the vestige group presents: a theatre in the home production

The Muses II: Memories of a House

Directors Note

"Every house has a story..."

When we began our first house project last year at Helen Roberts home, we had no idea what we would be embarking on. A bunch of actors, a zillion pieces, a beautiful home filled with audience members yearning for something different. It was our second show as a company, and we had no idea how it would be received. The overwhelming response amazed us.

In our original mission statement, written in one of our first production meetings over two years ago, we stated that we wanted to "push theatre back into the mainstream, making it just as desirable for the everyday person to pop into a play rather then see a movie." With the creation of Muses, we have accomplished this goal.

Our goal, at this point, is to make our "theatre in the home" project an annual tradition. We want to go as many places as we can in Austin, bring people in and create both a new work of art, and a new community of theatre goers. Without the collaboration of Bobbie Pearl ( and her beautiful home,) and the amazing playwrights and actors who wanted to be part of this unique process, none of this would be possible.

So come, schmooze, wonder, delight, have a drink, mingle with the actors...allow the theatrical wall to dissolve. Actually experience theatre instead of simply watching it. Become a character yourself without even knowing it.

This house has a story to tell, I hope you are listening.

Enjoy the show.
Susie Gidseg
Director

About the Homeowner: Bobby Pearl

Bobby Pearl has been sculpting for sixty years. She is presently working in clay and casting in bronze.

Her primary focus is the completion of a series of sculptures based on her Grandmother's stories of her escape from the Pogroms of Russia and of the ultimate triumph of her survival in America. These stories profoundly affected her growing up and have continued to inspire and haunt her adult life. She works from live models, photographs, memory, and from her imagination. She has tried to honor the dramatic and traumatic moments of her family history through the expression of the human body.

She has studied art at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; the Sculpture Department at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India; the Art Department at Yale University, New Haven, CT. under Andrew Forge. She has served as the Director of the Austin Sculpture Center where she also taught figurative sculpture.

She is currently doing free lance writing, concentrating on art and artists, and has been published in Ceramics Monthly, The Jewish Post and Opinion, Ceramics Art Handbook Series, 2008, and the magazine Farfelu. A movie ("Her Stories, My Hands") of her work was produced and shown at the Dallas Film and Video Festival, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Austin Jewish Film Festival (2007/8.) Her story " A Tribute to My Grandmother, Pearl Golokow" was recently selected to be published in the Wisdom of Our Mothers anthology, edited by Eric Bowen.

For further information she can be contacted at:
www.geocities.com/BobbyLouPearl