Original Work

The Great Brown Bear (NY Fringe Festival Premiere, 2018)

About The Great Brown Bear

"Once, there was a father. And because there was a father, there was also a daughter." Thus begins the story of The Great Brown Bear, a modern tale loosely adapted from the classic Scandinavian folktale 'East o' the Sun,West o' the Moon'. She, an earnest schoolteacher with an absentee father, meets He, a skeptical romantic unsure if He's ready for salvation. She, a Princess, promised adventure and safety, meets He, a brutish Bear with riches and the strength to uphold such a promise. What is it to transcend the past and reveal one's true self? In this surrealist retelling, two lovers quest to find each other. This story was inspired by and honors all of the important lovers in each of our lives. It explores the dichotomy of what it means to engage with an idea of a person; vs. the person themselves. We so easily convince ourselves that we know everything about those we love- we make promises about how we will behave, what we will feel, and what the future has in store. Truly? Truly, all we have is right now. Using movement, poetry, music and traditional acting, we will immerse you in a tale that lives in the liminal space between fairytale and familiar. Come join us in telling a story which belongs to everyone. 

I wrote The Great Brown Bear in 2017 after a conversation I had with my father about relationship, and the promises we all make to ourselves and to one another. The play is meant to be experienced like a parable; yes, it is about two main characters, but perhaps those characters only stand in as symbols for a larger pattern that many of us cling to.

In 2018, I and a generous team of artists premiered The Great Brown Bear at the New York Fringe Festival from October 12th-16th to positive reviews. The production was fully written, directed and produced by myself, and brought to life by a group of artists to whom I cannot express the depth of my gratitude. The cast and creative team included Joshua Dunn (choreography), Alex Doyle (choreography, ensemble), Kierna Conner (direction, costume design, set design, ensemble), Chris Okawa (sound design, ensemble), Nicholas Picknally (ensemble), Jamie Grossman (ensemble), Chance Wall (ensemble), Caleb Marshall (choreography, ensemble), Sarah Sinizer-Hopkins (ensemble), Jared Sigler (music, ensemble) and Jeanne Torres (set design).

Reviews for The Great Brown Bear

“Distilled from a Scandinavian folk tale, Crokimo Productions' The Great Brown Bear is a poetic exposition on the myth of love and the anatomy of marriage…The Great Brown Bear has an abundance of raw creative intuition, ingenious execution of ideas with minimal props and sets, and endless potential. Moreover, the show has the capacity to travel, and be unfolded anywhere.”

Review from Theatre Is Easy, full review found here.

“I walked out of The Great Brown Bear in a strange state of mind. It really was a beautiful piece, filled with imaginative writing, clever dialogue, and a lovely feel. There were some really moving moments of impassioned poetry as the story progressed. The costuming, again by Kierna Conner, was a charming folk-inspired mish-mash, like seeing the Von Trapp children after Julie Andrews gets her hands on the curtains in The Sound of Music. The choreography, which would appear at moments of high tension or drama, helped to create this atmosphere of a fairytale land, and then a fairytale gone wrong. The Great Brown Bear is clearly a passion project, which has had a whole load of love poured into it. In its current state, it is akin to being sat with your tribe around a campfire to be told an old story. Next time, and I do hope there is a next time, I want to be in the story.”

Review from No Proscenium, full review found here.