Dramaturg. Twelve Angry Animals, a new adaptation by Phantom Limb Company.
Department of Drama, NYU Tisch School of the Arts / New York, NY / Oct. 2019
Twelve Angry Animals is a new adaptation of Reginald Rose’s iconic play Twelve Angry Men, in which each of the twelve jurors is reimagined as a member of a highly threatened non-human animal species. This unique jury has been empaneled, sometime in the future, in a post-apocalyptic New York, to determine whether or not the last remaining human being should be held guilty for the destruction of the planet. The piece is a moving meditation on collective responsibility, shared vulnerability and ecological precarity in the Anthropocene. Director Jessica Grindstaff conceived of it as a coda to Phantom Limb’s recent trilogy of pieces on the more-than-human world: 69º South (2011), Memory Rings (2016) and Falling Out (2018).
I was honored to be the production dramaturg for Twelve Angry Animals, which Phantom Limb Company developed while in residence at NYU Tisch. Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Norse Sanko of Phantom Limb Company served as director and composer / mask designer, respectively. Adin Walker served as movement director, and the production was ably designed and stage managed by Department of Drama students. The twelve members of the ensemble were also drawn from our incredible student body.
Photos by Justin Chauncey and courtesy of Tisch Drama.