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Anne Washbun- The Communist Dracula Pageant
Anne Washburn
c/o Val Day
William Morris Agency
1325 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
(212) 903-1192
Email: vday@wma.com
Website: www.newdramatists.org
Anne Washburn is from the West and Northwest and as a result prefers her foliage and landscapes a little on the drastic side. Her work has been produced by 13P, A.R.T., Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, E.S.T., London‘s Gate Theatre, NYC’s Soho Rep., DC's Studio Theater, and NYC’s Vineyard Theatre, among others. Her plays have been published or are about to be published in American Theater (April 2007), Yale Theatre, Playscripts.com, and she is included in the anthologies New Downtown Now (Edited by Young Jean Lee and Mac Wellman; Univ. of Minnesota Press) and in New York Theater Review 2007 (Edited Brook Stowe). She has been commissioned by The Civilians, Soho Rep, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and Yale. She is a member of 13P and The Civilians, and an associated artist with New Georges.
THE INTERNATIONALIST
APPARITION
THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT
THE LADIES
ORESTES
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER
EVERYTHING NOT PERMITTED IS FORBIDDEN (AND VICE VERSA)
THE COMMUNIST DRACULA PAGEANT – World Premiere
by Americans, for Americans, with
hallucinations, phosphorescence, and bears
by Anne Washburn – directed by Anne Kauffman
"Wacky, chilling, and funny." — Boston Globe
"[Like] David Lynch’s early 1990s series Twin Peaks....The Communist Dracula Pageant is loaded with imagery and eager to plunge into the surreal." — Edge Boston
It is 1989, and one of the most vicious Eastern European regimes of all time is on trial.
And it is 1976, and Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, at the height of their powers, mount a pageant to celebrate the glory of the Romanian nation.
And it is the fifteenth century, and Vlad Tepes – the original Count Dracula – steps out of the dark mists and swings his cape about him. He looks around him and his eyes gleam red.
The Communist Dracula Pageant is a wild and offbeat romp through the web of Romanian myth and history, drawn from the imagination of one of this country’s most lauded young writers. Our own election season provides the perfect backdrop for the premiere of this theatrical satire on the forging of a national identity, and the power of a president to rewrite the news.
“With the exception of rumor, everything here is fact; apart from all the very colorful bits, it is imagination; this is how we create a history.”
“Something is dismounting the horse of history, which has been ridden hard. Something has leapt to the earth and is striding towards us. You can hear the horse's heaving breath, and footsteps on the icy ground.”
— The Communist Dracula Pageant