Hanne Tierney
A Play Called Not and Now
The Public Theater
September 6, 7, 8, 9

Constructed and Performed by Hanne Tierney
Voice: Richard Clarke
Music: Jane Wang
Sound: Myles G. Tierney
Production Manager: Ellen Green

HANNE TIERNEY presents a theatre of movement, gesture, light and form. She manipulates materials and objects through a system of strings and weights, constructed into a theatrical keyboard. A previously composed score denotes the gestures and movements of the elements on her stage. Coordinated with sound and text, they are choreographed into a theatrical performance. With A Play Called Not And Now, Hanne Tierney has experimented with Gertrude Stein¹s unconventional idea of "theatre as landscape." As with a landscape, there are no entrances and exits in the theatre. Here, movement and change determine the dramatic action. Gertrude Stein wrote this cynical and witty play on the psychological phenomena of assumed personality and glorified self-image after having attended a celebrity party given in her honor in Beverly Hills in 1936. In this production of the play, her ideas are interpreted through the choreographed movement of taffeta fabrics and industrial materials. This graceful shapes and their empty sameness underline Gertrude Stein¹s picture of the sophisticated party, the elegant superficially and purposeless movement that inspired the play.