For Immediate Release                                 Contact: Jane Bergeron/Carrie Ann Quinn

       Date: 5/20/2013                                                Phone: 857 265 3299
                                                                                  Email: escapeartiststheatreco@gmail.com
 

POSSESSIONS
Boston, MA- Escape Artists presents a new play, POSSESSIONS, a traveling premiere. Its travels begin at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. The production runs June 20th – 29th June 2013. Show times: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm. Press Opening: Saturday June 22nd at 8 pm.

POSSESSIONS is written by Jane Bergeron & Carrie Ann Quinn, and directed by Dawn M Simmons. Creative Team includes Anthony Phelps (Scenic & Lighting Design), Rafael Jaen (Costume Design), Megan Kinneen (Scenic Design & Multi-media). Actors include Jane Bergeron, Carrie Ann Quinn, Erin Reilly, Matrid Neli and Miguel Fana. Tickets are available at www.escapeartiststheatreco.com

Two sisters...
Beautiful, educated, wealthy beyond imagination. The Kings of England and France sought their hands in marriage. The journey of their lives was all mapped out…then fate stepped in and everything changed.


In the seventeenth century, the beautiful Mancini sisters became notorious for abandoning their aristocratic husbands, dressing as men and travelling unchaperoned throughout Europe. In and out of chateaux, courts and convents, they shocked polite society with their scandalous lives. Even more shockingly, they attempted to salvage their tarnished reputations by writing and publishing their memoirs.
POSSESSIONS is a thought-provoking new play that weaves together the historical narrative of the Mancini sisters’ lives with original texts and contemporary stories that explore how themes in the lives of these fearless and fascinating women resonate with women’s lives today.
 

ABOUT POSSESSIONS
For the past two years, theatre professionals Carrie Ann Quinn (of Boston & NY) and Jane Bergeron (of Sydney & London) have been researching the lives of the infamous 17th century Mancini sisters while on opposite sides of the globe. Bergeron and Quinn founded Escape Artists theatre company in 2011 and POSSESSIONS is their first international collaboration. After its Boston debut the production will travel to Sydney Australia.



In true Thelma and Louise-style, Hortense and Marie Mancini travelled independently all around Europe frequently dressed as men, armed and on horseback, to elude the armies of men their husbands sent to kidnap them and bring them back.

Their adventures were the stuff of gossip all across Europe. So they each wrote and published their memoirs. Bergeron says; “This is what initially drew us to these remarkably modern-thinking women. It was unheard of for a 17th century women to defend her reputation by writing about her own life. These were bold women.”

POSSESSIONS juxtaposes historical texts (letters, memoirs, poetry, pamphlets) with new technologies (YouTube, Wikipedia and blogs), period and contemporary music, multi-media and art to illustrate how the lives of the17th century Mancini sisters mirror themes in women’s lives today. Quinn comments: “Interestingly, we discovered the steps the sisters took to leave their husbands in the 17th century are almost the same as the 14 points listed on the Wiki How to Run Away from an Abusive Home.”

Bergeron and Quinn devised the script over a period of two years with various collaborators, including NEA award-winning performance artist Daniel Stein www.danielstein.org and New York-based Turkish theatre director and film-maker Onur Karaoglu http://onurkaraoglu.blogspot.com. They also won a competitive residency at the Ko Festival of Performance hosted by Amherst College where they spent a week developing the play.

When not on the same continent, much of their communication has been via social media, email, and Skype. Says Bergeron: “This seems particularly appropriate to our project since it mirrors the lives of the women we have been researching for the past two years. The Mancini sisters employed the written word to engage one another and their audience, refusing to keep quiet three hundred and fifty years ago, when the ‘other voice’ was typically silenced.”

POSSESSIONS runs June 20th – 29th June 2013 At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.

Show times are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm
Tickets are $20/$15/$10 and can be purchased by calling 866 811 4111 or online at www.escapeartiststheatreco.com
 

ABOUT ESCAPE ARTISTS
Escape Artist is a new international theatre company founded by theatre artists Jane Bergeron and Carrie Ann Quinn.

Jane Bergeron is a professional actor and director and also heads the Theatre Studies program at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Sydney). Prior to moving to Australia in 2005, she lived and worked as a theatre artist and educator in the US and the UK for over twenty years. Most recently, she performed the role of Anne Askew, a Tudor gentlewoman, who was tortured and burnt at the stake in the world premiere production of On the Borderline (2010) at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London’s off-West End. From 1993-2002 she served as artistic director of Vintage Repertory Company in Portland, Maine. As resident company at the Oak Street Theatre, Vintage Rep staged four seasons of critically acclaimed productions of modern and contemporary American and European plays, two of which, Marriage and Music Hall, were US premiere productions. Professional directing credits include plays by Chekhov, Pinter, Albee, Moliere, Mamet and Orton, as well as original stage adaptations of works by Shakespeare, Chekhov and Dylan Thomas.  Since 2006 she has focused on developing original devised performance work that explores issues related to living in our contemporary world. Recent productions include Where did it Go? (2008), Fractured (2009), Clockwise (2009), and Dead Letters (2010).  She received her undergraduate theatre training from the University of London in her native England, and her MFA from Boston University’s School of Theatre Arts.

Carrie Ann Quinn is a professional actor and director who divides her time between Boston and New York City. She is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts, head of the acting and directing programs at the University Massachusetts Boston. As an actor, Quinn recently appeared in Gloucester Stage Company’s world-premiere adaptation of An Ideal Husband, gender-bending as both Lady Chiltern and Lord Caversham; Company One/Phoenix Artists New England premiere of Christmas Belles; American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) world-premiere of The Communist Dracula Pageant; Warehouse Theatre's Frankie & Johnny in the Clare de Lune. She appeared in numerous productions during her six-year residency at the award-winning Los Angeles-based company, Theatre Unlimited, earning Valley Theatre League Artistic Director Achievement awards for acting in Seven Keys to Baldpate, Move Over Mrs. Markham, and Keys to the Kingdom. She has appeared in television and film, such as Fame LA (MGM/Fox television series), The Fighter, RIPD, and lead roles in independent films, commercials and voiceovers. Her directing credits include productions at SLAMBoston for Company One at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Centre Stage, and Chicago’s Chopin Theatre where she premiered her original production Sincerely, selected to headline the 2006 Around the Coyote Theatre Festival. She received her BFA in Acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (Paulette Goddard Scholarship Recipient), where she also studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and received her MFA from Boston University's School of Theatre Arts. She is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA).