“Lou” a Play by Fiery Octogenarian Premiers at the 2011 New York Int’l Fringe Festival

Aug. 13, 2011 - PRLog -- Here is a play that explodes the notion that passion fades with age. The playwright is 80 years old. The subject is a woman looking back on an amazing life. The passion on stage is white hot. “Lou” is Lou Salomé, who lived a century ago. She was a groundbreaking writer and psychoanalyst, but what matters most was her life of high adventure. With her brilliance and her raging hunger to know, she danced on the edge and inspired every life she entered. Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud all fell under her spell and emerged trailing holy fire.

In this electric staging of John Carter’s lyrical script, actress Elena McGhee and director Tina Benko reincarnate Lou’s amazing spirit and set her loose. The theater is small and the setting intimate. You can’t escape her. You won’t forget her.

Lou wrote, “Human life—indeed all life—is poetry. We are works of art, but we are not the artist.” This is the focus of this play. It portrays her life as glowing art, and it follows her search to find connection with the artist.

Lou Salomé was one of those remarkable and precious humans who alter our culture, for better or for worse. She has been called a truth-seeker, iconoclast, libertine, and blatant individual. She became an historical icon for the feminist movement. Anaïs Nin spoke of Lou as “a women whose importance to the development of women is immeasurable.” In spite of the many obstacles that dominated her era, no woman had ever so brilliantly invaded the intellectual domains of men, and no woman before her had flouted the confines of gender with such unruly will. She was a person of great spiritual substance. Her childhood glowed with the glory of God, then that God departed. The wound shaped her life, and she brought forth richness from it.

The show premiers August 20 – 28, 2011.
http://www.loulives.com/

Playwright and poet John Carter is a former merchant seaman, railroad man and wanderer. He began writing plays in his early 70s. He marks his 80th year with the staging of “Lou.” It is his third play to be performed in New York.

Actress Elena McGhee has performed on the stage and screen in New York, Boston and Los Angeles. She performed most recently at The Red Circle Theater with director Ed Sherin. Past credits include Shanghai Gesture off Broadway with Mirror Rep, Funnyhouse of a Negro with Classical Theater of Harlem, and the lead in Scenes from an Execution with QED @Hudson Guild.

Director Tina Benko’s recent theatre credits include Wallace Shawn’s Marie and Bruce at The New Group, The Little Foxes and Restoration at New York Theatre Workshop, Rough Sketch at 59East59th Street, Age of Iron at CSC as well as other Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and television and film.

Producer Ken Terrell (ACR) is the Artistic Director of the Curan Repertory Company. He
received his B.A. from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. and his M.A. from Western
Washington University in Bellingham, WA. With Curan Rep, he also produces the Notes From The Underground Festival for original one-act plays.

Show Dates:
Saturday, August 20, 2011 @ 8:45pm
Sunday, August 21 @ 2:00pm
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 @ 4:15pm
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 @ 7:45pm
Thursday, August 25, 2011 @ 7:00pm
Sunday, August 28, 2011 @ 12 pm Noon

Manhattan Theatre Source
(Fringe venue # 17)
177 MacDougal Street
New York, NY 10011
(bet. 8th St & Waverly Pl.)

$15 tickets are on sale now. For reservations call 866-468-7619 or order online.
http://www.fringenyc.org/basic_page.php?ltr=L#Lou