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If you were a private in the army and went AWOL in Iraq, where would you hide? In the body of a teenage girl, of course.
Plays & Players is presenting the world premiere of Pardon My Invasion, an adult dark comedy about Private Malcolm Jack and his residency in 13-year-old Penny’s body. Penny’s mother tries to lure Jack out, and what follows is nothing but pure, rowdy fun.
Naturally, casting Penny/Private Jack was no easy feat. “This city [has] an amazing abundance of quality young female performers — but to find one that can be a 13-year-old girl going through puberty and a [twentysomething] male full of the bravado and the pain necessary to represent a soldier, well, it was no easy task,” says artistic director Daniel Student. “Emily Gibson has both the natural instinct to take on both of these characters.”
Plays & Players has been heralded in Philadelphia Magazine’s Best in Philly issue twice in a row, and this is the fourth year in a row the theater is featuring the world premiere of a local playwright. “It feels that each year we are able to stretch our audience’s expectations more and more and challenge them to deal with potential discomfort of [the] subject matter,” Student says.
The play undoubtedly resonates with current issues, including the impact that the Iraq War has had on recent generations. “But what truly makes it unique is that it is a consistently surprising, artistic and imaginative play from Joy Cutler,” says Student. “Joy’s background in performance art lends [itself to] an absurdist style that is a joy to watch: sergeants popping out of armchairs, women with cannons for breasts, and a grown man dealing with the physical limitations of having his first period while stuck in the body of a young girl.”
Bodily functions and gender reversals naturally make for a hilarious play, which is smartly written by Cutler. The California College of Art graduate has had her plays produced in Indonesia, Amsterdam and Berlin. They’ve been seen locally at the Philadelphia Bake-Off, New Play Festival and the 2011 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
Nov. 3-19, $10-25, Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey Place, 215-735-0630, playsandplayers.org.
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