Production Concept

Our concept is to host a 24-hour long queer, drag, and gender non-conforming production of The Bald Soprano. The play is typically cast with 3 heterosexual couples but in this production, none of our couples will represent heteronormativity. The show has a run time of approximately 1 hour so we should be able to do 24 repetitions of the scripts. We will hire LGBTQ actors to play all the roles. After each run of the show, Martins change places with the Smiths to start the next repetition. In our production, the actors playing the Smiths will play the Fire Chief and Mary in the next iteration and the actors who played the Fire Chief and Mary in the previous iteration will play the Smiths. After 3 hours each couple will have played one of the members of each of the couples from the script. At this point, they will run the cycle again swapping roles with their partners, thereby casting many different bodies into the roles of the Smiths, the Martins, the Fire Chief and Mary.

 

In this play, Ionesco deconstructed communication and conformity in terms or language and class, but gender norms remain in place. This production aims to deconstruct those norms and reveal the underlying sexist gender roles that still exist in in this play despite Ionesco going to great lengths to deconstruct norms.

 

The performance will allow the audience to drop in anytime during the 24 hours. They are is invited to come and go as they please, subject to seating availability. Audience members are encouraged to stay for more than one iteration as desired or even to leave and come back. We will start at 7pm on Friday and go until 7pm on Saturday.

 

Our production will not only deconstruct gender and gender roles, but also the notion that theatre is something with an assigned viewing time and an assigned seat with a specific end time.  Our hope is to further deconstruct society in ways that Ionesco hadn’t yet imagined. According to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, Ionesco was concerned with the idea, “that a new vision of reality might occur to audiences if habitual patterns of rational thought were overthrown and presented, not just with arguments about the irrationality (or absurdity) of human existence, but with demonstrations of it.” By breaking down gender barriers, we are aiming to further demonstrate the irrationality of human existence.