THE INTERROBANG DEPARTURE EXTENDS ACCLAIMED HOLLYWOOD FRINGE SHOW LADY INTO FOX

Lady Into Fox

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 2, 2015

CONTACT:
Sam Hunter – Artistic Director
[email protected]
(925) 785-4364

THE INTERROBANG DEPARTURE EXTENDS ACCLAIMED HOLLYWOOD FRINGE SHOW
LADY INTO FOX

The award-winning Interrobang Departure present an encore extension of LADY INTO FOX, a world premiere play acclaimed by 2015 Hollywood Fringe audiences at Downtown Los Angeles’s Bootleg Theater.

LADY INTO FOX was David Garnett’s first and most successful novella, earning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1922 and the Hawthornden Prize a year later. Though obscure, it has been much loved by readers since its publication. It has never been adapted for the stage until now.

The story follows Richard and Silvia Tebrick: a young and devout couple living in rural Victorian England. On a walk one day, Silvia suddenly and mysteriously transforms into a fox. At first it is merely a physical transformation—she wears dresses, drinks tea, and walks on two legs—but after a short while her mind begins to change as well. She is a wild animal cooped up in a house. Richard, of course, is beside himself and tries desperately to preserve the marriage. The story explores themes of identity, fidelity, and change.

The story may be almost 100 years old, but the production is contemporary as can be. “We are definitely experimenting with how stories are told,” says Hunter. “We are drawing parallels between Silvia’s transformation and the transformation an actor can go through.”

LADY INTO FOX received universal audience acclaim at this summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, earning the Encore! Producers’ Extension Award, Combined Artform’s Pick of the Fringe, and four Fringe Award nominations, including Top of the Fringe and World Premiere. From Jonathan Ross’s Bitter Lemons review, LADY INTO FOX is “an undeniably charming and satisfying hour of theater
. . . all three members of the cast are excellent.”

The Interrobang Departure is a former sketch comedy group, now a full production company—a self-styled “multimedia storytelling collective,” using the stage and screen to build stories as an ensemble. This is their first stage production after dozens of online sketches, short films, and most recently the IAWTV Award-winning web series GOD PARTICLES, which was written and directed by Leland Montgomery, who is providing design for this show.

“We’re writers, actors, directors, and designers,” says Hunter. “We figured it was silly to limit ourselves to a single form, and this way we can achieve everything we want to individually and collectively. Working in all these different ways really clarifies what is unique and strongest in each, and helps us get to the root of what it means to act, direct, etc.”

That desire to explore performance has found its way into Garnett’s novella. The original is told from the author’s own perspective, and this adaptation will preserve that opinionated narration, only this time it is the actors’ perspective, not the author’s, through which the audience experiences the story.

“I had the actors re-write large chunks of the play, adding narration and opinion, so that what was happening on stage would be coming from them, the same way what happens in the novella is coming from the person actually telling you the story.”

The entire experience will be more akin to an elaborate story at a dinner party than a formal play. “It’s a great, fun, communal event, like a campfire! It’s made by old friends for new friends!”