Current/ past productions
THE ITCH / A PLAY at New Ohio Theatre [2017]
Ana and Simon are twins. Ana wants to sell her eggs for piles of money. Simon wants another beginning after his latest bender. They have spent a lifetime disappearing into each other and seeking to define their lives as separate beings. And now, through family, lovers, humans caught in the spiral of their narrative and the memories in which they all reside, they come to terms with their ghosts.
THE ITCH is story of sibling love, addiction, and how far we’ll go to save ourselves and others, experienced through theatre, film and original music.
More INFO
*Developed at La Mama Umbria's Next Generation incubator.
Featuring
Gore Abrams / Coco Conroy
Erik LaPointe / Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Dan Berkey / Ray C. Wright
Directed by Theresa Buchheister
Produced by Throes Theater
Written by Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Associate Producer: Kate German
Associate Producer: Melinda Prisco
Stage Manager: Darielle Shandler
Music: Throes Theater & The Petite Brunettes
Set Design: Matthew Dipple
Video Design: George Gavin
Lighting Design: Alejandro Fajardo
Costume Design: Jose Cavazos
*In its initial stages, this project was developed at La Mama Umbria International, with Mojo Lorwin, Gore Abrams, and Alexandra Zelman-Doring as collaborators.
Watch a Behind the Scenes
THE ITCH / A FILM PLAY at Dixon Place [2017]
THE ITCH is a film- play about sibling love, addiction, and how far we’ll go to save ourselves and others. It features original music, and takes place both on film and live as we journey in time
Featuring
Gore Abrams / Allison Anderegg / Joseph Huffman
Alexandra Zelman-Doring / Rae C. Wright / Dan Berkey
Lonely Christopher
Developed at La Mama Umbria International
Created in collaboration with Mojo Lorwin
MIKE / A New Play in Two Acts at HERE ARTS CENTER [2015]
Photo by Go Sugimoto
Based on true events of a headless chicken named Mike and the illegal adoption agency run by Gertrude Pitkanen, MIKE features a folk-pop score with lyrics by Alexandra Zelman-Doring and music by Jodi Ferguson, who also performs live on guitar and ukulele.
Featuring
Gore Abrams / Leo DeFriend
Giulia Martinelli / Vanessa Rose / Jodi Ferguson
Set design Amanda Millet Sorsa
Lighting design Haejin Han
Written and Directed by Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Assistant Director Jessica Kazamel
*This production is a part of SubletSeries@HERE: Co-op, HERE’s curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical support.
SPIRITUAL TERRORISTS / A Collaboration with I SPEAK MUSIC [2015]
Program
Someantics for Viola [Ryan Pratt], for a Cantonese speaker and electronics (staged by Alexandra Zelman-Doring)
Note to Self [James Currie], for 2 performers
Soldier’s Tale, Part I [Igor Stravinsky] (new interpretation by Throes Theater)
“Tell them there is nothing to understand”
Ryan Pratt’s Someantics for Viola explores the function of this human instrument, and its listening mechanism.
“I had decided that I needed to sort out my life. I devised a method for making notes to myself so that I would remember what was important. But I then went back and found that they were completely indecipherable. I felt as if my plans for happiness had been written by a people now dead, whose language had long since disappeared. I felt barred from my own optimism. I felt stupid and angry and ridiculous. Some time then passed and I forgot my disappointment. Now, by comparison, I just feel stupid and angry and ridiculous.” James Currie, on his new piece Note to Self.
“But I know that there is not going to be any dialogue or any conversation between the two of us. Our talk is bound to be in the nature of a monologue.”
Performers
Viola Yip & Jamie Currie, speakers
Elizabeth Derham, violin / Naum Goldenstein, clarinet / Mahir Celtiz, piano
Alexandra Zelman-Doring, actor
Directors
Someantics for Viola / Alexandra Zelman-Doring
The Soldier’s Tale / Zachary Schoenhut
The Soldier’s Tale is a theatrical work “to be read, played, and danced” by three actors and one or more dancers, accompanied by a septet of instruments. In this new and exciting interpretation, one actor, Alexandra Zelman-Doring, encompasses the three characters (Soldier, Reader, and the Devil) through a contemporary translation of the original French text by C.F. Ramuz (1918). The accompanying music includes Stravinsky’s transcription of the score for three instruments while the other movements are transcribed by Mahir Cetiz, holding true to the sanctity of Stravinsky’s score. This exciting performance, directed by Zachary Schoenhut, relates the parable of a soldier who trades his fiddle to the devil in return for unlimited economic gain.
IS YOUR FATHER A CARPENTER at ART 3 Gallery in Bushwick [2014]
One Night Only! At ART 3 Gallery in Bushwick
A mini-play with music
Improvised performance by
Naum Goldenstein & Alexandra Zelman-Doring
SIMPLE AS LIFE AND DEATH in Theater for the New City [2014]
Photo by Liora Tzur
A woman who looks like my mother
Sees a man who looks like me
They pass each other without turning around
Mistakes are miraculous and simple as life and death
as the arithmetic book of a small child
…An afternoon wind blows, as if asking: what did you do
What did you talk about
-Yehuda Amichai
A new play by Meirav Kupperberg & Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Directed by Keren Tzur
Production assistant Alexandra Zajaczkowski
Set design Keren Tzur
Dramaturgy Eran Shadar
Lighting Design Alejandro Fajardo Arbelaez
Video by Roan Bibby
Music Editor Erez Todres
Performed at Theater for the New City
HALFWAY THROUGH THE STORIES OF OUR LIFE at Access Theater & Dixon Place [2014]
Three actors, three musicians, three composers. A dark comedy inspired by Spalding Gray.
Three actors, three composers, and three musicians come together to wade through the inferno.“Halfway through the Story of Our Life” brings together an award-winning team of composers, actors and musicians to divulge a truthful, raw, explosive tale.
Written by 2013 Financial Times/Bodley Head Prize Winner Alexandra Zelman-Doring with Benedita Pereira and Emma Meltzer, this comedy inspired by Spalding Gray brings together an international team from the US, Czech Republic, Portugal, Turkey, Serbia, Israel, and South Africa.
Featuring live performance of original music by renowned group of Drama Desk Awards-nominated composers Ana Milosavljevic, Jiri Kaderabek and Mahir Cetiz, music and musician meet text and actor in this truly unique collaboration.
Featuring
Benedita Pereira, Emma Meltzer, Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Naum Goldenstein (Clarinet), Marc Uys (Violin) and Mahir Cetiz (Piano)
Musical director: Mahir Cetiz
Set design by Dan Spielman with stool by Jeff Landman
Lighting design by Alejandro Fajardo
Reviews
ACT BEFORE YOU SPEAK at The Burton Taylor Theatre in Oxford & at The Flea Theater in New York City [2012]
A translation of Hamlet into the aphasiac intensity of grief, love, revenge and madness.
For two women and a violin.
“A lovely little darkling rite – half dance, half pantomime – that reimplants the Melancholy Dane in what the gender studies crowd refers to as ‘female space’, but what off-Broadway connoisseurs simply call Black Box heaven.”
Scott Brown, New York Magazine
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
By William Shakespeare & A.S. Zelman-Doring
In collaboration with Ada Gafter-O’Higgins & Jeffrey Landman
Original score composed by Jiří Kadeřábek, Mahir Çetiz, and Ana Milosavljevic
Directed by Hedvig Claesson
First performed at the Burton Taylor Theater in Oxford, June 2011.
Premiered in the United States at The Flea Theater in New York City, August 2012.
Reviews
To Hold an Apple at Edinburg Fringe Festival & 59E59 in New York City [2011]
Three master improvisers meet to resolve a conflict that threatens to consume their friendship: a fierce impromptu struggle ensues as they enact an encounter between painter Paul Cézanne, his childhood friend Emile Zola, and the young poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
Inspired by Rilke’s ‘Letters on Cezanne’, and Zola’s ‘The Masterpiece’, this poetic homage to three great artists’ work explores the nature of improvisation through a rapturous portrayal of the tormented masters. Dramatic tension and irony acquire new meaning with the transformation, before the audience’s eyes, of actor into character. Moments of comedy mingle with tragic truths as the performers probe the limits of theatrical immersion. In this dynamic world of shifting identities, obsessions and fears, we are forced to ask: how much of this is truly an act?
By Alexandra Zelman-Doring
Selected by academy award winning playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton to be performed in Oxford’s New Writing Festival, March 2011.
Performed in New York at 59E59’s East to Edinburgh festival, July 2011.
Performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, August 2011.
Reviews
WITH EYES, WITH SHOES, WITH FURY, WITH FORGETFULNESS [2012]
A new play/street performance about drug-wars in Mexico, the Holocaust, and one young man’s quixotic dream of change. It features powerful singing, a play within the play, and an unusual love story.
By Jeffrey Landman & Alexandra Zelman-Doring
A Note on the Set:
The entire set fits into a large travelling trunk.
There are:
Two large folding screens, painted on both sides
Six small boxes containing: costumes, strings of flags, small- instruments, tomatoes, eggs
A portable record player with SOMOS by Chavela Vargas
A guitar
Two pieces of fabric used for curtains
A weathered stand fitted with rotating wooden placards
Strapped to the outside of the trunk is a folding chair.
THE LIGHT IN THE DUST [2018]
In a cramped Brooklyn apartment, an aging Russian Poet, her conflicted son, and her British husband struggle to reconcile their thwarted desires. Arguing over Peak-oil, Byzantium, and Chekhov, they find a mote of hope in long forgotten dreams.
By Alexandra Zelman-Doring
First performed at the Providence Hillel, April 2008
Reviews
