PAUL SWAN IS DEAD AND GONE

Written By: CLAIRE KIECHEL
Directed By: STEVE COSSON
Choreography By: DAN SAFER

Premiere: 2019, Torn Page

About The Show

Dancing as a young man in Europe, Paul Swan was billed as “The Most Beautiful Man in the World”. Decades later, as an old man still wearing the same revealing neo-classical costumes. He looked into Andy Warhol’s camera and declared, “I am the most famous unknown person in New York.”

Indeed, while Swan never achieved the recognition he desired as a modern Renaissance man (painter, sculptor, poet, dancer, etc.). Hence he achieved a different kind of fame, largely through weekly salons. Those held in his studio atop Carnegie Hall, every Saturday from the 1930’s through the 60’s. As the years progressed (and as Swan added layers of pancake make-up and black shoe polish), the tragic, the camp and the sublime intertwined to create his greatest artwork–himself. Playwright Claire Kiechel has a personal stake in Paul Swan; he is her great-great uncle.

And in Paul Swan is Dead and Gone, she resurrects her ancestor’s salon and re-imagines it as an electrically charged theatrical space where the forces of life, death and art do battle. Each night, The Civilians’ production offers a small audience an intimate, immersive salon experience. As the audience crosses the threshold into a Chelsea brownstone, they will be transported to the aesthetic world of Swan’s creation. Therefore It’s a show not to be missed, for the main attraction, Paul Swan, may well be already dead.

Paul Swan was a real man. Born in 1883, he danced well into his eighties until he died in 1972. Besides a dancer, he was a sculptor, a painter, a poet, and a philosopher. He was also my great grand-uncle.
I was ten years old when I first heard about Paul. I told my grandmother that I wanted to be an artist and she told me there had only been one other artist in our family – her uncle Paul Swan, who was “very strange.” In Nebraska speak, that meant he was loud, queer, and lived, for some awful reason, in New York City.
My grandmother meant it as a warning, but I held onto Paul as a talisman,
a guiding queer light in dark and serious times. My relationship with Paul has shifted throughout the years – I’ve been repulsed by him, amazed by him, amused and embarrassed by his stark, sincere longing.
The truth is that Paul has taught me many things.
He was never afraid of his own inner depths. Instead, his greatest fear was obsolescence, that there would be no trace of him once he left this world.
With that in mind, some of the text that went into the play has been directly adapted from Paul’s own work. The poems are his; Avi Amon and Rob Johanson have composed songs for lyrics that I’ve based on Paul’s poems and letters to him; and I took much of Paul’s specific language from his unpublished autobiography, his films, and his many newspaper interviews.
Also, I made stuff up.
From Paul’s own foreword to his book: “I dedicate this history to those who are magnificently misunderstood.”
And I dedicate this play to Paul and to the Paul Swan in all of us. To all of us who dare to be ridiculous.
– CLAIRE KIECHEL, New York, 2019

“Charmingly eccentric.”

Elisabeth Vincentelli

Cast

TONY TORN

ALEXIS SCOTT

HELEN CESPEDES

ROBERT M. JOHANSON

Creative Credits

Playwright Claire Kiechel
Director Steve Cosson
Scenic Designer Andromache Chalfant
Choreographer/Movement Director Dan Safer
Sound Designer and Original Music Avi A. Amon
Lighting Designer Lucrecia Briceño
Costume Designer An-lin Dauber
Production Stage Manager Ryan Gohsman
Assistant Stage Manager Sara Sahin
Assistant Director Kenzie Caplan