I’m so glad I’ve had a chance to blog about the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. At the start, it was a list of names and events in the town I was born in, and visited too infrequently in recent years.

By the end of the festival, it’s become a garden of revived memories, as well as some new names and faces I’ll be following (and going to see in the future), as well as a chance to talk and write about some of the things I like best: playwrights, composers, gay artists, theater companies, new work, and of course, the Phillies.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned and loved AND notes on shows that will continue their runs past the end of the Festival.

• I already knew about InterAct Theatre, and loved learning about their latest production, “A Passing Wind” a chamber musical by Artistic Director Seth Rozin. Because, really, you can’t write enough about a man who made his living by farting. The multi-tasking folk at InterAct are in production with ANOTHER show through May 8, with Rozin’s “Two Jews Walk Into a Bar” at their home theater, The Adrienne on Sansom St. in Center City. The show’s running through May 8. InterAct will conclude its season with the world premiere of  “In a Daughter’s Eyes” by A. Zell Williams from May 27-June 17. InterAct is also continuing to make a major contribution to American playwrights with its 20-year (!) program, begun in 2007 that offers development awards and commissions for new plays each year.
• I also found out about the wandering thespians of EgoPo, who did return to the land of their founder’s birth, whose world premiere production of “Hell,” adapted from the novel by Henri Barbusse, opened at PIFA, and continues through May 15 at the German Society of Pennsylvania. “Hell” will become part of the company’s repertory as it continues its season of works by and inspired by Antonin Artaud.

• I also found a new company to watch closer to home (well, in Brooklyn) in Grounded Aerial, whose artistic director Karen Fuhrman, filled me in on the amazing dance theater company that flies through the air with the greatest of ease (and expertise), which opened the festival with a performance on the outside wall of the Kimmel, 9 stories up, and opened their new show, “InsectInside” at the Brooklyn Lyceum this week (and for the record, seems to have outlasted that OTHER show featuring a spider…)

• Joe Hallman shared his experiences as artist in residence at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, and how his research, ideas, collaborator and talent came together to create the song cycle “Raving Beauty” inspired by the life and loves of Mercedes de Acosta. The song cycle is just beginning…I can’t wait to see what comes next. I’ve already suggested some future venues to him…so I can go see it myself on the subway! In the mean time, I’ve been scrolling through his playlist/channel on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/JoeHallman?blend=22&ob=5

• And, I finally discovered (it’s been around for a century!) the wonderful theater Plays & Players, which sponsored the PIFA New Plays Festival, and also does wonderful work year round supporting emerging playwrights and presenting new work and revivals for adults and children in its gorgeous (and I mean fantastic) historic space on Delancey Place in Center City. Two of the company’s playwrights-in-residence were given a chance to create and present new work using the “bake-off” method.
• It’s good to hear that there’s a strong spoken word scene in Philly, in the form of First Person Arts, who both develop and support Philadelphia artists, and provide a venue for touring storytellers and poets, hosting a Story Slam with nationwide talent at PIFA.
• I also had a chance to meet/agree with playwright Jules Tasca that producing your own work is hard...and fun! His "Art Lover" was one of THREE plays that mentioned/focused on/used as a plot point the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, which I now know a lot about. From three different POVs (and Wikipedia's).
  
• And I know there’s a roadtrip or three or five in my future because I must see for myself the neo-vaudeville and burlesque presented by Peek-A-Boo Revue. After all, it’s not every day you get to see folks named Lulu Lollipop and Buzz Speakeasy, much less without their clothes and doing banana dances. They’re committed artists, reviving and reinventing a classic form of American theater with a 21st century slant. And a good old fashioned bump-and-grind.

Ah, Paris…home of the Moulin Rouge, the Folies Bergere, the Crazy Horse Saloon, where Josephine Baker shook her bananas, and where artists and poets chased the green fairy in the Belle Epoque and beyond…providing much art and merriment in a time that inspired this year’s Philadelphia International Arts Festival. 
 
Ah, Philadelphia, home of the world-famous Trocadero, a Victorian-era theater, once a vaudeville and burlesque house, where the likes of Gypsy Rose Lee and Tempest Storm strutted their stuff, now a performing arts center. Sister cities, indeed!

Fortunately for Philadelphia and PIFA, there’s a classic vaudevillian, neo-burlesque show in town that was just the troupe to produce an “inspired by” show as the latest gig in its 13-year run.

The Peek-A-Boo Revue is a much-loved member of the city’s performing arts scene (and have sometimes performed at the restored Troc), which has been doing its thing for 13 years. They were invited by their home stage, World Café Live to create a show for PIFA, and will present two shows at the World Café at 8 and 11pm this Saturday, April 30. The shows, as you might expect, are not for children (you must be 18+ for the 8pm show, and 21+ for the 11pm show).

“It’s a good match for us,” said Lulu Lollipop, the company’s director, who has run Peek-A-Boo for the last eight years (it was founded by Molly Corsen and Five Spot owner Philip Cohen). “I’m glad Laura at World Café Live invited us to participate.”

Peek-A-Boo has collected a dedicated fanbase, and the faithful will see the kind of show they’ve grown to love, including some sketches and bits directly inspired by Paris in the early part of the 20th century.

“When we produce a new show, we take it to a bunch of other venues,” Lulu explained. “We’ll be in Philly every 2 to 3 months, and that same show travels.” So as they created the PIFA show, Peek-A-Boo was building a show that can tour, and also fits in with their  vaudeville/burlesque theme (or “mission” if you’re a non-profit, and they’re workin’ on the 503c3).

Veterans and newbies can expect to see “a very bawdy show,” Lulu said. “Jokes that are very tongue in cheek; we threw in a classic French can-can and elements from shows like the Folies Bergere.”

One of the company members, Miss Sophie, has created a performance that’s an ode to Josephine Baker.

“As she started moving through her performance style, we were like ‘wow: you have this movement quality of Josephine Baker.’ So she’s doing some pieces that are Baker-inspired. One is called ‘Drums a Gogo.’”

Here’s a clip of Miss Sophie performing “Drums a Gogo.” (NSFW!)

Peek-A-Boo’s musical director, Buzz Mouthpiece, wrote a song for the show, specifically for the Paris-inspired theme: Je ne Sais Quoi. As Lulu says: “Basically it’s sort of about falling in love in Paris.”

“It’s the big opener,” she said. “With all the girls in it, and they’re all falling in love with the French gigolo who’s singing this song.”

Peek-A-Boo is a both a large and dedicated venture: the company develops its shows, then tours with them around Philadelphia, upstate Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey and splits the box office with the company.

“Our whole cast is 22 people; it’s a lot of mouths to feed,” said Lulu. In addition to the opening number, she described a running sketch with two regular Peek-A-Boo characters, Chrissy Model (played by Christa D'Agger) and her stepsister TT Model (played by Peek-A-Boo’s resident songbird Tracey Todd Superstar), “foul-mouthed old fly girls, and they’re always interrupting the show somehow. Chrissy and TT are going to Paris, so we see them leaving, some of their experiences in Paris. Then they come back at the end, and show you pictures from their trip, like the Eiffel tower and doing dirty things with baguettes.”

This edition will also include a fan dance (not exactly in the style of Sally Rand) and all the traditional components of burlesque: A brass section, and of course, some bump & grind. (If you’ve gotta bump it…The 20-some acts perform to both live and recorded music, and have even taken their show on TV, in a (slightly) more covered up version, appearing on “America’s Got Talent.”

Tessie Tura would be proud.

Ed note: Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

Artists can tell stories with actors, with singing and dancing, with paint and light and a welding torch and orchestras. Or they can stand there and just tell it.

Sometimes simple is sublime. First Person Arts knows this, and is Philadelphia’s own storytelling series.

Here's a little preview on YouTube

Of course, I am a huge fan and sometime producer and participant in spoken word…and in fact am just a little bleary-eyed following last night’s edition of my own Drunken! Careening! Writers! Series at the KGB Bar here in NYC (and the Dirty Laundry series the night before…). So I toast you, my compadres in the city of Brotherly Love, and thanks for being there for ten years, and sharing the work with PIFA!

And share it they will in Slam Nation, an event in the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. First Person has gathered some of the best storytellers from across the country to weave their spoken word magic. Next Tuesday, April 26 at 8pm, head on over to the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center for the big event. Tickets are $25 ($20 for First Person members).

The lineup includes folks from all over including: 

Adam Wade (a record 16-time StorySlam champion and two-time Grand Slam champion at The Moth in New York City)

Elna Baker (This American Life, NYC Moth, and author of The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance)

Margot Leitman (NYC Moth Grand Slam champion, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Stripped Stories)

Jon Aaron (Baltimore’s The Stoop)

Michele Carlo (NYC Moth, The Liar Show, SMITH Magazine)

Nicolette Heavy (Boston’s massmouth)

Katonya Mosley (First Person Arts)

Laura Packer (Boston’s massmouth)

Giulia Rozzi (NYC Moth, Stripped Stories, MTV, Vh1)

The official theme for their stories is “Worldly Possessions.” In keeping with the spirit of migration and travel that led so many artists to Paris at the turn of the century, First Person asked the storytellers to talk about objects representative of journeys they have taken in life, both literal and symbolic ones.  

Slam Nation is part of a busy spring for First Person Arts, which presents programming throughout the year that is based on memoir and documentary art. They host StorySlams twice a month at World Cafe Live and L’Etage, as well as events with memoir authors and filmmakers.

The capstone of their yearly programming is the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art. The Festival brings together writers, musicians, storytellers, actors and other artists from across the country for live performances, dynamic workshops, interactive presentations, film premieres and more. This past year included the First Taste Dinner with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien; the East Coast premier of Dan Hoyle’s wildly successful one-man show, The Real Americans; and a star-studded tribute to poet Sonia Sanchez.

When I was producing with En Avant Playwrights, we put on a play by Maz Troppe called “How Mona Lisa Got Her Smile.” (It had something to do with Leonardo cross-dressing, a strongman who had lost his mojo, and some purloined diamonds. But I digress…)

In fact, the Mona Lisa has inspired many other works of art since da Vinci painted her in 1503 (or ‘04). She’s been the object of speculation, obsession and fascination since her creation. And, in Paris during the time that provided the inspiration for this year’s Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (1911-1920) she disappeared for two years, spirited out of the Louvre by a worker under his coat. Authorities were stumped, and even arrested French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who tried to implicate Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated (thank you, Wikipedia!)

The theft of the world’s most famous painting, on August 22, 1911,  continues to inspire: there are three events at PIFA that touch upon or revolve around her kidnapping: on April 9, Astral Artists presented “Who Stole The Mona Lisa?,” a multimedia experience; now running at the Arden Theatre is Rogelio Martinez’s “Wanamaker’s Pursuit,”  (through May 22) in which the denizens of Paris’s art scene in the Belle Epoch ponder her theft; and Jules Tasca has written a play about the man who took her home with him, “Art Lover,”   at the Caplan Studio, at the University of the Arts, 211 Broad Street, April 21-24. Tickets are $5-$10.

“I had always wanted to write a play about the theft of the Mona Lisa,” said Tasca. “But where’s the market for that?” Tasca, a prolific playwright who has written, published, and produced many plays, including Live Drawing, about the relationship between Leonardo daVinci and the Mona Lisa.

When PIFA was in its formative stages, he attended preliminary meetings, and found that the period they were focusing on was when the play he wanted to write was set. He wrote it, submitted it to the festival and it was accepted.

“I’m producing the play myself,” he said. “It takes over your whole life.” I know, Jules. I know. “But it’s a fun experience. We’ve got the flyers, the postcards, we go up April 21st for 6 performances. We have the theater for a week. We’re all hoping to break even.” (Godspeed, brave playwright/ producer! Been there…done that…have the props in my storage unit.)

There hadn’t been a play written about art thief, and as Tasca researched it, he went over the transcripts of Vincenzo Peruggia’s trial. The reason generally given for the theft is either that the Peruggia was a patriot who wanted the painting returned to Italy, or that he may have been part of a plan to sell copies of the missing painting as the original. Tasca found another motivation for the thief.

“The thing that really made it go,” he said. “Was the fact that he [Peruggia] took up with a streetwalker, and according to the trial transcript, she had a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa. It’s the Madonna/whore syndrome, literally. He had the Mona Lisa when she wasn’t there. When he was there, he was screwing this girl who looked like the Mona Lisa…the idea and the real. He’s living this fantasy life for almost two years. If this was just a play about the art theft, it would have been interesting; this gave it a whole new layer.”

Tasca went to work and said the play progressed quickly. “It wrote itself in a sense,” he said. He showed the script to director Drucie McDaniel, and they cast actors Alex Mandell and Illiana Hubbard as Peruggia and the streetwalker, Mathilde.

Following some of the performances, Art Historian Nancy Davenport and psychologists, Fabian Ulitsky and Jeffrey Wolper among others will join the cast in talkback sessions about the play and the real events and people that inspired it.  

From 1911-1913, Peruggia kept the painting hidden in his Paris apartment, then returned to Italy with it. He was finally arrested in Florence, and was hailed as a patriot by many of his fellow Italians, for returning the painting to its “homeland.”

After its recovery, the painting was exhibited in Italy before being returned to the Louvre. Peruggia served six months in jail for the theft.

The Mona Lisa continues to reside (and inspire) at the Louvre.

Ed note: Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

What’s better than a 72-hour play? Well, a 24-hour play, but then I’m hardcore.

In fact, the “bake-off” (a term used for a writing exercise popularized by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel), in which dramatists are given several “ingredients” they must incorporate into a play that has to be written in 72 hours or less, has become a popular genre-within-the-genre of live theater.

There’s nothing like the surge of adrenalin that hits a playwright when you get your puzzle pieces and must fit them together with the clock ticking into a real play.

This year’s Philadelphia Bake-Off has led to the development of two new plays being presented at the Plays & Players PIFA New Play Festival, running from April 20-24 at the Rendell Room of the Kimmel Center. Plays start at 6pm, and admission is free, but reservations are highly recommended. (Note that the event is not suitable for children).

Plays & Players is the group organizing for the event, as well as celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2011; it was born right at the start of the time the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts is celebrating: Paris from 1911-1920.

“We became involved in PIFA the same way nearly everyone in Philadelphia did,” said Daniel Student, the company’s Artistic Director. “The Kimmel Center really reached out to the community and invited them to participate. There was an application process that involved proposing the performance you wanted to do, and it was stressed that each performance needed in some way to fit the theme of the festival. We had run a New Play Festival for two years during March at our theater, and when we heard that the theme of PIFA was going to focus on innovation, we couldn't think of a better fit!”

Plays & Players has hosted the annual Philadelphia Bake-Off, since 2009, in collaboration with PDC (Philadelphia Dramatists Center), a service organization for Philadelphia playwrights. Each year, P&P posts three "ingredients" online and give playwrights 72 hours to craft new plays from them.

“Then we gather for a pizza party with actors and read as many of the plays written as we can,” Student said. “Each year this event brings together veteran and first-time playwrights alike.”

PDC members in this year’s event were invited to submit their plays to the PIFA New Play Festival, and two plays were selected for developmental rehearsals and public staged readings in the festival.

This year’s ingredients are:

1. Riots -- That is, artistic riots, or riots precipitated by artistic daring, or perhaps artistic demagoguery, or artistic thumbings of the nose.

(suggested by Barbara Silverstein, Artistic Director of The Pennsylvania Opera Theater)

2. "That is probably the most repulsive thing I've ever seen."

(suggested by playwright Sheila Callaghan)

3. two ceramic tiles, created by Isaiah Zagar, an award-winning mosaic mural artist:

Playwrights Joy Cutler and Greg Romero were selected to have their work developed for PIFA.

Cutler‘s work has appeared in all three Philadelphia Bake-Offs. Romero has been selected for the first time. They are two of the three playwrights in residence in a pilot program this year, called the PDC Residency at Plays & Players. Quinn Eli is the third P&P playwright in residence.

They were chosen to spend 14 months at P&P, in a program focused on developing them as artists, rather than on developing specific work.

“It is playwright-driven programming,” Student explained. “This year, on request of the playwrights, it has morphed into three different aspects: 1. Meeting and workshopping with artists ranging from landscape architects, puppet masters, and a local visual arts legend, Isaiah Zagar of Philadelphia's Magic Gardens fame. 2. Closed door developmental readings upon request from the playwrights. 3. Full weekday usage of our space for personal development or time to play with actors to experiment with their work.”

Romero’s play is Marilyn Monroe Has Sex for the Last Time with Groucho Marx. It’s directed by Rowen Haigh. Cutler’s play is The Stormy Hanky, directed by Cara Blouin

“Marilyn Monroe is a daring and at times disturbing play about the intersection of sexuality and obscenity,” Student said. “It puts its audience into the position of voyeur as we watch a woman role-playing as Marilyn Monroe and a man role-playing as Groucho Marx engage in various acts of carnal lust.”

Cutler’s Stormy Hanky takes an absurdist look at the anarchy that emerges when one of the characters inadvertently brings "back the 4th primary color". The artists riot and all colors and shapes in the world no longer hold their original integrity.

“These plays will explode from the page to the stage, inspired by its ingredients that spoke of artistic riots, repulsivity, and sexuality in visual art,” Student said. “While we cannot promise all audiences will like them, we hope that some people will love them and will be inspired by them. As PIFA reminds us, art is SUPPOSED to challenge. We need to encourage our new playwrights to experiment and push the boundaries of art. We hope this evening will accomplish just that.”

The PIFA presentations are just part of Plays & Players’ current season. The company will present 4 mainstage plays (both revivals and new work) from June through October this year, as well as Late Night and family programming, and hosts other Philadelphia-area companies throughout the year.

Its home stage, Plays & Players Theatre, at 1714 Delancey Place in Center City, was designed and constructed in 1912 by Philadelphia architect Amos W. Barnes. Beginning as The Little Theatre, it has also been known as the Delancey Street Theatre (1920) and The Philadelphia Theatre before being known as Plays & Players Theatre.

Ed note: Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

Hell was sitting on Lane Savadove’s bookshelf for years.

Savadove, artistic director of Philadelphia’s EgoPo Classic Theatre, has adapted, with EgoPo actor Ross Beschler, the Henri Barbusse 1908 novel Hell. The play will have its world premiere at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, opening April 27 at the German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, running through May 15.  Tickets are $15-$30.

“Hell, the novel, was actually handed to me years ago by an associate, just a friend who thought it fit my interests,” Savadove said. “It sat on my bookshelf for close to 8 years.”

Barbusse’s novel caused a great sensation when it was first published: reviewers debated (and still debate) whether it is a novel about voyeurism or solipsism. In the novel, a young man moves into a Parisian boardinghouse, and through a hole in the wall observes the lives of his fellow boarders: as he watches them give birth and die, fall in love, commit adultery, perpetrate and become victims of cruelty, he becomes obsessed with what is going on in the next room.

“A man who peeps through a hole in his room: very theatrical, very much about the process of watching theater even,” Savadove said. “I met with the guy who is playing the lead (Beschler), whom I’ve worked with before, and we had talked about doing an adaptation or a new piece, so we decided to work on Hell.”

EgoPo, which focuses on building a repertory of classic theater and adaptations, chooses themes in classic theater for each season, and they had already chosen  ‘theater of cruelty’ influences on and from Antonin Artaud, and were planning a season of shows adapted from Artaud’s work.

“I found that Barbusse was a big influence on him,” Savadove said. “And realized as I got into it, that it helped give birth to the French Avant Garde movement. We knew this would be a very intense theater piece.”

Just before he caught Hell, Savadove met with PIFA, which was in the planning stages of the festival, and developing ideas with Philadelphia theater companies, PIFA’s focus on Paris in the early part of the 20th century meshed with EgoPo’s season.

“I knew the season would fit PIFA potentially,” Savadove said. “So I found the book again, and said I hope I like this thing…I’d read about it, but not read it, and when I did, I realized, oh my God it’s great!”

EgoPo has been working on the piece for about 9 months. Savadove described the process as, in the early stage “going page by page…we know the whole novel. Ross and I would sit for 4 hours at a shot together, 3 or 4 times a week, and try to convert each page into a theater piece. And we would sort of have a very similar sense of what language tends to pop onstage, so it was a very easy process, done together, out loud. And then we would read chunks of the novel, and meticulously begin adapting it.”

As they worked, they tried to figure out how big a cast they’d need: how many actors, how many characters each they could play. About halfway through first draft, they’d figured out the size of their cast.

“Once we finished the rough draft, we brought cast in, starting to stage it, and doing table work,” Savadove said. At that point the cast became incredibly active. About 2-1/2 months ago, we had a 2 week development process with the cast, to really finish the script. Then we took a break before beginning rehearsals, but even then, every scene, the script is open to changes and tweaks, and cast is very participatory.”

During a show’s development, Savadove starts thinking about the light and sound needed, and brings in designers early: set design; music, even the possibility of video is part of the conversation through the whole process.

EgoPo tries to book its casts for the season: building and playing in repertory. Savadove says that on any given show, about half the company are regulars who have done multiple shows with them. The company works to create shows that can continue to live after their initial run; pieces that can tour, return to the rep, go into different venues. The process of creating Hell took about nine months, about six months longer, Savadove estimated, than the company usually spends on a new piece.

While they may have spent nine months in Hell, EgoPo has spent longer than that in limbo and purgatory. Founded 20 years ago in San Francisco, EgoPo later moved to NYC.

“We were there for awhile,” Savadove said, until they moved to New Orleans. “New Orleans was really sort of the perfect dream; a city that was very affordable, and NYC had gotten very frustrating…” he said in a voice many companies know all too well. “In New Orleans, we got a long-term lease on a space and built our theater…we just didn’t know the hurricane would hit.”

When Katrina devastated New Orleans, EgoPo was on tour—in Philadelphia, Savadove, a Philly native, had never performed a show in his home town, and “I was dying to take a show to Philly,” he said.

So the EgoPo troupe watched in horror on TV as their home was destroyed…and the news media watched them watching the destruction, an act of voyeurism (or solipsism) not unlike the protagonist of Hell.

“Our theater in New Orleans was completely destroyed,” Savadove said. “The roof blown off, most of us lost our homes, it just didn’t really make sense to stay there anymore.” So the company stayed in Philadelphia. “It was the time to come home basically.”

In EgoPo’s production, Savadove has placed the audience in a position similar to the voyeur: “I think part of the process is that they take the perspective of the peeper’s room, the audience is literally sitting in, they share his view of the world,” he said. “They are implicated in the process. And it’s really fun on that side.

In addition to Ross Beschler, the cast includes Mary Lee Bednarik, Allan Radway, Sean Lally, Sarah Howard, Ed Swidey, Cindy Spitko and Sarah Schol.   Set Design is by Tony Hostetter, Light and Original Score by Matt Sharp, Video by Ren Manley, and Costumes by Janus Stefanowicz.

Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

First the important question: does being an artist in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia involve actually staying in the two 1865 townhouses where the collection resides? Because that would be very cool.

Joseph Hallman agrees. When he was chosen to be Composer-in-Residence at the Rosenbach, Hallman says he thought: “if only this were a residency residency! They told me they were considering it for the future.” And he told them he’d come back for that.

Hallman didn’t get to stay overnight, but he did have complete access and help from the archivist and librarian to delve into the documents of Mercedes de Acosta, poet, playwright…lover. The result is the song cycle “Raving Beauty,” inspired by de Acosta, which will have its world premiere through the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts this Saturday, April 9 at 2pm at the Rosenbach. Tickets are $5-$10.

Hallman, a Philadelphia born and educated composer, has worked with some of today's most talented musicians and artists. His recently completed series of chamber concerti were composed for members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra. Hallman has also worked in the downtown New York music scene with the improv/experimental group ThingNY. He’s an adjunct faculty member at Drexel University, and Composer-in-Residence and Assistant Director of Festivals for the Traverse Arts Project.

“The Rosenbachs chose the archive,” Hallman said. “I think they wanted to highlight the archive, since a few years ago they got the Garbo estate documents. She is a really interesting historical figure. They picked it, and then I was totally into it; it’s a great story, a sad story, but it’s a good story.”

De Acosta’s life and times were shaped by the theme of the festival: the artistic experimentation and uninhibited creativity of Paris in the early part of the 20th century. She was a lover of women at a time when such things were not spoken of, and she had an eye for talented artists and women of great beauty: her lovers included Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva le Gallienne, Isadora Duncan, among many others.

As he went to work, Hallman spent about 4 months in the archives, working with the research librarian and archivist, going through documents: de Acosta’s letters, her books, her plays, and sort of ephemera that she had collected and sold to the Rosenbachs before she died.

“The way I approached it, was that I would I wanted the pieces not to be entirely specific. I wanted them to be representative of a more of an ambient or emotive kind of quality: first with Greta; then with her sister, Rita Lydig; and the third with Isadora Duncan.”

de Acosta’s older sister was famous in her own right for her beauty and influence on fashion and design, as well as her several marriages.

“Her sister was old enough that Mercedes looked up to her a lot, and wanted to be like her,” Hallman said. “She was a fashion icon; she was famous in her own way for being a socialite and they had a falling out, and it’s a sad thing, you can tell she aspired to be much like her sister.”

Hallman describes de Acosta’s relationship with Garbo as “the puppydog relationship, where Mercedes was sort of hounding her, and Garbo reciprocated at times, but not all the time, and not publicly.”

Hallman also noted that de Acosta “had her own way of telling things…you never know what the truth was. I think she had a way of accentuating the things that would make her look good, or make a situation look more dramatic. She was hyperbolic and self-aggrandizing, and I think that affected a lot of what she put out.”

This, of course, can be a boon to a biographer or adapter, as larger-than-life characters can leap most readily to artistic life.

Hallman finished with three songs, each with a different emotional theme.

“There’s the unrequited lover, that one was the hardest to write,” he said. “It’s got a series of episodes, and each of the episodes represents an emotional state that one might be in, frustrated longing, one where you’re the supplicant, submissive to the person’s will and whim, and no matter what, you’ll sing their praise. The second one is the one with the relationship with the sister; and the third is more stable relationship with Isadora Duncan. I wanted to create universal emotional tropes, more than a specific moment or person. Of course it’s about her, and you know these are based on her life, but I wanted to create these universal emotional themes I think anybody who’s ever been in love can relate to, can see or feel these things.”

As Hallman collected his research on the three central relationships, he decided that there would be a representative voice of Mercedes, sung by one singer. He passed along his research to his collaborator, Jessica Hornik, who created poems that Hallman would set to music.

“Most of the poems are in first person, and they’re not specific to any situation,” he explained. “They’re nostalgic and memory-laden, and they’re really beautiful on their own. Jessica is really a wonderful, wonderful poet. She’s done every vocal piece I’ve done except one. She’s a muse of mine. I’d send her recordings, clippings, pictures, all kinds of things, and she would send me stuff back.”

Hallman said that Hornik told him the last poem was the hardest for her. It was meant to be a love poem from a woman to a woman, and his collaborator said she wasn’t sure if she could write a lesbian love poem. Hallman, who is gay, said he didn’t know if he could either, but he wanted the piece to focus on a love relationship.

“The lesbian element is so there,” he said. “You have to think about these relationships happening at this time. And they had to be so secretive. You think of these things as being taboo, and not at all feasible, but they had them of course, and they happened under different guises, and it’s just amazing to see. It’s a great part of gay history to know about this. But at the same time, I didn’t want it to be ghettoized as a gay project alone. I wanted people to feel: these are two women in love, but it was bigger than them being two women. I wanted to do both of those things, be celebratory of gay history, but universal so that anybody could feel like: wow, I feel that, or I can understand those emotions.”

Hallman composed the pieces for the flute, cello, and harp of the Dolce Suono ensemble (flautist Mimi Stillman, cellist Yumi Kendall, and harpist Coline-Marie Orliac.  Soprano Abigail Haynes Lennox will sing the songs.

Hallman says in composing the music, he was “influenced by music of that time, of the ‘20s, the sort of impressionist chanson and French art songs.”

In terms of the emotional qualities, Hallman described what he was going for: “The first movement has got so much in it, it is full of pathos and every conceivable emotion when you love someone more than you could ever love you. There’s unbridled joy at moments, unbearable depression at others.”

Hallman’s time in the archive will spark other work, he knows. “I had such a great time working in the archive: it’s like overload. You don’t know how to process it. I wrote a 20 minute piece and tried to talk about 60 years of a woman’s life and her love. It’s funny to think of these things and that was what was cool about it for me, seeing the people as living, breathing things, rather than someone sort of having written about them. Seeing their lives through their eyes was phenomenal.”

He hopes for the piece to continue to be performed and developed after its PIFA premiere.

“Every composer’s dream and desire is to have their piece performed more than once,” he said. “It’s frustrating to realize you may only get one performance; I don’t think that will be the case with this piece. It’s a strong piece and a strong group, and I think it has a good message.”

Ed note: Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to John Wanamaker’s department store in downtown Philadelphia. It was a special treat to go down and see the great bronze eagle in the lobby, to eat at the Crystal Tearoom, and to stop by the founder’s office…left exactly as it was the day John Wanamaker died, behind a wall of glass, the day of his death outlined in red on the office calendar. To me, Wanamaker’s was one of the things that made Philadelphia a great city. A great city should have a fine department store, a world-class symphony orchestra, beautiful art museums, and a mediocre team in the National League.

To Rogelio Martinez, “Wanamaker” was the name of a famous mile. That is, The Wanamaker Mile, a race for star runners in the annual Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. Martinez ran track, and he knew that the Irish did well in it, especially Eamonn Coghlin, “Chairman of the Boards.”

“I associated the Wanamaker name with Madison Square Garden,” Martinez said. “Only when I started to spend time in Philadelphia did I say to Terry (Arden Theatre artistic director Terrence J. Nolen): ‘tell me a little bit about the Eagle.’ That’s sort of how I arrived at it…via a long, circuitous route.”

Martinez, a NYC-based playwright, has had Philadelphia on his mind a lot lately as the author of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit,” a new play being presented at the Arcadia Stage by the Arden Theatre, directed by Terrence Nolen, as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, currently in previews, and opening April 7, running until May 22.

The title character in Martinez’s play is Nathan Wanamaker (played by Jürgen Hooper), a fictional character inspired by John Wanamaker’s grandson, John Wanamaker, Jr. Wanamaker Sr.’s son Rodman, actually did spend a great deal of time in Paris in the late 19th century.

“When Rodman dies, the store gets passed to a trust,” Martinez recounted. “I was always interested in why it doesn’t go to the children. Oftentimes, third generations lose some interest in the family business.” Rodman Wanamaker took over the family business after his father’s death, but did not pass it on to his children (Wikipedia hints that Rodman’s only son, John, had “personal problems” which prevented his taking over the family business.) John, Jr. was known as “Captain John” after his service on General Pershing’s staff in World War I. Captain John died at the age of 45, in 1935.

Martinez originally intended to write “a little bit” about John, imagining what the young man might have seen, who he would have met in Belle Epoque Paris.

“I started writing a story about a young man going to Paris, learning to be a buyer,” the playwright said. “But what I was really writing about was Paris in 1911 (the heart of the time that gives PIFA its theme), with people like Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.” This is when Stein and Picasso and other artists in their circle were becoming themselves, and before they became as visible to a wide range of people as they later did. “If you write about them at that time, we get to know who they are as they begin have an idea of who they are. This is the moment when their egos are beginning to blossom. By the time you get to the 1920s, their egos are in full bloom.”

Among the relationships that he follows is that of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein, which was beginning to fall apart, and it would eventually completely collapse. “I wanted to explore that aspect of it, a brother and sister coming to the end of their relationship,” Martinez explained. “And breaking up, in a sense. It was a sad breakup.”

Martinez spent six or seven months doing the historical research on the piece, then another 3 months writing the play, and did rewrites over the course of another year. The play was commissioned as part of the Arden’s Independence Foundation New Play Showcase, and received additional support with an Edgerton Grant from the Theatre Communications Group, which allowed the production 2 additional weeks of rehearsal.

So Martinez had the opportunity to bring his Nathan Wanamaker to Paris to meet and mingle with great artists on the verge. One of the major characters in the play is Paul Poiret (played by Wilbur Edwin Henry), a French designer whose influence on fashion made him one of the most important figures of his time; now he is more of a supporting character, not as well known, in today’s histories.

“The idea is that this man was a name that’s now forgotten. It’s really interesting who history decides to remember and who it decides to forget. Leo Stein, as far as culturally, as far as being responsible for curating this art, is as powerful a force as Gertrude Stein,” Martinez said. “He wasn’t the artist that his sister was, but as far as having an eye for art, he was. But we’ve forgotten Leo. The Metropolitan Museum recently did a show on Paul Poiret’s fashions, so it’s not like we’ve forgotten him, but he’s not a name like Coco Chanel, who came in the 1920s, and knocked him off the map. Yet, in 1911, he was a rock star. He was it. He brought fashion into the modern era. So it’s interesting for me to see, and for audiences to see, who history chooses to remember and why.”

“Why have we chosen to remember the Mona Lisa, when so much art was created in that period?” Martinez asked. (The theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 is part of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” and the subject of another PIFA play, “Art Lover” by Jules Tasca). “I don’t quite have an answer for that, and I don’t expect audiences to have an answer, but it’s interesting to contemplate the question, and at least each of the main characters has a different response to the paining that makes it personal to them. That’s what the Mona Lisa does…when we see it, we have a personal reaction to it, different from any other.”

 “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” also features Geneviève Perrier as Denise Poiret, Catharine K. Slusar as Gertrude Stein, David Bardeen as Leo Stein and Shawn Fagan in a variety of roles including Pablo Picasso.

It's playing at the Arcadia Stage at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd St. Tickets are $20-$39 (student and senior discounts may be available).