Bikini

Fake Friends is a Brooklyn-based theater and media company led by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley. Cat Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert are core members.

Fake Friends work together, sometimes. When they do, they usually mix and remix original text with material drawn from modern drama, pop culture, method acting, technology, and dance, pastiching from performance forms like reality TV and capital-R Realism. Through thick and thin, Fake Friends push personal, political, and theatrical boundaries, negotiating the screens and prosceniums that dominate our daily lives.

Before the pandemic, they worked with screens on stage. Their work has been presented by Ars Nova, NYTW Next Door, the Prelude Festival, Exponential Festival, Little Theater, and more.

Beginning in June 2020, they began experimenting with the stage on screen. "Circle Jerk," a critically acclaimed live-stream hybrid theater experience produced with Caroline Gart and Jeremy O. Harris, was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama and Best of 2020 by "Vulture" (Helen Shaw), "Exeunt" (Best COVID live streams, Nicole Serratore), "The Playlist" (Kyle Turner), and the Miami Times (Juan Barquin). The work was nominated for a Drama League Award 2021 in “Outstanding Digital Theater, Individual Performance.”

Their next digital work was "This American Wife," which live-streamed from a mansion in Great Neck, New York. Juan A. Ramírez for the New York Times profiled the show as “a semi-improvised, high-concept dialectic on identity and ‘realness.’” Charles McNulty called it “an ingenious hybrid of stage and screen” in the LA Times.

This project was supported by the Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship.