Award Winning Playwright, Vanda, presents a monthly stage performance of her soon to be released book, Juliana. The novel and live performance centers around LGBT life in New York City in the 1940’s. The performances are directed by Ray Fritz. 
Every month actors dress in period pieces and perform chapters from the novel. Incorporating singing and dancing from the time period, Juliana, the performance, is part radio show, part play, part nightclub entertainment, part novel. Performances take place the second Tuesday of the month and a recap of previous chapters/performances is provided before each show. The series, which was to end in March 2016, was just extended through December of 2016. Additional dates to be announced soon. Vanda’s novel, Juliana (Vol. 1, 1941-1944) will be released in February by Booktrope Editions.
About Juliana: It’s 1941 and Alice “Al” Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her beau, her best girlfriend and her girlfriend’s beau to make it on the Broadway stage only to find she has no talent. She meets Max, a former producer, talent manager and possible con man who introduces her to the glamorous, perpetually on the brink of stardom night club singer, Juliana. Juliana’s voice sounds to Al like “warm milk slipping down the whole of my body.”
Al is increasingly drawn into a secret gay underworld of men who wear dresses and women who smoke cigars, while her childhood friends continue in their “normal” lives. Al glides easily between the two worlds until these worlds begin to collide.
Juliana is the first in a series of novels about the same characters living through forthcoming decades of LGBT history.
The cast features Andrew Albigese (Listen Up/Manhattan Rep), Matt Antar (Verona Walls/WorkShop Theater), Matt Biagini (The Misanthrope/PS 122), Molly Collier (five time nominee Irene Ryan Scholarship), Ray Allen Fritz (A Midsummer Night’s Dream/MTB Studio), Tom Godfrey (In Touch Network personality), Sharlene Hartman (Times Square Playwrights), Colleen Lis (Seussical/National Tour), Lucy McMichael (The Secret Sits in the Middle/Primary Stages), Jacques Mitchell (Summer and Smoke/T. Schreiber Studio), Jess Miller (Comic Strip Live/Foxwoods), and Jami Simon (High Maintenance/HBO), Annie-Sage Whitehurst (Limetown/Two-Up Productions).
Performances take place at The Duplex, 61 Christopher Street (corner of 7th Avenue). Subways: 1 to Christopher Street, A/B/C/D/E/F to West 4th. Bus: M20 to Christopher Street. There is no cover charge – 2 drink minimum. RSVP at www.purplepass.com.
Show Dates:
Tuesday, February 9th @ 7:00 pm
Tuesday, March 8th @ 7:00 pm
Tuesday, April 12th @ 7:00 pm
Tuesday, May 10th @ 7:00 pm
Tuesday, June 14th @ 7:00 pm
Running time: 60 minutes.
About Vanda:
Vanda’s novel, Juliana (Vol. 1, 1941-1944) will be released in February by Booktrope Editions. The novel is about the hidden-in-plain sight lives of gay boys and girls living in New York City in the 1940’s. As a playwright, Vanda has received numerous honors, among them an Edward Albee Fellowship. Her play, Vile Affections, published by Original Works was a finalist for a National Lambda Award. Vanda’s play, Patient HM, which later became The Forgetting Curve, won the Pride Stage and Screen’s Women’s Playwriting Award and was optioned by Theatrum Mundi. It was produced at The Boston Arts Center in September 2014.
Vanda’s non-fiction story, “Jack,” was published in Prairie Schooner in summer 2011 and another non-fiction piece, “Roger: Lost Between Philosophies,” which appears in Pentimento was selected by New Millennium Writings for Honorable Mention from a submission pool of 1,300. Other short prose pieces have been or will be published in Sinister Wisdom, The Outrider Review and The Grub Street On-Line Journal. www.vandawriter.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thejulianaproject – www.facebook.com/vandawriter // Twitter: @vandawriter