TELEPHONE, a new play commissioned to poet Ariana Reines, is a nocturne about invention and love, inspired by "The Telephone Book," by Avital Ronell. It begins performances on February 6th at the Cherry Lane Theater.
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson presented their invention to the public, vaudeville-style, in theatres. TELEPHONE begins with both of them onstage again, but their task is more complicated than it used to be. A biography of the phone and a meditation on the nature of the disembodied voice, TELEPHONE operates like a switchboard connecting places and people across time and space. Miss St (Jung’s notorious schizophrenic madwoman) takes over in act two, she suffers the slander of invisible telephones and tells you all about it. Finally, act three, in which people who love each other make phone-calls. Reines’ TELEPHONE is a delicate and tender yet ferociously poetic work that asks what it means to 'take a call' not knowing what or who might be on the other end.