Who: Sara Farrington, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Tony Torn, James Scully
What: Live performance, talkback, and dinner
Where: The Salmagundi Library at the Coffee House Club, 47 Fifth Ave. between Eleventh & Twelfth Sts.
When: Wednesday, October 8, free with advance RSVP (a la carte dinner to follow), 6:30
Why: Back in May, Sara Farrington came to the Coffee House Club to discuss her work during a cozy Friday lunch. The playwright and author will be back on October 8, in the Salmagundi Library, for the latest installment of “Breaking the Audio Fiction Form.” Joined by actor and creator Jocelyn Kuritsky (A Simple Herstory) and actor and director Tony Torn (Paul Swan Is Dead and Gone), Farrington will perform several pieces from her fast-growing, no-holds-barred Substack Theater Is Hard, in which she waxes poetic about independent, experimental, and unconventional theater in a way that is “half–Socratic dialogue, half-manifesto.” The performance will be followed by a brief talkback moderated by actor, writer, and director James Scully (Breaking Walls).
“Sara is a cool fit for this series because breaking the audio fiction form means just that — pushing its boundaries and blending it with other mediums,” Kuritsky told twi-ny. “Her work spans both theater — as a playwright and Substack writer — and audio, as a performer. She offers an informed perspective on the current challenges facing theater and has a unique take on how audio can, does, and could further intersect with it.”
Jocelyn Kuritsky, Sara Farrington, and Tony Torn team up for latest edition of “Breaking the Audio Fiction Form” on October 8
Farrington has collaborated with her husband, Reid, on such multimedia productions as BrandoCapote, CasablancaBox, and The Return while also writing her own plays, including A Trojan Woman, Mickey & Sage, and the forthcoming musical Dr. Uncanny Presents: Moreau ’96, about the making of the infamous 1996 horror disaster The Island of Dr. Moreau. She is also the author of The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde, in which she speaks with such legends as Richard Foreman, André Gregory, David Henry Hwang, Bill T. Jones, Adrienne Kennedy, Mac Wellman, and Robert Wilson.
Admission to this first-ever live edition of Theater Is Hard is free with advance RSVP; the evening will conclude with an à la carte dinner with the participants.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]