| Heather Woodbury
Tale of 2Cities
An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks
| "As
I spin each vinyl I see it like a saucer plate spinning in
space slicing sideways through peoples heads intersecting
in discs like a slicer frisbee thrower and I come on my grandmother
and a red-haired old woman entwined together and covered
in a tattoo of everything: there is a tattoo of the black
haired lady on the Viviana Beauty salon sign, there's a tattoo
of a red cherry with drops spraying out."
"a tattoo that says mom with a heart, a tattoo that
says Jesus with a heart, a tattoo that say Ku Klux Klan with
a heart, and a tattoo that says Tracy I miss you, come home,
we need you, Ashley needs her mommy, come home, come home --
Love Forever, Mark, with a broken heart. There's a tattoo
of a hot-rod car and tattoos of numbers for gassing people,
there's a tattoo of a rosebush, a tattoo of a tattoo artist
making a tattoo. There's a tattoo of all the constellations
of all the stars everywhere, and there's twisting vines everywhere
to connect this tattoo of everything that covers the two bodies
of mi abuela and of this strange white woman with hair like
ruby sunflowers." |
| In this second "living
novel" by Heather Woodbury, fifty years of New York
and Los Angeles history collide in a live mix spun by Manny,
a young DJ, in his dead grandmother's Echo Park apartment.
Flashing back to 1957, when Brooklyn lost its home-team
and LA's Chavez Ravine was razed to build the Dodger's a
new stadium, Woodbury enacts a live seance among three generations
of interwoven characters on both coasts whose lives were
changed forever by this single act of urban redevelopment.
Writing about 2 Cities in Time Out ,
David Cote says: "Think of the expansive social criticism
of John Dos Passos' USA tempered by the loopy humanity of
Lily Tomlin. " Using her trademark meta-mix of voices,
Woodbury links the psychic devastation the Dodger's desertion
wrought upon Brooklyn fans, with the fate of Chavez Ravine,
where a whole community of Mexican Americans were forced
to sell their homes to make room for the new stadium. Toggling
between 1957 and the present, Tale swoops through cities
and minds of a mini-series worth of major and minor characters.
From the rise of Senator McCarthy to the fall of the twin
Towers, 2Cities channels a lost universe of lives
otherwise erased, in a style that owes as much to DJ Shadow
as John Steinbeck.
Heather Woodbury is the author of the renowned What Ever (Farrar
Straus Giroux), which began as a ten hour theater phenomenon
and was adapted as a radio play hosted by Ira Glass of This
American Life . A legendary performer, Woodbury's serial-dramas
were a highlight of the East Village club scene of the 1980s. Tale ,
which won a Kennedy Award for playwrighting , will premiere
next Fall in New York at PS 122. |
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"Woodbury's America is a haunted
place, all desire and no memory, searching for redemption
in the richness of human experience.”
Fintan O'Toole, THE IRISH TIMES
"Parlaying an ace reporter's eye for telling detail and a mimic's ear for nuances
of dialect, Woodbury's ability to weave a rich tapestry of Americana is impressively
evident."
Philip Brandes, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Entrancing and exhilarating....With her keen observations, she works as a sort
of social historian molding gut-wrenching truths and hilarious caricatures into
a portrait of the family of man-past and present."
Mary Houlihan, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES |
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