Ensemble in Residence
In six seasons at OSF: Playwrights and Composers, UniSon; Playwrights, Party People; actors in UniSon, Party People, The Unfortunates, The Comedy of Errors. UNIVERSES is a New York-based ensemble company of multidisciplinary writers and performers who fuse poetry, theatre, jazz, hip-hop, politics, blues and Spanish boleros into their own unique brand of theatre-based performances. The members of UNIVERSES ensemble, Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, William Ruiz (a.k.a. Ninja) and Gamal Chasten, grew up in the housing projects in New York City and started performing poetry in the spoken-word scene of the late 1990s at venues such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Then they started writing their own plays, including Party People, Ameriville, Slanguage, The Ride, The Denver Project, One Shot in the Lotus Position, Blue Suite and Live from the Edge. Their work has been performed at venues around the world, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Humana Festival and The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. Party People was a commission by OSF’s American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle.