Crown Hill Cemetery

“Her vivacious, amazingly zingy off-the-wall material about death and dying came across hilariously.” The Post and Courier – Piccolo Spoleto Festival

Centering on the story of living in the shadow of a mausoleum, Haas aspires to embrace life, only to have it trampled on by telemarketers selling cemetery plots, National Geographic and a series of hapless embarrassing events.

A recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship to be an artist-in-residence the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center in Minnesota, Haas had the opportunity to begin development of this solo show. Subsequently, CROWN HILL CEMETERY has had readings and workshops in various NYC venues, (including the Artists of Tomorrow Festival where it was named Best of the Fest) and was performed 2003 Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

A regular storyteller in NYC at SPEAKEASY: STORIES FROM THE BACKROOM, Haas is also a playwright best known for her comedy STACKED: A DEVIANT DOCTORAL DISSERTATION which was critically acclaimed by the New York Times and was also produced, by Vitalstatistix in Adelaide, Australia. Haas is also the co-author of the sketch comedy, RITA & INEZ: THE TRUE QUEENS OF FEMININITY which has been a critically acclaimed festival hit in the Seattle and Edmonton Fringes. (To see reviews of all her work, visit www.lisa-haas.com)

Directed by Jocelyn Sawyer, CROWN HILL CEMETERY is Haas and Sawyer’s third theatrical collaboration. In NYC they are currently developing an outrageous audience interactive comedy IN HEAT, and have begun a new solo piece for Haas about a real-life 1950’s Burglary Scandal.

CREATIVE TEAM BIOS:

LISA HAAS is a Brooklyn based playwright, essayist and monologist. Her plays and solo performance pieces have been seen in New York City, nationally and internationally. In NYC her works have been produced by The Toyota Comedy Festival, The Fourth Unity, HERE Arts Center, The WOW Café and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Some of those pieces include Rita & Inez: The True Queens of Femininity, I Sit in the Café, In Heat and Stacked: A Deviant Doctoral Dissertation. Stacked was also produced in Australia by the Vitalstatistix Theatre Company. She is a storyteller with Speakeasy: Stories from the Backroom and sings a capella with the comedy group The Lesbian Overtones. She was the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship to develop her solo comedy, Crown Hill Cemetery, which was seen in the 2003 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and in the 2004 Artists of Tomorrow Festival in NYC where it was named Best of the Fest. A teaching artist with the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Creating Original Opera Program, she holds a BFA from Loretto Heights College, an MFA from the University of Montana and is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. www.lisa-haas.com

JOCELYN SAWYER has directed new work for Reverie Productions, SP Productions and for many festivals in New York including Six Figures’ Artists of Tomorrow, American Globe Theatre, Estrogenius and NYC Fringe, in addition to Queer@HERE and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Women’s Performance Festival for which she directed the first two parts of “In Heat” by Lisa Haas. She assistant directed at Playwrights Horizons (where she was a directing resident last season), The Flea and Rattlestick Theaters and the Summer Play Festival. She is a member of Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, Directors Lab West and Actors’ Equity Association.