And you thought February had just one day of love.
But here it is two weeks after Valentine’s, and here are three more jours D’Amour in which to lose our hearts. Of course, these aren’t the same-old, same-old candy-Cupid and greeting-card-poem love days; they belong to Lisa D’Amour, the gifted theatre artist who penned and performed Oscar Snowden and the Magic O, dress me blue/window me sky, and Slabber, and thus they involve poetry of a singular kind: dramas swathed in mystery and imagination, theatrical images in which the familiar is made strange and the strange familiar, confessions that reveal a heart opening with the delicacy of a night bloom. And it’s shared with you so personally, so intimately, that it feels as if it is addressed to you and you alone, and so you’re liable to lose your own heart to it.
If you’re of a mind to surrender your heart, this weekend offers the exceptional opportunity to do so through not one but two projects by D’Amour. One is her play 16 Spells to Charm the Beast, being given its world premiere by Salvage Vanguard Theater. This curious romance concerns a sophisticated woman of the big city and a beast. A big, hairy, toothy beast such as one finds inhabiting gloomy forests in fairy tales. This beast is head over heels for the lady, and she, fearing the vulnerability that comes with love, employs magic to keep her hirsute suitor at bay. A fine cast — Monika Bustamante, Harvey Guion, and Cyndi Williams, with Lana Dieterich as the apple of the Beast’s eye, and David Jones as the Beast — is directed by Deanna Shoemaker. The play, which opened last week, continues at the Off Center through March 8 (see “Exhibitionism,” p.34, for a review).
The other project is Nita and Zita, a cabaret about the late Flora and Piroska Gellert, two Romanian sisters who danced around the world as a vaudeville team, then retired to New Orleans and became legendary “gypsy ladies,” creating art out of clothes, furniture, even their home. New Orleans performance artist Kathy Randels had started a piece about the Gellerts, then D’Amour and her longtime collaborator Katie Pearl got involved. The trio co-created the cabaret, which draws Nita and Zita back from the great beyond to reveal the truth about their lives (or not). Here, performer D’Amour and director Pearl swapped roles, with D’Amour directing Pearl and Randels in dance numbers, songs, and malapropisms served up in Eastern European accents as thick as borscht. They premiered Nita and Zita in New Orleans last June and are bringing it to Austin for three shows before a run in New York City.
A fairy-tale beast infatuated with a metropolitan enchantress. The ghosts of two vaudevillians dancing the life they shared. It’s gotta be D’Amour … and that means divine. 
16 Spells to Charm the Beast runs through March 8 at the Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo. For more information, call 474-SVT-6.
Nita and Zita runs Feb. 27-March 1 at ALLGO in the Bakery, 700 Tillery.
This article appears in February 28 • 2003.