Word on the Street Plays
Shows
23 Feet in 12 Minutes
23 Feet in 12 Minutes is a one-woman tour-de-force that follows seven real-life New Orleans characters whose lives were irrevocably changed by Hurricane Katrina. Their raw and poignant stories are based on over 60 interviews conducted with Katrina survivors and New Orleans transplants between 2006 and 2010. The show received rave reviews at its premiere at the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival, garnering an Excellence in Performance Award for actress Deanna Pacelli; played to enthusiastic crowds in New Orleans in May 2011, where HBO series Treme co-creator Eric Overmyer called the piece "remarkable"; and was selected for a residency and performance series at the prestigious Cape Cod Theatre Project in August 2011.
Performer: Deanna Pacelli
Playwright: Mari Brown
Directors: Pamela Berlin, David Travis
Producer: Lanie Zipoy
Sound Designer: Vincent Olivieri
Production Assistant: Maura Hooper
Pamela Berlin: (Director) Pamela Berlin's New York directing credits include Endpapers at the Variety Arts Theatre, Steel Magnolias, which ran for three years Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday ( Ensemble Studio Theatre and Circle in the Square downtown), The Cemetery Club (Broadway), Crossing Delancey (Jewish Rep), Joined at the Head (Manhattan Theatre Club), The Family of Mann and The Red Address (Second Stage), Three in the Back, Two in the Head (MCC), Black Ink and Elm Circle (Playwrights Horizons), Snowing at Delphi and Club Soda (WPA), and numerous one-acts in the Marathon at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. She teaches directing in the MFA program at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Pamela served as the President of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers from 2000 to 2006.
David Travis: (Director) co-founded the OBIE Award-winning Synapse Productions. His New York directorial credits include Animal Farm (the Puppet Musical)—Drama Desk nomination and national tour, American premieres of The God Botherers and Caryl Churchill's Iraq.doc, Brown and Pacelli's There Goes the Neighborhood, and his own re-translation of Euripides' The Phoenician Women. David is the theatrical director for The African Children's Choir (national tour: Journey of Hope).
Vincent Olivieri: (Sound Designer) has designed sound and composed music for many theatrical productions in New York and around the country. In New York, his Off-Broadway credits include The Water's Edge at Second Stage, The Brothers Size at The Public Theater, The God Botherers at 59e59, Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy, and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Omnium-Gatherum atthe Variety Arts Theatre. He sits on the faculty of the UC-Irvine Drama Department.
There Goes The Neighborhood
Brown & Pacelli's first work, There Goes the Neighborhood, a documentary theater piece about the gentrification of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, was on the cover of the Metro Section of The New York Times, ran for nearly three years in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and caught the eye of Marty Markowitz, Borough President of Brooklyn, who declared December 13th "There Goes the Neighborhood Day." Jason Zinoman of the Times lauded its "scrupulous balance" and Paulanne Simmons of The Brooklyn Paper called it "a work of more than a little brilliance."