WAKE
59E59 Theaters, NYC
Nov 6th - 23rd, 2025
In a magical kitchen where memory, grief, and absurdity collide, a woman mourning her mother’s death navigates the messy, beautiful, and often hilarious process of letting go. With help from her sibling, a chorus of strange visitors, and the lingering scent of brisket, WAKE is a collective attempt to make peace with impermanence.
This production is dedicated to Keegan Sol Fitlow
“This is not grief as tidy catharsis or therapeutic deliverable. Rather, Wake functions as an assemblage of impressions: a kinetic phrase here, a whispered confession there, a musical motif drifting like smoke across the stage. Its aesthetic is that of the collage, the palimpsest, the half-remembered dream. One senses the company attempting to inhabit grief rather than explain it—to trace its contours with the fingertips rather than chart its terrain with the instruments of conventional storytelling.”
“Ianthe Demos’ production, aided by Natalie Lomonte’s movement and music by Rinde Eckert and the single-named violinist Ren, Wake strikes a unified tone.”
“The actors, all top-notch, highlight the sensitive nature of grief as they work with the abstract script and within the abstract structure of the play.”
“The show demands that the audience engage in ways that more commercial fare does not…. for those who dig into the show actively rather than as passive viewers, there is something here worthwhile.”
“This is a production that insists—quietly at times, insistently at others—on a mode of engagement far removed from the passive consumption that so much commercial theater, with its pre-chewed emotions and frictionless dramaturgy, has trained us to expect. Wake asks its audience not merely to observe but to lean in, to sift, to reckon. Its methods are unconventional, even disorienting: an assemblage of movement, music, and fragmentary vignettes that resist the comfort of narrative propulsion. And yet, within this unfamiliarity lies an undeniable universality.”
Cast and Crew
Cast: Brooke Shilling, Alex J. Gould, Akyiaa Wilson, Cristina Pitter, Christina Bennett Lind, Adesola Osakalumi
Director: Ianthe Demos
Playwrights: Leon Ingulsrud & Brooke Shilling
Movement Director: Natalie Lomonte
Musicians: Rinde Eckert and Ren
Sound Design: Brendan Aanes
Scenic Design: James Hunting
Lighting Design: David Shocket
Stage Manager: Celina Revollar
Assistant Stage Manager: Alex Church-Gonzales
Technical Director: Omri Bareket
Photographer: Russ Rowland
Videographer: Sam Dellert
Assistant Producer: Dora Graham
