port • man • teau : the blending of two words into a new word or idea
Portmanteau is a theater collective built around partnerships between generative artists.
Originally founded by director Lila Rachel Becker and playwright Eric Marlin, Portmanteau work tends to have intimate, minimalist forms that lure the audience into unnerving theatrical landscapes. We’re interested in language, power, and complicity.
projects
current
I WANNA MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A STUPID SET OF HOLES | a verbatim text opera using profiles and DMs from dating apps
artists: Lila Rachel Becker and Mel Hsu
developed with the New Georges Audrey Residency
Flatbush Lysistrata | an adaptation of Aristophanes’s play set in the Hasidic Jewish community at an axe-throwing parlor
artists: Lila Rachel Becker and Olivia Palacios
developed with the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Jewish Plays Project, and The Interstitial
Red Musa Palacios of Fez, the Rabbi Pirate | a music theater piece about 15th century Iberian Jewish and Muslim pirates
artists: Lila Rachel Becker and Avi Amon, with additional material by Eric Marlin
developed with the 2021-22 Civilians R&D Group
past
and come apart | a blindfolded play about assimilation & disapora
artists: Eric Marlin and Lila Rachel Becker
The Tank [workshop production]
Finalist for the 2019 Creative Residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm
Press:
Time Out NY For this year's edition of DarkFest, the Tank's series of productions that eschew theatrical lighting, Portmanteau presents Eric Marlin's eligiac drama about an elderly Jewish woman, now blind and mute, who derives little comfort from the daughters gathered at her deathbed. Lila Rachel Becker directs the production, which features Amy Rodriguez and the voices of Meredith Alexander, Lori Elizabeth Parquet and Ching Valdes-Aran; the in-person performances will also be streamed live through CyberTank.
bad things happen here | a collage play inspired by the Argentinian Dirty War
artists: Eric Marlin and Lila Rachel Becker
University of Iowa
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Press:
The Skinny ★ ★ ★ ★ This performance…written by Eric Marlin, would be unnerving at the best of times, but in a world where we see ever-increasing levels of violence and oppression to people who choose to speak out it is captivating, relevant and disconcerting. Lila Rachel Becker’s direction has culminated in a tense, thrilling hour that leaves us strangely hopeful. In a time where we’re challenged by an ever-changing political climate, bad things happen here asks how we might challenge the lies we’re told.
The Mumble ★ ★ ★ ★ Bold, unexpected and gripping,…‘bad things happen here’ is a brilliantly-acted feast for the imagination. Set in an alternative universe where strict curfews, round-the-clock CCTV and constant police (known as ‘dogs’) suppress speech and thought, bad things happen here follows the lives of multiple nameless individuals as they conform or rebel against the system. There’s no denying that the prevalence of The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror and Stranger Things have made dystopian theatre and film fashionable. Indeed it seems that we the public relish wincing at the nightmarish woes of characters trapped within a cruel alternative universe, forever suffering and never escaping. What makes bad things happen here so brilliant, however, is the way it manages to get all of the dystopian stuff in without losing us as an audience – it cuts so close to the bone that we can’t suspend our disbelief too much, and the show is all the more powerful as a result.
FringeReview Embedded with complex philosophy, expressed in simple sentences, this show will linger with you for many weeks to come. It is easy to portray modern dystopia, it is harder to dismantle the complex systems that make one. Despite halting fears there is the possibility of escape, protest and revolution; there is unwavering and unyielding hope. Bad Things Happen Here is brilliant for its contradictions. It points to our shared and immediate reality – the dangers of taking action and the even more present danger of doing nothing at all.
Seven Scenes of Writers Writing Writerly | a short satire
artists: Eric Marlin and Lila Rachel Becker
Dada Futures Conference, University of Iowa
