(image via Dead Darlings)
Dead Darlings
At Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Greenwich Village. Free. More info here.
Typically, when we go see a performance of any sort, the material we’re watching has been written, rewritten, and carefully narrowed down from a presumable slew of ideas. Dead Darlings, a monthly show curated by performer and female drag queen Amanda Duarte, seeks to assemble a group of artists to show work that didn’t make the final cut or has not yet found a home. This time is “book club edition,” so there’ll be a gaggle of authors reading their work: Dave Hill (Inside Amy Schumer), Michael Schulman (Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep), Rebecca Traister (All The Single Ladies), and Cintra Wilson (Fear And Clothing).
THURSDAY
(image via The Cobra Club)
At The Cobra Club, 6 Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick. 8:30pm. $8. More info here.
Comedian Jo Firestone (clever creator of shows such as Punderdome 3000 and The Inner Beauty Pageant), along with Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, has whipped up yet another interactive and silly night o’ fun with A Hastily Written Masterpiece Starring The Audience. This show consists of a yes, hastily-written plot chock-full of one popular artist’s songs (this time it’s Beyoncé, and the musical is titled When Life Give You Lemons, so), and yes, anyone in the audience can volunteer to be in the musical. This could either be your finest moment or your most embarrassing, but regardless, it’ll be a rollicking good time.
FRIDAY
(image via The PIT)
At The PIT, 123 E 24th Street, Flatiron. 8pm. Tickets are $20. More info here.
Political Subversities (PoliSub if you’re in the know) are a musical political sketch comedy group (say that five times fast) that describe themselves as a sort of mishmash of The Daily Show, Glee, Avenue Q, SNL, and South Park. They’re fresh off a two-year hiatus with this new weekly show, so it’s safe to assume they’ve taken all that time to bring an even wilder sense of energy to their wacky and madcap performances. And it’s not like they have a particular shortage of material, what with the political goings-on nowadays… Sometimes the only way to avoid crying is to laugh.
SATURDAY
(photo: Sara Brown)
At Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette Street. 11:30pm. (Also on 6/13 at 9:30pm.) Tickets are $15. More info here.
The full title of Adrienne Truscott’s piece is—brace yourselves—Asking For It: A One Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else! She has performed this biting comedic takedown/exploration of rape culture and rape jokes before, and now due to popular demand and acclaim it returns to Joe’s Pub for a two-show hurrah. And if you’ve even so much as glanced at the news or your Facebook newsfeed this week, you’ll know that some people may benefit from seeing this, whether it reminds them that they’re not alone or teaches them a thing or two.
ONGOING
The Trans Theater Festival
Continues through June 25 at The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg. Various dates and times. More info here.
Williamsburg space The Brick is home to the first-ever Trans Theater Festival, curated by trans artists MJ Kaufman and Maybe Burke, presenting live performance work and panels of all varieties celebrating trans artists. The result is a vibrant array of programming, such as a panel about pronoun etiquette, an adventure featuring masked crime fighters in the 1940s, a puppet show, slam poetry, exploring the transmasculine experience, “passing” privilege, and more. (Full disclosure: I’m working on Mouse, one of the shows in the festival.)