For Immediate Release
Evan Munday, Publicist for Coach House Books: [email protected]
The Drifts Live: the novel onstage
The 4th Annual United Solo Festival
at Theatre Row
410 W. 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Tickets: $18.
For tickets visit www.unitedsolo.org
Author and Performer thom vernon brings a hybrid of traditional literary story theatre and performance arts of his acclaimed novel The Drifts as part of the 4th annual United Solo Festival for one show only, November 6, 7pm. 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.”
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, 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. “As his characters walk through the snow, you may find yourself getting the chills. Vernon’s physical work — walking through snow, castrating oneself, fighting a calf, putting on a wig — is impeccable and captivating.” (Theatre is Easy.com).
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. thom has taken “Cubby” Selby’s advice finding each person’s voice and now translating them to the stage. 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!”
Don’t miss The Drifts Live at the United Solo Fest!
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