Rochelle Owens

Rochelle Bass Owens (born April 2, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet and playwright.

Life and career Owens is the daughter of Maxwell and Molly (Adler) 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 (1983). 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. Mark's 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' (as Amiri Baraka was known then) 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. Mark's 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 Hawk's Well Press: 1962, and Methuen: 1969 Homo, Cafe La Mama, 1966; Ambiance Theater, London, 1966; published by Hawk's Well Press: 1968 Judson Poets Theatre, 1968; Actors Playhouse, New York City, 1971 Beclch, Theatre for the Living Arts, Philadelphia; Gate Theatre, New York City, 1968; published by Hawk's Well Press: 1968 produced in New York City, 1968 Queen of Greece, La Mama E.T.C., New York City, 1969; published by Alexander Street Press: 2003 He Wants Shih, La MaMa, New York City, 1973; published by Dutton: 1974 American Place Theatre, New York City, 1973 O.K. Certaldo, published by Dutton: 1974 Kontraption, published by Dutton: 1974; New York Theater Strategy, 1976 Coconut Folk-Singer, published by Dutton: 1974 Farmer's Almanac, published by Dutton: 1974 Emma Instigated Me, New York City, 1976; published in Performance Arts Journal: 1976 The Widow And The Colonel published in Best Short Plays 1977 Who Do You Want, Piere Vidal?, Theatre for the New City, New York City, 1982 Chucky's Hunch, Theatre for the New City, 1981; Harold Clurman Theatre, New York City, 1982

Mountain Rites, published by Alexander Street Press: 2003 Sweet Potatoes, published by Alexander Street Press: 2003

Screenplays Futz, Commonwealth United: 1969

Poetry

The Joe Eighty-Two Creation Poems, Black Sparrow Press: 1974 The Joe Chronicles II, Black Sparrow Press, 1977

W.C. Fields In French Light, Contact 2 Press: 1986 How Much Paint Does The Painting Need, Kulchur Press 1988 Black Chalk, Texture Press 1992 Rubbed Stones and Other Poems, Texture Press: 1994 New And Selected Poems 1961-1996, Junction Press 1997 Luca, Discourse On Life And Death, Junction Press: 2000 Triptych, Texture Press: 2006 Solitary Workwoman, Junction Press: 2011 Out of Ur - New & Selected Poems 1961 - 2012, Shearsman Books 2012 Hermaphropoetics, Drifting Geometries, Singing Horse Press 2017 The Aardvark Venus - New and Selected Poems 1961 - 2020, Texture Press: 2020 Patterns Of Animus, Texture Press: 2022

Anthologies

New American Plays (Vol. 2), Hoffman, Hill, Wang, 1968 The New Underground Theater, Schroeder, Bantam Books: 1968 Technicians of the Sacred, Doubleday: 1969 Inside Outer Space, Anchor Books: 1970 The Best Short Plays, Chilton: 1971, 1977, 1978 The Off-Off Broadway Book, Poland, Mailman, Bobbs-Merrill: 1972 America A Prophecy, Rothenberg, Quasha, Random House: 1973 No More Masks, Howe, Bass, Anchor/Doubleday: 1973 Psyche: The Feminine Poetic Consciousness, Segnitz, Rainey, Dial Press: 1973 Rising Tides: 20th Century American Women Poets, Chester, Barba, Washington Square Press: 1973 A Big Jewish Book, Rothenberg, Lenowitz, Doubleday: 1979 Scenarios: Scripts to Perform, Richard Kostelanetz, Assembling Press: 1980 A Century In Two Decades, Burning Deck Press: 1982 Exiled In The Word, Copper Canyon Press: 1989 Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women, Faber and Faber: 1989 Poems For The Millennium (Vol. 2): 1998 The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry, Kale, Granger, Columbia University Press: 2002 North American Women's Plays from Colonial Times to the Present, Alexander Street Press: 2003 All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 60's, University of California Press: 2003 Light Years, Spuyten Duyvil, Awareing Press: 2010

Radio plays The Widow And The Colonel, 1976 (commissioned by Voice of America for the bicentennial) Sweet Potatoes, 1977

Videos

Oklahoma Too, 1987 How much Paint Does The Painting Need, 1991 Black Chalk, 1994 Chucky's Hunch, 2024

Sound recordings A Shaman's Notebook, Broadside Records 1968 The Karl Marx Play, lyrics by Owens, music by Galt MacDermot, Kilmarnock 1974 Black Box 17 San Francisco State University, Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives 1987

Translations (to English) The Passersby, trans. Owens, Henry Holt: 1993 from the French Les Passants by Liliane Atlan

As editor

Spontaneous Combustion: Eight New American Plays, Winterhouse: 1972

Novels

Journey To Purity, Texture Press: 2009