Theater, Music, Performance
"Jesse and James bring an incredible amount of care and intentionality to all of their work... unlike anything we've ever seen!"
-Josh Short, Artistic Director of The Wilbury Theater Group
"extraordinary veteran performers, theater-makers, and songwriters... they embody the thing I value most about theater..."
-Young Jean Lee, Playwright
Sea Monsters is a theatrical song cycle with stories that summon every variety of dark demon of the deep hell-bent on destroying the lives of the unfortunate and land-dwelling. Sirens, Krakens, Leviathans, the mythological Charybdis, the hagfish (the most disgusting creature in the sea) or the Hydra – these are the stuff of nightmares that have in equal parts repulsed and inspired the creators of Sea Monsters. Embodying a mix of haggard sea captain, ship figurehead, and long-drowned Victorian waif, Hawley and Stanley use live instruments, loops, samples, close harmonies and musical layering to (much like the monsters) to lure audiences into a stormy deep that may or may not parallel torments in the here and now.