The Exponential Festival and The Tank Present
The Story of the Orca’s Silver Tongue as Told by the Manager of the Only Taco Bell in Juno Poem by Nina Budabin McQuown, adapted for stage by Anna Lublina, Lim Mui, Lilly Kaplan, and Nina Budabin McQuown
Lead Artists and Performers: Anna Lublina Nina Budabin McQuown Lilly Kaplan Lim Mui
Annie-Sage Whitehurst Christopher Delacruz Gabby Harrison Anqi Zhang Anna Slate Lemon Guo Leigh Akin Victoria Rosser
The Story of the Orca’s Silver Tongue as Told by the Manager of the Only Taco Bell in Juno follows the epic tale of a whale god named Murder, the Manager of the only Taco Bell in Juno, and Frankie Bottomless, the former BFF who stole their gorgeous sparkling tongue and ran away to San Francisco. This narrative of shifting selves manifests as a transdisciplinary performance with a projected video essay, puppetry, and live choral soundscape. The cast assumes new bodies with each encounter, assembling a queer utopian world that envisions new modes for friendship, lust, and solitude.
RUNTIME
60 minutes
About the Artists
Anna Lublina is a director, teacher, and eager warm-up participant. She embraces ideals of collectivity and community action that she first encountered in her research into the Soviet conceptualists. Find out more @ annalublina.com
lim is an instigator of dreams. as a theatrical & cinematic writer, director, player, their devotion brews in the invocation of endless possibility, cosmic morality, and Hope theatre and film illuminate in minds - minds searching, minds connected. art aligns us with spirit; a union to all beings; an ascension for the healing of Earth Mother. muilim.com
Lilly Kaplan is a classical singer-cum-wishful bedroom pop star who makes coffee during the day and whose room always smells like rosewater. Having grown up studying opera as a coloratura soprano but listening to Riot Grrl, she is now interested in making music that lives somewhere at the intersection of punk and classical. Hear her music here: https:// soundcloud.com/lillilliana
Nina Budabin McQuown is a poet, essayist, and puppeteer originally from the Bronx. They are currently at work on Cruise Ship, an epic about a queer afterlife which includes the Manager’s story. They live in Washington, DC, where they create puppet shows with Wits End Puppets, edit the Hilary Tham Capital Collection for The Word Works Press, and blog at yeswehaveno.com. You can find their poetry and reviews published or forthcoming with Thethepoetry.com, SAND, The Cimarron Review, The Kenyon Review, and Hotel Amerika.
The Tank is a non-profit arts presenter serving emerging artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. We serve over 1,000 artists every year in over 400 performances, and work across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, public affairs, and storytelling. Our goal is to foster an environment of inclusiveness and remove the burden of cost from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form. The heart of our services is providing free performance space in our 98 seat proscenium and 56 seat blackbox that we operate in Manhattan, and we also offer a suite of other services such as free rehearsal space, promotional support, artist fees, and much more. We keep ticket prices affordable and view our work as democratic, opening up both the creation and attendance of the arts to all. Since its founding in 2003, artists who have come through The Tank include Alex Timbers, Amy Herzog, Lucy Alibar, Mike Daisey, Reggie Watts, Kyle Abraham, Andrew Bujalski, We Are Scientists, and tens of thousands of others. www.thetanknyc.org