City Garage presents the World Premiere of

Stories by Aimee Bender

March 8 – May 5, 2002

Adapted & Directed by Frederíque Michel

Wife Maureen Byrnes

Husband Bo Roberts

Narrator Maureen Byrnes

Rich Girl Victoria Coulson

Shy Man Paul M. Rubenstein

Susie Maia Brewton

Narrator Maureen Byrnes

Businessman Bo Roberts

Patrick Paul M. Rubenstein

Belly Button Girl Kathryn Sheer

Father Laurence Coven

Daughter Ilana Gustafson

Set, Sound, Lighting, & Media Design Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.

Assistant Director Doria Valenzuela

Costume Design Michele Gingembre

Light/Sound Operator Katharina Lejona

Stage Manager Jed Low

Videography Ford Austin, Paul M. Rubenstein

Photography Rick Pickman

In the opening moments of the text of "Fugue," selections of which tie together this production, a woman’s alienation emerges in a quiet sentence describing a dinner she’s prepared: "I made steak and green beans and homestyle potatoes and even clipped two red roses from the bush in the backyard; they stand in the vase between us which is clear so I can watch the stems drift in the water as he speaks." The lone semicolon here serves as a tiny fishhook that sinks into the reader’s flesh, evoking the aching chasm between the reality of the woman’s life and the passion for which she hungers. One of the numerous mysteries and delights of Aimee Bender’s story collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, resides in our being made to feel that our bodies, our skins, are as important to the reading process of this particular work as are our eyes and brain. Though never previously adapted to the stage, the material serves as a catalyst for rich, erotically charged imagery as powerful as Bender’s prose. It’s a body-centered aesthetic that by its very nature takes you deep within a character, deftly playing the music of the sexual hunger in order to reveal a full array of poetically expressed emotional and physical truths. As the author said in an interview with the online magazine Bold Type: "Everything a human experiences happens on the body. That’s enough setting for me."

For instance, the female narrator of "Fell This Girl" tells us volumes in a brief account of events at a party: "I am wearing a short skirt that flows, a shirt with a scoop neck and I am luscious. I meet a man at this party who… has shaggy red hair, and calluses on his fingers from construction, or guitar or golf." The reader participates in the tactile drama of the characters in advance, adding texture to the experience of their inevitable conjoining.

One of the less-familiar tracks of the Beach Boys’s 1966 Pet Sounds album (a work that, similar to Flammable Skirt, inhabits then subverts its form) contains the lyrics: "Don’t talk / Take my hand and listen to my heart." It’s perhaps not too farfetched to liken a book of short stories to a pop album. If so, Bender’s debut collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, is like the mature work of a seasoned singer-songwriter, who knows just how densely (or sparsely) to pack a song for maximum emotional effect.

We hope you enjoy the cuts we’ve selected.

Aimee Bender is a native of Los Angeles. She is the author of two books, An Invisible Sign of My Own, a novel, and The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a collection of short stories. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt was on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for nearly ten weeks, and was also a New York Times notable book of 1998. Her short fiction has been published in GQ, Granta, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Fence, and many other journals, and her books have been translated into six languages. She has also had a story featured on NPR’s "This American Life."