Bartleby

A Note from Chelsey

This was a marriage between Fiasco Theater and myself — arranged by Barry Edelstein, Artistic Director of The Old Globe. He had been presented with the piece, and knowing both of us, he said he thought the play needed movement for success.

Fiasco had a lot of first on this show- one being the element of automation, specifically a revolve. They had never brought in an outside choreographer — as a company, they're all-encompassing: company members direct, act, write, everything. So bringing in someone from the outside was genuinely new territory for them. But it's actually one of my proudest pieces of work as a choreographer and movement director

The play is based off of "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" is an 1853 short story by Herman Melville. Adapted for the stage by Noah Brody and Paul L. Coffey. My favorite part of this process was cracking the code of how to use the revolve to it best ability, specifically a square shape revolt in a theater in the round. This is more unusual than a standard revolve because of the geometry of the space. I work with revolves all the time, and this one was a real challenge, and loved it.

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