David Semonin

Magdalen is a tavern Scheherazade, a prostitute who sells stories in a seedy Philadelphia dive bar. Her clients include Mr. Jones, an angry black businessman who wants to hear the same graphic, sexual fantasy every night; Jace, a droll, Mishima-loving slacker/writer looking for an ending to his novel; Phil, a precocious skater-boy who wants to understand his dead father; and Edward, a shy 53-year-old virgin looking for love. Alix D. Smith is Magdalen McElhinney, a tough, brainy femme noir, whose name suggests that the film's director is the father she talks about obsessively. Littered with literary and cinematic allusions, the film's narrators make Magdalen part Warholian confessional and part Brechtian taproom comedy.

Tom Collier (Christian Pedersan) shocks his moneyed father Rufus (James Laster), lawyer Owen Arthur (Konya Hood), and nosy neighbor Grace Macomber (Anne Bailis) by suddenly announcing his engagement to poor but eminently respectable socialite Cecelia Henry (Kristina Valada-Viars). A fragmented whirligig of romantic intrigue, Animal Husbandry is a word-for-word production of a 1931 play, performed in modern dress.