Last of the Red Hot Dadas
REVIEWS AND MEDIA ABOUT THE SHOW
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IMAGChristina Augello as the Baroness Elsa, Mama of Dada
PHOTO: LAURIE GALLANT
Last of the Red Hot Dadas is the true story of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Dada's unsung heroine, as she reflects on the nature of art, gender relationships and the price to be paid for telling the truth about both.
Last of the Red Hot Dadas, a one woman play by Kerry Reid starring Christina Augello, with a supporting cast of found object puppets, premiered at EXIT Theatre in San Francisco in 2002 and then toured North America and Europe during 2003 and 2004 and will be performed June 15 - July 1, 2006 at the Red Room in New York City.
ABOUT CHRISTINA'S PERFORMANCE ...
"I have been meaning to connect with you for some time and tell you how much I have enjoyed your Baroness Elsa show. I think you've captured her wild and iconoclastic spirit well … The Baroness is a notoriously difficult subject and you have portrayed her with warmth and passion and compassion."
--Irene Gammel, author of Baroness Elsa, Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity: A Cultural Biography
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR BOOKING CONTACT:
Christina Augello
415.931.1094
Last of the Red Hot Dadas
a one person play by Kerry Reid
starring Christina Augello
Lighting Design Jason Ries
Sound Design Pamela Z
Puppets, Hair & Make-up Design Christina Augello
Set/Prop Design Alison Tassie
Puppet Coach Liebe Wetzel
Dialect Coach Lynne Soffer
Movement Coach Mark Jackson
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Christina Augello
415.931.1094
BOX OFFICE 415.673.3847
mail@sffringe.org
About the Christina's Performance:
- Scotsman (August 16, 2003) "This is a powerfully emotional performance with a force that will leave you drained; all the grief, passion, derision, rage, and love that imbued Elsa’s life is transferred to the audience and it’s impossible not to be utterly transfixed."
- edinburgh-festivals.com audience review (Doug) August 13, 2003 "5 Stars ... Hilarious, scabrous, poetic and wise. Yet there is a tragic emotional honesty behind it all - the story of a true original and a life lived passionately and for keeps."
- one4review.com Scotland August 2003 "Please take my advise and see this show Christina Augello gets deeply into character and performs a visual experience not to be missed."
- Three Week e-Daily Scotland August 5, 2003 "Christina Augello passionately brings the historical figure to life and manages to comment on American greed, the myth of female sexual innocence, and the Baroness' painful childhood while breathing life into a host of puppets and performing a found poetry-cum-urination piece that would make any true-blue Dadaist proud."
- The List, Scotland July 31, 2003 "Talking to Augello, it becomes clear that she has developed a bond with Elsa that goes beyond simple theatrical production"
- Winnipeg CBC July 23, 2003 (Linda Harlos) "Both (Baroness Elsa and Christina Augello) have chosen the "freedom of passion", tell the unvarnished truth ("the only thing worth living for"), declining to shut up for the world's convenience, and want to live in a world where they're honoured for their true selves. Is that too much to ask?"
- Audience Review on CBC July 19, 2003 (joannetta) "Strong, fascinating, confident. I loved this play's human-ness and visual beauty. Elsa's conversation is such a gift to be a part of."
- Audience Review on CBC July 17, 2003 (Adele Kory) "creative story - line, incredible delivery and unique costume and set....definitely a 5 star performance"
- Toronto Eye July 10, 2003 (Holland Gidney) "art come to life onstage"
- Montreal Mirror June 19, 2003 (Amy German) "charismatic and professional performance"
- SF Chronicle August 1, 2002 (James Sullivan) "A big achievement in a little package"
- Backstage West June 13, 2002 (Jean Schiffman) "Christina Augello brought a cheery bitterness, flamboyance, and humor to the role under John Warren's imaginative direction."
ABOUT THE BARONESS ELSA VON FREYTAG-LORINGHOVEN
"In the late 1910's and early 1920's, the Baroness reigned among the intellectual avant-garde who laughed at sexual taboos and made art their revolution. But in the widely colorful hothouse of Greenwich Village bohemia, the Baroness was the most exotic blossom of them all. 'She is not a futurist,' Marcel Duchamp said. 'She is the future.' In 1921 she starred in a film made by Duchamp and Man Ray, titled "Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shaving Her Pubic Hair." In the two frames that remain (Man Ray accidentally destroyed the film during development), she appears to be dancing, spectacularly naked, after the barber has done his work."
--NY Times Magazine
"She was New York's first punk persona 60 years before their time. … The Baroness seems vivid today because of the interest in gender play and 'acting out' in the '90s art world, as though she were a very distant great-aunt of feminist performance art."
-- Time Magazine
"Baroness Elsa makes Vanessa Beecroft's chorus line of vaginas and Karen Finley's canned-yam act look downright dull. She was a walking performance piece too explosive for her times. She stalked her reluctant targets with the unselfconscious ferocity of a tiger in heat. Djuna Barnes recalls that the baroness made a plaster cast of a penis and then showed it 'to all the 'old maids' she came in contact with.'
-- The Village Voice
"She was an artist, a poet, a voluble fixture of the cultural avant-garde and a guerrilla fighter in sexual politics."
-- NY Times Book Review
"Her eyes were the eyes of a suddenly unhooded falcon."
-- Alexander King
"As a language and performance artist I have the highest respect for the early avant-garde and for Dada artists. In Gammel's biography the Baroness emerges as a truly ground breaking force."
--Yoko Ono
"The Baroness died mysteriously in Paris in 1927, at age 53, asphyxiated by gas from an oven. Her death was assumed to be a suicide, but her friends thought she might have been cruelly murdered by one of her one-night stands."
--NY Times Magazine
The Art of Baroness Elsa:
Francis M. Naumann Gallery Show New York City 2002
"Dada Part of Berenice Abbott"
Selected Poems by the Baroness
About the Baroness Elsa:
Irene Gammel's Biography of the Baroness
Women in Dada, edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse
Margaret Anderson and the Little Review
PAST PERFORMANCES OF LAST OF THE RED HOT DADAS
May 16 - 25, 2002 World Premiere at DIVAfest, San Francisco
July 12 - August 9, 2002 EXIT Cafe, San Francisco
March 28, 2003: LA Women's Theatre Festival, Los Angeles Theatre Center
April 24 - May 3, 2003 EXIT Stage Left, San Francisco
May 15 - May 18, 2003: UNO
Festival of Solo Performance, Belfry Theatre, Victoria, British
Columbia
June 12 - June 22, 2003: Festival St. Ambroise Fringe, Montreal, Canada
July 2 - 13, 2003: Fringe of Toronto Festival, Toronto, Canada
July 16 - July 27, 2003: Winnipeg Fringe, Winnipeg, Canada
August 1 - August 25, 2003: Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland
October 5 - 6, 2003: Rhinoceros Theater Festival, Chicago
June 1 - 6, 2004 Prague Fringe Festival, Prague Czech Republic
June 2 & 3, 2006 EXIT Cafe, San Francisco