Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else! | Performance Space New York

Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else!

Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It:
A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else!

Adrienne Truscott (USA)

Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else! mixes humor, dance, video, and pussy-puppetry while undoing the rules and rhetoric surrounding rape and comedy.

Stepping outside the realm of an arts space, Adrienne straddles the world of stand-up and performance art in this one women show dressed only from the waist up and ankles down. With commentary from George Carlin, Louis C. K. and Robert De Niro, she takes on ducks, mini-skirts, rape whistles, Daniel Tosh, and Rick Ross all while drinking enough gin & tonics to get a girl in trouble.

Heavy at its core but light on its feet, Adrienne makes jokes about rape all night long…even if you ask her to stop.
“Brutal, brilliant and brave…if you miss it you will miss the moment in the history of stand-up comedy wherein a woman actually took the genre and did something with it that no man could do. This is without doubt the most powerful hour of comedy.” – The Scotsman (UK)

Comedy | Theater | Multimedia
Co-presented with
The Creek and the Cave
& The Chocolate Factory.

Sept. 23-25, 30-Oct. 3 at 8pm
Sept. 26 at 7pm

at At The Creek & The Cave
10-93 Jackson Ave, Long Island City in Queens

Tickets $18

Twitter: @PS122

 

 
 

 
 

 

Adrienne Truscott is a choreographer, circus acrobat, dancer, writer and as of late, comedian. She has been making genre-straddling work in New York City and abroad for over 15 years and has performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theater (London), Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival and most recently with sold out run at Joe’s Pub. She is one half of the infamous Wau Wau Sisters and has worked with cult cabaret legends Kiki and Herb, Meow Meow, and John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus).

Adrienne is the winner of the Fosters’ Edinburgh Comedy Award 2013 Panel Prize for the premiere of Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else.

Adrienne learned how to and continues to make work in terms of choreographic composition, an early application of form that seemed to allow for the most broad investigation, loose interpretation, and varied possibilities. This impulse remains strong because increasingly live performance strikes her as the most radical way to re-engage people’s attention—not just socially or politically, but personally, aesthetically, energetically; the most available way to trigger the act of paying attention. She engages many genres of live performance that look, act, and intend differently. Her work is held uniquely in common by this understanding of composition, enabling it to remain clear while being complex, sophisticated while accessible, available yet mysterious, personally unique while layered in abstraction, entertaining yet rigorous and serious about being humorous. She has consistently sought out different environments/mandates for her work rather than relegating it to specific economic, social, aesthetic, or geographic contexts. She is curious about how modes of presentation (i.e., experimental, international, commercial, or illegal venues) interact with different forms (dance, cabaret, circus, comedy) and how that can upend assumptions that often accompany these forms and their target audiences, respectively. She is attracted to the possibility of failure as a mandate for rigor.

Adrienne Truscott by Julieta Cervantes“I don’t like to say much about this show; I like it to speak for itself. So 
I’ll say this. This show debuted at the 2013 Edinburgh Free Fringe Festival, by design. It was unfinished, untested and unruly (like a fringe show could or even should be) and free so that people would take a chance on it regardless or because of initial impressions – as
a clarion call, a bad idea, a naked lady, a desperate fringe-y grab for attention, or worse, ‘feminist comedy’. The first time I cracked a joke about this topic was offstage among other women comics, while working off the coast
of Mexico on a cruise ship with 1800 lesbians on vacation. Two facts about that trip collided unexpectedly – it was an incredibly ‘safe’ space as a woman and an unpredictably conservative and treacherous space for a comedian. It was before making ‘rape jokes’ became the go-to for ‘edgy’ comedians. That trend hit while I was already wondering if I could use comedy to talk about rape or ‘rape culture’. It was prior to mattresses being carried on college campuses. Although best known as a cabaret and circus performer and choreographer, I had always wanted to try stand-up. I thought, instead of trying to do a tight 5 to 7 minutes at an open mic, why not debut with an hour of stand-up? And make it about rape. What could go wrong? No comic or anyone else for that matter wants to be told what they can or can’t say, nor should they be, obviously. It is often a comic’s job to utter the unutterable; that doesn’t mean they (we?) are beyond rebuke. Comedy is bold, powerful and supple but not beyond reproach or consequence. There is a difference between a fool and the fool in the king’s court. I may be both or neither, but my instincts for costuming are unassailable. – Adrienne Truscott

 The Creek and The Cave is a bar, restaurant, lounge and comedy theatre one stop from Manhattan in the heart of Long Island City. Our food is California Style Mexican, our Margaritas are strong and our vibe is funny.
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Since its founding in 2005, The Chocolate Factory Theater has supported the development and presentation of new work by a community of local, national and international artists working in dance, theater, performance, and multimedia. The Chocolate Factory’s programs have drawn many thousands of new visitors to its 5,000 square foot industrial facility in Long Island City, Queens. The organization is currently planning for the purchase and renovation of a permanent facility in the neighborhood.

The Chocolate Factory is artist-founded and artist-led. Its founding Directors, Sheila Lewandowski and Brian Rogers, continue to create and present their own work at The Chocolate Factory while providing support to a close-knit community of forward-thinking visiting artists working at all stages of their careers.

The Chocolate Factory received an Obie grant in 2009. Its works have received Bessie and Obie Awards and have toured nationally and internationally.
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Dates: Sept. 23 - Oct 3, 2015

Type: Comedy, Theater, Multimedia

Premiere Status: at The Creek & The Cave

All rights reserved by Performance Space New York
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