Community Blog

Our Undiscovered Works community blog offers another communication medium by which we can support and grow our community – an extension of our mission to share stories, to promote work that we think should have the chance to grow, to develop, to find a voice and an audience. We want to hear from you – email us to be a guest blogger!

There’s no place like home

By Jennifer Dean

I was seven and a half years old when my parents separated.  Separated, not divorced, because of course divorce is the legal end but inevitably there first comes a separation, and in my parents’ case, it was the separation of an ocean.  My mother moved me back to her parent’s house in Bromley Kent, England – several thousand miles away from my father who was left in a cheap stucco house in the suburbs of Northern California.  I remember the evening before we left – sitting in the living room in front of our small television watching “The Wizard of Oz” with my father.  Nothing was said.  My mother told me we were going to visit her family for a bit.  Once we arrived in their very English home with my grandfather, Poppy and my Uncle Ken, she told me I was going to go to school for a bit since the summers in England are shorter than the summers in the States.  I remember thinking, “why do I have to go back to school just because everyone here is still going to school?”  I soon figured out that we weren’t going home.  We were there to stay.  I don’t ever recall my mother telling me – I just deduced it as would most seven year old detectives once they were stuck in a class and their mother was heading out for job interviews and such.  It would be several months before my ruby red slippers would bring me home again … because … “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

I start mid-term at Burnt Ash Elementary school to study.  I have Hello Kitty stuff which makes me extremely popular on the playground – for a short time anyway – until I open my mouth and my funny accent makes them not want to talk to me.  I’ve got to get rid of that quick.  I can sound like they sound no big deal.  Unfortunately they still don’t want to be my friend.  My teacher reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the East.  She looks like Maggie Smith in the “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” with flaming red hair and the cold features of an English schoolmarm.  I am nervous and awkward in my new surroundings, feeling completely like a fish out of water.  We are told in no uncertain terms not to use an eraser – EVER!  We are being taught penmanship and, even though we are to use pencils, our mistakes should remain evident.  I make one.  I look around me.  I have to fix this.  I can’t be seen as the inadequate American.  I use my own saliva to get rid of the lead and rewrite the letter.  Mrs. Smith sees me out of the corner of her eye and asks me to the front of the class.  I’m trembling.  I feel the blood rushing to my face….. she knows.  “Listen class,” she tweets with her proper upper crust English accent “our new student has been vulgar enough to use bodily secretions to mask her mistakes.  You shall not do the same.”  I want to crawl into a hole and stay there.  Unfortunately it is not yet time for me to go home to America so I simply have to continue down the yellow brick road.

Poppy takes me to school in the morning in his car that smells of petrol (he runs a trucking company), only he starts driving before I am fully in the seat.  “Poppy wait!”  The next two characters I come upon are a pair of twin girls in the changing room for gym class.  There is ice on the ground outside but we must still change into our shorts.  The girls corner me.  They are HUGE!  They come from the secondary school.  I don’t know how they ended up in the locker room at the same time as me.  I don’t know why I am there alone.  But they did and I am – and I can only hope that I get to run away when the bell rings.  Somehow I manage to escape the monster twins and head outside to run laps.  What a relief!

Coming from California I have never seen a storm before.  It sounds like the sky is very angry.  It is booming and throwing electrical currents through dark grey clouds.  My Mummy is out at her new job and I turn to Poppy to ask if she is coming home or if she will get taken away by the storm.  After all, that is what happened to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.  Poppy assures me she will be home soon enough. I don’t know that I believe him because Dorothy had to go through a lot before she got home.  Uncle Ken and Poppy start teasing me about the English runner who has won some race.  According to them he is the best runner in the world – proving of course that no one can run faster than the English – certainly not the Yanks.  Of course I point out how do you know he is the fastest runner in the world?  He hasn’t raced everyone.  He hasn’t raced my Dad.  Maybe my Dad is faster than him.  That doesn’t stop Uncle Ken and Poppy from bringing it up.  It makes them laugh that I get so riled up.

My Mum made it home – without the ruby slippers – maybe I will too.  I am going there for a visit to see my Dad.  I always wondered if Dorothy went back to Oz after she got back to Kansas.  I mean it would be sad if she just left and never got to go back.  At the airport the woman who works for the airplane assures my Mum that I will be just fine on the plane by myself. I feel quite grown up.  My Mum keeps telling me I have to eat something on the plane but she knows I won’t.  She gives me a bag of grapes for the trip.  They are the only things I can eat because the smell of the airline food makes me nauseous and I end up throwing it up anyway, so what’s the point?  I try to be asleep whenever they serve food so I don’t have to smell it and they don’t ask me if I want any.  Of course, they end up waking me up anyway.  

When we land I have to go pick up my luggage.  It’s really warm in the airport but I don’t want to take off my English winter coat because then I have to carry it and will probably lose it.  So I just leave it on.  The luggage is going round and round on the conveyer belt.  I’m looking at it and don’t quite know what to do because it’s as big as I am so I can’t really get it off.  I guess I’m not that much of a grown up.  It has wheels so as long as I get it to the ground I’ll be fine… I’m just not quite sure how to do that.  Luckily there’s a nice couple from the plane who were sitting near me and ask me if that’s my bag and would I like help getting it off the continually circling metal contraption.  I quickly respond “oh yes please”.  I must have had quite a perplexed and distraught look on my face so they knew I needed help.  Once it is on the ground I am able to wheel it to the customs area.  I see my Dad looking down on me through the glass windows from the flight above – just outside of customs.  I wave.  He waves back.  

A few months after that trip my Mom moved us back to California.  I didn’t need a Wizard – just a brave Mother.  Of course, when I got back I had a funny English accent which all the kids teased me about.  The one slight I recall is “you sound like a frog”.  I’m not quite sure why but I quickly adapted back to my original way of speaking.  Hello Kitty wasn’t going to make me any friends in California.  It is true that there’s no place like home.  I am sure I would eventually have made England my home, but without my Dad it wouldn’t have been the same. 

By leahsab, ago

Community Blog

By Leah S. Abrams

Welcome to our Undiscovered Works blog! What’s it all about? We want to create a new communication medium by which we can support and grow our community – an extension of our mission to share stories, to promote work that we think should have the chance to grow, to develop, to find a voice and an audience.

As we launch this newest program, I’d like to offer up a bit of an origin story…

Where it All Began

According to friends from elementary school, I have been producing theatre since the second grade, when my mother and I moved in with my grandparents. There were earlier theatrical projects – always singing for folks and a poem recitation about a turtle who lived in a box (he swam in the puddle and climbed on the rocks) at kindergarten graduation, but the bug really hit when we moved and I began spending every day with my grandfather who had been an entertainer himself, who gave me my first public speaking lessons because the new school required weekly show-and-tell presentations.

An old classmate pointed out to me that I’d started pitching a production of “Annie” for us that same year I arrived in town. Eight-year old me even approached the manager of an old local movie theatre (it had a stage!) to pitch a variety show featuring local talent, representing people of all backgrounds and ages.

 In the fifth grade, I penned a terrible play for my friends to perform called “Broadway Dreamers,” full of song and dance numbers reflective of my bizarrely eclectic tastes at the time – ranging from Fred Astaire to George Benson. Call me an early adopter of the jukebox musical.

Alas, none of my crazy childhood production ventures came to fruition. Still, the desire to make stories come to life did not dissipate, even when I pretended an intention to drop it.

My dad was a driving force behind my ultimately pursuing a life in the theatre. When I was heading to college, intent on focusing all energy on pre-law endeavors, he was adamant that I choose a school with a strong theatre department and opportunities for student productions. When I graduated college, he was the one who helped me set up the non-profit theatre company I’d go on to manage for two decades, first in Boston and then in San Francisco. In the final years of that endeavor, for multiple complicated reasons, running a company had worn me down, had made believe I’d grown to hate my passion.

A New Start

New York changed all that. A theatre person arriving here cannot help but fall madly in love with the thing all over again. From the moment I arrived in the city nearly a decade ago, I picked back up with a small group of producer and artist friends with whom I’d collaborated in my previous life across the country and, through them, was reminded that the whole point of theatre was to inspire, to collaborate, to discover voices – in short, to be a community.

I’ve been truly blessed by this city, the theatrical hub that I’d spent my whole life longing for. From the moment I decided I wanted to get involved, people gifted me the opportunity.

Kira Simring, whom I’d known for a single show in the early 2000’s, brought me into the cell where she’s long been its artistic director – there, she helped me launch what has become the Undiscovered Works monthly storytelling series, co-produced with me a piece I’d longed to do since college, and got me my first G.M. gig on a show that introduced me to Marianne Driscoll who is the kind of person that makes you think there are indeed angels walking among us.

When the cell’s programming got so full that we needed a new home for the reading season, the seemingly unlikeliest of places took us in – Ryan’s Daughter, an upper east side bar where, at the time, one of The Irish Rep Theatre’s most beloved artists, Mick Mellamphy, was involved before he took to full-time acting. He and partner Jim Gerding gave us a home for five years, until we accepted an invitation from Dixon Place to move the series to their lounge.

With that last move (prior to our current reality of online programming) came the full realization of the potential of Undiscovered Works. Our focus is on community – on giving life to stories, often in their infancy, in the belief that we learn and grow and empathize not through facts and statistics but through listening to someone else’s experience. Where do our differences converge?

What I essentially wanted was to invite people to my parlor to share and support one another as we find our voices. I wanted a place where I could welcome the people who care for our neighbors to share their work and so we have our non-profit partners. As for those full-scale productions that were my focus for so long, there is still space for them. If a writer has something to say, something our society needs to hear, then I want to help it be heard. Productions will happen – they are already planned. They are the kinds of pieces I used to be proud and excited to let loose on the world, and the kind I am passionate about supporting. 

At Undiscovered Works, we believe, at the end of the day, that theatre should be about bettering our shared world. And we’re proud to play our small part.

Our Blog Endeavor

Moving forward, we’ll be featuring a wide variety of content here on the Undiscovered Works blog, including new work, interviews with creators, opinion pieces, information about artistic happenings, and just about anything else our community can come up with.

We’re excited for this new launch and we believe it will provide more opportunities to connect, to share, to learn, to develop ideas. Many of you will be hearing from our team directly to solicit your contributions, but please feel to contact us at with ideas, suggestions, or proposed topics at info@undiscoveredworks.org.

By leahsab, ago

March 29th: Community Spirit Abounds

In these trying times, community is, as always, our foremost thought.

As I sit down for my fifth attempt to write to you, it is a positively beautiful Friday afternoon here in New York – clear, blue skies; birds orchestrating; flowers and buds emerging from slumber. You’d hardly think we were in the middle of a national emergency. And yet, here we are – quarantined for a fast-spreading pandemic that, this time at least, is receiving some government response. In fact, between this morning’s draft and this moment’s editing, I received notice that Congress has passed the CARES Act, offering real financial support for our colleagues, including unemployment insurance for the countless numbers of us who would not normally be eligible. 

Here at Undiscovered Works, we are dedicated to keeping the stories going and staying connected with all of you. We’ve been busy navigating technology to bring you our monthly storytelling series and, this past week, we’ve been focused on… auditions! We managed to hold over 70 “live” auditions with actors who not only entertained us in these trying times, but who were an absolute inspiration in kindness. We would especially like to thank those who had to move things around based on their work in emergency rooms, paramedic teams, and other critical positions taking care of our neighbors.

I have stalled in sending this communication, in part, because I’ve been somewhat at a loss for what to say. We have had many conversations on our end about the importance of the arts to be a source of light and support, recalling what NYC’s entertainment industry was able to do for our collective spirit after the Sept. 11th attacks, but we find ourselves in a scenario more closely aligned with the days of The Plague as we’re wisely forced to socially distance ourselves.

We are watching our friends and colleagues, including some of Undiscovered Works own team members and presenting artists lose their livelihoods. Many of our non-profit partners and the city’s vibrant non-commercial theatres face uncertain futures. All of this is in the midst of people falling sick and even dying at alarming rates. We are humbled by our own sense of helplessness. BUT we must soldier on – that is what artists of every age have been asked to do and we are determined to do our part in continuing that tradition!

On Monday, April 11th, at 7:30pm (east coast), we will be virtually hosting our monthly event – details coming next week! This will, naturally, not be a paid-ticketed event, but we will share info. on how to support our friends and colleagues throughout the arts and hospitality industries. 

Please know that you are in our thoughts – ’til we gather together once more, may you be healthy and well and able to lose yourself in stories of all kinds!

With much gratitude,
Leah and Team Undiscovered Works

By leahsab, ago

March, 2019: Kicking off a new Storytelling Series

March Films & Filmmakers

306 HOLLYWOOD

On March 10th, we gathered at Ryan’s Daughter for a pre-screening of Elan and Jonathan Bogarin’s 306 HOLLYWOOD, an official Sundance Selection now available on iTunes, along with Heather Pirnak’s animated short THE COLORS OF LIFE.

We followed the viewings with a discussion with Elan and Heather who both shared experiences of creating their films and answered thoughtful questions from our audience.

I was particularly struck by an inspiration shared by Heather Pirnak, the animator and director of the short film THE COLORS OF LIFE. She spoke about coming to New York as an artist and living on the lower east side and so she went to The Tenement Museum – one of my personal favorite places – and was inspired by what it must have been like to have come here during that time. The journey she created as a result is poetic and musical and perfectly captures the era and ever-changing city that sparked the film’s creation.

Elan shared a driving thought behind the evolution of 306 HOLLYWOOD that will always stay with me – she said they started from a place of the idea that the ordinary could be extraordinary, giving us a way to look at all of our histories. She also spoke of the inspiration of her Venezuelan roots, of magic being a part of the language and the culture – the same is absolutely true of this extraordinary film.

On Making Their Films:

It’s like driving at night with your lights on and you can only see just ahead of you where the lights shine and you just keep going knowing you’ll get there.

Elan Bogarin

You take a chance – journey to a new place.

Heather Pirnak

By leahsab, ago