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      PEM PRESENTS

      La Daniella: Gooey's Toxic Aquatic Adventure

      Saturday, June 7, 2025 from 2—3 pm

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      PEM Presents La Daniella

      Know before you go

      In-person event
      Location: Morse Auditorium

      Included with admission

      Join PEM Presents for a puppet musical about self-discovery, friendship and late-stage capitalism. Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure is written and performed by La Daniella, an AfroDominican/Nuyorican playwright, actor and puppeteer from Brooklyn.

      In a near apocalyptic New York City, Gooey Pudín is an insecure mermaid from a sewage-filled creek in search of a better life and gainful employment at G’wond’rLand Theme Park. Along the way, Gooey encounters a smart-mouthed, streetwise rat named Scabby, an animated suitcase, a radical socialist parakeet, a couple of wiseguys and the truth of how she came to be and where she comes from.

      Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure will have its world premiere at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn in February 2026.

      La Daniella (Book and lyrics)

      Ben Langhorst (Lyrics and music)

      Sammy Zeisel (Direction)

      About the collaborators

      La Daniella
      La Daniella

      La Daniella (she/her) is an AfroDominican/Nuyorican playwright, actor, performer, puppeteer and teaching artist from Bushwick, Brooklyn, where her family has lived for 60 years. She makes satirical fabulist theater that centers queer Black/Latine women and working class communities. As a playwright, her work has been supported by The Public Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Bushwick Starr, New York Theater Workshop, The New Group, Checkmark Productions, United Solo Festival, Barrington Stage Company and San Diego Repertory Theater. Her play Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back (FKA Columbus Play) won the 2020 Burman New Play Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. La Daniella is an alum of The Public Theater’s 2018-19 Emerging Writers Group and was a staff writer on the upcoming narrative podcast FLIPPED! (produced by echoverse and Neal Baer). As an actor, she is best known for her role as Zirconia on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black. La Daniella is a graduate of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and graduated NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Drama.

      Ben Langhorst
      Ben Langhorst

      Ben Langhorst (he/him) is a New York-based writer, composer and actor. As a writer, his work has been seen at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, Joe’s Pub, The Tank, Judson Memorial Church and Dixon Place. His work includes Hartwell Church of God: The Musical - The Search for the Next Divine Pastor and whale/wail/wale. He has also spent the last ten years music directing, arranging and performing with the renowned cabaret artist Salty Brine. Their work was featured at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where they were nominated for Best Show by The List UK. As an actor, Langhorst has developed new works with Roundabout Theatre Company, Second Stage Theater, the Atlantic Theater Company, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Next Door @ NYTW and Pipeline Theatre Company.

      Sammy Zeisel
      Sammy Zeisel

      Sammy Zeisel (he/him) is a Brooklyn-based theater director and filmmaker who recently completed his M.F.A. at Yale, where he was awarded the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize for excellence. At Yale, Sammy developed and directed new plays, as well as Annie Baker's translation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and his own adaptation of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Sammy has worked with institutions including The Civilians, Steppenwolf Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre and The Actors Theatre of Louisville. He is an alumnus of Northwestern University and is currently the directing fellow at Rattlestick Theater. Most recently, he directed Chekhov's The Seagull at Quinnipiac University and the new puppet pageant The Undercity at Culture Lab LIC. Next up, he will be directing a reading of Tremolo by Regan Moro, a contemporary queer reimagining of The Seagull, through Fault Line Theater's Iron in the Fire.

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