MOTHER/ROAD - The Shed

Avi Amon. Video: Tara Kutz.

About this production

Part concept album, part memoir, part immersive concert, Avi Amon’s MOTHER/ROAD invites audiences to participate in an act of emotional memory.

For this production, Amon creates a musical meditation on grief, memory, and family using cassette tapes carried by his parents when they immigrated to the United States from Istanbul in 1979.

The piece explores the porous nature of time, how it fades and distorts, and how—like a cassette tape—it can rewind, warp, and overwrite itself. Out of the stuff of memory, music and sound compose new worlds at once fragile and infinite for the generations to inhabit together.

Program Details

Tickets to all Open Call events are free with a reservation. Day-of tickets will be available at the box office prior to each performance.

Seating is first come, first served. Please arrive early. A reservation does not guarantee admission. Doors open 30 minutes before the performance.

Running time: 65 minutes. This production includes haze effects.

Public Program: Between Experience and Remembrance

Saturday, July 18
Directly following the 2 pm performance of MOTHER/ROAD
In The Tisch Skylights (Level 8)

This community conversation, led by theater-maker and rabbi Kendell Pinkney and Avi Amon, draws on the ancient ritual of havruta, a practice of studying texts in pairs. With the aim of creating shared meaning in real time, this havruta will open a space for collective reflection on the themes of MOTHER/ROAD. We’ll discuss grief and joy as portals into deep time, memory and its transmission across generations, and the space between an experience and our recollection of it.

Kendell Pinkney is a Brooklyn-based playwright, arts and culture advocate, educator, and rabbi. His work has been commissioned, developed, and presented at venues across the United States and Canada. In addition to his creative work, Pinkney is the director of Jewish learning and artist-in-residence at the arts and culture organization Reboot. Additionally, he serves as the founding artistic director of The Workshop, one of Reboot’s signature programs providing an arts and culture fellowship for emerging creatives of BIPOC-Jewish heritage. kendellpinkney.com

Creative Team

Avi Amon is a Turkish American composer and sound artist whose music often examines themes of collective memory and being “in-between.” Theater work includes music, songs, and sound design for projects with Arena Stage, Ars Nova, Edinburgh Fringe, The Kennedy Center, Lookingglass, New York Theater Workshop, The Old Globe, PAC NYC, Page73, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Signature Theater, The Public, Target Margin, and Waterwell. Amon’s film scores have been featured at Cannes, Disney, DOCNYC, HBO, Hulu, Slamdance, SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, The Venice Biennale, and more. Recent highlights include: music and sound design for Danger & Opportunity (2025 Drama Desk Award) and The Following Evening with 600 Highwaymen (PAC NYC); original score for the feature film, The Fisherman, directed by Zoey Martinson (Venice); and two musicals, The Lesson directed by Raja Feather Kelly (Ars Nova), and Through the Sunken Lands directed by Cara Phipps (Kennedy Center). Amon’s scores for the documentary film, Everything You Have Is Yours, and the critically acclaimed play, Well, I’ll Let You Go (by Bubba Weiler, directed by Jack Serio), are available to stream everywhere. Amon is a MacDowell Fellow and has received artistic support from NYSCA, Jonathan Larson Grant, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor, Dramatists Guild, Goodspeed, Mercury Store, New Music USA, The O’Neill National Music Theater Conference, The Playwright’s Center, Rhinebeck, and others. Amon is the music director at the 52nd Street Project and teaches at NYU Tisch. www.aviamon.com

Keenan Tyler Oliphant is a theater-maker and director from Cape Town, South Africa. Oliphant’s work is in the lineage of the theater-making and storytelling traditions of Southern Africa. Selected directing credits include Nazareth Hassan’s Practice (Playwrights Horizons; NYT Critic’s Pick, Vulture and New Yorker Best Theatre of 2026), Heather Christian’s TERCE: A Practical Breviary (HERE Arts; NYT Critic’s Pick, Vulture, New Yorker, and NYT Best Theatre of 2024), Will You Come With Me? (PlayCo), Jeesun Choi’s To the Ends of the Earth (JACK), Jay Stull’s The Singularity Play (Harvard TDM; Alliance Theatre Reading), Sam Grabiner’s People on Earth (Columbia University), Vivian Barnes’s Intro To (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Oliphant is associate director for Hadestown (Broadway). Oliphant has developed work with Ars Nova, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, The Vineyard Theatre, and more. Oliphant is the 2025/2026 Susan Stroman Directing Award recipient, an alumnus of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship (2020 – 21) and the Drama League Directing Fellowship (2021 – 22).

Acknowledgments

MOTHER/ROAD has been developed with support from The Bushwick Starr, MacDowell, Mercury Store, New Jewish Culture Fellowship, New York Theatre Workshop, REBOOT, and THE WORKSHOP.

Accessibility

Seating

The Shed’s Griffin Theater has accessible seating. Please contact us in advance to discuss your needs and available options by emailing accessibility@theshed.org or calling (646) 455-3949.

Assistive Listening

Visitors may check out assistive listening devices at the entrance to the theater. A driver’s license will be held to check out the device.

ASL Interpretation

ASL interpretation will be available at the Saturday, July 18 matinee performance. There will be a reserved section of seats if you would like to sit in proximity to an interpreter. To find the seats, look for the Reserved signs in the theater or ask an usher for help.

Audio Description

Audio description will be available at the Saturday, July 18 matinee performance. For audio description, visitors may check out assistive listening devices at the entrance to the theater. A driver’s license will be held to check out the device.

Purchasing Tickets

The Shed’s online ticketing system includes the option to submit accommodation requests beyond the access points detailed here.

Contact Us

For questions or other requests, visit the Accessibility page, email accessibility@theshed.org, or call (646) 455-3494.

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JUN 26 – JUL 25

New art for New York

Thank you to our partners

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Additional support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; The Wescustogo Foundation; and Onassis ONX.

The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund. Major support for live productions at The Shed is provided by the Charina Endowment Fund and the Shubert Foundation, with additional support from New York State Council on the Arts with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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