Garth Greenan Gallery has announced a special one-night-only reading of Sweet Tooth, a play by Rosalyn Drexler, directed by Dustin Wills, as part of the ongoing exhibition Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard.
The play will be performed at Garth Greenan Gallery, 545 West 20th Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues) on Monday, September 25, 2017 at 7 PM.
Under the direction of Dustin Wills, the cast includes: Varín Ayala*, Gilbert Cruz*, Lucas Dixo*, Ana Grosse*, Elia Monte-Brown*, Jesse J. Perez*, Emma Ramos*, Socorro Santiago*, and Luis Vega*. Tyler Keiffer will provide sound design and Joey Moro will provide lighting design.
Laced with elements of vaudeville, satire, and Brechtian directness, Sweet Tooth is an absurdist take on the timeless history of political perfidy and sexual opportunity. R.C. Baker, of the Village Voice, writes, "It is staggering to consider even a minimal list of all that Drexler has witnessed: Hopper, Pollock, Warhol; World War II, the Cold War, the War on Terror; jazz, rock, rap; FDR, JFK, Trump; fascism, feminism, and fascism again." Sweet Tooth may be set in Nueva Concordia, a fictional country ruled by the fictional dictator Dionisio, but, much like Drexler's sinister paintings from the 80s, there is something precariously prescient about the work.
In addition to her work as a visual artist, Drexler is also an accomplished novelist and playwright. She published her first play in 1963 and her first novel in 1965. She is the recipient of three Obie Awards, as well as an Emmy Award for her work on Lily Tomlin's television special Lily (co-written with Richard Pryor). Her plays have been performed in New York at Judson Memorial Church, Manhattan Theatre Club, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and Soho Rep., amongst others. Drexler's paintings are in the collections of many museums, including: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; the Allen Memorial Art Gallery, Oberlin College; the Colby College Museum of Art; the Grey Art Gallery, New York University; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Modern Art; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; the Wadsworth Athenaeum; the Walker Art Center; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to represent Rosalyn Drexler.
Dustin Wills is a New York-based theatre and opera director originally from Texas. Recent and upcoming projects include CREAM! (PAGE 73), Die Zauberflöte (Yale Opera), Frontières Sans Frontiéres (Bushwick Starr), Orange Julius (Rattlestick and PAGE 73), AWFUL EVENT! (Baryshnikov Arts Center), O, Earth (Foundry Theatre), and ongoing work on a musical adaptation of a trio of short plays by Federico García Lorca. Wills has developed work with New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkeley Rep, Berkshire Theatre Group, Paper Chairs, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, and devised new work for Teatro L'Arciliuto in Rome, Italy. He is a two-time recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre, a Drama League and Boris Sagal directing fellow and, for a couple of years gave rogue tours of the Vatican. Wills completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama.
Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard, an exhibition of paintings, is on view through October 21. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. For more information, contact the gallery at (212) 929-1351, or email info@garthgreenan.com.
*These actors are appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.