In Development
The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakespeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard
by Talene Monahon
A demented revenge comedy
It’s 1606 and William Shakespeare is stuck in quarantine with his unpaid peasant apprentice, Francis. It would be a great time to write King Lear… if he weren’t plagued with writer’s block. In through the window climbs Jane Anger, the Cunning Woman, with a large sack and a mind to change history forever.
Playwright Talene Monahon says, "The play is about some real people and also some people I’ve made up. There’s alot of true history in there and also a flagrant disregard for historical fact."
Deliciously low-fi aesthetic complimented with lush period costumes, underscored with fabulous anacronistic beatz. Feminism, whimsy and willy jokes.
Bec is an award-winning actress across film and television, and one of Australia’s beloved theatre clowns. She founded Club House Productions as a naughty play space for skilled artists to colour outside the lines.
Currently, she is preparing to tour 44 Sex Acts in One Week to festivals both here and abroad, as well as developing Dance Dance Insurrection, the next instalment in David Finnigan's apocalyptic trilogy.
Talene Monahon is a Brooklyn-based playwright and actor. Her plays include Jane Anger (New Ohio; 2022 Off-Broadway Alliance Best New Play Nominee, New Yorker Critic’s Pick, Time Out Critic’s Pick, New York Magazine Approval Matrix), How to Load a Musket (Less than Rent; #3 on TheaterMania’s list of “The 10 Best Theater Productions of 2020”), Frankie & Will (MCC), proud revengeful ambitious (Play Per View) and All in Good Fun (Peterborough Players). Her work has been developed by NYSAF, Bedlam Theater, Red Bull Theater, Cape Cod Theater Project, and Northern Stage and her writing has been published by Stage Rights, The Cincinnati Review, and McSweeneys. As an actor, credits include productions at Roundabout Theater Company, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, the Atlantic, MCC, New Georges, Encores!, Red Bull, La Jolla Playhouse, Gingold Theater Group, and Partial Comfort, as well as selected film and television. She has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, where she was a Senior Fellow.
Lee Lewis is one of Australia’s leading stage directors and as Artistic Director has led Queensland Theatre, the state company based in Brisbane, Australia and Griffin Theatre Company, Australia’s new writing company.
While at Queensland Theatre, despite pandemic restrictions, the company returned to production in late 2020 and managed to produce eight shows in 2021 and seven shows in 2022, while also building their significant statewide Youth and Education programme.
For Griffin Theatre Lee directed the world premiere of Prima Facie, The Almighty Sometimes, Kill Climate Deniers, The Homosexuals or Faggots, Rice, Gloria, The Bleeding Tree (three Helpmann Awards), 8 Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography, Masquerade (co-directed with Sam Strong) , Emerald City, A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il, The Serpent’s Table, Silent Disco, The Bull The Moon and the Coronet of Stars, The Call, A Hoax, The Nightwatchman, and; for Griffin and Bell Shakespeare: The Literati; for Bell Shakespeare: The School for Wives, Twelfth Night, for Belvoir: That Face, This Heaven, 2000 Feet Away, Half and Half, A Number, 7 Blowjobs and Ladybird; for Melbourne Theatre Company: Gloria, Hayfever, David Williamson's Rupert, which toured to Washington DC as part of the World Stages International Arts Festival and to Sydney’s Theatre Royal in 2014; for Sydney Theatre Company: Mary Stuart, Honour, Love Lies Bleeding and ZEBRA!; for ATYP: Battlegrounds and Citizenship; for Darwin Festival Highway of Lost Hearts; for NIDA: After Dinner, Big Love, Shopping and Fucking, and The Winter’s Tale; and for WAAPA: As You Like It. She also directed the revival of Max Lambert’s and Katharine Thompson’s musical Darlinghurst Nights for The Hayes.
Lee was the first person to receive a Master of Fine Arts from NIDA in Directing. Her thesis was published by Currency Press as a Platform Paper under the title Cross-Racial Casting: Changing the Face of Australian Theatre. She was the 2007 Richard Wherrett Fellow at Sydney Theatre Company. She started at Griffin as the Associate Director in 2008, becoming its Artistic Director in 2012. Many of her productions have been nominated for awards, but most notably, her production of Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree won three Helpmann Awards including Best Play, Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Best Director.
Her production of Prima Facie starring Sheridan Harbridge was the beginning of the remarkable journey of that play around the world, to the West End, to Broadway and now into film and novel. Known as a champion of playwrights, she has specialized for many years in the first productions of new works, but her body of work reveals a deep love of classics and working with young people.
New York Times
'Mile-a-minute gags'
The New Yorker
'A blast! Demented revenge comedy riffs with bawdy irreverance.'
The Washington Post
'With its joyfully anachronistic tone, nod-and-wink meta-humor and raunchy antics, ‘Jane Anger’ makes for brazen counterprogramming.'
Time Out
'Mad funny'