AN INTERPRETATION OF ANNA To Be Presented At The Neurodivergent New Play Series This June

This June, the Neurodivergent New Play Series - an ongoing production of Piccione Arts curated by spit&vigor - will conclude its 2023-24 Season with a staged reading of An Interpretation of Anna - written by Natalie Sacks & directed by Ash Singer - at spit&vigor's black box theater, located at 115 MacDougal Street, 3C, New York, NY on June 16th at 2pm EST.

Tickets are available at www.spitnvigor.com/neurodivergent-plays, with a minimum $15 donation for limited in-person seating & pay-what-you-can for at-home for at-home livestreaming up to two weeks after the live performance. Regular updates are available at www.linktr.ee/neurodivergentplays and on Instagram & Facebook @neurodivergentplays.

An Interpretation of Anna tells the story of Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter and a psychoanalyst in her own right. She finds her world turned upside down when heiress Dorothy Burlingham arrives in Vienna and requests that she treat her children. Together, the women found a school, fall in love, build a family together, and work to protect the Freuds from the encroaching threat of antisemitism coming out of interwar Germany.

“I've known about Anna Freud's role in helping her father Sigmund flee the Holocaust for a while,” says playwright Natalie Sacks. “[B]ut what convinced me that now was the time to explore her history more fully was the immense increase in antisemitic violence across this country in recent years. And as I read more and more, I kept encountering moments so theatrical, they needed to be in a play. From the family's many near escapes from the Nazis to Anna's unlikely life partnership with an American heiress, I wanted to understand the story of how this extraordinary woman came to be.” Director Ash Singer adds that “[t]he play is about an unknown woman living in the shadow of an extremely well known man [and] I wanted to help put her in the spotlight. And that for a play about a family known for their brains, these characters continue to explore the parts of their hearts."

On the topic of empowering neurodivergent artists, Ms. Sacks says that “neurodivergent empowerment means doing your part to make these ideals closer to becoming a reality, not just for the “low support needs” or “normal-looking” among us but for us all,” with Ms. Singer adding that “[the] status quo can never quite understand a new way of thinking unless it embraces it without trying to see how it fits. I personally know what it's like to feel like parts of you may feel so distant and different from others, but it is those qualities that are special”

Founded in 2023 by award-winning autistic playwright and producer Anthony J. Piccione, the Neurodivergent New Play Series is dedicated to presenting matinee readings on the 3rd Sunday of every month - with seasonal breaks in December, January, July, and August - of plays written entirely by neurodivergent and disabled playwrights (i.e. autism, ADHD, dyslexia, OCD, Tourette syndrome, etc.) as part of a growing resident company of playwrights whose interests and specialties span a wide range of subjects, genres & structural approaches, with each play personally selected from a neuroinclusive resident company of directors. Learn more at www.linktr.ee/neurodivergentplays or by following @neurodivergentplays on Instagram and Facebook.

The Neurodivergent New Play Series is a curated production of spit&vigor. Founded in 2015, spit&vigor is a non-profit theater company devoted to the development of new plays and spirited, innovative productions of existing work. Their small roster of productions has been award winning and critically acclaimed, praised as “darkly humorous, deliciously ghoulish”, “wrenching and visually eloquent”, "irresistibly dramatic" and "legitimately upsetting" by the New York Times. In collaboration with theater company Theatre4thePeople, spit&vigor was the recipient of the 2015 New York Innovative Theater Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play Award for their very first production in a historic chapel at The West Park Presbyterian Church, which included an Artist Support Grant from the Donn Russell Fund. spit&vigor has since gone on to earn The Players Theater Off-Broadway Artistic Residency, The Center at West Park's Artist Residency, IRT's 3B Residency, The Davenport space grant, and The Times Center space grant.

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