Word: shear
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...personal calamities of illness and grief. Actors vary from the well-established (Redgrave, three-time Tony Award winner Irene Worth and Regina Taylor of TV's I'll Fly Away) to the + succes d'estime (Eric Bogosian, Anna Deavere Smith) to the yearning-for- discovery (Sherry Glaser, Claudia Shear, Barnaby Spring). Some play a multitude of characters, some just one, and several basically play themselves. Some, like Spalding Gray, who in January finished a return engagement on Broadway and is coming back in June, devote themselves principally to the solo form. Others, like John Leguizamo, who was named last season...
...performers. Economically, they improve their prospects of getting produced because one-person shows involve fewer salaries -- onstage, obviously, but also backstage -- and require less scenery and costuming. Artistically, these actor-authors have bargaining power to keep their visions intact. Says Evangeline Morphos, a producer of Blown Sideways Through Life, Shear's account of getting and hating 64 jobs: "If you finance a one-person show, you basically buy into the creator's view of the world. The words and delivery are their sense of reality. And you market the personality as much as the play...
...have twenty dollars to spare (twenty six on weekends) and have always thought of yourself as Nancy Drew or one of the Hardy boys, go see Shear Madness. After all, it's in the Guinness...
...Shear Madness has been running continuously for ten years in Boston and has made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running non-musical play in the country). It is playing simultaneously in six other American cities not to mention Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Budapest and Melbourne. The play relies on two gimmicks: setting the action in the city and year in which it is playing and populating it with local caricatures and spontaneous humor. These ideas keep the ten-year-old act from becoming dated, as recent events are constantly mentioned--everyone from Nancy Kerrigan...
More than anything else, this play rests on the assumption that everyone--not just your roommate--wants to feel more insightful and intelligent than those around. Shear Madness gives everyone and their mother (and roommate) the chance to enact Sherlock Holmes fantasies...