In November 1976, Alice Eve Cohen and Anne Hammel began collaborating on a piece that would become THE TRANSFORMATION FROM PLANT TO HORSE. Working in a loft on Third Avenue and 23rd St, where Alice lived with a gaggle of downtown dancers, musicians, jugglers, and actors, Anne and Alice rehearsed for months, investigating the interaction of dance, music and theatre, and the possibilities of joining their two artistic visions to produce a single unified work. It was the start of a fruitful collaboration, and the beginning of Practical Cats Theatre Company.

Anne, a dancer and choreographer, was performing with Meredith Monk’s company, the House, as well as choreographing her own work. Alice, a playwright, composer, and actor, had just graduated from Princeton University, where she’d studied acting and playwriting with Paul Zimet and Jean Claude Van Itallie (both original members of the Open Theatre) and had started working with Paul’s new theatre company, The Talking Band.