Rajah Is Back!!

Dramahound Productions and Open Source Gallery present a reading of The Tiger Play by Anne Phelan and directed by Tamara Fisch at Open Source Gallery (306 17th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215) on Friday, September 21and Saturday, September 22 at 8:00 PM. 

The Tiger Play is based on the remarkable life of tiger tamer extraordinaire, Mabel Stark.  The play examines the love triangle between Mabel; her eventual husband, tiger tamer Louis Roth; and Mabel’s favorite tiger, Rajah.  Katharine McLeod will play Mabel, Michael Raimondi will play Louis Roth and Kevin Loreque will play Rajah the Bengal tiger.

The Tiger Play was chosen by the League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW) as part of its “30 Plays for 30 Years” anniversary celebration.  The special LPTW member night is Friday September 21^st.  There will be a talk-back after the reading with the director and the playwright.  This event is co-curated by members Cheryl L. Davis and Anne Phelan.

The earlier, much shorter version of this play was Mi Tigre, My Lover.  It was performed at the opening of Open Source’s new space for the show of Naoe Suzuki’s drawings, “Mi Tigre, My Lover” last summer.

This is Anne Phelan’s fourth play at Open Source Gallery.  She is a two-time Edward F. Albee Fellow and William Inge Festival Playwright-in-Residence; her plays have been produced throught the U.S. Anne is on the faculty at The Acting Studio in Manhattan.    

Tamara Fisch is a freelance theatre director based in New York City.  Recent credits include Race by David Mamet and The Scene by Theresa Rebeck at Portland Playhouse and Emma by Stephen Karam at PPAS. She is a graduate of Yale College, has an MFA from the University of Washington and is a Drama League Directing Fellow.   

For more information, contact Dramahound Productions at 917.991.4395 or dramahound05@yahoo.com; or, Open Source Gallery at 646.279.3969.

The Tiger Play

Ever since we closed "Mi Tigre, My Lover" at the end of June at Open Source Gallery, I have been doing two things: researching the full-length version, and hunting for money to produce it.
The new character in the play (now called "The Tiger Play"; Tom said to me at one point, "You know it's 'The Tiger Play.'" And there's nothing Spanish about it, so the title just seemed weird) is Louis Roth, Mabel's second or third husband. He was a Hungarian farm boy obsessed with the U.S., and his parents allowed him to come here at the age of 13.
Today, I finished reading his autobiography, Forty Years of Jungle Killers, at the Science & Business Library in the basement of the old B. Altman's building. And I have no more excuses left to not write.

Everyone's Gone to the Movies

My latest play is set in an American circus in the 1920s. It's called My Tiger, My Lover, which is based on a series of paintings by Naoe Suzuki (more to come about this), based on the life of tiger tamer Mabel Stark. So I've been reading, watching animal acts on Youtube and watching movies about circuses. I keep running into the technology problem- there are all these movies on VHS, but not yet available streaming or on DVD. That said, I've seen a lot of movies in the past few months.
At the Circus (1939) was much better than I remember. I used to group it in the sad, the-brothers-are-old-and-tired, post-A Night at the Opera movies. And while it's not as good as that, it's pretty good. And Groucho sings the original lyrics to Lydia the Tattooed Lady, not "When she stands the world gets littler,/When she sits, she sits on Hitler."
First, I saw The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). It's quite plodding, though the train wreck is pretty exciting. Todd Browning's Freaks (1932) never fails to impress. I first saw it in college and I must've seen it four or five times since then. And this version had special features! It turns out that Olga Baclanova, who plays Cleopatra, had been at the Moscow Art Theatre. And after that piece of work, Todd Browning didn't work much anymore. What a waste!
I hadn't seen Chaplin's The Circus (1928), a lovely movie, as good as his best. I'm not sure why it's not more popular. Nor had I seen Poppy (1936), which started as a stage vehicle for W.C. Fields (not actual circus, but a carnival). Barnum! is a film of the London production of the musical starring a very young and athletic Michael Crawford. It was directed by Joe Layton (George M!, etc.). It is remarkably dated- I was kind of stunned at how much. Or we've all absorbed and moved beyond Trevor Nunn's directing aesthetic.
The real research find for me (and I never would have known it if I hadn't watched the Special Features) was Charlie Chan at the Circus. Dreadful movie- boring and racist all at the same time. But it was shot at the winter quarters of the Al G. Barnes Circus (which by then had been bought by Ringling) in 1936, the last year that Mabel Stark was with that circus. Several of the sideshow attractions (like the giant) are on screen.
The other find was Mae West's She Done Him Wrong, which I think was Cary Grant's first leading role. West plays a lion tamer, and in the cage with the lions is her stunt double, Mabel Stark. They look somewhat similar, though Stark was slimmer and not a real blonde.