And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid (2015)
Billy the Kid (2014)
You, My Mother: An Opera Project (2012)
Trifles (2010)
It Cannot be Called our Mother but our Graves a.k.a. Macbeth (2008/9)
Drum of the Waves of Horikawa (2006)
Major Barbara (2006)
The Cataract (2005)
The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (2004)
The Mother (2003)
The Difference Engine (2003)
Tumor Brainiowicz (2002)
And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid (2015)
In July 2015, Brooke O’Harra directed, with Nicky Paraiso music directing, Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez’s long running serial drama And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid. This long running collaborative work appeared and reappeared in New York City (and Allentown, PA) under many titles over three decades–And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Hot Keys, Come Clean, The Confessions of Conrad Gerhardt, and Spring Offensive.
In the original performance of the work, Weiss performed all the roles but over time he and Martinez began casting actors and non-actors and by 2008 hundreds of people had performed alongside Weiss in this perverse, scary, hilarious, sex-filled and sexy serial drama that follows a charming serial killer through the queer underbelly of the city. Conrad Gerhardt, sometimes in tandem with his alter ego Bjorn Zoltar and, in later iterations, his son, Billy, who is a hustler and also a serial killer, moves gloriously, passionately and violently through show business from the stage to Walt Disney as well as through the AIDS crisis (referred to as the “taint” in Weiss and Martinez’s dramas). Showing at Good Medicine & Company, the storefront theater that Weiss and Martinez ran out of their 10th Street apartment and also at Café Cino, LaMama, the Performing Garage, Naked Angels and PS 122, these serials were celebrated by loyal audiences and participants. Brooke O’Harra, Nicky Paraiso, and Kate Valk banded together with the support of the Kitchen to stage three evenings of Jeff and Richard’s work. They assembled a cast of about 50 people, many of whom worked with Jeff and Richard in the 80s and 90s, to reengage the work. Weiss appeared in the production, in various cameo performances, throughout the three-day run.
The Artists involved in the 2015 production included Jeff Weiss, Andrea Darriau, Becca Blackwell, Brenda Cummings, Brian Buys, Brian Liem, Brooke O’Harra, Chris Hurt, Christine Donnelly, Ciaran Walsh, Dan Peeples, Danaya Esperanza, Danny Ryan, David Cale, David Pittu, Dorothy Cantwell, Eric Lockley, Hanna Allerton, Heather Litteer, Hye Young Chyun, Jacob Burckhardt, Jane Bradley, Janet Bryant, Jennifer Miller, Jess Barbagallo, Jiro Ueno, John Jeserun, John Walker, Kate Valk, Keith McDermott, Margherita Fapiano, Mark Bennett, Mary Schultz, Moe Angelos, Michael Roth, Neil Greenberg, Nicky Paraiso, Nicolas Norena, Richard Sheinmel, Sturgis Warner, and Tanya Selvaratnam
Billy the Kid (2014)
Outlaws were conjured and liberated in a performance inspired by San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer’s 1958 poem Billy the Kid. Aliens, aliases, and renegade desires (both poetic and sexual) possessed five characters over a long night of drinking, singing, and seeking. Manifestos were subverted/inverted/perverted in search of a language that can queer their world. SPICER brought together a host of longtime The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf collaborators, including performers Becca Blackwell and Laryssa Husiak, to theatricalize “a poem somebody could hide in/with a sheriff’s posse after him.”
Artists involved in the production included Brendan Connelly, Lisa D’Amour, Brooke O’Harra, Becca Blackwell, Laryssa Husiak, and Donnell E. Smith.
You, My Mother: An Opera Project (2012)
by Kristen Kosmas & Rick Burkhardt (text and music for part 1) and Karinne Keithley-Syers & Brendan Connelly (text and music for part 2)
February 9 – 20, 2012
The Ellen Stewart Theater at La MaMa, E.T.C. (NYC)
Created by composer Brendan Connelly, playwright Karinne Keithley Syers, Obie Award-winning composer Rick Burkhardt, and playwright Kristen Kosmas, You, My Mother is an opera project in two parts, with music performed by Yarn/Wire + Strings. It is an investigation into the ever-shifting relationships between mothers and their adult children.
Performed By
Beth Griffiths, Laryssa Husiak, Mike Mikos, Kate Soper, Hye-Young
Music Performed By Yarn/Wire
Ian Antonio (percussion), Russell Greenberg (percussion), Laura Barger (piano), Ning Yu (keyboards)
plus
Joshua Modney (violin), Mariel Roberts (cello)
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Scenery and Lights
Chris Kuhl, Justin Townsend
Costumes
Alice Tavener
Slide Projection Design
Ahram Jeong, Yoonkyung Lim
Choreography
Barbara Lanciers
Production Management
Lisa McGinn
Technical Direction
Kate Stack
Assistant Direction
Hye Young Chyun
Slide Operators
Elena Gageanu
Rhedd Morton Jankel
Assistant Lighting
Chris Thielking
Trifles (2010)
– The New York Times
“The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, have turned [Glaspell’s] masterpiece into a nonsingers’ mini-opera, something spare and strange and very, very new …a thrilling project.”
– Time Out NY
by Susan Glaspell (1916)
January 28–February 14, 2010
Ontological-Hysteric Theater, NYC
In it’s 2010 performance, The Theater of a Two-Headed Calf explored the quiet but transgressive unfolding of Trifles, the 1916 proto-feminist one-act by Susan Glaspell. Exploring the real-life murder case that Glaspell covered extensively as a reporter, wherein a man was killed by his wife, Trifles is ultimately concerned with the changing female role in a society that was not wholly ready to accept it. The play might literally be about the murder, but much more is at stake–Trifles is a groundbreaking work that demanded a recognition of the powerlessness of females of the time, and made way for a realization of a more subtle, sophisticated power, even in the face of law triumphing over justice.
Performed By
Becca Blackwell, Laryssa Husiak, Danny Manley, Caitlin McDonough-Thayer, Mike Mikos
Music Performed By
Yarn/Wire
Created by
Brooke O’Harra, Brendan Connelly, and Laryssa Husiak
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Assistant Director
Barbara Lanciers
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Designers
Michael De Angelis, Peter Ksander, Kirby Mages, Justin Townsend
Trifles was performed with support from the Franklin Furnace Performance Artist Award
It Cannot be Called our Mother but our Graves a.k.a. Macbeth (2008/9)
In development as part of the Soho Rep Studio
Excerpt One: March 2008
Clemente Velez Soto Cultural Center
Excerpt Two: August 2008
Industry City, Brooklyn
Excerpt Three: June 2009
The Bushwick Starr
Performed By: Heidi Schreck, Jess Barbagallo, David Brooks, Mike Mikos, Becca Blackwell, Jason Blaine, Laryssa Husiak
Music Performed By: The Weirding Way
Director: Brooke O’Harra
Composer: Brendan Connelly
Sets/Lights By: Peter Ksander, Justin Townsend
Costumes By: Travis Boyer
Drum of the Waves of Horikawa (2006)
“it’s amazing what sick, outrageous connections O’Harra & Co. inspire.”
– Time Out NY
“loud (duh), lively and exploratory”
– The New York Times
“ample proof that super-ultra nerds really can rock after all!”
– The Gothamist
by Monzaemon Chikamatsu
A Co-production of The HERE Arts Center
and The Two-headed Calf
Performed at the HERE Arts Center (NYC)
October 24 – November 17, 2007
and developed at The Perishable Theater (Providence, RI)
Combining live music performed by two drummers, a keyboardist and a bass player with traditional elements of Japanese performance, this production interpreted the 18th Century Chikamatsu classic Drum of the Waves of Horikawa that teems with lying, cheating, drinking and assassination.
In this work, The Theatre of a Two-headed Calf founders Brooke O’Harra and Brendan Connelly explored a number of similarities between the styles of 1970s Punk and 18th Century Kabuki – both loud, violent, transgressive and fueled by radical politics. Both forms use an elaborate gestural system that attempts to codify strong emotional conditions such as humiliation, shame, anger, lust jealousy and rebellion. While Kabuki’s dramaturgical building blocks include rape, double suicide, sword fights and beheadings, Punk favors frenzy, choreographed chaos and overt hostility. They share an appetite for extreme attitude.
Performed By: Jess Barbagallo, David Brooks, Laryssa Husiak, Mike Mikos, Nadia Mahdi, Tatiana Pavela, Heidi Schreck, Laura Berlin Stinger
Music Performed By: The Weirding Way:, Ian Antonio, Russell Greenberg (drums), Tony Gedrich (bass), Brendan Connelly (pipe, horseshoe, keyboards)
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- Photo by Brooke O’Harra
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- Photo by Brooke O’Harra
Major Barbara (2006)
“an infectious, full-throttle sense of daring and adventure in increasingly low supply below 14th Street.”
– Time Out NY
“[The Two-headed Calf] have ratcheted up their own game to a new and welcome level.”
– The New York Sun
“Something true and real…This is a way to hear [Shaw’s] warning, still timely 100 years later.”
– The New York Times
By George Bernard Shaw
A La MaMa presentation in
association with Chashama
Performed at La MaMa’s ANNEX
January 12 – 29, 2006
What happens when George Bernard Shaw, theater’s old-time renegade, meets Japanese Kabuki? Will it be a fight to the death or can these these two disparate theatrical forms peacefully and productively co-exist? In this work, The Theatre of a Two-headed Calf melds together the dense political rhetoric of Shaw with the physical and vocal stylizations of Japanese Kabuki.
Brooke O’Harra (Director) believes the infusion of Kabuki’s aesthetics of cruelty adds a particular poignance to Shaw’s play, in which Barbara, a Major in the Salvation Army, argues for soul-saving and redemption, while her father, a rich arms manufacturer, argues for the necessity of man’s murderous, freedom-giving abilities.
This play was developed simultaneously with a Kabuki Piece by Chikamatsu, The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa.’
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Designers
Peter Ksander
Michael Phillips
Justin Townsend
Tara Webb
Performed By
David Brooks
Lula Graves
Laryssa Husiak
Bob Jaffe
Johnny Klein
Tom Lipinski
Nadia Mahdi
Mike Mikos
Tatiana Pavela
Rosemary Quinn
Salney Ross
Tina Shepard
Heidi Schreck
Music Performed By:
The Scenery Ensemble:
Ian Antonio
(percussion)
Brendan Connelly
(percussion)
Sam Hillmer
(tenor sax and percussion)
Matthew Hough
(electric guitar)
The Cataract (2005)
By Lisa D’Amour
Performed at The Perishable Theater, Providence RI
May13 – June 7, 2005
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Performed By
Nadia Mahdi
Nehassaiu deGannes
Tom Lipinski
Jonathan Woodward
Music Performed By
Andrew Fox
(guitar/mandolin)
Carolina Maugeri
(violin)
The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (2004)
“a unique and jolting voice that will be an important presence in the world of performance in the future by taking important risks and creating novel experiments today.”
– OffOffOnline
by Henry Fielding
Performed at La MaMa
May 13 – June 6, 2004
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Videography
Bilal Khan
Choreography
Barbara Lanciers
Lighting Designer
Justin Townsend
Costumes Designer
Juliann Kroboth
Performed By
Matt Berger
Brian Bickerstaff
Lauren Brown
Cecile Evans
David B. Gould
Lula Graves
Suli Holum
Tatiana Pavela
Mary Regan
Matt Shapiro
Mathew Stadelmann
Music Performed By
Matthew Hough
(electric guitar, voice)
Charlie Looker
(electric guitar, voice)
The Mother (2003)
by S.I. Witkiewicz
Performed at La MaMa
March 27 – April 13, 2003
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Designers
Peter Ksander
Emily Rebholz
Justin Townsend
Puppets and Video
Bilal Khan
Daniel Levine
Dramaturgy
Inna Giter
Lighting Designer
Michael Phillips
Costume Designer
Audrey Robinson
Performed By
Zakia Babb
Jim Fletcher
Wilson Hall
Suli Holum
Barbara Lanciers
Nicky Paraiso
Tina Shepard
Music Performed By
The Scenery Ensemble
Eli Asher
(trumpet)
Sam Hillmer
(clarinet/saxophone)
Beth Meyers
(viola)
Matthew Hough (electric guitar)
Gina Valvano
(bassoon)
Brendan Connelly
(conductor)
The Difference Engine (2003)
by Samantha Hunt
Performed at The Bowery Poetry Club, 2003
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Designers
Bilal Khan
Michele Phillips
Choreography By
Barbara Lanciers
Performed By
Barbara Lanciers
Brian Bickerstaff
Music Performed By
Beth Meyers
(viola)
Joanna Lin
(cello)
Tumor Brainiowicz (2002)
by S.I. Witkiewicz
Translation: Daniel Gerould
Performed at La MaMa
February 28th – March 10th, 2002
April 25th – May 5th, 2002
Developed at Manhattan Theater Source,
Chashama and Dixon Place
Director
Brooke O’Harra
Composer
Brendan Connelly
Designers
Peter Wahlberg
Ben Fox
Carol Cutshall
Puppets By
Candy Ellison
Misako Takashima
Performed By
A. Brian Bickerstaff
Mary Bonner Baker
Rob Marcato
Matt Shapiro
Mary Regan
Nicky Paraiso
Zakia Babb-Bornstein
With Voices Of
Isaac Zimet-Maddow
Misako Takashim
Music Performed By
Jean Cooke
(violin)
Matt Hough
(electric guitar)
Sam Hillmer
(tenor saxophone)
Gina Valvano
(bassoon)
Jacob Garchik
(percussion and trombone)