LuLu LoLo
Workspace 2007-2008
LuLu LoLo, a playwright/actor/performance and multi-disciplinary artist, has written and performed five one-person plays on such topics as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the lesbian lover of murder victim Kitty Genovese. Selected NY venues: Metropolitan Playhouse, Raw Space, Lower East Side Tenement Museum Theater, FAR Space, Garibaldi-Meucci Museum. Reviews: The New York Times, Village Voice, Nytheatre.com review, Bill Kaiser: On the Purple Circuit, and Greenwich Village Gazette. LuLu’s 2007 on-site performance project The Paper Boats of Mother Cabrini was performed in Campagna, Italy, and Paris, France. She is Board Member/Director of Performance of the City Reliquary Museum, Brooklyn. LuLu has been selected to participate in Uptown/Downtown.
George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812 ) buried in St. Paul’s Chapel Cemetery
Alas Poor Yorick I knew him well And here I stand—headless as him as well Suffering the Scorn of Critics for my portrayals Sending me into a downward spiral of drink and debt To wander St. Paul’s Cemetery—prowling for my bones My grave is marked thanks to Sir Edmund Kean He bowed to my thespian prowess—He emulated Me Did he take my toe or was it my finger as a souvenir? It is said Kean’s wife—upset by the sight of my appendage Threw Kean’s cemetery trophy away But my skull has lived on—lived on in performances of Hamlet Alas, I must wander here in St. Paul’s searching—searching And on September 11th bones came falling from the sky Scattering into the sacred grounds of St. Paul The cherubs on the gravestones—gazed upwards at this rain of humanity Others too have come searching—searching here
George Frederick Cooke, Actor
As a lad— the theater beckoned me In the town of Berwick Nar a farthing in my pocket With no stage keeper in sight Sneaked inside—that holy place Spying a large barrel in a corner Crept inside And lo on the bottom of the barrel Two twenty-one pound cannon balls What be they—in this play? Sitting on cannon balls—hidden in a barrel Listening to the chatter of the arriving audience The musicians tuning their instruments And the hushed voices of the actors With a great sense of anticipation When darkness engulfed me By a carpet draped over the barrel And suddenly lifted aloft Cannon balls rolling from my feet to my head Summoning all my strength—bursting out of the carpet Sending the barrel rolling out on the stage I emerged—facing the audience and Macbeth’s Three Witches Escaping the entrapment of the Thunder Making Barrel That heralds the start of Macbeth. And which now heralded my first appearance on the stage Predicting that Macbeth would be one of my greatest plays
