News: Free 2024 LUNGS Summer Theater Festival Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9

Vít Hořejš and his marionettes

LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens), a grassroots community gardens-based organization uniting the many volunteer-run community gardens in the Lower East Side and the East Village, FRIGID New York, and nonprofit arts organization GOH Productions present the third annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival, a festival featuring the work of International and LES artists, on Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9 from 2 pm-5:30 pm at the 6B Garden (located at Avenue and East 6th Street in New York City). Admission to the festival is completely FREE.

In 1956, Joe Papp began the outdoor theater tradition on the Lower East Side when he introduced “Shakespeare in the Park” in East River Park Amphitheater. From the 1950s to the present, the Park was the site of frequent free Evening-in-the-Park concerts and plays. In 2022, LUNGS launched the first free annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival and continues to honor the tradition with the third annual festival this June. The 2024 festival will be hosted by Lower East Side icon Riki Colon and feature poems by Loisaida Poetas, read by Carlos Rodriguez.

The 3rd Annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival is supported in part by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The festival was curated by Erez Ziv, Riki Colon, Roman Primativo Albear, Bonnie Sue Stein and Charles Krezell. Special thanks go to 6B Garden, Sally Young, and Rina Root. 

2024 Festival Schedule

2pm: CZECH AND BENGALI STORIES WITH PUPPETS

By Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre
Created and performed by Vít Hořejš & Sayma Karim

Featuring The Naughty Tiger, performed by Sayma Karin, and The Devil and The Lawyer & The Twelve Months, performed by Vít Hořejš. In addition: The Devil marionette announces his 2024 Presidential Campaign. Sayma Karim and her Muppet Titly will tell a Bengali folk tale she heard as a child in her home country of Bangladesh, followed by Vít Hořejš and his century-old marionettes telling his childhood story from Czechoslovakia, where the naughty creatures are, of course, the devils.

Sayma Karim, a versatile puppeteer and educator, worked for 19 years in Bangladesh before emigrating to the USA. As a teacher, she trained emerging talents in voice, acting, and puppetry and acted in television dramas as well as puppetry. She joined the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre this year.

A native of Prague, Vít Hořejš emigrated to the US in 1979. In 1990, he found a trove of antique marionettes in the attic at Jan Hus Church on East 74th Street, in the heart of the once-upon-a-time Czech and Slovak neighborhood and founded Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre in NYC. He has lived in the once-upon-a-time Czech and Slovak Lower East Side since 1980.

3pm: EL TENDEDERO

Presented by Something from Abroad
Written and Directed by Regina Romero

Performed by Regina Romero, Silvana Gonzalez, Pelayo Alvarez, and Martha Lorena Preve.
In El Tendedero, Latin New Yorkers Zaira and Nadia deal with the arrival of new neighbors - and everything that it might imply: gentrification? Love? Infidelity? This short comedy is set in the perfect chisme (gossip) spot: a rooftop "Tendedero." The reflection of a quintessential NY community.

Something From Abroad produces material from different cultural backgrounds to give "outside" stories a voice in America today. It is a theater company made up of a couple of broads from abroad, proud to promote art created by women. Its mission is to provide an opportunity for actors from all over the world to perform on stage in New York. 

4pm: OUR DAD IS IN ATLANTIS

Written by Mexican playwright Javier Malpica
Directed by Roman Primitivo Albear
Performed by Daniel Gutierrez Isaiah Garcia Muchas

The play concerns two young Mexican brothers who are left with their grandmother in a rural village while their father goes to the United States to look for work. Motherless, missing their father, and left in the care of relatives they scarcely know, the boys rely on one another for emotional support they are unequipped to provide, and for physical support in a naive and desperate attempt to reach their father in “Atlantis.” Roman Primitivo Albear, playwright, poet, director, and painter, was born in Mexico City and lives in New York City.

5pm: LORCA’S LAST NIGHT

Written and directed by Charles Krezell
Directed by Daria Fain, Music by Leonid Galaganov
Performed by Leonid Galaganov, Rocco George, Jhonathan zapata Garcia, Owen Engesser and David Fasano. Guitar by David Barish

Lorca is captured by the Guardia de Civil (“Civil Guard”) in fascist Spain. He is waiting for the morning to come.

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