Round 2
SHELLEY WOLLERT
ELSKA'S ARCTIC ADVENTURE
Written and performed by Shelley Wollert
Directed by Nicholas A. Cotz
A workshop performance
July 2019
After a mysterious seed arrives with an albatross, Elska and the audience embark on an epic journey across her arctic island. Could the glowing seed be dangerous? Should she plant it? Will the Land of Lost Socks ever learn to behave themselves? Through pop-songs, dance, puppetry, and projection, young pioneers (3-6 years old) will be immersed in Elska's quirky land of fire and ice in this interactive 40-min production. Award-winning artist Elska (Parents' Choice, NAPPA, NY Times Critics Pick) brings the audience through waterfalls, geysers, and fields of moss, introducing them to her best friends along the way.
SHELLEY WOLLERT (Playwright, Elska) Elska is a multi-media project for families created by Shelley Wollert and Allen Farmelo after a trip to Iceland in 2009. Elska, a fictional character, performed by Wollert, is a modern pioneer who discovers a small island off the coast of Iceland on the edge of the Arctic Circle, where she lives with a group of unusual residents – an Arctic Fox, a Polar Bear writer, a green Goobler, and a colony of Lost Socks, to name a few. Elska’s debut album, Middle of Nowhere, which released 2012 on Winter Bear Records, received critical acclaim and both a Parents’ Choice Foundation Silver Award and a NAPPA Honors Award, as well as national exposure though heavy rotation on SiriusMX Radio since its release. Elska toured her one-woman theatrical show Middle of Nowhere, throughout the United States, UK, Canada and Iceland in such venues as BAM (Brooklyn), Symphony Space (NYC), Alden Theater (VA), Mass MoCA (MA), Arts Commons (Calgary) from 2012-2016.
Shelley is currently writing a collection of short stories from Elska’s Island that will be accompanied by a music album and live theatrical production.
NICHOLAS A. COTZ (Director) has produced and directed in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe. In 2013 Cotz directed and produced the NY Times Critic’s Pick rogerandtom at HERE with Personal Space Theatrics. With AFO he most recently produced Mark Thomas’ Cuckooed at 59E59; Bill Bowers’ All Over The Map and Elizabeth Van Meter’s Thao’s Library at Theatre Row; Gideon Irving’s solo show Songs, Space Travel, and Everything in Between at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning ThreeWeeks Editors’ Award; Irving’s I’m Probably Going to Die Eventually at Rattlestick; Aaron Mark’s Squeamish at Theater Row; and most recently the NY Times Critic's Pick The Brobot Johnson Experience, created and performed by AFO Artist In Residence, Darian Dauchan. Cotz holds an MFA in directing from Brooklyn College and was a Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow.