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THEATERLAB ANNOUNCES
HOTEL NEW WORK RESIDENCY ARTISTS SELECTED FOR
20th AnniversaryÂ
New Projects by Arturo LuĂz Soria & Dustyn Kurt Gobler, Neil Totton, and Kate VozellaÂ
Selected for HOTEL NEW WORK Residency
with Collaborators Danilo Gambini, Gabrielle Loren, Erwin Maas, and Colm Summers
Theaterlab announces its selection of three ambitious new projects to receive a Hotel New Work residency in 2026. Neil Totton’s “Fit For Love: A Mixtape Ritual” directed by Erwin Maas and associate choreographed by Gabrielle Loren; Arturo LuĂz Soria & Dustyn Kurt Gobler’s “The White Whale Journal” directed by Danilo Gambini; and Kate Vozella’s “This Motherless Earth” directed by Colm Summers will each go through a 40-hour development process as part of Theaterlab’s 20th Anniversary season of programming.
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Hotel New Work artists will be using the residency as an artistic respite: a dedicated, low-pressure laboratory where new work can breathe, grow, and engage with outside eyes at an early stage without the pressure of a full production.
Each project will receive a $750 budget as well as space to unpack their bags, display their ideas, and test ambitious new work—often across disciplines. As past participants have described, Hotel New Work is built to support the messy, exciting middle of creation: time to experiment, translate big ideas to the stage, and refine the work through a supportive sharing session and talkback.
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All of the artists will be exploring a technical aspect of the show and have chosen to use their room key on the Theater – with its projectors, lighting plot, moveable walls, and unique architecture – for their residency.
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Theaterlab invites audiences to join the artists in the room to witness and respond to this new work. The team will share up to 45 minutes of material followed by an opportunity for attendees to offer thoughts and insights—feedback that is welcome and essential to the next phase of development.
MEET THE PROJECTS
Fit For Love : A Mixtape Ritual
by Neil TottonÂ
in the room with collaborators Gabrielle Loren & Erwin Maas
“Fit for Love: A Mixtape Ritual” is a solo multidisciplinary performance with original music that digs into the psychology of love. It’s part two of his Artistically Fit trilogy following Fit for Freedom which premiered at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective on Juneteenth 2025.Â
Through songs, dance, and monologues that range from first loves to an exaggerated retelling of an experiment performed on Grindr, the hookup app, to explore queer male racial preferences. The music for this mixtape ritual is deeply rooted in R&B/hip-hop soul sounds reflecting The Fit Prince’s passion for 90s R&B, hip-hop, and house. Fit for Love is an interactive work inviting the audience to move, groove, and get fit for love, be it self, platonic, erotic, or romantic.
The White Whale Journal
by Arturo LuĂz Soria & Dustyn Kurt Gobler
in the room with collaborators Danilo Gambini
After the tragic death of his brother, a writer inherits a strange archive: journals of daily life, each tagged with a sticker—pig, plum blossom, small talismans of attention. All are accounted for save one: The White Whale Journal. Drawn into the undertow of his brother’s words, the performer goes hunting—for what was withheld, erased, or too heavy to name. He builds a ritual from fragments and margins, chasing the meaning of blank pages and deliberate gaps. The play refuses quiet reverence, circling instead the cultural silence around suicide and the lack of rituals to hold it. In tracking what’s missing, the narrator resists a neat ending, choosing obsession over closure, pursuit over resignation. What emerges is not an answer, but a widening: a brother restored not as a final act, but as a vast, unfinished human story still breaching the surface.
This Motherless Earth
by Kate Vozella
in the room with collaborator Colm Summers
“This Motherless Earth” is set in a small desert town, in a future where women can no longer carry children and parenthood is regulated through state-issued synthetic infants. When an Auditor arrives to observe a couple’s eligibility to receive one of these children, the present fractures with memories of a childhood shaped by a mass illness. The development process will center on the play’s atmospheric weather events—sudden heatwaves, storms, flash flooding, and drastic temperature shifts—using projection and visual design to create recurring environmental motifs that reflect the story’s emotional and political climate.
SUPPORT HOTEL NEW WORK
Hotel New Work provides companies and collectives in the midst of creating challenging new work with 40 hours of  rehearsal space, a work-in-progress showing, and $750 cash support. This short-form residency allows theatre-makers to test the early stages of a new project in front of an audience for the first time.
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By making a donation to HNW in exchange for a key, you become an active participant in making this program possible.
You’ll make your donation in person, during the RSVP process online, or directly though this link. Then, you’ll pick up your souvenir room key at Theaterlab and sign-in as a guest by adding your name to the wall – publicly showing your support for a new generation of theater and making room for the exploration of innovate live arts.
MORE INFO & RSVP
