An Interview with the Dramahound (that's me)

An interview with me by Meaghan Meehan on axs.com:

http://m.axs.com/news/interview-with-playwright-anne-phelan-86519?utm_campaign=ex_content_axs_approved&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru

Hades- A New Play

Fool’s Progress and Dramahound Productions are pleased to announce the world premiere of a one-act play by Anne Phelan, Hades.  It will be read on Saturday, February 13 at 4:40 and 6 PM at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn.   Admission is free. 

The play was commissioned by Fool’s Progress Productions, and is inspired by Tom Bovo’s Merge photographs in the back space at 440 Gallery. It features Patrick Avella and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Dante and Virgil.

Dante has been driven from his home in Florence, Mass.  Disillusioned, homeless and broke, he meets Virgil on the streets of Brooklyn. Virgil then proceeds to guide Dante through three circles of Hell in Park Slope and Gowanus where they encounter a murdering wife, a notorious Welsh traitor from King Arthur’s time and finally Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, the murderer of Julius Caesar.  By the end of the play, Dante has begun to rebuild his spirit, and he and Virgil go off to further adventures. 

Dramahound Productions is happy to be back at 440 Gallery, for its fourth world premiere in conjunction with Fool’s Progress Productions.  Previous plays include The Mermaid Won’t Sing for Tom Bovo’s The Other Side of Summer, The Skull Beneath the Skin for Tom Bovo’s Genius Loci and Ellen Chuse’s Everyone in the Pool; and Did You Hear the One About the Carp Who Hailed a Taxi? for Tom Bovo’s New York.   

Directions:  To reach 440 Gallery, take the F, G, or R train to Fourth Avenue/Ninth Street.  718.499.0901

440gallery.com

Photo by Tom Bovo

Venus von Merkel

Abover:  Detail of "Venus von Hamburg" by Cristian Bors and Darius Ritiu. 
Photo credit:  Anja Matthes, courtesy of Open Source Gallery


It's been a busy theatrical summer, which I'm winding up with a new play, "Venus von Merkel," which opens this Friday.  It's much broader and more overtly political than I'm used to writing.  But thanks to Open Source Gallery, I have the opportunity.  

All the info is below.

Dramahound Productions and Open Source Gallery are pleased to announce the world premiere of a one-act play by Anne Phelan, Venus von Merkel.  It will be performed September 18 and 19 at 7:30 and 8:30 PM at Open Source Gallery, 306 17^th Street, Park Slope.   Admission is free. 

The play was commissioned by Open Source Gallery, and is inspired by its current exhibition Venus von Hamburg, Cristian Bors and Marius Ritiu’s sculptural take on the Greek debt crisis. It features Alexandra Gellner (Romeo & Juliet, The Cradle Theatre Company; Pericles, The New Ensemble Workshop; Coffee & Biscuit, HERE Arts SubletSeries, NYC Fringe) as Aphrodite, and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum (Robert Moses, in Les Frères Corbusier’s Boozy; Bernie Madoff in Woodshed Collective’s The Confidence Man; Old Testament God in Les Frères The Franklin Thesis) as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The director is Christie Marie Clark (Anne Phelan’s They All Know Me, Thespian Production Slam-a-Thon; Clown Love, Strawberry One-Act Festival; The Diner, Caravan Play Festival) with costume design by Anna Slocum.  

Venus von Merkel imagines a surreal summit between Merkel, dressed as a pirate of the Caribbean, and Aphrodite, representing the Greek people.  It is a satirical, questioning exploration of globalization, the euro crisis and their the human cost. 

This is Anne Phelan and Dramahound’s sixth production at Open Source; previous plays include Brooklyn Lighthouse; Deconstruction (featuring Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum); Mi Tigre, My Lover (featuring Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum); a reading of The Tiger Play; and Olmsted in Autumn.

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

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The Mermaid Won't Sing

"The Mermaid Won't Sing" is a new one-act by me, inspired by Tom Bovo's photograph "Harbor- Fog."  It will be presented twice, at 4:30 and 6, on Saturday, July 18th at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue (near Ninth Street), in Brooklyn, New York.  It's directed by Christie Marie Clark, and features Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Barnaby, and Shannon Marguerite as Aphrodite the mermaid.  Admission is free.  The play was commissioned as part of Tom Bovo's solo photography show, "The Other Side of Summer." 

The Other Side of Summer

"Harbor- Fog" photo by Tom Bovo

Tom has got another solo show at 440 Gallery, and once again, he's commissioned me to write a play based on a photo of his (I chose the above).  It's called "The Mermaid Won't Sing," directed by Christie Clark, featuring Shannon Marguerite as Aphrodite the mermaid, and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum as Barnaby.  The play will run one afternoon only, Sat., July 18 at 4:30 and 6PM. 

Tom has many events for his show.  This Saturday, there's an opening reception, 5-8.  Sat. the 25th, I'm giving a talk on mermaids (really not for children, nor is the play) at 4.  Sun. August 2nd, Jody Mullen is singing a pop and standards set; and Sunday, August 9th, there's a closing reception, 4-7.

440 Gallery is at 440 Sixth Avenue (near Ninth Street) in Brooklyn, New York.  The nearest trains are the G, F, R at 4th Avenue/Ninth Street.  For more information, www.tombovo.com or www.440gallery.com

The Return of the Skull Beneath the Skin

"The Skull Beneath the Skin" is back by popular demand next weekend-  Saturday, March 15 at 5:30 and 7PM at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Admission is free.  It features Cotton Wright and Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, pictured above,  as Bertha Roentgen and Dr. Wilhelm Roentgen, the man who discovered xrays and won the first Nobel Prize in Physics. 

The play is written by me, directed by Christie Clark and the costume design is by the illustrious Meganne George.  It's being produced by Ellen Chuse, as part of her solo show of drawings and paintings, Finding the Root.

Photo by Tom Bovo.

The Skull Beneath the Skin

(Photo credit:  Wikipedia)

Tom Bovo has a solo photography show, Genius Loci, at 440 Gallery (440 Sixth Avenue, near Ninth Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn).  He commissioned me to write a play for it. 

Genius Loci is photographs of leaves.  After looking at the photographs, I decided that some of them reminded me of x-rays.  So I have written a ten minute play about Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of the x-ray.  It's called "The Skull Beneath the Skin," and it's directed by Christie Marie Clark.  Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum plays Roentgen, and Cotton Wright plays his long-suffering wife, Bertha.  The costumes are by Meganne George.

Performances are Saturday, November 16 at the gallery at 4:40 and 6 PM.  Admission is free.  Wine and seltzer provided.

The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2011

Smith & Kraus' The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2011 is out.  Edited by Lawrence Harbison, it includes plays by a lot of playwrights, several from the League of Professional Theatre Women:  Jenny Lyn Bader, Deborah Savadge, and me, plus Carson Kreitzer, Rich Orloff and others.  It's $24.99, but it's chock-full of new work. 

The Best Ten Minute Plays 2011My play is "Our Dolls" that was directed by Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum for the 4th Annual Shortened Attention Span Festival at the Players Loft Theatre.  It featured Emily Louise Parker as Bitsy and Michelle O'Conner as Heather. 

Here's the link to buy the book:  http://www.smithandkraus.com/htdocs/store.php?n=10

Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum

My friend and tireless collaborator (he's been in more plays of mine, by far, than any other actor) Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum is a fight/violence choreographer. His latest Broadway show is Peter and the Starcatcher. There is a great interview with him on Channel Thirteen's Metrofocus magazine, both written and video. It's a good look into how he works with actors (very, very patient) as well: http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/culture/peter-and-the-starcatcher-takes-fight-err-flight/

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 |

Did You Hear the One About the Carp Who Hailed the Taxi? Part Two

So we teched the play last night in the gallery itself. Since I last wrote, through the efforts of Mr. Grigolia-Rosenbaum, we have acquired a costume designer. And not just any costume designer, but the lovely and talented Sidney Shannon, who I assisted at the Milk Can Theatre six or seven years ago.
The opposite photo is by Tom Bovo, which captures Jacob in Sidney's giant carp head, Cotton in her NY taxi driver costume, and the photo of Tom's that the play is based on hung on the wall behind them. Melanie thought that was the best place to situate the actors in the space, and it looks really great.
The above photo is mine (the blurry one), but it does grab the actors' faces.
So, come to 440 Gallery (440 Sixth Ave., near 9th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn) tomorrow for shows at 7:30 and 8:30, as part of Tom Bovo's My New York. Of course the R train isn't running this weekend, but you can take the N to 4th Avenue/Ninth Street. There will be wine and snacks and admission is free. Link to the gallery above.

Did You Hear the One About the Carp Who Hailed the Taxi?

My boyfriend is a photographer. For years, I have been staring at this photograph of his, trying to figure out what these fish are up to with the taxi. He is having his first solo show since college, which opens Thursday night at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue near 9th Street in Brooklyn. There's an opening party, 6-9 and it's free.
Take the R to 4th Avenue/9th Street, or the F to 7th Avenue.
When Tom got the dates for his show, he told me he wanted to commission me to write a play about a photograph in the show. I actually did have a difficult time deciding. I was all set to write about mannequins in a window (440 Gallery has some lovely bowed windows to put actors in), but I decided on the fish. The photograph is untitled, which kind of makes me crazy- playwrights don't do that).
I started writing in October, and last week we assembled our merry band for the first rehearsal: Melanie Sutherland is directing, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum plays Karl Carp and the lovely Cotton Wright is Mo Avakian the taxi driver. Jacob and Cotton and I have worked together a lot; Melanie and I worked on "7 Sins in 60 Minutes." I was trying to count how many plays of mine Jacob had worked on- I think he's acted in six, directed one and then been in a bunch of readings. Cotton was in "Kansas Faust" and "Deconstruction," and many readings.
We froze the script yesterday, so now I just have to worry about props and the program. More photos to come.

7 Sins in 60 Minutes Hits the Road

I’ve just finished the rewrite of my Anger (a.k.a. Wrath, Ire) scene for 7 Sins in 60 Minutes in its Philadelphia Fringe Festival incarnation. Completely new scene, which culminates in completely new violence. In the midst of that, I wrote up a little essay about what anger means to me, and how it plays out in the scene itself. A version of it follows:

Anger is incredibly insidious, I think because there are so many possible different manifestations of it. Unlike envy or gluttony, there are good kinds of anger, like God’s wrath or righteous anger, or used creatively, as Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet, “Anger, cleanly used, is clean, too.” You can tell yourself your anger is righteous, though it very well may not be. Anger can be passive-aggressiveness, impatience, self-destructive behavior, vengeance or rage. The experience of rage, the way it literally feels like it’s taking you over, makes me understand why people used to believe in demonic possession. Because that’s what rage feels like- it crowds out everything else from your mind. It’s also exhausting to live with for any length of time- either in yourself, or in your house.

What I didn’t know until the last night of 7 Sins in 60 Minutes at HERE (because that’s when fight choreographer Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum told me and pride-playwright Cheryl Davis) is that each Deadly Sin/Virtue has a demon assigned to it (by a German bishop in the 16th century). It seems that Amon (the Wrath demon) is a quite powerful one who has 40 legions of lesser devils at his beck and call. His particular talent is manipulating love and hate situations with both friends and enemies. One of Amon’s physical manifestations is “a man with dog’s teeth who is situated inside of a raven” (which I still can’t conjure up completely in my mind).

In Scene 5, anger first manifests itself as Amadea’s impatience and Dante’s passive-aggressiveness (pretending to look for the tire jack that isn’t there, continuing his pitch while Amadea rages). They each put themselves and others in danger (anger with a soupcon of pride) by trying to flag down a car. It culminates in violence, anger’s physical manifestation.

Rehearsals

As luck would have it, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum was available to choreograph the fights in my scene. I've just blogged about it for the 7 Sins website (see below). The link to buy tickets to the HERE performances is above.
Last Wednesday, we got to hear “7 Sins in 60 Minutes” for the first time. Rehearsals are usually my favorite part of the writing process. It’s always exciting to hear your words aloud for the first time. There are always a few “oh, my God, what was I thinking?” moments, when that line that looked so great on paper sounds so bad you want to hide under your chair. But that’s all part of it.

My second rehearsal was on Saturday, and I had an experience that I’d never had before. For my scene (Anger), we had a professional fight choreographer, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum. This is an unheard of luxury for me! I’ve written plays with punches or slaps or falls in them, but it was always a matter of the actors, and/or the director, and/or me, stumbling through working things out. I’m not sure what to ascribe my fascination with stage violence to. As a teenager, I did take stage combat classes, and one in graduate school. I also spent many hours watching cartoons (Warner Brothers’ “Merrie Melodies,” and “Popeye”) and “The Three Stooges.”

When I’m writing scenes with violence or a lot of physicality in them, I have a tendency to go crazy (in one play I have a character on roller skates while she keeps a hula hoop rotating around her waist; it’s never actually been staged like that), or suck as much violence out of it as possible, so that it’s a pale imitation of what it was originally in my head. I did not do that in this instance, because in the back of my mind, I’d hoped that Jacob would be able to do the fights. He is attuned to the sounds of fighting in a way that I’ve never seen or heard before. If you saw his work in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” or “Sailor Man,” you will know what I mean. Jacob’s sense of humor always informs his work, so his fights are never what you’ve already seen somewhere else.

In rehearsal, I finally got to watch him work his magic. Karen Soars and Michael Rosete didn’t hold back at all, but literally jumped right in with both feet. Breaking fights into pieces is slow, exacting work; even more so than dance choreography, I think. I guess I think of fight sequences as teeny one-acts in themselves: they start one place, end somewhere else, and if they’re good, at the end you’re happily surprised at where they’ve landed. By the end of 90 minutes, Karen and Michael were getting comfortable with putting the pieces together, and it did not take a lot of imagination to visualize what it would look like when it was performed: violent, and funny, and totally specific to “7 Sins” and the characters. I like having a professional around!

"Our Dolls"

We had a technical rehearsal tonight, which went swimmingly. The actresses (Emily Louise Perkins- dark- and Michelle O'Conner- blonde) are ready, the director (Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum) gave good notes, and I took photos.
The easiest way to get tickets is to show up, or call Ovation (212.352.3101). Theatermania is really confusing.
I've had a note to myself sitting on the coffee table in my living room for the past two weeks, to blog about what inspired this play. Jacob actually asked me the question a few weeks ago, and I gave him an incorrect answer. I said it was too much St. Paul in church for too many years (a Bible scribe not known for his great love of women).
But there are two other elements. One is a feast day now called the Feast of the Presentation (aka Candlemass, aka the Feast of the Circumcision) February 2nd) and something I read in a local paper. I sang in the quartet at my church on the Feast of the Presentation last February. The Hebrew Bible reading for that day is an endless section of Leviticus about the proper mikvah practices for the young mother, be it of a boy or girl. I also remember asking my mother about the Christian equivalent of that, the Churching of Women (yet again reminding me how much Christians stole from the Jews). It's a set of prayers said over a mother after a birth, before she's allowed back into church. But it's not "gee, we're really glad you didn't die in childbirth" prayers. It's more "you're unclean, and need to be purified." When I was born, the priests couldn't have cared less. But they were quite interested in making her submit to this when my brothers were born. And she rightly said, "No. There's nothing dirty about having a baby."
What really set me off was this: when I first moved to Brooklyn, I was looking for activities for us to do on weekends. And in one local paper or another, I came across an article for a Williamsburg walking tour (I've spent very little time there, though Tom used to work in Greenpoint). But when I got to the end of article, it said that because so many Hasids live in the neighborhood, this is how women should dress for the walk: no exposed arms, or legs. And it just made me crazy. It's New York City, in the 21 century, and I need to cover my elbows and knees? WTF?
I have been called a feminist playwright (which is totally bizarre to me). I only think about parity. And don't like having to defend it.
But I remember, when I worked at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn, one of my work/study students (I, too, was a work/study student in college) said to me, "My pastor said we may not show our arms above the wrist, and our skirts must be mid-calf." What I wanted to say (and did not) was: never, ever let a man tell you what you must do.

Organized Religion & Barbie

My latest short play, Our Dolls, is part of this summer's Shortened Attention Span Festival. It's directed by one of my favorite colleagues, Jacob Grigolia-Rosembaum, and features Emily Perkins and Michelle O'Conner. You may recall Michelle's performance in Boozy- I certainly do.
The play is about two coworkers, Bitsy and Heather, in the Our Dolls factory. Its theme is organized religions and women. And Barbie dolls, too.
It's at The Players Loft (the third floor black box at The Player's Theatre, 115 Macdougal Street at Minetta Lane). The show runs June 17th through 20th: Thursday at 8, Friday & Saturday at 9 and Sunday at 3 (n.b., that Sunday is Father's Day).
Tickets are available through Theatre Mania (link above), at the door or call 212.352.3101.