THE DRIFTS LIVE: THE NOVEL ONSTAGE Returns to the United Solo Tonight

After a successful run at the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, author and performer Thom Vernon brings his solo show, The Drifts Live back to New York. The Drifts Live is a hybrid of traditional literary story theatre and performance arts of his acclaimed novel The Drifts as part of the 4th annual United Solo Festival for one show only, tonight, November 6, 7pm. You won't want to miss this live version of a novel Canada's national newspaper called "a great contemporary twist on the Southern Gothic tradition."

The Drifts Live tackles the consequences of gender and the meanings applied to bodies in a Southern small town. In this one-hour live performance of excerpts from his novel, The Drifts, Vernon brings a trans-dad, a bitter pregnant housewife, her cheating husband, his butch lover and a calf onstage to fight their sex.

The creative team includes dramaturgy by Maja Ardal and original music by Lyon Smith.

All performances take place at Theatre Row - The Studio Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, between 9th & 10thAvenues, New York, NY 10036.

Tickets are $18.00 and can be purchased at www.unitedsolo.org/us/2013-thedrifts/ or by calling 212-239-6200.

For more info: www.unitedsolo.org or www.TheDriftsLive.com

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Thom Vernon (performer/writer) is a queer-exiled American writer, actor and educator now based in Toronto. On-going artistic & critical explorations take on the unique collusions of gender, history & memory in everyday life. Recent work includes The Drifts (Coach House Books, 2010), The Angel at Our Table: Benjamin, Melancholy & the Art of Brooding (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012) & Selling It: Creative Writing& The Public Good. (Multilingual Matters 2012). Increasingly, he conducts performance/writing talks & critical workshops about gender and the meanings applied to bodies. Although he's recently back in the saddle with a Lifetime movie, you'll see him in mid-90s Film/TV (The Fugitive, Seinfeld, Grace Under Fire and General Hospital, etc.). www.thomvernon.com

About the book, The Drifts:

Lauded by the Globe and Mail as "magnificent", The Drifts has also been compared favourably to the work of Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and others. Vernon has a long history of bringing literature to life on-stage as part of The Piven Theatre Workshop, where he initially trained as an actor. HIV+ for 26 years, and being forced into exile from the U.S. to stay with his Zimbabwean partner, The Drifts is a literary and imaginative treatment of displacement. These experiences have also inspired several published critical articles about creative work and public policy. "It comes out of my own experience," says Vernon, "though it is more about exile from one's self."

Vernon began writing The Drifts while studying under Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream. It is a highly subjective, emotional and expressionistic reading experience. Thom has taken "Cubby" Selby's advice finding each person's voice and now translating them to the stage. Audiences have said, "Their voices are stricken and desperate and dangerously poetic....Thom embodies them with fluidity and a muscular grace. ...His characters are at once hilarious and heartbreaking....Wow!"

About United Solo:

United Solo is a New York-based company dedicated to the genre of one-person performance. Our goal is to present solo pieces, both local and international; discover original scripts; bring creators together; exchange perspectives; assemble performers, companies, and institutions, as well as other activities related to solo performance. We believe the single person on stage gives us the opportunity to connect and focus on the uniqueness of human being. Through the exploration of existential themes, solo artists reflect upon political, sexual, economical, religious, and social diversity. This diversity unites us all in a constellation of unique solos.

Phot Credit: Dixie Sheridan