From prostitutes to prudes, the rousing one-woman hit, Paris Unlaced! serves up a Belle Epoque feast at Theatre ROW, 410 West 42nd Street, November 3 at 7:30 PM as part of the 2011 United Solo Theatre Festival.
Paris Unlaced! is a romp through Paris in the Gay 90's - a world of courtesans, grande dames, and clueless but ambitious cancan dancers. Costume, accent, and character changes keep the pace lively as Unlaced! delivers laughs, heart and, of course, a little risqué business.
Paris Unlaced! premiered at Ventfort Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts, in collaboration with Shakespeare & Company where it played to critical and popular acclaim in over 70 performances. The play was commissioned from playwright and author Juliane Hiam and stars Shakespeare & Company member Anne Undeland in multiple roles.
With a running time of an hour, Paris Unlaced! brings to light a mystery featuring five women, all performed by Ms. Undeland: "Juliette," a contemporary museum director, "La Crème," an infamous Parisian courtesan; "Hettie," the wife of La Crème's benefactor; "La Chapeliere," a wily and wise milliner; "Gertrude," an American innocent abroad; and finally, "The Virgin," a flash-in-the-pan celebrity in the Montmartre nightclub scene - singer, dancer, aspiring courtesan. In Citizen Kane-style, as we hear from each successive character, we come closer to solving the mystery around which the play is constructed.
While filled with farce and naughty innuendo, Paris Unlaced! resonates with contemporary audiences for its examination of aging, celebrity culture, and -- most provocatively -- sexual politics. It reveals the friendships that, by necessity, developed among women and the strategies they employed to ensure each other's financial and physical security. Compressing a number of ideas in a neat little package, Unlaced! looks closely at prostitution (which was legal and even celebrated in fin de siècle Paris) without ever losing its sense of humor, clear-sightedness, or compassion for its characters. It is "girl power," 19th century-style.
Playwright Juliane Hiam was one of the youngest screenwriters in Hollywood to also direct her first feature film. At 21, she optioned her script, "Dead Silence," an award-winning film starring
Danny Aiello,
Sally Kirkland and
Maureen Stapleton. Her humor column "The World According to Jacoozi" was syndicated nationally with a circulation of over a million in newspapers such as the LA Daily News and its affiliates.
Actress Anne Undeland has appeared on stages along the east coast for the last 15 years, most notably in the one-woman shows, "Open Marriage," "The Belle of Amherst", "Xingu" and "Fanny Kemble's Lenox Address," all collaborations between Shakespeare and Company and Ventfort Hall. She trained at Shakespeare and Company has performed with Mixed Company, Stageworks, Barrington Stage, Capitol Rep, The
New Repertory Theatre in Boston, and at the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York. She is a recurring voice in award-winning BBC Radio productions by Gregory Whitehead.
For further information contact
www.paris1890.com and United Solo Theatre Festival
www.unitedsolo.org
