Jes煤s I. Valles' BATHHOUSE.PPTX will receive a world premiere staging Off-Broadway at The Flea later this year.
Directed by Obie winner Chay Yew, the play will begin performances March 19, for a limited run through April 22. The work has been developed in partnership with Valles as co-producer on all elements of their production.
Valles' play follows Presenter, a gay Latine student, whose PowerPoint presentation on the history of cleanliness and bathing is haunted by the ghosts of a bathhouse at the end of the world. Valles describes the work as 鈥渁 group project for perverts, somewhere between lecture, re-enactment, and cruising ground. A meditation on queer longing, queer grief, and all our queer worlds that will come to pass, that will come to be.鈥�
The work was the 2023 recipient of the Yale Drama Series Prize, judged by Jeremy O. Harris; and is the first recipient of The Flea鈥檚 production commission, an open call program that provides finishing funds and a full production to an experimental new work by a Black, brown, and/or queer artist.
Said The Flea鈥檚 Artistic Director, Niegel Smith: 鈥淓very so often you come across a play that is epic in scale, written with delicious language and yet deeply personal, with characters that seize you as they careen toward their desires. Jes煤s鈥� play grabbed the attention of the entire Flea staff. As soon as we read it, we knew we had to bring it to production.鈥�
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