Productions

Deviant Craft

 





Mr. Snow runs the drama therapy group at a (fictional) reformatory known as The Phlogiston Foundation, a unique facility for women who’ve been convicted of violent crimes, but who have remarkable aptitudes in science, technology and art. The Phlogiston Foundation routinely parades their ‘successes’ before the public, often in high profile civic venues (such as The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage.) Tonight, the audience arrives expecting to see the inmates perform The Tempest, but their performance is delayed when the wrong costumes and props arrive. What arises from this mishap will forever alter the course of The Tempest, the prisoners’ lives and our own notions of creativity.

Written by
W. David Hancock

Directed by
Melanie Joseph
 

1995 : Presented by Creative Time in The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage

 

Company

Written by  W. David Hancock 
Directed by Melanie Joseph 

Performed by:
Doris Difarnecio 
Venida Evans
Dor Green 
Pamela Gray
Jim Himelsbach   
Annette Hunt
Lee Nagrin  
Molly Powell
Ching Valdes-Aran

Set & Lighting:  Teddy Jefferson
Costumes:  Doey Luethi
Sound Design:  David Van Tieghem
Composers:  David Van Tieghem & Grisha Coleman
Production Stage Manager:  N. Bonnie Reese
Stage Manager:  Theresa Gonzalez

Press Representative: Carol Fineman

 

Press

“Watching Hancock’s elaborate environmental piece, Deviant Craft, is like cutting into what looks like an ordinary cake and discovering it has twenty layers, each with a different flavor and consistency.  Don’t ask what kind of cake it is. Just dig in.”  The New York Times

 

“Rigorously metaphysical …  rough magic has never been more raw, more visionary.” 
Ross Wetzsteon The Village Voice

” a chilling inversion of the Tempest’s celebration of art as liberty.”
Alisa Solomon, The Village Voice   

 

Drama Desk nominee for “Most Original Theatrical Experience”

 


 

“Sometimes ghosts are a plume of smoke, sometimes a reflection of light in a window, sometimes they are simply a word that keeps popping up in conversation and then disappears. When you look at a ghost, it’s best to gaze slightly to one side – like you do when you’re looking at a star. We appear brighter that way.”
– Act 2 of Deviant Craft