For immediate release,
Contact: Jane McNulty, 504-931-8297 or silkdressproductions@gmail.com
Tiny Alice, Albee’s Enigmatic Goddess,
Returns to New Orleans
What: Tiny Alice by Edward Albee
Press photo attached
Who: Silk Dress Productions featuring an ensemble cast of New Orleans
favorites- Bob Edes Jr. as Cardinal, Scott Jefferson as Lawyer, Ross Britz as
Julian, Doug Barden as Butler, and Jennifer Growden as Miss Alice. Directed
by George Patterson.
Where: Mid-City Theater, 3540 Toulouse Street, New Orleans, LA (between
N. Cortez and Jeff Davis Pkwy, just behind the American Can Company.
There is a cash bar, and free parking all around the theater!)
When: January 12- 28, 2012, Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm.
How: $15 Thursdays, $22 Fridays & Saturdays. Call Su Gonczy at 504-4881460 to make reservations.
New Orleans, La – Silk Dress Productions concludes The Albee Project with
Albee’s Tiny Alice, only the second New Orleans performance of this
infamous play in over 40 years. Tiny Alice runs January 12 through 28,
Thursdays through Saturdays. George Patterson directs "one of Albee's most
endlessly fascinating creations" (Variety), a tantalizing puzzle that is "tightly
constructed, elegantly written and (most surprisingly) defiantly funny" (The
New York Times). An incredible ensemble cast comes together to present
this psycho-spiritual mystery play.
When Brother Julian agrees to visit the Church's mysterious benefactress
Miss Alice in her sepulchral mansion, he finds himself a pawn lost in her
labyrinthine world of aggressive consorts, children's games and seething
passions. Theatrically innovative, this rarely produced play first challenged
audiences with its premiere in the late 60s, posing questions that far
outpaced its time. Albee's infamous and lacerating treatise examines man's
relationship with God and the serpentine way it is negotiated with an
exchange of love, money, power, and sometimes, your life.
Silk Dress Productions’ presentation of Tiny Alice will be the second in New
Orleans in more than 40 years by the same director, George Patterson. He
first visited this metaphysical conundrum in 1968 at the Gallery Circle
Theater. When asked why this play has such appeal, Patterson points to the
abiding nature of man’s quest to understand God and his place in the
universe.
When Tiny Alice first opened to audiences in New York in 1964, the play
immediately sparked passionate controversy and debate that was played out
almost daily in newspapers and magazines. Critics and viewers demanded to
know what the play meant. Albee claimed in a press conference, and in his
Author’s Note when the text was published in 1965, that the play was quite
clear, even simple, and thus did not need his explaination. Despite Albee’s
assertions, people continued to have a hard time deciphering the play, in
which characters are symbols, words and actions have multiple dimensions,
and religious expression mixes with sexual fantasy.
“This play gets under your skin because it uses archetypal imagery to probe
deeply into our questions of who we are and why we are here. It doesn’t
give you any answers but throughout The Albee Project we’ve been about
finding the divinity in Albee’s thorny presentation of women. The destructive
and simultaneously nurturing force that is Alice is the most challenging of
these goddesses for me,” says Artistic Director and actress, Jennifer
Growden.
Laden with verbal and visual metaphors, vintage costumes by Veronica
Russell, set design by Sean Creel, and Su Gonczy’s pyrotechnics Tiny Alice is
sure to be a night of top quality theater at the city’s great new theatrical
venue.
Bios:
George Patterson’s over 50 year theatre career has taken him from
Monroe, Louisiana to New Orleans to Boston to D.C. to NYC and right back
again to New Orleans where for the past 25 years he produced, with his
recently deceased life partner, Mickey Gil, and directed many plays and
musicals as benefits for either the Krewe of Petronius or the Krewe of
Satyricon. The Boys in the Band, How I Learned to Drive, both Charles
Ludlam’s Camille and his Bluebeard, and Full Gallop, are but a few of
these productions. Through his Cabaret Company he produced and directed
The Fantastiks, Speed-The-Plow, Shirley Valentine, Ludlam’s Reverse
Psychology, The Gifts of the Magi, Talking Heads and The Sophie
Tucker Show with Special Guest Jimmy Durante. George wishes to
thank Jennifer Growden and Silk Dress Productions for this opportunity to
reprise the directorship of the second New Orleans production of Tiny Alice,
having directed the original New Orleans production in 1968 at Gallery Circle
Theatre.
Jennifer Growden has been appearing onstage since she won a Good
Housekeeping baby contest while still in diapers. She grew up moving
frequently with her military family and settled in New Orleans post-Katrina
with her husband, Stephen Haedicke and their pack of rescued dogs. Her
local performances include Uncle Vanya, I Want Sex All of the Time, A
Crude Trilogy, and The Third Degrees of J.O. Breeze. Over the last
year she has ventured into the production end of theater: producing, acting
and directing The Albee Project through her company Silk Dress
Productions. The overarching goal in the project has been to use wellknown works to grapple with archetypal personalities and their quest for
love and fulfillment. In January of 2011 she produced and appeared onstage
as "C" in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women. In May she directed and
produced Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The current production of Tiny
Alice marks the culmination of four years intense effort to bring this piece
back to New Orleans and she wishes to thank everyone who has helped
along the way. In the future, she hopes to use Silk Dress to promote
collaborative theater projects that bring light to the myriad of roles women
play in modern society.
Scott Michael Jefferson has played a number of roles in New Orleans
theatre. Chekhov roles include Vasily Vasilyich Svetlovidov in Swan
Song, Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov, in The Bear, and Stepan Stepanovich
Chubukov in The Marriage Proposal, all under the direction of Natasha
Ramer. His Shakespeare roles include Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Lear
in King Lear, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, and Bottom in
Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the Tennessee Williams Festival in New
Orleans he has portrayed John Buchanan Jr. in Williams’ Summer and
Smoke, Boss Finley in Sweet Bird of Youth, Dr. Cukrowicz in Suddenly
Last Summer as well as other roles. He won the Big Easy Award for his
portrayal of Hickey in O’Neil’s The Iceman Cometh. He was also in Three
Hotels as Kenneth Hoyle, A Walk in the Woods as Honeyman (Big Easy
Award for Best Drama) and Captain Ahab in the stage adaptation of Moby
Dick. No stranger to historical roles Jefferson has portrayed Tennessee
Williams in David Cuthbert’s A More Congenial Climate and Lyle Saxon in
Robert Kornfeld’s one man show Father New Orleans, and Anton Chekhov
in I Take Your Hand in Mine. He has also appeared in other plays, films
and commercials. Scott is a Member of Actor’s Equity Association, the Union
of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.
Doug Barden is very happy to be working with Su Gonczy at the new MidCity Theatre. In 2010 Doug appeared as Henry, the Old Actor, in the JPAS
production of The Fantasticks in Westwego. Other shows in New Orleans
include Small Craft Warnings at Le Chat Noir, Tiger Tail at Le Petit,
Psychopathia Sexualis at the CAC, It’s a Wonderful Life at The
Orpheum Theater, Filumena at Carlone’s Dinner Theater, Playboy of the
Western World at Southern Rep, Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet
at the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane, and staged readings of Confederacy
of Dunces at Le Petit. Doug spent 28 years as a working actor in New York
City before retiring to New Orleans in 1996. He toured in the national
companies of Grease in 1976 and Satcho in 1984. He appeared OffBroadway in Surf City, the Beach Boys musical, as well as The Diary of
Anne Frank, Cyrano de Bergerac, Night Must Fall, and The School for
Wives. Dinner theater performances include FDR in Annie, Will Rogers in
The Ziegfeld Follies, and Scapino in Scapino.