THE LOST LESSON
By Joan Marie Moossy

Directed by Ivana Catanese
Designed by Maria Pessino
At Karyn Mannix Contemporary, Southampton, NY, 2010

ABOUT THE PLAY

The play, conceived by Maria Pessino and Joan Maria Moossy, written by Joan Marie Moossy, is aone-woman tragi-comic monologue featuring the historic Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira, a pro-sex, anarchist girl-genius of the 1920’s and 30’s Spain, delivering her lesson on sexuality for young girls, along with a running commentary on her troubled life and times, her deranged mother, the pro-sex intellectuals of her day, her fascist political nemesis, and her idealistic vision for a future of freedom, equality, and world peace. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joan Marie Moossy is a writer, filmmaker, and actress. Her work has appeared in publications like Penthouse Magazine, Por Esto!, In These Times, and The FLING. 

She co-hosts “Let Them Talk”, a cable TV talk show, and produces “Miss Moossy’s Modern Movies”, a series of short comedic films. 

She has worked with Ethyl Eichelberger, Paul DeRienzo, Mark Eisenstein, Mr Fashion, Penny Arcade, Jazzmyn Banks, and Cleopatra’s Bridget Donahue, Bridget Finn, Kate McNamara, and Erin Somerville.

DIRECTOR

Ivana Catanese has choreographed several Oddfellows Playhouse productions: “One Thousand Avant Garde Plays” by Kenneth Koch at Guild Hall, “Systole and Diastole” and “Your Wait in Gold” by Maria Pessino at the Long House Gardens and “RRR” by Maria Pessino at Benson & Keys Gallery. 

After graduating from UNC, in Mendoza, Argentina she founded the Alvarez-Catanese-Ponce company, whose adaptation of Sartre’s “No Exit” (A Puerta Cerrada) toured to the New Trends Festival in Buenos Aires and to the Casa de las Americas Festival in Havana, Cuba. From 2000-2007 she worked at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, where she co-founded The South Wing Theatre Company (TSW) and has since acted, produced, written and directed on the company’s works in Europe, the Americas and Japan. In April 2011 she will present her adaptation of Kobo Abe’s Secret Rendezvous at HERE Arts Center, NYC. www.thesouthwing.org. 


LIGHTING DESIGN

Kameron Steele’s previous design work with Oddfellows Playhouse includes: “One Thousand Avant Garde Plays” at Guild Hall and “Your Wait in Gold” by Maria Pessino at the Long House Gardens. Since 1990, Kameron Steele has worked as an actor, director and designer, most notably with Robert Wilson and Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki at the Lincoln Center Festival, Bam Next Wave and various other festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

At the Watermill Center in 2000 he started The South Wing Theatre Company with Ivana Catanese, and has since presented works in NYC at HERE, PS122, The Public, LMCC, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and Japan Society. Kameron is a graduate of Northwestern University.

CAST

Maria Pessino (Performer/Set Designer) was born in Cuba in 1957.

She left Cuba as a young child, grew up and was educated in Europe. She has been living in East Hampton, New York, since 1990, with her children.

She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Oddfellows Playhouse, a not-for-profit artist’s theater company, which instigates new work and uses alternative indoor and outdoor stages throughout many locations in the Hamptons.

In the past thirty years, he has played numerous roles in many theater productions in New York City and in the Hamptons as well as directing the varied productions of Oddfellows Playhouse.

She is founder and honorary co-chair of the Community Board of Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center.

In addition to developing theater works, Maria Pessino constructs magic environments inside boxes –Troves-, shown in numerous galleries of the Hamptons.

She holds a Bachelors Degree of Arts from New York University in Drama Therapy and Psychodrama.

PRESS

Performance piece by Maria Pessino at Karyn Mannix gallery
The East Hampton Press and The Southampton Press - July 13, 2010
Pat Rogers
view article (pdf)

RESTRICTION, RESTRAINT AND RELEASE

At Benson-Keyes Art,
In Southampton, NY
2009

Restriction, Restraint and Release, is collaborative piece conceived, directed and designed by Maria Pessino and choreographed by Ivana Catanese.

A kinetic theatrical exploration on the themes of Restriction, Restraint and Release to accompany a series of Troves on the same theme, exhibited at the same time.

Texts by Henri Bataille, Antonin Artaud.

Music by Katie Down, Kevin Steele and Hawai’ian Garbage

CAST

Lisa Cory, Anna Gheesling, Barbara Groot, Alberto Herszage, Maria Pessino, Evan Thomas, Susan Blacklocke, Dea Million, Samantha Ruddock

SYSTOLE AND DIASTOLE

At the Long House Gardens Foundation in East Hampton, NY (2004)

A site-specific collaborative theater piece, conceived, designed and directed by Maria Pessino, on the themes of the Minoan Myths of the Labyrinth.

Texts by Borges, Samuel Beckett and Maria Pessino

Music by Patrick Grant 

Costume design by Carlos Soto

PATRICK GRANT (Composer) 

Patrick Grant is a composer/performer living in New York City and creates music for a wide range of media. A native of Detroit, MI (aka Motown), he moved to NYC in the mid-80s where he studied at the Juilliard School, worked on John Cage’s production team, and produced his first recordings at Philip Glass’ studio.

CARLOS SOTO (Costume Design)

Having withdrawn from studies in Art History and Literature at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, Soto entered on a long-term collaboration with director and artist Robert Wilson, with whom he has worked since 1997 as a performer, designer and assistant. Dissatisfied with formal education, he embarked on a mission of self-guided artistic practice, collaborating with artists spanning theatre, dance and contemporary art, presenting work at the Guggenheim Museum, Wiener Festwochen, Walker Art Center, Whitney Biennial, Staatsoper Unter Den Linden, Joyce SoHo, HERE Arts Center, Kampnagel Kulturfabrik, etc.

CAST

Jacqui Leader, Elaine Grove, Evan Thomas, Camille Hollander, Debbie Klighers, Suynan Rudick, Nixon Beltran, Janice Bishop, Clifton Nordemeier, Mickay Mc Cay, Ashely Freesa, Rachel Haab, Dezary Klughers, Sadie Klueghers, Sky Marilgold, Gabrielle Raacke, Tomas Majerski, Nasimi Massi, Rebecca Massi.

ONE THOUSAND AVANT GARDE PLAYS
By Kenneth Koch

Directed and designed by Maria Pessino
Music by Roger Trefousse
Art by Larry Rivers
Lighting Design by Kameron Steele
Co-choreography by Ivan Catanese

At Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY (2002)

ABOUT THE PLAY

“I’ve noticed when I go to the theatre, unless it’s something very great, that within one or two minutes in the theatre, I get it. I noticed, also on television, when there are a number of movies on, that I can switch from one channel to another and be in the middle of three different movies and in 30 seconds I could be laughing or crying at what I see, that a great deal of the plot is being communicated in an already ongoing piece, very quickly. I wanted to get that part of drama, that part of theatre, on stage at least into these texts.”

— Kenneth Koch

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Koch (27 February 1925 – 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry, a loose group of poets including Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery that eschewed contemporary introspective poetry in favor of an exuberant, cosmopolitan style that drew major inspiration from travel, painting, and music.

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR

While the world seems to ripping apart in anger, however, I have been given a golden chance to enter the lyrical garden of Kenneth Koch. In it, I have found the blossom of promises and delight, the hues of humor, the sting of passion and the scent of regret. I have had the honor of traveling toward the Triumph of Love, in the company of generous and talented artists, who have lit my path. I have harvested hours of exquisite human contradictions, which have endeared me further yet to the fragility and the humbleness of our existence. Kenneth Koch died of leukemia during this production of One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays on July 6th, 2002

— Maria Pessino, East Hampton, 2002

MUSIC

Roger Tréfousse writes a wide variety of music: film scores, operas and musicals, symphonic works and chamber music. Films include the HBO thriller Ladykiller and the PBS documentary, Jackson Pollock: Portrait. Television credits include The Guiding Light and As the World Turns (CBS). 

SCRIM PROJECTIONS

Larry Rivers is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, designer, actor and poet, and a leading figure in the revival of figurative art that a reaction against the dominance of Abstract Expressionism.  

LIGHTING DESIGN

Kameron Steele (Lighting Designer)

Previous design work with Oddfellows Playhouse for Your Wait in Gold (Long House). Since 1990, Kameron has worked as an actor, director and designer, most notably with Robert Wilson and Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki at the Lincoln Center Festival, Bam Next Wave and various other festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. At the Watermill Center in 2000 he started The South Wing Theatre Company with Ivana Catanese, and has since presented works in NYC at HERE, PS122, The Public, LMCC, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and Japan Society. Kameron is a graduate of Northwestern University. 

CO-CHOREOGRAPHER and ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR

Ivana Catanese (Director) 

Previously for Oddfellows Playhouse: Your Wait in Gold & Labyrinth (Long House) and RRR (Benson & Keys Gallery). After graduating from UNC, Mendoza, Argentina where she founded the alvarez-catanese-ponce company, whose adaptation of Sartre’s No Exit (A Puerta Cerrada) toured to the New Trends Festival in Buenos Aires and to the Casa de las Americas Festival in Havana, Cuba. From 2000-2007 she worked at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, where she co-founded The South Wing Theatre Company (TSW) and has since acted, produced, written and directed on the company’s works in Europe, the Americas and Japan. In April 2011 she will present her adaptation of Kobo Abe’s Secret Rendezvous at HERE Arts Center, NYC. www.thesouthwing.org

CAST

Janice Bishop, Rodrigo Cameron, Lydia Franco-Hodges, Diane Grotke, Tomas Majchersky, Skye Qi Marigold, Maria Pessino, Robert Salas, Ines Somellera, Evan Thomas

1000 AVANT GARDE PLAYS

by Kenneth Koch

The Watermill Center; Watermill New York (2001)

Directed and Designed by Maria Pessino

Phase I of 1000 Avant-Garde Plays

CAST

Evan Thomas, Jacqui Leader, Diane Grotke, Janice Bishop, Robert Sallas, Maria Pessino, Skye-Qi Marigold, Richard Driscoll, Eliza Foss

PRESS

Theatre Review: One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays
Dan's Papers - August 17, 2001
Marion Wolberg Weiss
view article (pdf)

DESIRE, CAUGHT BY THE TAIL

By Pablo Picasso

Staged reading at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center: Watermill, NY (2000)

Designed and Directed by Maria Pessino

ABOUT THE PLAY

The play is beyond criticism and likewise beyond those who seek more in it than a farcical creation of new objects and new relations. It does not invite comparison with Hamlet or Phedre, though it does with Ubu Roi. It says nothing of human destiny or the human condition. In an age which has discovered Man, it is gratifying to advise the reader that Picasso has nothing to say of man, nor or the universe. This in itself is a considerable achievement. In fact the characters are not even human. Nor, except for the Two Bow-wows, which articulate briefly, are they animal. This is a further achievement. The reader should note these matters.

— Bernard Frethman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pablo Picasso (1881-1899) was born in 1881 in Spain. His birth name is 23 words long; the family called him Ruiz, not Pablo, when he was a boy. In 1900 In 1900, Picasso changed his name from Ruiz to Pablo Picasso. He moved to Paris and strained his relationship with his parents by rejecting fine art styles in favor of new techniques. Picasso landed his first paid job, earning 150 francs each month for his paintings. Picasso wandered throughout Europe, a habit that he would continue for the rest of his life.

SELECTIONS FROM PICASSO’S STAGE DIRECTIONS

Act II
Scene I – A corridor in hotel Sordid. Shadows of monkeys eating carrots.
Scene II – All characters in bathtub filled with soapsuds in period costumes. Undertaker dumps actors in coffins and carries them off.

Act III
Scene II – Characters cut off big foots hair until bald. Whips of sun strike the actresses through venetian blinds. All actresses faint, covered in blood.

Act IV
Potatoes are heard, seen and smelled in boiling oil. Smoke of potatoes fills the theater to complete suffocation.

Act V
Tart pisses, farts and syphillises for a good fifteen minutes.

Act VI
In the sewer bedroom of the Anguishes. Actors, filthy dirty, get out of bed filled with French fried potatoes.

CAST

Scott Core, Larry Nathanson, Michael Citranini, Janice Bishop, Jacqui Leader, Dominique Hawksly, Eric Davies, Kristin Sinkel

PRESS

Review: Desire, Caught by the Tail
Dan's Papers - August 11, 2000
Marion Wolberg Weiss
view article (pdf)

frida @ Chiapas.net

By Ellen Frank and Maria Pessino

Directed and Designed by Maria Pessino

At the Watermill Center: Watermill, NY (1999)

ABOUT THE PLAY

A day in the death of Frida Kahlo.

frida @chiapas.net is about Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter born 1910 and died in 1954. This work is not about the Frida Kahlo we know, but about the one we suspect: her bearing in the world today and the durability of her determination. It is a distillation of her timber, a prodigious transit into the unknowable.

frida @ chiapas.net is about Subcomandante Marcos, Mexican warrior, leader of today’s zapatista army in Chiapas. This work is not about the Subcomandante Marcos we know, (through his internet communiqués), but about the one we suspect: his address to the world today and the endurance of his charge. It is the marrow of his substance, an intersection in time.

"Another Mexico?

Every Mexico.

I talk about something else, how other breezes begin to blow, how another wind is rising. Move-in, the feet that walk back and forth!

Allow us to blind the sun.

The devil is free. The macaw is in your pocket.

'A macaw is fire and a parrot dry wood. Along came the devil and told them they should.'

And soon one thing lead to another and this little egg that I now have in my hand is the endangered forbidden fruit of their illicit relation.

A coefficient of paintbrush and gun.

An alloy in orbit."

— Maria Pessino and Ellen Frank, Aug. 2002

ABOUT FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon in Coyoacan, Mexico, July 6th, 1907. She was one of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent. She did not originally plan to become an artist. A survivor of polio, she entered a pre-med program in Mexico City. At the age of 18, she was seriously injured in a bus accident. She spent over a year in bed recovering from fractures to her spine, collarbone and ribs, a shattered pelvis, and shoulder and foot injuries. She endured more than 30 operations in her lifetime and during her convalescence she began to paint. Her paintings, mostly self-portraits and still life, were deliberately naïve, and filled with the colors and forms of Mexican folk art. At 22 she married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, 20 years her senior. Their stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of careers, divorce, remarriage, Frida's bi-sexual affairs, her poor health and her inability to have children. Frida once said: "I suffered two grave accidents in my life…One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego." The streetcar accident left her crippled physically and Rivera crippled her emotionally.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Maria Pessino was born in Cuba in 1957. She left Cuba as a young child, grew up and was educated in Europe. She has been living in East Hampton, New York, since 1990, with her children. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Oddfellows Playhouse, a not-for-profit artist’s theater company, which instigates new work and uses alternative indoor and outdoor stages throughout many locations in the Hamptons. She is founder and honorary co-chair of the Community Board of Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. In addition to developing theater works, Maria Pessino constructs magic environments inside boxes –Troves– shown in numerous galleries of the Hamptons. She holds a Bachelors Degree of Arts from New York University in Drama Therapy and Psychodrama.

Artist and scholar Ellen Frank’s many awards in painting, book design and scholarship include a Fulbright Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Award in Painting, and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant. Ms. Frank holds an interdisciplinary doctorate from Stanford and Yale. In 2004 she founded ELLEN FRANK ILLUMINATION ARTS FOUNDATION, Inc. (EFIAF), a 501 (C) (3) non-profit organization. The global initiative to revitalize, create and exhibit the art of illumination, EFIAF applies historic and literary traditions to integrate art with social justice to build an international culture of understanding. Since 2005 Ms Frank has directed EFIAF’s Peace Education Program, the ILLUMINATION ATELIER, where she has worked with and united youth from more than 15 countries, artists and scholars to research and create its illuminations. The process and artistic products, the workshops, demonstrations, exhibitions and symposia, testify to the transformative power of the collaborative artistic experience to bring forth positive social changes.

Texts inclusions by Frida Kahlo, Subcommandant Marcos, Rigoberta Menchu, Jalalud’n Rumi, Federico Garcia Lorca, Sir Thomas Whyatt, Ellen Frank.

CAST

John Monteleone, Corina Katt Ayala, Don Williams, Onahua Rodriguez, David Conolly, Anne Scobie, Kate Mayfield, Rick Colitti, Hamilton de Oliveira, Louie Leonardo, Ana Lucero.

PRESS

Review: Frida Kahlo Plays at Robert Wilson's Center
Marion Wolberg Weiss
view article (pdf)

LOVE PUZZLES

By Marjorie Appleman
At the Oddfellows Hall in East Hampton, NY (1994)
Directed and Designed by Maria Pessino

ABOUT THE PLAY

Three short plays about love’s mysteries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marjorie Appleman's poems have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies, and her volume of poetry, Against Time, was published by the Birnham Wood Press. She is also a much produced playwright, with over sixty productions from coast to coast and abroad.

CAST

Jacqui Leader, Evan Thomas, Matt Savage, Lisa Batcho, Christine Murphy and Mathew Conlon

CREW

Richard Ney _ Lighting

Andrea Gross - Stage manager

John S Maddox – Managing Director

Tony Finstrom - Production Assistant

PRESS

Review: Love Puzzles
Dan's Papers - September 4, 1992
Ellen Keiser
view article (pdf)

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY AT THE CLAIR DE LUNE

By Terence Mc Nally

Directed and Designed by Maria Pessino

At Renee Fotouhi Fine Arts East: East Hampton, NY (1996)

ABOUT THE PLAY

The play focuses on two lonely, middle-aged people whose first date ends with them tumbling into bed. Johnny is certain he has found his soul mate in Frankie. She, on the other hand, is far more cautious and disinclined to jump to conclusions. As the night unfolds, they slowly begin to reveal themselves to each other as they take tentative steps towards the possible start of a new relationship. The reference to "Clair de Lune" in the title refers to a piece of music by Debussy, the third movement of the Suite bergamasque, which is a key plot element.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Terrence McNally (born 3 November 1939) is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served vice-president since 1981. 

CAST

Andrea Gross and John Monteleone

Frankie and Johnny Connect
The East Hampton Independent - August 17, 1994
Bridget LeRoy
view article (pdf)

Apple Pie in Hell's Kitchen
The East Hampton Star - August 18, 1994
Patsy Southgate
view article (pdf)

"Frankie and Johnny": McNally Play at a Gallery Pointed, Touching Delight
The Southampton Press - August 18, 1994
Lee Davis
view article (pdf)

THE BALTIMORE WALTZ

by Paula Vogel

At Arlene Bujese Gallery in East Hampton, NY (1995)

Directed and Designed by Maria Pessino

ABOUT THE PLAY

The Baltimore Waltz is a play by Paula Vogel. Essentially a series of comic vignettes underlined by tragedy, the farce traces the European odyssey of sister and brother Anna and Carl, in search of hedonistic pleasure and a cure for her terminal illness, the fictitious ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease) she contracted by using the bathrooms at the elementary school where she teaches.

Knowing her life is nearing its end, Anna is driven by a lust that compels her to have casual sex with as many men as possible during their travels, a passion shared by her gay brother. Assisting the pair is the mysterious Third Man, a reference to the classic suspense film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, to which Vogel frequently alludes in detail.

The play was Vogel's response to the 1988 death of her brother Carl, who died from complications due to AIDS before they were able to enjoy a long planned European vacation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A productive playwright since the late 1970s, Vogel first came to national prominence with her AIDS-related seriocomedy The Baltimore Waltz, which won the Obie award for Best Play in 1992. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned To Drive (1997), which examines the impact and echoes of child sexual abuse and incest. Other notable plays include Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief (1979); The Oldest Profession (1981); And Baby Makes Seven (1984); "Hot 'N Throbbing" (1994); and The Mineola Twins (1996).

Although no particular theme or topic dominates her work, she often examines traditionally controversial issues such as sexual abuse, and prostitution. Asserting that she "writes the play backwards," moving from emotional circumstances and character to craft narrative structure, Vogel says, "My writing isn't actually guided by issues ... I only write about things that directly impact my life." Vogel's family, especially her late brother Carl Vogel, serves as an influence to her writings. Carl's likeness appears in such plays as The Long Christmas Ride Home (2003), The Baltimore Waltz, and And Baby Makes Seven.

CAST

Diane Grotke, Lane Luckart and James Walsh

CREW

Elisabeth Willoughby – Stage Manager, Lights operator

Odd Fellows' Labor Of Love at Bujese
The East Hampton Independent - August 2, 1995
Roger Ziegler
view article (pdf)

Stage Write: The Baltimore Waltz
The East Hampton Independent - August 9, 1995
Bridget LeRoy
view article (pdf)

Reviews: A Dreamy, Surreal Dance With Death
Newsday - August 11, 1995
Steve Parks
view article (pdf)

"Baltimore Waltz" Confusion, Rewards
The Southampton Press
Steve Parks
view article (pdf)