#solo-performance

#solo-performance

The Specimen follows Johnny, a gay paleozoologist who loses his job amid Trump-era science budget cuts. Outraged and unmoored, Johnny refuses to abandon his life's work, continuing his research through increasingly dangerous-and darkly comedic-methods inside his apartment bathroom. Blending horror, satire, and political rage, The Specimen explores queer identity, institutional abandonment, and the costs of pursuing truth in a world that no longer funds it.

I remember laughing so hard, largely because of how Gridley, so relaxed in her comedy, played Juliet as someone who made sense to herself, if no one else, and what did she care? Gridley's comedic stance-part purveyor of nonsense, part paragon of common sense-put her squarely in the tradition of amazing women like Imogene Coca, and "Mad TV" 's Debra Wilson, comedians who made mental pratfalls a thing.

Tullock, who wrote Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God with Frank Winters, introduces Frances in her preferred environment, a cozy book talk with an easy interlocutor, where she can opine in a measured, NPR-ready alto about her memoir of the trauma she endured growing up in Kentucky. But soon, the action glitches. Frances's literary agent is calling, and the church she discussed in her book is threatening to sue.

Owens is on stage for the entire 95-minute run time of Primary Trust, guiding us into Kenneth's perspective on his world. Kenneth is an unobtrusive bit player in his small town, a fictional suburb of Rochester, New York - but in this play, he is the protagonist. All of the action revolves around him. It's quite a shift in focus for an unobtrusive Black man in a small town dominated by white people to be the focal point of the story.