Lead by Caroline Fermin, Adam M. Kassim, & Kathleen Kennedy Tobin
The Doxsee Theater | September 17 – October 3, 2026
The NONSENSE LAB will offer three productions, each for 6 performances, from September 17 to October 3, 2026, in The Doxsee, and three 1-night events (talks, installations and performances). All of our Lab Artists start with these questions: how can we work meaningfully with the nonsense around us? How can we create poetry and beauty through nonsense itself?
This season our Labs are led by three Artists from diverse disciplines. Choreographer Caroline Fermin’s Let Me Be an Animal is an evening-length dance celebrating the slow, awkward, sweaty, and questioning parts of ourselves. Associate A.D. Adam M. Kassim creates an explosion of politics, pop culture, and history in We’ll Jump Off That Bridge When We Get There; Toy theater creator / puppeteer Kathleen Kennedy Tobin builds a tiny cruel nonsense universe called The Charnel House.
One-time music and artistic events enrich the program. On Tuesday, September 22, TMT Community Café for the Nonsensical will feature a collective reading of Entertainer Zero Machine: A Cyber Peep Show Lyric of Illegitimate Theater by Ron Allen. Saskia Lane leads our Nonsense Music Night on Monday, September 28 and Theresa Buchheister assembles a Nonsense Performance Night on Wednesday, September 30. Both Saskia and Theresa will curate a gathering of artists to offer a confetti cannon of nonsense in all its artistic forms.
Lead Artist: Caroline Fermin
In a society filled with algorithmic dead ends, deepfakes, and trends like biohacking and min-maxing, what makes a human a human is freshly up for debate— again. Online and in life, we are shown potentials for optimizing the human body at an exhausting rate. Let Me Be An Animal is about slowing down, giving up some control, and celebrating the exquisite nature of human responsiveness.
Dancers: Thy-Lan Alcalay, Lauren Aureus, Miranda Blumanstock, Nova Persio, Alexis Vinzons
Musician/Composer: Robert Boston
Foley Arrangements by Trey McGee
Fri 9/18 @ 7pm
Sat 9/19 @ 4 pm
Sat 9/26 @ 7pm
Sun 9/27 @ 7 pm
Fri 10/2 @ 9 pm
Sat 10/3 @ 2 pm
Tickets start at $20:
Lead Artist: Adam M. Kassim
It’s a disorienting and fractured world – history is manipulated, documents are shredded, and even knowledge is lynched. As the trash piles up, how do you find connection in a system created to isolate? Better hold onto your neck. We’ll Jump Off That Bridge When We Get There is a theatrical event that blends history, pop culture, and current news to explode the chaotic nonsense in which we find ourselves.
An ensemble of 5 performer/collaborators made up of returning TMT artists and new faces
Design: Brian Lady
Thurs 9/17 @ 7 pm
Sun 9/20 @ 7pm
Fri 9/25 @ 7 pm
Sat 9/26 @ 4 pm
Fri 10/2 @ 7 pm
Sat 10/3 @ 4 pm
Tickets start at $20:
Lead Artist: Kathleen Kennedy Tobin
In The Charnel House, shadow puppetry and toy theater explore memories of past lives reflected in every corner of our city. The artifacts of history pile up and are crushed beneath our feet. Look, we continue to love in the time of apocalypse and search for a human and humane world amongst the rubble.
Composer: Eamon Goodman
Sat 9/19 @ 7 pm
Sun 9/20 @ 4 pm
Thurs 9/24 @ 7 pm
Sun 9/27 @ 4 pm
Thurs 10/1 @ 7 pm
Sat 10/3 @ 7 pm
Tickets start to $20
ONE-TIME EVENTS
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
TMT Community Café for the Nonsensical
An evening in the Doxsee over light bites and a collective reading of Entertainer Zero Machine: A Cyber Peep Show Lyric of Illegitimate Theater by Ron Allen
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
Nothing to See Here
curated by Saskia Lane
Nothing to See Here is an evening devoted to nonsense in all its musical forms: songs, sounds, improvisations, wrong turns, and happy accidents. Where musicians take their cues from the audience, from each other, and occasionally from nowhere in particular. Come feast your ears on an evening of songs, sounds, tangents, interruptions, and other musical nonsense. With help—or possibly interference—from the audience, performers will follow wherever the music, the moment, and a questionable idea or two might lead.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
Uh Oh Manifest(o)ing
curated by Theresa Buchheister
Uh Oh Manifest(o)ing! is a declaration of varied intentions and the weaving of a spell in the shape of a one-night-only performance. This night could never and will never be able to happen again. With a slew of trusted collaborators, Theresa Buchheister serves up an evening of impossibility, delight and challenge. Featuring Blake Bolan, Aaron LaRoche, Ilana Stulepner, William Sydney, Thalia Sablon, kanishk pandey, Joey Merlo, Devon Wade Granmo, Teri Madonna, E. Jim Ford, John-Philip-Faienza, Paul Ketchum, Mark Krawczuk with the spiritual presence of Ryan William Downey and Ann Marie Door. Strap in and strap on! It’s gonna be a wild ride!
ABOUT THE LEAD ARTISTS OF THE NONSENSE LAB
Caroline Fermin (she/her) has created dance works in collaboration with musicians, media artists, and directors for over two decades. Her work has been presented by the Juilliard Center for Innovation in the Arts, Barnard, Mt Holyoke, University of South Carolina, Stockton University and others. She is happy to return to Target Margin Theater for the Nonsense Lab after choreographing for Show/Boat: A River at NYU Skirball. As an educator, Caroline is a lead faculty for Summer Performing Arts with Juilliard and has been a teaching artist for New York City Center and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She has served as Director of Culture for Dancewave and Director of Education for Gallim Dance. Currently, she holds the positions of term lecturer at Barnard College/Columbia University and adjunct lecturer at Marymount Manhattan College. She attended The Juilliard School (BFA Dance) and Wilson College (MFA Choreography) and is a founding member of Gallim Dance where she performed and toured internationally. www.carolinefermin.com
Adam M. Kassim (he/him) is a Palestinian American theater director and arts facilitator. He has developed work and directed projects at Target Margin Theater, The People’s Theater, Clubbed Thumb, The Mercury Store, The Orchard Project, and Mosaic Theater Company, to name a few. Adam received an MFA in Directing from Boston University and was named a 2020 National Directors Fellow with the O’Neill Theater Center. Currently, Adam serves as the Associate Artistic Director at Target Margin and lives in Brooklyn with his husband and dog, Huck. www.adamkassim.com
Kathleen Kennedy Tobin (she/her) is a paper theater designer, puppeteer, and animator. Her work has been part of several Target Margin seasons, including a set of toy theaters for Uriel Acosta: I Want That Man!, full length tabletop puppet productions of Eugene O’Neill’s Dynamo and Tennessee Williams’ Purification, as well as The 2012 Puppet Re-Enactment of the 1920 Bolshevik Re-enactment of the Storming of the Winter Palace October 1917 which also appeared in Great Small Works’ Toy Theater Festival and at the Detroit Institute of Arts.