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The Drifts Live: the novel onstage
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(White Box @ 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette Street, New York, NY, 10003)(See website for schedule)
The Drifts Live tackles the consequences of gender and
the meanings applied to bodies in a Southern small
town. In this one-hour live performance of excerpts
from his novel, The Drifts, actor/novelist Vernon
(Seinfeld, The Fugitive, General Hospital, etc.) brings a
trans-dad, a bitter pregnant housewife, her cheating
husband, his butch lover and a calf onstage to fight
their sex. Audiences have said, “their voices are
stricken and desperate and dangerously poetic….Thom
embodies them with fluidity and a muscular grace. …
His characters are at once hilarious and
heartbreaking….Wow!”
Author and Actor Thom Vernon brings his
theatricalized version of his acclaimed novel The Drifts
as part of the 17th annual New York International
Fringe Festival this August. You won’t want to miss
this live version of a novel Canada’s national
newspaper called “a great contemporary twist on the
Southern Gothic tradition.”
Lauded by the Globe and Mail as “magnificent”, The
Drifts has also been compared favourably to the work
of Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Carson
McCullers and others. Vernon has a long history of
bringing literature to life on-stage as part of The Piven
Theatre Workshop, where he initially trained as an
actor. HIV+ for 26 years, and being forced into exile
from the U.S. to stay with his Zimbabwean partner, The
Drifts is a literary and imaginative treatment of
displacement. These experiences have also inspired
several published critical articles about creative work
and public policy. “It comes out of my own
experience,” says Vernon, “though it is more about
exile from ones self.”
Vernon began writing The Drifts while studying under
Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and
Requiem for a Dream. It is a highly subjective,
emotional and expressionistic reading experience.
($15/$18 @ door)
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| August 10-11 , 15 , 17 , 21-22 , See website for schedule |
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Event Website
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