The Flea’s Production of

we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism

By Jenn Kidwell and the blackening

About the Show

OBIE Award-winning artist Jenn Kidwell and ASL artist Brandon Kazen-Maddox invite you to roll in the pigsty of American consumerism. Dark, funny, incisive, and just a little bit misbehaved, Kidwell’s interrogation of capitalism and her place within it is an unforgettable, all-inclusive trip into the Amerikka’s anus of darkness. Beneath the laugh-out-loud humor is a proposition: fuck work, chase your dreams — believe that you are a miracle.

See the hilarious comedy that startles, delights, and surprises. Come ready to laugh, and leave seeing your worth in a new light.

Creative Team

Performed by
Jennifer Kidwell and Brandon Kazen-Maddox

Writer, Director, Performer – Jennifer Kidwell
Co-Director – Adam Lazarus
Dramaturg and Interdisciplinary Performance Doula – jaamil olawale kosoko
Scenic Concept – Jian Jung
Lighting Designer – Evan Spigelman
Sound Designer – Jordan McCree
Video Designer – Matthew Deinhart
Props and Objects Designer – Petra Floyd
Original Music – Juliette Jones and Jarvis Benson
Production Stage Manager – Pat Adams
Creative Producer – Jecca Barry
Production Manager – Brian Freeland
Director of Artistic Sign Language – Patrice Creamer
Scenic Builders – Parrish Productions
Tour Produced by Jecca Barry / Fin Productions

About the Artists

Jennifer Kidwell (Instigator, Writer, Performer) is a performing artist with a penchant for getting people to do things they never thought they’d do. Recent original projects – Those With 2 Clocks (The Wilma Theater), Underground Railroad Game (2017 Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work; 2018 Edinburgh Fringe First Award; Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes nominations). Currently collaborating with Chef Laquanda Dobson on Givingthanks and with Ars Nova Workshop/Immanuel Wilkins on Recess. Recent performances – The Welkin (Atlantic Theater Co.), Ocean Filibuster (PearlDamour), Eternal Life Part 1, Fat Ham (2021 film) and Antigone (The Wilma Theater), Syllabus for Black Love (jaamil olawole kosoko), Home (Geoff Sobelle; 2018 Bessie Award), Adrienne Truscott’s Still Asking for It (Joe’s Pub), Superterranean, Fire Burns Hot: Little Reno!, I Promised Myself to Live Faster, and 99 Break-Ups (Pig Iron Theatre Company). Published in “Black Body Amnesia” and Movement Research Performance Journal #45 and at hyperallergic.com. 2020 Visiting Artist Duke University, 2021 Visiting Artist UPenn. 2013 TCG/Fox Resident Actor Fellowship, 2015, 2021 Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant, 2016 Pew Fellow, 2017 Independence Fellowship, 2020 Ruthie Award & Hodder Fund Grant, 2023 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grantee.

Brandon Kazen-Maddox (they/them)(ASL Artist), choreographer, dancer, actor, filmmaker, and third-generation heritage signer raised in a culturally Deaf household. Their work centers Deaf, Disabled, BIPOC, and LGBTQAI+ communities through inclusive, interdisciplinary performance in American Sign Language, spoken English and Simultaneous Communication, or SimCom. They have shared their story nationally, including TEDx, The Getty Museum’s Day of Unreasonable Conversation, NASPA, and PBS’s Stories from the Stage. Their work has been recognized with a Creative Capital Award, NEFA NDP Grant, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation Grant, Gucci’s Chime for Change, and the Times Square Midnight Moment (“Georgia”).

Television credits include The Good Fight, High Maintenance, and PBS’s Brief But Spectacular, As a 2024 WNET/ALL ARTS Artist in Residence, their 30-minute special SOUL(SIGNS): Making Music Visible premiered in April 2025. Theater and dance credits include Bill T. Jones’ Deep Blue Sea (Park Avenue Armory), (FREEDOM) (ArtYARD), and Fresh Tracks (New York Live Arts). Brandon holds an MFA from NYU Tisch and is a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective. Learn more at www.upuntilnowcollective.com and www.brandonkazen-maddox.com

Adam Lazarus (Co-Director) is an award-winning theatre creator, known for bringing a dark and comic sensibility to all of his work. Some credits include the international thought disrupter Daughter; the radical race oration The Art of Building a Bunker; the vicious bouffon love play Wonderland; and his latest anxiety odyssey Versus. His work has been presented globally including runs Off-West End, the Sibiu International Festival, Latitude Festival, Sydney Festival, PuSh Festival, Canada’s National Arts Centre and the Edinburgh Fringe. Adam has acted as a creation director and coach for countless actors, musicians, speakers, comedians, dancers, and performance artists, helping them spark and form characters, narratives, worlds, and unforgettable images. Some collaborations include Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, SSENSE, TED Talks, United Way, and Habitat for Humanity. He’s a regular acting instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada, Canadian Film Centre, Pig Iron, University of Toronto, Columbia, and Penn. He’s a graduate and former apprentice of Phillipe Gaulier.

Jian Jung (Scenic Concept) is an Obie Award winning set designer from Korea, based in New York City. Recent theater credits include Staff Meal at Playwrights Horizons, The Following Evening at PAC-NYC, The Nosebleed at LCT3 and Woolly Mammoth Theater (DC), Kiss at Wilma Theater (Philadelphia), Ocean Filibuster at A.R.T. (Boston), Bodies They Ritual at Wild Project, The Day You Begin at Kennedy Center (DC), and Suicide Forest at Bushwick Starr. Opera and musical credits include productions in Wolf Trap Opera (VA), Fisher Center in Bard, Huntington Theater (Boston), Juilliard, and Long Beach Opera (CA).

Jung received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Set Design, a Barrymore Award, 2 Edith Lutyens & Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Awards, and 2 nominations for Henry Hewes Design Awards. Her design in Venezuela was presented in Prague Quadrennial. Jung received an MFA in Theater Design from NYU, and an MFA in Environmental Design from Ewha Women’s University in Korea, where she was born and grew up. She teaches at NYU Tisch Design MFA program and Sarah Lawrence College. 

Evan Spigelman (they/them) (Lighting Designer/Illuminatrix) is an actor, cabaret artist, singer, DIY filmmaker and lighting designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Previously residing in New Orleans, they are a co-founder of New Orleans performance collective Skin Horse Theater and of LOUD, the New Orleans Queer Youth Theater. When not designing, they are fulfilling their lifelong aspiration: to become an agitprop surrealist anti-fascist clown. This title is exactly as pretentious as it sounds. Recent performance credits: Leland and Silas (Chinkapin Craftstead), HILMA (Wilma Theater), Ocean Filibuster (A.R.T/Pearl D’Amour), Mouthbrain (Barnett Cohen), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (Pomegranate Arts), The Lily’s Revenge (Southern Rep), Creep Cuts (self-produced). TV/Film: Creep Cuts in Freeze Response (co-director).  Recent lighting design credits include associate light design on Ocean Filibuster, and design on My Beatnik Youth (Justin Elizabeth Sayre/La Mama), No One Likes an Ugly Revolutionary (Mette LouLou Von Kohl/Abrons Arts Center), and the upcoming A Few Ways it Goes (Jack Fuller). Constantly stalking around in drag as Mx Asa Metric. Instagram: @evspig

Jordan McCree (Sound Designer) is an artist based in Philadelphia. Their most recent collaborations include: Half-God Of Rainfall (Wilma Theater), fallawayinto (Ninth Planet), we come to collect: a flirtation with capitalism (jenn kidwell and the blackening), The Comeuppance (Woolly Mammoth/Wilma Theater), Good Person of Setzuan (Wilma Theater), Grief Hotel (Clubbed Thumb), Cost of Living (Philadelphia Theatre Company), The BFG (Arden Theater), The World Takes (short film, Eight Flow Studio), Eternal Life Part 1 (The Wilma Theater), The Karamazovs (film, Village Park Productions), Fat Ham (2021 World Premiere, The Wilma Theater). They were one of the 2022 grant recipients to the 1/52 Project. They are also a member of Philly-based, Barrymore Award winning, hip hop collective, ILL DOOTS. Their album, Divine Transmission, is available everywhere!

Matthew Deinhart (Video Designer) is a New York-based multidisciplinary designer who specializes in the use of nontraditional technologies to create unique storytelling devices. Recent design credits include the scenic design for Song of Joy (The Tank) and Sweat (Brooklyn College). Lighting design: Dark Star of Harlem (La MaMa); Blackbird (New Ohio Theatre); Tongue Depressor (The Public Theater). Projection design: El Amor Brujo (La MaMa); ANIMUS ANIMA//ANIMA ANIMUS (The Public Theater). Co-design (with Jon DeGaetano): I Know Exactly What You Mean (Danspace Project). Video installation design: Be Holding (The Girard College Armory). Matthew is a 2021 graduate of Brooklyn College with an MFA in Design and Technical Theater.

Petra Floyd (Props & Objects Designer) is a Liberian-American post-disciplinary artist and designer based in Pittsburgh, who embraces an improvisational approach to art and design, often collaborating with others and using readily available materials. Their work is informed by their upbringing in a working-class immigrant family in Philadelphia, and they are committed to creating art that is both socially engaged and accessible. Petra teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, where they also earned their MFA in 2022. They have been recognized for their work with awards from The Heinz Endowment and The Pittsburgh Foundation, and are members of Monmade’s Green Leap and Pittsburgh Creative Corps.

jaamil olawale kosoko (Dramaturg and Interdisciplinary Performance Doula) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, curator, and educator. Their interdisciplinary practice merges performance, poetry, video, and sculpture to explore queer Black theory, emergence, and critical rest-care strategies for BIPOC+ liberation and reparation. As an educator and facilitator, jaamil works across Black-centered creative, nonprofit, and corporate spaces. Their works—including The (chrysalis) Archives, Black Body Amnesia, Chameleon, Séancers, and the Bessie Award–nominated #negrophobia—have toured internationally to venues such as EMPAC, Fusebox Festival, the Guggenheim, Montréal Arts Interculturels, ICA at VCU, New York Live Arts, The Centre for the Less Good Idea (SA), HAU (Berlin), Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Their practice has received support from the Doris Duke Performing Arts Technology Lab, LMCC, Slamdance (Jury Prize, Best Experimental Short), La Becque Residency (Switzerland), two MacDowell Fellowships, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. jaamil.com

Patrice Creamer (Director of Artistic Sign Language) returns as Director of Artistic Sign Language for The Flea’s we come to collect: the flirtation, with capitalism. She has served in this role for over 15 Off-Broadway productions, including Paper Mill Playhouse’s The Color Purple, After Midnight, Gun & Powder, and Mystic Pizza. Her credits also include the Public Theater, BAM, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Classic Stage Company. On Broadway, she has worked on The Lion King, Birthday Candles, Kimberly Akimbo, The Book of Mormon, and Hadestown. Patrice is grateful to the we come to collect team for this collaboration.

Patreshettarlini (‘Ms. Pat’) Adams (she, her) is the Resident Stage Manager at the Wilma Theater. She has recently celebrated 29 seasons and over 100 productions with them! Pat’s almost 40-year stage management career encompasses work with the Crossroads Theatre Company, New Brunswick, NJ; Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia, PA; New Victory Theater, NYC; Ford’s Theater, Washington, DC; The National Black Theater Festival, Winston-Salem, NC; The National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA.; the Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa. Also, she has traveled internationally with Noche Flamenca! Pat is a 2020 recipient of the Del Hughes Award for Lifetime Achievement in Stage Management. In memory of ‘Miss Thomi’, for Love and Faith.

Brian Freeland (he/him) (Production Manager) is a production manager, director, producer, writer, and sound + media artist. Production management for The Flea includes The Ritual of Breath and Amm(i)gone. Brian is also the touring Production Manager for The Flea’s production of Zora Howard’s HANG TIME Additional production management includes works for and with Illinoise (Broadway), The Flea, BAM, En Garde Arts, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, The TEAM, Under The Radar, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, The Park Avenue Armory, Mass MoCA, Ripe Time, The Bearded Ladies, Andrew Schneider, Up Until Now Collective, Bard, Curious Theatre Company, HERE Arts Center, Beth Morrison Projects, The LIDA Project, Countdown to Zero, The Brick, and PROTOTYPE Festival. www.brianfreeland.com

Jecca Barry (Creative Producer) is an independent theatre, opera, dance, and film producer. She is the founder and creative producer of Fin Productions, and a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective. Jecca’s practice focuses on developing work with artists that are challenging the conventions of the performing arts industry. From 2012-2022, she served as Executive Director of the acclaimed production company Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and was a Co-Director of New York’s annual PROTOTYPE Festival from 2017-2022. Jecca has overseen the commissioning, development, production and touring of over 30 new theatre, music theatre, and opera works, and has toured those works to more than 40 national and 20 international venues. Jecca holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in avant-garde flute performance from the Royal Northern College of Music and New York University.

SUPPORT

we come to collect was commissioned by Woolly Mammoth’s Weissberg Commission program and developed with support from MCA Chicago, the Ucross Foundation Residency, Under the Radar’s UFO series, Venturous Theatre Fund, Subcircle Residency Program, and The Flea. The World Premiere took place at The Flea on August 30, 2025

Producers
Shelley Green and Michael Golden
Deborah Solo
David and Linda Glickstein