Miss Lizzie Borden Invites You to Tea in NJ

Marjorie Conn’s one woman show Miss Lizzie Invites You to Tea is being presented in Fair Lawn, NJ this October, starring Karen Asconi. The press release is below. This sounds wonderful! Wish I could go. Buy Tickets here.

(FAIR LAWN, NJ) — Boz and the Bard Productions, Inc. presents “Miss Lizzie” at the Fair Lawn Community Center (10-10 20th Street, Fair Lawn, NJ). Performances run Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM and Sundays at 2:00 PM, October 19-21 and October 26-28, 2007. There will be a special Q&A after each Saturday performance. Tickets are $20.00 in advance, $25 at the door. For tickets call 866-811-4111 or visit www.bozandthebard.com for more information.

Boz and the Bard Productions, Inc., a theater production company formed in 2000, is proud to announce their new affiliation, through a borough sponsorship, with the town of Fair Lawn. “We are thrilled to be working in this beautiful, professional new space,” say co-founders Frank Avellino and Steve Hess, of Hackensack. Boz and the Bard has played the Sande Shurin Theater in NYC, the Sanford Meisner Theater in NYC, as well as the Hackensack Cultural Arts Center, where the company revived their NYC debut production of Marjorie Conn’s “Miss Lizzie A. Borden Invites You To Tea.” Robin Schamach, Corporate and Cultural Planner of the theater at Fair Lawn Community Center expressed an interest in this play when Frank and Steve first introduced themselves. Ms. Schamach felt a play about Lizzie Borden would fit perfectly into the October pre-Halloween slot.

Most of us know the gruesome events that took place in 1892 in the Borden home in Fall River, Massachusetts. And, ever since the infamous butcherings of Miss Lizzie’s parents in the heat of that August 4th morning, that old poem about Lizzie Borden taking an axe has been recited daily by children all across the world. Most of us know that Lizzie was arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted of murder. But not many of us know or understand the rest of Lizzie’s story. In “Miss Lizzie A. Borden Invites You To Tea,” we find Lizzie an aging, lonely spinster in 1913. Twenty one years after the murders, the notoriety of her trial has waned and her heyday has passed. Her status as ‘social celebrity’ has faded, and has left her forgotten by all but a handful of hungry local journalists, and a bitter, taunting few who won’t allow her peace. In this one-woman tour-de-force starring Karen Asconi of Jersey City, we witness Lizzie’s powerful lust for freedom and learn how such a yearning can drive one to acts of unimaginable desperation.
Conn Artist

In 1999, playwright Marjorie Conn was acknowledged with an award by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force for her contributions to Gay and Lesbian theatre in Provincetown, MA. She is also the founder of Conn Artist Performance Event (C.A.P.E.) Inc. & the Provincetown Fringe Festival, a non-profit theatre company that believes in risk-taking theatre and giving everyone a chance. The Fringe is now located in Asbury Park. “Lorena Hickok & Eleanor Roosevelt: A Love Story by Pat Bond” was the longest running show in Provincetown from 1994 to 2006 & Conn has performed this play all over the country. The companion piece written by Conn, “The Honeymoon Years of Eleanor Roosevelt & Lorena Hickok” premiered in 2002. This and two of Conn’s other plays about Lizzie Borden and a cross-dressing whaling woman are published in Lost Lesbian Lives. She can be reached at [email protected]

Avellino and Hess named their production company in honor of their two favorite writers, Charles Dickens (whose early pen name was Boz) and William Shakespeare (The Bard of Avon). The traditions established by these masters of literature and theatre are the traditions that Frank and Steve strive to carry on in their own work. As B&B continues to become a presence in Northern New Jersey, you can expect more than the usual bill of faire generally seen in the area. This company can flavor a season with a wickedly clever new script, revisit a superbly written comic classic, or shake its audiences to their core by poignantly exposing human foibles and honoring human courage. You can be certain that you will leave the theater talking, debating, inquiring or simply rediscovering the beauty of life. And, since B&B offers Sign Language Interpreted performances, B&B will make sure that whatever the genre, whatever the play, the Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience will experience the same depth of emotion as the hearing audience.

Boz and the Bard Productions, Inc. is proud to bring this revival of their critically acclaimed production of “Miss Lizzie A. Borden Invites You To Tea” to the Fair Lawn Community Center for a special, co-sponsored, limited engagement. Ms. Asconi’s “…fascinating, high-strung performance…under Frank Avellino’s taut direction…is a worthwhile experience,” claimed Peter Filichia, of The Star Ledger, of the 2004 production.