Natalie McCollum

Ashes to Angels Natalie McCollum

A love story told as a horror story and a horror story told as a love story, Ashes to Angels is raw and edgy as the early millennial, hipster characters whose blended voices color much of the ink like a literary tattoo. With original poetry reminiscent of the Beat Generation, this performance-oriented narrative reinvents 21st century pop culture informed by a background in Shakespeare. The characters speak to each other alternately in poems and rock lyrics on a Lower East Side stage beset with demons, hookers, drug addicts, swingers, artist communes, and a schizophrenic poet and his punk angel lover. Auryn cuts off her wings -- with scissors -- in an ill-advised deal made with her demon twin sister looking for bail out of hell. Auryn falls out of the sky to earth, where she falls for Asher, failed artist. This is the story of the evolution and dissolution -- a vicarious nuclear catastrophe -- of their bizarre relationship: angel falls for atheist, poet steals from his own muse, mortal rapes a supernatural, immortal commits suicide. As a paranormal dark romance, it makes subversive comment in poetic meditation on the (im)possibilities of love, the arguably most lethal threat to human existence.