Photos: PRONOUN SHOWDOWN Celebrates 5th Anniversary at 54 Below

PRONOUN SHOWDOWN celebrated five years at 54 Below on April 17th with two performances to which fans of the novelty series flocked, excited and happy to celebrate five years of interesting and festive creativity. At Pronoun Showdown producers Abby DePhillips and Kimberly Jenna Simon present a series of musical numbers that are well-known, but in ways that explore them in new manners, simply by changing a few pronouns. For instance, Ms. Simon herself performed "Nothing" from A Chorus Line and, by changing the pronouns, told the story of the other students in Mr. Carp's acting class watching Diana Morales fail at the assignments that they are all working so hard to ace. Sometimes a little more than pronouns must be changed, in order to make a story work, like when Antonio Cipriano (a Pronoun Showdown regular and crowd favorite) made minor alterations to turn "She Used To Be Mine" into a song being sung TO Jenna, rather than by Jenna, from a concerned brother. It's incredibly clever and Musical Director, Maestro Benjamin Rauhala, was right on top of every move and every moment for fifteen musical numbers, so on top of things that when Megan Kane made a flub at a crucial point in "Maybe This Time," he wisely suggested she take it all the way back to the key change because she and the audience deserved that key change moment so important to the famed torch song. It is instances like this that remind everyone why Mr. Rauhala is so vital to the scene, to the artists, and to the art form. The entirety of the 9:30 performance proved to be incredibly entertaining, as well as a fascinating study in the change of perspective that can occur with just a little imagination and a working knowledge of good grammar. May Pronoun Showdown live another five years or more.

Below, please enjoy photos from the evening, in chronological order of appearance, with the names of the performers and the songs they performed.

Find great shows to see on the 54 Below website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher; Visit the Stephen Mosher website HERE.