Her Own Words, Liz Eden Finally Takes the Stage at La MaMa

Everyone remembers the bank. Almost nobody remembers who the robbery was for.

Tonight on East 4th Street, La MaMa opens Doll Day Afternoon, a 60-minute solo piece built from the words of Elizabeth Eden. In the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, a bank robber played by Al Pacino stages a heist to pay for his partner's gender-affirming surgery. The real woman behind that subplot was Eden. In this room, she gets the floor.

The Woman Behind the Heist

La MaMa calls Eden an overlooked trans icon who wrote her own memoir denouncing the people who exploited her, a firsthand account of life as a trans woman in Stonewall-era New York. The memoir was never published. La MaMa's tagline for the evening is blunt and sly at once. "The truth is even queerer than fiction."

Dmitri Barcomi, who created and directs the piece, spoke about it with Tamás Marquardt in a conversation published by Culturebot on October 10. Barcomi calls the memoir an "amazing snapshot of life pre-Stonewall" and says Eden was "determined to represent herself."

"Now she's going to be Off-Broadway." Dmitri Barcomi

The line comes with a small, sharp pleasure. A subplot has been promoted.

How a Memoir Reaches a Stage

Barcomi found Eden through a friend, Sean Pollock, who told him, "Come to the archive." Barcomi describes his role as "artist-as-archivist" and calls Doll Day Afternoon "wholly its own project," one entry in what he jokingly calls the "Dimitri theatrical cookbook," in which queer archival material is translated a different way each time. He also describes "a very disembodied approach" to directing it. In plain terms, the show trusts the words and the performer to carry the weight.

Barcomi is a New York theatermaker, a Fulbright Scholar and the founder of the Museum of Drag, according to La MaMa's artist bios. The text is adapted from Eden's own words.

Daphne Kinard performs. According to her La MaMa bio, she originated the role of Liz Eden in In Full Bloom, a Transgender Day of Remembrance event at HERE Arts Center, so she has been living with this character for a while. The designers are Karen Boyer on costumes, WhimZee Lee Hanna on lighting, Mengyi Liu on set and props, and Liam Bellman-Sharpe on sound. Vice Squad Artist Collective, Rula A. Muñoz and Red Light Theatrical produce.

A Year of Dog Day

The timing is hard to miss. Dog Day Afternoon played Broadway this year at the August Wilson Theatre, in a new play by Stephen Adly Guirgis directed by Rupert Goold, with Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in the leads. It opened March 30 and ran until July 12, according to Broadway.com and the Broadway records.

That was the big-room version, the one with the famous names. What La MaMa is doing is the other one. It is the version in which the person at the edge of the frame speaks first, in her own words, and takes her time.

For another downtown restaging of a real fight from the past, see our story on Kramer/Fauci at St. Ann's Warehouse.

What to Know Before You Go

Doll Day Afternoon runs October 15 through 25 at La MaMa. The running time is 60 minutes. Showtimes were not posted on the production page when we looked, so check La MaMa's site before you go. The company lists a content warning for transphobia, drug use, and descriptions of suicide and domestic violence.

One actor, one story, sixty minutes. For once the film's footnote gets the final reel.