Man-Made

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set and Video Design: Michael Casselli
Lighting Design: Pat Dignan
Original Music and Sound Design: Timothy J. Anderson
Costumes: Dorothy Fennell

Stage Manager: Yvonne Perez
Technical Director: Adela Kuehn

Cast:  Bryant Bradshaw, Kate Hall, James Himelsbach, Richard Prioleau, Eva Patton, Michael Kevin Ryan, Amelia Workman

Presented at The Ohio Theatre
Workshop production: Ohio Theatre's ICE FACTORY FESTIVAL 2004.
Staged reading New York Theatre Workshop 2001.

Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, the Creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Eugenie Doe—the first bio-genetically created female—confront the ethical implications of engineering human life.  Censure from small-minded moralists and the tyranny of organized religion threatens to halt science and their survival.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Susan Cook ]

Abandon

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Original Music: Andrew Ingkavet
Video Design: Zbigniew Bzymek
Set Design: Michael Casselli
Lighting Design: Laura Mroczkowski
Costume Design: Yuki Kawahisa
Stage Manager: Cassey Kivnick
General Manager: Stephen Sosnowski

Cast: Jeff Barry, Victoire Charles, Alexis McGuinness, Genevieve Odabe, Richard Prioleau, and Michael Ryan

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

Abandon explores the story of Helena, a young woman terrified to love. It combines a minimal narrative spine with a non-linear, image- based world; haiku marries collage. The collages of the play can be viewed here. The play asks these questions: What is the fear of love? How do we abandon ourselves to love? If love has produced a wound, can the wound ever heal?

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Peter Bellamy ]

The Making of Eugenie Doe
A workshop production

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Julia Wolfe
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Set Design: Kerry Chipman
Costume Design: Dorothy Fennell
Stage Manager: Sabrina Sand

Cast: Bryant Bradshaw, Frank Deal, Fataah Dihaan, Monica Koskey, Eva Patton, A-men Rasheed, Michael Ryan, Amirh Vann

Presented by Soho Think Tank ICE FACTORY 2004, Ohio Theatre

Science meets fiction: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Mary Shelley, and the first genetically engineered woman fight for survival against the rigid morality of nineteenth century Victorian England, and later, against the tyranny of twenty-first century corporate America.

[ Photo: Kerry Chipman ]

Nighttown

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set and Light Design: Kyle Chepulis
Sound Design: Timothy J. Anderson
Stage Manager: Kristen Petliski

Performed by Matthew Maguire and Michael Ryan

Presented at The Flea Theater
Special performance at The National Arts Club

Shakespearean actor Cesar McCarthy, institutionalized in a Dublin asylum for the attempted murder of his adulterous wife, finds himself paired up with another cuckold, a Mr. Leo Kettle interred because he believes that he has drowned his wife's lover. Homesick and pining for his wife, Caesar re-invents himself as James Joyce and casts Mr. Kettle as Leopold Bloom from the novel Ulysses, launching them on an imaginative journey to Dublin's infamous red-light district, which Joyce called Nighttown.

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Embers

By Samuel Beckett
Directed by Caroline Nastro
Set Design: Troy Hourie
Costume Design: Mattie Ullrich
Light Design: Nelson Downend
Video Design: Zbigniew Bzymek
Sound Design: David Gilman
Music: Jose Halac
Stage Manager: Britta Jensen

Performed by Mary Magdalena Hernandez and Matthew Maguire

Produced in association with MC99 at The Connelly Theater

Beckett’s 1959 radio play is about a haunted man sitting at the edge of the sea trying to conjure his dead father by talking to himself. The ghost of his dead wife tries to comfort him. The U.S. stage premiere.

[ Press ]  [ Collage: Matthew Maguire ]

Marching to Union Square

By Dorothy Fennell
Directed by Matthew Maguire and Colin Hodges
Music Direction: Ginette Van Der Voorn
Stage Manager: Kristin Petliski

Cast: George Drance Jr., Arthur French, Todd Griffin, Mary Neufeld, Marty Pottenger

A site specific work created for Union Square, NYC

Marching to Union Square is about the birth of the trade union movement in New York City. The script is based entirely on historical material from the first Labor Day parade held on September 5, 1882. The play brings to life the words, music, issues, and personalities from an era that established Union Square’s reputation as labor’s home, and as the place where working people came to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Michael Sofronski ]

Chaos

Libretto by Matthew Maguire
Music by Michael Gordon
Directed by Bob McGrath
Music Direction: Greg Pliska
Set Design: Laurie Olinder and Fred Tietz
Slide Design: Laurie Olinder
Film: Bill Morrison
Costume Design: Laurie Olinder
Light Design: Howard Thies
Sound Design: Andrew Cotton
Stage Manager: Judy Tucker

Cast: Lisa Bielawa, Tony Boutté, Jeffrey Johnson, Alex Sweeton, Toby Twining

Produced in association with The Kitchen and Ridge Theater at The Kitchen

Chaos is a science fiction opera; two scientists in love struggle against political censorship and betrayal as they try to create a revolution in science by penetrating the Chaos Zone.

The movement of a butterfly’s wing in Beijing can magnify till it sets a Kansas cyclone spiraling.

[ Press ]  [ Download ]  [ Photo: Steve Kahn ]

Harry and the Cannibals

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Paula Longendyke
Light Design: Howard Thies
Sound Design: Joe Gallant
Costume Design: Julia Van Vliet
Production Manager: Merry Jayne Howard
Stage Manager: Kaddy Feast

Cast: Malcolm Adams, Frank Deal, Louise Favier, David Giambusso, Lars Hanson, Eva Patton, Greig Sargeant, Raphael Nash Thompson, Sean Weil

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

The boundaries of the body are blurred when four friends discover that each of them has been recomposed through genetic engineering, cosmetic surgery, organ transplants, and limb replacements. They do not inhabit the same bodies they were born with; leading them to ask: "Whose body is this anyhow?"

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I Don’t Know Who He Was and
I Don’t Know What He Said

Written and Directed by Mac Wellman
Set and Light Design: Kyle Chepulis
Costume Design: Quina Fonseca
Associate Producer for Creation Production: Nick Schwartz-Hall

Performed by Matthew Maguire

Presented at the Flea Theater, House of Candles, and Dixon Place, Ellie Covan, Artistic Director. Originally produced as part of the Mac Wellman Festival: Clubbed Thumb Inc. and Tim Farrell, producers.

The purpose of the play is to lead a frontal assault against the oppression of the Obvious. It’s a portrait of a stock market analyst who has gone mad. All his interchangeable languages have derailed. The culture’s madness is revealed in him.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

Throwin’ Bones

By Matthew Maguire
Directed by Joumana Rizk
Set Design: Chris Doyle
Light Design: Howard Thies
Costume Design: Quina Fonseca
Stage Manager: Bridget Markov
General Manager: Troy Hollar
Graphic Design: Doyle Partners

Cast: W. T. Martin, Annie Parisse, Randy Scott, Rebecca Wisocky

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

In the class warfare of grifters against the rich, both armies have summoned their best warriors. Philip has enormous wealth and the ability to mesmerize. His partner Arabella is razor-sharp like a barracuda. Lilah is a chameleon with a black belt and paranormal empathic ability. Her partner Sammy can snap the jaws of attack dogs. He’s obsessed with revenging old wounds, yet his psyche is fragile. Can Lilah save him from self-destruction?

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Steve Kahn ]

LocoFoco

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Kevin Cunningham
Light Design: Howard Thies
Stage Manager: Lisa DeRensis

Cast: Ching Valdes-Aran, Linda Donald, Jan Leslie Harding, Mary Shultz

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

Four sisters reunite at the site of their old family home only to find the house gone. The only visible evidence left of their home is the sunken cement casing of the swimming pool. Determined to relight the family hearth, they fan the flames of the past amid alien abductions, transsexualism, evangelism, and rock' n' roll. The house is resurrected—that place of fire.

LocoFoco was first presented at The Padua Hills Playwriting Festival, Los Angeles, 1995.
Cast: Shawna Casey, Molly Cleator, Pamela Gordon, and Tina Preston

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nina Subin ]

Phaedra

Written and directed by Matthew Maguire
Set Design: Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Choreography: Patricia Hoffbauer
Light Design: Roma Flowers
Costume Design: Suzanne Gallo
Stage Manager: Lisa DeRensis

Cast: Nicole Alifante, George Bartenieff, Verna Hampton, Andy Paris, Socorro Santiago, Ray Xifo

Presented at HERE Arts Center, Kristin Marting, Executive Director
Co-produced with Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art, Randy Rollison, Artistic Director, Barbara Busackino, Producing Director

What is desire and why does it never release us? Phaedra is a play about forbidden love, a response to Racine's Phèdre, a story of the violence of erotic desire and the impoverished character of a life that attempts to kill it.

[ Press ]  [ Download ]  [ Photos: Nancy Campbell ]

The Tight Fit

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Concept: Susan Mosakowski
Set Construction: Michael Casselli
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Stage Manager: Lisa DeRensis

Cast: Tom Cayler, Louise Favier, Tina Preston, Jeff Sugarman

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C. in 1995

The setting is the Orbit Diner. An elliptical white countertop stretches horizontally across the entire width of the stage. Here presides a short order cook and part-time shrink, whose customers are an actress, a historian, and a mystery writer. Tourette's syndrome, amnesia, and autism are rampant as they whip up their appetites and piece together the story of the diner and their fragmented relationships.

The Tight Fit was first presented at The Padua Hills Playwriting Festival, Los Angeles, 1991.
Cast: Molly Cleator, Bert Hinchman, Lee Kissman, Tina Preston

[ Press ]  [ Download ]  [ Photos: Nancy Campbell ]

The Window Man
A music theatre work

Book and lyrics by Matthew Maguire
Music by Bruce Barthol and Greg Pliska
Directed by Bill Mitchelson
Musical Direction: Genji Ito
Set Design: Kyle Chepulis
Light Design: Spencer Mosse
Stage Manager: Christine Lemme
Graphic Design: Doyle Partners

Cast: Angela Bullock, Frank Deal, John Nesci, Kaipo Schwab
Musicians: Jules Cohen, Steve Alcott, John Jenkins, Harry Mann

Presented in association with The Working Theatre at the One Dream Theatre, 1994

Maggie's Place, a bar in a Detroit neighborhood hit hard by auto plant shutdowns. Ed Wyroba, a white, unemployed auto worker, kills a Korean-American man because he thinks he's Japanese. He hides in a bar where Jackie McCarthy, a retired alcoholic union man is fighting off last call. Jackie and Maggie, the African-American owner of the bar, ridicule Ed's Japan-bashing theories and so enrage him that he blurts out a boast, that he "struck a blow." The victim, Tommy Kim, arrives.

The Window Man was first presented at the Ontological at St. Mark’s, 1992.
Cast: Tom Cayler, Joe Daly, Verna Hampton, Eisaku Takami
Musicians: Daniel Levy, Thomas Pliska, EisakuTakami
Stage Manager: Christopher Kelly

[ Press ]  [ Collage: Matthew Maguire ]

Throat
An Opera

Music: Vito Ricci
Libretto and Lyrics: Susan Mosakowski
Musical Director: Tom Judson

Cast: Tom Caylor, Christine Donnelly, Karen Hovik, Hugo Monday, Michael Ryan, Laila Maria Salins, Stan Warren, Jay Alan Zimmerman

Presented at the Knitting Factory

The right to speak and the fear of losing language propel Sibyl into a cacophonous world of many tongues. Amid the verbal chaos she searches for a common language.

[ Collage: Susan Mosakowski ]

Babel Stories
A solo adaptation of The Tower

Written and performed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Glenn Branca

Presented at Primary Stages

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]  [ Collage: Matthew Maguire ]

Cities Out of Print

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Tom Dale Keever
Light Design: Pat Dignan

Cast: Matthew Maguire and Susan Mosakowski

Presented at Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Westbeth Theatre Center

Ghoulish glamour and infatuation with death in a speeding car keep a couple entranced by legendary figures that have died in car crashes—James Dean, Grace Kelly, Albert Camus, Jackson Pollock, and Jane Mansfield—causing them to work themselves into an ecstatic, suicidal frenzy of fantasized identification.

Cities Out of Print was first presented at The Padua Hills Playwriting Festival, Los Angeles, 1989
Light Design: Jason Berliner
Cast: Shawna Casey and John Diehl

Cities Out of Print was developed at BACA Downtown in 1988
Cast: Terence Barrell and Susan Mosakowski

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Tom Brazil ]

The Tower

Written and directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Glenn Branca
Choreography: Susan Mosakowski
Music performed by the New York Chamber Sinfonia
Musical Director: Glen Cortese
Set Design: Dean Holzman and Matthew Maguire
Light Design: Jeff Bartlett
Costume Design: Katherine Maurer
Dramaturg: Rabbi Barry Holtz, Jewish Theological Seminary
Stage Manager: Robin MacGregor

Cast: Megan Grundy, Alfred Harrison, Mary McDevitt, Marysue Moses, Jefferson Slinkard

Premiered in association with the Walker Art Center and Illusion Theater at the Illusion Theater

The Tower is a contemporary retelling of the story of the Tower of Babel. As Ruth fights for her life on the operating table she dreams of secretly rebuilding the Tower. Her husband Jacob and the surgeons seem to be speaking all the voices in her mind.

In 1989 En Garde Arts commissioned a site-specific version of The Tower at Belvedere Castle in Central Park. It was titled Babel On Babylon. The cast was comprised of a large chorus and two principals: Tessie Hogan and Kevin Davis.

Presented at Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art, 1989
Cast: Shellye Broughton, Anthony Lee, Michael Ryan, Isabel Sáez, Kazuki Takase
Set Design: Joe Fyfe
Light Design: Pat Dignan

[ Press ]  [ Download ]  [ Photos: Nancy Campbell ]

A History of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones,
VOL III: WIPEOUT

Written, Directed, and Designed by Jeffrey M. Jones
Sound: Daniel Moses Schreier
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Costume Design: Sally J. Lesser
Stage Manager: Jennifer McDowall

Cast: Martin Donovan, Zivia Flomenhaft, Gary McCleery, Liz Schofield, Mary Shultz, Victor Talmadge

Presented at Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art

The last in trilogy exploring notions of history and identity through the collage of appropriated texts: classical history as endless beach party--the decline and fall of Frankie & Annette, as performed for the Emperor Nero (with fish).

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Jeffrey M. Jones ]

THE BRIDE/BACHELOR TRILOGY

The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate
Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design and Body Constructions: Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Costumes and Objects: Richard Curtis
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Production Manager: Judy Kepes
Cast: Terry Barrell, Constance Crawford, David Finck, Mariko Tanabe

The Bride and her Extra-Rapid Exposure
Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Steven Baker
Light Design: Jeff Bartlett
Objects and Costumes: Richard Curtis
Cast: Carole Andersen, Constance Crawford, Anne Devitt, Carolyn Goelzer,
Michael Ryan

The Bachelor Machine (Video)
Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Steven Baker
Director of Photography: Victor Prokopov
Editor: Bob Jorissen
Cast: Matthew Maguire and Susan Mosakowski

Presented at The Southern Theater, Minneapolis

Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's painting, the Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even), the trilogy depicts the journey of the Bride and her Bachelors as they move through a mechanical labyrinth. The meeting of opposites never occurs; the Bachelors embark on a hermetic journey seeking a Bride who will never marry. Their desire is delayed in time as they struggle for erotic climax. The three works dramatize their journey first from the perspective of the Bride, then from the Bachelor, culminating in the seductive duality yet untouchable illusion of unity in The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate.

See: The Bride and her Extra-Rapid Exposure (1985), The Bachelor Machine (1986), and The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate (1987), for additional descriptions and history.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Marc Norberg ]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(Adapted from Robert Weine’s film)

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb
Set Design: Tom Dale Keever
Costumes and Objects: Richard Curtis
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Production Manager: Jennifer McDowall

Cast: David Alton, Karla Barker, Terence Barrell, Rob Elk, Michele Elliman, Terry O’Reilly, Michael Ryan.

Presented at La MaMa E.TC.

Interwoven with a feverish Weimar psychosexual angst and an Expressionist mise-en-scene, Caligari tells a tale about the corruption of power. An asylum director, Dr. Caligari, hypnotically controls Cesare--a side-show somnambulist—to commit murders. Caligari, seen through the lens of Nazi Germany, Julius Caesar, and corporate America, becomes the embodiment of insane evil, born from an unlimited authority that idolizes power and manipulates those that are asleep to basic human values.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Tom Brazil ]

Propaganda

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Fred Frith
Set Design: Matthew Maguire and Daniel Ptacek
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Costume Design and Objects: Richard Curtis
Dramaturg: Alisa Solomon
Stage Manager: Carol Cleveland

Cast: David Alton, Karla Barker, Rob Elk, Michele Elliman, Oni Faida Lampley, Michael Ryan, Steven Major West

Premiered at La MaMa E.T.C.

A political satire filtered through science fiction and John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. Propaganda’s Duchess is a malevolent tyrant who is downloading the population through computer linkage into colonies inside her mind. She is supported by her impeccable and hypnotic media manager Edwin Manion and her brutal military man Hieronimo. Opposing them are the guerrillas, Saracene and Antonio, fighting for their lives and minds.

Presented at New City Theatre, Seattle, 1988.
Cast: Brian Faker, Mary Ewald, Ki Gottberg, Todd Moore, Anthony Lee, John Kazanjian

Presented at the Southern Theatre, Minneapolis, 1986.
Cast: Constance Crawford, Carolyn Goelzer, Ben Kreilkamp, Charles Schuminski, Mic Woicek

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Set Design and Body Constructions: Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Music: Vito Ricci
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Costumes and Objects: Richard Curtis

Cast: Terence Barrell, Michele Elliman, David Finck, Mariko Tanabe

Presented by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Apropos of Marcel Duchamp, a Centennial Celebration) at the Painted Bride Art Center
Premiered at La MaMa E.T.C.

An erotic game of hide-and-seek between a "bride" and a "bachelor" who assume multiple identities, including each other's in a mating ritual of attraction and pursuit. The play is staged on both sides of a revolving metal door that divides the everyday world in front from an illusionary world behind. Architects Diller + Scofidio create a rear-view environment, observed in a large, tilted overhead mirror that makes the actors who spin and swim along the floor seem like upright figures dancing eight feet above the metal door. The audience assumes the voyeuristic viewpoint as they watch the enigmatic love story unfold as the bride and bachelor slide from one world into another, from reflection to reality, from apparition to exposure.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Michael Moran ]

Visions of Don Juan

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Choreography: Susan Mosakowski
Set and Light Design: Jim Clayburgh
Costumes and Object Design: Richard Curtis
Sound Score Collage: Matthew Maguire and Jonathan Mann
Stage Manager: Louis Pietig

Cast: Karla Barker, Joyce Leigh Bowden, Tom Cayler, Michele Elliman, Rob Elk, Terry O’Reilly, Michael Ryan, Steven Major West

Presented at the Pepsico Summerfare

Commissioned for the bicentennial of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, it is a meditation on desire, a collage of obsession probing the many facets of the erotic impulse: the romantic, the political, the aesthetic, and the demonic. Don Giovanni, a figure perpetually vanishing, is seen through the eyes of his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. As Da Ponte imagines Don Giovanni his mind swirls with visions of his scandal-ridden memories careening from raucous commedia to the tragedy of perpetual loneliness.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Johan Elbers ]

The Bachelor Machine (Video)

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Steven Baker
Director of Photography: Victor Prokopov
Editor: Bob Jorissen

Cast: Matthew Maguire and Susan Mosakowski

Presented at the Southern Theater, Minneapolis

In the second part of the Bachelor/Bride Trilogy the bachelor frantically pursues his female alter-ego. A dance of death ensues between the bride and the bachelor.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Marc Norberg ]

The Bride and Her Extra-rapid Exposure

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Steven Baker
Objects and Costumes: Richard Curtis
Light Design: Pat Dignan

Cast: David Alton, Michele Elliman, Catherine Hondorp, Julie Ruth, Mariko Tanabe

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

The first work in the Bachelor/Bride Trilogy traces the genesis of "the bride" in Duchamp's work. From his early relationship with his sister Suzanne, through his paintings "Dulcinea," "Nude Descending the Staircase," and later in his alter-ego Rrose Selavy, and finally in his last work "Etant Donnes," he pursues the bride as the object of desire, witnesses her apotheosis, and casts her in an alchemical relationship with her bachelors.

The Bride and Her Extra-rapid Exposure premiered at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1985
Cast: Carole Andersen, Constance Crawford, Anne Devitt, Susan Mosakowski, Michael Ryan, Madeleine Sosin.

[ Press ]  [ Visual Text ]  [ Photos: Marc Norberg ]

The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Costumes: Helen Carratala
Masks and Objects: Richard Curtis
Dramaturg: Susan McClary
Stage Managers: Lori E. Seid, Karen Williams

Sets and installations by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Joe Fyfe, Laurie Hawkinson, Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, Kit-Yin Snyder, Allen Wexler, Ellen Zimmerman and George Palumbo.

Cast: Karla Barker, Agnès Boucher, Constance Crawford, Rob Elk, Christopher McCann, Nadja Smith, Mic Woicek

Presented in association with Creative Time in the Anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, 1986

Giulio Camillo was one of the most famous men of the 16th century. With a commission from the King of France he created a theatre that contained divine powers: whoever entered the theatre would emerge with a complete memory of all the knowledge that ever existed. The play premiered at La Mama, then traveled to The Southern Theatre in Minneapolis, then arrived back in the Anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, where the audience was led through the Gothic chambers within the bridge to encounter scenes in a series of installations by artists and architects. A meditation upon memory in a period when America is slipping again into moral amnesia.

Presented in association with the Walker Art Center at the Southern Theatre, Minneapolis, 1985
Cast: Constance Crawford, Rob Elk, Michelle Elliman, Carolyn Goeltzer, Michael Ryan, Madeline Sosin, and Mic Woicek
Production Manager: Matthew Spector
Light Design: Jeff Bartlett

First presented at La MaMa E.T.C., 1985
Cast: David Alton, Karla Barker, Michele Elliman, Michael Ryan
Stage Manager: Jon Larson
Dramaturg: Barbara Somerville

[ Press ]  [ Download ]  [ Photos: Peter Bellamy ]

A History of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones,
VOL II: TOMORROWLAND

Written, directed, and designed by Jeffrey M. Jones
Sound Design: Daniel Moses Schreier
Light Design: Jeffrey McRoberts
Costume Design: Catherine Zuber
Stage Manager: Brad Phillips

Cast: Karla Barker, Zivia Flomenhaft, Zach Grenier, Gary McCleery, Barbara Somerville, Victor Talmadge

Presented at the Performing Garage

The second in trilogy exploring notions of history and identity through the collage of appropriated texts, this time all from 1950: commies, cowboys, TV stars, polio scares, aliens from outer space and teenage dating.

[ Press ]  [ Found Image: Jeffrey M. Jones ]

Berenice

Adapted from Edgar Allen Poe and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Matthew Maguire
Light Design: Pat Dignan
Costume, Mask, and Object Design: Richard Curtis
Dramaturg: Gautam Dasgupta
Stage Manager: Jan Harvey

Cast: David Alton, Karla Barker, Michele Elliman, Matthew Maguire

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

An adaptation of the Poe short story of a man who is so obsessed with his wife’s teeth that he digs up her grave to extract them.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Jerry Vezzuso ]

Ice Station Zebra

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Tom Dale Keever
Light Design: Pat Dignan

Cast: David Alton, Karla Barker, Michele Elliman, Matthew Maguire, Michael Ryan.

Presented at the Ohio Theatre

In the final day of Howard Hughes' life--when he was living in virtual isolation in Las Vegas' Desert Inn--Hughes assumes the persona of an Egyptian pharaoh. The Desert Inn becomes his pyramid and his Mormon handlers his high priests. Hughes embodies a person living in time, not space, as he travels around the world from a location that never changes. In the background his favorite movie "Ice Station Zebra" plays, which he purportedly watched 168 times, about men trapped and totally isolated in the North Pole.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Jerry Vezzuso ]

A History of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones,
VOL I: DER INKA VON PERU

Written, directed, and designed by Jeffrey M. Jones
Sound Design: Daniel Moses Schreier
Light Design: James Schoenfelder
Costumes: Quina Fonseca
Stage Manager: James Schoenfelder

Cast: Karla Barker, Keith Druhl, Zivia Flomenhaft, Zach Grenier, Patrick O’Connell, Barbara Somerville

Presented at the Performing Garage

The first of trilogy exploring notions of history and identity through the collage of appropriated texts: Prescott's classic rendition of the conquest of the Inca, in the context of a Harlequin romance about scheming doctors in an Egyptian backwater.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Jeffrey M. Jones ]

Fun City

Written, Designed, and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci
Light Design: Amy Richards
Costume Design: Esther Smith
Masks and Objects: Richard Curtis
Stage Manager: Robert Grillo

Cast: Ching Valdes-Aran, Olivia Negron, Bob Holman, Eric McGill

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

Two couples: Kame and Zeno, Peggy and Ron: Asian, White, Latina, Black: urban dwellers, brilliant sex fiends. Descendents of the actors of Greek Satyr plays, the Commedia, Restoration sex farces, the burlesque, and the carny sideshow. Voyeurs all.

[ Photos: Jerry Vezzuso ]

The American Mysteries

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Glenn Branca, Vito Ricci (with Rashied Ali) and Clodagh Simonds (with piano treatments by Brian Eno)
Choreography: Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Light Design: Amy Richards
Costume Design: Kim Druce
Stage Manager: Valerie Gunderson

Cast: Andrew Arnault, Tibor Feldman, David Finck, Michael Harris, Peter Lobdell, Joanne Munisteri, Lenard Petit, Kim Saunders

Presented at La MaMa E.T. C., 1983

A Mystery play that combines the ancient Greek Mysteries (The Eleusinian Mysteries) with the American hard-boiled detective story made iconic by Chandler and Hammet. It asks the question: where is the core of a violent act? Like Oedipus, this detective is seeking the killer in a murder he unknowingly committed.

Presented by the Walker Art Center at The Southern Theatre, 1984
Cast: Constance Crawford, Rob Elk, David Finck, Michael Harris, Rana Haugen, Vertov Helweg, Maurice Jacox, Madeleine Sosin, Matthew Spector
Light Design: Jeff Bartlett
Stage Manager: Sandra Crawford
Production Manager: Matthew Spector

[ Press ]  [ Photos: B&W Nancy Campbell, Color Jerry Vezzuso ]

The Commie Stories

Written and Directed by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci (with Phillip Johnston)
Set Design: Kenneth Becker
Light Design: Richard Lloyd
Costumes: Penelope Wehrli
Masks: Richard Curtis
Stage Manager: Norman MacAfee

Cast: Brian Buckley, David Finck, Joanne Munisteri, Nicky Paraiso, Mary Shultz

Presented at the Ohio Theatre, and P.S.122

The Commie Stories: seven stories based on incidents that occurred in East Berlin when Creation Production Company was on tour in Germany.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Nancy Campbell ]

Untitled (The Dark Ages Flat Out)

Written and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci
Performed: Matthew Maguire and Vito Ricci

Presented at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1983
De Melkweg, Amsterdam, 1982
Washington Project for the Arts in association with the Smithsonian Institution, 1982
The Painted Bride, Philadelphia, 1982
Baltimore Theatre Project, 1982
Ohio Theatre, NYC, July, 1981

A play within a play inspired by Joseph Cornell. A man writing a play about a man going blind who sees with his mind a play about the fear of blindness and the paradox of clarity.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Mark Gulezian ]

The Confessions of a Dope Fiend

By Jeffrey M. Jones
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Set and Light Design: Jim Clayburgh
Costume Design: Kim Druce
Sound and Music: Vito Ricci
Stage Manager: Mark Maniak

Cast: Michael Harris and Ron Vawter

Presented at the Performing Garage

The eight plates of Hogarth's The Rake's Progress as the matrix of an autobiographic examination of craving.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

The Inferno

Adapted from Dante's Divine Comedy by Susan Mosakowski
Music composed by Vito Ricci (with Youseff Yancy)
Set Design: Kenneth Becker
Set Concept: Susan Mosakowski
Light Design: Richard Lloyd
Masks: Richard Curtis
Costume Design: Penelope Wehrli
Additional Set/Costume Constructions: Tom Hill and Inez Foose
Stage Manager: Curtis Randall

Cast: Katie Bentley, David Finck, Eric Larson, Nancy Mikota, Nicky Paraiso, Michael Ryan, Mary Shultz, David Taft

Presented at Theatre for the New City

A dramatization of Dante's poetical work and an exploration of Dante's life, the portrait of an artist searching for illumination in the midst of political, social and moral blindness.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Nancy Campbell ]

Michi’s Blood

By Franz Xaver Kroetz
Directed by Mark Lutwak
Music: Wayne Horvitz
Set and Light Design: Liz Mestres
Stage Manager: Dave Sewelson

Cast: Christopher McCann and Y York

Presented in association with the Taller Latino Americano at the Taller

The New York premiere. Kroetz describes his characters as being “incapable of seeing through their situation because they have been robbed of their capacity to articulate.”

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Chromatic Spectacles

Choreography by Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Susan Mosakowski and Barbara Helpern
Light Design: Rob Brenner
Masks: Richard Curtis

Cast: Eric Larson, Nancy Mikota, Michael Ryan, Paul Wolff

Presented at the Ohio Theatre
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1983

The stage as a kinetic canvas for light, well defined space, and color, in which painted figures—Red Man, Yellow Lady, and Blue Man—struggle for control over the image.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

Circuits

Choreography: Susan Mosakowski
Set Design: Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Narrated by Jeffrey M. Jones
Light Design: Pat Dignan

Performed by Susan Mosakowski and Matthew Maguire

Presented at the Open Space Theatre

An illusionary labyrinth where two players jockey for position under the watchful eye of the narrator.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

Walled Garden: (Language)

By Richard Foreman
Directed by Bennett Theissen
Set and Light Design: Richard Lloyd
Costume Design: Kim Druce

Cast: Karla Barker, Julie Edelstein, David Finck, Valerie Gunderson, Susan Lemak, Joanne Munisteri, Kastutis Nakas, Kevin O’Rourke

Presented at Inroads

The premiere of a play written by Foreman in 1973, but never staged by him; a play about erotic space and the ontological hysteric writer at home.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

Bruises

By Charles Borkhuis
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci and The Same
Set Design: Barbara Helpern
Light Design: Amy Richards
Stage Manager: John Barber

Cast: Bob Holman, Sturgis Warner, Deirdre O’Connell

Presented at the Ohio Theatre

A Poets’ Theatre postfunk nickelodeon dealing with fame, fear of the void, pop culture, and the consequences of the flashbulb replacing the light of salvation.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Richard Thomas ]

Eye Figure Fiction

Written, Designed, and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Vito Ricci
Light Design: Amy Richards
Costume Design: Shay Cunliffe
Masks: Jane Stein
Photography: Mark Sikorowski, Richard Thomas, and Morgan Reese
Stage Manager: Katharine Sturak

Cast: Andrew Arnault, Caroline McGee, Susan Mosakowski, RuisWoertendyke

Presented at the Theatre for the New City, 1980

A lust for balance is revealed as Booth’s assassination of Lincoln collides with a shifting grid of autobiography.

Presented at the Open Space Theatre, 1979
Cast: Terence Barrell, Andrea Darriau, Susan Mosakowski, Michael Slater

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Jonathan Postal ]

Seventy Scenes of Halloween

By Jeffrey M. Jones
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Set and Light Design: Jim Clayburgh
Costume Design: Maura Clifford
Stage Manager: Bo Metzler

Cast: Christopher McCann, Frederikke Meister, Caroline McGee, Kevin O’Rourke

Presented at Theatre at St. Clement’s

Home and hunger, marriage and violence, children, adultery, disguise and the intrusion of strangeness, in interchangeable scenes.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

White/Black

Choreography: Susan Mosakowski
Music: Vito Ricci
Set Design: Susan Mosakowski
Light Design: Rob Brenner

Performed by Susan Mosakowski

Presented by at the Wonderhorse Theater, 1980
Baltimore Theatre Project, 1980
Iowa Theatre Lab, 1980
Melkweg, Amsterdam, 1982
Künstlerhaus, Berlin, 1983

White/Black represents theatrically the four dimensions known to physics using a color progression: black on black, white on black, black on white, white on white. The artist's search for a geometric homeland culminates in sensory overload and white-out. A choreographic exploration of the human figure moving from a darkened landscape into light and color.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Manfried Sackman ]

Eclipse

Written by Susan Mosakowski
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Stage Manager: Barry De Jasu

Cast: Iris Alhanti, Terence Barrell, Kevin Coleman, Caroline Cox, Tom Howe, Susan Lemak, Lina Todd.

Presented at the Perry Street Theatre

A murder may or may not have taken place. The only proof that a crime may have been committed is from the confession of the alleged murderer who can no longer remember.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Morgan Reese ]

Night Coil

By Jeffrey M. Jones
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Set Design: Jim Clayburgh
Light Design: Rick Shannin
Costume Design: Shay Cunliffe
Stage Manager: Robert Bramlet

Cast: Iris Alhanti, Maureen Barnes, Terence Barrell, Robert Cappelletti, Bob Holman, Kevin O’Rourke, Earl Michael Reid, Ellie Schadt

Presented at Theatre at St. Clement’s

A man is ensnared by his double, as action and dialog simultaneously interweave across two rooms, side-by-side.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Nancy Campbell ]

The Ride Across Lake Constance

By Peter Handke
Directed by Matthew Maguire
Set Design: Stephen Cramer
Light Design: Andreas Nowara
Costume Design: Margo LaZaro
Stage Manager: Lyn Ellis

Cast: Maureen Barnes, Joseph Daly, Lyn Ellis, Bob Holman, Amy Nathan, Rocco Sisto, Dianne Thompson, Lina Todd,

Presented at Theatre at St. Clement’s

German film stars deconstruct an inverted world.

[ Press ]  [ Photos: Morgan Reese ]

The Seven Deadly Elements

Written, Designed, and Directed by Matthew Maguire
Music: Clodagh Simonds
Light Design: Andreas Nowara
Costume Design: Margo LaZaro
Photography: Morgan Reese, Mark Sikorowski, and Richard Thomas
Sculpture and painting: Charles Marzocca and Gregory Turpane
Masks: Jane Stein, Peter Samuels, and Fran Caruso

Cast: Terence Barrell, Maurice Blanc, Karen Feinberg, Susan Mosakowski, Robert Todd

Presented at La MaMa E.T.C.

Max Ernst “wrote” his surrealistic collage novel, Une Semaine de Bonté, ou Les Sept Éléments Capitaux in 1934. He transposed the art of collage into the form of the novel. These images which do not mirror consensual reality generate thousands of words when we try to resolve them, but just look at them and soon the habit of words, the appetite for meaning, abates and one is in a vast, rushing free fall. We generated this piece by exactly recreating on stage thirty-nine of the collages, and then inventing the actions that led into and out of them to form a continuous flow.

A special and profound thanks to Ellen Stewart for giving us our first production.

[ Press ]  [ Photo: Stu Chernoff ]  [ Collage: Max Ernst ]