The Peculiar Utterance of the Day: Live on Stage!

 

"It's all funny...Chao the writer has one of the most deliciously off-kilter senses of humor in modern theatre."
SmartTix

Tickets: $10

Dates
Times
Thursday 3/8
1030pm
Saturday3/10
10pm
Sunday 3/11
4pm
Tuesday 3/13
730pm
Saturday 3/17
7pm

Tom X. Chao weaves episodes of his comedic podcast, "The Peculiar Utterance of the Day," into his first all-new show in three years.  Chao (Cats Can See The Devil, Can’t Get Started) is "a dryly funny downtown comedian.”--New York Times.  “Tom X. Chao is a magnificently sick man."--Planet S

 

Tom X. Chao is a playwright and performance artist based in New York City's East Village.  Chao began his involvement with the Horse Trade Theater Group in 2000, following an invitation to develop a show, Can't Get Started, at the St. Marks Theater. The production was revived in 2001 along with The Negative Energy Field, billed as 2xTXC, again at the St. Marks Theater.  Chao was a Horse Trade Resident Artist from 2000-2004.  His one-act comedy, Cats Can See The Devil, appeared in the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival (at the St. Marks Theater). The script was selected for the print anthology Plays and Playwrights 2004. Three monologues from the play were further reprinted in Best Men's (and Women's) Stage Monologues 2004 (Smith & Kraus). Chao began appearing in Canadian Fringe Festivals during 2005, presenting an anthology show, Freak Out Under the Apple Tree, at the Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals, and The Moral Values Festival in Brooklyn, NY.  In 2005, he remounted Can't Get Started at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in Alberta, Canada. Chao has been invited to present original theater pieces by numerous New York City theater organizations, including Confluence Theatre Company, Prospect Theater, P.S.122, Surf Reality, Dixon Place, BRIC Studio, and The Brick Theater. Currently he writes and produces a daily comedic podcast, "The Peculiar Utterance of the Day," which can be heard at txc.libsyn.com.  He recently released his first audio CD of four original songs, entitled The Only Record. 

Please visit tomxchao.com for more information.

Tom X. Chao

The Cast and Crew

Gyda Arber

The movie The Wizard of Oz inspired actress Gyda Arber to take up performing at the tender age of three. After working as a child performer with San Francisco's Children's Opera Company for many years, in high school Gyda starred in many of her school productions (following in the footsteps of Lowell High School's Benjamin Bratt and Carol Channing) and studied with Guinness Book champion tapper Rosie Radiator and famed vocal coach to the stars (including Barbra Streisand) Judy Davis. Her studies continued with her acceptance into NYU's prestigious musical theatre program. After four years of intensive study, Gyda emerged onto the Indie Theatre scene, performing with such companies as Gorilla Rep, Inverse Theater, Pilot House, and The Brick. She's currently in her second year at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York, a 2-year Meisner conservatory.

 

Danny Bowes
Danny Bowes has appeared most recently in Temptation and Mountain Hotel in the Havel Festival (the first festival featuring all the works of Czech ex-premier/dissident playwright Vaclav Havel) at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this past fall. Previous highlights include In a Strange Room and The Pragmatists at the Brick, and The Water Hen at the Present Company Theatorium. Bowes' forays into playwriting (acclaimed by nytheatre.com for their "novel and adventurous content") have been performed at Bard College, Columbia University, and the Brick.

Josephine Cashman
Josephine Cashman (performer). Recent credits include Sarah in Geology of the Mind, Beth in Linguish (Untitled Theater Company #61), Ida Wolfe in World Gone Wrong (Gemini CollisionWorks), Lucetta in Two Gentlemen of Verona (Deptford Players), and Audrey in Don Nigro's The Curate Shakespeare's As You Like It. Other memorable roles include Miranda in The Tempest, Marissa in the world premiere of Whywork.com (E.S.T), Regan in King Lear (Oberon Theatre Ensemble), Spike in Larry and the Werewolf (Gemini Collisionworks), Hilda in the world premiere of Harry in Love, Florinda in Into the Woods, Lady MacDuff in Macbeth and Ann Slade in Ten Nights in a Bar Room. She also does a bunch of film and television. Love and thanks to Those in the Know.

 

Rosalie Purvis
Rosalie Purvis (dramaturge, choreographer) has directed plays and choreographed dance-theatre performances at the Brick, the Henry Street Settlement, Manhattan Theatre Source, and many other venues in New York City, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam.  Her most recent projects include productions of Jacob M. Appel's "In The Floodplain," Lila Rose Kaplan's "Catching Flight" at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Mya Kagan's "Monotone, Poncho, Spatula" as part of the Estrogenius Festival, and staged readings at the Culture Project and the Atlantic Theater's Second Stage.  Rosalie also recently staged a series of interpretive works based on Shostakovich's fantasies for piano at the Duke Romijn Theater in the Netherlands.  Among her other directing credits are Jonathan Levy's "Charlie the Chicken," Brecht's "The Good Person of Setzuan," as well as the world premieres of "Sandsharks on the A-train" and "This is Not a Burlesque." She has worked as a movement coach at the White Horse Theatre Company, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, the Prospect Theatre, and elsewhere.  Rosalie is a graduate of Bard College (BA in drama/dance), and the MFA program in Theater Directing at Brooklyn College.  Sometimes she performs.  She likes doing that, too.  She is currently in rehearsal for "Kinetic Fortress" by JoAnne Maffia of the Jojo Experiment.  This is a multi-media piece, in which she will be seen (in shadow) during March at 78th Street Theatre Lab.

Tom X. Chao Press Quotes
(in reverse chronological order)

Can’t Get Started
(Tom X. Chao production)

"It's charged, smart stuff. . . . [Chao's] self-depreciating revelations about his own inequities and insecurities are hilarious. . . . It's very dry, coy and funny stuff. . . . The parallels between leaving yourself on the page as a writer and truly opening yourself up to another person are sharply drawn in this darkly comic play. . . . If you're looking for an anti-Fringe play, you've found it."

--Yuri Wuensch, Edmonton Sun (5 Suns out of 5 rating, also "Pick of the Fringe")

"Can't Get Started, [Chao's] clever exploration of the hapless nerd's place in the sexual universe, is THE date play of the 2006 Fringe. Men will recognize something primal and honest here, beginning with the absolute wonder that is Tamara Hamilton. . . . Tom X. Chao is perfect as Tom X. Chao. As a Fringe play, Can't Get Started is well aware of itself as a Fringe play. . . . What follows is uneven, juvenile, geeky, stupid, smart and a veritable hoot."

--Todd Babiak, Edmonton Journal (* * * * 4 stars out of 5 rating)

Can’t Get Started
(Black Sheep Theatre production)

"It must be said that New York writer Tom X. Chao is a magnificently sick man."

--Planet S (Saskatoon)

"Playwright Tom X. Chao's little gem is a definite sleeper hit."

--Toronto Sun

"A personal story of heartbreak from playwright Tom X. Chao. . . . His brainy banter . . . is entertaining . . . including a hilarious puppet show between geometric shapes which has 'no allegorical content'."

--Eye Weekly (Toronto)

"New York playwright Tom X. Chao certainly deserves a lot of respect just for finding a new take on the “smart, misunderstood, antisocial guy wonders why girls don’t like him” premise. . . . It’s self-referential in a surprisingly funny way. . . . It’s very clever, thought-provoking, at points very funny. . . . If you’re like me, and you like your Fringe shows extra-fringey, you’ll probably thoroughly enjoy Can’t Get Started."

--CBC Manitoba (Winnipeg, previewed in Ottawa)

Freak Out Under the Apple Tree:
(Some of) The Best of Tom X. Chao

“Chao is a party pooper of the first order, and his humor stands sentinel on the wall of dispassionate observation. . . . He is a talent worth following, a comedian whose unique delivery sharply jabs the ridiculous and mundane.”

--NYTheatre.com

"Chao's a funny, sarcastic, dry urban hipster."

--Montreal.com

"[Chao] offers up a surreal, sophisticated, but decidedly dyspeptic kind of humour here. Imagine Monty Python after an especially bitter divorce. . . ."

--Winnipeg Free Press

"Chao is a funny man. . . . Chao’s drollness and dark, hip sketches are smart and subversive . . . "

--Uptown (Winnipeg)

How to Invoke Pan
(The Hell Festival, Brick Theater)

Tom X. Chao is "a dryly funny downtown comedian."

--New York Times

"My favorite . . . was certainly How to Invoke Pan, starring Tom X. Chao. . . . His delivery of the mundane is alive with timing . . . a gold value that alone outweighs the $10 fee at the door. . . . I found tremendous adventure in this piece . . . . With dead-pan flatness, Chao’s narration brilliantly serves up the items we would need to bring Pan into our lives. . . . You will laugh up a storm . . ."

--Matthew Trumbull, NYTheatre.com (2nd review)



"How to Invoke Pan, was the jewel. . . . The text, by Chao and Craig Heimbichner, is clever, but the star is Chao’s deadpan hipster delivery. He has a gorgeous way of saying a line, then patiently staring into the distance while waiting for the audience to catch up to the joke."

--David Johnston, NYTheatre.com (1st review)

"Gothamist is especially looking forward to seeing Tom X. Chao, performance-artist and bladder-taunting comic, who had a much-deserved success at FringeNYC last year with his original play Cats Can See The Devil.”

--The Gothamist, "Go To Hell"

More Praise

"Chao is, perhaps above all else, a supremely funny writer. His is a far-ranging, esoteric wit . . . "

--Martin Denton, editor, Plays and Playwrights 2004

"Tom X. Chao is one of our favorite local playwrights because he's like a Chinese-American Dennis Potter, hopelessly morbid with a very sharp and very dry wit."

--NY Press

"[NYFA Current has] got a rant and rave with Tom X. Chao which made me laugh. I haven't seen him perform in awhile and I forgot about his dry, sardonic wit."

--Culturebot.org

"One of the smartest and most original anti-comedians around . . . Tom X. Chao is a talent worth checking out."

--Theatermania (review of Can’t Get Started)

"Hilariously angsty writer-performer Tom X. Chao presents two works in repertory . . . Misery and self-loathing haven't been this funny since Dostoyevsky quit his stand-up routine."

--Time Out New York (preview of 2xTXC)

Can't Get Started is "endearing . . . Chao performs several congenial characters . . . His self-obsession is balanced by the omnipresence of charming Eve Kerrigan, a shrewd alter ego . . ."

--The Village Voice (review of Can’t Get Started)

"I stumbled on [The Negative Energy Field] and felt like I'd finally found the fringe in the Fringe Festival. It was grim, weird, funny, and chillingly perceptive . . . turns St. Marks Place into Bleaker Street."

--OffOffOff.com

Tom Chao is "one of the funniest writers on contemporary male uncertainty that we've seen in a long time."

--Matthew Finch, WBAI (live interview)