Blockchain Theater Project (BTP) was created as a platform to empower artists to produce the work that they create. We believe playwrights know better than anyone where to find the most exciting new works being written, and when they do, they should be given the tools to bring them to life. Like Bitcoin and other blockchains, BTP eliminates the institutional gatekeeper, creating a peer-to-peer model of support where the next play to be produced will be nominated by the playwright of the current production.
Both theater and blockchain can seem like insular communities: the people who know about them know a lot, and those who don’t are in the dark. BTP aims to merge these two worlds. We are funded through ticket sales and donations, which we accept in $USD and select cryptocurrencies. Our operating budget goes entirely toward productions, never development.
Nicola Korzenko is the Executive Director of Blockchain Theater Project. Theater was Nicola’s first love: she acted, directed and produced throughout high school and college, and met Sofia Alvarez in 2007 working in the theater department of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as an agent trainee. Nicola’s second love was technology: from CAA, she joined a tech startup before moving to Lerer Hippeau Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Nicola joined Amazon as a product manager for Prime Video. She’s incredibly excited to continue combining both her passions at BTP and can’t wait to help introduce new plays to new audiences.
Sofia Alvarez is the Founding Artistic Director of the Blockchain Theater Project. She is a playwright and screenwriter. Most recently she adapted Jenny Han’s best selling novel To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before for Netflix for which she was named one of Variety Magazine’s 2018 screenwriters to watch. Her play Friend Art was produced by Second Stage Theater in May of 2016. She wrote the book and lyrics for a musical adaptation of William Steig’s classic children’s book, Amos and Boris. The musical was produced at South Coast Rep in May of 2018. South Coast Rep also produced her first play, Between Us Chickens. Work in television includes the first two seasons of Man Seeking Woman (FXX) and the first season of Sirens (USA). She is a graduate of Bennington College and the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. She’s thrilled to be partnering with Nicola Korzenko to give productions to worthy new plays with a company that emphasizes the peer support she has always found present in her community of playwrights.
Written by: Sofia Alvarez Directed by: Knud Adams Starring Sheila Vand
To be presented at TheaterLab in New York City
March 6–24, 2019.
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I am thrilled to be working with the actress Sheila Vand as Anna. Sheila acutely embodies the questions and depths of the character and viscerally understands how many conflicting needs go into every one of Anna’s actions. Director Knud Adams rounds out our creative team. As a longtime fan of Knud’s work, I am consistently impressed by the sleek, painterly sensibility with which he imbues all of his productions both in his keen eye for design and with the razor’s edge precision he brings out of performers.
Sheila Vand (Anna) most recently starred as “Ma” in the Independent Spirit nominated We the Animals (2018 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Innovator Prize) and alongside Susan Sarandon in Viper Club (Toronto International Film Festival 2018). Her extensive filmography includes the anthology hit XX (2017 Sundance Film Festival), Paramount’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (opposite Tina Fey), the Sundance hit A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and the Academy Award–winning film Argo. Other notable credits include her Broadway debut opposite Robin Williams in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Sneaky Nietzsche (her original theatrical experience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and an ongoing visual art collaboration with TED-fellow Alexa Meade. She will next star in TNT’s upcoming series Snowpiercer.
Knud Adams is a New York-based director who specializes in artful/intelligent/radical new plays. Recent productions: Tin Cat Shoes (Trish Harnetiaux, Clubbed Thumb), Marie and Bruce (Wallace Shawn, JACK), Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen (Eliza Bent, Abrons), The Workshop (Torrey Townsend, Soft Focus), Asshole (Justin Kuritzkes, JACK), Every Angel is Brutal (Julia Jarcho, Clubbed Thumb), On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba (Eliza Bent, The New Ohio), Tom & Eliza (Celine Song, JACK), Snore (Max Posner, Juilliard), An Intimate Evening with Typhoid Mary (Carl Holder, The New Ohio), That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her (Jen Silverman, U. of Rochester), Krazytown (Jenny Schwartz, NYU), and Salome of the Moon (Nick Jones, Waterwell). Assisting: Knud trained by assisting André Gregory, Elizabeth LeCompte, Richard Foreman, Sam Gold, and Sarah Benson. Affiliations: Drama League Next Stage Resident, Drama League NY Directing Fellow, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident. www.knudadams.com