The TEAM is a Brooklyn-based ensemble dedicated to creating new work about the experience of living in America today.
The Guardian once described us as “theatrical excavators of American culture, American dreams and the American psyche.” Combining aggressive athleticism with emotional performances, our work crashes characters from American history and mythology into modern stories, drawing unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable connections across time to touch the raw nerves of the current moment.
The company was founded in 2004 by a group of 6 NYU alumni, and has since grown to 15 core members and a continually expanding group of collaborators. We devise plays by examining a wealth of material, ranging from existing texts (fiction, theory, drama, etc.) to images taken from visual art and film, and then combining that research with original writing and staging. In a final production it is nearly impossible to trace any one line of dialogue or image back to a single author’s hand.
To date, we have created and toured 12 original works. Our work has been seen in New York at the Public Theater, PS122, Vineyard Theatre, Ohio Theatre, and The Bushwick Starr; nationally at ArtsEmerson, A.R.T., Walker Art Center, Playmakers Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Virginia Tech, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and internationally at the National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, Barbican, Almeida Theatre, and Battersea Arts Centre in London; Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre; Culturgest in Lisbon; the Salzburg Festival; Galway Festival; Perth International Arts Festival; and Hong Kong Arts Festival.
We are four-time winners of the Scotsman Fringe First Award, Winner 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, 2011 Herald Angel, 2008 Edinburgh Total Theatre Award, Best Production Dublin Fringe 2007, and were nominated for a 2012 Drama League Award for Outstanding Musical. We were recently cited on “Best of 2013” lists on 3 continents, and are a recipient of the American Theatre Wing’s 2014 National Theatre Company Grant. We have published three books of our plays, including our 10 year anthology Five Plays by the TEAM, all with Oberon Books.
The TEAM is Jessica Almasy, Frank Boyd, Rachel Chavkin, Stephanie Douglass, Jill Frutkin, Amber Gray, Brian Hastert, Jake Heinrichs, Matt Hubbs, Libby King, Ian Lassiter, Jake Margolin, Dave Polato, Kristen Sieh, and Nick Vaughan.