The Brief
Nerve Tank Media is the brainchild of Melanie S. Armer and Chance Muehleck. Based in New York and founded as a company that produces live performance, NTM has evolved to encompass different modes of contemporary storytelling and entertainment. We collaborate with actors, designers, and other skilled creatives in a spirit of artistic adventure. Our theatrical work often combines elements of popular culture, mediated image, and physical presence to test lines of engagement between spectator and live event.
We’ve staged shows at such venues as Dixon Place, University Settlement, Incubator Arts Project, the World Financial Center Winter Garden, the Grace Building Plaza, and La MaMa ETC. Our short films have screened at festivals worldwide, including FilmQuest, HollyShorts, the Portland Film Festival, and Interfilm Berlin. The company has been featured in the New York Times, American Theatre Magazine, and the Village Voice, and our production of The Maiden was nominated by the New York Innovative Theatre Awards for Outstanding Performance Art Production in 2014.
“It is in the relationship to space and time that Nerve Tank really stands out as a company.”
jake witlen | the brooklyn rail
The Founders
Melanie S. Armer is a bicoastal director and steel sculptor who specializes in ensemble theatre, hybrid performance models, and immersive events. As co-founder of NTM she has directed Project Woyzeck, The Maiden, The Attendants, Glory Road, and Opal, among many others. She was co-Artistic Director of New Circle Theatre Company for two years where she directed Betsy Ross Lies!, Consumption, and Tooth of Winter, all by Emmy award winner Ed Valentine. She was assistant director to Leonard Foglia on the Broadway revival of Wait Until Dark with Quentin Tarantino, Marissa Tomei, and Stephen Lang. Her regional credits include Terminal Lucidity by Amy Bernstein at The Baltimore Theater Project and an immersive production of Hamlet, which she adapted in Saint Louis. She has directed both graduate and undergraduate actors in UBU ROI, Fahrenheit 451, and a five-person staging of Twelfth Night for the Post Theater at Long Island University. She is a proud alumnus of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the Directors Lab West.
Chance Muehleck is a writer, filmmaker, and theatre artist. His work has been produced in New York and regionally, and he’s been commissioned by Primary Stages and Arts Brookfield. Chance taught playwriting at Point Park University and has served as a mentor at the CineStory Retreat in Idyllwild, CA. He was a finalist for the Warner Brothers TV Writers Workshop and is the recipient of the John Golden Award for Excellence in Playwriting. He was also an adjudicator for the New York International Fringe Festival. His screenplays have been optioned by Realm Productions and developed by executives on both coasts. Two of his monologues appear in the Audition Arsenal series published by Smith & Kraus. He wrote and directed the award-winning short films Advent and Below, and he recently created story content for a gaming app based on his original pitch. With NTM he’s created dozens of cutting-edge projects, including LIVE/FEED, Saturn’s Return, and The Attendants, which the Village Voice called “an important new development in performance.”
What’s New?
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Our History
