Lascivious Something
By Sheila Callaghan
Directed by Daniella Topol
Originally produced at Women's Project, New York, NY.
May 8,2010 through June 6, 2010
About the Premiere Production: Sheila Callaghan is known for her theatricality, craft, and articulation of big ideas, and her newest work, Lascivious Something, is a powerful addition to the American canon. When the play begins, it's 1980 and Reagan has just been elected. August had fled the country six years prior to be with his beautiful young Greek bride on a secluded Mediterranean island, where he planted a modest vineyard. Now, his young wife is pregnant, his crop is robust, and he is about to have his first tasting when a strange woman in a large-brimmed hat arrives at the couple's guesthouse. At its baseline, it is a simple love triangle between a man, his ex-lover, and his current young bride; however, as the narrative evolves, it delves evermore deeply into the idealism of youth and activism, the destructive and seductive power of money, the unyielding forces of repressed desire, and the daunting challenge of creating a new life.
Lascivious Something was first developed in the 2006 Mentor Project at Cherry Lane Theatre. This production marks the first collaboration and co-production between Women’s Project and Cherry Lane Theatre.
Artistic Statement: Plunging into the world of Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something is to join a Bacchic revel—sensual, intoxicating, and dangerous. It pushes limits with form, dialogue, and depth of character. It tells a story that hits you in the gut while simultaneously blowing your mind with the range of intellectual dexterity. In short, it’s playwriting at its finest. And it’s a play that needs to be produced.
Sheila Callaghan is surely one of the most courageous playwrights in the American theater today, and Women’s Project is honored and overjoyed to be producing her first “uptown” production (traversing 14th Street isn’t easy, particularly for women, in the provincial mindset that too often pervades the New York theater). So take Sheila and her gorgeous play, add director Daniella Topol to the mix, and top it off with Angelina Fiordellisi and Cherry Lane Theatre as co-producers, and suddenly you potentially have the most powerful theatrical experience of the season. And this, as Bacchic revels often are, is sublimely desirable. - From Producing Artistic Director Julie Crosby:
Director: Daniella Topol
Set Design: Marsha Ginsberg
Sound Design: Daniel Baker and the Broken Chord Collective
Dramaturg: Megan E. Carter