INTERVIEW: Talking Band is back with ‘Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless’
Photo: Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is set to premiere at La MaMa. Photo courtesy of Craig Lowy / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
Billed as a celebration of older women, Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless is set to premiere March 11 at La MaMa in New York City. The production comes courtesy of the Talking Band theater company, featuring the work of playwright and composer Ellen Maddow, director Paul Zimet, and choreographer Sean Donovan. Performances continue through March 27.
The premise for Lemon Girls finds four longtime friends getting together for a performance at a local community center. At first they don’t take the opportunity that seriously, but eventually — through dance, song and storytelling — they reveal themselves and the experiences they have had throughout life. The cast consists of Maddow, Patrena Murray, Lizzie Olesker, Tina Shepard, Louise Smith and Jack Wetherall.
Talking Band has been going strong for nearly 50 years, with more than 50 new works to its name. Maddow is a founding member, and her previous work includes everything from Fusiform Gyrus — A Septet For Two Scientists and Five Horn to Fat Skirt Big Nozzle to Burnished by Brief. Recently she exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audiences expect from Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless?
This piece is a comedic celebration of older women and those who will one day become older women — our surprising histories, our engagement, our complex intelligence, our nourishing friendships, and our minds still hungry for challenge and novelty.
It is the story of four female friends in their 70s who are roped into creating a performance at the local recreation center. At first, we see them as a bunch of empty shell old ladies, cranky about anything new, dull, annoying, and almost obliterated by the younger people who have overrun their world. But as they embark on their new performance adventure — creating dances, singing songs, telling nested stories — they reveal their singular histories, complex relationships, surprising professions, unusual interests and unorthodox world views.
How is the piece a “celebration of older women”?
For the last several years, I have participated in a movement/dance class for older people at my local recreation center. There [is] a wide variety of people in this class — among them a professor of Medieval studies, a Puerto Rican janitor, a retired kindergarten teacher, a chemist who loves to dabble in the stock market, a psychoanalyst who helps victims of mass shootings and terrorist attacks. We compose and perform short improvised pieces for each other. There is strong concentration, exuberance and honesty in these small performances, which I find evocative and theatrical, so I decided to interview people from this movement class.These interviews became the inspiration for the characters in the play.
Older people are full of contradictions between the inside and the outside. They are like geodes — dusty looking rocks that when you crack them open reveal intricate masses of sparkling crystals — or pomegranates, dull and leathery on the outside but filled with voluptuous bunches of red seeds inside.
What’s your collaboration like with director Paul Zimet?
Paul and I are founding members of Talking Band and have been collaborating on theatre pieces for almost 50 years. Before that we were members of the Open Theatre. We are also married and have two children and two grandchildren. People sometimes ask if it feels strange to be making art with your partner, but for us it is rewarding, inspiring and an invaluable part of our life together. At the moment we are collaborating with [a] younger married couple who also make work together — Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone of the acclaimed theatre company, 600 Highwaymen. They are writing a play — The Following Evening — that the four of us will perform together. It will premiere in 2023.
What’s your proudest achievement with Talking Band?
Our longevity and ability to transform. We have been creating work since 1973 and have produced over 50 new works for the theatre. As a company we take pleasure in challenging ourselves — always asking what kind of theater do we want make, and are therefore always trying new approaches and seeking new collaborations. At the same time, we build on shared skills and knowledge that we have accumulated together over a long time.
When we were in our 20s we used to go out late at night with posters and a bucket of glue. This was the only way to advertise in a world with no social media. One night I turned to Paul and asked him if he thought we would still be slopping wallpaper paste on walls when we were 60. We are now in our 70s, and even though the late night postering days are over, we are still making work together.
How did the pandemic disrupt plans for Talking Band?
At the beginning of the pandemic we had several exciting projects in the pipeline: Lone Shark, a site-specific work that was a co-production with the Coney Island Aquarium, Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless — scheduled to premiere at La MaMa in 2021, and The Following Evening, a commission for the theatre company 600 Highwaymen.
Lone Shark had to be canceled when the aquarium closed. The Following Evening moved to extensive workshops on Zoom, and Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless was rescheduled for 2022.
In the meantime we tried to keep busy and stay creative. I wrote a serial audio play, Efflorescence , which is a prequel to Lemon Girls. It is a seven-episode story with 14 songs. Producing it gave us a chance to work intensively with our beloved collaborators, as well as some new folks, like Tyler Keiffer, who is now the sound designer for Lemon Girls. We created the piece remotely — the performers were in five different cities — overcoming technical problems like the lag when singing or playing instruments. Telling a story with audio required meticulous attention and was very gratifying. Efflorescence is still available on La MaMa’s website.
We are in live rehearsals now. We feel grateful to be in a room together, and we are looking forward to the pleasure of sharing a theatrical experience with a living, breathing audience, which at this moment, seems like a kind of miracle.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless, written by, starring and featuring songs by Ellen Maddow, plays March 11-27 at La MaMa in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
