"The All Stars of Non-Violent Communication" @ LACE

I'm performing in a new work by the consistently re-inventive Asher Hartman as part of the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (LACE) series "So Funny It Hurts," curated by Brian Getnick.  This bizarre, hilarious, tragic short play considers identity, death, and showmanship.  All one and the same, obviously.  Here's a bit more:

THE ALL STARS OF NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION 
Featuring Franc Baliton, Patrick Kennelly, Michael Morrissey, and Joe Seely
Written and directed by Asher Hartman with costumes by Curt LeMieux
Sound by Jasmine Orpilla

A blue vaudevillian poem in three parts, THE ALL STARS OF NONVIOLENT COMMUNCIATION unleashes the vitriol of three dead, under-appreciated gay entertainers of the 1970s in a seething round of comedy and complaint.

Featuring veteran performers Franc Baliton, Patrick Kennelly, Michael Morrissey, and Joe Seely, with costumes by sculptor Curt LeMieux, sound by composer and performer Jasmine Orpilla, and text and direction by Asher Hartman, THE ALL STARS OF NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION is a compact exploration of the brutality of language, the grief from which comedy emerges, and the ways in which language empties out into the passage from life to death.   Although brief, the work is written in a dense amalgam of poetic speech, one-liners, movement, and sound with plenty of bite and aftertaste.

Loosely inspired by the lives of Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Barclay Shaw, and Wayland Flowers, THE ALL STARS OF NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION takes its cues from the moment in a stand up routine when the comedian turns against the audience, heaping savagery upon it in an attempt to defend the comic’s role as container and messenger of a society’s unacknowledged debts and burdens. 

START TIME: 7:30PM

Running time: Approximately 30 minutes.

Inappropriate for children, very strong language