Naoe Suzuki and Dramahound Productions: Mi Tigre, My Lover

Open Source Gallery
306 17th Street, Brooklyn, New York
June 25th- July 9th

Opening Reception: June 25th, 7:00-10:00pm
Play by Dramahound Productions: June 25th, 7:30pm and 8:30pm



Mi Tigre, My Lover, detail
Mineral pigment and graphite on paper.

How exciting! Anne Phelan of Dramahound Productions wrote a short play which was inspired by my series, Mi Tigre, My Lover. And we’re showing our works together at the Open Source Gallery in New York later this month.

My series, Mi Tigre, My Lover is inspired by a life of Mabel Stark, a renowned female tiger trainer in the early 1900s when the circus was in its golden age. Her relationships with tigers and men were complex. Mabel survived many severe mauling by her tigers and had five husbands, but she seemed to have always preferred tigers.

Just a brief background on Mabel’s life. Mabel Stark was a nurse for a short time before she joined the circus as a sideshow dancer in 1909. She married a rich man in Texas, but only a few months later she left to join the Cosmopolitan Amusement Company as a cooch dancer. The following year or so, she was performing cat act with two tigers and a pair of lions for the Al G. Barnes Circus. By the early twenties, her wrestling tiger act became the best-known cat act in the American Circus. Mabel also raised a tiger from a cub—her favorite tiger, Rajah. She bottle-fed him and let him sleep in bed with her. She was mauled several times throughout her career, but kept coming back to the tiger cage every time. Mabel committed suicide on April 21, 1968. According to the show-business newspaper, it was a heart attack and her age was listed as seventy-nine. She always lied about her age and her exact age was actually unknown.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, detail
Mineral pigment and graphite on paper.

Mi Tigre, My Lover at the Open Source Gallery will be a multi-media installation, originated out of my series, and the related play by Anne Phelan of Dramahound Productions. Just a brief correspondence with Anne revealed that she too had pretty intense relationship with Mabel and Rajah when she was working on her play. She said, “I feel like Mabel and Rajah have taken up semi-permanent residence in my head.”  That’s exactly how I felt when I was working on these drawings. I had several images of Mabel from books and internet, as well as many images of tigers on my wall. I kept looking at these images for more than a year before I actually started drawing about them. By then I was very consumed by Mabel and Rajah. During my research on Mabel, I also came across a great book called, “The Final Confession of Mabel Stark,” by Robert Hough, a fictional biography based on Mabel Stark’s life. Hough’s novel provided another interesting layer to the life of this famous female cat tamer.

For me, it was the ‘love affairs’ aspect of Mabel’s relationships with her tigers that fascinated me, as well as her wild career and private life. In Mi Tigre, My Lover, there’s a complex play of love/power relationship between a woman and her tiger. Obsession, control, submission, passion, tension and love filled the space between them.

Dramahound Productions will be performing a play entitled My Tiger, My Lover written by Anne Phelan during the opening reception on June 25th. The cast includes Cotton Wright as Mabel Stark and Jacob Grigolia- Rosenbaum as Rajah the tiger, both featured in last year’s “Deconstruction.” It will be directed by Tamara Fisch, with costumes by Sidney Shannon. I’m really looking forward to seeing this play!

View the entire series of Mi Tigre, My Lover.

Read Dramahound blog.