#StopSESTA, Lobotomies, and More Performance Picks

THURSDAY

Tim Platt: Live in COWncert
Thursday, April 26 at The Brick, 9:30 pm: $10

Many of us grew up watching Sesame Street. Comedian Tim Platt has recently written a song for this beloved children’s show, but that isn’t the only song he’s penned. In fact, you can see Platt’s entire repertoire of comedy music on Thursday night at The Brick when he plays a concert as part of the Brooklyn Comedy Collective’s residence at the Williamsburg theater. Sure, comedy music can be grating or cringe-inducing, but Tim’s music is neither of those things. Well, unless it’s trying to be. So, come one come all, and open your ears for songs about vegetables (as someone who once wrote an entire play about broccoli, this excites me) and all other sorts of topics, with accompanist Ben Kling and opening act Eudora Peterson. Maybe, just maybe, there will also be a cow.

FRIDAY

Stigma Unbound: The #StopSESTA Show
Friday, April 27 at Wild Embeddings, 7 pm: $10 suggested donation

Hopefully, you’ve heard of the bill duo FOSTA/SESTA and have been warned about the harmful (or even deadly) impact they will have on sex workers and the freedom of the internet in a more general sense. Though the bill was recently signed into law, the relentless resistance from sex workers, activists, and allies has not ceased. One of the obvious ways you can support these people is financially, and what better way to do so than seeing a show? Stigma Unbound, a performance and film series featuring sex workers and allies, presents a night of performance and video in response to FOSTA/SESTA’s passage, illustrating the nuances, stigmas, joys, and complexities of being a sex worker in today’s society.

SATURDAY

Assembled Identity
Tuesday-Saturday through May 19 at HERE Arts Center, 7 pm: $25

As technology and science become more advanced, and things like VR, genetic engineering, and widespread surveillance become more commonplace, the idea of human cloning doesn’t seem so far-fetched. New multimedia “hybrid” theater piece Assembled Identity, from HERE’s own artistic director Kristen Marting, Purva Bedi, and Mariana Newhard (who also performs in the piece), asks what might happen when two “racially ambiguous” twins find out that their genetic relationship is not in fact biological, but a result of cloning. This discovery raises questions about the controlling and defining of identity and race, and how science and tech can play either a helpful or insidious role in these processes.

SUNDAY

Danger Signals
April 27-May 19 at New Ohio Theater, 8 pm (some shows at 7 pm): $15-25

This new “multi-disciplinary fantasia” of a theater production tackles the idea of control in all its forms. Directed by Built For Collapse’s Sanaz Ghajar, written by British playwright Nina Segal, and composed by musician Jen Goma (member of A Sunny Day In Glasgow, known as Showtime Goma in some circles), Danger Signals explores the compulsion by people in positions in power to control and correct what they deem uncivilized or problematic. In this show, these acts of control range from conducting literal lobotomies to colonizing other people’s lands. There is a song about control playing in the coffee shop as I write this, and I can only wonder what type of fate (or force) was responsible for such a thing.

Update, April 30: The Danger Signals listing was revised to clarify a detail about Jen Goma.