BabyLove

Christen Clifford's

BabyLove

Written and performed by Christen Clifford
Developed with and directed by Julie Kramer

What Happens When Your Infant Son Becomes The Other Man?

"Like motherhood, BabyLove may not always be for the faint-of-heart, but is well worth your time."

Ivanna Cullinan

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Click here to purchase tickets

Tickets: $14

Dates

Times

Wednesday 3/7	9pm
Saturday 3/10	1pm
Sunday 3/11	5:30pm
Tuesday 3/13	7:30pm
Friday 3/16	730pm

BabyLove is Christen Clifford's story of motherhood and sexuality.
Infants on laps are welcome and sex toys will be given away.

"Comically provocative...daringly personal...a comfort to other new parents. Clifford (has) disarming charm!"
- The San Francisco Chronicle

From trying to conceive to masturbating with an infant, from the humiliations of postpartum sex to the eroticism of breastfeeding: in Clifford’s true stories of sex and motherhood she exposes the deepest secrets with refreshing candor and humor; by exploring the intimate, she illuminates the universal. A solo play with choreography by burlesque star Julie Atlas Muz and directed by Julie Kramer (Best of Fringe for Give Me Shelter, It’s a Hit!), BabyLove had its world premier in Ljubljana, Slovenia and was SOLD OUT and won BEST OF FRINGE at The San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2006.

BabyLove is based on Clifford’s controversial essay for Nerve.com. Clifford last appeared Off Broadway in the title role in The Woman Before, and has performed at Classic Stage Company, The Culture Project, and The Public Theatre. She has been a mainstage storyteller at The Moth. Her writing has been published in Salon.com, Nerve.com, The New York Press, and Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong (Disinfo). Clifford is a member of The Association for Research on Mothering as well as The Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality and is the winner of the 2006 New School MFA nonfiction writing competition. www.christenclifford.com

www.christenclifford.com

BabyLove won “Best of Fringe” awards at the 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival: “Best Female Solo Comedy” and “Sold Out”.

CHRISTEN CLIFFORD

is a performer and writer. Her most recent solo show, BabyLove , had its premier in Ljubljana , Slovenia in October 2005 at the Mesto Zensk International Festival of Contemporary Art and won Best Female Solo Comedy at The 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival. BabyLove was seen as part of The Hourglass Group's Real Live Women at the D-Lounge and was included in Terra Nova Collective's 3rd Annual Solo Arts Festival. Also as part of The Motherlode: the 10th Anniversary conference of The Association for Research on Motherhood at York University in Toronto , Ontario, Canada in October 2006.

www.christenclifford.com

Here's what they said about BabyLove in San Francisco:

The revelations of nursing-mother titillation are the subject of Christen Clifford's much-buzzed-about “BabyLove”.…Clifford's much-traveled "BabyLove" (it premiered last year in Ljubljana, Slovenia), seen Thursday at Exit on Taylor, deals with knotty (and naughty) issues at the beginning of life's spectrum: maternal sexuality. As developed with director Julie Kramer, with comically provocative choreography by Julie Atlas Muz, the uninhibited Clifford delves into some taboo topics with uncommon frankness and disarming charm.
Clifford presents herself as a woman who's always defined herself by her sexuality, "seeing the world through sex-colored glasses," suddenly confronted with prolonged postpartum pain, sexless monogamy and disturbing feelings of arousal while breast-feeding. Some of what she says is discomfiting; some, revelatory, and much may be a comfort to other new parents. It's also an exploration still in process (her son is now 3 years old), with Clifford still writing new endings for each show. It's daringly personal and, in Clifford's unabashedly generous performance, as engaging as it is provocative.

- The San Francisco Chronicle

Christen Clifford is a sex-positive activist…her work is exciting, she is sexy and vulnerable, and she delves in with good humor!

-Dr. Danielle Harel, DHS, MSW, Clinical sexologist. www.daretoenjoy.com

Here's what they said after the world premiere in Slovenia :

Smart, sexy and funny! Clifford is a wonderful storyteller and is so funny, and she performs with such truth and authenticity, that by the end no one in the audience doesn't want to be her little one, two-year-old son Felix, whom she is still breastfeeding.

- Mladina (like the Balkan Village Voice )

The most important piece of feminist theatre since The Vagina Monologues!

-kulturevermitterlin

Hilarious, smart, erotic and moving.

- Delo

Here's what they said about the show in New York :

Culturally fashion forward!

– MaudNewton.com, the Smart Set

A wonderfully moving and inspiring performance! Brilliant! It was brave, provocative, truth seeking, wildly entertaining and funny, painfully honest, tender and very moving. We were all blown away. And touched in our own private ways.

- Candida Royalle, Femme Productions,
author of How to Tell A Naked Man What to Do.

Christen Clifford's BabyLove gives a theatrical voice to what has too long been kept secret about sexuality and motherhood. Her stories about being pregnant, giving birth, concerns postpartum, and while breastfeeding reflect a common experience. The pulls and conflicting demands of motherhood are shown not to be at odds with a woman's sexuality, but an honest part of it. Women will laugh in recognition and men will learn a lot!

-Jean Levitan, Ph.D., Professor, and co-author of Healthy Sexuality ,
Society for the Study of Science and Sexuality

"Speaking the unspeakable is one of my favorite art forms. BabyLove is the real deal. Christen Clifford goes to places about motherhood that few would dare explore. BabyLove is a revelation to the world of experiences that millions of women have lived through and, without a doubt, taken to their graves. Christen Clifford ends the silence with nerves of steel and a vulnerable performance that celebrates the real in a woman's struggles between the sensual and the maternal."

Betty Dodson, PhD
author, Sex for One

Collaborator bios for BabyLove:

JULIE KRAMER (developed with/director)	directed the premiere of "BabyLove" for The City of Women Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, (as well as subsequent productions) and co-created and directed Clifford's “17 Guys I Fucked” at The Culture Project in New York. Other recent directing credits include the Ensemble Studio Theater, The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute/ New York University , the New York Fringe Festival, New Georges, Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and ABC TV. She has also directed three shows for the HBO/Aspen Comedy Festival (including Andrew Secunda's “One Woman Show” which won the Best of 2001 comedy, Time Out New York) and was the dramaturg for The Joys of Sex at The Variety Arts Theatre. Her work has received praise from The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Backstage. Julie Kramerdirected Wendy Weiner's Best of Fringe (NY) award-winning show “Give Me Shelter“ and ANDREW SECUNDA'S ONE WOMAN SHOW, which won Best of Comedy in Time Out New York.
JULIE ATLAS MUZ (choreographer)	is a choreographer/conceptual performance artist/burlesque sensation. 2004 Whitney Biennial Artist and a 2005 Valencia Bienal Artist, and 2007 Ethyl Eichenbereger Award artist-in-residence at P.S. 122. She has presented her work at P.S. 122, HERE, The Performing Garage and Art at St. Anne's Warehouse, chashama, LaMama, The Kitchen, and Dixon Place . Muz has been awarded Artist- in-Residency status from Chashama (2002), Joyce Soho (2001), Mondo Conne Artist-in-Residency at Dixon Place (2000) and Movement Research Artist-in-Residence (1998-99). Miss Exotic World 2006! JULIE ATLAS MUZ has been awarded Artist- in-Residency status from Chashama (2002), Joyce Soho (2001), Mondo Conne Artist-in-Residency at Dixon Place (2000) and Movement Research Artist-in-Residence (1998-99). She was a 2004 Whitney Biennial Artist and a 2005 Valencia Bienal Artist. Muz won the 2006 Miss Exotic World title. She was awarded the PS122 Ethyl Eichenberger Commission 2007.
TYLER MICOLEAU ( Original Lighting design, Slovenia )	He is the recipient of the 2004 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design, a 2004 Village Voice OBIE Award and a 2000-2002 National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Program for Directors and Designers. New York Off-Broadway design credits include: Orson's Shadow , BUG (OBIE Award, Lortel Award / Barrow Street Theater); Counsellor-At-Law (Peccadillo); Underneath the Lintel (SoHo Playhouse); The Night Heron , Dublin Carol , Mojo (Atlantic Theater); Refuge (Playwrights Horizons); My Marriage To Ernest Borgnine (Vineyard Theater). Also regional and international designs. Tyler Micoleau is the recipient of the 2004 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design, a 2004 Village Voice OBIE Award (BUG) and a 2000-2002 National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Career Development Program for Directors and Designers.
ELIZABETH RHODES (sound design)	New York credits include Steve Martin's adaptation of The Underpants and The Winter's Tale with director Barry Edelstein at Classic Stage Company; John Patrick Shanley's Dirty Story and Sailor Song as well as Dutch Heart of Man with LAByrinth; she has worked on numerous projects with director John Gould Rubin including Trial by Water (Ma-Yi), Hamlet , Blood in the Sink , Memoir (LAByrinth), Erin Cressida Wilson's Trail of Her Inner Thigh (LAByrinth) and The Erotica Project.
MELISSA SCHLACHTMEYER (costume design)	Associate/Assistant on numerous operas and Broadway productions. The Woman Before for German Theatre Abroad. Recent designs include: Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos , A Heartbeat to Baghdad (JABU, Henry Hewes Award nomination), Iphigenia at Aulis (Pearl Theatre Company), The Phoenician Women (Synapse Productions), Mimesophobia (SPF), The A Word (Greenwich Street Theatre/ Lark Theatre ), The Lunch Anxieties (DoGooder Productions) and Factory Girls (Williamstown Theatre Festival/Bay Street Theatre).