Persephone
by Gianna Kiehl
May 20 - June 13 2021 (THUR-SUN) @ 20.30
PERFORMED OUTSIDE IN HOXTON TRUST COMMUNITY GARDEN (COVID19 Compliant)
In partnership with Hoxton Hall, Hoxton Trust and Howl at the Moon
Professor Charlotte Hawthorne's students would lie, cheat and steal for her. And her brightest student, Masha Murray has done all three. When Masha arrives at her reclusive professor's estate expecting to find the Professor waiting, she instead finds the house guarded by a most peculiar Gardener. The need for these two women to deal with isolation and to connect soon creates uncertain and dangerous dynamics.
Performed at dusk in the Hoxton Trust Community Gardens, this new 1-act play -written during lockdown- explores the impact of grief and the price of believing in something unbelievable.
Writer Gianna Kiehl wrote this story during self-isolating in London and Prague in order to investigate the surprising, frightening and sometimes imperceptible marks left by loneliness and loss. Feeling frustrated by the lack of stories about female relationships, Gianna wanted to explore what happens when women interrogate and challenge each other.
The title Persephone alludes to the Greek myth of Goddess Demeter’s daughter whose capture by the dark lord of the Underworld, Hades, throws Demeter into despair and results in the invention of winter. They myth tells of Persephone’s return and thus the return of the Spring: pain is turned into something beautiful.
CREATIVES
Writer / Director: Gianna Kiehl
Actors: Laoise Sweeney & Yolanda Ovide
Designer: Marco Turcich
Dramaturg: Uri Levy
Stage Manager: Anuska Zaremba-Pike
Photography by Sèverine Howell-Meri
Production management: Alexander Raptotasios
ARTISTIC PLATFORM
Ferodo Bridges is a community interest company committed to providing a platform for new voices in theatre and the arts. This project is created and led by young and female artists with a fresh new story to tell, a story born out of the isolation we all experienced during lockdown and a story that needs to be said right now. We are very proud to support and promote these three talented young artists at the heart of this project:
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Gianna Kiehl is a London-based actor and theatre maker originally from Vermont, USA. In Vermont she has worked as a director and choreographer for 13 The Musical, and as artistic director for an independent production of Plautus’s farce Pseudolus. She worked as an actor and performer for several professional theatre companies, receiving critical acclaim for her role as Lauren in Middlebury Actors Workshop production of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation in 2012, and Becky in Vermont Stage’s production of Slowgirl in 2015. Since moving to London she has graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts BA (hons) Professional Acting program, worked as part of the development team of the Ferodo Bridges production HOTEL APOCALYPSE and starred in Amazon Prime’s critically acclaimed TV series HANNA. This is her first play.
A recent graduate from LAMDA, Yolanda has had the joy of working with Mischief Theatre in 'A Comedy About A Bank Robbery', Secret Cinema in 'Casino Royale', and Women's Write in 'The Guide to Not Being a Shit Feminist' at The Vaults Festival.
During Lockdown, Yolanda has worked with 'The Show Must Go Online' in Various Shakespeare roles including Miranda in 'The Tempest'. In 2020 she won Paradox Theatre Company's Monologue Competition Actor Prize and also performed as 'Juliet' in The Shakespeare Republic #AllTheWebsAStage (The Lockdown Chronicles) Web series.
Laoise trained on LAMDA’s BA in Professional Acting, graduating in 2018 with First Class Honours. Since then she has been working internationally, starring as Ophelia in ‘Hamlet’ at the Mill Theatre in Dublin, and then as Sister Virginia in ‘Eclipsed’, performed originally at the Mill Theatre Dublin and then streamed as part of many theatre festivals in 2020. She has also worked extensively in Audio, voicing numerous audiobooks for Harper Collins and Audible, as well as making appearances in TV shows such as ‘Mr Swallow,’ ‘Belgravia’ and ‘The Witcher.’
