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Anna Driftmier

Love, Medea

January 14, 2020

The production is unapologetically irreverent. At the beginning, we see a masked Greek chorus wearing long robes, shuffling ever-so-slowly around the stage of the Center at West Park (the sanctuary of a Presbyterian church). The leader of the chorus eventually speaks to us in staid, stentorian tones from behind his gold mask. But soon the actors (all male) strip off the robes. They’re bare-chested, save for leather harnesses that look as though they could have been purchased from a local kink boutique. Costume designer Yuanyuan Liang obscures the men’s faces with black head coverings, giving them the look of hostage takers or executioners. [more]

Wickedest Woman

January 24, 2019

Six actors, three men and three women, in a company of seven, play many roles in this fluid production designed by Anna Driftmier that uses several different doorways,  on-stage props and furniture that is rolled out swiftly to tell Ann’s story from age 16 in 1828 to her untimely death at 66 in 1878. Jessica O’Hara-Baker is a towering Ann Lohman, aka Madame Restell, level-headed, goal-directed yet humorless as she sees a need and methodically goes about taking care of it, caring little for the mores of times or proscribed women’s roles. Narrated by Ann and including newspaper headlines read by the other cast members as well as period songs of 19th century ballads sung and played by the company, "Wickedest Woman" begins with her 1848 trial which is interrupted repeatedly in order to tell the story in chronological order. [more]

Terezin

June 26, 2017

Loaded with many characters and incidents, "Terezin" focuses on two sisters, Alexi (Natasa Petrovic) and Violet (Sasha K. Gordon) who, along with their father, Kurt (Sam Gibbs, playing his complex palette of emotions quite well) and mother, violinist Isabella (Sophia Davey, a calm presence who returns frequently as a spirit) are savagely grabbed by the SS for deportation to Terezin.  (One of the shocking first events is the rather realistic strangulation of one of the characters followed soon by the usual vile language—“Jewish swine,” etc.—used by the clichéd glowering Nazis.) [more]