Projects & Events

2013 — The Service Road

Erin Courtney’s play received its world premiere in January and February 2013 at the Voorhees Theatre at New York City College of Technology, directed by Meghan Finn. A nature guide searches for a lost child after a violent storm transforms a familiar Prospect Park service road. The production combined sparse language with moving and inclined scenery, live sound effects, stop-motion animation, projected Tree Children, a skeletal dog puppet, and a large puppet whose face was animated through live video.

2009 — NOIR

Written by Kalle Macrides and directed by Cory Einbinder, NOIR was presented at the Voorhees Theatre. The multimedia dance-theater mystery followed a filmmaker trying to identify a murderer in the moment before his death. Frames, screens, angular props, deep shadows, live music, and movement translated the grammar of cinema into a live environment. A reading of the play had been presented at the same venue in December 2008.

2009 — Tenth-year event

Adhesive marked ten years of hybrid multimedia performance with an evening of music and dance in Brooklyn. The event looked back at work made with puppets, video, stilts, magnets, live musicians, and collaborators from outside conventional theater departments. It belongs here as a company gathering rather than a staged production.

2008 — I, Object!

Created by Cory Einbinder, Kalle Macrides, and Jared Mezzocchi, I, Object! appeared at The Brick during The Film Festival: A Theater Festival. Its premise shifted attention between collectors and their possessions: were people keeping objects, or were objects keeping people? Music, props, puppets, costumes, animation, and live video built an ensemble world around that question.

2006 — R.U.R.: A Futurist Folk Opera

Written and directed by Cory Einbinder, with music and lyrics by Joel Griffin and Cory Einbinder, the workshop production was based on Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. It played at Spring Theatreworks and combined rock, tango, jazz, and punk-inflected music with contemporary dance, film, sculpture, and a live band.

2006 — Brooklyn Robot Parade

The first Brooklyn Robot Parade took place near Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in D.U.M.B.O. The event welcomed toy robots, constructed machines, and handmade robot costumes. It carried the R.U.R. season into a public event where engineering enthusiasm and theater craft could share the same route. Rain changed the original outdoor plan, and the event moved to a rain-safe nearby location.

2005 — Hysteria: HYSTERIA

Written by Jake Hooker, directed by Cory Einbinder, with music and lyrics by Sam Shaffer, this production played at The Stable in D.U.M.B.O. It marked the company’s first stated move into dance theater. The text pasted together material from many sources, while the cast and director developed a movement score to bind those fragments into performance.

2005 — Chantecler

Edmond Rostand’s animal allegory, in Kay Nolte Smith’s translation, played at Teatro LA TEA. A rooster believes that his song causes the sun to rise. Adhesive approached the story through puppets, masks, physical theater, a live three-piece band, and two illustrators drawing the play’s world as the performance unfolded. A related Farmyard Puppet Workshop invited participants to make and manipulate masks and puppets using materials connected to the show.

2005 — Stoop sale

The first large stoop sale accompanied the Chantecler season. It turned the everyday Brooklyn form of a table of household objects into a company event. Later stoop sales supported other productions and extended the company’s recurring interest in the lives and afterlives of things.

2004 — Figaro Gets a Divorce

Adhesive Theater Project and Elefterion Productions co-produced the New York City premiere of Ödön von Horváth’s play in Roger Downey’s translation, directed by Edward Elefterion at The Access Theater. The sequel places Figaro and Susanna among refugees forced to consider identity and the cost of changing it in order to survive.

2002 — Les Mauvais Garçons

Jake Hooker’s play, directed by Cory Einbinder, was presented in HERE Arts Center’s American Living Room series and returned for additional performances. The company described it as a work about the absurdity, vulgarity, and hidden poetry of modern life, as well as the human desire to understand everything alongside the inability to understand anything.

2002 — The Devil’s Parole

Eric Giancoli’s comedy, featuring Eric Giancoli and Cory Einbinder, appeared in the Sam French Festival of New Plays. It was an Adhesive member project presented by Mind the Gap Theater.

2000 — IRS Training Video

Written and directed by Eric Giancoli, this satirical film was produced by Adhesive Theater Project and Admantium Inc. Structured as a training film for fictional agents conducting “Personal Refund” sessions, it turned an institutional format into comedy. Peter Brown played Terrence Trendari and Eric Giancoli played Curtis Finnegan.

2000 — Spring Awakening

Frank Wedekind’s play, in Ted Hughes’s version, was conceived and directed by Cory Einbinder at Center Stage. Seven actors played twenty-six roles. Painted sets, costumes, actors, towering adult figures, a detailed soundscape, and stark shadow and light shaped a dark comic world around the play.

2000 — Kirby

Written by Adhesive cast and staff and directed by Cory Einbinder at Nada Classic, Kirby told a superhero fable about a hero and a mute girl. The company described its form as a collage of images, sound, music, movement, and spectacle with room for interpretation.

1999 — The Battles of Coxinga

Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s play, translated by Donald Keene and adapted and directed by Cory Einbinder, played at The Piano Store. Adhesive transformed the journey of exiles into an action spectacle using sword fights, shadow puppets, ghosts, giants, and tiger dances.