Promotional Poster for the Play, “Femme Fatale: The Invention of Personality”

Item Details

poster

Near Fine

One-sheet poster on (15.25 x 21.75”) medium-weight stock, black background with white & red lettering & central image of a woman, chained at the wrists, with flames emerging from & around her. Near Fine, appears never circulated.

Written & directed by Laura Farabough (1949-2022), who, on her now defunct website, described herself as "raised by wolves in the bomb shelters, flood washes, cotillions and riding stables of suburban Los Angeles, always an artist…[i]nfluenced by sources as diverse as Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman and Captain Beefheart, she is one of the pioneers in the genre of site specific performance and in the merge between video and performance." The play is about the actress Greta Garbo & the infamous spy, Mata Hari, whom Garbo had portrayed in a 1931 film (acting with Lionel Barrymore).

The poster promotes upcoming performances at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco & Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley., CA, May-June, no date, but likely 1981, when the play premiered. It represented the first production by the company known as Nightfire, which Farabough had originally founded with Chris Hardman as Beggars Theater (1972), later renamed Ouroboros Mask Society (1976-1977), then Snake (1977-1980). it is from the collection of the late Ted Shank, then head of the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Davis, who interviewed Farabough multiple times & reviewed many of her plays.