Three celebrated Bay Area artists -- a writer/choreographer, a director and an actor -- have created a unique performance piece based on the book Dark Days and a Black Dog. Obie award winning actor Andrea Snow performs an intriguing, fully embodied “play/reading,” a new approach to bringing the written word to vivid life for an audience.
Dark Days and a Black Dog, both the book and the performance, is rooted in the experiences of a family over seven heartwrenching, darkly comic years that will, for many, feel both shocking and breathtakingly recognizable.
The piece is directed by Jael Weisman, also an Obie award winner, whose work with legendary companies and productions has spanned almost fifty years. The book is by Emily Keeler, a four-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship who was worked as a dancer, choreographer and writer in San Francisco and New York since the 70’s.
Praise for Dark Days and a Black Dog
from the first audience:
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“Thank you, Andrea, for your bravura performance…. The poems are guided by the poet’s dogged presence in the phenomenological world; the doubt, regret, resentment, courage, love and compassion…This is a journey for our time.”
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“She’s still got it!” I’ll say. The writing was beautiful, lyrical, heartbreaking and relatable. I laughed, I gasped, I marveled at the words and your interpretation of them.”
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“The poems are …funny, but there is no place for the outward expression of amusement. There is only the silent chuckle of recognition. You travel from each character bringing each one into the light.”
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“It's rare to be exposed to the candor implicit in Emily's poems, to hear these thoughts, (which are usually encased in a secret room), expressed with such humor and pathos. It liberates, broadens and extends our humanity and I think that you, Andrea, having been part of this expression, have reason to be proud, not only of your performance, but of the role you played in giving voice to these thoughts which are so often locked up in the closet of shame.”