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Cynthia as Sarah Bernhardt
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Drama-Comedy
by Tony Marando
Directed by Tony
Marando
Performed as a staged reading at The Theatre @ Swing 46,
NYC
Why “ACTRESS”?
The playwright Tony Marando has commented
on the record, “SARAH BERNHARDT was pivotal in not
only creating the foundation of a contemporary acting style,
but also for breaking the shackles for every actress who
followed her, always and for all time. The prime example
of BERNHARDT’S influence, seen in film, especially
now, was her radical and groundbreaking premiere, at 30,
of Racine’s 16th century drama, ‘Phedre’.
It was a role every actress feared since it had been perfected
by Rachel, at La Comedie Francais, thirty one years earlier,
one year before BERNHARDT was born.”
How could she make and impact and recreate
this role as genuinely hers – a feat she needed to
do in order to take the quantum step in her career and become
the most important actress of her generation?
By the brilliant and audacious instinct
which propelled her life, she physicalized Phedre’s
sexual anguish at a key point in this classic tragedy. When
other actresses screamed their pain – BERNHARDT thrust
her hands between her thighs and moaned her lines in a suggestion
of tormented masturbation.
Audiences were dumbstruck, literally. Women
wept, men adjusted themselves in their seats. In her American
tours she was denounced from the pulpits – and the
shows were sellouts.
SARAH BERNHARDT not only broke the 4th wall
of the theatre, but she broke through the barrier hitherto
not ever acknowledged publicly; that women were as sexual
as men, and needed to be represented that way, realistically,
onstage, no matter the character or production. And with
her background raised as a courtesan, she used her creative
instinct to portray sexually alive, sexually active women,
in her performances, to control men (and women) –
as she did her own life offstage.
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Cynthia as Rosannah
"The Runaway Bride"
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Drama-Comedy
by Cindy Lou Johnson
Directed by Shellen Lubin
Fight Direction by David Dean Hastings
Trilogy Theatre, NYC
“I became completely immersed in the story and characters…Cynthia Enfield and James Gilchrist delivered their lines with such ease and realism I forgot it was a play with actors.”
—DARCEY JACOBS, Theatergoer
BRILLIANT TRACES is one of those plays in which a man and woman battle it out in a small enclosed space, alternately repulsing and seducing each other.
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If I must be wrung through the paradox,
—broken into wholeness,
wring me around the moon;
pelt me with particles from the dark side.
Fling me into space;
hide me in a black hole.
Let me dance with devils on dead stars.
Let my scars leave brilliant traces,
for my highborn soul seeks its hell—
in high places.
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Avah Pevlor Johnson, INDIVIDUATION
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Cynthia as Francie
"The Southern Teenager"
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Drama-Comedy
by Joey Guastella
Directed by Walter Hershman
Performed as a reading at Manhattan Class Company, NYC
“I first worked with Cynthia Enfield while filling the positions of Literary Associate for MCC Theater. It was there in which she touchingly portrayed and introverted teen-ager who believed she was living in the 1920’s, in the reading of a play I, myself had written. [SO THE FARMER SAID TO THE TRAVELING SALESMAN] I became instantly impressed by her quick, in- depth understanding of the role, and after following up on future projects to which she was cast, I realized what I had initially been impressed with, was a pattern. Shortly after, I was clued into her honesty as a performer, (she has no trouble facing any amount of work regarding a challenging role), and commitment toward her craft.”
—JOEY GUASTELLA, Writer and Former NYC Casting Director
A dark comedy about Francie Cranville, a frail, withdrawn teen from rural Louisiana, who lives in a fantasy world, believes it is the 1920's and she is off to The Palace to become a Vaudeville star. Her life is then touched by a traveling salesman from New York City, whom her parents have kidnapped in a scheme to get him to marry her, thinking this will cure her of her ills.
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Cynthia as
"The 1940's Model and Southern Belle"
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Dark Comedy
by Leah Kornfeld Friedman
Directed by Paul Ben-Victor
Performed as a reading at The Belt Theatre and Cutting Room, NYC
Award winning playwright Leah Kornfeld Freidman’s exciting new dark comedy brings to life the garment center jungle of the 1940’s. With Dana Liatsis, Dan Futterman, Pablo Schreiber, Bill Raymond, Paul Ben-Victor, Lev Gorn, Roberta Wallach and Heidi Du Toit.
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Cynthia as Eleanor
"From age 14 to 40"
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Drama-Comedy
by A.R. Gurney
Directed by James Karcher
Rogues Company, NYC
In a series of flashbacks from the 1940’s to the 1970’s we encounter the WASPy Barney and Eleanor at various stages of their life from youth to middle age — and throughout these years, the rebellious Barney professes his love for Eleanor and challenges the validity of the "safe" lifestyle she has chosen.
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Cynthia as Connie
"The Gene Tierney Wannabe"
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Drama-Comedy
by Larry Myers
Directed by Shellen Lubin
Theatre For the New City, NYC
“[GENE TIERNEY MOVED NEXT DOOR] is very funny, but also has a lot of depth and emotional power…there are four wonderful performances...Connie played by the lovely Cynthia Enfield did a very, very good job of portraying a movie struck person…”
—JOYCE WEST, WBAI Radio
“The quiet glamour of Gene Tierney in Laura, The Razor’s Edge and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a touchstone for a pair of splitting lovers, Connie and Mack, for Dess, their cinemaphile friend and for the invalid father he cares for. All at sea, all seekers, they find respite from their searches in the larger-than-life actions of their movie star idols. ”
—STAGES, The National Theatre Magazine
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Cynthia as Belle
"The Fairytale Newlywed"
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Drama-Comedy
by Elliot Meyers
Directed by Scott Pegg
Wings Theatre, NYC
The lives of Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty all happen to intersect one night at the Annual Ball thrown by Prince Charming in honor of he and Ella’s first meeting, fifteen years ago. It’s just before midnight when these somewhat older, now supposedly wiser women are confronted by their pasts in the guise of incredibly beautiful young girl named Belle, who has held them as role models throughout her own recent experience with a charmed Beast, and who’s own happily ever after has just begun. The rest of the evening unfolds with timeless insights into love, expectation, and the choices we all must make trying to obtain true happiness.
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