Twelve Ophelias

Plays
Full Length
Short Plays
Translations/
Adaptations
Collaborations

TWELVE OPHELIAS by Caridad Svich this summer

Woodshed Collective
presents the professional premiere of

Twelve Ophelias (a play with broken songs)*
by Caridad Svich

Directed by Teddy Bergman
with music (played live) by The Jones Street Boys
lyrics by Caridad Svich

Perfs/Previews are July 11,12,14, 16,18,19,23,24,26, 30 and 31
August 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22 - time: 8 PM. in a site-responsive production at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, NY. Admission is FREE. First come, first served.

Further details about this production go to
www.woodshedcollective.com
www.thejonesstreetboys.com

Click here for a musical sampling of 12 Ophelias by The Jones Street Boys

Press Rep: Richard Kornberg and Associates
richard@kornbergpr.com

This play was developed at Powerhouse Theater/NY Stage & Film, Red Bull Theater, and New Georges. It was previously presented at Baruch Performing Arts Center. It is published by Kendall-Hunt in Performing the Here and Now, CallReview No. 2;

It is published in a single paperback edition for this production by NoPassport Press available from Drama Book Shop in New York City and at link http://www.lulu.com/content/2375749
ISBN: 978-0-6152-1271-2
US List Price $9.95

New edition of 12 Ophelias is now in print. Below is amazon.com link

new ISBN # is 978-0615249186

new US List price: $12.95

Click here: Amazon.com: 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs): Caridad Svich: Books

VENUE: How to get there:

The Entrance to McCarren Park Pool is on Lorimer Street, between Driggs Avenue and Bayard Street.

FROM THE BEDFORD AVENUE L TRAIN STATION:
Take the L train to the Bedford Avenue stop in Brooklyn. Walk north on Bedford to Lorimer Street, take a right on Lorimer, the Main Arch of the pool is on the left on Lorimer St. between Driggs & Bayard Ave.

FROM THE METROPOLITAN G TRAIN STATION AND THE LORIMER L TRAIN STATION:
Take the G or L train to Metropolitan Avenue or Lorimer, respectively. Walk out of the station and cross Metropolitan on Union. Walk up Union under BQE overpass until you reach Roebling. Make a right, walk one block to Lorimer.

FROM THE NASSAU AVENUE G TRAIN STATION:
Take the G to Nassau Avenue. Walk South two blocks to Lorimer Street and take a left on Lorimer Street. Walk 1 1/2 long blocks and McCarren Park Pool will be on your left.

Ophelia dreams (Pepper Binkley)

Woodshed Collective production at McCarren Park Pool

Brooklyn, NY (2008)

director: Teddy Bergman

photo: courtesy of Woodshed Collective

PRESS:

July 20, 2008

The Week Ahead: July 20-26

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Theater

Charles Isherwood

The teeming hordes of tourists who descend on Manhattan in the summer rarely stray far from Times Square in search of theater. But there is plenty of stage activity in the other boroughs too. A whimsical riff on “Hamlet” opens this week at an appropriately unusual site, the McCARREN PARK POOL in scruffy-hip Brooklyn. “TWELVE OPHELIAS,” by CARIDAD SVICH, imagines an afterlife for Elsinore’s unluckiest lass. Ophelia pops out of the water, squeeze-dries her skirt, tosses aside the water-logged flowers and sets out for new adventures in a new world. Elsinore, you see, looks a lot like Appalachia in this twisted take on the tragedy. A bluegrass band, the Jones Street Boys, supplies an original score for this production from the Woodshed Collective, founded by Vassar alumni. Opens on Thursday, Lorimer Street, between Driggs Avenue and Bayard Street, Greenpoint, mccarrenpark.com; free.

nytheatre.com review

Saviana Stanescu · July 19, 2008

It's absolutely refreshing—in the present-day theatre world full of shows that can easily be TV sitcoms or TV dramas—to see a production that's truly, genuinely, wonderfully theatrical. I applaud Woodshed Collective for their risk-taking project—this environmental site-specific show that does justice to Caridad Svich's lyrical play Twelve Ophelias.

Svich is known for her many re-inventions of the classics in which she sometimes creates sort-of sequels to the original plays, continuations set in an undefined time and space, in the afterlife or after-story. The playwright loves to "rescue" especially female characters and give them more choices, more feelings, and more life, while offering audiences a chance to look at an old well-known story in new and different ways. It's something similar to a hall of mirrors—a watery trance taking us away from the solid ground of credible facts, verified knowledge, psychological-realistic drama, and "drowning" us with ambiguity, poetry, and spectacle.

This time, Caridad Svich is on the rescue of Shakespeare's Ophelia, whose wretched fate is to be challenged and rewritten. She "rises up out of the water dreaming of Pop-Tarts and other sweet things. She finds herself in a neo-Elizabethan Appalachian setting where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet is called a Rude Boy, and nothing is what it seems. In this mirrored world of word-scraps and cold sex, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself."

This Ophelia (Pepper Binkley) is a girl-woman with childish cravings for sweets and popsicles, while lusting for the Rude Boy (the charismatic Dan Cozzens) and having wild sex with him. She's all about sensuality, unlived life, un-walked roads ready to be discovered. She can be a not-so-romantic little mermaid who found her gorgeous angry-sexy prince but eventually manages to see him as disposable.

Gertrude (Kate Benson) sings and walks with majesty; she's a "madam" taking care of her girls with poise, style, and innate dignity. Mina (Jocelyn Kuritsky), one of the "whores," cynical yet nice, is all temperament and spontaneity. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are here R and G, two androgynous guardians of memory, played with nuanced physicality by Grace McLean and Preston Martin. Horatio becomes H (Ben Beckley), best friend and confidante of Rude Boy, a partner for boyish-manly things like wrestling, fighting, and talking about women.

But what makes this production so compelling and unique is the beautiful coordination of three main elements: the organic set-design by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn, who uses the empty McCarren pool in a very intelligent and effective way, with attention to details and symbols/metaphors at the same time; the precise and imaginative "stage" direction of Teddy Bergman; and the music written and performed live by the arresting Jones Street Boys (with lyrics by Svich). The atmosphere they manage to induce in this empty pool—transformed into a performance space with rope-roads, wooden-decks, plastic leaves, and imaginary rivers—has intimacy, sensuality, and vibrancy. No wonder people come to have picnics and chomp on pieces of watermelons and chocolate while letting themselves be transfigured by the show (as the ladies sitting on blue beach rugs in front of me did). The sky above us, changing colors; the spectators sitting in a circle, like a breathing amphitheatre; the engaging actors telling a new old story—it sounds like a perfect way of spending a hot-hot-hot evening in New York, doesn't it?

Copyright ©2008 The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. All rights reserved.

LINKS:

http://BroadwayWorld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=29158

http://flavorpill.com/newyork/events/2008/7/11/twelve-ophelias

http://www.villagevoice.com/events/12-ophelias-505340/

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/print/119385.html

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/07/theater/a-play-at-poolside-caridad-svichs-12-ophelias

http://www.nytheatrecast.com/wordpress/archives/106
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=14&aid=84047
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/showpgprint.php?t=twel6877

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/sundayarts-news-for-72708/121

Erik Piepenburg/The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/25/theater/twelve-ophelias3/index.html

New edition of 12 Ophelias is now in print. Below is amazon.com link

new ISBN # is 978-0615249186

new US List price: $12.95

Click here: Amazon.com: 12 Ophelias (a play with broken songs): Caridad Svich: Books