BRING A WEASEL AND A PINT OF YOUR OWN BLOOD
In 1928, the 26-year-old Felipe Alfau, a recent émigré to New York from Barcelona, strafed the prologue to his picaresque first novel, Locos: A Comedy of Gestures, with dares, complaints, and disavowals. The reader was invited to begin the book at any page and proceed in any direction. Despite praise from reviewers when finally published in 1936, Locos soon sank without a trace and only bobbed up again half a century later when an editor came across a copy at a barn sale.
The reissued edition’s many fans included Mac Wellman, who has now put it into the hands of three writers from the Brooklyn College Playwriting program – Richard Toth, Scott Adkins and Normandy Sherwood.Each playwright has adapted one story from Locos for an evening of three plays at the 13th Street Theater:
Richard Toth’s Identity by Scott Adkins and Normandy Sherwood By Richard Toth
In which a boring man kills himself in order to become a character, with terrible results
The Character By Scott Adkins
In which a character relates the sad story of his love for a real woman, and messes up the story while the author is on a break
The Necrophil By Normandy Sherwood
Concerning Dona Valverde, a funeral-hunting widow whose only love is death
All three plays will be directed by Meghan Finn, with dramaturgy by Allison Lyman.
The cast includes Yehuda Duenyas, Juliana Francis-Kelly, Kate Benson, Cat Cabral, Neil Hellegers, Lucy Kaminsky, Matt Korahais, Michael Lister, and Travis York.
The Weasel Festival, now in its fourth year, is a festival of plays written and produced by playwrights from Mac Wellman’s Brooklyn College MFA Playwriting program.
The Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood Theater Festival will run at 7:30pm from July 17 through July 19 at the East 13th Street Theatre, 136 East 13th St., New York, NY.
Admission is a suggested $15 at the door and tickets can be reserved by emailing bringaweasel@gmail.com. All three plays will be performed each night