.png)
.gif)
.png)
.png)
%20copy.webp)
.jpeg)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.png)
.png)
.png)
In the vein of the lesbian theatre makers in the downtown New York tradition that came before them, Bailey Williams and Emma Horwitz have written a delirious and joyful performance piece that mines, among a dizzying array of other things, lesbian erotica to explore everything from the surprisingly titillating dynamics of a library visit to alien abduction.
Billed as a “burlesque of fiction and reality,” Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, a Rattlestick Theater and New Georges co-production, defies easy summarizing or description. While it’s driven by its own sort of zany dream logic, any attempt to encapsulate what the show is about will ultimately fall short. At the risk of generalizing, it’s about so many things.
In a series of madcap vignettes and quick sketches, Williams and Horwitz inhabit characters at breakneck speed—at once a babysitter and a yearning lesbian widow, then a set of psychic sisters. It’s clear from their facility with the bonkers text and the ease with which they embody each character that no one could master these performances quite like Williams and Horwitz. As real life partners, they are in tune with each other in rare ways, which creates a space for impeccable comedy. Throughout the show’s 69 (wink, wink) minutes, their energy levels never flag. With sly, devilish grins, Williams and Horwitz, along with director Tara Elliot, invite the audience to participate in this hilarious and heartfelt fantasia of erotic, queer joy.
Williams and Horwitz are surrounded by cheekily-labeled bankers boxers (examples: “Butch Heiresses”, “Titty Titty Bang Bang”, “Microplastics made me gay?”), which contain an awe-inspiring amount of props and surprises. (Normandy Sherwood is credited with set, costume, and props design). Combined with Josiah Davis’ lighting and Johnny Gasper’s sound design, the result is a never-ending playground of theatrical delight. Two Sisters…’ DIY ethos provides a space for play and the kind of clever, unbridled creativity that has been missing from the more traditional theatrical programming in this city.
Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods is at the HERE Arts Center through April 26th. Ticket information here.
.png)
A sharp satire of the art world through the double prisms of race and generational gaps, the Cape Verdean-American playwright francisca da silveira’s minor.ity makes a canny premiere at the WP Theater. Co-produced with Colt Ceoeur, it takes place backstage at “Diaspora Now!”, a bigwig international fair in Paris, but begins with a front-of-curtain address from Cheikh (Ato Essandoh), a mid-career Senegalese artist who acts as our charming, unreliable griot. By this point in his life, he and Céza (Nedra Marie Taylor), a Cape Verdean painter and longtime frenemy, know how to play the game – shake some hands, give your spiel, make your way.
The young Sami (Nimene Sierra Wureh), a third-generation Ghanaian-American, seems not to. A self-titled director-playwright-dramaturg-intimacy coordinator, she’s eager and nerdy, thrilled to be in their presence and shocked to see Céza dump her Ivy Park goody bag. But she also begins to betray her naivete with a haughty sense of contemporary righteous academia that gets on her heroes’ nerves. Everything to her is about gatekeeping and trauma and preparing for her festival workshop, “Subverting the Western Dramaturgical Frame Through Radical Technique.
da silveira has great fun lambasting Sami’s Millenniallness, but only gradually shifts the onus to her. Céza, while the more composed of the older pair, is crippled by the feeling her success has catapulted her beyond the ability to connect with her nationals. And though Cheikh only returned to Senegal from his playboy life in London once his pockets emptied, he does ultimately contribute to his homeland’s economy. Still, he’s far quicker and calmer about donning a dashiki to sell a commission to a European buyer, an aspect of the game which seems to have exhausted Céza.
Through a series of intersecting drapes, Brittany Vasta’s set cleverly imagines their world as a limbo of presentation, always seconds away from a potentially lucrative performance. Celeste Jennings’ pitch-perfect costumes deliver the work’s best punchline in a production, under Shariffa Ali’s keen direction, that packs several laughs: the festival’s panels keep getting postponed or canceled, but its unseen announcer comes up with increasingly absurd shoutouts to its sponsors. (“Thank you, ExxonMobil: We give where you live.”)
Each actor shades their archetypal character with memorable grace. Essandoh has an avuncular charisma; Taylor, a weary wisdom; and Wureh handles well a role which demands her to alternate as a punching bag, a conscientious youth, and a pest. While the play asks us to consider whether her own work (she’s trying to access her Ghanaian grandmother’s recipes for a play about her migration) doesn’t cross that same line between preservation and extraction for which she frowns at them, its narration suggests that such answers will vary, depending on whose story sells best.
minor.ity is in performance through May 4, 2025 at the WP Theatre on Broadway in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
.png)
A sharp satire of the art world through the double prisms of race and generational gaps, the Cape Verdean-American playwright francisca da silveira’s minor.ity makes a canny premiere at the WP Theater. Co-produced with Colt Ceoeur, it takes place backstage at “Diaspora Now!”, a bigwig international fair in Paris, but begins with a front-of-curtain address from Cheikh (Ato Essandoh), a mid-career Senegalese artist who acts as our charming, unreliable griot. By this point in his life, he and Céza (Nedra Marie Taylor), a Cape Verdean painter and longtime frenemy, know how to play the game – shake some hands, give your spiel, make your way.
The young Sami (Nimene Sierra Wureh), a third-generation Ghanaian-American, seems not to. A self-titled director-playwright-dramaturg-intimacy coordinator, she’s eager and nerdy, thrilled to be in their presence and shocked to see Céza dump her Ivy Park goody bag. But she also begins to betray her naivete with a haughty sense of contemporary righteous academia that gets on her heroes’ nerves. Everything to her is about gatekeeping and trauma and preparing for her festival workshop, “Subverting the Western Dramaturgical Frame Through Radical Technique.
da silveira has great fun lambasting Sami’s Millenniallness, but only gradually shifts the onus to her. Céza, while the more composed of the older pair, is crippled by the feeling her success has catapulted her beyond the ability to connect with her nationals. And though Cheikh only returned to Senegal from his playboy life in London once his pockets emptied, he does ultimately contribute to his homeland’s economy. Still, he’s far quicker and calmer about donning a dashiki to sell a commission to a European buyer, an aspect of the game which seems to have exhausted Céza.
Through a series of intersecting drapes, Brittany Vasta’s set cleverly imagines their world as a limbo of presentation, always seconds away from a potentially lucrative performance. Celeste Jennings’ pitch-perfect costumes deliver the work’s best punchline in a production, under Shariffa Ali’s keen direction, that packs several laughs: the festival’s panels keep getting postponed or canceled, but its unseen announcer comes up with increasingly absurd shoutouts to its sponsors. (“Thank you, ExxonMobil: We give where you live.”)
Each actor shades their archetypal character with memorable grace. Essandoh has an avuncular charisma; Taylor, a weary wisdom; and Wureh handles well a role which demands her to alternate as a punching bag, a conscientious youth, and a pest. While the play asks us to consider whether her own work (she’s trying to access her Ghanaian grandmother’s recipes for a play about her migration) doesn’t cross that same line between preservation and extraction for which she frowns at them, its narration suggests that such answers will vary, depending on whose story sells best.
minor.ity is in performance through May 4, 2025 at the WP Theatre on Broadway in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
.png)
.png)
.png)
