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A week-long festival dedicated to nurturing the creation of world-premiere works by women performing artists in a variety of genres.

THE CRAVINGS OF RAPUNZEL
Jean Armstrong
A modern re-telling for adults of a classic tale

Jean Armstrong is pleased to be in her 4th Cassandra Project.  She has performed her original material at US and Canadian Festivals and the National Storytelling Network Conference.  Her original material is contemporary, quirky, humorous with a flair for the incongrous and ridiculous.  She regularly conducts voice, performance and storytelling workshops and performs traditional stories in schools, festivals in New England and is an adjudicated performance artist on Maine Arts Commission roster.

CROSSROADS
Jennifer Armstrong
Chance meetings, Choices, Moments. What if we turned a different way, learned a different lesson? Who would we be now? “Crossroads” explores pivotal moments through song, story, movement, and a little madness.

Jennifer Armstong is a musical storyteller who tells traditional and
personal stories and plays the Scottish bagpipe, fiddle, banjo and guitar. Her two previous autobiographical theatre pieces were produced by Northlight Theatre in Chicago and were enthusiastically received at the National Storytelling Festival in TN. She has been a professional performer for thirty years and a Maine residency artist for the past seven.

ALMOST
written and performed by Odelle Bowman
Jack Ruby and other defining moments. What makes us who we are?

Odelle Bowman is a professional actor/director, storyteller and arts educator. At this time as an artist she is focusing on developing original solo performance pieces. She is the founding Director of A Company of Girls and was the Director of the Maine Humanities program "Girls Going Places', bringing the arts and humanities to youth incarcerated at Long Creek Development Center for six years. In 2002, she was one of three women honored with the Maine Women's Fund Award. The Maine Women's Fund Award is given to women and girls who, by their accomplishments, serve as role models and inspirations and who advance the well being of women in Maine.

HOLD IT
written and performed by Cathy Counts
In this one-woman show, Alishya wants to keep hold of all air, space and time, but everybody around her is taking too much of it.

Actress Cathy Counts has performed on Maine stages and in voiceovers, films, and commercials since she was four. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have been published in Maine Sunday Telegram, Maine Times, Headcheese, The Presumpscot Review, The Kennebec Review, Portland Review of the Arts, The Free Press and numerous other publications. A company member of both Acorn's Naked Shakespeare Ensemble and The Escapists, she will be appearing in RUTHLESS THE MUSICAL and PRELUDE TO A KISS with Good Theater this season.

THE AMAZING LIFE AND MYSTERIOUS END OF RAGANA: MISTRESS OF ILLUSION
Lynne Cullen
A performance with concertina music, exploring the illusory history of possibly the only lady stage magician of the Roaring 20s. Dramaturged by Suze Allen.

Lynne is a storyteller, writer and artist living in Yarmouth, Maine. She has told stories all over New and (Old) England. In April, 2007, her short play, ‘Jesus and the Sewing Circle,’ was produced for the Maine Short Play Festival. Lynne produces a monthly storytelling evening: Seanachie Nights, at Bull Feeney’s Pub in Portland.

INVITATION TO THE SOIREE
theatrical comedian and bon vivant, Amanda Huotari
You're invited. Tonight, the party is at Elizabeth's house. You never know who will turn up...or what will happen when she gets into the cooking sherry!

Amanda Huotari is an actress, teaching-artist, and the Executive Director of Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris, Maine.  She studied physical theater at the Lecoq School of Theater in Paris and is a graduate of the International School of Comic Acting is Reggio Emilia, Italy.  Amanda has a BFA in acting from Emerson College. She has been working with Addverb Productions for the past four years performing in The Thin Line and Money Talks.    She is a member of the eccentric touring ensemble, The Odd Company, and performs regularly at the company’s home venue, The Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield, Maine.  She teaches workshops in middle and high schools as an artist in residency with the Maine Alliance of Arts Education.

HOW FEAR TAMES US
Hannah Maris
A brief foray into our "excuses for not moving"

Hannah Maris, MS (Environmental Studies) is a Registered Maine guide, vision quest guide, singer/songwriter, activist, and mom. She has performed at many political rallies and festivals around the state, appeared at the Comedy Connection in Portland doing stand up, created the (now defunct)  women's vocal ensemble, The Sirens, and sung back-up for The Rebecca Wing Ensemble. She has a self-produced CD out, "U.S. Out of North America" and has produced shows for charity and fun.

THE STRUGGLE TO BE
choreographed and performed by Karen Montanaro
A mime-dance in two parts from an internationally known performer.

Karen Montanaro is a choreographer, performer and innovator of "mime-dance" (the fusion of two classical art forms).  Karen studied ballet at the Cantarella School of Dance in western Massachusetts, The Ram Island Dance Center in Portland, Maine and on scholarship with the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City.  She danced professionally with the Ohio Ballet and the Darmstadt Opera Ballet in Germany.  Upon moving back to the United States, Karen danced principal roles with the Portland Ballet.  For more than a decade, Karen toured and taught internationally with mime master, Tony Montanaro.  She currently tours the world with her one-woman show entitled "Tanzspiel".  

photo courtesy of
Don Verger

THE CROW'S FUNERAL
written and performed by Kelly Nesbitt
What is death to one thing, gives birth to another in this tragic, personal, and comedic RELEASE. "When the heart becomes congested with secrets, and the eyes begin to burn from searing tears, and the ribs are about to burst with the growing of the heart's confinement, one cannot find expression for such a labyrinth except by a surge of RELEASE"- Kahil Gibran

kElly nesBitt... sometimes bubble-bottomed clown and sometimes sultry crooner, Kelly is equally at home wearing or strumming nylon. With a performance background in clowning, mime, music, and the visual arts, Kelly creates original and absurd performances that twist reality, are rooted in humor, and cradled with haunting edges. Her shows are infused with alter-egos, conversations with dead relatives, double-chins, zany sound effects, weathered wigs, sequined leotards, funny bones...and more.

EMILY DICKINSON - ZERO AT THE BONE
performed by Nanette Perotte
A remarkable rock music showcase for the work of this great poet, nurturing and trumpeting the creative roots of the female renegade spirit

Nanette Perrotte - performer, composer , educator.  BA Berklee College of Music, MA Ed Lesley University.  First rock band - G.I.R.L (Get it Real Loud), she was twelve. Perrotte ‘s book Voice & Yoga- Natural Singing with Breath, Body and Voice  integrates voice , breath, yoga and meditation to help anyone improve their voice.

SHUTTING UP PEGGY LEE
written and performed by Susan Poulin
Things are going great for Susan. Really. So why does she keep hearing the refrain to “Is That All There Is?” From the creator of “Ida: Woman Who Run’s With the Moose!” and “In My Head I’m Thin.”

Selected by Portland Magazine as one of the "Ten Most Intriguing People in Maine,” Susan Poulin has been creating and touring her original theatrical productions for fifteen years. She has been a featured performer at the Women's Performance Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Maine Festival and the Minneapolis Fringe Theater Festival. Working in collaboration with Gordon Carlisle, Susan’s critically acclaimed plays have broken box office records throughout New England. “Ida’s Havin’ a Yard Sale!”, which premiered at the Cassandra Project, received the Portsmouth Herald’s 2005 Spotlight on the Arts Award for Best Original Script.

Photo courtesy of
Ronald Gehrmann

ANIMUS
choreographed by Sasha Randall and Heather Baur and performed by Sonar Dance
A four-part  dance piece fantasy depicting the pathways that exist when a woman is developing her "male" mind

Sasha's early training began with Rhonda Davis-Cook in Gorham, ME and Kathy Nolan through the Southern Maine Regional Fine Arts Program. She has trained extensively in modern dance composition and worked in New York with Circle of Dance Repertory Company, performing in notable venues such as the Duke Theater, P.S. 122, and Clark Theater in Lincoln Center. She has also worked as a performer, teacher, choreographer, and researcher of dance in the northeast and California.

ABOUT CASSANDRA PROJECT

Cassandra Project fosters and showcases new works by female performing artists from a wide variety of genres. There are two primary components to Cassandra Project.  The most visible component is a week of public performances at the St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center from October 15 to 21, 2007. Artists wishing to be a part of this mainstage series need to apply with a specific event that is already in development.  The festival producers will want to see a script and/or video of past work in support of the other application materials. This year's festival also features a "Rough Cuts" series of works still being edited at another location in downtown Portland.

Acorn Productions also seeks to develop a new collaborating community of artists interested in forging long-term working relationships with one another.  Thanks to funding provided by the Maine Arts Commission, these artists will work with guest artists, master teachers and professional female solo performing artists to develop their craft and new works over the next three months.