Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks

From Brooklyn to Chavez Ravine, 50 years of New York and Los Angeles history collide in a mix of voices from three generations in this "living novel" by Heather Woodbury.

Library Journal

Author (and performer) of the "living novel" What Ever, a ten-hour solo theater piece, Woodbury here paints a bicoastal portrait of American lives, again in living novel form and featuring a cast of more than a dozen characters. According to Woodbury, a living novel is "a novel-length dramatic work. The way it works is that I perform newly written and partly improvised installments in front of a live audience, until a body of material is formed from which is then culled a finished work." Set simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles from 1941 to 2001, the action swoops through time and place and in and out of characters' lives. Coney Island, Ebbets Field, Dodger Stadium, and Ground Zero are but a few of the locations in which their stories collide. Told in gritty dialog set to an urban beat, these stories become part of an epic mix spun by one Manuel "Manny" Vasquez, a 19-year-old DJ mourning his grandmother's death. An original and compelling creation suitable for any performing arts collection. Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Heather Woodbury is the author of the critically acclaimed What Ever, which began as a ten-hour theater phenomenon and was adapted as a radio play, excerpts of which were heard on Ira Glass's This American Life. Woodbury's legendary serial dramas were a highlight of the East Village club scene of the 1980s. A fully-staged version of Tale of 2Cities, which won a Kennedy Award for play writing, will have its premiere in Fall 2006 at PS 122 in New York City.