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The Production
| Artist Bios | Video | Photos | Livestream
Written and directed by Lisa D'Amour, Nita
& Zita features Katie Pearl as Zita
and Kathy Randels as Nita. New Orleans jazz pianist Tom McDermott
provides a live score of original songs.
Nita & Zita
premiered at the State Palace Theater in New Orleans in June,
2002 after a two year process of research and development. The
project began with research in New Orleans in 2000 and a work-in-progress
showing at Zeitgeist
Theater Experiments. Performer Anne-Liese Juge-Fox originated
the role of Zita and was an essential part of the development
process. After the birth of Anne-Leise's gorgeous son Hal, she
turned the role over to Lisa's long time collaborator Katie
Pearl. Katie, Kathy and Lisa worked over the course of 2001
to recreate and remount the performance at The Core, a cabaret
space housed within the State-Palace
Theatre.
The show ran for 3 weeks to packed houses. David Cuthbert of
the Times Picayune called the show "a fascinating cabaret turn…Randels
and Pearl play with the easy, irascible give and take of two
people joined at the hip for too long…." We revived the show
at Southern
Repertory Theatre in New Orleans as the second leg of our
2003 tour.
Nita & Zita
tells the real life story of two sisters - dancers, seamstresses,
painters - and the mystique that still resonates long after
their death. In 1922, the sisters from the Jewish town of Baia
Maire, Romania, stepped off a ship called "The Reliance" onto
Ellis Island. For Flora and Piroska Gellert, this was the beginning
of a long life of travel, performance and fierce personal style.
Traveling through this country and beyond as "Nita and Zita,
International Dancers," Flora and Piroska dazzled audiences
with their handmade costumes and exotic routines featuring petite
Piroska, a contortionist.
In the early 1940's, they settled into a Creole cottage in New
Orleans, performing in the French Quarter and in a nearby bar
until their retirement in the 1950's. Quickly, their home became
the sisters' refuge, their reclusive habits making them instant
neighborhood legends: rumors spread about the "gypsy ladies"
who walked to the grocery store wearing formal dresses, and
who painted their entire house, inside and out, with wild polka
dot patterns.
More on the real Nita and Zita . . .
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