My grandmother was the senior sea lion trainer at Alabama’s Sea Country aquatic park in 1971. Now she is 93 living in Burlington, North Carolina and receiving regular steroid shots in both hips. She still swims regularly in the retirement center’s pool. This sweet and succinct exploration of the loss of strength explores what it means to swim through all stages of life. Everyday objects – a mop, a bowl, a bean bag chair – come to life to bark, laugh, and paddle…  a memento mori for the aging body and the young body alike.

John Pizza is a Brooklynite artist and performer excited to be back at Dixon Place. Most recently he can be seen on HBO’s High Maintenance, and has performed original works for Knockdown Center, The  Brick, Irondale Center, Reckless Theatre and others. He’s enjoyed residencies in both rural Nebraska and urban Norway. Check his drawings at john_pizza@instagram.com and his rap albums at johnpizza.bandcamp.com.

After some extensive(ly non-scientific) research, we have planned a revolutionary expedition into the future. Data from at least 10 interviews with strangers, combined with ideas mashed together in science-like ways, has only revealed more questions on the purpose and feasibility of musical time travel, patent-pending. And we may be combining this with a rescue mission for a certain lost colleague. In short, we take off into the future, bringing our audience, melodies and memories in tow. We’re serious, people: pack light.

Playwright / Song-Writer / Co-Composer/ Performer/ Traveler Charlotte Moroz
Co-Composer/ Banjo / Traveler Jason Vance
Director / Traveler Leigh Walter

Charlotte Moroz is a playwright, singer-songwriter, puppet-maker and performer hailing from Brooklyn, New York. Charlotte has written, co-scored, and designed puppets for and performed in more than 7 original puppet musicals in the past 3 years, producing workshops with “The Society for Misfit Puppets”, a company formed with Leigh Walter, a Lincoln Center-based director. Speaking of the past and future, Charlotte apprenticed for The Puppet Kitchen in 2016 and continues to serve as a Teaching Artist,  as well as at Abron’s Summer Arts Camp. She most recently workshopped Regret+Time Travel as an Artist-in-Residence at Fresh Ground Pepper’s annual artist retreat. Charlotte is thrilled to return to Dixon Place and Puppet BloK Fest for a second year in a row!

Jason Vance Fellow Time Travel Provocateur, Vance complements the winsomely thoughtful Moroz Melodies with his exploratory harmonic textures on banjo and melodica. If the goal of this experience is to push the audience out of time and their comfort zones, Vance’s MO with the Banjo is no different. Despite his Appalachian roots and experience with old-time Banjo, his sweet spot is delicate arpeggios on jazz chords along with raucous strumming on a rockabilly beat. In addition to his tenure alongside Moroz with Society for Misfit Puppets, he has performed for years in NYC interactive theater as musician and actor with Trusty Sidekick and producer, director, writer, and actor with Live In Theater. By day you can find him teaching the little ones music at the Brooklyn Music Factory as Director of their MINI-Keys program or doing other Arts Ed as a member of the New Victory Teaching Artist Ensemble. Or you may even find him singing at you on the streets or subway platform as his one-man band.

Leigh Walter is a director and AEA stage manager.  She’s worked at Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Goodspeed Musicals, La MaMa, and New York Theatre Workshop.  DIRECTING: Campfire (Lincoln Center, AD), Boy at the Edge of Everything (Lincoln Center, AD), LARP Me Gently, (Dixon Place), Blossom (Dixon Place, AD), Power of Emotion (Under the Radar, AD). Leigh has been working with Charlotte Moroz for the past two years and together they have created, developed and produced over a dozen different theatre performances, including puppet musicals, variety shows and improv musicals.  SDCF Directing Observership Class 2015-2016.  Company Member Trusty Sidekick.  B.F.A. Directing, Nebraska Wesleyan University. leighwalter.com

Made possible in part with funds from the Jim Henson Foundation.