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Max Vernon on balancing ‘The Tattooed Lady’ and ‘KPOP,’ and celebrating freaks

Vernon is a composer and playwright who has two productions this season. You can watch those or any of the other fantastic theater productions currently on offer.

Max Vernon and Erin Courtney, co-creators of "The Tattooed Lady," a world premiere musical coming to the Philadelphia Theatre Company.
Max Vernon and Erin Courtney, co-creators of "The Tattooed Lady," a world premiere musical coming to the Philadelphia Theatre Company.Read moreEvan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

November 20 will be a momentous day for Max Vernon, an award-winning musical theater composer.

It’s the day when the world premiere of The Tattooed Lady, a rock musical which Vernon cowrote with Obie award-winning playwright Erin Courtney, closes at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. But Vernon won’t be there. They’ll be in New York, at the Circle in the Square Theatre celebrating the official opening night of KPOP on Broadway, for which they wrote the music.

The two productions “couldn’t be more different,” said Vernon, who wrote the music, lyrics, and orchestration for The Tattooed Lady, and cowrote the book with Courtney.

“It’s literally one door closes and another opens. I also got married two weeks ago,” they said. “It’s everything, everywhere, all the time, all at once.”

The Tattooed Lady officially opens Nov. 4, with previews beginning Oct. 29.

Vernon drew inspiration for The Tattooed Lady from their childhood, when at age 6, their father took them to the Freak Show at the amusement park on Coney Island. “I saw my first tattooed lady,” they said.

“My whole life, I grew up very, very bullied and targeted. I felt othered in that way,” Vernon said. “For my survival, I was looking for heroes who were outsiders, who faced a lot of controversy but were comfortable in their own skin.”

When Vernon, with their “wild sense of fashion” and penchant for wearing dresses as a young boy, saw the tattooed lady, her body covered with tattoos, they were intrigued.

“The emcee was saying, ‘Isn’t this depraved and disgusting?’ But I saw them onstage celebrating themselves. That planted a seed in my brain that has blossomed over my entire life.”

Courtney, who has more than a dozen tattoos, picked up the story: “Max had the idea to explore the forgotten story of the tattooed lady, who wasn’t born a freak and who chose to be one for agency and for power.”

Vernon, Courtney, and Ellie Heyman, the director, started by researching the history and lives of tattooed ladies. “We were looking at images of tattooed ladies and what type of narrative we could build based on the history of these women who were brave and messy,” Courtney said.

“The 100-year history of sideshow performers reflects feminist history of America, in which women and civil rights make progress, see a change, and [experience] a backlash,” Courtney said.

The show takes place over 100 years from the 1880s to the 1980s and revolves around the relationship between another woman and her granddaughter. Tattooed lady Ida Gibson, a fictional character, leaves the freak show for the suburbs. To fit in, she covers her body with so much makeup that she appears to be caked with confectioners’ sugar. A cast of characters show up, determined to liberate Gibson from her self-imposed exile and to help her granddaughter, Joy, find forgiveness.

Cast as Gibson is Jackie Hoffman, who plays Uma in Only Murders in the Building.

The Tattooed Lady’s songs range from rock to ragtime. Vernon composed the score for musicians playing a saw, wine glass, pipe organ, vibraphone, cello, accordion, and a toy piano for a childlike whimsical yet haunting sound evocative of a carnival. For the Philadelphia production, many of those sounds will be produced by synthesizer, but Vernon hopes that in future shows, they’ll be able to contract with musicians proficient on saw and wine glass — and yes, toy piano.

Vernon hopes The Tattooed Lady will have all the freakish energy of a sideshow. “I want to communicate that we are pushing the envelope about what is acceptable in a piece of musical theater. If people protest our musical, it would be the coolest thing that ever happened.”

“We are reentering the culture wars. I think there’s a lot of politicians who are saying dangerous things about women and calling them degenerates and that absolutely echoes the language of how people in the freak shows were looked at,” Vernon said.

The Tattooed Lady’s path to the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on Broad Street began five years ago when Paige Price, the former producing artistic director for the Philadelphia Theatre Co., was looking for a signature work to make her mark on the company. Back in 2017, she met Vernon, Courtney, and Heyman, became intrigued with their work, and sought to bring the play, then in development, to Philadelphia. Paige Price is the show’s creative producer.

Throughout the development, Philadelphia Theatre Co. worked to engage the city’s tattoo community. “Philly has an amazing tattoo scene,” Vernon said. “We’re inviting a lot of those folks to partner with the theater.”

On Nov. 2, Philadelphia Theatre Co. will host an Ink Industry night featuring Kristel Oreto, owner of Now and Forever Collective, a Philly-based tattoo collective of women, nonbinary, and trans artists. Oreto served as a consultant in the development of the show. Tattooed Lady snacks and drinks will be part of the event, along with an exhibit of tattoo-themed art.

To watch a 22-minute documentary about the play’s development, go to YouTube for The Tattooed Lady: Make Your Mark.

(Oct. 29 to Nov. 20, Philadelphia Theatre Co. at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., Phila. 215-985-0420 or philadelphiatheatrecompany.org)

‘Wolf Play’

Who’s your pack? That’s the question that emerges in the Philadelphia premiere of Wolf Play at Theatre Exile. A married man and woman adopted a Korean boy, Wolf, but must give him up due to family complications. New parents emerge — a promising nonbinary boxer on the verge of a pro debut and their wife. The adoption stalls when the father in the first set of adoptive parents realizes that the boy’s prospective new household doesn’t include a conventional father figure. At that point, Wolf takes matters into his own hands. Will he find the right pack? Deborah Block, Theatre Exile’s producing artistic director, directs Makoto Hirano as Wolf in this work about chosen and unchosen families. The play is by Hansol Jung, a South Korean playwright who began her master’s in theater at Penn State University, completing it at Yale.

(Oct. 27 through Nov. 20, Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th St., Phila., 215-218-4022, or theatreexile.org)

Pub, Pint, Pie … and Play

You’ve got the beer, you’ve got the pot pie of choice, and you’ve got the pub. That puts you in the right frame of mind for what comes next — an Irish play hosted at an Irish bar, Fergie’s Pub in Center City. Inis Nua Theatre Co. presents the American premiere of 10 Dates With Mad Mary, by Irish Palestinian playwright Yasmine Akram. Her work was turned into a movie by the same name in 2016. Mad Mary, once known as the fiercest fighter in her hometown, finishes her prison term. She’s older, but still foulmouthed; wiser, but still aggressively funny AND she needs a wedding date. Will she find one? Will she find herself? Inis Nua artistic director Kathryn “KC” MacMillan directs Anna Faye Lieberman as Mary.

(Oct. 26-Nov. 6, Inis Nua Theatre Co., Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom St., Phila., 215-454-9776 or inisnuatheatre.org)

’Eleanor’

Act II Playhouse in Ambler presents a regional premiere of Eleanor by Mark St. Germain. In this one-woman production, Penelope Reed plays former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a powerful force in her own right.

(Oct. 25-Nov. 20, Act II Playhouse, 56 E. Butler Ave. Ambler, 215-654-0200 or act2.org)

Halloween from Crossroads Comedy Theater

Trick or treat — mainly treat, from Crossroads Comedy Theater presenting its run of Halloween shows, with different shows on different nights, and sometimes two or three over the course of an evening. Start with Study Hall-oween, improv inspired by a Halloween set of lectures from academic and other types. Not Yet Rated: An Improvised Horror Show relies on prompts from the audience to create a different horror every night. A Nightmare on Jawn Street: A Horror Comedy Sketch Show involves slashers, demons, and zombies. Other shows in the series include Gruesome Twosome: The Story So Far & Joe Moore’s Exploding Halloween Garage; the Sideshow Halloween Special, and Rick Andrews and Louis Kornfeld in Kornfeld & Andrews: One Night Only.

(Oct. 21-31, Comedy Crossroads Theater at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place, Phila. 215-650-7360 or xroadscomedy.com)

‘We All Fall Down’

Theatre Ariel is focusing on Passover with We All Fall Down, a story about what happens when a disorderly family tries to organize an orderly Seder.

(Oct. 22-23 at Har Zion Temple, 1500 Hagys Ford Rd., Penn Valley; Oct. 29-30 at Kaiserman JCC, 45 Haverford Rd., Wynnewood. 610-667-9230 or theatreariel.org)

Check with individual venues for COVID-19 protocols.