Conversation Storm is a 2006 [1] play written by playwright and composer Rick Burkhardt and originally performed by The Nonsense Company.
The performance is often paired with Great Hymn of Thanksgiving , another piece written by Burkhardt.
Three friends from three sides of the political spectrum unwillingly argue their way through a "ticking time bomb" scenario, dissecting, revising, and even brutalizing their own positions in the process — but time has either stopped or entered an ugly loop, and as the friends assign and reassign roles, the scenario begins to dissolve the boundaries between real and hypothetical, past and future, day and night.
In 2007, filmmaker H.P. Mendoza was working for the San Francisco Fringe Festival and was able to see a performance of The Nonsense Company's Great Hymn of Thanksgiving/Conversation Storm and was determined to meet the troupe. In 2008, Mendoza gave his voice to Great Hymn playwright Rick Burkhardt for his award-winning composition "Calf", performed by the ensemble Ascolta and decided to ask Burkhardt if he would be interested in making a film version of Great Hymn of Thanksgiving/Conversation Storm, called "a delicious two-course evening" [2] by Time Out New York.
The film is slated for release in 2015.
Conversation Storm was published in Plays and Playwrights 2009, edited by Martin Denton.
NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival put on by The New Festival, Inc., is one of the most comprehensive forums of national and international LGBT film/video in the world.
The New York International Fringe Festival, or FringeNYC, was a fringe theater festival and one of the largest multi-arts events in North America. It took place over the course of a few weeks in October, spread on more than 20 stages across several neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan, notably the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Greenwich Village. Most of the venues were centered on the FringeHUB. Yearly attendance topped 75,000 people.
Zuzana Justman, born Zuzana Pick, is a Czech-American maker of documentary films and writer. She was born in former Czechoslovakia, which she left in 1948 with her mother after surviving two years at Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. She went to New York state for college and graduate school, and settled in New York City afterward. After working as a writer and translator, in the late 1980s, she started filmmaking. She has filmed most of her documentaries in the Czech Republic and other European countries, and her topics have been the Holocaust of World War II and postwar history.
EXIT Theatre is an alternative theater located at 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco, California, in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood. The theater operates four storefront theaters and annually produces the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the second oldest fringe festival in the U.S. and the largest grass roots theater festival in the San Francisco Bay Area, and DIVAfest, dedicated to creating new plays by women writers.
Matthew Earnest is an American theater director. He has also written plays, as well as adapted plays from novels, non-fiction books, short stories, and essays, and he has translated works in other languages for his direction.
David Greenspan is an American actor and playwright. He is the recipient of six Obies, including an award in 2010 for Sustained Achievement.
The FRIGID New York Fringe Festival or FrigidFest is an open and uncensored fringe theatre festival founded in March 2007 jointly by New York's Horse Trade Theater Group and San Francisco’s EXIT Theatre. The first year 29 theatre companies performed for more than 2,000 people. The artists are paid 100% of their box office.
Rabbit Hole Ensemble is a Brooklyn, New York, United States based, not-for-profit, Off-off Broadway theatre company. Under the artistic direction of Edward Elefterion, the ensemble has produced seven original works throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Great Hymn of Thanksgiving is a 2003 performance piece, scored for three speaking percussionists, composed by playwright and composer Rick Burkhardt. It has been performed by The Nonsense Company, Ensemble Chronophonie, line upon line, thingNY, and several other contemporary music ensembles.
Lynne Sachs is an American experimental filmmaker and poet living in Brooklyn, New York. Her moving image work ranges from documentaries, to essay films, to experimental shorts, to hybrid live performances. Working from a feminist perspective, Sachs weaves together social criticism with personal subjectivity. Her films embrace a radical use of archives, performance and intricate sound work. Between 2013 and 2020, she collaborated with musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello on five films.
James Asmus is a writer, actor and comedian known for his affiliation with such theaters as The Annoyance and the sketch group Hey You Millionaires, and for his work writing comic books such as Quantum and Woody, Thief of Thieves and Gambit.
Ars Nova is an Off-Broadway, non-profit theater in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Ars Nova develops and produces theater, comedy and music created by artists in the early stages of their careers.
No. 11 Productions is a non-profit 501(c)(3) theatre company based in New York City. The company's productions have been reviewed by The Washington Post, NYTheatre.com, The Happiest Medium, Broadwayworld.com, and DCTheatreScene.com. No.11 Productions has produced works at the New York International Fringe Festival, FRIGID New York, Kentucky Repertory Theatre, Fringe Wilmington, The Bushwick Starr, @Seaport, Capital Fringe Festival, 14th Street Theatre, Van Cortlandt Park, and SaratogaArtsFest.
Dave Malloy is an American composer, playwright, lyricist, and actor. He has written several theatrical works, often based on classic works of literature. They include Moby-Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville's classic novel; Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the mind of romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff; Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; and the Tony Award winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War and Peace.
Joe Gulla is an American playwright, actor and reality television participant. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he writes and performs for the theater. He is a regular performer at Feinstein's/54 Below and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. An award-winning playwright, his plays have been performed Off-Broadway, nationally and internationally.
Hot Thespian Action is a sketch comedy troupe based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They have been nominated three times for "Best Sketch Troupe" at the Canadian Comedy Awards. The group consists of Shannon Guile, Jacqueline Loewen, Garth Merkeley, Ryan Miller, and Jane Testar. They appear yearly at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, and many other sketch comedy festivals across North America.
Yeast Nation (The Triumph of Life) is a musical that premiered in 2007, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It serves as the first part of a musical trilogy, with the middle installment being Hollmann and Kotis' previous Tony Award-winning musical Urinetown and the final installment being Welcome to Space.
Katherine "Katie" Cappiello is an American playwright, director, feminist, teacher, activist and public speaker best known for her plays Slut and Now That We're Men. Gloria Steinem called Slut "truthful, raw and immediate!" and David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker called it "vital, moving, and absolutely necessary". Cappiello is the creator, writer and executive producer of Grand Army.
Arlene Hutton is an American playwright, theatre artist and teacher. She is best known for a trio of plays, set during and after the Second World War, known as The Nibroc Trilogy. The initial play of that trilogy, Last Train to Nibroc, was the first play to transfer from FringeNYC to Off-Broadway. Other works for which she is known include a one-act dramatic work about the aftermath of a sexual assault, I Dream Before I Take the Stand; a one-act musical drama set among the members of a Shaker community in the 19th century, As It Is in Heaven; and a Holocaust-themed work, Letters to Sala, based on actual documents. She has also created plays for young audiences.
Shivali Bhammer known as Shivali, is a British singer-songwriter and public speaker who was born and raised in London.