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“… a beautifully woven tale…utterly engaging and genuinely moving…real artistry and humor”

 

– Winnipeg Free Press

“… a gorgeous evening of theater. The piece is so beautifully wrought, both the writing and the performing…the complexity of thought, the humor, the images that rolled and thickened… just glorious.”

 

-Brian Thorstenson: Summerland, Heading South

…this exquisite tale goes far beyond searching for one’s roots.  Magree creates images, people, moods, places- almost imperceptibly...Unexpectedly compelling and worth listening again, and again.” 

 

-Jon Skaalen, Minneapolis Fringe Festival

"Other"

Previously titled: 
PILGRIMAGE: WHY I'M NOT AN INDIAN

MARIN SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
Fri. April 5, 8PM

514 Fourth Street, San Rafael, CA

THE MARSH BERKELEY
Saturdays, April 13, 20, 27, May 4, 5PM

2120 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA

Elaine, intrepid lesbian, turkey-baster mom and childhood abuse survivor sets out at 60 to untangle the story of her mixed heritage.

 

If only that were ALL she'd inherited from her dramatically disturbed mother!  It's a tale of irony, outrage and irreverence. Guaranteed fun for "dysfunctionals", genealogists, social activists, the deeply hopeful and anyone who loves their family despite it all.

"My mother told us some of her family was Indian (Native American). Her telling was jumbled and bitter in ways I couldn’t understand. So, growing up in the 1950’s, I never knew which box to check: White, Black, Indian, Asian, Hispanic, Other. I didn’t want to check White – that would be a denial of my mixed heritage. But I didn’t feel I could check Indian – that felt like stealing something that wasn’t mine. I always chose Other. I thought of and think of myself as Other. Other than the categories we are given to choose from and other than who and what is represented in the national stories of race and culture. A few years after my mother died, I took her ashes on a road trip to Walla Walla, Washington where she was born, to the reservation where her relatives lived, and to Portland where she grew up. On the reservation, I started to ask questions. I wondered how racial/cultural/historical trauma contributed to my mother’s mental illness. I wondered if there was some way to think of myself besides Other. Pilgrimage recounts a part of that journey.” - Elaine Magree, excerpt from "Other"

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"pussy
grabbing
revenge"

- a solo show by Elaine Magree

PussyGrabbingREVENGE is a seriously funny play about seriously unfunny things.

 

Spanning 60 years, collective responses to sexual threats and violence are recounted and interrogated: is it revenge, resistance, subversion or justice?

 

PGR tackles both personal and collective responses to sexual threats and violence and ponders the question:

what is justice?

~~~

 "Somehow it brings both deep drama and exuberant humor to a fast moving tale of growing up as a queer woman."

- JOsh Kornbluth

 

Listen to Elaine 
talk about PGR: 
(8:06)

"holding the edge"

- a solo show by Elaine Magree

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"These laughs in don’t just balance tears; they also amount to their own nugget of wisdom: In the face of senseless tragedy, it’s our duty not just to help our fellow humans, but also to live our own lives with irreverence and joy. "

- SF Chronicle, Lily Janiak

This solo show takes audiences to January 28, 1986 to join Elaine, a hospice nurse and Cub Scout mom. She finds herself in the chaotic socio-political center of the AIDS epidemic on the day of the Challenger explosion, confronting the relative value of lives. What does an irreverent and outraged lesbian, who also happens to be in the midst of early sobriety, do? Determined to keep holding the edge, Elaine starts a riot.

Click HERE to listen to an interview with Elaine discussing Holding the Edge with Jen Chien at KALW Public Media, Bay Area.

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"The story telling is deceptively simple cuz it's a ritual and a live performance and fiction and a protest all at once. The weaving of life and death is done as a magic spell that implicates the audience and we all change together. Something happens."

- Keith Hennessy

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