My New Best Imaginary Friend, Calvert Vaux

Since mid-May, I've been busy researching and writing a play about Frederick Law Olmsted.  It's a commission from Open Source Gallery to accompany the opening of their new installation, We Know Not Exactly Where or How, an Olmsted-inspired park put in the gallery itself. 

Here are the guys themselves.  The play is called "Olmsted in Autumn."  The wonderful Tamara Fisch is directing, Mitchell Stout plays Olmsted, Michael Raimondi plays Vaux, and Cotton Wright plays Charlotte Olmsted (his stepdaughter) and Charlotte Olmsted (his mother). Costume design by Sidney Shannon.

It will be performed August 24 and 27 at 7:30 and 8:30 PM at Open Source Gallery, 306 17^th Street, Park Slope.   Admission is free. 

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were the landscape architects of Central Park, Prospect Park and Niagara Falls, among many other spaces. 

Olmsted in Autumn looks at Olmsted near the end of his life.  Because of his advancing senility, he has ceased working and his family has committed him to the McLean Hospital.  He is visited by three ghosts with whom he has unfinished business:  first, his stepdaughter/niece Charlotte, who’s incarcerated in a different Massachusetts mental hospital; next, his longtime partner Calvert Vaux, who drowned himself in Gravesend Bay two years earlier; and finally, his mother Charlotte, who died from an overdose of laudanum when Olmsted was a child.  

This is Anne Phelan and Dramahound’s fifth production at Open Source; previous plays include Brooklyn Lighthouse; Deconstruction (featuring Cotton Wright); Mi Tigre, My Lover (directed by Tamara Fisch, featuring Cotton Wright, costume design by Sidney Shannon); and a reading of The Tiger Play (directed by Tamara Fisch, featuring Michael Raimondi).

Open Source Gallery is a 501(c)3 owned and curated by Gary Baldwin and Monika Wuhrer.  Directions:  To reach Open Source, take the R train to Prospect Avenue.  306 17^th Street, near Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn NY.  646.279.3969

open-source-gallery.org

My Trip to Kansas

Back in October and November, I did a residency at the William Inge Theatre Festival (Peter Ellenstein, Artistic Director) in Independence, Kansas.  I shared Inge's birthplace with Adam Szymkowicz, who was working on a new musical about pan-sexual female pirates.  Adam was an excellent housemate!

Peter  took the beautiful photograph of the combined casts and creators of "My Dark and Scurvy Heart" (Matt Sherwin, lyricist, is sitting next to me; and Adam Szymkowicz is behind Forrest Attaway's head) and my play, "The Benders," which is set in southeastern Kansas.  Our shared actors were the wonderful Joe Gomez (the man with the mustache) as Johnny; Hannah Joyce-Hoven (next to Joe) was Actress #1 (who was so good I wrote more for her); Forrest Attaway (next to Hannah) was Actor #1; the lady in green was our beloved director Tamara Fisch; I'm in between her and Matt Sherwin; Sean McDermott (so funny, and so much menace, played Pa); Cady Huffman (yea!) played Ma, and Nellie McKay played Kate.

There is a zoo in Independence which I did not get to on my previous trip.  But Tamara and I made an effort to visit it this time.  It is, as Cady Huffman describes it, "a zoo with a door."  It is free.  There are monkeys on an island.  There are burros who tried to follow me.  And there were some pretty fine looking swans (this is my artistic photograph of the swan and its reflection

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.

The Last of the Photos

Photo #11: The couple with a whip.
Photo #12: The end of the play.
Photo #13: Tamer and tiger at rest.

More Photos

Photo #6: Rajah contemplates life without Stark.
Photo #7: Jacob and Tamara brainstorming.
Photo #8: Stark and Rajah at a standoff.
Photo #9: Stark contemplates her tiger, in front of the art installation (evoking a circus tent).
Photo #10: The dangerous dance that ends the play.
All photos copyright 2011 by Tom Bovo.

The Photos Have Arrived!

Here are the best of the production photos that Tom Bovo took during the dress rehearsal of "Mi Tigre, My Lover" at Open Source Gallery,back in June. Tom shoot over 200, he narrowed it down and then I chose my favorite 13.
Photo #1: Mabel Stark, Cotton Wright, has just told Rajah, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, she got a job offer from Chipperfield's Circus in England, and he can't come with her.
Photo #2: Stark has crossed Rajah, and he doesn't like it.
Photo #3: Stark and Rajah, as he looks for new places on her back to put a scar from his claws.
Photo #4: Tiger tamer Mabel Stark, in a moment of contemplation.
Photo #5: Director Tamara Fisch resets the pedestal (actually, a borrowed piano stool) as Jacob asks a question and Cotton looks on.

Mi Tigre, My Lover

June 25th - July 9th, 2011
at 306 17th St. (between 5th and 6th Ave), South Slope, Brooklyn

Opening Reception: June 25th, 7-10PM
Play by Dramahound Productions: June 25th, 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM

Open Source is proud to announce its first show in our new space. Mi Tigre, My Lover, is a multi-media installation by Naoe Suzuki, originating from a series of Naoe’s paintings, with the related play by Anne Phelan of Dramahound Productions. Phelan’s play, of the same name as Suzuki’s paintings, was inspired by the paintings and uses them as a backdrop for her production. This is the third play at Open Source Gallery by Dramahound Productions and we are very excited to host the fusion of painting and live theater by these two talented artists.

Suzuki’s paintings were inspired by “The Final Confession of Mabel Stark” by Robert Hough, a novel based on a true story of a renowned female tiger trainer in the early 1900s, the golden age of the circus.

Mabel’s life was certainly a tumultuous one. In 1909, Hough writes, she joined the circus as a sideshow dancer, leaving her short career as a nurse. She then married a rich man from Texas only to leave him a few months later to join the Cosmopolitan Amusement Company as a cooch dancer. It was not long before she had her own cat act, with a pair of both lions and tigers, with the Al G. Barnes Circus.

By the early twenties, Mabel’s wrestling tiger act became the best-known cat act in the American Circus. In the novel she also raised a tiger cub into adulthood–her favorite tiger, Rajah. She bottled-fed Rajah and let him sleep with her in her bed. Although having been mauled several times during her career, Mabel kept returning to the tigers’ cage time and time again.

In her artist’s statement Suzuki states:
“It was this ‘love affairs’ aspect of her relationships with tigers that fascinated me, as well as her wild career and private life. In Mi Tigre, My Lover, there’s a complex play of love/power relationship between a woman and her tiger. Obsession, control, submission, passion, tension and love filled the space between them.”

Mabel Stark committed suicide on April 21, 1968. According to a show-business newspaper, she died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-nine. Having always lied about her age, Hough says, Mabel’s true age at the time of her death was actually unknown.

Despite having five husbands and surviving many severe maulings by her tigers, Mabel seemed to have preferred her tigers over her men. Mabel’s relationships with both tigers and men were no doubt complex, and it is this idiosyncrasy of Mabel’s life that fascinates Suzuki.

Dramahound Productions is thrilled to produce the first play in Open Source Gallery’s new space entitled My Tiger, My Lover, written by Anne Phelan as inspired by Naoe Suzuki’s paintings. The cast includes Cotton Wright as Mabel Stark and Jacob Grigolia- Rosenbaum as Rajah the tiger, both featured in last year’s “Deconstruction.” It will be directed by Tamara Fisch, with costumes by Sidney Shannon. Jacob has graciously volunteered to choreograph the whip violence, so we hope it will be a feast for both your eyes and ears.

The play My Tiger, My Lover will be presented on June 25th at 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM as part of the reception for Naoe Suzuki. Admission is free.
***

Open Source Gallery
306 17th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215

HOURS
Wed/Thurs: 11am-3pm; Sat 3pm-7pm
Map

opensoucegallery.com
info [at] open-source-gallery.org
(646) 279-3969; (718) 207-9235
©2011 Open Source | 257 17th street | Brooklyn, NY 11215 |