I will take any opportunity to keep Mae West‘s memory alive here on THM - I’ve worshiped her since I was a child.  Not just a film actress, West was a pioneer of the stage who didn’t wait around for parts to be written for her.  Nor did she shy away from the subject matter that interested her most – sex.  So it just stands to reason that she would write a vehicle for herself which she could star in – and title it bluntly.

Almost a century later, I’m absolutely ecstatic that The Dirty Blondes will present a staged reading of Mae West’s infamous stage play, SEX, for a limited engagement September 29-October 2 at UNDER St. Marks, directed by Courtney Laine Self.  Written by West almost 90 years ago, SEX is about a sharp-witted prostitute from Montreal’s Red Light District looking for true love.  It was initially shut down in 1927 during its Broadway run, and West was jailed for “lewdness and corrupting the youth.”

I got to chat with Ashley Jacobson, the Artistic Director of The Dirty Blondes, who took a minute out of her hectic schedule to talk about sex, SEX, how some things never change – and how the things that DO change are not always what you think.

It is SO GREAT to see someone take this great play out of the trunk, dust it off, and give it a good shine. I’ve been a Mae West fan since the age of 8, so literally grew up knowing about Mae West, her work and her mission. But why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about how you came to know about SEX and what made it seem like the perfect script to do as a staged reading?

Ashley Jacobson: I always grew up knowing about Mae West as well, but mostly just about her stardom/Hollywood Fame. I came across her book of plays on Amazon one day when I was looking for plays by women, and was so confused! I had no idea she had been a playwright, let alone one that was produced on Broadway. Then I just fell down the research rabbit hole and became more and more impressed by her and excited by the play’s history. She was the patron saint bad-ass we have been looking for! As a company with the name “Dirty Blondes” we are clearly interested in playing off people’s perceptions of femininity and sexuality and challenging these notions with surprising theater. Mae West literally embodies everything we think about ourselves as a company, so it seemed like the perfect thing to explore.

We also wanted to do it as a reading because we wanted it to be presented as a conversation starter, rather than a perfectly polished piece. There is a lot of meat in her play and a LOT to talk about – in terms of the play itself and what Mae West meant by all of it. There are also some problematic elements, including the way race is discussed in the play. So we wanted to present it and make sure we had the opportunity to provide the context and conversation around it. A reading seemed like the best way to accomplish all that.

There’s a lot that’s changed in the 90 years since SEX was seen by its original audience. Obviously what was considered shocking and scandalous back then is almost yawn-inducing now. Does this script hold up? And in the parts where it may not, are you playing it straight, or giving a bit of a wink-and-nod to the audience?

Ashley: The script holds up! Not just for its salaciousness, but Mae wrote some really interesting characters in her play and good characters will always hold up. The story itself, about redemption and about this woman finding her way to a new life, is a timeless story. We’re playing the script straight, letting it speak for itself but also being completely conscious of things that might be considered problematic NOW. The play still needs a “trigger warning” – and not for the same reasons it was considered problematic 90 years ago. There is a lot of talk of violence against women, some racist language – these things were considered fine then, but they certainly aren’t now. Mae West captured a moment in time with this play, and showed us how it was for women in the 20s. We’re interested in exploring that much more than the raunchiness of the story – which, you’re right, isn’t anything to bat an eye at now.

Mae West was a pioneer – a feminist long before the feminist movement. If she was around today, what updates do you think she’d be making to her work in general? And more directly – how different would SEX be if she were to write it in 2016?

Ashley: Wow! What a question! You can see that Mae West progressed as a feminist even in her own life. By the time she reached Hollywood she was one of the biggest advocates for including people of color in her films, and when she was on Broadway she insisted on casting gay & lesbian actors, even though they weren’t allowed in the union. I don’t know if I can speculate on the type of artist she would be now – although I’m sure she would be basking, enjoying the fearlessness of some fellow female performers in the comedy and TV arena – but I honestly don’t know if SEX would be all that different. I would hope it would have a better take on race relations now, but I think it would still focus on how women are continuously reduced to the lowest common denominator. I think it would still talk about the struggle to find empowerment in female sexuality, while avoiding being defined by it. Violence against women is still a serious issue, human trafficking and unfair treatment of sex workers are all important issues now and she sheds some serious light on them in her play.

The Dirty Blondes embody so much of what Mae West was herself – a feisty, strong female doing it all – creatively – herself. Talk to me about what it would be like if you could bring her back and have her come see your staged reading. Do you think she’d be honored? Pleased? Or a little threatened even?

Ashley: Oh God, that would be incredible. (Also thank you for the very nice description!). I would hope she would be honored and excited for us. I would hope that she would see how she paved the way for us to be more fearless and unapologetic – to create the theater that we aren’t seeing anywhere else. She might be a little overwhelmed by how much we intend to dissect the work in our talkbacks but I hope she would see that we are doing that because we believe that she had so much to offer; that her play, although it was widely panned by critics during its time, is actually a full and fruitful story with so much to say about being a woman then AND now. I think Mae West, were she alive today, would be a huge proponent of sisterhood and supporting women artists. There is room for all of us, and I believe that Mae West believes that. She wrote roles for herself and then cast as many people as humanly possible in her plays – she was an artists’ artist.

Finally – staged readings are fantastic. I’ve seen some where you forget you’re not watching an actual play. However, there’s always hope for bigger and better, right? In which case I’m wondering – does The Dirty Blondes have any hopes of doing a full-out production of SEX if this reading goes well?

Ashley: I guess we’ll have to see, but I think the fact that its a reading is a really big part of what we’re doing. We have scheduled some incredible talkbacks with current and retired Sex Workers, Feminist Burlesque Dancers, and an incredible Mae West historian. We really wanted to place the play at the center of a larger conversation – and sometimes you can’t do that in a full production. So presenting the piece as kind of a work-in-progress is important to us. But who knows, if we get the lightning to hit just right, there could be room for bigger aspirations!

Thanks so much for not only answering these questions, but for bringing this back to the stage. I can’t tell you how excited I am to know that new audiences will be seeing this work – even (if only for now) as just a reading!

Ashley: Thank you for such thought-provoking questions!

~~~

For a little extra fun, I’m going to leave you with some Mae West Drunk History courtesy of The Dirty Blondes themselves. Take it away, gals …

Mae West Drunk History from The Dirty Blondes on Vimeo.

~~~

FRIGID NEW YORK @ HORSE TRADE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE DIRTY BLONDES

PRESENT

MAE WEST’S SEX
directed by Courtney Laine Self

September 29-October 2

UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Place
(between 1 st Avenue and Avenue A)
Performances: Thursday through Sunday at 7pm
Tickets: $17
CLICK HERE to purchase

Talkback Schedule:

Kick off the opening night with some bad ass feminist poetry by Maya Osborne and guests, and stay after the show to grab a drink and talk to our amazing cast.

Friday, September 30
Native New Yorker LindaAnn Loschiavo is a journalist, dramatist and Mae West Historian.

Saturday, October 1
Juniper Fleming previously directed, produced, and performed in an all sex worker revival of SEX, at Dixon Place Theater this past June.

Sunday, October 2
Veronica Varlow is a siren born of the 1940s Fantasy of Pinup Girls and Femme Fatales. Beguiling and beautiful, Varlow weaves a spell upon her audiences like none other.

Related Posts:

• Too Much Of A Good Thing Can Be Wonderful! – Mae West’s Birthday Bash
• Outskirts of Eden: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Why So Much Shame?: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Basic Help (2014 Frigid New York Festival)
• Tina And Amy: Last Night In Paradise (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

I Shall Forget You Presently (Amy Overman/Nicole Lee Aiossa/Cara Moretto/Jennifer Gill/Rachel Grundy) [Photo by Theresa Unfried]

She was a woman … a poet … a lover.

She was found at the bottom of the stairs.

She made the city – she WAS the city.  She was from the country.

I’d never read her …

These are some of the overlapping and recurring words of The Dysfunctional Theatre Company‘s theatrical piece I Shall Forget You Presently – a gorgeous dollop of theatre as evocative as a poem – magical, alluring – a love letter to a writer who wrote of love … and of more than love.  You may have only vague notions of who Edna St. Vincent Millay was (she was a poet) or may dismiss her work (I’d never read her) because, like so many misconceptions, her time of birth seems to place her as someone from a by-gone era who would be out of touch with anything that your own life may reflect in this “modern world”.

Fortunately this beautiful homage written by Amy Overman and Eric Chase (who also directs) gives you not only a way to interact with Millay’s work, but a way to fall in love with it, as I did.  Now playing as part of the Frigid New York Festival it has but one show left in its short run – all the more reason to read this review quickly so that you can get those tickets by clicking the link provided at the end.

Chase must have the soul of a poet himself, for his direction of this piece is as redolent and as transporting as any good piece of poetry can and should be.  He not only makes Millay’s world come alive, but he makes her words rise up, shimmer, beckon.

The play is constructed as a play about poetry – and a poet – must be: filled with overlapping words and music, meaningful repetition that changes in nuance with each utterance, joyous patter set to an evocative tempo, all interwoven with soulful music and soaring arias

I Shall Forget You Presently ( Nicole Lee Aiossa & Rachel Grundy) [photo by Theresa Unfried]

With all the actresses having their turn at being Edna St. Vincent Millay (and some stepping into the shoes of her sister, Norma) the audience is brought several versions of the woman as interpreted through the mannerisms, postures and affectations of Nicole Lee Aiossa, Jennifer Gill, Rachel Grundy, Cara Moretto and Amy Overman. This effect gives us a Millay who is in turn playful, direct, authentic, romantic, yearning, and most of all – in every way -seductive.  This makes the entire cast – including the wonderful men who support by playing Millay’s lovers, friends and husband (Rob Brown, Adam Files and Adam Swiderski) quite seductive in their own right.  This is a true ensemble piece, melding, moving, catching up where another leaves off.  As a cast The Dysfunctional Theatre Company is as in tune with their subject, and with their execution of the material as the poet herself was with her own creative voice.

Edna St. Vincent Millay [photo: Carl Van Vechten Archive at the Smithsonian]

Overman and Chase’s script – when not giving us snippets of poetry – give us a Millay who is shockingly accessible and raffish.  ”Vincent” (as some friends called her) smoked, she drank, “she cursed and cut classes but she turned in work that was brilliant” … these days those things are not diametrically opposed.

It’s always shocking to realize — or rather reintegrate – the evidence that people were sexy and seductive in earlier centuries.  As if the same sepia tones which color their fading photographs somehow scrub them clean of any impure thoughts.  As if only our generation, or perhaps the one prior, invented longing, aching, frustration, confusion,

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,—yes—but what
Is that to me?

– “Thursday”  Edna St. Vincent Millay

But consider the biblical Bathsheba (mentioned in one interlude) whose seductive bath scene witnessed by David was as vivid and ribald as any webcam show.  These are the connections Millay was offering up – and suddenly we realize that her discovery of prior centuries of lust is as surprising to her as ours is of her generation.  Simply because people used more elegant and evocative language to discuss their urges doesn’t mean the fires weren’t burning with as much sizzle and steam as our own great love affairs.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
– “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)” Edna St. Vincent Millay 

At the end a teary eyed Cara Moretto addressed the audience as Edna and intoned Millay’s “First Fig”

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

At this point my eyes were filled with tears as well – not just because I’d been so touched, so transported by what I’d just seen, but at the fact that these words had meant so much to me for so long – had been quoted by me, had been written in my diary at both triumphant as well as desperate moments, yet I had never bothered to cite the author for I had never known who it was.  Wait.  Just sit with that for a moment.  I had never known who had written words I had quoted hundreds of times.  It was both shaming as well as galvanizing.  I couldn’t wait to dive headlong into more Millay.

“To know a great poet is a painful but precious privilege” says one of the characters in Presently, and so to know this great theatrical performance is both a painful but precious privilege.  Painful for the brevity and fleetingness of it – painful for the travesty of never discovering this eloquent ebullient poet until now.  But most definitely a precious privilege.  Thank you, Dysfunctional Theatre Company, for capturing so hauntingly, so lushly, and so deeply the work of a poet who was a woman … a poet … a lover.  A woman – found at the bottom of the stairs.

~~~

I Shall Forget You Presently
Company: Dysfunctional Theatre Company
Written by: Eric Chase and Amy Overman
~BASED ON THE WORKS OF EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY~
Directed by: Eric Chase

Remaining Performance:
Mar 06, 5:30PM

Click HERE for tickets

Running time: 1 h 0 min
Price: $12.00 – $15.00
Seating: General Admission

The Kraine Theater
85 E. 4th Street
New York , New York 10003
2nd and 3rd Ave

Horse Trade Theater Group will present the 8th Annual FRIGID New York Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4^th Street between 2^nd Avenue and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1^st Avenue and Avenue A) February 19-March 9. Tickets are available for purchase in advance at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling 212-868-4444. 

Related Posts:

• I Shall Forget You Presently: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2014 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Ed Wood Lives And Is Better Than Ever: Final Curtain, The Last of Ed Wood
• The Dirty Blondes Talk About SEX
• THE CANUCK CABARET (2014 Frigid New York Festival)
• Delving Into DARK WATER With Diánna Martin