Eliza Bent's PENGUIN IN YOUR EAR to Play Elysian Theater Next Month

Bentertainment will present Penguin in Your Ear, a stand-up adjacent work-in-progress written and performed by Eliza Bent, and directed by Jess Barbagallo, on September 17 at 7:30pm at Elysian Theater.

Bent is the love-grandchild of Lili Tomlin, Mr. Peanut and Pee Wee Herman. A former downtown experimental New York theatre mainstay— whom Time Out New York once described as “immensely likeable”—Bent now steps in and “stand ups” inside a New Medium. Chicago-based Bent knows comedy is tragedy plus time.

Penguin in Your Ear, which recently played to sold-out houses at Brooklyn's The Brick, Chicago's Color Club and Omaha's Benson Theatre, features Bent's classic stew of jokes, puns, and uncanny accents. Philosophical stories and anecdotes that go absolutely nowhere are about new chapters, academia, relationship status, family, IBS, and America's favorite narrative: Second Acts.

This new intrepid work lasts a mere 50 minutes because Bent believes “brevity is the Sol Lewitt.” Audiences will cringe, chuckle, and squirm when not audibly laughing, “lol-ing,” and clamoring for more.

Performance Schedule:

Tues Sept 17 at 7:30pm

Location:

The Elysian
1944 Riverside Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90039

More info at:

https://www.elysiantheater.com/shows/penguininyourear
 

https://elizabent.wordpress.com/

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Bentertainment:

Bentertainment creates performance texts and media that tends toward narrative, dramatic, and linguistic structures that are indeed “bent” “different from normal; strongly inclined; changed from an originally straight condition.” Bentertainments take many shapes: as plays, solo shows, adaptations, hybrid works, experiential immersions, Zoom theatricals, and most recently stand-up. Bentertainments are seriously silly and philosophically inclined, they explore the edges of appropriateness and are best experienced in a state of ecstatic liveness.  

Eliza Bent (writer / performer)

Eliza Bent is a playwright, performer, and artistic director of Bentertainment. As the love child between Lily Tomlin, Pee Wee Herman, and Mr. Peanut Bent's Bentertainments include solo-ish works (Karen, I Said, Toilet Fire and Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen), plays (Indeed, friend!, On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba, The Hotel Colors), adaptations (The Beyonce, She of the Voice), and hybrid affairs (Bonnie's Last Flight, Real Talk / Kip Talk, Blue Wizard / Black Wizard, Pen Pals Meet). Bent's shows have been developed, workshopped, commissioned, and produced at Abrons Arts Center, the New Ohio, the Atlantic Theatre, the Bushwick Starr, the Exponential Festival, and New York Theatre Workshop's Next Door Series. Residencies: MacDowell, LMCC's Workspace, SPACE on Ryder Farm, New Georges, Target Margin Institute Fellow, Casa Zia Lina, Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Ground Floor, Beach64, and Pilot Balloon. As an actor Bent has performed in pint-sized New York theatres, regionally in Omaha and Louisville, and internationally with the performance ensemble Half Straddle. BA in philosophy Boston College, MFA in playwriting Brooklyn College. Bent is currently a lecturer in the Radio TV & Film department at Northwestern University.

Jess Barbagallo (director)

Jess Barbagallo is a theater artist, teacher, and writer. Some creations include: Sentence Fetish (The Brick's Trans Theater Festival, NYC); Not for Resale (in collaboration with NYU Steinhardt's Drama Therapy as Performance, Provincetown Playhouse); Beaches in Winter (Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU); Room for Cream: A Live Lesbian Serial (with the Dyke Division at LaMama ETC/The New Museum, NYC); The Puzzlers/The Puzzlers 2: Black Box (with Accent Wall Productions at The Brick's Exponential Festival); Weekend at Barry's/Lesbian Lighthouse (Abrons Arts Center, NYC); and Weekend at Barry's: Greatest Hits (The Brick). Currently, Jess is directing Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month to premiere at Soho Rep in October. He is a regular contributor at Artforum.

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