mnartists.org: Amanda Sterling Lewis

4.48 Psychosis

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:31:06 GMT

It is purported that most suicides take place at 4.48am... when darkness is deep and the body's chemical imbalance is at its peak... a moment of clouded lucidity occurs... and much like the prince in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair... those for which psychiatry and medication can not lighten the crushing burden of their existence will experience this hour as a moment of delirious sanity... all others will perceive it only as an hour of madness.

Bent

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:32:15 GMT

An aching and soulful love story that chronicles the perseverance of the human spirit in the most degrading hell mankind has ever created.

image: Bent

image: Bent

image: Bent

image: Bent

image: Bent

No Exit

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:53:51 GMT

When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, he was among the most celebrated philosophers in France. Sartre originally called his intellectual drama The Others, then changed the title to Huis Clos, a legal term meaning "behind closed doors." As a reflection of his own wartime experience of being unable to escape from other people's constant harsh scrutiny, Sartre decided that none of the three lead characters would ever be allowed to leave the stage. That same year his lengthy work, Being and Nothingness, helped to define the new philosophy of existentialism, whose tenet--simplistically stated-- challenge the existence of God while maintaining that all human relationships are based on conflict. Sartre was not a playwright; he knew little about dramatic structure. No Exit was his attempt to reach a wider audience by staging philosophy as melodrama. Even though it tends to get ensnarled in its own labyrinthine of arguments, No Exit nevertheless has become Sartre's theatrical masterpiece. Contrary to what many believe is the theme of this existentialist critique of the pitfalls of everyday existence: hell is not other people. Sartre believed that because we allow others to be our judges through our own refusal to embrace the person we really are and accept responsibility for all our flaws and mistakes, we actually require the good opinion of others for absolution. In existentialism, the profoundly alone individual must strive for ruthless self-honesty. The biggest challenge for me, as the director, was coming to understand that not every journey is a hero's journey, no matter how many faces our hero has. Some characters, some stories, move directly from point A to point B, and sometimes they wander in circles only to end up back at point A. Development, or the lack thereof, can be dismally linear. No Exit helped me to realize that life's lessons are not always recognized, let alone learned; sometimes they're just used as doormats into hell.

image: Inez & Garcin

Beyond Therapy

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 04:53:15 GMT

Beyond Therapy is a stylized, over-the-top, much-too-quick-to-breath comedy about sexual identification, relationships and therapy. In any other play the character of Prudence would be a pleasingly out-there neurotic flake, but across the table from her date, Bruce, she seems almost normal.

Why We Have a Body

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 04:49:12 GMT

"This play was written in three months from a wellspring of fragments and ruminations, conscious and part-conscious. I made an effort to reflect the "lesbian brain" in form as well as in content... therefore letting the plot be driven by memory, lust and hammering doubt. In doing so, however, I do not pretend to represent anyone else's lesbian brain but my own." ~Claire Chafee

image: Mary with gun

image: Eleanor in shadows

Trial of God

Amanda Sterling Lewis — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 03:46:36 GMT

Where is God when innocent human being suffer? In 1649, Russian Jews are being massacred. A group of survivors at an inn on the eve of Purim decide to indict the Almighty for His silence in the face of evil. A trial is staged, but who will defend God? Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel gives a challenging view of the nature of faith and justice.

image: Stranger Revealed