Find out more about PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE !
World premiere production at HERE September 12-30 2023!
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is a show that invites audiences into the guts of the theater. Patrons enter the show through portals draped with fabrics and corridors dimly lit by chandeliers. Are they entering into a séance? After piercing many veils, the audience arrives at what is apparently a tiny, haunted proscenium theater. Anticipation mounts as a grand curtain opens with fanfare… and then another… and then a further curtain… and then the curtains keep opening and closing, revealing and concealing characters, objects and scenes in hypnotic patterns, transporting performers and audience to psychic realms. As this dance of curtains ascends to abstraction, creatures of knots and thread emerge from the shadows, protagonists are absorbed into set dressing and scenic ornaments run rampant. The theater digests and incorporates its prey.
The abstract, hallucinatory world of PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE—simultaneously a séance, a sculpture, and a live action screen saver—creates a space for you to recalibrate your attention. PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE invites you to experience mystery and mental spaciousness by way of that most basic of theatrical machineries—the curtain reveal.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is created, written, designed, and directed by Normandy Sherwood. It features composition and sound design by Craig Flanagin, scenic and rigging design by Daniel Allen Nelson, curtain and costume design and construction by Normandy Sherwood, and lighting design by Christina Tang. The creative team includes production manager Daniel Allen Nelson, sound engineer Travis Wright, and line producer Caitlin Adams. Conceptual collaborators include Craig Flanagin, Daniel Allen Nelson, Christina Tang, Nikki Calonge, and Ean Sheehy.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is performed by Ean Sheehy, Nikki Calonge, Daniel Allen Nelson, Kate Brehm, Adrienne Swan, and Elyse Durand with musicians Craig Flanagin and Normandy Sherwood.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by The Dime Community Bank Fund for NYC Theatres, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York); Mental Insight Foundation; NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity Fund (A Statewide Theatre Regrant Program); Puffin Foundation. This work was commissioned by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and received artist residency support from Collapsable Hole, HERE, Millay Arts, and Yaddo.
All Trees are Hardest to Feel Terrible is an experimental opera about opera, the horrors of nostalgia and the pleasures of the handmade. It is scored for classical voices and strings as well as generative electronic music from modular and custom built synthesizers.
BEAST VISIT
August 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27 2020
7PM
Ticket link available here
https://here.org/shows/beast-visit/
A sunset encounter with some lonesome creatures currently living in Rubulad’s sculpture garden in Bushwick. This intimate outdoor experience by The Drunkard’s Wife incorporates extravagant costumes, song, and modular electronics.
Beast Visit is written and directed by Normandy Sherwood. Music and sounds are by Craig Flanagin. Costumes are by Normandy Sherwood. Beast Visit features performances by Nikki Calonge, Braulio Cruz, Blaze Ferrer, Craig Flanagin, Daniel Allen Nelson, and Normandy Sherwood. Glorious electronic noise along with original songs by Sherwood and Flanagin surround guests, with costumes by Sherwood, and lighting design by Christina Tang.
All photos by Maria Baranova
Madame Lynch at the New Ohio Theatre
World Premiere May 29, 2019-June 15 2019.
(preview performances May 26 and 28)
A spectacle with music, Madame Lynch takes on the picaresque story of Eliza Lynch, a 19th century woman who was an Irish potato famine refugee, a French courtesan, and the self-proclaimed "Empress of Paraguay." In collaboration with the Paraguayan folkloric dance group Ballet Panambí Vera, The Drunkard's Wife creates a complex and fragmented portrait of La Lynch, through live music, dance, and real and imagined scenes from her life as an adventuress, cultural doyenne, femme fatale and microfinance pioneer.
We are very excited that this show features a collaboration with a contemporary Paraguayan dance company who work in exactly this artistic tradition : Ballet Panambí Vera of Queens, NY.
Written and Directed by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin
Choreographed by Iliana Gauto of Ballet Panambí Vera
Set: Yung Oh Le Page, Lights: Christina Tang, Video: David Pym, Sound/ Music Direction: Craig Flanagin, Costumes: Normandy Sherwood, Associate Costumes: Chelsea Collins, Curtains: Normandy Sherwood.
Featuring: Juliana Francis Kelly, Lisa Clair, Nikki Calonge, Blaze Ferrer, Braulio Cruz, Mieko Gavia and the dancers of Ballet Panambí Vera
Live band directed by Rachel Swaner
Development History: First look presentation August 8-11, 2018 at the Ice Factory Festival. Developed as a part of the Deep Space Residency at NACL Theatre. Madame Lynch Has been supported by the Archive Residency a collaboration between tThe New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater), The ART-NY Creative opportunity Fund and Nancy Quinn Fund, and Materials for the Arts.
Photos in this gallery by Russ Rowland.
In a corridor haunted by wronged maidservants, a stable boy considers the ways he is becoming bad because of the things his new job asks him to do. As a progression of rakes engage in profligacy, one rake reflects on his dawning consciousness that his actions harm others. Ruffles is a meditation on power, consent, and how to be a good person.
Ruffles was produced at The Tank October 11-21, 2018
TINY HORNETS invites you to experience our people's folk ways, mores, and lores. You will witness the folk at work and at play, dancing their authentic dances, and singing very traditional songs. Guided by an intrepid Ethnographer, you will meet many fascinating village types, including Essie, a young girl who longs for a taste of something more... flesh.
TINY HORNETS, or, it didn't have to come to this
a musical folkloric spectacle by The Drunkard's Wife
August 24, 25, 31, Sept. 1, 7, 8 at 7:30 pm
at 389 Melrose St.
Bushwick
Written and directed by Normandy Sherwood
Composed and Music Directed by Craig Flanagin
Sets by Yung Oh LePage
Lights by Christina Tang
Video by David Pym
Costumes by Normandy Sherwood and Chelsea Collins
With Admiral Grey, Juliana Francis Kelly, Jordan Baum, Hanlon Smith-Dorsey, Maxwell Cosmo Cramer, Alexander Paris, Blaze Ferrer, Maggie Robinson, Kristine Haruna Lee, Mieko Gavia, Famous Artist Laura McMillan and more!
and The Drunkard's Wife: Rachel Swaner, Dan Whalen, Genny Slag, Tom Abbott,
A new materialist spectacle by The Drunkard's Wife.
Written by Normandy Raven Sherwood
Directed by Craig Flanagin
MENDING runs for three nights at an occult meeting place in Bushwick!
Performances November 9, 10 and 11 at 7:00 pm
at 389 Melrose St!
at Knickerbocker Ave.; Bushwick, Brooklyn. L train to Jefferson stop / J or M to Central Ave. stop
Tickets: $10. Available at the door.
I know what you're thinking:
Why did I come here -- What is this place --
It's like a self-help seminar -- or a guided meditation.
Or a middle school art class.
But with music.
Why do we need all this stuff?
I’m sorry it’s such a vague question, but, you see, some Satanists confiscated my notebook, the notebook that had all the details in it.
By stuff I mean things: pencils, erasers, phone cords, wall clocks, pinecones, driveway, threshing machine, silo, catfish, telephone pole, sunset…. Pinecones... Catfish... We are enacting a ritual to mend and recover, to heal our bad relationship with things. We’re reconstructing it from memory. We want to learn how to respect a spoon.
MENDING invites you to heal your broken relationship with things. A hybrid of a secret meeting, self help seminar, a swap meet and a craft hour, this performance asks: Why do we need all this stuff? Join us as we attempt to recover our lost knowledge and work out the problem implicit in our relationships with objects.
MENDING is a project of The Drunkard’s Wife, whose last project, TINY HORNETS, was seen at 389 Melrose in August 2017. The Drunkard’s Wife is a no-wave mountain music band/ theater troupe whose works have been presented at the Brick Theater (Permanent Caterpillar), The New Ohio Theatre (Feather Gatherers), Uncanny Valley/chashama (Tiny Hornets 2012) and parties and bars all over New York City.
MENDING features performers Ean Sheehy, Lisa Clair and Normandy Sherwood! As well as musicians Sana Nagano and Max Maples. MENDING is written and directed by Normandy Sherwood and Directed by Craig Flanagin. Sets and props by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin
Monstrous transformations, teenaged-girl-hood, murdering, 1930s radio: Permanent Caterpillar is a body-horror play with music,
Permanent Caterpillar was performed at The Brick from May 19-June 4
One summer night in a small town, sometime in the 20th century, a teen-aged girl named Charity loses herself in a cave. Or is it a night club? A mysterious torch singer croons as Charity becomes a permanent caterpillar, lost in her own voraciousness.
Permanent Caterpillar is written and directed by Normandy Raven Sherwood; with music direction and sound design by Craig Flanagin;original music by Sam Kulik and performed by the Drunkard’s Wife; with music direction and sound design by Craig Flanagin; conducted by Nick Demopoulos; lighting and set design by Josh Smith; costume design by Chelsea Collins and Normandy Sherwood and stage managed by Emily Goforth. Permanent Caterpillar features performers Jordan Baum, Maxwell Cosmo Cramer, Admiral Grey, Juliana Francis-Kelly, Kristine Haruna Lee and Kevin Shea.
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AWST Press published an abridged version of Permanent Caterpillar in August 2015, in chapbook and digital form. You can buy it for really cheap, and scratch your itch for body horror plays with songs. http://www.awst-press.com/normandy-sherwood/ Also, there's an interview: http://www.awst-press.com/library/normandy-sherwood/interview
A Stravinsky vaudeville by The Drunkard's Wife.
Enter the Devil, dressed as a Devil... In Feather Gatherers, a Stravinsky vaudeville set in a fictional 1960s Serbia (or is it West Virginia?), The Drunkard's Wife channels the spirit of Yugoslavian Black Wave film to renovate and re-cathect the 1918 "fairground entertainment", L'Histoire du Soldat -- simultaneously returning it to its folk roots and using it to re-frame a classic Faust story as a rehearsal for a post-communist utopia -- with echoes of the American Shakers’ heaven-on-earth, and of Wilhelm Reich’s orgone-energy-charged communitarian experiments.
Presented in New York City by the New Ohio Theatre as a part of its 2014 Ice Factory Festival.
Feather Gatherers was written by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin
directed by Normandy Sherwood
music directed, arranged and composed by Craig Flanagin
conducted by Ben Grow
Sets by Sherwood and Flanagin
Costumes by Sherwood
Lighting by Sarah Johnston
Sound Engineer Peter Mills Weiss
Stage Manager Sophie Silleck
TD Andy Sowers
It featured performances by Juliana Francis Kelly, Margarethe Kelly, Ean Sheehy, Jess Barbagallo, Nikki Calonge, Admiral Grey, Tavish Miller, Lili Sotirova and Edgar Oliver.
Musicians: Sam Kulik (trombone), Hajnal Pivnik (violin), Frank London (trumpet), Nanci Belmont (bassoon), Taylor Christen-Bergson (bass), Tom Abbott (clarinet) and Lura Vuksinich (percussion)
musical work of The Drunkard's Wife:
you can hear more at https://thedrunkardswife.bandcamp.com/
