Nic Adams is an NYC-based playwright, director, producer, and theatre-maker.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I first became introduced to the term theatre-maker, or its German equivalent, theatermacher, in my undergraduate actor training. My professor introduced it to me as an ideal, a model and expectation, that any person in the company had either done every job possible in the art form or was in the process of accumulating this body of knowledge. I took that ideal to heart, and for the past two decades I’ve been completing my journeyman training in the theatre. Live performance is a wonderful art form for theatre-makers because it can engage so many diverse skillsets, but after a decade of lending my talents to others’ productions and festivals while producing my own work in New York City, I knew that no one was going to grant me an artistic identity. And so I decided to focus my attention on my own work. In 2021 I went back to school, bent on proving that I was both a jack-of-all-trades and a master of playwriting, too. At Brooklyn College, I wrote plays about odd jobs, charlatans, the American daydream, sclerotic bureaucracies as the battlefield of class warfare, the heroism of artists, toxic masculinity, fraternal love, eco-psychosis, the careless language of buffoons, and most importantly, bathos: the transformation of the ridiculous into the sublime. ”

HISTORY

Works include: The Comfort Illusion, a darkly comedic solo performance-poem charting one person's descent into eco-psychosis (2017 - present); Icarus in the L.E.S., a performance-poem exploring New York’s mystical literati (2017); and Six Church Poems, a musical variety-show featuring the world’s best fake poets (2014). Nic is currently developing Mean Time, a full-length comedy about revolutionary spirits set at a high-school drunk-driving assembly.

Collaborative works include: Corona Cam Show (with Lee Rayment, 2021), Bun in the Oven (with Lee Rayment, 2020), Duet-ed (with Cori Marquis, 2019); Real Talk / Kip Talk (with Eliza Bent, 2017); White Wines (after Plays) (for Target Margin, 2015); and The Silent Janitor (for The IPA, 2013). He is currently developing a new project with performer Lee Rayment.

Adams’ work has been seen in NYC at Judson Memorial Church, Joe's Pub, The Bushwick Starr (with Target Margin), JACK, and The Tank, among others, and by The BEAT Festival, The Performing Garage Presents, and The Exponential Festival, for which he serves as the Producing Director. Residencies and fellowships include the Woodward Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, IRT Theater, Theater Reconstruction Ensemble, The In-Between People, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His writing has been published online at B O D Y Literature and in print with Avantlanche. Since 2017, he has served as the Producing Director of The Exponential Festival. MFA in playwriting, Brooklyn College ‘23.