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The six cast members of Penn Dixie Alive have been living more than 70 miles from Philly in the woods of Nazareth since Aug. 14 finishing their debut work, “The Seer,” for this year’s Fringe Festival.
“It just gives us the ability to do all the work that’s done in the margins. The work that gets done when the rehearsal hours end,” Anisa George, who directs the work, said. “When we are having dinner together and having a laugh and someone says, ‘You know, it’d be really fun if we did this.’ It lets us concentrate on the work and not be distracted by all the other things that life entails.”
George, who makes her home at Clarion and Federal streets, is excited about her first Philadelphia performance since moving to the area about a year ago.
“The piece is a rambunctious and absurd, hilarious, strange and bizarre retelling of Arthur Rimbaud’s life, and it’s dance and poetry and music, and it’s very off-the-wall experimental,” George, 29, said.
The 90-minute piece about Rimbaud, a 19th-century poet prodigy, who wrote all of his material before the age of 21, will be taking the stage Sept. 15 to 17 at Center City’s Vox Populi. The cast, which met in London while studying in a master’s program, hails from Brazil, Argentina, Sweden, France and America. Upon graduating in 2010, they formed the group with plans to work on this piece and tour the world.
“Everybody is here and we’re making the piece and finishing the piece. We have plans to perform in Sweden, but we thought, ‘Why are we building the whole piece and not performing here?’” George said. “When you are at the point of completion, you want to share it with an audience and not bury it away for someone else and some other time.”
With the gang together, the Fringe was the perfect showcase for the unconventional work, and they set plans to premier stateside before taking it to Sweden next summer.
“You know, it’s always very frightening [to unveil a work]. If it’s not frightening, you probably aren’t taking enough risks,” George said. “I’m excited. It’s my first theatrical production that I’m directing so that makes me more nervous. I think I’ve performed in a lot and written and directed film, but directing theater is something unique, and it was especially challenging for me.”
George’s work has included film and theater, but her theatrical directorial debut was an interesting process to undertake.
“Directing for film you get to work on it until it’s done, and it doesn’t change when you turn your back. It’s fixed,” she said. “Directing for theater, it’s a living art form. It’s a much more fragile and precarious situation. It changes every moment and there is a lot less control.”
A Lehigh Valley native, George spent her childhood immersed in theater, as her parents, Bill and Bridget, were the creators of Touchstone Theater, an experimental company founded in 1981. George began performing with her family by age 7.
“I grew up doing theater my whole life, and I tried to get away from it and it failed,” George said.
Her attempt to get away was a pursuit of Middle Eastern studies at New York’s Columbia University. After graduating, she went back and forth between America and places like Iran, Yemen and Kuwait from ’04 to ’07.
“I was studying languages, mostly Arabic and Persian, and then I was working out some things side by side,” George said. “I did a solo theater piece and a documentary, then I got cast in the film ‘Rachel Getting Married.’”
George played Emma, Rachel’s friend and intended maid of honor, before Kym, played by Anne Hathaway, shows up the day before the wedding and replaces Emma. George’s participation in the ’08 independent film, which was a critical success, was purely serendipitous.
“I wasn’t auditioning at all. The director saw this solo theater piece I wrote, which I was performing, and asked me to audition for the film,” she said.
Try as she may to forge a different path, George continued to return to her roots and feel at home on the stage. She received a fellowship to the London International School of Performing Arts, where she met the majority of her six-person cast for “The Seer.”
“We really hit it off and I started working on [The Seer] a year ago,” George said. “I did concentrated chunks in London and here and we decided to try and bring it to the Philadelphia Fringe since that’s where I’m based.”
Living in South Philadelphia was a choice the international-minded artist made based on recommendations from her boyfriend, Dan Rothenberg, who is the co-artistic director and a founding member of the Pig Iron Theatre Co.
“My boyfriend and partner had been living here for the last 15 years,” George, who settled into her South Philly digs last September, said. “I think the creative community is very exciting in South Philadelphia. I’ve been very excited about the people I have met and the work I have seen. Philadelphia is great, really amazing, and the Fringe is the closest thing they get to European festivals like Edinburgh.”
With her Philadelphia debut two weeks away, George is feeling her usual ups and downs about unveiling a new piece.
“I think you’re always nervous no one will show up,” George said, adding with a laugh, “and then you’re nervous people will show up and it won’t be any good.” SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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