Residency: Juli Crockett

Workshop residency to develop Crockett's new play, Saint Simone

Writer/Composer/Director Juli Crockett will develop her new play, Saint Simone, an ecstatic meditation based on the life and sufferings of French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil. Saint Simone engages the stark prospects and fugitive pleasures of daily life in an era of unprecedented wealth inequality and environmental degradation – a clear-sighted indictment of the precarious world we inhabit in 2015. The play centers on a cult of women dedicated to Simone Weil’s canonization before a Kafkaesque ecclesiastic court. A vicious, transgressive gender war ensues in which a series of miracles are cross-examined, while visitations, compulsions, confessions, and leaps of faith unfold and overlap. More information can be found at julicrockett.com

 

Biography

Alabama-born Juli Crockett is a bona fide Renaissance woman: singer, songwriter, playwright, theater director, retired (undefeated) professional boxer, and amateur champion, ordained minister, proud owner of a PhD (summa cum laude) from The European Graduate School, and leader of the alt-country/Americana genre-defying band The Evangenitals.  As a playwright/ director, Crockett is best known for her adaptations of classic works of literature and philosophy. Her work has been presented at the REDCAT and 24th Street Theatre (Los Angeles), TENT (Portland, ME), and Red Room (New York); festivals: Downtown Film Festival’s Sustainable LA and Edge of the World Festival (Los Angeles), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Venue 13, Scotland.) Having recently completed her PhD in the Philosophy of Media and Communication at the European Graduate School, Crockett has also received a BFA in Acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Directing at the California Institute of the Arts. Published works include Void Creation: Theater and the Faith of Signifying Nothing (Atropos Press) and [or, the whale] (Delere Press). Excerpts of this new play, Saint Simone, appear in the collection I Might Be the Person You Are Talking To (Padua Playwrights Press). Unique to her career, Crockett was a professional boxer who was featured in Sports Illustrated, US News and Music Connection Magazine due to her professional connection to Jerry Boyd (aka F.X. Toole) and the film Million Dollar Baby. Crockett retired professionally in 2002, undefeated at 3-0 (2 KO’s).