NYU Skirball Presents the U.S. Premiere of BROKENTALKERS & ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT'S MASTERCLASS

NYU Skirball will present the NYC premiere of Masterclass, a hilarious examination of gender and power from Ireland's Brokentalkers Theatre and New York City's Adrienne Truscott, on Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 at 7:30 pm. Following its NYU Skirball performances, Masterclass will play the Fisher Center at Bard College, April 3 – 6.

Blending together the savagely comic discourse of Adrienne Truscott (Wild Bore, Asking For It) with the slick dramaturgy of the internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy), MASTERCLASS is a parody like no other - uncovering truths about privilege, power and the hold they have over our so-called great artists and the positions and opportunities they are granted.

Taking shape as an interview masterclass, Masterclass doesn't hold back. Performed by fed-up feminist Adrienne Truscott and all-around good guy Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a fun and familiar parody, but there is something more at play. Using the arts world as a metaphor, Masterclass is a literate and hilarious examination of gender and power. Masterclass won the Fringe First Award at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

This wickedly funny work has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and more. 

When it premiered at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Masterclass won the Fringe First Award. It received five-star reviews in The Irish Times, The Stage, and The List, and has been hailed by critics as “a magnificent send-up of the anxieties of the age” (The Irish Times) and an “inspired interrogation of 'the great male artist…' as interrogative as it is hilarious” (The Stage). This “magnificent, unmissable” (The Scotsman) work “slices through the pieties of scripted theatre and contemporary attempts to preserve patriarchy and privilege beneath the appearance of solidarity” (The List).

Brokentalkers are a multi-award-winning Dublin based theatre company. For over a decade Brokentalkers have been making formally ambitious work that defies categorization and have built a reputation as one of Ireland's most innovative and Original Theatre companies. They make work that responds to the contemporary world, using elements such as original writing, dance, classic texts, film, interviews, found materials and music to represent that world in performance. brokentalkers.ie/masterclass/

Adrienne Truscott's work crosses lines and methodologies from dance, theatre, comedy and performance art; these iterations appear as drag club acts as well as evening-length pieces; dances to one-lady plays; group pieces to solos. Recent pieces include THIS and Wild Bore. She is one half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a boundary-busting cabaret & circus collaboration that has been laying stages to waste for 20 years, and her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else continues to tour (as both a solo and an expanded group show). This show is considered a critical impetus to the evolving discourse about intersections of rape culture, gender and comedy. adriennetruscott.com/