February 22nd, 2009 / 5:52 pm
 Author News

NYT loves “Telephone,” the new play by Ariana Reines

What are those distant, garbled voices on the line? What is the significance of that wavery technological hum that bears an alarming resemblance to heavy breathing? In such moments it feels as if there’s nothing lonelier than being alone on a phone. Reach out and touch someone? Ha.

“Telephone,” the inspired and utterly original new tone poem of a play at the Cherry Lane Theater, probes such feelings with the sensitivity and detachment of a heart surgeon.

The play is an adaptation of Avital Ronnell’s The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech, a critical theory text which, according to that same NYT critic, was “created at the height of Derrida-style deconstructionism and laid out (by the graphic designer Richard Eckersley) in the style of a Dadaist phone book… Under the direction of Ken Rus Schmoll, a cast of three and a sharp-eyed design team turn what might have come across as gobbledygook into a stylish and stimulating show.”

So cheers, Ariana, and to everyone in NYC, the show is playing at Cherry Lane Theatre through February 28th (even though there doesn’t seem to be anything written about it on CLT’s website) so catch it while you can.

MORE OF ARIANA REINES

The Cow which won Fence’s Alberta Prize, was published in 2006.

Coeur de Lion was published by mal-o-mar editions in 2008. I wrote about Coeur de Lion (and Katy Lederer’s The Heaven-Sent Leaf) in my FLAUNT magazine column (print only- it appeared in issue #100).

The Agriculture Reader #3, the magazine I co-edit, contains a new piece of prose by Ariana Reines.

Ariana Reines poems at Coconut Poetry.

The real deal. To the real deal's immediate right (photographer's left), wearing his signature green hoodie, basically not in the photograph, is yours truly. - Stain Bar, Brooklyn, 2008.

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14 Comments

  1. February 22nd, 2009 / 10:07 pm Ken Baumann—

      NO COLONY Vol. 2 may or may not include a piece directly related to Telephone…

  2. February 22nd, 2009 / 6:07 pm Ken Baumann—

      NO COLONY Vol. 2 may or may not include a piece directly related to Telephone…

  3. February 22nd, 2009 / 6:11 pm pr—

      I can’t read this right now, but I so will, because Avital Ronnel was in Angry Women, from Research, with Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley ( i paid a 100 bucks to have karen ,the yam lady, to give me a psychic reading and i got a “painting of my reading thingy” too) and so on. That Research meant ALOT to me. Still have it. Wasn’t she a history of consciousness person, that santa cruz program.

      Also, I may have the wrong person. Forgive me.

      i ran ten miles today and have ice on my knees and started drinking vodka cause it works better than advil. my brain and knees hurt. early bed. LOVE this though Justin. You rock.

  4. February 22nd, 2009 / 10:26 pm Justin Taylor—

      It may or may not include the piece, or the piece may or may not be directly related?

  5. February 22nd, 2009 / 6:26 pm Justin Taylor—

      It may or may not include the piece, or the piece may or may not be directly related?

  6. February 22nd, 2009 / 11:20 pm Ken Baumann—

      The former.

  7. February 22nd, 2009 / 7:20 pm Ken Baumann—

      The former.

  8. February 22nd, 2009 / 11:22 pm Justin Taylor—

      Neato. Ambiguity rules, but clarity is pretty sweet sometimes too…

  9. February 22nd, 2009 / 7:22 pm Justin Taylor—

      Neato. Ambiguity rules, but clarity is pretty sweet sometimes too…

  10. March 28th, 2009 / 12:55 am a. lesley—

      @pr
      she was totally in that ReSearch
      that issue change my life!

  11. March 27th, 2009 / 8:55 pm a. lesley—

      @pr
      she was totally in that ReSearch
      that issue change my life!

  12. November 13th, 2009 / 11:53 am HTMLGIANT / I ESTABLISH THE CLARITY THEREFORE ALL THIS GOES WITH ME: Ariana Reines Week, Part 5—

      […] works by Ariana Reines. The first, Miss St.’s Hieroglyphic Suffering, is based on act two of Reines’s highly regarded play, Telephone, and will be performed at a Works+Process show at the Guggenheim this weekend. (I’m going on […]

  13. March 9th, 2010 / 4:37 pm HTMLGIANT / FUNDRAISING Alert: Help Send Ariana Reines on a UN Mission to Haiti—

      […] listen to this. Ariana Reines–poet, playwright, translator, publisher and frequent target of this blog’s affection–has been invited to […]

  14. January 11th, 2011 / 2:31 am ARIANA REINES INTERVIEW « Minor Progression—

      […] stalking and book buying, I finally got to meet her after the staging of the second act of her play TELEPHONE which took place at the Guggenheim museum last […]