She Stoops to Comedy

An actress - played by a man - schemes to woo back her estranged female lover by playing Orlando opposite her lovers' Rosalind in this gender-bending romp ...

Alexandra Page, a self-absorbed actress famed for her portrayals of tragic heroines, disguises herself as a man in order to play Orlando opposite her girlfriend, Alison Rose, who has been cast as Rosalind in an out-of-town production of As You Like It

Because the role of Alexandra is played by a man, her transformation does not require the use of drag

And because the other actors in the As You Like It cast are friends of Alexandra and Alison and the "disguise" so effective Alexandra has an opportunity to not only hear what people really think of her, but to be made privy to the inner lives of her friends and colleagues

The play examines the friendships and love relationships of its seven characters, and plays with the nature of authenticity both on and off the stage

Reviews

"80 minutes of near total delight ... Greenspan creates a fiction that has the pleasure and pain of life, plus the extravagant possibilities of the imagination. He does it without apparatus, attitude, amplification, willed ugliness ... It's just theater, pure and simple" ~ The Village Voice

"Within the first five minutes, it's clear that you're in for a bumpy ride. Not a ''fasten your seat belts'' kind of ride, but rather one where you're a picked up by a tornado, spun around, and dropped into a world that is different and odd and wonderful and fun" ~ Metro Weekly

Characters:

ALEXANDRA PAGE - an actress, assumes the role of Harry Samson
ALISON ROSE - Alexandra's lover, also an actress
KAY FEIN - close friend of Alexandra, an archeologist or a lighting designer
HAL STEWART- a filmmaker
EVE ADDAMAN - Hal's girlfriend, also a filmmaker
JAYNE SUMMERHOUSE - rival to Alexandra, also an actress, she's studying film
SIMON LANQUISH - an actor

NOTE: Alexandra Page is played by an actor, not an actress - at no time in the play is that actor in drag

With a cast of six, one actress plays Kay Fein and Jayne Summerhouse