Monk Parrots

04/23/2026

Do you want another class, or a room where work actually gets made?

This summer, Monk Parrots is inviting a small group of artists in NYC—led by artistic director Luke Landric—to join a three-week performance intensive focused on training, collaboration, and creating original performance work as an ensemble, culminating in a studio showing.

Serious about performance? Get in the room.

Performance Studio 2026
June 29 – July 17
Limited to 15 participants

Apply → link in bio

Know someone who should be in this room? Send it to them.

Have questions? Comment below or DM us.

04/22/2026

Do you want another class, or a room where work actually gets made?

This summer, Monk Parrots is inviting a small group of Luke LandricYC—led by Luke Landric—to join a three-week performance intensive focused on training, collaboration, and creating original performance work as an ensemble, culminating in a studio showing.

Serious about performance? Get in the room.

Performance Studio 2026
June 29 – July 17
Limited to 15 participants

Apply → link in bio

Know someone who should be in this room? Send it to them.

Have questions? Comment below or DM us.

03/16/2026

Workshop A

The work begins.

Support the project → link in bio

📸:

12/31/2025

✨ Happy New Year ✨

As we step into 2026, we’re filled with gratitude for everyone who gathered with us at La MaMa on December 18 for Vision Forward: A Tribute to Robert Wilson — and for the wider community that continues to show up with such care.

These photos capture moments from the evening, including our VIP reception: artists, collaborators, friends, and supporters brought together by shared purpose and trust.

One lesson we’re carrying forward: care, trust, and shared purpose carry people — especially in the arts — in ways systems and checklists simply can’t. Community matters. Togetherness matters.

⏳ Just 10 hours left — our silent auction closes tonight at 11:59 pm. If you’ve been meaning to place a final bid or make a year-end donation, now is the moment.

👉 Link in bio to bid or donate

With love, gratitude, and hope for the year ahead. 💛

12/31/2025

Just 11 hours left.

As we close out our year-end auction, we want to say thank you to everyone who joined us on December 18 at La MaMa for Vision Forward: A Tribute to Robert Wilson — and to all who’ve already bid or donated.

We’re so close to our goal — just $317 to go — and every bid or contribution helps us cross the finish line.

Today’s photo captures a moment from the VIP reception: artists, collaborators, friends, and supporters brought together by shared purpose and care.

If you meant to place a final bid or make a year-end donation, there’s still time. The auction closes tonight at 11:59 pm.

As we head into the New Year, we’re deeply grateful for this community and wish you a hopeful, healthy, and inspiring 2026.

👉 Link to bid or donate in the comments

With gratitude,
Luke & the Monk Parrots Board

12/30/2025

⏳ One day left! Our silent auction closes Dec 31 at 11:59 pm.

In the final stretch, we’re sharing a glimpse of the extraordinary items available:
• A Northern Qi Dynasty (550–577 CE) Head of Buddha
• Photographs by Sue Bailey
• A Robert Wilson book bundle, tracing decades of visionary work
… and many more offerings!

We’re so close to our goal, and every bid or donation helps us cross the finish line and move the work forward.

👉 Bid or donate via the link in our bio
Thank you for being part of this community. 🌿

12/23/2025

📣 Fifteen posts in celebration of fifteen years.
We’re digging through the Monk Parrots archive—one work at a time—while we push toward the finish line of our year-end fundraiser. The auction has been extended through Dec. 31, with a goal of $2,000. We’re currently at $1,200, and every bid helps carry us across the line.

Still available: an extraordinary Buddha head and photographs by Sue Bailey—rare, striking works that would be powerful in a home or office. Truly special pieces. The winning bidder will not be disappointed: https://auctria.events/MonkParrots

No. 15: PEARLS FOR SPURS (2024)
by Gates Leonard

Set in a sweltering Florida trailer park, Pearls for Spurs is a darkly comic portrait of a family unraveling under the weight of grief, neglect, and survival. Missy, a mother numbed by pills, drifts through loss while her sister Danny forces cheer into chaos. Their children—Carousel, Kill, Spoon, and Bean—navigate violence, desire, humor, and harm in fractured ways. Absurdity masks despair as tensions escalate, asking what survival looks like when family ties are as suffocating as they are sustaining.

The 2024 premiere was presented at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre (A.R.T./New York Theatres) and supported by A.R.T./New York, the Puffin Foundation, Seoul Institute of the Arts, and individual donors. The work grew from an earlier public reading at La MaMa Great Jones Rehearsal Studios, carrying its history from page to stage.

Today’s images trace that journey—rehearsal, performance, and the emergence of a play that confronts cycles of grief and inheritance with humor, brutality, and fierce humanity.

Production photos 📸

Fifteen years. Fifteen works. Help us close the year strong.
📣 Auction link in bio. Ends Dec. 31

12/20/2025

Dear friends,

Thank you to everyone who joined us on December 18 at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club to honor Robert Wilson and to be in conversation with the artists who knew and worked with him. It was a moving evening—full of generosity, memory, and shared care for the kind of daring, intimate theatre that Monk Parrots exists to make.

We wanted to reach out today with a gentle reminder that our online silent auction and donation page is open through December 25. The auction was created in the spirit of last night’s gathering, in support of Monk Parrots’ next work, the ATOMIC war, written by our Artistic Director, Luke Landric. The piece is inspired by Robert Wilson’s unfinished epic the CIVIL warS, and continues to support our mission to develop adventurous, original work that engages contemporary culture and challenges traditional performance forms.

We are already more than halfway to our modest fundraising goal of $2,000. Every bid and every donation—large or small—directly supports the development of this new work and helps sustain Monk Parrots' commitment to making bold, original theatre.

If you’re able, we warmly invite you to:

Visit the silent auction

Or make a direct donation through the same page

https://auctria.events/MonkParrots

If you’re not in a position to give financially, please know that your presence, care, and continued engagement with Monk Parrots is deeply appreciated.

With gratitude,

Karen Sullivan
Board Member, Monk Parrots Performance
(on behalf of the Board and Artistic Team)

12/17/2025

To celebrate 15 years of Monk Parrots, we’re digging through the archive with a daily post for the next 15 days—leading up to our gathering at La MaMa on Dec. 18 (link in bio).
No. 14: LOVE FAIL — David Lang | ACOCo × Monk Parrots.

When the pandemic shut down theaters across the world, Monk Parrots and Australian Contemporary Opera Company pivoted online—continuing an international collaboration under radically changed conditions.

Created during COVID-19 lockdowns in New York and Australia, LOVE FAIL is a filmed adaptation of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Lang’s chamber opera, inspired by Tristan and Isolde. The film was directed and designed by Luke Landric, transforming distance, isolation, and fragmentation into part of the work’s visual and emotional language.

Featuring sopranos Amelia Jones and Heather Fletcher, mezzo-soprano Belinda Paterson, contralto Alexandra Amerides, and actors Josh Landis, Charlotte Simcock, Gates Leonard, and Oscar and Amelia Landis, with Patrick Burns as Music Director and Fergus Nash as Sound Engineer, the project became a true cross-continental creation—voices recorded apart, yet bound together by Lang’s spare, aching score.

LOVE FAIL was presented online as part of the Yarra Valley Opera Festival (2020), later screened live at Fed Square, Melbourne (2021), and went on to be shortlisted for the Everyday Arias Film Festival (London) and receive an Honorable Mention at the Tokyo Short Film Festival.

Described as “exceptional…potent and streamlined…a fantastic contemporary exploration and reflection on love” (Limelight Magazine), LOVE FAIL stands as a document of artistic resilience—proof that even in isolation, collaboration, music, and storytelling could still find new forms.

No. 14: LOVE FAIL

12/16/2025

To celebrate 15 years of Monk Parrots, we’re digging through the archive with a daily post for the next 15 days—leading up to our gathering at La MaMa on Dec. 18 (link in bio).
No. 13: “Terminus” — New York Premiere at New York Theatre Workshop.

“Terminus” marked many firsts for Monk Parrots: our first collaboration with playwright Gabriel Jason Dean, our first partnership with New York Theatre Workshop, and an unforgettable performance by Deirdre O’Connell.

Written by Gabriel Jason Dean and directed by Lucie Tiberghien, “Terminus” centers on Eller, a poor white matriarch in rural Georgia whose deteriorating memory forces buried violence and racial reckoning to surface. Told in a lyrical form that blends psychological realism and expressionism, the play asks how white Americans are haunted by — and complicit in — the trauma inflicted on Black Americans.

At the center was O’Connell’s performance, which critics described with unanimity:
“New York stage treasure Deirdre O’Connell gives a heartbreaking and brilliant performance.” — The New York Times
“Deirdre O’Connell’s performance will leave you speechless.” — YesBroadway
“…an emotional tour de force.” — Stage Buddy

Presented at NYTW Next Door in 2018, “Terminus” was the New York premiere of the second chapter in Dean’s Attapulgus Elegies, following its award-winning debut in Austin.

Today’s images return to that production: rehearsal moments, performance stills, and the quiet intensity of a role that left an indelible mark.

No. 13: “Terminus”

12/15/2025

To celebrate 15 years of Monk Parrots, we’re digging through the archive with a daily post for the next 15 days—leading up to our gathering at La MaMa on Dec. 18 (link in bio).
No. 12: The Scottish Opera (2016) / M*cBETH (2019) — Monk Parrots × Australian Contemporary Opera Company.

This work marks an important first: the inaugural co-production between Monk Parrots and Australian Contemporary Opera Company (ACOCo)—the beginning of a long-term international partnership.

The collaboration began when Linda Thompson, Artistic Director of ACOCo, reached out after discovering images from Luke Landric’s production of David Lang’s The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. That exchange led to Luke’s first trip to Australia in 2015, and soon after to our first co-produced work together: The Scottish Opera (2016), presented at the Nagambie Lakes Opera Festival in Victoria.

Directed and designed by Luke Landric, with Verdi’s score radically adapted and arranged by composer Peter Stopschinski and costumes by Alison Heryer, the piece reimagined Macbeth as an 80-minute chamber opera—politically charged, psychologically compressed, and visually stark.

In 2016, Michael Lewis performed Macbeth opposite Linda Thompson as Lady Macbeth. In 2019, the work evolved under the title M*cbeth, with John Marcus Bindle stepping into the role at the Yarra Valley Opera Festival.

The images shared here span both the 2016 and 2019 Australian productions. That same year, M*cbeth appeared in New York as a concert presentation at La MaMa Rehearsal Studios, with plans for a full New York premiere in 2020—plans later interrupted by the pandemic.

More to come on the works that followed. For now, we return to the beginning of a partnership that reshaped how Monk Parrots thinks about opera, scale, and international collaboration.

No. 12: The Scottish Opera / M*cbeth

12/15/2025

Dear friends,

Our VISION FORWARD silent auction is now live in support of Monk Parrots and the ATOMIC war: a cloud is best measured when it is up. You can browse and bid here: https://auctria.events/MonkParrots

To place a bid, you’ll just need to register once on the auction site—after that, you can bid anytime while the auction is open.

The auction includes a small, curated set of items, including:

Head of Buddha (Northern Qi Dynasty, 550–577 CE) — donated by Throckmorton Fine Art

Robert Wilson book bundle

Photographs by Sue Bailey (sold individually)

One month of online yoga classes (1 hour/day for 30 days)

ATOMIC Closed Rehearsal + Dinner with Luke and the creative team (date to be arranged)

Plus more…

Bidding is open online, so even if you can’t join us in person, you’re still able to participate and support the work.

And if you’ll be with us on Dec. 18 at La MaMa, the evening will include an in-person conversation with Sheryl Sutton and Helga Davis, with Ann-Christin Rommen joining us via Zoom. We’ll also be joined by Noah Khosbin, Curator at The Watermill Center, who will share a few words about Bob and The Watermill Center. We also hope to be joined (pending availability) by Charles Chemin (longtime Wilson collaborator and co-director) and Alexander Carra (Wilson collaborator and former personal assistant).

Only a few spots remaining:
Get Tickets on Eventbrite → https://vision_forward_celebrating_robert_wilson.eventbrite.com

Monk Parrots is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law.

Thank you for being part of this community and for helping us carry the work forward.

Sincerely❤️,
Monk Parrots Performance

P.S. Please feel free to share the auction link with friends who may want to support. If you’re not able to bid, donations are also welcome at the same link: https://auctria.events/MonkParrots

VISION FORWARD: Celebrating Robert Wilson, 15 Years of Monk Parrots, + Launching New Work