Adrienne Truscott

(Brooklyn, NY, Land of the Lenapehoking) 

THIS

Created, Written, and Performed by Adrienne Truscott

Direction: Ellie Heyman                                                   

Set, Video, and Sound Design: Carmine Covelli         

Lighting Design: Mary Ellen Stebbins   

DESCRIPTION

Adrienne Truscott's Bessie-nominated work THIS is propelled by both blistering satire and choreographic composition as radical tools for capturing and holding an audience's attention. Truscott mines her own genre-straddling oeuvre—as comedian, choreographer, cabaret performer, performance artist, and activist—in a brash, non-linear confessional that bounces from contemporary feminism to the presidency to unconventional urban living. THIS is a solo performance that may not always be a solo; it is a dance that may not be a dance; it is a comedy that may not always be funny. It is a performance of writing (and reading) that alters to reflect the moment at hand—the venue and location, the current news cycle—and to reflect the experience of time as it is transformed by memory and embellishment, intention and execution. It plays with assumptions about authorship, linear narrative, truth, fiction, failure, and autobiography. Maybe, like it or not, performance is just another form of memoir, and maybe that fact is weird. THIS tries to make a piece of art about trauma while being traumatized by the inadequacy of making art in the current political landscape. Treating both her monologues and the theater as a kind of choreography, Truscott stages her self with impeccable timing. This program will be followed by a DJ set by ​​Shannon Funchess / LIGHT ASYLUM. 

PRESS QUOTES:

'In “THIS,”  Truscott has managed a real tongue twister: to make a dance about dance with no dance in it...to choreograph a dance of the mind.' - Gia Kourlas, New York Times

'Truscott is the poster woman for today’s working artist. Instead of compartmentalizing her countless roles, the salty-tongued artist embraces her circus artist/dancer/comedian/activist/essayist self in performance.' -  Dance Enthusiast

'Truscott may take it too far sometimes, and yes, she may make you blush. But, above all, she makes you think and feel.' - Dance Enthusiast

'[A] delightedly vulgar, rampantly feminist, genre-shifting solo.' - Helen Shaw

'[Truscott is] a major influencer on the international circuit (thanks to extraordinary highs and lows at Edinburgh Festival) and—despite making recent pieces that look like very arty stand-up comedy—an acclaimed visionary in the world of contemporary dance.' - Helen Shaw

NOMINATED FOR A NY BESSIE AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Adrienne Truscott received a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Artist Award and is a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grantee for Theater/Performance Art. Her solo comedic work and group choreographic works have been presented at Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Just For Laughs, Darwin Festival, PS122, Joe's Pub, The Kitchen, Dublin Fringe Festival, Danspace Project, Boom Arts, New York Live Arts, the Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne), and Dance Theater Workshop. Her form-busting show Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! won the 2013 Edinburgh Foster's Panel Prize, was a finalist for the Total Theatre Award for Playing With Form, and is considered a critical impetus to the evolving conversation about rape culture. It has been presented by or included in curriculum at CalArts, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Lewis and Clark College, among others. THIS was nominated for a 2017 New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for Outstanding Production. The Wau Wau Sisters, her boundary-defying neo-vaudevillian collaboration with Tanya Gagne, have been presented by the Sydney Opera House, Joe's Pub, CBGB, Victoria Arts Centre, and The Roundhouse, and won the prestigious 2009 Herald Angel Award. Her piece Wild Bore, a “meta rebuke to critical writing,” was nominated for a Green Room Award for New Writing for the Australian Stage and won for Best Ensemble. Current touring pieces MASTERCLASS, a collaboration with Dublin-based Brokentalkers was recently presented at Dublin Fringe, in Harstad, Norway and at The Pleasance at Edinburgh Fringe and Grey Arias, a desecration of the problematic Madame Butterfly through the lenses of race and drag with UK-based opera performer Le Gateau Chocolat is premiering in Melbourne in April 2023. Truscott's essays have been published in Between Us: Women of Letters and Doing It: Women Tell the Truth about Great Sex, as well as in the Guardian. She's appeared as a storyteller at the Sydney Opera House's Festival of Dangerous Ideas and on The Moth. Truscott has guest taught for the Wesleyan University Dance Department, Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, Bard College, and is currently the MA Coordinator at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College/Open Society University Network.