Get ready for the wildly unexpected in Ivo Dimchev’s In Hell with Jesus / Top 40 at La MaMa (photo by Krasimir Stoichkov)
Who: Ivo Dimchev and company
What: Interactive performance
Where: The Downstairs, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
When: November 16-26, $10-$30
Why: Bulgarian theater director, performance artist, activist, choreographer, singer-songwriter, and visual artist brings his unique talents to La MaMa with 2022’s In Hell with Jesus and the US premiere of 2023’s Top 40. The former is a musical, centered around an audition, that challenges political correctness in theater and beyond, conceived and directed by Dimchev and performed by him and Andrew Fremont-Smith, Cassondra James, Louis Schwadron, Xavier Smith, and Chris Tanner in madcap costumes; it asks the question, “Big dick, big house, or great sense of humor?” Dimchev, the founder and director of Bulgaria’s Humarts Foundation, wrote and choreographed the latter, which features songs from previous shows of his and a hefty amount of audience participation.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]