In The Blink of an Eye
A MUSICAL MEMOIR
BOOK BY KATE FUGLEI / MUSIC AND LYRICS BY LESLIE STEINWEISS
On October 22nd, 1966 in a field near Beatrice, Nebraska a pheasant flew. Shots were fired. In the blink of an eye, one life was shattered, the life of a family forever changed. A musical memoir, IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE is the journey of a family, their unique cycle of violence and a young girl's struggle to imagine another way of life.
Kate Fuglei
KATE AND I RECENTLY COMPLETED A RESIDENCY GRANTED TO US BY HB STUDIO IN GREENWICH VILLAGE. THE RESIDENCY WAS AN IMPORTANT STEP IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHOW AND WE ARE GRATEFUL TO HB STUDIO FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY!
A sample of songs from
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
The score for “IN THE BLINK…”has 14 songs and much underscoring. This medley consists of short excerpts from five of the songs:
In The Blink of an eye, Omaha, Nebraska, The Lake, Mrs. Dale, A Place for me
THE CREATIVE TEAM
KATE FUGLEI
BOOK WRITER/PERFORMER
Kate Fuglei most recently played a character inspired by the primatologist Dian Fossey in the site specific production of ANIMATE, staged at St. Paul’s Como Park Zoo and produced as the first live post pandemic performance by the storied Mixed Blood Theater. Her stunning leading man was Virgil the gorilla. She completed work in the lead role in a film based on a Dorothy Parker short story I LIVE ON YOUR VISITS, adapted and directed by Shannon Fopeano which will premiere in 2022. Her novel based on the life of director Frank Capra was published by Mentoris Press in October 2021. It follows two other novels based on the lives of physicist Enrico Fermi and educator Maria Montessori A fourth novel based on the life of Federico Fellini will be published in 2022.
Kate has played leading roles in theaters across the country including the Guthrie Theater (Belle in A CHRISTMAS CAROL), Music-Theater Group (Richard Foreman’s AFRICANIS INSTRUCTUS), Hartford Stage (A SHAYNA MAIDEL), Public Theater (LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST), Arena Stage (CRIME AND PUNISHMENT), Portland Stage (MAN IST MAN), A Contemporary Theater (THE RED AND THE BLACK), La Jolla Playhouse (OUR TOWN), Utah Shakespeare Festival (A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and A FLEA IN HER EAR) and many others. Kate founded a theater company in NYC, DearKnows, which created and produced original work, and where she met Leslie Steinweiss. She toured with the First National Broadway tour of the musical SPRiNG AWAKENING.
Kate developed and performed the one person musical RACHEL CALOF, based on the memoir of a Jewish homesteader on the Northern plains, in collaboration with Leslie Steinweiss, Ken LaZebnik (adaptation) and Ellen Pressman (director). The musical won best musical at the 2015 United Solo Festival in NYC and toured America from 2011-2018.
Kate has appeared in over forty roles in television and film, the most recent being PICARD. Her credits are available on IMDB or on her web-site, https:/katefuglei.com
LESLIE STEINWEISS
COMPOSER/LYRICIST
Leslie Steinweiss is a Brooklyn-based composer/lyricist/pianist. He graduated from The High School of Performing Arts and The Mannes College of Music. He was accepted into Lehman Engel’s BMI Music Theater Workshop as well as the ASCAP Music Theater Workshop.
As composer-in-residence of the New York theater company DearKnows, he worked with a fellow member Kate Fuglei. Kate and Leslie remained friends. In the early 2000’s Kate asked him to write the music and lyrics for a project based on the memoir of a Jewish homesteader which became RACHEL CALOF: A Memoir with music. That one-woman show played in many venues around the U.S. and in 2015 won best musical in the United Solo Theater Festival.
“IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE” marks Leslie’s second collaboration with Kate Fuglei.
Other recent musical activity includes a commission for the Cantata”The Grip of Evil/The endurance of Hope”(music and lyrics and text) commemorating Yom HaShoah (The Holocaust). The premiere is scheduled for May 2022 in Gloucester, MA. Also the launching of a series of piano improvisations online which will culminate in an album release in 2022.
Past work includes The Price Of Genius (incidental music) at the Lambs Theater (Broadway), music for The School of Jolly Dogs, a British music hall at the Home for Contemporary Theater and Art (NYC), the St Lawrence Theater Festival and a two week workshop and performances at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and many chamber works. For more info about Leslie please go to https:/Lesliesteinweiss.com
SYNOPSIS/IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
N THE BLINK OF AN EYE is a one-person musical written by Kate Fuglei with original music and lyrics by Leslie Steinweiss. It is based on true events that occurred in the family of the book writer.
When I was ten years my brother Kent was shot in the head in a field in Beatrice, Nebraska while hunting pheasants with his younger brother and father. The incident marked the family forever. It has had a profound effect on who I have become. The joys, sorrows, the pain and the triumphs all seem to be linked in some way to the memory and to the voice and to the tragedy of my brother Kent. IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE details what happened to Kent through the lens of his youngest sister, who grew up and became a woman haunted by his presence.
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE is an attempt to create in a work of art what my brother rarely had in life; a voice, empathy, understanding, dignity. It is a work of art that relates the story of a blue collar family in the Midwest in late mid century that did not have the tools to handle a tragedy.
The words and the music are meant to form a seamless journey, for the listener, into both the brutality of the tragedy as well as the inner life of a young girl caught in the middle of a family crisis. She escapes into the world of imagination and finds music and stories and the world of theater, where even the most violent acts end when the curtain goes down. She is haunted by her brother and experiences his violence firsthand as well as his vulnerability. She is blessed by the grace and kindness of people she meets who show her another way to live. But she is forever drawn back to her nuclear family and Kent.
Kent wasn’t easy to love. IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE is the struggle to understand, to reveal the complexity, to find honor in the struggle; to make the act of remembering holy and humane.
Collaboration History
Kate Fuglei and Leslie Steinweiss have been artistic collaborators for over thirty years. They began working together in the mid 1980’s in a theater company in New York City. DearKnows (the name of the company, based on a quote from James Joyce’s DUBLINERS, “ahh well, we did our best, the dear knows.”) created original works based on the works of James Joyce, E Nesbitt, Lewis Carroll and Breece D. J. Pancake, among others. Their performance venue was the Home For Contemporary Theatre and Art on Walker street in Soho. Leslie was the composer in residence for DearKnows, creating original music for all of the pieces. As an actress and singer in the company Kate formed a working relationship with Leslie to work on many of the songs and sounds that shaped the highly regarded reputation of the company.
This collaboration continued as Leslie composed songs and underscoring for RACHEL CALOF, a one- person musical that was adapted by Ken LaZebnik and directed by Ellen S Pressman. The project was conceived by Kate after discovering a memoir written by a Jewish homesteader on the Northern plains. It detailed the harrowing life of a Jewish immigrant who moved to North Dakota in 1894 and gave birth to nine children under the harshest of circumstances. Kate performed the role of Rachel Calof. RACHEL CALOF won Best Musical at the 2015 United Solo Festival in NYC and toured America for three years.
The development of IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, their current collaborative project, began as a result of the trust and artistic friendship they have nurtured through the years. Kate has long desired to give artistic voice to the suffering of her brother who was shot in a hunting accident in Beatrice Nebraska. In sharing stories of their childhoods, Kate’s revelation of long held and painful family secrets moved Leslie deeply and led to a narrative composition and and the composition of songs and underscoring that explores the difficult terrain of a traumatic childhood. The grace and trust between them has allowed them to explore theatrically the meaning, dignity, honor, hope and resilience of the story being told as well as the profound artistic understanding shared between the two longtime collaborators.
The first time Kate met Leslie was after a performance for which Leslie had composed music; TAMING OF THE SHREW. Leslie and his wife offered Kate a ride uptown in their brown Volvo. Their three children peeked over the backseat. To quote Stephen Sondheim in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE….”children and art.” The themes of family, of resilience, of how the deep connections and experiences of childhood form who and what we are. What things we want to leave behind and what to nurture. These are the themes of our mutual inquiry in our current piece.