Blonde Poison

by Gail Louw
Directed by Steve Bogart

Based on the true story of Stella Goldschlag, a German Jew, living illegally in WW II Berlin, who was betrayed, arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. In order to save her parents from the death camps, she agreed to become a “ greifer” and turn in fellow Jews. She was extraordinarily successful at this and the Gestapo gave her the nickname “Blonde poison“. Decades after the war she has agreed to be interviewed by a journalist.

Karen MacDonald. Recent credits include The America Plays (Plays in Place, Mt.Auburn Cemetery), Escaped Alone (Gamm Theatre), Universe Rushing Apart (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), Calendar Girls (Greater Boston Stage Company). She has appeared at the Huntington Theatre, Trinity Rep, SpeakeasyStage, New Rep, Gloucester Stage, Lyric Stage, Israeli Stage, Merrimack Rep Theatre,
Portland Stage, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Boston Theatre Company, Sleeping Weazel, Vineyard Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Co. and Berkshire Playwrights Lab. A Founding Company Member of the American Repertory Theatre, she appeared in 74 productions. On Broadway, she understudied and performed the role of Amanda Wingfield in John Tiffany’s revival of The Glass Menagerie. In 2010, she received The Robert Brustein Award for Sustained Achievement in The Theater and the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. She teaches at the Extension School and the TDM Concentration at Harvard University.

Steven Bogart has directed for the American Repertory Theater (Cabaret, The Boston Abolitionist Project, Kirsten Greenidge’s Greater Good), Boston Playwrights’ Theater (Ginger Lazarus’s, Burning, Dan Hunter’s, Legally Dead), Company One (Shockhead Peter, Ruby Rae Spiegel’s, Dry Land, Jeehae Park’s Peerless, Kirsten Greenidge’s Greater Good), and Wheelock Family Theatre (Pinocchio). Currently he is directing The Last Days of Judas Iscariot for Hub Theatre Company of Boston. His plays have had various readings and some productions in Boston, NYC, Chicago, and Michigan, and Nebraska. He was a 2015 Massachusetts cultural Council Fellow in playwriting, and in 2009 an MCC grant recipient in playwriting. His play, Pigcat was the recipient of the Holland New Voice Award at the 2010 Great Plains Theater Conference.

Snowgirl

created by Rosie McInnes, Morgan Rose Ford, Caitlin Gjerdrum, Meghan Hornblower, Cassie Chapados

November 11, 2019

What is a Snowgirl? Do we all have one inside of us, buried deep, beneath stifling social mores, quiet tramas, and banal anguish? Is she a mythical being from a fairytale you almost remember reading? Or is she an imaginary friend, a schizophrenic alter ego, the piece of a girl that withered (but maybe didn’t quite die) as she grew up–as she learned how to be nice and polite, how to survive her family, how to grow up as a girl in a hostile, wintery, magical world. Snowgirl follows the tale of two beings (or is it one?), Shannon and Snowgirl. Shannon’s world is unfriendly, austere, with the faint scent of lurking danger present in the lives of all assigned-female bodies. Her struggle is an internal one–to free herself from the fear and restraint she’s been taught by her mother, by society at large, by herself. Is Snowgirl a menace or a friend? The answer to her questions or the source of her problems? Through music, movement, and some magic Snowgirl tells the story of this girl and of so many others, at a time when we are all searching for who we are and who we will become.

Bios:

Rosie McInnes is a New England-based theater maker, youth worker, and activist. Rosie received her BA in French Literature and Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College in 2016 and has been making her life in Boston and Plymouth, VT since then. Recent theater credits include: A Story Beyond (Liars and Believers), Circle Up! (Central Square Theater), Fear Project (The Open Theater Project), and The Weird (Off the Grid Theater Company). Practiced in devised work, Rosie has collaborated with many individuals and companies around Boston and is a founding member of the Unbridled Child Theatre Collective. Having worked as a youth worker for many years, Rosie is also trained in peer counseling practices and is the mental health coordinator at Farm and Wilderness camps in VT where she works supporting youth to claim their power through connection with the earth, social justice education, creative practices and farming.

Morgan Rose Ford is a writer and performer based in Somerville, MA. Recent projects include Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly at Hibernian Hall (Kimber), Boston Theater Company’s touring productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helena), and Romeo and Juliet (Mercutio), and Theatre in the Open’s The Tempest (Stephano). Morgan is a founding member of the Unbridled Child Theatre Collective and a co-creator of Snowgirl. After originating the role of Shannon in 2018, she is excited to bring her devising and dramaturgy skills to play in this new production.Thank you to The Nora and CST for an incredible opportunity and to Cassie and Meghan for joining us on this wild ride.

Caitlin Gjerdrum is a singer, actor, writer, director, sometime linguist, occasional educator, aspiring puppeteer, and would-be time traveler focused primarily on the development of new works riding the intersections of curiosity and joy. Current projects include a one-woman show loosely based on the works of Virginia Woolf, an original sci-fi musical in development, a multi-lingual jazz album with new translations by the artist, and a collaborative musical adaptation of a short story by Tolstoy. Previous credits at Central Square include performing in URT’s A Christmas Carol and music directing The Nora’s Cloud 9. She is a proud faculty member of Berklee College of Music’s Musical Theatre Summer Intensive, where she shepherds students through the process of writing their own original musical (book, lyrics, & music). Founding member, Unbridled Child Theatre Collective.

Meghan Hornblower is thrilled to be devising movement for Snowgirl. She is an actor, dancer, and choreographer from the greater Boston area currently living in NYC. Past choreography projects include Delicate Particle Logic (Flat Earth Theatre), Shrek the Musical Jr., The Lion King Jr., Honk! Jr., and Beauty and the Beast Jr. (Magic Circle Theater, Tufts University Children’s Theater), and Assassins (Boston College). Meghan is also looking forward to joining the cast of CST’s upcoming production of A Christmas Carol. Film: principal dancer in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. BA Theatre & English, Boston College. Thank you, Lee and Debra, for your support and for giving us the space to develop this play at CST. Many, many thanks to Rosie, Cassie, Caitlin, and Morgan for bringing me onboard this incredibly imaginative, enriching, and collaborative process! May you always hold onto your snowgirls.

Cassie Chapados is a director, designer, production manager, and educator from Wisconsin, who semi-permanently resides in Cambridge. In addition to being a freelance director and designer, she is the full-time production manager at Central Square Theater and the Associate Artistic Director of The Nora Theater Company’s That’s What She Said program. As an artist she strives to tell the stories of young people, particularly young women in a time when those stories are more necessary than ever. Currently she is helping to develop several new works (mostly about young women, all about what it means to be human), assistant directing at Boston College, and knitting as much as she possibly can in preparation for the coming winter.

A Lady Does Not Scratch Her Crotch

by Celeste Cahn

directed by Adrienne Boris

October 8, 2019

Growing up is hard enough, but how about when Mrs. Potts stops you from masturbating? This one woman interactive show explores growing up, masculinity, femininity and expectations through the lens of The Beauty and the Beast. Ultimately the show is about how society, our friends, our families, our partners and even ourselves place made-up restrictions on women that we are never able to fully live up to, but must find a way to live with. 

Celeste Cahn is an actor/director/writer from New Orleans, LA. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in Theatre and History (with a focus on RADICAL SOCIAL CHANGE). Recently she played Achilles/Calypso/Mate 2 and Argo in HOWL: An Odyssey at CLF Art Cafe in London, wrote and performed as Robert Mueller in her show REDACTED : A Robert MuellErotica or do me Mr. Mueller!, Third Witch in Macbeth and did her show A Lady Does Not Scratch Her Crotch at the Nola inFringe and the Tank. Other activities include talking to strangers and making personality quizzes related to Medieval History. 

Adrienne Boris is a director of theatre and opera with special interest in new and contemporary work, stories about women, and new music theater genres. Recently, with OperaHub in association with Diva Museum, she co-produced and directed the world premiere of DIVAS: A New Play with Opera Music by Laura Neill, which focused on the lives of 17th-19th century opera divas and their extraordinary contributions to political, social, and musical history. Other recent directing credits include La boheme with Long Island Lyric Opera/Opera at the Madison, the world premiere of Eva Kendrick’s ten-minute opera Wish You Were Here with Boston Opera Collaborative as part of Opera Bites, Next to Normal with Arts After Hours (Lynn, MA), and OR, by Liz Duffy Adams with Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company and Simple Machine, which was nominated for three Elliot Norton Awards including Best Fringe Production. She has worked as an assistant director extensively, including Off-Broadway and with director Austin Pendleton on his acclaimed interpretation of Fiddler on the Roof at New Repertory Theatre. She has served as National New Play Network Producer-in-Residence at New Repertory Theatre and Artistic Associate at OperaHub, and received her MFA in Directing from Boston University. For more information please visit www.adrienneboris.com 

Join us this August for a series of readings presented by The Front Porch Arts Collective.

Our award winning company in residence, The Front Porch Arts Collective, returns this summer with yet another 100% free reading series. This time around, we’re featuring all original plays written by local black playwrights to share with our friends from the Boston area! Join us this August for three stupefying staged readings about love, loss, and the mystery of our shared history.