Lydia Blaisdell. Photo by Molly Hagan.
CINCINNATI, OH – Following sold-out runs of her immersive apocalyptic audio adventure (BEAR EATS BEAR) in Brooklyn, Toronto, Charlotte, Austin, and the Minnesota Fringe, award-winning playwright, Lydia Blaisdell, offers the world premiere of her first solo work, which weaves family secrets, medical records, and photographs together, unearthing her great-grandmother’s decades lost in a state-run asylum.
In 1931, Cora Lockett—an accomplished pianist, teacher, and mother of three–was held in a state asylum against her will until her death 32 years later. “She Buried the Pistol” examines Cora’s “madness,” and whether the patterns handed down from our ancestors can ever be laid to rest. A current member of the OBIE-Award winning playwriting group Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and a graduate of the Michener Fellowship for Writers, this piece will be Blaisdell’s first performance of her own work in over a decade.
Press for SHE BURIED THE PISTOL
“Part of the privilege of seeing theater is being able to negotiate the different angles of experience in a shared space with characters who are living those orientations in real time. In the last few weeks, I’ve loved She Buried the Pistol by Lydia Blaisdell for that reason.” – Gracie Gardner, New York Theatre Review, 2018
Past Press for Blaisdell’s Plays
***** “Absolutely worth it; a little scary, [a little funny], a little heartbreaking, and very, very human.” – Audience review of Bear Eats Bear, Minnesota Fringe 2017
“Thoughtful and tenderhearted, Bear Eats Bear is a great curiosity”- The Austin Chronicle, 2017, review of the Rude Fusion production of Bear Eats Bear
“…a feminist study of the tragic injustices suffered by ordinary women for centuries, perhaps millennia” – Lexington Herald Leader, review for The Silent Woman in 2015
WHAT: SHE BURIED THE PISTOL in the Primary Line-up of the 2018 Cincy Fringe
WHO: Created & Performed by Lydia Blaisdell
Directed by Hannah Wolf
Design by Bruno-Pierre Houle
Poster image by Jenny Snider
WHEN:
- 7:45 pm Saturday, June 2, 2018
- 7:00 pm Sunday, June 3, 2018
- 6:30 pm Tuesday, June 5, 2018
- 8:30 pm Thursday, June 7, 2018
- 9:00 pm Friday, June 8, 2018
- 2:45 pm Saturday, June 9, 2018
- 6:30 pm Saturday, June 9, 2018
WHERE: First Lutheran Church (FLC) Basement, 1208 Race Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202
TICKETS: $15 at https://knowtheatre.vbotickets.com/event/She_Buried_the_Pistol/27323
SHOW WEBSITE: https://guide.artswave.org/event/she-buried-the-pistol/
Creator Bio:
Lydia Blaisdell is a proud member playwright of the OBIE-winning collective Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater (since 2010). She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. Blaisdell recently received the 2018 Visionary Playwright Award and commission from Theater Masters, which will take her to the Aspen Ideas Festival later this summer. Bear Eats Bear, her immersive audio piece, has toured to Toronto, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Minneapolis, and Austin, TX. Her dystopian piece, The Last Great American Bear Hunt, was a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (2016). Her historical sex-doll play, The Silent Woman, won the 2015 Kentucky Women Writers Conference Prize and made Honorable Mention on the 2016 Kilroy’s List of best new plays. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo (fall 2016), the Marble House Project (fall 2017), and Ucross (spring 2018) in Wyoming. Her work has been received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the City of Austin, and Scriptworks. She belongs to the Brooklyn-based writers’ collective, Kristiania, and the Austin-based political action group, Literary Women in Action. Her short play about pubic waxing, Donna’s First Brazilian, is published and licensed by Samuel French. Lydia lives in Brooklyn with her pup.
More info at: http://www.lydiablaisdell.com
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