ETTA AND ELLA ON THE UPPER WEST SIDE

WORLD PREMIERE

by Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by Monty Cole
February 23 - 25, 2023
Center for New Performance at the REDCAT, Los Angeles

One of the American theater’s seminal writers, Adrienne Kennedy captures the Black experience in America in the 20th century with a trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures. In this world premiere production, Etta and Ella Harrison are talented academics on the Upper West Side – as well as sisters and rivals. After a lifetime of competition, they are on the verge of destroying each other. Director Monty Cole employs a cinematic approach to this intricate blend of monologue, dialogue, voiceover, and prose in a work that is part experimental play, part narrative thriller.

Monty says, “I felt uniquely qualified to tackle the play. Almost all of the core characters in the play are Black academics, an identity that runs deep in my family. On both sides of my family, there are professors, teachers, teachers who teach teachers, superintendents and principals that go back generations. After completing grad school at the California Institution of the Arts, I was fated to join their legacy. In fact, the recently published essay in Harper’s Bazaar about Kennedy’s work, occasioned by the Broadway production of Ohio State Murders, was written by my cousin Wendy S. Walters, director of the non-fiction concentration at Columbia University. I’m all too familiar with how revealing yourself in your work can feel like an act of bloody self-immolation, or how education can turn into compulsion, and compulsion into obsession—a deep rabbit hole with seemingly no bottom. This is what I could bring to the process. (from his essay “Film Noir as a Key to Adrienne Kennedy’s Style” in American Theatre Magazine)

ENSEMBLE: Tori Danner (Ella), Sarahjeen Francois (Etta), Wesley T. Jonest (Troupe), Maleke Clemmons (Pianist)

PRODUCTION TEAM
Scenic Design: Yuki Ding
Lighting Design: Claire Chrzan
Sound Design: Clare Marie Nemanich
Costume Design: Loren Weldon
Video Design: Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh
Composer: Maleke Clemmons
Fight Choreographer: Edward Monaghan
Dance Choreographer: Mecca Andrews
Dramaturg: Sonia Fernandez

Stage Manager: Leigh Robinette

PRESS AND RECOGNITION

“Cole’s cinematic approach provides an intricate blend of monologue, dialogue, voiceover and prose in a work that is part experimental play, part narrative thriller. To experience Cole’s effective use of dual mediums with seamless technicality and the actors’ fluidity between stage and screen  — highlighted via musical score/soundtrack— unleashes the imagination. Indeed, this experience embodies theater anew through intimate and multifaceted encounters.” - Melina Paris, Random Lengths News