Tiresias & Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre present

c r y p t o c h r o m e

written, directed, composed, & performed by Evan Silver aka Tiresias

music direction by Tristan Allen

“A gorgeous, trippy eco-cabaret” – Helen Shaw, The New Yorker

cryptochrome is a sonic odyssey across the animal kingdom that invites audiences to imagine themselves in the sensory worlds of other living things. Named after a protein believed to be responsible for the ability to navigate using the Earth’s geomagnetic field, cryptochrome explores realms of perception beyond the visible.

light designed by Chris Voegels

artwork by Deborah Maris Lader

Development of this project took place at MacDowell and was made possible with support from Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre and The Puffin Foundation.

An earlier iteration of cryptochrome was presented at We Are Here as part of The Exponential Festival, and featured the dancer Mizuho Kappa. The project was also developed through readings at LPAC and La MaMa E.T.C.

BIO

Evan Silver aka Tiresias is a hybrid writer, director, composer, performer, producer, mythmaker and ritualist based in NYC. Recently called “a rara avis of experimental theatre” by The New Yorker, their work aims to divine new ecologies and mythologies in performance toward more habitable futures on planet Earth.

Tiresias is a 2024 Artist in Residence at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology and the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, a 2023 Artist in Residence at MacDowell, the Mercury Store, the cell theatre, and the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, a 2023 Puffin Foundation Grant recipient, a 2022 Awesome NYC Grant recipient, a 2021 & 2017 Artist in Residence at the Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, a 2019 Fulbright Scholar, a 2017-19 Marshall Scholar, and a 2016 Luce Fellow in Indonesia. They hold degrees from Brown, RCSSD, and King’s College, Cambridge.