The Maids at the Bouwerie Lane Theater will only be performed this weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7pm). Despite the fact that the rights to both the female and male versions have been granted, the constraints of the production as outlined in the license agreement made it impossible to make changes in the allotted time to alter the director's vision of the male version." The Genet play is the first effort by the outfit, which is the result of a merger between the struggling downtown mainstay Jean Cocteau Repertory and the homeless New Orleans company Ego Po Productions.
According to a report in the New York Times, Lane Savadore, the head of Ego Po and now the artistic director of EgoPo/Cocteau, maintained that he had secured the rights to the play from the Genet estate, but had lost the paperwork when Ego Po's home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina last fall. However, Samuel French, the play publishing house, said Ego Po had not won the rights to The Maids.
EgoPo/Cocteau plans to present plays in a "multi-city repertory," with different shows being presented on both The Bowery and Philadelphia at the same time. The collaborations will be supported by a third group, the Catskill Mountain Foundation, which will provide summer workshop performance space, as well as an annual residency with Julia Hansen's Theater Masters in Aspen, CO.
The Maid x 2 was seen in New Orleans and at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.
