Emma Horwitz (left) and Bailey Williams experience a typically surreal moment in Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods at HERE Arts Center.
With Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, Emma Horwitz and Bailey Williams pay homage to their foremothers in downtown queer performance—collaborative troupes like Split Britches and Five Lesbian Brothers that produced freewheeling entertainments infused with sapphic sensibilities yet typically without any linear story.
In that spirit, Horwitz and Williams (who are a couple offstage) wrote and perform their own anarchic creation—a stream-of-conscious mishmash of sketches, character and musical bits, and lesbian inside references. The sisters, the box of lesbian erotica, and the woods mentioned in the title are, rather than plot details, more like motifs that recur as Williams and Horwitz cycle through a variety of characters and scenarios.
Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods is a very personal project of writer-performers—and real-life partners—Horwitz and Williams.
Theatergoers who like to understand what they’re watching at all times may get exhausted by the frenetic activity and elliptical dialogue in Two Sisters, but the work can be enjoyed for the performers’ commitment; the surprises that come out of scenery, props and sound effects; and the surreal energy around the production, which is directed by Tara Elliott.
Preshow, Horwitz is already onstage, seated at a large wooden table and typing on her laptop. The play begins when she steps up to a mike to read what she has supposedly just written, as if she’s participating in a lesbian erotica spoken-word event. Soon after, Horwitz switches her eyeglasses to become “Emma Horwitz, the fifth artistic director at HERE,” interviewing an artist in residence, “Bailey Williams.”
This section plays like a parody of pretentious art-world blather, as Williams speaks of “museo-visual art” and how “the movement of visuals to text can be so transformative.” Her body of work includes “essayistic video practice of layering personal narrative over the incineration of erotic collage”; “nude portal pieces entitled Don’t Look at Me! ”; and a project called “Performance Interventions in Choreographic Temporality,” pairing “a series of hand-knit relics of famous lesbians that had been encased in glass, or reliquaries, set on display” with “improvised dance responses, to force a kind of institutional reckoning with the presence of me, the artist.”
“‘Two Sisters’ may be a small show ... but it’s a busy and extensively designed one.”
This is the play’s most accessible and conventionally funny skit, one that might be in any sketch show. From there, Two Sisters gets increasingly obtuse. Scenes are set in a pet shop, a diner, at the opera and a Sheraton conference room, among other places. Williams and Horwitz take on such characters as a businesswoman and her secretary, a mother of seven and her babysitter, two bewigged dancing sisters, and the conveners of a meeting of the National Institute for Paranormal Psychic Lesbian Investigations (or NIPPLI).
Certain terms get repeated from sketch to sketch, and usually one object or reference in a scene somehow figures into the scene that follows. Still, it’s not clear how all the different episodes fit together, or even if they’re supposed to. The dialogue can be mystifying, and the show isn’t easy to follow plot- or idea-wise (unless there’s some secret lesbian code I didn’t crack).
Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods may be a small show—performed in a space with fewer than 100 seats, lasting only 70 minutes—but it’s a busy and extensively designed one. Its array of props include red stilettos, opera gloves, a printer and rubber boobs. Some sounds are heavily accentuated: When Horwitz opens and pours a can of seltzer, the click of the pop-top and sound of a fizzy drink filling the glass are heard loud and clear.
Horwitz and Williams’s script says their show “exists within a specific context of downtown queer performance.” Photographs by HanJie Chow.
Hundreds of banker’s boxes are stacked up behind the performers and extend off the stage into the theater’s entryway. Each box is labeled in magic marker with a category of lesbian ephemera: “Mount Holyoke Yearbook 1975–1978,” “Roles Rachel Weisz Turned Down,” “Red Hair Dye Off the Shelf” and “Salad Bar Meet-Cutes,” among others. Many of the boxes are opened, moved or otherwise transformed by the end of the play. During the show’s final minutes, a deus ex machina in the scenery gives the stage a new backdrop.
The creation and execution of these production elements is outstanding. A preface in the script notes that “the design ... was conceived in tandem with the text” and that stage directions cannot “fully articulate the significant contributions” of scenic and costume designer Normandy Sherwood (also responsible for the props), sound designer Johnny Gasper and lighting designer Josiah Davis.
Williams and Horwitz prove themselves versatile actors, crafting distinct personalities and demeanors for all their bizarre characters. Two Sisters is indeed expertly performed by its creators and their design collaborators, though one must be a true fan of experimental theater-making to appreciate the show for more than that.
Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, coproduced by Rattlestick Theater and New Georges, runs through May 3 at HERE, 145 Sixth Ave. (entrance on Dominick Street). Performances are at 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For tickets and more information, visit rattlestick.org or newgeorges.org.
Playwrights: Emma Horwitz & Bailey Williams
Director: Tara Elliott
Sets, Costumes & Props: Normandy Sherwood
Lighting: Josiah Davis
Sound: Johnny Gasper
