Heather Litteer’s Lemonade [Photo credit Steve Menendez]

Read on as Heather tells me all about the ramifications of her role of a lifetime, what it means to be a powerful sexual woman in today’s society, and how she juggled all this while remaining close to her steel magnolia of a Southern mom.

​​Heather!  Your story sounds fascinating.  Why don’t you start off by telling us what “Lemonade” means.
Heather Litteer: Lemonade started out as a poem about all the different jobs and acting roles I have had. They say your real life can mimic the kind of acting work that comes to you, and in my case it did!

Lemonade also represents my southern upbringing. I was raised in Georgia and we drank a lot of lemonade during those hot summers. I moved to NYC at 18 but I kept a close relationship with my mother over the phone and we talked almost daily. She was a pure Proper Southern Woman as well as a Steel Magnolia. She always had these southern sayings. “When life hands you lemons, you just make lemonade” was one she used constantly, so that’s where the title came from. Lemonade is the sweet and the sour in life. The play weaves in and out of my experiences with film work and how it affected my relationship with my mother. It’s about never giving up hope and to always keep pushing that envelope. If you fall down 12 times, get up 13 times.

Heather Litteer

So, your tagline’s pretty bold – you’re “not a hooker … but you play one on TV”.  You’ve been cast as strippers and junkies as well.  What’s wrong with that?
Heather:  I don’t see anything wrong with playing strippers, junkies or hookers or even being a stripper, junkie or hooker. Except being a junkie is not so healthy! So long as no one is getting used, abused or hurt, I love and respect them all.
I was a stripper and even danced at Billy’s Topless as well as numerous nightclubs like Jackie 60 in the New York gay 90’s. I was part of the House Of Domination, and my nickname was Jessica Rabbit. It was a blast!
Junkies, hookers, and strippers are fun roles to play, but they can also be heartbreaking. When that’s the only way people perceive you, and you’re being repeatedly typecast and stereotyped, it can get old. I was the girl people called to play these roles because I was brave and I wasn’t afraid to get naked!

​​Your show is about how women are treated in the industry.  Talk to me about when you first started seeing a pattern of misogyny.
Heather: All these roles started to come in after I did the extremely terrifying sex scene in Requiem for a Dream. That was the role that has led to me being typecast for the past 16 years. I thought working with all these amazing people, like director Darren Aronofsky and actress Jennifer Connelly, would take me to higher places. I suppose that dream was a little naïve. But I’ve always had big dreams! I just had to learn how to play the game. In Lemonade I talk about my experiences and how it makes me feel and I think this will be relatable to a lot of woman. Being treated like a piece of meat, even though I went in willingly. There are aftershocks from that. And that sex scene in Requiem is legendary!

Your show is a solo show, so you’re wearing a lot of hats.  Who is your favorite character to embody?  And tell us a little about one of their scenes.
Heather: Working on this show has been a real challenge with all of the different characters, but I love it!

My favorite character to play is definitely my Mom. It brings her back to me for little moments and I feel like she’s right there in the room with me. When I embody her it makes me feel close to her, and that is extremely cathartic. It makes me miss her so very much and I wish I could have just one last conversation with her. She passed away suddenly during the initial writing of Lemonade. I used to get a lot of guidance from her and I use a lot of her southern sayings in the show. This show is dedicated to my Mom, Nancy.

How hard is it for people to “get” the true issues of ​Lemonade?  Do you have people who, when you talk casually about the ​show, try to explain​​ it away with “Well, maybe that’s just your experience”, or “Maybe you just didn’t meet the right people?”
Heather: There are a lot of different issues covered in Lemonade. There is the mother/daughter relationship. It’s a struggle between two different sets of values, my mother with her southern roots, and me with my New York contemporary ideals.

Its also about how being a powerful sexual woman in society is perceived. Most people’s views are so old fashioned. It deals with the struggles of an actress who is feeling marginalized and like she is only being seen through a tiny keyhole when she has so much more to give. The through line of the show is to always have hope. To work hard, and never give up. There is something waiting for you right around the corner, always with a Lil’ Sugar Honey!

Heather, thank you so much for giving us a glance into what makes you so special.  I know your mom, Nancy, would be proud of the work you’re continuing to do, and it’s lovely that the show is dedicated to her.  

~~~

For the rest of you- make sure to check out the world premiere of Heather Litteer’s solo show Lemonade!

The Club at La MaMa
74A East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery
April 15-24 –  with performances on Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 6pm

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased in advance here or by calling 646-430-5374

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In the dark and hazy mirrored halls a woman stands teetering on a towering wooden stool – eyes blindfolded and arms shackled to the ceiling.  She is motionless, speechless; an altogether eerie presence. Beneath her in the darkness, piles of whitewashed suitcases act as a barrier between her world and some other place. She is Persephone and this is The Maiden, currently playing at The Club at LaMaMa.

This reboot of the Greek abduction myth is the brain child of The Nerve Tank and while it certainly falls under the category of innovative independent theatre, it does so in a way that is expectedly innovative and predictably independent. While there’s a lot to be distracted by it’s not a distraction that transports fans of avant-garde theatre to any new lands. Still, The Maiden does have its enjoyable moments and clocks in at just around an hour – so if you’re in the mood for a little left-of-center performance you’ll probably feel The Maiden is worth the price of admission.

The text, by Chance D. Muehleck, is an amalgam of rap lyrics, movie speeches and bits of poetry which are restated, overlapped, whispered, chanted and spoken in every available manner in order to coax out a subtle nuance or, at times, do the opposite. To this end there are moments when the words (intentionally) become so repetitious as to become almost hypnotic thus losing all their meaning and allowing the tone and timbre to supply the intention of the scene.

The Maiden (photo by Raymond Haddad)

Mark William Lindberg as Hades rides about the environs on a stunning four wheeled chariot (designed by Greg Henderson and Melanie Armer) which he steers expertly as he waves a golden megaphone. His ensemble designed by Miodrag Guberinic is goth black with accents of golden bullets which make their intended statement. As Lindberg channels P. Diddy and raps “I got it all but I really need a wife at home” he comes across more like Eminem dunked in Marilyn Manson.  Don’t get me wrong -this is actually a very enjoyable thing.  Other moments, however, just seem rehashed, familiar, and pat.

Still, for all its contrivances director and choreographer Melanie S. Armer offers forth an underworld that is at times exotic yet robotic – futuristic yet ancient. Some of the most intimate and – if not erotic then at least arousing – moments between Hades and his Persephone (Robin Kurtz) occur as they recite parts of “My Century” By Gunter Grass (referred to moments before in “The Rape Joke“).  The blandness of the passage which explains how he “bought his first straw hat to wear while strolling to the Mühlentor” is neatly counterpointed with a Persephone who shimmies up Hades’ chariot and mingles her breath with his before dismounting. Their shared reality throughout this play is often mimicked by the chorus who sometimes watch, sometimes persuade, sometimes invade, and who are the trio of Admiral Grey (who also composed), Brandt Adams, and James “Face” Yu.

The result of all this movement, talk, quoting and perplexity is somehow more Alice In Wonderland than Persephone.  One has the sense that this underworld of non-sequiturs is simply another plane of awareness – and calls to mind the stream of consciousness propelled from a grown up Alice as she endlessly drops down the rabbit hole.

Overall, The Maiden is an hour’s worth of one parcel of words leading to another. Midway one must simply come to terms with the fact that leaning forward and concentrating with extreme effort is no more the theatre experience intended here than leaning back and allowing the whole performance to simply wash over you.  There’s no correct way to be an audience member, there’s no correct way to interpret theatre, and ultimately if you like your nights of theatre to end with a question mark, or an ellipse rather than a more decisive period, then The Maiden will be exactly the type of theatre experience you’re looking for.  As for me …

~~~
The Maiden

La MaMa’s The Club
74A East 4th Street (2nd Floor)
(btw Bowery & 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003

March 28 – April 13, 2014
Created by The Nerve Tank
Friday – Saturday at 10pm and Sunday at 5:30

CLICK HERE for tickets

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