Theater for the New City
Executive Director, Crystal Field
Presents
Afterwards
Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 7:00 PM
JOHNSON THEATER
Pay what you can!
Suggested Donation $5 – $10
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Street)
New York, NY 10003
Directions
“Afterwards” is based on the true story of Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve’s older sister who burned to death in a car crash following an argument with her boyfriend who’d stormed away only to hear shortly after that she had died.
Her lover was the son of Sam Shaw, famous photographer and producer, who became mired in a lawsuit of biblical proportions with his only male child before he passed away.
Using information freely shared in real time and spiritually imparted Enz’s “Afterwards” explores the generations of suffering these people’s stories hold along with the sanctifying power of their mythic love.
The director Sarah T. Schwab and playwright Pamela Enz are eager to work on a truly unplugged piece where text and relationships are not overwhelmed by the often too spectacular technology presently available.
The plan for “Afterwards” as a full production is to use a simple actor propelled apparatus that Pamela’s brilliant long time collaborator Ève Laroche-Joubert designed to transport characters between decades and states of being.
An adult-maze-roundabout with various wall heights Ève’s design offers limitless varieties of human interactions that metaphorically suggest the complexity of relationships depending on how the actors move about and place their bodies in relation to one another. Additionally it supports the displacement of past and present and moments that exist outside of time.
Austin Pendleton starred in “City Girls & Desperadoes” Enz’s play he’d generously shepherded for years up until its Theater for the New City premiere Jan. 2018 after which Pamela became increasingly interested in revisiting City Girls’s characters wondering how they might have fared after its grand denouement.
Hearing Austin Pendleton sing as part of TNC’s Lower East Side Festival of the Arts 2024 which like his writing, directing and acting was a tour de force provided her the necessary connecting thread between the past and futures of these characters.
Elliott Randall, a blessed long time collaborator, is composing a song for Austin and an aural playground to support Afterwards themes of love and longing that transcend time.
Inspired by Edward Snowden’s BitCoin2024 address, itself a yowling howl of a reaction to an increasingly technological world we’ve little power to decide how much we might want to be subsumed by Afterwards ends with a plea for kindness.
Like the whole of Ms. Enz’s recent work particularly the film AIRTIME co-written with Alexandra Guerineaud the play posits the importance of a resurgence of empathy.
CAST
Austin Pendleton
Heather Litteer
Marlon Xavier
Elizabeth Yeoman
Annette Fox
Kim Savarino
Juanita Castro-Ochoa
Pamela Enz – A Hybrid Collaborative Theatrical Collagist my creative heart is best fed and firmly planted in the joyful act of storytelling whether through visual art, film, performance art or most profoundly, theater. Earliest cherished credit: Inclusion in The Guinness World Book’ of Records’ certified longest line of tap dancers on Broadway in NYC that besides copious colorful material provided me insight into the endless space that is the human heart.
A recipient of Edward Albee Fellowships, PEN grants, The Tennessee Williams One Act Play Award, Franklin Furnace Emerging Performance Award, the centerpiece of @aCall2Arms thenewtownproject, refining my art and finding my voice performing nascent pieces on the steps of Metropolitan Museum with Anna Deavere Smith I aim to create compelling narratives that explore the miracles we wish for and sacrifices we make in the name of love and survival.
Sarah T. Schwab is an award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer, as well as the president of Cardinal Flix, an independent film production company. Currently, she is in pre-production for two narrative features and one narrative short, all slated for filming in 2025. Sarah’s directorial work includes three feature films: “Crybaby Bridge” (2025) starring two-time Emmy nominated actress Sydney Mikayla (“General Hospital”), “A Stage of Twilight” (2024) starring Karen Allen (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”) and William Sadler (“The Shawshank Redemption”), and “Life After You” (2022) starring Florencia Lozano (“Narcos”). She is also a member of the playwright/directors unit at the Actors Studio in New York City.