Rochelle Owens
Rochelle Bass Owens is an American poet and playwright.
Life and career
Owens is the daughter of Maxwell and Molly Bass. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, then studied at the New School for Social Research and the University of Montreal.After a brief marriage to David Owens, she married the poet George Economou on June 17, 1962. Owens has taught at Brown University, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. As of 2018, Owens lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and Philadelphia. Her biography is published in Gale Research Contemporary Authors, Volume 2. In 2006, she was celebrated in La MaMa's Coffeehouse Chronicles series.
Theatre
She was highly involved in the early off-off-Broadway theatre movement. As a poet, she contributed greatly to the St. Marks Poetry Project and was a founding participant in Mickey Ruskin and Bill Mackey's Les Deux Mégots on 7th Street in the East Village. Owens was also involved in the ethnopoetics movement. Her work has influenced experimental playwrights and poets in subsequent generations.During the 1960s and 1970s, Owens' plays premiered in New York City at the Judson Poets Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Theater for the New City, and the American Place Theatre. She was a founding member of the New York Theater Strategy and the Women's Theater Council. Her play Futz was first published in 1961 and is foundational to the off-off-Broadway canon. It raised some controversy, and was banned in Toronto and called a "lust and bestiality play" by a newspaper in Edinburgh. Futz was made into a film in 1969. The cast includes Sally Kirkland and Frederic Forrest.
Owens' plays have been performed in theatre festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin.
Poetry
Owens at the age of 19 had her poetry published in LeRoi Jones' and Hettie Jones’ magazine Yugen. Owens’ poems appear in the volume Jones edited in 1962 titled "Four Young Lady Poets". Owens may not refer to herself as a "Beat poet", but she was there and influential among the Beat poets and that movement in New York. She read her poems at The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church In-the-Bowery in New York City, on the same bill that included Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Allen Ginsberg introduced her poetry to LeRoi Jones.Radio
In 1984, after relocating to Norman, Oklahoma, Owens hosted "The Writers Mind", a radio interview program from the University of Oklahoma with various artists.Awards and recognition
- 1965 - Rockefeller Foundation grant
- 1965, 1967, 1982 - Village Voice Obie Awards
- 1971 - Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1973 - ASCAP Award
- 1976 - National Endowment for the Arts grant
- 1984 - honors from the New York Drama Critics' Circle
- 1993 - Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio Center
- 1994 - Oklahoma Book Award finalist
- New York Creative Artists in Public Service Program
Selected works
Plays
- The String Game, Judson Poets Theatre, New York City, 1965; published by Methuen: 1969
- Futz, Tyrone Guthrie Workshop Theatre, Minneapolis, 1965; Cafe La Mama, New York City, 1967; published by : 1962, and Methuen: 1969Homo, Cafe La Mama, 1966; Ambiance Theater, London, 1966; published by Hawk's Well Press: 1968
- Judson Poets Theatre, 1968; Actors Playhouse, New York City, 1971Beclch, Theatre for the Living Arts, Philadelphia; Gate Theatre, New York City, 1968; published by Hawk's Well Press: 1968
- produced in New York City, 1968Queen of Greece, La Mama E.T.C., New York City, 1969; published by Alexander Street Press: 2003He Wants Shih, La MaMa, New York City, 1973; published by Dutton: 1974
- American Place Theatre, New York City, 1973O.K. Certaldo, published by Dutton: 1974Kontraption, published by Dutton: 1974; New York Theater Strategy, 1976Coconut Folk-Singer, published by Dutton: 1974Farmer's Almanac, published by Dutton: 1974Emma Instigated Me, New York City, 1976; published in Performance Arts Journal: 1976The Widow And The Colonel published in Best Short Plays 1977Who Do You Want, Piere Vidal?, Theatre for the New City, New York City, 1982Chucky's Hunch, Theatre for the New City, 1981; Harold Clurman Theatre, New York City, 1982Mountain Rites, published by Alexander Street Press: 2003Sweet Potatoes, published by Alexander Street Press: 2003
Screenplays
Futz, Commonwealth United: 1969Poetry
The Joe Eighty-Two Creation Poems, Black Sparrow Press: 1974The Joe Chronicles II, Black Sparrow Press, 1977W.C. Fields In French Light, Contact 2 Press: 1986How Much Paint Does The Painting Need, Kulchur Press 1988Black Chalk, Texture Press 1992Rubbed Stones and Other Poems, Texture Press: 1994New And Selected Poems 1961-1996, Junction Press 1997Luca, Discourse On Life And Death, Junction Press: 2000Triptych, Texture Press: 2006Solitary Workwoman, Junction Press: 2011Out of Ur - New & Selected Poems 1961 - 2012, Shearsman Books 2012Hermaphropoetics, Drifting Geometries, Singing Horse Press 2017The Aardvark Venus - New and Selected Poems 1961 - 2020, Texture Press: 2020Patterns Of Animus, Texture Press: 2022Anthologies
New American Plays, Hoffman, Hill, Wang, 1968The New Underground Theater, Schroeder, Bantam Books: 1968Technicians of the Sacred, Doubleday: 1969Inside Outer Space, Anchor Books: 1970The Best Short Plays, Chilton: 1971, 1977, 1978The Off-Off Broadway Book, Poland, Mailman, Bobbs-Merrill: 1972America A Prophecy, Rothenberg, Quasha, Random House: 1973No More Masks, Howe, Bass, Anchor/Doubleday: 1973Psyche: The Feminine Poetic Consciousness, Segnitz, Rainey, Dial Press: 1973Rising Tides: 20th Century American Women Poets, Chester, Barba, Washington Square Press: 1973A Big Jewish Book, Rothenberg, Lenowitz, Doubleday: 1979Scenarios: Scripts to Perform, Richard Kostelanetz, : 1980A Century In Two Decades, Burning Deck Press: 1982Exiled In The Word, Copper Canyon Press: 1989Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women, Faber and Faber: 1989Poems For The Millennium : 1998The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry, Kale, Granger, Columbia University Press: 2002North American Women's Plays from Colonial Times to the Present, Alexander Street Press: 2003All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 60's, University of California Press: 2003Light Years, Spuyten Duyvil, Awareing Press: 2010Radio plays">Radio drama">Radio plays
The Widow And The Colonel, 1976 Sweet Potatoes, 1977Videos
Oklahoma Too, 1987How much Paint Does The Painting Need, 1991Black Chalk, 1994Chucky's Hunch, 2024Sound recordings
A Shaman's Notebook, Broadside Records 1968The Karl Marx Play, lyrics by Owens, music by Galt MacDermot, Kilmarnock 1974Black Box 17- San Francisco State University, Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives 1987