Gas & Electric Arts Remounts Anna Bella Eema

Anna Bella Eema is a trailer-park odyssey about a precocious 10-year-old girl and her mother who live on the edge of extinction. As her home is threatened so a city can expand, Anna Bella breathes life into a girl made out of mud who catapults them onto a pulse-quickening rollercoaster ride filled with vampires, wild animals and police chases. Crackling with the heat of the mother/daughter bond, this family's secrets and deepest instincts vividly remind us not only of how many in America are mistreated, silenced, and forgotten but also the tremendous power of their inner resources and resiliency.

At Gas & Electric Arts, the ordinary and the extraordinary fluidly mingle. In our productions, we strive to make the invisible visible through provocative, evocative physicality and vocal exploration. The three actors in our newly imagined production of Anna Bella Eema will draw you deeply under their spell simply using their bodies, voices and an array of found objects, slipping back and forth from D'Amour's magical text into singing a hauntingly beautiful a cappella score by Chris Sidorfsky. Catch this new production of Gas & Electric Arts' underground sensation of 2005, re-imagined and enriched for 2008.

September 23 - October 11, 2008 Mainstage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street in Philadelphia.

For tickets and info visit www.GasAndElectricArts.org or call 215.407.0556. Tickets are $20, $15 for students.

Obie-award winning playwright Lisa D'Amour has been called "one of the most articulate explorers of the human experience" (Austin Chronicle). This production of Anna Bella Eema typifies Gas & Electric Arts' commitment to creating thrilling, unexpected theatre that weaves together innovative text with highly refined movement, voice and music to create aesthetically rich productions, penned by playwrights on the cutting edge of American playwriting not normally seen or heard on Philadelphia stages.

Anna Bella Eema has been an underground sensation since Gas & Electric Arts first presented it in October of 2005. At that time, The Philadelphia City Paper exclaimed "What a debut...full of theatrical pleasures." Describing it as a "Powered Play," in which "The three actors sit (or jump or rock or stand or climb) on red kitchen chairs, using a variety of domestic objects to create an astonishing variety of sound effects. They sing, separately or harmonically, in eerie, lovely, melodic voices, advancing the plot with lyrics. They speak, too, in a variety of voices-some funny, some scary, some sweet." This description is not surprising as Gas & Electric Arts' intrepid performance style is an athletic task for the actors' bodies, voices, imagination, heart and the senses. Our type of acting leaves quotidian expression behind as the actors devise vivid, extraordinary forms for their bodies; they become instruments of passion, resonators of our time. For each Gas & Electric Arts production, artistic director Lisa Jo Epstein devotes several weeks to training the cast in rigorous movement and vocal techniques, exploring the plasticity of the body and the voice so that the actors can write with their bodies in space, physicalize and sound emotions, inhabit a character's many states of being, express the invisible movements of the soul and mind; in sum, they learn how to develop vibrant, theatrical bodies. Then, as an ensemble, in the remaining six weeks of rehearsal, together they seek what is most alive on stage and collectively create precise physical and vocal scores to transform the play into a theatrical experience that will take the audience on a journey that activates their minds and stimulates their imagination, that makes us think and want to know more.

Now in its fourth season, Gas and Electric Arts presents a newly re-imagined production directed by Lisa Jo Epstein. The 2008 cast will feature Elena Bossler, Kate DeRosa and Kristie Lang. Lighting will be designed by Gas & Electric Arts' resident lighting designer James Clotfelter (Miro Dance, Rennie Harris, Pig Iron), with a set design by Matt Saunders (New Paradise Laboratory, Haas Emerging Artist winner, renowned local set designer and actor) in his first collaboration with Gas & Electric Arts, and costumes by Susan Smythe (Mum, InterAct, et al) returning to work with us after designing the original costumes for the 2005 production.

"Lisa D'Amour packs her script with electrifying musicality, invigorating literary eclecticism, smart flashes of humor, intimate insights and genuine suspense." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Interwoven tales that are comical, surreally frightening, even mesmerizing." -- San Francisco Examiner

Lisa D'Amour is an Obie-award winning playwright, performer, and former Carnival Queen from New Orleans who now resides in Brooklyn, NY. American Theatre Magazine describes D'Amour's theatrical sensibility as "uninhibited, intensely visual and unapologetically ritualistic" which is what drew Gas & Electric Arts to her work. Says D'Amour, "There's something about the ritual of the moment. I insist on dealing in a concrete, tactile way with the magic reality of performer and audience living and breathing in the same room." She has received multiple fellowships and grants including 2005/6 Playwrights' Residency from TCG to write Hide Town which premiered at Infernal Bridegroom Productions (Houston, 2006). Lisa received her M.F.A. in playwriting from UT Austin. She is a core member of the Playwrights' Center, a former resident artist at HERE and a recent alumna of New Dramatists. Her play Anna Bella Eema has been performed to great acclaim in Austin, New York, Minneapolis and most recently in San Francisco by The Crowded Fire Theater Company where it received three 2007 year-end Top Ten Lists, including The San Francisco Chronicle.

Gas & Electric Arts was founded in 2005 by Lisa Jo Epstein and David J. Brown. Our purpose is to lead audiences to experiences that shimmer with theatricality and shiver with social reality. In our work, we are passionately committed to corporeal, visual, vocal and spatial investigation, fusing the richly textured language of risk-taking playwrights with a physically rigorous performance style and compelling stage imagery. Together, we hope they offer a great sense of play which unshackle our imaginations and renew our perceptions of the exquisiteness of being alive and of our mortality, the necessity of empathy and the imperative to live responsibly.

Through our productions, we are instrumental in introducing Philadelphia to exemplary, nationally-recognized women playwrights who are boldly redefining American theatre. These are playwrights who are in love with the art of theatre as a way to respond to the ever-shifting cultural and political landscapes that comprise our lives. Their plays lead us to unchartered theatrical territories and enable us to make total, fresh theatre whose images and stories linger long after the show is over.

Productions include: Anna Bella Eema by Lisa d'Amour (2005), Voices Underwater by Abi Basch (2006), Quick Silver by Kira Obolensky (2007) and O Yes I Will (I Will Remember the Spirit and Texture of this Conversation) by Deb Margolin (Spring 2008), Cabinet of Wonders (world premiere) by Kira Obolensky (Fall 2009).

The Cast of Anna Bella Eema 2008

Elena Bossler | Anna Bella

Elena is a very recent graduate of Temple University's Theatre program where she was last seen as Amalia in "Darker Face of the Earth". Last winter she toured a one-woman show Anatomy Lesson in Northern India with the Alliance Francaise de Delhi courtesy of the Hutton Memorial Award. She is pleased to have worked with the People's Light and Theatre Company, Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Wilma (PYP), Lantern (studio), Hedgerow, and the Philadelphia Young Playwrights.

Kristie J. Lang | Irene

Kristie completed theatre studies at Kalamazoo College, BESG in Cambridge, England and the Moscow Art Theatre. She has performed as an actor/educator for Great Lakes Theater Festival, Magical Theatre Company and the Cleveland Municipal School District. Kristie's Philadelphia credits include: The Blue Room at Allen's Lane directed by Kate Galvin and the 2001 Fringe Festival in The Hidden Twin, an original work created with the Cleveland based group Wishhounds.

Kate DeRosa | Anna Bella Eema

Kate is a graduate of the University of the Arts. She has also studied the Lecoq pedagogy at Naropa University and Balinese dance and shadow puppetry through the Dell'Arte School Abroad Program in Bali. Kate has worked with local companies including McCarter Theatre Center's Educational Touring Company, Mum Puppet Theatre, Enchantment Theatre Company, Theatre Horizon, and Tribe of Fools with which she last performed Echo in the 2007 Philly Fringe.

 

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