On Cats & Dogs & Other Family Revelations
is part of the
2024 Gotham Storytelling Festival
written and performed by Ella Veres
sustained by Pandele and Rosamunda
Our performance On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations was a success during the 2024 NYC Fringe Festival in spring and Turn on the Lights Festival, Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's in July. As a result we got a once a monthly Tuesdays Encore this fall season in East Village and in November we'll be part of the Gotham Storytelling Festival.
Upcoming Performances:
Encore Series:
Tuesdays at 7 p.m.
on
December 10th
and
Gotham Storytelling Festival
Sunday November 10th
5:30 p.m.
at the Under St. Marks Theater on
94 St. Marks Place between 1st & A Avenues.
Tickets $25 or sliding scale at:
https://tickets.frigid.nyc/event/6897:713/
The performance will run one hour.
Each show is a different iteration, repeat attendance is advised.
A compilation of the entire stories
is available in autographed booklet format
that you can purchase for $15 cash,
or through zelle: ellaveres@gmail.com or venmo: @ellaveres or at our brand-new bookstore: vermilllion.com
On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations wraps big ideas in focused stories about Ella’s pets, offering glimpses of her human family and life in her place of birth, Transylvania, Romania using her dog and cat as reference points.
The cast features Ella Veres and her companion dog, Pandele, who said she's in it not for fame, but to pay her vet bills. Rosamunda, her cat, was asked to perform but declined. She’d rather lounge under the sofa than be in the limelight.
This production was enriched by the:
Pre/Post show Soundscapes by Lauren Covey
Portrait of Pandele by Tanya Nickolan
Signature coat Magic Cat paintings in collaboration with Angela Rogers
Bios:
Ella Veres is an independent performer and writer who has been active in the New York City cultural community since 2001. Her work has been presented at the Immigrant Theater Festival, Galapagos Art Space, Manhattan Theater Source, IWAS, The Field, Theater for the New City, The Moth, Stage Left, Bowery Poetry Club, Chashama, and her present incubator, Fountain House Gallery. For several years she focused on her visual art, but in 2022, serendipity made her act in Stories From My Mother at the Theater for the New City, and thus reminded her how lovely it is to be in front of a live audience. Her current solo storytelling show, On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations, was shaped during her 2023 Fountain House Gallery summer residency on Governors Island and in Adam Wade’s Magnet Theater Solo Workshop.
@vermilion.nyc www.ellaveres.com
John Lance Harrison is a light designer and a Broadway stage electrician, harried by people asking him constantly for comps for Broadway show. He’s an avid supporter of indie performers.
@lancewerkz www.lancewerkz.com
Lauren Covey is a multidisciplinary artist with an MFA in Sound Art from Columbia University. Covey combines her artistic practice with her background as a peer counselor in the mental health field, recognizing the significance of sound in maintaining mental well-being. She is currently working on her 'Sonic Portraits of New York' project that uses sound as a therapeutic tool to support marginalized communities affected by mental illnesses and incarceration.
Angela Rogers is an artist who has exhibited for many years at the Outsider Art Fair and has shown at venues including Andrew Edlin Gallery, Gallery at HAI, and Art on A Gallery. Angela has been a reader of Tarot cards for over 40 years, which has informed her work.
She created several original Tarot decks and a feminist comic book titled No One Likes a Woman. She is a performer and co-founder of the bands Lone Vein and Ash Negative. Angela’s paintings have been featured in films such as Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, and What Maisie Knew. She takes commissions for coat paintings. @angelajrogers
Tanya Nickolan is a Brooklyn-born artist. She studied at School of Visual Arts and at LaGuardia Community College, which awarded her an AS degree in Fine Arts. She works primarily in the mediums of pen and ink, pencil, watercolor, acrylic, and oil. Fascinated by faces, Tanya often focuses on portraiture, and also makes pieces in styles including abstract, still life, and collage. She'll gladly make your pet portrait. @tanyanickol
Buy our autographed story collection
Audience Kind Feedback:
Ella’s one-woman and one-dog show provides a fantastical journey through stories and wishes from the past, present, and future. One can easily be transported to her family’s garden in Romania, padding alongside of her and her father’s guard-dog-turned-lap dog, to the bustling chaos of Central Park in search of her missing cat. Her vibrant storytelling employs beautiful prose, lyricism, and humor to navigate a poignant narrative of what is lost and found in a life well lived.
-Rachel Weisman, Fountain House Gallery Director
I was very impressed with your show. To be frank, I did not expect to be wowed by a show featuring an artist and her pet, but you utilized your dog in a creative way and told some fascinating and touching stories-with both humor and sentiment. Your account of what it was like to live in a communist country was brutally honest and informative. Keep up the great work!
-Craig R. Bayer, Journalist, Activist and Poet
Ella Veres likes to talk. It’s a casual, laid back, reflective kind of sharing. Just sitting comfortably on an ottoman in front of an audience. When she is telling dog stories, her devoted Pantele is by her side, being caressed by her stroking hand. On another night when she is telling cat stories, there is no cat with her… They are stories of other cats that have crossed her path. And that is at the heart of it… The humorous, gripping, painful, odd, weird, stories that weave through Transylvania, her birthplace, to Harlem. From all the places and people and animals in between. And you can tell the effect that these stories are having, by watching the reaction of the audience. A “theater” completely enthralled, and shocked, and amazed. Laughing out loud to the poetic ease of Ella’s Romanian tinged English, her second (or third) language. And did I say that Ella’s self-designed and handmade “costumes” are in fact her daily attire?
This is an experience, not to be missed.
-Wendy Snyder, indie performer supporter
