Friday, August 1 2025 at 7 PM
Le Petit Versailles
https://www.alliedproductions.org/news/reading-of-hand-book-a-manual-on-performance-process-and-the-labor-of-laundry-by-lynne-sachs-lizzie-olesker-and-jasmine-holloway
Please join us for a performative book event with authors Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker and actor/writer Jasmine Holloway celebrating the publication of Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry. Just published by punctum books, an independent queer- and scholar-led, community-formed publisher, Hand Book is a collection of writings and images that came out of a hybrid documentary performance and film made by Sachs and Olesker that was set within a neighborhood laundromat, a microcosm of service work within our city. With a focus on the people who wash and fold “drop-off” loads, Hand Book explores the convergence of dirt, stains, money, identity, and desire. This theatrical reading will include short essayistic pieces, a dramatic monologue and poetic dialogue distilled from real conversations with laundromat workers, against a backdrop of projected photographic images. The work will call to mind the intimacy of laundering other people’s clothes, almost like a second skin, the textural care for things kept close to the body.
Jasmine Holloway is an actor, singer, and writer who works to excavate the bones of a character before she can tell their story, honoring the life and times of the people she is portraying in a performance. Her New York theater credits include Generations at Soho Rep, and The Wiz, In The Heights, and Tambourines To Glory at Harlem Repertory Theatre.
Le Petit Versailles is a vibrant community garden, performance space, music venue and public forum for workshops, screenings and exhibitions. It is Allied’s primary program and a focal point for participants enhancing the public spaces of our neighborhood, Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The garden has an active performance and exhibit schedule during the summer months. LPV is an NYC Parks GreenThumb garden. Le Petit Versailles occupies a 20’ by 60’ lot that was formerly the site of an auto body “chop shop”. In 1996, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters began developing the site into a garden. With years of work they created a lush open space dominated by a stage that fulfills their comittment to providing a place for performers, filmmakers, and visual artists to show their work. Since its founding, Le Petit Versailles has been home to countless art exhibitions, performances, readings, film screenings, and more.
