The Fisher Center at Bard Presents Brokentalkers and Adrienne Truscott’s Unruly Parody Masterclass, April 3–6, Immediately Following Performances At NYU Skirball In New York City
Performed by Truscott and Brokentalkers Co-Artistic Director Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass is a Scathing and Hilarious Dissection of the Male Artistic “Genius”—and of Excruciating Truths Surrounding Privilege, Gender, and Power
Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play. Using real-life examples of unnamed divisive but celebrated playwrights, Masterclass takes from existing footage, publications, and interviews to let these very artists reveal uncomfortable truths about themselves, and by extension, our culture.
This wickedly funny work has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and more.
When it premiered at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Masterclass won the Fringe First Award. It received five-star reviews in The Irish Times, The Stage, and The List, and has been hailed by critics as “a magnificent send-up of the anxieties of the age” (The Irish Times) and an “inspired interrogation of 'the great male artist…’ as interrogative as it is hilarious” (The Stage). This “magnificent, unmissable” (The Scotsman) work “slices through the pieties of scripted theatre and contemporary attempts to preserve patriarchy and privilege beneath the appearance of solidarity” (The List).
Masterclass was written and created by Brokentalkers co-artistic directors Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan, and Adrienne Truscott. The creative team includes Eddie Kay (movement director), Rachel Bergin (creative producer), Sarah Foley (costume designer), Dara Hoban (lighting designer), Ellen Kirk (set designer), and Jennifer O’Malley (sound designer).
Masterclass Schedule
Masterclass performances take place:
Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 pm
Friday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Saturday, April 5 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday, April 6 at 3 pm
Tickets are available here.
After the performance on Sunday, April 6, there will be a post-show discussion with the writers and creators of Masterclass: Feidlim Cannon and Adrienne Truscott, in conversation with Gideon Lester, the Artistic Director of the Fisher Center. The Sunday, April 6 performance of Masterclass—as well as the post-show talk—will be ASL-interpreted.
About Brokentalkers
Brokentalkers are a multi-award-winning Dublin-based theatre company. For over a decade, Brokentalkers have been making formally ambitious work that defies categorization and have built a reputation as one of Ireland’s most innovative and original theatre companies. They make work that responds to the contemporary world, using elements such as original writing, dance, classic texts, film, interviews, found materials, and music to represent that world in performance. Some of their notable works include: Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy & Silver Stars.
To date, Brokentalkers have presented work in Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, New Zealand, and the U.S. brokentalkers.ie
About Adrienne Truscott
Adrienne Truscott’s work crosses lines and methodologies from dance, theatre, comedy and performance art; these iterations appear as drag club acts as well as evening-length pieces; dances to one-lady plays; group pieces to solos. Recent pieces include THIS and Wild Bore. She is one half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a boundary-busting cabaret and circus collaboration that has been laying stages to waste for 20 years, and her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else continues to tour (as both a solo and an expanded group show). This show is considered a critical impetus to the evolving discourse about intersections of rape culture, gender, and comedy. adriennetruscott.com
Funding Credits
Masterclass is created with funding from Arts Council of Ireland and is a co-production with Project Arts Centre, Mermaid Arts Centre, and Dublin Fringe Festival.
International Touring is kindly supported by Culture Ireland.
Masterclass premiered at Project Arts Centre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2021.
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, Andrew E. Zobler, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, the Educational Foundation of America, the Smokler/Hebert Family Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
About the Fisher Center at Bard
The Fisher Center is a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education that demonstrates Bard College’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. To support artists, students, and audiences in the examination of artistic ideas, the Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire.
Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. This world-class theater building will be complemented by a new studio building designed by Maya Lin, scheduled to open in 2026. More than 200 events and 50,000 visitors are hosted at the Fisher Center each year, and over 300 professional artists are employed annually. As a powerful catalyst of art-making regionally, nationally, and worldwide, the Fisher Center produces 8 to 10 major new works in various disciplines every year. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 165-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.
Through Fisher Center LAB, the Center’s acclaimed residency and commissioning program, artists are provided with custom-made support toward their innovative projects, and their work has been seen in over 100 communities around the world. Resident choreographer Pam Tanowitz’s 2018 “Four Quartets” was recognized as “the most important work of dance theater so far this century” by The New York Times. In 2019 the Fisher Center won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical for Daniel Fish’s production of Oklahoma! which began life in 2007 as an undergraduate production at Bard and was produced professionally by the Fisher Center in 2015 before transferring to New York City. Illinoise, a 2023 Fisher Center world premiere from artists Sufjan Stevens, Justin Peck, and Jackie Sibblies Drury, was recognized with a Tony Award for Best Choreography following its tour and transfer to Broadway.
Fishercenter.bard.edu
Facebook.com/fishercenterbard
Instagram.com/fishercenterbard
Twitter.com/fisherctrbard
Youtube.com/fishercenterbard
For more information, please contact Blake Zidell of Blake Zidell & Associates at blake@blakezidell.com or 917.572.2943.