Roundtable Theatre Lab

Serena Ryen

Founding Member, Artistic Director, and Managing Director

Visit me at SerenaRyen.com

What is Roundtable Theatre Lab?

 

       Roundtable Theatre Lab creates fully immersive theatrical events and original short films that speak to our current social and political climate. We aim to push the boundaries of how the world of the play can be as fully experienced by an audience as possible; how it can arouse the senses, the mind, and the soul in order to ignite conversation and affect positive change. We believe theatre belongs to the people and in an effort to make it available to everybody, all of our shows are currently pay-what-you-wish.   

 

 

Our history...

 

      When Serena Ryen and her classmate, Eloise Colin, were working on the final scene of The Children's Hour for their scene study class at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the actresses realized that they could not get enough of Lillian Hellman's controversial classic. After an inspiring Self-Generated Theatre course that same year, they decided to mount a full production of the play in order to fully explore its nuances and explosive characters. Rather than a conventional theatre space, the women decided to stage the production in the sitting room of an Upper West Side apartment. The up-close-and-personal environment coupled with the dynamic performances made the audiences feel as though they were simultaneously evesdropping on and somehow implicit in the action of the play. They could not hide from the bold questions the play poses but rather had to face them head-on. 

    After a sold-out run of The Children's Hour, RTL branched out into uncharted territory with a new play by founding member and Children's Hour director, Luis Restrepo. A workshop of his Magical Journey of Abraham and the Moon was presented as part of Welcome Home, an awareness and fundraising fiesta for KIND/Kids In Need of Defence. Half of the evening's proceeds were donated to the charity, which was founded to source pro bono lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S. Visit www.supportkind.org for more info and                                              to stay up-to-date with our future projects!