BONEYARDS is back from the dead to rock your underworld just in time for Halloween. Shiva3 is proud to announce the return of Jeffrey Stanley’s solo show BONEYARDS which was a hit in the 2013 Philly Fringe. The 80-minute show will again be performed in the dark, dank coal cellar of the century-old storefront Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras-Israel Synagogue, also known as “the little shul” (part of the June 2013 Hidden City Festival) at 2015 South 4th Street in South Philly near Snyder Avenue for 4 performances. Stanley’s solo show is a followup to his 2011 Fringe hit BEAUTIFUL ZION: A BOOK OF THE DEAD. Stanley is also a dramatic writing faculty at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and at Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. He is a religion blogger for the Washington Post.
About the Show
A funeral for the living. A coming-of-age embalming. A suicidal decapitation by coal train. A cross-dressing hillbilly named Doodlebug. This metatheatrical, taphophilic, true-to-life monologue resurrects and converses with the cadaverous–from Philly’s Laurel Hill Cemetery to a British colonial era graveyard in India to ancient Greek tomb worshippers. Is there a meaning to the universe? Is the spirit world speaking to you right now
through this press release? If so it should be testable, no? Thrill as Stanley points to a tombstone and researches the forgotten dead beneath it, forming connections with the deceased who rise to the surface halfway around the world in a Kolkata graveyard, and in his own Appalachian family. Shriek and shimmy as Stanley worships the dead in song. Be amazed as a live seance yields messages for audience members. Psychism? Telepathy? Subconscious ideomotor impulses? Watch, decide, leave smiling, healed and redeemed. BONEYARDS. There’s a little taphophile in all of us.
Same Unique Location
Similar to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras-Israel is an historic, century-old synagogue and hidden architectural gem in South Philly on 4th Street near Snyder Avenue. Audience members are invited to come 45 minutes early to wander the 3 story building before descending into the dark, dank coal cellar for Stanley’s macabre performance. Seating is limited to 20.
About Writer-Performer Jeffrey Stanley
Jeffrey Stanley’s play Tesla’s Letters (Samuel French, 2000) premiered to rave reviews Off Broadway in 1999 and went on to national and international productions including the Edinburgh Fringe and most recently a Chicago premiere. He is a regular religion blogger for the Washington Post, and a performing arts faculty at both New York University Tisch School of the Arts and at Drexel University. Other plays include the 2003 Medicine, Man commissioned by the Mill Mountain Theatre in Virginia and most recently produced at Theatre Three Dallas, and Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead which premiered in the 2011 Philly Fringe. In the 2012 Philly Fringe he produced the classical Indian dance show Einstein/Tagore: Seashore of Endless Worlds. He was a 2011-12 artist-in-residence at Plays & Players Theatre. Stanley is a past president of the board of directors of the New York Neo-Futurists experimental theatre ensemble. He has been a resident of prestigious artists’ colony Yaddo, a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and a guest lecturer at the Imaginary Academy summer theatre and film workshop in Croatia sponsored by the Soros Foundation. He has appeared as a guest writer in The New York Times, New York Press and Time Out New York, and he was an editorial advisor to Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies’ book on apocalypse movements The End That Does (Equinox Books, 2006). Stanley holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing and a BFA in Film & Television from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Listings Information
What:
BONEYARDS
When:Thu 10/17 8pm
Sun 10/20 3pm
Sat 11/2 9pm
Sun 11/3 2pm
Doors open 45 minutes early to allow the audience time to wander the 3 floors of this century-old storefront synagogue before descending to the cellar.
Where:
Shivtei Yeshuron-Ezras Israel Synagogue
2015 S. 4th Street
in the cellar
Tickets:
$10, purchased here.
