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Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann

Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann

Regular price $ 12.00 USD
Regular price Sale price $ 12.00 USD
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ANN, FRAN, AND MARY ANN
by Erin Courtney
with an introduction by Sarah Lunnie
& an interview with Erin Courtney, José Zayas, and Carl Erik Fisher
Feb 2021
$12
130 pages
5x7
paper/perfect bound
ISBN: 978-1732545205

Ann and Mary Ann are married. They are both neuroscientists and they both witnessed deeply traumatic events when they were young. Now, in the carefully ordered worlds of their marriage and laboratory—which is linked like the two lobes of the brain—Ann and Mary Ann care for, protect, and reflect one another. But when Ann begins to study Fran, a tile artist who is unable to recognize her husband after he commits an unthinkably violent act, Ann and Mary Ann must reckon with what it really means to see and be present to another person. ANN, FRAN, MARY ANN is a deeply reflective, reflecting, refracting play about trauma, God, patterns, and the way they live in our bodies, our minds, and acts of love. 

PRAISE:

"In this exquisite chamber piece about trauma, intimacy, and terror, Erin Courtney brings her inimitable sweet-savage vision to an exploration of the mystery of human consciousness. How do we understand who we are, and who we are to each other? How do we make sense of the fractures that trauma cracks into our minds? The under-explored overlap between science and theology, objectivity and love comes to life in this funny, heart-stopping gem of a play."
-Madeleine George

“'I am a scientist,' declare two of the protagonists of the deliciously titled Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann. And Ann and Mary Ann are scientists, married to each other. Fran is a tile artist. Then there’s a third scientist girding this play. It is the writer Erin Courtney—a true scientist of poetics and drama—giving us life-force language, firm form, and rounded, clear edges to create the play as vessel, a vessel as magical and secure as a lab beaker which holds the shaky beauty of these three women and the moment in time when they cross paths. Erin puts questions of God, effects of trauma, distrust in our bodies, and brain science under her singular microscope and creates a page-turning play that feels utterly of this moment and then tethered to a kind of forever. “Listen to me,” Ann and Mary Ann implore each other finally. Let’s listen to them through and because Erin chose to find these characters and this story—and because it’s like a fact that we should as often as possible listen and look to Erin Courtney as one of our guides to the feelings we hold inside and outside ourselves."
-Tina Satter

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