The Fire Ensemble
About this collaboration
Join Us
The Fire Ensemble is for shower singers, professionals, and anyone in between. Our doors are always open to new members. Whether you are interested in coming to a single rehearsal or singing with us for the entire season, we welcome you to join our choir community as we explore the power of our individual voices to make music collectively.
During free, weekly rehearsals, singers from different backgrounds and identities come together to use music and ritual as tools to explore collective liberation, intergenerational healing, radical relationships, and personal emergence. Though the invitation to participate in collective liberation is open to all, The Fire Ensemble is committed to centering BIPOC communities.
Rehearsals will begin Monday, September 11, and will be held most Monday evenings afterward from 6 – 8 pm through November 20 at The Shed. To join the Ensemble, please fill out this RSVP form.
The Fire Ensemble Team
Troy Anthony is a Kentucky-born composer/lyricist, director, and theater-maker based in NYC practicing Black queer joy. He has received commissions from The 5th Avenue Theater, The Civilians, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theater, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and The Shed. He’s enjoyed residencies with Musical Theater Factory (MTF), The O’Neill Theater Center, and Village Theater. Additionally, he’s presented work at Joe’s Pub, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, JACK, Prospect Theater Company, the National Alliance for Musical Theater Conference, and 54 Below. Anthony recently received the Vivace Award from the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation and is currently an artist-in-residence at The Chelsea Factory.
As an actor, Anthony has been seen in the Public Theater’s As You Like It, Hercules, and Twelfth Night, as well as Prospect Theater Company’s Tamar of the River. Anthony’s work lives at the intersection of art, social justice, and community practice. In this spirit, he recently founded The Fire Ensemble as a home to develop his work and to share the joy of singing in community.
More about the ensemble
As part of a multiyear residency, this mass choir will invite community members to rehearse, workshop, and perform in transformative large-scale music theater works and rituals rooted in predominantly Black musical styles including gospel, R&B, and musical theater. In the group’s inaugural year, The Shed will host two 10-week sessions (in the spring and fall), each culminating in a one-night-only performance offered to the general public for free. Although performances will be moments of culmination and expanding the circle of sharing, the emphasis of the project will be on the process, and on the space and community being built through the weekly gatherings.
Troy Anthony first joined The Shed’s family of artists as part of the inaugural cohort of Open Call artists. When the pandemic delayed the presentation of his work, he collaborated with JJJJJerome Ellis on a digital performance as part of the Up Close series. In summer 2021, Anthony presented his Open Call project, The Revival: It Is Our Duty, in celebration of Juneteenth.
Past Events
Thank you to our partners
The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund and the Shed Commissioners. Major support for live productions at The Shed is provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, with additional support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
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