you don’t have to do anything (2024)
Premiered February 9-23, 2024 at HERE Arts Center.
FEATURING: YARON LOTAN+, WILL DAGGER*, ANDREA ABELLO+, MILES ELLIOT
UNDERSTUDIES:JASMINE SHARMA+, NICHOLAS SALEM, KAYLA ZANAKIS
PLAYWRIGHT: Ryan Drake
DIRECTOR: ryan dobrin
LEAD PRODUCING: WILL ARBERY, LEIGH HONIGMAN, JOEY NASTA
Production stage manager: caren celine morris
Scenic + properties design: cat raynor
costume design: christopher vergara
lighting design: bentley heydt, molly tiede
music + sound design: carsen joenk
video design: zack lobel
intimacy + fight director: alex might
Production manager: shannon molly flynn
technical director: eric nightengale
associate director: isabelle chirls
assistant stage manager: eva rubin
associate sound design: emma hasselbach
associate producer: mckenna quigley harrington
producing consultant: olivia facini
house manageR: isabel loughlin
graphic designer:JUNE BUCK
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARIA BARANOVA
We made it off-Broadway! After 2022’s workshop production at IRT Theater, we went on to a 2024 run at HERE Arts Center.
Teddy hopes to find closure on the time in his life with Clark, a former classmate, and brings us into the past where it all began: 7th grade at a new school in the early 2000s. After being shunned by the rest of their classmates, Teddy and Clark have a sleepover that takes an unexpected and uncomfortable direction. They then fall out of touch when Clark is expelled until Teddy receives an AIM message from Clark late in the night.
The conversation incites an online communication over a decade that’s part friendship, part adversary, part sexual exploration. As their communication progresses, it bleeds into Teddy’s own life and sense of intimacy, identity, and sexuality. Teddy once again fails to find closure in re-telling this experience to an audience and forces us to question our own perception of what really happened.
PRESS COVERAGE
you don’t have to do anything is a bit like a dark twin to “It gets better”–style adolescent YA like Heartstopper…Rather than coming of age, Teddy gets stuck in adolescence, enabled by mechanics of the internet. - Vulture
…one of the best performed shows in New York right now, "you don't have to do anything,"…deals with sexual coercion and the slippery nature of identity combined with trauma. - The New Yorker
Teddy’s mélange of memory is what makes you don’t have to do anything shine. The play lives in the murky waters of adolescent reminiscence, where the line between kids messing around and assault is blurred by both a would-be perpetrator and a potential victim.- Theatermania
The cast successfully walks the tightrope of communicating the complicated narrative while keeping their audience from shying away during uncomfortable situations. - Playbill
Unfolding during the first two decades of this century, you don't have to do anything still has plenty to say about young gay people who, absorbing the homophobia in the air around them, become their own worst enemies.
- Lighting and Sound America
This play requires the viewer to go beyond the surface impression of a “coming of age” story and separate what is real from what may be a psychologically perceived reality. This is not a show for everyone; it is for an audience interested in being challenged by a thought-provoking theatrical experience.
- Theaterscene.net
YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. (2022)
A workshop production presented October 13-16, 2022 at IRT Theater.
It was an honor and a privilege to have co-produced YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. presented under IRT Theater's 3B Development Series. It's a disquieting new play by Ryan Drake and directed by Ryan Dobrin, that interrogates memory, agency, and the various boundaries and violations of Queer exploration.
This play really excites me in its interrogation of Queer adolescence and the damage we inflict on each other, skipping the romanticization we so commonly see around Queer pain these days. We pursued a workshop production model to further learn the needs of this sensitive text and to better prepare us for a full production in winter 2023/24. Stay tuned for updates!
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Teddy brings us into the past where it all began: 7th grade at a new school. After being shunned by the rest of their classmates, Teddy and Clark decide to have a sleepover that takes an unexpected and uncomfortable direction. They then fall out of touch until Teddy receives an AIM message from Clark after he’s been expelled for groping a student at school.
The conversation incites an online communication over a decade that’s part friendship, part adversary, part sexual exploration. As their communication progresses, it bleeds into Teddy’s own life and sense of intimacy and identity. As realities and personal discoveries clash, his relationship with Clark ends but the effects linger in Teddy’s present.
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