New Ohio Theatre and The Drunkard's Wife present
MADAME LYNCH

Written and Directed by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin
Choreographed by Iliana Gauto of Ballet Panambí Vera
An Archive Residency Production, in collaboration with IRT Theater

A spectacle with music, Madame Lynch takes on the picaresque story of Eliza Lynch, a 19th century woman whose fortunes took her from Irish potato famine refugee, to French courtesan, to the self-proclaimed "Empress of Paraguay". In collaboration with the Paraguayan folkloric dance group Ballet Panambí Vera, The Drunkard's Wife creates a multifaceted portrait of La Lynch as a way to understand the complex dynamics of cultural imperialism. The show reaches peaks of beauty and horror as it proceeds by way of live music, dance, and real and imagined scenes from her life as an adventuress, cultural doyenne, femme fatale and microfinance pioneer.

Featuring: Featuring: Juliana Francis Kelly, Hannah Kallenbach, Nikki Calonge, Blaze Ferrer, Braulio Cruz, Mieko Gavia, Kevin Green and the dancers of Ballet Panambí Vera

Live band directed by Rachel Swaner

Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission

Tickets $25 Tues - Sat @ 8 PM Sundays @ 7 PM Special opening night performance + reception Wed 5/29 @ 8 PM Friday special: June 14 @ 4 PM and 8 PM

Scenic Design: Yung Oh Le Page
Lighting Design: Christina Tang
Costume Design: Normandy Sherwood with Nikki Luna Paz & Chelsea Collins
Sound Design and Music: Craig Flanagin
Video Design: David Pym
Stage Manager: Liz Nielsen
Pres Rep: David Gibbs | DARR Publicity

The Archive Residency is New Ohio Theatre's ongoing development and presenting program, providing a two-year commitment of time, space, and support to select independent theatre companies. Each residency culminates in a world premiere of a new work. In partnership with IRT Theatre, our neighbors in the Archive Building, we provide independent theatre companies with that most elusive and invaluable resource: an artistic home. Following a showing in Ice Factory 2018, this production of MADAME LYNCH represents a re-working of the piece.

The Drunkard's Wife is a theater company, led by Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin, that creates theatrical and musical spectacles in New York City. Their mission is to create and produce experimental musical plays and site-specific theatrical environments with a generous, maximalist design sense. Their plays are darkly comic, language-drunk, full of reverence for the hand-made and therefore wholeheartedly feminist and anticapitalist. Their theatrical style combines our impulses towards camp, the carnivalesque, and the maximal with an appetite for subtlety, complex argument and tenderness. They make music that draws from folk mountain music traditions and no-wave dissonance, and that incorporates complex time signatures and improvisation.

Ballet Panambí Vera is an organization founded by Berta Gauto which is dedicated to supporting Paraguayan cultural in New York. Since 1995, Panambi Vera's mission has been to educate, demonstrate and spread Paraguayan culture through collaboration with local artists, organizations, and leaders in the community. While our focus is empowering young Latina/Paraguayan girls locally, ultimately our goal is to embrace global currents in contemporary culture so that we can foster global citizenship through the affirmation of local identities. Choreographer Iliana Gauto is the Creative Director of Ballet Panambí Vera.

The Archive Residency is generously supported, in part, by grants from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Howard Gilman Foundation; and Mental Insight Foundation.