No Singing In the Navy
- Written by Milo Cramer
- Directed by Aysan Celik
Milo Cramer’s Obie-winning solo show SCHOOL PICTURES has been featured on NPR’s This American Life, and produced in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and at Playwrights Horizons, where it was named the #1 show of 2023 by Vulture. Other works include BUSINESS IDEAS (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks 2025, winner of the Alliance Theater's Kendeda Award, upcoming publication through Concord Theatricals), CUTE ACTIVIST at The Bushwick Starr (“a brilliant match of material and theater… a fable for our times” - NYT), and MINOR CHARACTER: SIX TRANSLATIONS OF UNCLE VANYA AT THE SAME TIME created with New Saloon and seen at The Public Theater / Under The Radar. MacDowell Fellow; MFA UCSD.
Aysan Celik is a theater maker and performer. Her Off Broadway work includes: Artificial Flavors (The Civilians/59E59), Gone Missing (City Center Encores); The Undertaking (The Civilians/ 59E59); Juarez: a Documentary Mythology (Rattlestick/Theater Mitu); Paris Commune (BAM/The Civilians); The Black Eyed (New York Theater Workshop); Faust (Classic Stage Company/Target Margin); Pericles (The Culture Project/Red Bull Theater); Attempts on Her Life (Soho Rep). Regional and International: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Cal Shakes, Humana Festival, American Repertory Theater, Barbican, and the international tour of Juarez: a Documentary Mythology. She is an Associate Artist of the Obie Award-winning companies Theater Mitu and The Civilians.
With a hundred bucks in hand and 24 hours on leave, three silly sailors live as much life as they possibly can before getting shipped off to war and certain death. A 3-actor, 1-piano attack on the “golden age” of musicals, No Singing in the Navy is a delightfully sardonic explosion of the myth of American innocence.
What [Milo Cramer] is doing is simply structured, generously conceived, full — inside its simple container — of irresolvable yearning and wondering, guessing and risking — and it’s completely wonderful.
Walking out of Milo’s show, I became aware that my cheeks felt a slight ache from either my constant grinning, or my laughing out loud, during their performance. What a welcome ache in these most challenging times.