Loudon Wainwright III to Bring One-Man Show SURVIVING TWIN to SubCulture, 6/3-24

Loudon Wainwright III will perform his one-man show SURVIVING TWIN June 3-24 at SubCulture. Directed by Daniel Stern, Wainwright connects and combines his songs with spoken-word performances of his father's columns for LIFE Magazine.

Loudon Wainwright III is widely considered one of the great singer-songwriters of his generation. His album High Wide & Handsome won a GRAMMY in 2010, and in April 2015 he was awarded BBC 2's Lifetime Achievement Award for songwriting. Some of the most memorable entries in his body of work are songs -- by turns poignant and hilarious -- about his family relationships, from "Rufus Is a Tit Man" to "Your Mother and I" to "Surviving Twin," from his 2001 album Last Man on Earth. More than four decades into his career, Wainwright has expanded the boundaries of his artistry with Surviving Twin, a new one-man show directed by Daniel Stern that connects and combines some of his songs with spoken word performances of columns his late father, Loudon Wainwright Jr., wrote for LIFE Magazine.

Loudon Wainwright III will offer work-in-progress performances of Surviving Twin June 3, 10, 17 and 24 at SubCulture (45 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012). All performances will begin at 7:30pm. Tickets ($30 in advance, $35 day of show) can be purchased at subculturenewyork.com/wainwright or 212.533.5470.

Wainwright describes Surviving Twin as a posthumous collaboration with his father -- whose column "The View from Here" was a favorite of LIFE readers throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s -- and as a game of creative catch between son and father, exploring issues like birth, loss, parenthood, fashion, pet ownership and mortality. The performance weaves together the son's songs with selected writings by his father, which the former transforms into spoken word pieces and intersperses with family history that is both narrated live and visible in four generations of photographs and films projected on stage.

Surviving Twin offers an intimate glimpse into Wainwright's relationship with his father and a meditation on father-son relationships in general. "The View From Here," LIFE's first personal column, began in 1963 and continued until Wainwright Jr.'s death in 1988. Upon his passing, Charles Champlin, then Arts Editor of The Los Angeles Times, wrote, "The column was always a pleasing paradox, a self -revealing and even confessional voice, thoughtful, concerned and unpretentious amid the grandeurs of photo-journalism."

Surviving Twin draws on Loudon Wainwright III's work as both a singer-songwriter and actor. Prior to beginning his recording career, which includes 26 studio albums to date, he spent a year and a half in the Drama department at Carnegie Mellon University. He has appeared in TV shows including "M.A.S.H.," "Ally McBeal," "Undeclared" and "Parks and Recreation"; in movies such as Big Fish, The Aviator and Knocked Up; on Broadway in Pump Boys and Dinettes; and Off-Broadway in Hot Lunch Apostles.