Review: "On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations" Unleashes Memorable Storytelling

On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations

Created, directed, and performed by Ella Veres

Presented as part of the 2024 Gotham Storytelling Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks

94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC

November 10, 2024

Elle Veres and Pandele
Our relationships with nonhuman animals can be revealing on not only individual but also socio-cultural levels. Solo show On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations, from independent artist Ella Veres, a Harlem-based native of Transylvania, dexterously interweaves both of these levels in a fascinating hour of stories that span her personal history from childhood to the present while drawing on the particular perspective that she has acquired living in both Romania and the United States. Developed during Veres's 2023 Fountain House Gallery summer residency on Governors Island and in Adam Wade’s Magnet Theater Solo Workshop, the show debuted at the 2024 NYC Fringe Festival. Most recently, the performance of On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations that we attended was part of the twelfth annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, curated by storyteller Brad Lawrence and FRIGID New York’s Managing Director Erez Ziv, and running from November 3rd to 18th at UNDER St. Marks. Outside the festival, Veres's show also plays monthly on Tuesdays at 7 pm at the same location, with each performance offering a different iteration, and the show’s entire story collection is gathered in a limited edition book.

At the opening, Veres placed the show in some context, relating how she took a break from theater for a number of years and concentrated on the visual arts before returning to the stage a couple of years ago. Joined onstage by her dog, Pandele, who reclined comfortably throughout, ears occasionally perking up at a particularly interesting sound, Veres moved through a story of an encounter with death and elegantly linked it to where, surveying current storytelling trends after her absence, she sees herself fitting in. This linkage provided the entry point into the show's selection of dog-involved tales (Veres has a cat, Rosamunda, as well, and doubtless equally interesting narratives involving felines, but the iteration that we attended focused on dogs). Stories of the origin of Pandele's name and Veres's evolving relationship with her father's dog, Poofy, to take a two examples, were at the same time stories of her relationships with her father and mother, her family history and genealogy (including the discrimination against its Romani branches), and life under and after Romania's communist dictatorship. Her description of Ceaușescu as a stupid person with a gold toilet who liked to talk about being the savior of the nation sounded uncomfortably familiar–and that was before, a bit later, she made the comparison explicit.

Veres and Pandele performed from a pair of adjoining chairs, one rather medieval in its styling, with Veres playing more or less absently with Pandele's leash or occasionally stroking her companion's head as she spoke, visible symbols of their bond. The use of "family" in the show's title as inclusive of dogs and cats resonates with Veres's discussion of cultural differences in attitudes taken towards them. While dogs have long been seen more as tools, primarily for the protection of property, in Eastern Europe, she tells us, one thing Americans do well is giving and receiving love from cats and dogs, considering them as family members (supporting her point, we happened to attend the show with a bag full of freeze-dried treats from the nearby holistic pet store, purchased for the birthday celebration for a rescue cat who is still deciding whether he will let us touch him since being adopted a couple months ago). At the very least, these attitudes towards our pets say something about our ability to empathize with the Other (one might also imagine an association between more critical attitudes towards nonhuman animals as impure and, say, her mother's conservative attitudes toward gender and chastity). As a storyteller, Veres creates the sense of being party to an intimate conversation, and the stories themselves were poignant but infused with humor, even, or maybe especially, when the material leaned toward the bleak side (poverty and alcoholism, for instance, figure repeatedly). Poofy's story, for one, will certainly stick with us. The show perhaps inspired those with pets to spend some quality time with them after getting home from the theater–we may need that companionship more than ever in the months and years to come, and Veres's story and storytelling reminds us why.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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