30 Days of NYMF: Cyclone and the Pig-Faced Lady

“Move Over, Wonder Woman”

By Dana Leslie Goldstein (Bookwriter & Lyricist)

I’m a geek.  I was obsessed with comic books as a kid, and I still have hundreds of them in a milk crate under my desk.  They’re not in plastic bags or mint condition, because I read them until they were ragged.  I’m sure I became a playwright because I was so used to reading speech bubbles.

My obsession wouldn’t have been strange if I hadn’t been a girl.  I loved Wonder Woman, but I longed for quirky superheroines written or drawn by women.  They didn’t exist in the seventies.

So I grew up and stowed my comics under my desk and made the infinitely more practical choice of becoming a playwright and lyricist, only to discover that there are almost as few successful women playwrights as comic book writers.  But I was undeterred.  I joined the playwrights’ lab at The Women’s Project, the nation’s oldest and largest theatre company devoted to producing plays by women.  

In 2002, Women’s Project offered a grant to a playwright and director to create a show together.  It was just after 9/11, and we really needed a superhero. Director Elysa Marden and I came up with Cyclone, a gorgeous, gypsy superheroine who battles crime and roller coaster accidents in 1920’s Coney Island.  We also wanted to tell the story of Cyclone’s creator – Sally Kaplan - a woman comic book artist who prefers her drawings to real life.  Until current events remind her that there are no superheroes.  Sally asks herself what many of us were asking: what can an artist do in response to tragedy?  Sally answers that question for herself and succeeds in becoming the hero of her own story.  

Our concept struck a chord, and we won the grant.  Then composer Rima Fand, who writes some of the sexiest, most original and compelling music you’ll ever hear in a theater, joined the team.

That was the beginning of CYCLONE and the Pig-Faced Lady, and my return to comic books.  Now there’s a world premiere production at NYMF, with costumes, choreography and projections of comic book panels.  And here’s the most exciting part: those panels will be drawn by the amazing female artist Adriana Melo, who draws Witchblade, Fantastic Four, Stars Wars and more for Marvel and DC.  This geek girl’s dream is finally coming true.  In more ways than one.

Move over, Wonder Woman!  CYCLONE is here, and she sings