Soft Belly returns: 11/17 + 11/18 at AS220

Join us for two encore shows of Soft Belly this fall.

November 17 + November 18
7:30pm at AS220’s Black Box
95 Empire St. Providence, RI

What do you see in the underbrush?
A robin eats a worm.
Moss devours stone.
And Earth swallows you whole.

In Soft Belly, a woman encounters an audience to share a lesson. Well, maybe a lesson. It might be a message. Or is it a warning?

Soft Belly is the latest play written by Lily Mathews, co-created with local musicians and performers Adam Kotin, Aly Frank, Kate Teichman, Max Mathews, and Spencer Curry. Originally debuting at the Providence Fringe Festival this past summer, we’re excited to bring it back one more time.

Soft Belly at Providence Fringe: July 20, 21, 22

​What do you see in the underbrush?
A robin eats a worm.
Moss devours stone.
And Earth swallows you whole.

We’re excited to debut a new original show at the Providence Fringe Festival July 20, 21, and 22nd.

In Soft Belly, a woman encounters an audience to share a lesson. Well, maybe a lesson. It might be a message. Or is it a warning?

What she hears in the reverb could change everything.

Soft Belly is the latest play written by Lily Mathews, co-created with local musicians and performers Adam Kotin, Aly Frank, Kate Teichman, Max Mathews, and Spencer Curry. Featuring original film and live musical accompaniment, we’re thrilled to share this odd lecture/poem/concert with you.

More details and tickets can be found on the FringePVD website.

After Dark: Upcoming Providence Run

Who do we turn to when the lights go out? In a dusty valley that time forgot, everybody’s business is on the air. When a soothing voice from outer space finds the frequency, nothing will ever be the same again.

After Dark is a devised play written by Lily Mathews, directed by Adam Kotin, in collaboration with musicians and theater-makers Casey Seymour Kim, Kate Teichman, Liam Horne, Matt Requintina, Max Mathews, and Spencer Curry.

The show debuts at the Providence Fringe Festival from July 21, 22, + 23, 2022 before continuing its run at AS220 August 5 + 6, 2022.

***

FRINGEPVD
SHOWTIMES & TICKETS

Thursday, July 21 at 8:30pm
Friday, July 22 at 8:30pm
Saturday, July 23 at 8:30pm

at The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Ave. Providence, RI
Tickets are $15 (advance purchase recommended)

AS220
SHOWTIMES & TICKETS

Friday, August 5 at 8:00pm
Saturday, August 6 at 8:00pm

at AS220’s Black Box Theater, 95 Empire St. Providence, RI (indoor venue, masks required)
Tickets are $15

Booby Trap! at Providence Fringe Festival

After more than a year hibernating, we’re ready to play once again.

Next up: Booby Trap! a devised play written by Lily Mathews with collaborators Adam Kotin, Max Mathews, Kate Teichman, and John Bender for the Providence Fringe Festival (July 18-31, 2021). This exuberant group of performers, playwrights, cellists, and directors is truly delighted to dig in, make new work, and perform after a hell of a year.

The deets for all you hungry theatergoers:

BOOBY TRAP!
By Lily Mathews

SHOWTIMES:
Saturday, July 24 at 7 pm
Thursday, July 29 at 8:30 pm
Friday, July 30 at 8:30 pm
Saturday, July 31 at 5:30 pm

LOCATION:
The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Ave. Providence, RI (outdoor venue)

TICKETS:
$10 (advance purchase recommended)

We’re excited to be back on stage performing alongside many other exciting acts that are part of FringePVD. Hope to see you there!

January Double Feature: Yay America! & Fix Me, Baby

Look around: it's winter, the world has warped, and all we have is each other. Join artists from Oakland and New York City as we perform two bold works exploring what it means to be alive today.Yay America! and Fix Me, Baby perform one weekend only, January 11th and 12th, 2020.

First, A Little Backstory

This summer, Dugway Proving Ground culled together some donated frequent flier miles and brought our play Pretty Bird to the Providence Fringe Festival.

Adam and Lily were well-acquainted with humid RI summers, while Shannon was getting her first taste (a Northern Californian at heart, she may or may not have thought over-the-knee black leather boots were appropriate summer shoes). The opening night of the festival started innocently enough, but by mid-party, blistering summer heat broke into a thunderstorm. Under the dull roar of rainfall, we met Kaitlin Kaufman—AKA Penelope the Clown.

We immediately hit it off: both socially, and then, creatively. Kaitlin, a self-described "red nose wunderkind and mime princess from Long Island" is a clown who specializes in mask performance, mime, and improvisation, having trained in Florence, Italy. By day she works as a clown doctor. When Kaitlin saw Dugway's Pretty Bird at the festival and proceeded to surface all sorts of profound meaning from the show, we were impressed. But when we saw her solo clown performance of Yay America! and left the theater weeping, we were transformed.

Flash Forward Six Months

After being cross-country cheerleaders this fall (Kaitlin performed Yay America! at the Tank in NYC, while we debuted Pretty Bird to West Coast audiences in November), we're reuniting for a night of performance this January 11th and 12th, 2020. Kaitlin is traveling from NYC, and Dugway Proving Ground will produce Yay America! alongside Fix Me Baby, a spanking new one-act from Lily Mathews, directed by Adam Kotin. We hope to see you there.

YAY AMERICA!
Created and performed by Kaitlin Kaufman
Co-created by Elizabeth Baron

In this heart-warming, gut-wrenching solo clown tragicomedy, Penelope the Clown splits sides and heals divides with a surprising and loving patriotic foray. West Coast debut.

FIX ME, BABY
Written and performed by Lily Mathews
Directed by Adam Kotin
Featuring original music by Dan Berson

Somewhere, in a cafe, a woman with a rash stares down despair through the eyes of a stranger. This debut one-act play is full of astonishing heart and bizarre imagination.

Performance Details
Saturday, January 11 at 7pm
Sunday, January 12 at 7pm
Jeffrey Bihr Studio (5390 Miles St. Oakland, CA)

Advanced tickets are available at Brown Paper Tickets. Seating is extremely limited.

Pretty Bird: Bay Area Pop-up Performances

After premiering at the Providence Fringe Festival in July 2019, Pretty Bird is coming home to the Bay Area! Dugway Proving Ground is thrilled to present Lily Mathews’s new play this fall with two pop-up performances.

Performance Details
Friday, November 1st at 7:00pm
Saturday, November 2nd at 7:00pm

The Sawtooth Building
Western Sky Studio
2525 8th St, #13A
Berkeley, CA 94710

Street parking is available in the surrounding residential neighborhood

Tickets
Advanced sliding scale tickets are available at https://prettybird.bpt.me/.

Pretty Bird Premier at FringePVD

We’re headed East, baby! DPG is excited to go back to our RI roots with a new play premier by Lily Mathews, directed by Adam Kotin, with favorite collaborator Shannon DeJong. The Providence Fringe Festival is chock full of different performances, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.

Lane's got a secret—and a star on her hands. Her blue ribbon hen, Pretty Bird, is poised for the big leagues. But fame has a way of ravaging the pecking order, and glittery ghosts from the past are intoxicatingly tempting. Will crippling codependence, a Dutch dandy, and David Attenborough bring them closer together? Or will a daring con destroy it all?

Pretty Bird is a darkly comic theatrical melange about the precariousness of putting all your eggs in one basket.

SHOWTIMES
Wednesday 7/24 at 10:00pm
Thursday 7/25 at 8:30pm
Saturday 7/27 at 4:00pm

LOCATION
WaterFire Arts Center - Down Studio
475 Valley St.
Providence, RI 02908

MORE INFO
http://fringepvd.org/pretty-bird

Art or Voyeurism? Oyster Play Reading

Many thanks to all who joined the Oyster play workshop reading last month at Danspace in Oakland. The space was humming with energy and feedback.

In Lily Mathews’s Oyster, four women, a cactus, and a seagull navigate the befuddling pursuit of self-perception. This new play examines vanity, ambition, and the role of voyeurism in the creative act.

With this round of feedback, the play will continue in its development process that will move it toward production. Until next time!

Oyster: Workshop Reading Coming Soon

After a kickin’ 2018 and sold-out run of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information at The Gravel Lot, Dugway Proving Ground is excited to be back in action in 2019.

To start us off, we’re focusing on new works development. This month, we’ve workshopped Co-Founder Lily Mathews’s new play, Oyster, with a talented cast and crew. The play will be staged as a reading and is open to the public on Sunday, February 3 at 7pm. Put your dramaturgical caps on and help a playwright out as we contribute to the development process.

In Oyster, four women, a cactus, and a seagull navigate the befuddling pursuit of self-perception. This new play examines vanity, ambition, and the role of voyeurism in the creative act.

Written by Lily Mathews
Featuring Shannon DeJong, Pamela Hollings, Renee Penegor, Jamie Sharp, and Max Mathews
Directed by Adam Kotin

The nitty gritty details:

• Sunday, February 3 at 7:00 pm

• Danspace, 473 Hudson St. Oakland 

• Easy street parking / 3 blocks from Rockridge BART

• TO RESERVE A SEAT: Email dugwaytheater@gmail.com

This is a project of foolsFURY and Dugway Proving Ground Theater.

Love and Information at the Gravel Lot

Under the dusky autumn sky, the audience huddled in—bundled under blankets, tucked into camp chairs, sipping their beverage of choice. Dugway Proving Ground was thrilled to present our debut theater production, Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, over a three-night, sold-out run.

Churchill is a masterful playwright, dubbed by some as the greatest living playwright alive. We love how Lucy Kirkwood puts it: “Simply put, [Churchill] is the only person writing today who says something new in both form and content every time she puts pen to paper.”

Our ensemble of 9 was honored to present this kaleidoscopic journey to the audience through an immersive experience that brought together live music, dance, film, and more.

Thank you to our first supporters. We are so grateful.