Event

Melancholy, a comedy

In Melancholy, a comedy, Sara Felder collages comic monologues, circus routines, video projections and image/object work to tell the stories of two people who lived with depression and mental illness. In time for the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth, Felder's play probes Abraham Lincoln's life-long battle with his own melancholia and how the man known for uniting a divided country, worked just as hard to unite the disparate parts of himself. And she also tells the story of Amy, a woman she met on the bus one day in the rain. A beautiful, campy, poignant, and funny work, "Melancholy" is ultimately the redemptive and ridiculous story of personal liberation.

Melancholy, a comedy is directed by David O'Connor.
The show was made possible in part by a grant from the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts.

Bio Notes:
Sara Felder is a juggling performance artist and playwright known to tackle difficult subjects with delight, aplomb and rubber chickens. Topics of her plays include the creation and deployment of the atomic bomb, same-sex marriage and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Felder began as a juggler for San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus. She has toured with Jugglers for Peace in Cuba, the Womens Circus in Nicaragua and Joel Grey's Borscht Capades in West Palm Beach. She taught juggling and performance in California prisons for many years. Felder's work has earned numerous commissions and fellowships from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Independence Foundation, the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Most recently she received a fellowship from the Leeway Foundation which honors women and trans-artists committed to art and social change. A resident of San Francisco for many years, she currently resides in Philadelphia, where she is on the roster of the Pennsylvania Performing Artists on Tour.