James Clements' BEAUTY FREAK to be Presented at BorderLight Festival

What Will the Neighbors Say? has announced that Co-Artistic Director James Clements' play, "Beauty Freak," has been curated to be presented as a digital reading at the BorderLight Festival in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2021. The play, which examines the complex and controversial life and legacy of the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, has been developed by the WWTNS? team over the three years, and this reading will be presented with the support of an A.R.T./New York Creative Space Grant and funding from the Indie Theatre Fund's Urgency Grant. The readings will be available online July 22nd-31st 2021. Tickets and further information are available at www.borderlightcle.org or by visiting www.wwtns.org.

Clements' "Beauty Freak" explores the creation of art as propaganda and questions the culpability of the artist in how their work is consumed. This challenging piece puts on stage the hatred and hypocrisy at the core of the Nazi regime, and places a magnifying glass over Riefenstahl's unique life. The play was researched at the Imperial War Museum and BFI archives in London, the Museum für Fotografie and Film University Babelsberg in Berlin and at USC in Los Angeles. It was developed at the Berliner Schule Für Schauspiel, and again at a workshop presentation that was produced by WWTNS? at the Plaxall Gallery in New York in 2018 in association with LIC-Artists. Clements also directed this reading, featuring Ana Cristina DaSilva, Sam Hood Adrain, Derya Celikkol, Beatriz Miranda, Thalia Romina, Max Beckman, Wes van Schaik and Abram Blau. WWTNS? Resident Artist Pablo Caldéron-Santiago is the Director of Photography.

"Beauty Freak" continues Clements' trajectory as a playwright and director who works to recontextualize complex, historically misrepresented or misunderstood figures, from Princess Diana ("The Diana Tapes") to the Romanovs ("Four Sisters") to Britney Spears ("MEDEA/BRITNEY") to Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary"). "I am thrilled to be returning to this challenging and prescient text, which asks difficult but necessary questions, at this wonderful festival," said Clements. "I hope it provokes necessary conversations."

Founded in 2015, BorderLight's mission is to present visionary international and contemporary fringe theatre and build cross-cultural understanding. The BorderLight Festival returns July 22-31, 2021 as a remote-access event featuring over 30 interactive live streamed and on-demand virtual works, as well as site-specific, outdoor audio experiences from local and international companies.

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