PRINCEVILLE — What’s so funny about death? Plenty if you’re the critically acclaimed performance artist, Ann Randolph, renowned for transforming horror into humor. “Loveland,” the one-woman show garnering Randoph “Best Solo Performer in San Francisco 2010” honors, has its premiere
PRINCEVILLE — What’s so funny about death?
Plenty if you’re the critically acclaimed performance artist, Ann Randolph, renowned for transforming horror into humor.
“Loveland,” the one-woman show garnering Randoph “Best Solo Performer in San Francisco 2010” honors, has its premiere at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Church of the Pacific in Princeville.
Set on a cross-country flight, Randolph assumes 10 different characters. The impetus for her chosen content was the year leading up to the death of her father.
“That year I was always on a plane (traveling from Los Angeles, Calif. to her hometown of Loveland, Ohio),” she said.
“I thought the grief would over-take me so I explored every aspect of what I thought would happen if I let myself lose it.”
Performance art as a coping mechanism for angst or sadness is not new to this seasoned actress. Randolph’s past productions have examined social issues running the gamut from homelessness to schizophrenia. Mel Brooks and the late Anne Bancroft produced her stories about working in a women’s homeless shelter, titled “Squeeze Box,” off-Broadway for a six-month run. “Squeeze Box” won LA Weekly’s “Best Solo Show” and the Los Angeles Times Ovation Award for “Best Solo Performer.”
In her latest production, “Loveland,” the heroine, Frannie Potts, faces the loss of the greatest love of her life, her mother. She takes the audience on a wild ride as she stumbles from outrageous confrontation and awkward confusion to a glimpse of the mystery, tragedy and beauty that unites everyone, states the press release.
“When you say you are doing a comedy on death and grief people wonder how I can make that funny, but it’s hysterical,” she said. “I try to look at it in a way I could find humor.”
Randolph mines the dark corners of her life for a story then creates characters by mocking contradictions she finds in herself.
“Mom and I are the main characters,” she said. “She’s the boozy alcoholic, and the version of me is an overly charged sexual misfit.”
Add to the mix a New Age yoga teacher, saccharine-sweet stewardess, mortician and a nursing-home social worker — and the result is what The Los Angeles Times lauds as “wickedly hysterical.”
Randolph, who has been compared to the late Gilda Radner, uses her elastic face, acrobatic voice and attuned body language to play male and female, young and old characters, her website states.
She likens her development as an artist to Rumi’s poem, “Chickpea to Cook,” where a chickpea leaps from a boiling broth to ask the cook, “Why are you doing this to me?” To which the cook knocks the chickpea down with a ladle, answering, “You think I’m torturing you. I’m giving you flavor.”
“Each time I’ve been whacked down by the ladle the material gets better and better,” Randolph said. “I wonder sometimes why I’m not bitter. But I keep finding things. We are a big mystery to ourselves and that’s inexhaustible.”
“Loveland” is directed by award-winning director Matt Roth and rated R for sexual content and language. Tickets are $20 at brownpapertickets.com/event/118937 or by calling 800-838-3006. Reservations strongly encouraged.
Visit annrandolph.com to learn more.
