HOLA presents EL CANTO DE CARLOTTA/CHARLOTTE'S SONG.
"Charlotte's Song" by Nancy Ferragallo is a performance-based experimental work that explores a daughter's reality of growing up with her emotionally disabled mother and how that impacted her life and healing process. It is a poetic collective of monologues, dialogue scenes and movement theater in the style of the Tanz Theater of Pina Bausch. The work is co-directed by Andreas Robertz and Mario Golden and co-choreographed by Nancy Ferragallo and Celeste Hastings.
The narrative is told through literary fragments and movement sequences. A mother (played by
Mario Golden) and her daughter (played by Yvette Quintero) are so alienated from one another that they communicate primarily by letters. A dancer (Celeste Hastings) dances the mother's inner life. As the play progresses, the daughter explores issues of betrayal and abandonment and comes to an ultimate understanding of her mother's behavior. All is played out in the presence of a doll, designed by Maria Hupfield, who bears witness to the daily life of both women.
In shifting auditory landscapes, we hear the language of disconnect that announces the underlying fragility of the mother and her love and need for her daughter, all rendered in exquisite movement sequences and a clothing ritual. The play was born out of Nancy Ferragallo's experiences with her own mother, who died when Nancy was 37. Ferragallo reports that the idea for this play "tugged at her and waited decades to be born."
The production contains both spoken text and Tanz Theater reminiscent of the style of Pina Bausch. Ferragallo's background is primarily in the field of dance. She believes that by transferring rituals drawn from the mother's instability to the dancer rather than through the text, she conveys a fuller expression of the mother's life. In the production, Celeste Hastings dances the mother's inner life, in movement sequences which include undressing and redressing herself in various sets of clothing set to the repetitive and dissident scores of Steve Reich,
Philip Glass and most notably, Luciano Berio ("Sequenza 111 per voce solo").
"Charlotte's Song" was first presented on December 7, 2012, at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center's Lab 101, as part of their residency program. The audience's overwhelmingly positive response encouraged the author and directors
Andreas Robertz and
Mario Golden to move forward with the play, which was accepted for production at the Theater for the New City, where it enjoyed a three week run in the Spring of 2014.
Nancy Ferragallo is a dancer/choreographer, conceptual artist and writer. She began her professional career in dance with the San Francisco Contemporary Dancers. Over the course of her extensive career she studied, performed, choreographed and taught in the U.S., Germany and Israel. She spent several years in India and Nepal in collaboration with indigenous theater artists and dance companies. In addition, her work as a movement therapist at a hospital in Illinois provided her with a rich resource for her conceptual work that followed. Most recently, she collaborated with OneHeart Productions, the first as Luna, in the non-speaking role in "Lunas Armband" in Berlin (2010), while presenting her own conceptual dance theater work, "A Symbolic Improvisation" with members of the New York and Berlin casts. She conceived and wrote "Charlotte's Song" for the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center's Little Theater (2012) and was resident choreographer for the New York based production of "Breaking the Silence" at the Edinburgh Festival (2013). Nancy is thrilled about this workshop Spanish-language production of "Charlotte's Song." She writes: "It goes without saying that this is extremely meaningful to me, and I am very happy that my story can be shared with the Spanish-speaking community in New York."
Andreas Robertz (Director) is Artistic Director of OneHeart Productions and a freelance director and producer working in both Germany and NYC. He last directed "Negative is Positive" at Theater for the New City in November 2014. Other plays he has directed in New York include "Deceit," "The Love of Brothers," "The Boxer's Son," and a workshop production of "Birmingham Reunion." He has collaborated with the Immigrants' Theatre Project, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Around the Block and the
Martin E. Segal Theatre. Andreas has received numerous directing awards and nominations in Germany, including the 2006 Cologne City Award for "The Pillowman." He co-directs the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre's Playwrights' Unit and is a member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab network.
La Nueva Ola eLetter
A.B. Lugo & Manny Alfaro, Editors
published by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors
107 Suffolk Street, 302, New York, NY 10002
212-253-1015;
holagram@hellohola.org;
http://www.hellohola.org
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