Blood on the Cat’s Neck

Blood on the Cat’s Neck is an absurdist 1971 play originally written by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It was first produced in Nuremberg under the title Blut am Hals der Katze. It is sometimes subtitled Marilyn Monroe vs. The Vampires.

The play visits the question of how an alien from space might view humanity; the alien in the play is an attractive woman named Phoebe Zeitgeist, an alien vampire taken from a 1960s comic book. In this play, she is surrounded by horrible people at a cocktail party and learns how to speak from them. The play has three sections: an opening section in which the main characters give monologues that reveal themselves; a second section in which Phoebe speaks one-on-one with these characters, picking up certain phrases from them; and the final section, in which Phoebe, using her limited vocabulary, repeats back “their aphoristic and self-justifying slogans”, with the other characters divided over whether she is smart or drunk.

Williamstown Theatre Festival 2004

Director – Ted Sluberski
Assistant Director – Clayton Lord

Cast: Amber Gray, Julie Sharbutt, Liz Wisan

Set Design by Chisato Uno
Lighting design by Ian Garrett