Women’s Project presents

transFigures
April 6 - May 6 at the Julia Miles Theater 424 West 55th Street.   

transFigures, a new work conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet inspired by Jerusalem Syndrome, a well-documented 5-7 day psychosis that causes otherwise normal tourists to channel Biblical figures, create togas out of hotel bed-sheets, and parade through the holy city as Moses, Mary Magdalene, Jesus, and other religious icons.  Created from sources as varied as the writings of Bathsheba Doran and Joan of Arc, scientific journals, and post-it notes from the desks of New York corporate secretaries, transFigures skips from New York to Jerusalem to map the intersection of religious revelation and insanity.

Four years ago during my first year in New York, I conceived and directed a play called transFigures; it was a guerrilla project staged in an abandoned AA Hall connected to a church on 21st and Park.  To my amazement, I found out in January that the Women's Project is going to give transFigures a full Off-Broadway run in New York this spring.  Yet more proof that in this wild business, we truly never know.

After graduating from U.Va. in 2002 I moved to New York, having no idea how to begin a directing career.  Anne Bogart talks a lot about not waiting for the ideal circumstance to present itself, but just making work wherever you are with whomever and whatever you can muster.  Lacking better alternatives, I took her advice.

My approach to transFigures began with a question: what does it mean to hear the voice of God?  I had become intensely interested in people claiming direct encounters with the divine; as all of my projects, transFigures grew organically from eclectic research and countless discussions.  I began with the latest theories in neuro-theology (the brain science of spiritual ecstasy), and this led me to Russell Shorto’s Saints and Madmen, a series of case studies.  The lynchpin of the piece clicked into place when I discovered the phenomenon of Type III Jerusalem Syndrome, a strange 5-7 day psychosis that affects tourists in Jerusalem (usually following 7 steps, which include the victim channeling a Biblical figure, creating a toga out of their hotel bed-sheets, and parading through Jerusalem preaching).  I located a documentary on the phenomenon, and the director, Erin Sax, surprisingly gave me permission to use the research and interviews she had collected over four years.  I pulled supplemental text from sources as varied as Ibsen’s The Lady and the Sea and transcriptions of post-it notes from the desks of New York corporate secretaries (which I collected during my various temp jobs). 

When I assembled the group of 7 actors, I gave each a packet of research and an assigned character based on source material.  Over the next 6 weeks, we made the play.  On our shoe-string budget, Jenny Sawyers (fellow U.Va. grad, MFA 2002) created a scenic design that allowed transFigures to seamlessly skip from New York to Jerusalem, from Joan of Arc to abortion clinic terrorists. She chose 16 muslin panels (inspired by tents from the documentary) that were manipulated by actors throughout the production to repeatedly transform the space.  The sound and lighting design were responsible for weaving the piece together and taking the audience on the journey of spiritual transcendence.
  
transFigures nearly killed me the first time.  While there were moments of joy and exhilaration, I was definitely in WAY over my head.  We faced absurd logistical challenges with the site-specific space (our load-in day was thwarted by an emergency funeral thrown in our space, and I was bawled out by the inebriated widow).  We unexpectedly had to cover the walls with velvet for acoustics and wire the light board through a refrigerator in the church basement.  Because of my insistence that the actor playing Joan of Arc enter from the roof, I landed the job of standing up there with a clip light during every performance, even during in a thunderstorm.

No one was more surprised than I when transFigures  was called “breathtaking and vital” by writer Joseph Langham.   It played to sold-out houses, becaming a very important first step of my NYC career, and now my Off-Broadway premiere. 

Right now I am in the thick of casting sessions and script re-writes, adapting a play  made to be performed by 22-year-olds in a dingy AA Hall into one suitable for a professional run on a proscenium stage.  Part of me feels like this time around will be smoother, and logistically it will be.  But the moment I stare the material in the face again and prick my mind to imagine an empty stage, waiting, I am full of the same terror and exhilaration I experienced the first time.  I guess that’s part of the deal.

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