Frank & Stein 2

Medicine Show Theatre Ensemble presents Frank & Stein 2, an evening of short works by Frank O’Hara and Gertrude Stein dealing with wildly antic takes on identity, creative thinking, and nature (human and otherwise).

Act I, by Stein, is set in a fictional country house at the start of WW II in which guests perform a series of very short plays that explore the possibilities of shifting personas, alliances, and moods. All of the words are Stein’s, and the act is composed of a dramatization by Patrick Mullowney and director Barbara Vann of The Geographical History of America or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind within which there is a performance of the rarely seen Look and Long.

Act II is devoted to the “Urban” Eclogues of O’Hara. These short verse plays were written in the early 1950s and capture New York’s post-war energy and edge. An eclogue is a pastorale poem – but the sheep and shepherds who inhabit O’Hara’s pastures belong to the New York art world, and Southampton is as rural as they get. The four plays performed are Very Rainy Light, Lexington Avenue, Grace and George, and Amorous Nightmares of Delay.