The 777 Building
Limited Availability!
Robin Frohardt
The Plastic Bag Store
(+ fees)
This custom-built public art installation and immersive film experience uses humor, craft, and a critical lens to question our culture of consumption and convenience — specifically, the enduring effects of our single-use plastics.
Shelves are stocked with thousands of original grocery items meticulously sculpted by hand, all made from discarded single-use plastics organically harvested from streets and garbage dumps. Several times a day, the store transforms into an immersive, dynamic stage for a film in which inventive puppetry, shadow play, and intricate handmade sets tell the darkly comedic and sometimes tender story of how the overabundance of plastic waste we leave behind might be misinterpreted by future generations — and how what we value least may become our most lasting cultural legacy.
The Plastic Bag Store is commissioned by Times Square Arts with generous support provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the National Endowment for the Arts; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional commissioning support has been provided by Carolina Performing Arts, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was developed with support from: MANA Contemporary, The Made in NY Women’s Film, TV & Theatre Fund by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts; Olson Kundig; The Jim Henson Foundation; and is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). The Plastic Bag Store is a project of Creative Capital. The Plastic Bag Store film segments were commissioned by the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA with additional support by the Adelaide Festival.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
TITLE SPONSOR
- Rachel Bendit and Mark Bernstein
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PRESENTING SPONSOR
PRINCIPAL SPONSOR
- Max Wicha and Sheila Crowley
- An anonymous gift supporting programming in climate change and a sustainable environment.
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SUPPORTING SPONSOR
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- Ilene H. Forsyth Theater Endowment Fund
MEDIA PARTNERS
Robin Frohardt is an award-winning theater and film director known for her rich aesthetic and highly detailed constructions. Her narrative-based film, puppetry and sculpture, use recognizable materials, often trash, to create richly detailed worlds that make magic of the mundane and highlight the trivialities of daily life. Her theatrical work has earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, and multiple Jim Henson Foundation Grants. Her play The Pigeoning hailed by the New York Times as “a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination,” debuted in 2013 and continues to tour at home and abroad. Her follow-up project The Plastic Bag Store premiered in Times Square in 2020 and has since toured to Los Angeles, Chicago, Adelaide, and Austin. Her films have been official selections at The Telluride Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, The One Earth Film Festival, and BAM.