FEMINIST GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD FRINGE

Define: dif-fer-ent

Check out this great article by Holly Derr on Ms. Magazine Blog, featuring DEFINE: DIFFERENT!

Define: Dif-fer-ent, written and performed by Keaton Talmadge, June 8-27
Buster Keaton‘s great-granddaughter delivers her share of comedy in her one-woman show, Define: Dif-fer-ent, about her experience falling in love with a woman for the first time. Talmadge both narrates and reenacts her journey, from the terror of realizing she may never have really known herself to an embrace of all of the possibilities now before her.
Talmadge definitely inherited her great-grandfather’s penchant for physical comedy as well as her father’s love of musical theater. She sings, dances and trips over herself with abandon in this show. Even in real life, she says her favorite party trick has always been falling down the stairs. Asked how her DNA and extensive physical training come to bear on this show, she says:
It’s easy to be yourself, you know what that body is, and you [the actor] know how to embody another character for a whole play, but in a one-woman show you get to do that with both characters. You’ve got to figure out how you go from one character to the next, and as long as you keep the crispness, it’s very easy for the audience to see all of the people. The thing that has always made sense to me is that you have to build the character from the feet up.
Part poetry, part pop culture, this ode to falling in love finds a way to celebrate heartbreak as much as romance. Though the very personal story stays mostly away from politics, a gentle reminder at the end that marriage should be a question of love and not of laws will help the audience take the compassion they have developed for their protagonist out of the theater and into the world.

Full Article HERE:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/06/the-feminists-guide-to-the-hollywood-fringe/

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