Founders

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.

Pilot Production: NYLON

NYLON

About this play

In NYLON, an estranged couple, Anna and Matthew, meet for the first time in four years. Over the course of the encounter their past is dredged to the surface in a way that ruptures Anna’s carefully constructed persona and sets in motion a psychological tennis match that threatens both of their individual futures as well of those of everyone around them. A modern dayA Doll’s House, NYLON explores the options available to women and the ways in which we become our own worst enemies when we stray from the acceptable paths available to us.

From the playwright

NYLON is a play about a woman who is both incredibly composed but also someone who has little to no control over her impulses. Unable to find equilibrium between these two sides of herself she fears her carefully manicured life is starting to unravel only to find she’s actually trapped in the box she’s created. I wrote NYLON to explore the choices available to women. There are others, both men and women, ready to criticize and take away women’s choices at every turn - but often the worst critic we encounter is our own mind.

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.

From the director

I’m honored to help tell this story. In NYLON the protagonist Anna reaches a crisis point in her life and marriage and feels trapped by her dwindling choices. Sofia has written a powerful play about a woman in free fall, and we have the perfect actor in Sheila to take on that challenge. I’m also delighted to present this play at Theaterlab, where I directed my first show in New York. Their artful white-box will perfectly frame the depth and specificity of our production. In this play, unflattering truths are laid bare. In this space, there’s nowhere to hide.

Collaborators

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

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