othello is not considered one of shakespeare’s “problem plays”. however, in the years between the play’s writing and now, it has certainly become a problem. drawing on the work of black scholars and intellectuals like ayanna thompson, keith hamilton cobb, w.e.b. dubois and many more, another othello aims not to solve that problem, but to finally present it to an audience that has ignored it for too long.
adapted from preston sturges’ oscar-winning 1941 film of the same name, this in-progress musical aims to start in the risk-free silliness of the screwball comedy, follow sullivan into the idyllic tragedy of a romantic epic before suddenly shifting to a bleak, neorealism-inspired sequence as he finally experiences the true realities of poverty, and soon wishes he hadn’t.
below is the most recent draft of the script… that i’ve remembered to upload here. if you like it, and can write/orchestrate music, drop me a line!
while nine is traditionally cast with 22 women and one man, this production will cast one actress to play (almost) all of the female parts, aided by a combination of prerecording, shadow play, quick changes of both costume and lighting, and puppetry.
a pitch deck – which includes a set design and plan, a preliminary budget/inventory as well as a fuller exploration of the production’s concept – can be read here.
an inflammatorily-titled, less-long discussion of how art that makes you think before it makes you feel is more criticism than art.
an in-depth exploration of how mainstream theater performs its progress on stage with “race-blind” casting, while still allowing creative control to remain majority white, and how their risk-aversion is arresting not only societal but artistic advancement. exploring topics from laurence olivier’s baffling 1965 performance as othello (and pauline kael’s equally baffling rave review), to daniel fish’s 2019 production of “oklahoma”, and beyond!
a semi-fictionalized account of a summer i once spent in colorado, and a portrait of the more ambiguous and important relationships one can have in life, and then let go of. this was a completely individual project, written and illustrated by me alone. I think it turned out pretty good.
a work-in-progress puppet conceived for
nine, portraying the main character’s mother in a way that made him child-sized. by pulling the ropes, it is possible to control the sheet so that it looks like a shawl being worn by a giant woman who isn’t there, towering over the seated actor (represented in the model below as a corkscrew). the actor reverts to childhood, the sheet becomes their mother, and they dance with her. as the two dance, she begins to bend lower and lower, before settling on the floor.
look, I’m terrible at coding. I couldn’t figure out how to make one of these not open, so now it does. sue me. it’s supposed to be a header. everything below this is student work. go away.
Henry James’ 1878 novella Daisy Miller – A Study in Two Parts is an example of James’ career-long struggle with his trans-Atlantic identity as a US-born Brit, and the tug-of-war between the promised freedom of America and the comfortable formality of Europe.
While over 100 years old, the novella is still deeply relatable: Daisy dies raging against the conformity expected of her, while Winterbourne gives up on his freedom in favor of stability. Collage seemed the perfect medium to express this uncomfortable juxtaposition of the old and the new, the free and the caged.
I’ll finish it one day.
listen closely to “2”, mac demarco’s first full-length album, and you’ll find that behind the lilting psychedelic guitar and gap-toothed smile, he is detailing an at-once familiar and deeply personal picture of adolescence. he bounces effortlessly between themes, from worrying about worrying his parents to deep, guileless love, to that feeling that life has more in store for him. this album cover was created to reflect that, using dirty and classically teenage objects to create an affectionate and earnest moment.
in his 1842 dramatic monologue “my last duchess”, robert browning writes in the voice of an obsessive duke showing a visitor a painting of his last wife. as it goes on, it grows more comfortable in its true form, a terrifying study in jealousy, power, and the unseen. i tried to capture that in this shadow play, underscored by erik satie’s haunting “gnosienne no.4” to match the poem’s slow, inevitable violence.
OK, this is kind of embarrassing. I feel like my favorite novel should be something obscure and sexy by someone French or Japanese, but instead it’s this. I know it’s the book that every high schooler studies, the most obvious choice ever, but…
IT’S, LIKE, BASICALLY PERFECT.
Anyway I made a big interactive PDF thing for an adaptation of the play. It’s a little buggy but it works and there’s some interesting stuff in there.
nobody read it at the time, obviously.
download the pdf here! (the interactive stuff only works in adobe Acrobat)
my first experience designing costumes was for a hypothetical production of camille saint-saëns’ posthumously-released suite the carnival of the animals, a collection of short, animal-themed pieces, complete with ogden nash’s silly interstitial poems read by a narrator. like the best children’s media, this series has plenty for adults to enjoy as well, and i wanted to capture that in my designs, focusing on recognizable characters and conflicts within each piece.
written in 1931, but only produced after his death, when five years pass is one of lorca’s most surreal plays. it explores the inescapable cycles of desire, memory, and metaphor through a story of a young man whose old love is not how he remembers her, and his interactions with personified facets of both himself and her.
the design centered around ideas of surprising but organically-uncovered set pieces, unfolding and merging the way images do in a dream.
take back the rains is a plan for a state-wide water rights awareness campaign to expose the stealing of our natural resources to be sold back to us.
the grand hotel was an independent project designed and produced alone as a solo entry to the d&ad new blood awards’ hasbro brief, which asked for a party game for millennials based on an existing game.
inspired by a drinking game and my love for the roaring 20’s, i created a luxurious, witty art deco styled card game for two or more people, printed a rough but fully playable pack, and wrote/recorded/edited a rough silly advert for it.
Blood Wedding is a folk tragedy in three acts by Federico García Lorca, first produced as Bodas de Sangre in 1933. Langston Hughes wrote his translation around 1937, but it was not produced until 1992, sitting in archives for over 50 years.
In the below document, I propose a production of Hughes’ richly poetic translation at 26501 McBean Parkway, an unused lot in modern Santa Clarita, on the ancestral land of the Tataviam and Chumash tribes.
Dynamic Change Consultants (Design and Copy)
dcc.com
liane strauss – poet and writer
lianestrauss.com
I’m putting together a book of bad reviews received by great (Western) artists before they were famous, the kind that others might have taken as a sign to give up on their art.
“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime [sic] I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
– Mark Twain
“Liszt’s orchestral music is an insult to art. It is gaudy musical harlotry, savage and incoherent bellowings.”
– Boston Gazette
“As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”
– Vladimir Nabokov
“Morrissey sometimes brings out records with the greatest titles in the world which, somewhere along the line, he neglects to write songs for.”
– Elvis Costello
I’m the editor of the SubStack How To Read A Poem : A Love Story by poet and literature professor Dr. Liane Strauss, and have done some freelance editing in the past.
While the majority of my work at Wireforks was auxiliary (and therefore hard to show off on a portfolio website), these taglines, invoking first effortless style and then ancient wisdom, were my first foray into writing copy independently. Each was published in a number of national and international salon industry magazines.
Of course, almost a decade later, I have notes for past me. But I know changing it now would be cheating, so…
the most traditional innovation in the world.
historically timeless, eternally peerless.
head to heel forever iconic.
Zen Series
Zen Series
As part of my job as a Junior Creative at Wireforks (a boutique design firm in East London), I researched and wrote supplemental essays for a collection of posters aimed at children/young adults, which detailed the histories of various objects.
the grand hotel was an independent project designed and produced alone as a solo entry to the d&ad new blood awards’ hasbro brief, which asked for a party game for millennials based on an existing game.
inspired by a drinking game and my love for the roaring 20’s, i created a luxurious, witty art deco styled card game for two or more people, printed a rough but fully playable pack, and wrote/recorded/edited a rough silly advert for it.
OK, this is kind of embarrassing. I feel like my favorite novel should be something obscure and sexy by someone French or Japanese, but instead it’s this. I know it’s the book that every high schooler studies, the most obvious choice ever, but…
IT’S, LIKE, BASICALLY PERFECT.
Anyway I made a big interactive PDF thing for an adaptation of the play. It’s a little buggy but it works and there’s some interesting stuff in there.
nobody read it at the time, obviously.
download the pdf here! (the interactive stuff only works in adobe Acrobat)
take back the rains is a plan for a state-wide water rights awareness campaign to expose the stealing of our natural resources to be sold back to us.
an inflammatorily-titled, less-long discussion of how art that makes you think before it makes you feel is more criticism than art.
an in-depth exploration of how mainstream theater performs its progress on stage with “race-blind” casting, while still allowing creative control to remain majority white, and how their risk-aversion is arresting not only societal but artistic advancement. exploring topics from laurence olivier’s baffling 1965 performance as othello (and pauline kael’s equally baffling rave review), to daniel fish’s 2019 production of “oklahoma”, and beyond!
a semi-fictionalized account of a summer i once spent in colorado, and a portrait of the more ambiguous and important relationships one can have in life, and then let go of. this was a completely individual project, written and illustrated by me alone. I think it turned out pretty good.
Dynamic Change Consultants (Design and Copy)
dcc.com
friends of musique et vin (Design)
fomv.org
liane strauss – poet and writer
lianestrauss.com
listen closely to “2”, mac demarco’s first full-length album, and you’ll find that behind the lilting psychedelic guitar and gap-toothed smile, he is detailing an at-once familiar and deeply personal picture of adolescence. he bounces effortlessly between themes, from worrying about worrying his parents to deep, guileless love, to that feeling that life has more in store for him. this album cover was created to reflect that, using dirty and classically teenage objects to create an affectionate and earnest moment.
take back the rains is a plan for a state-wide water rights awareness campaign to expose the stealing of our natural resources to be sold back to us.
the grand hotel was an independent project designed and produced alone as a solo entry to the d&ad new blood awards’ hasbro brief, which asked for a party game for millennials based on an existing game.
inspired by a drinking game and my love for the roaring 20’s, i created a luxurious, witty art deco styled card game for two or more people, printed a rough but fully playable pack, and wrote/recorded/edited a rough silly advert for it.
my first experience designing costumes was for a hypothetical production of camille saint-saëns’ posthumously-released suite the carnival of the animals, a collection of short, animal-themed pieces, complete with ogden nash’s silly interstitial poems read by a narrator. like the best children’s media, this series has plenty for adults to enjoy as well, and i wanted to capture that in my designs, focusing on recognizable characters and conflicts within each piece.
Henry James’ 1878 novella Daisy Miller – A Study in Two Parts is an example of James’ career-long struggle with his trans-Atlantic identity as a US-born Brit, and the tug-of-war between the promised freedom of America and the comfortable formality of Europe.
While over 100 years old, the novella is still deeply relatable: Daisy dies raging against the conformity expected of her, while Winterbourne gives up on his freedom in favor of stability. Collage seemed the perfect medium to express this uncomfortable juxtaposition of the old and the new, the free and the caged.
I’ll finish it one day.
a semi-fictionalized account of a summer i once spent in colorado, and a portrait of the more ambiguous and important relationships one can have in life, and then let go of. this was a completely individual project, written and illustrated by me alone. I think it turned out pretty good.
OK, this is kind of embarrassing. I feel like my favorite novel should be something obscure and sexy by someone French or Japanese, but instead it’s this. I know it’s the book that every high schooler studies, the most obvious choice ever, but…
IT’S, LIKE, BASICALLY PERFECT.
Anyway I made a big interactive PDF thing for an adaptation of the play. It’s a little buggy but it works and there’s some interesting stuff in there.
nobody read it at the time, obviously.
download the pdf here! (the interactive stuff only works in adobe Acrobat)