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Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

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Yannick Trapman-O'Brien posts

NYC Playtest Alert: "Immodest Proposal"

Hello my adventurous friends,

I'm very excited to announce my first in-person playtest for a new work! 


Immodest Proposal (working title); a psychological thriller for an audience of one.


This is a piece I've been experimenting with for quite some time, and for the next stage of its development, I'd love to hear your thoughts. While many of the tools and design are familiar, this is me exploring a very different kind of experience, so...

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November Highlight - “Kind of like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

[Don't hit play yet - I'll tell you when]

TIME. IS. PASSING.

Which is what my brain screams every time I begin to type the sentence “November’s almost halfway done!” This Month, I’m revisiting one of my favorite interviews, done back in 2016 for my
“True Love Story Library” project (click the link for an overview, if you’re not familiar). ...

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November Updates

Happy November folks!

As the Halloween recovery period comes to an end, I'm doing some prep on a secret project that will become un-secret before December arrives (Spooky Season may be over, but something wicked still this way comes…). As such, I’m returning to a book I loved immensely many years ago to see what it can teach me about temptation—check your inbox for the month's Reading Recommendation, which includes a little easter-egg attached as a pdf on this site.

Speakin...

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October Highlight - "It's Just Enough to do Nothing"


Gallery Entrance, IF WE WIN. September, 2021. Cannonball Festival. Credit: Lilly Roman


It's still October! Things are in full swing at The Telelibrary, with shows at the Denver Film Festival upcoming, and some fresh love from 2021-10-28 00:35:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Read of the Month: Citizen; An American Lyric

Hello all,

This is your regularly scheduled reminder that time is passing.

More specifically, since the Archive Highlight this month is a doozy, I thought I'd drop the Read of the Month a little early — especially since I can now reveal my special guest for the segment!

Courtney Lyneé is an actor, vocalist, voiceover artist, and director, and plays Citizen 2 in the New Light Theatre production of Citizen; An American Lyric. She is also I am th...

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It's (been) October (for several days)!

Hey everyone!

The madness of Fringe has passed, which means the madness of Spooky Season has now begun in earnest: Gigs on gigs on gigs. IF WE WIN was a great time, and I learned so much from building my first in-person gallery of User generated content. There will be updates on that and more soon.

For now, The read of the week has been released to your emails, along with Shortlist Invites for the lucky Patrons attending Telelibrary this month.

In other news, this Month T...

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September Read of the Month

Hey everyone,

Sliiiiiding in just at the end of the month - we'll be switching to the Book Club Format for Reading Lists and Read of the Month for the foreseeable future, but since the season is just right, I thought I'd throw out a quick piece I've always loved. There's a balance of sadness and solace at the end of summer, like the peace that comes just after laughing as hard as you can (or sweating as much as you can, in my case). Taking a moment of breath as I wrap up my F...

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September Highlight - “Not a Love Story”


Pictured: A Celebrated Piece of Classical Art

Greetings from mid-madness! September is a big month for me, both rehearsing and devising for a production of
2021-09-16 23:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post

What Do You Think? - Reading Lists Moving Forward

Hey Everyone,

A little extra mid-month check in for all of you. Now that we're in our 6th (!) month of working together on Patreon, I'm interested in exploring the format a bit. Currently, the reading list I send at the top of every month is a pretty exhaustive breakdown of a lot of different reading and resources on a source. While I love doing the deep dive on a subject, I've found the time it takes to format and tie these links together is much longer than I'd anticipated.

I ...

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September Updates

Hey Everyone,

It's September, which means I'm

  • waking up from stress dreams about going back to middle school
  • here with fresh-baked content.

The September Reading list can be found in your inbox and as a pdf below, and Shortlist emails have gone out inviting 6 folks at the "Get Hands On" and "Pay-It-Forward" tiers to special Telelibrary sessions.

Finally, in case you missed it, the 2021-09-01 22:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post

August Reading Excerpt

Just a quick something to celebrate the end of the month - another reading excerpt.  Between the maintenance break for Telelibrary and the upcoming launch of IF WE WIN time is pretty tight, but I actually enjoyed being able to step into something not-quite-either for a moment, so I look forward to keeping this series going in future months.

Enjoy! 

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August Highlight: "Paint by Numbers"

“Now What?”

The wonderful thing about taking in data before you know what to do with it is that you get to be surprised by the work you end up making, and the stories you find yourself telling. The horrible thing about taking in data before you know what to do with it is that “knowing what to do with it” often takes a
very long time. This is especially true with a piece like IF WE WIN, which tends to adapt quickly* as it chases an evolvin...

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August Updates

Hey Everyone,

August is here, which can only mean two things:

  • Time is an unrelenting torrent pummeling us all into submission
  • Your regularly scheduled content and updates have arrived

The August Reading list can be found in your inbox and as a pdf below, and shortlist emails have gone out for the very patient folks at the "Get Hands On" and "Pay-It-Forward" tiers who have waited their turn. This is officially month 5 of running the Patreon, which me...

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July Highlight - “What makes Some Love True?”

Seeing as we’ve been pretty deep in the world of finance, negotiation, and money, I thought we could all use a break from the numbers with a very different kind of currency. This month I’m looking back at a very different exchange that I ran under the umbrella of a larger project, “The Institute of Internal Certainty.” This project also represents another early model of a collaborative archive or “space” built by participants, and an experiment in thinking about the ways emoti...

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Something Extra

Hey Everyone,

As I'm finishing up this month's Archive Highlight, I thought I'd share a little something extra.

I was asked to prepare a reading excerpt on another job, and after making it, it occurred to me this may be another way to satisfy my seemingly endless hunger to read things to people.

What do you think? Would you be interested in more extra videos and highlights? Maybe a way to scratc...

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July Updates!

Happy holiday weekend everyone! 

Reading Lists have gone out to your emails, along with shortlist sessions for the month, so check your inbox*! Next month is the last month in the cycle, so if you didn't get a session yet, you're guaranteed a spot next month.

Additionally, I've added another round of playtests for IF WE WIN, so...

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First Playtests for IF WE WIN

Hey everyone,  

Very excited to finally announce the first of a few rounds of playtesting for a remote version of IF WE WIN.  These tests are serving double duty for me. IF WE WIN requires me to have a pretty intense mastery of a lot of facts, and it's hard to zero in on what information needs to be in the piece at any given time without having a bunch of conversations and seeing how the balance of information affects the participant experience.  

But just as inte...

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June Highlight - “The Dotted Line”

Continuing our theme of exchanges, this month I wanted to highlight the role that contracts have played in my past works. While some of the exchanges in my work are more implicit, or even non-verbal, I started exploring exchanges with audiences in a very literal and detailed way, which jump-started my education in crafting “a fair trade.”

Alright, on to June!

~
[MISSING] was my...

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A Quick Update and a Thanks

I'm very excited to share this month's Archive highlight with you all - so excited in fact, that I've gotten a little too into writing it; you can expect it before the top of next week, along with the first round of playtest times for IF WE WIN.


Until then, I wanted to share a quick update from my work, as a demonstration of how much of a difference your support makes.

If you've accessed the Telelibrary or my other projects, you know how important au...

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June Announcements!

Welcome to June everyone!

The June reading list has hit your inboxes, which you’ll want to double check anyway if you’re at the “Get Hands On” or “Pay it Forward '' levels, because exclusive Telelibrary sessions have also been sent out to this Month’s callers.

Finally, in other exciting news, Playtesting for a remote version of “IF WE WIN” will begin for Patrons this month! Expect to see times and instructions for booking posted on the Patreon (and by e...

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May Highlight - The Telelibrary

An ongoing interest in my practice is creative data - I try to think carefully and expansively about what data my exchanges create, and what can be learned or made by applying it creatively. The trade off is that data collection can be fairly resource intensive; it’s hard to find the time to properly process, sort, and document everything I’m taking in, and even harder to make time to really sit with that information and start to find what stories emerge beyond the intuitive.

L...

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Update on Shortlist Distribution

Hey folks,  

Thank you again for your input on shortlist sessions! You can follow the discussion at my previous post.

Once again, I ran my favorite random number generator to pick from the shortlist and sent out times for this month.

Per your input, those selected for April were not in consideration for this month, and those selected this month won't be considered for June, so if you haven't b...

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AMA Recording

Thanks again to everyone who joined us for the AMA this past Sunday, or submitted questions! We had a ton of questions, and a lot of fun, so it seems like something that may be worth doing again.

Let me know in the comments:

Want more AMAs? Behind the Scenes content?
Want more discussions with special guests?


In all cases, it was such a treat to chat through your questions / devolve into chat-storm chaos together, all under the steady guiding hand of Sarah Rey...

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April Archive Highlight; "If We Win"

Thanks to your support, I've been able to dedicate time to exploring and reactivating research from my 2019 project If We Win. This is the first of what I hope to make several features on this project. If you’ve got questions in the meantime, why not submit them for the AMA this Sunday at 12pm? You can find the link and more details in my ...

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AMA Update

Hey everyone,

I have exciting news about our AMA, happening this Sunday, April 18th at 12pm EDT / GMT-4.

First off, you can log in on the day of here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89375887317

Meeting ID: 893 7588 7317

Second, your questions have been coming in steady (though it's not too late to 2021-04-16 15:29:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Submit Questions for the AMA

Photo: Questions from "Ask Us Anything" - April, 2011, Abu Dhabi, UAE*


Hey everyone,  

Based on your input, the AMA to celebrate reaching our first goal will be held Sunday April 18th, 12pm EDT / GMT-4.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89375887317

Meeting ID: 893 7588 7317


It will last 1 hour, and be held on zoom (links to follow). If...

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Setting a time for an AMA

Hey everyone,

Welcome to April!
UPDATES:

- The Reading list for April has been sent to everyone at all Tiers - check your emails!

- Exclusive Session invitations have been sent to those randomly selected from the Shortlist. If you're at the "Get Hands On" or "Pay-It-Forward" level, check your emails (...again...)!

Now then, onto the main topic.

Since we absolutely smashed my 1st goal, (and then some), I'll be setting up a...

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An exciting update!

We've already hit 5/5 supporters at the "Pay-It-Forward" level! 

[cue all available air horns]

While we've hit this milestone much earlier than anticipated, it turns out it couldn't have come at a better time! After a wonderful conversation with a hospital and potential future recipient of free sessions, I've made an agreement to offer 5 calls in the comin...

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Distributing Exclusive Telelibrary Sessions

Per tier benefits and User requests, I'll be adding some exclusive sessions, reserved for Patrons at my two highest tiers. I'll make sure there's at least 1 session/month for every 5 folks at these tiers (6 would unlock 2 sessions, etc.), so you should always be looking at ~ 1/5 odds, which is currently a hair better than the ~18 times released to 350+ people every two weeks.

I have thoughts on how best to distribute the exclusive sessions, but would love to get input from the people w...

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Highlight From the Archives: [_______] (Peter)

[Don't hit play yet - I'll tell you when]

In 2013, I was tumbling through my final year of college at NYU in Abu Dhabi. We were asked to prepare a Capstone graduating project, so—displaying my usual over-eagerness—I opted to pitch a 9-month study on the topic of what it means to miss someone or something. It was titled "[MISSING]," but as I was 20, pretentious, and entirely unaware, I insisted on writing that title as "[_______]." Years later, still pretentious but...

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