Telephone is a theatrical triptych inspired by Avital Ronell’s The Telephone Book, an epic work that draws upon history, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature to explore the nature of communication in the age of technology. Like the book, Reines’ play operates like a switchboard, connecting people and places across time and space.
Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks: 2006), Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar: 2007; Fence: 2011), and MERCURY (Fence: forthcoming fall 2011), plus the LP/audiobook SAVE THE WORLD starring Lili Taylor (Fence: forthcoming spring 2011).
Volumes of translation include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar:2009), The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore by Jean-Luc Hennig, (Semiotext(e): 2009), and the forthcoming Preliminary Notes Toward a Theory of the YoungGirl by TIQQUN, (Semiotext(e): 2012).
TELEPHONE, her first play, was commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theatre and presented at The Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, February 2009. The production won two Obies and a spin-off was featured in the Works+Process series at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Fall 2009. TELEPHONE was be published in Fall 2009 in PLAY: A Journal of Plays.