SNATCH ADAMS & TAINTY MCCRACKEN PRESENT IT'S THAT TIME OF THE MONTH to Premiere at Soho Rep

Soho Rep, in association with The Bushwick Starr, will present Becca Blackwell’s Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month, directed by Jess Barbagallo (he/him). With Snatch Adams, Blackwell (they/them)—a member of the first cohort of artists in Soho Rep’s Project Number One and, previously, a performer in Soho Rep’s world premiere production of Richard Maxwell’s Samara—returns to Soho Rep with a joyously vulgar queer spectacle. Snatch Adams is written and performed by Blackwell and Amanda Duarte (she/her), developed with Barbagallo and Greg Corbino (he/him), with an immersive production design by Corbino; Barbara Samuels (she/her) serves as Creative Producer. 

Blackwell (Is This a Room; They, Themself and Schmerm) assumes the role of a six-foot tall vagina, the eponymous Snatch Adams, who recently lost her job at Planned Parenthood and has turned to hosting a talk show. Snatch is joined by her co-host, the recently #MeToo-ed comic and life-sized taint Tainty McCracken, played by Duarte (Staying Alive, Dead Darlings). Together, they lead audiences through the evening—a taping of their antic-filled talk show, with biologically-themed games, the word “vagina” uttered at world-record-breaking rates, and each performance featuring a special guest interviewee embarking on a collective metaphysical journey with Snatch and Tainty. Guests will change each night.  

Snatch Adams represents a major milestone in Blackwell’s singular career: having appeared in other artists’ work and written and performed solo shows, Blackwell now takes the lead creative role in imagining a work from the ground up and situating it in a fully designed and embodied world.

In 2013, as Planned Parenthoods in Texas were shuttering and Wendy Davis was filibustering to deny the passage of anti-abortion legislation, a vision emerged of a giant clown vagina counter-protesting Planned Parenthood protestors. 

The idea of embodying this goofy character in some capacity onstage, Blackwell explains, “became a way to performatively deal with the fact that everyone still hates women and people who have vaginas—and ask how do we get out of this? How does gender keep us stuck inside of it? As a person who loves humor, and feels like people struggle to even have these conversations, I wanted a way to start them with a feeling of fun and safety and curiosity.” 

Blackwell enlisted Amanda Villalobos for puppetry design to give flesh to Snatch Adams, and soon found the voice befitting the vulvar puppet. And so Snatch Adams, flamboyant TV personality and anthropomorphic genital, was born. 

“But I couldn't imagine doing it alone,” says Blackwell, “So I went to the other weirdest person I could think of, Amanda Duarte, and asked, will you be my weird sidekick?” To Blackwell’s delight and Snatch Adams’ dismay, Tainty McCracken—the “brogressive” taint forced onto the talk show by network execs to offer a male presence—became her co-host. 

Snatch Adams is the first production of Soho Rep’s 2023-2024 season, curated by outgoing Soho Rep Directors Sarah Benson and Meropi Peponides, and featuring three works by artists the organization has a long history of engaging. (The season also includes work by fellow inaugural Project Number One member Shayok Misha Chowdhury and Raja Feather Kelly—who choreographed Sarah Benson’s production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview and was, himself, formerly a member of Soho Rep’s Writer Director Lab.)

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

The world premiere production of Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month runs October 25 - December 3 at Soho Rep, located at 46 Walker Street in Manhattan. The production opens on Thursday, November 2.

Tickets are $35 and can be purchased by visiting sohorep.org or calling 646-586-8982. $20 rush tickets are available at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain for each performance. $0.99 Sunday tickets will be offered on November 12 & 19. They are available first come, first served at the box office only. There are no advance sales for rush or $0.99 Sunday tickets.

About Becca Blackwell

Becca Blackwell (they/them) is an NYC-based trans actor, performer, and writer. Existing between genders, Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D'Amour. Film/TV includes Survival of the Thickest, Bros, Sort Of, High Maintenance, Ramy, Marriage Story, Shameless, Deadman's Barstool, and Jack in the Box. They have toured their solo shows They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice across the U.S. and are currently creating a new show, Back To She, that will premiere in 2024. Blackwell was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace award and the Creative Capital Award.  

About Amanda Duarte

Amanda Duarte (she/her) is a writer-performer who lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York, among other publications, and she has appeared on stages large, small, and legally nonexistent across, above and under the city for two decades. Recent shows include Staying Alive at Joe's Pub, the long-running cult favorite Dead Darlings at Judson, and the Nasty Women comedy series at the 14th St. Y. Current projects include farming, strenuous attempts at astral projection, and political subterfuge. For six years, she has been fortunate enough to collaborate with Becca Blackwell and wear the indeed heavy but truly priceless rectal crown of Tainty McCracken.

About Jess Barbagallo

Jess Barbagallo (he/him) 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). He is a regular contributor at Artforum.

About Barbara Samuels

Barbara Samuels (she/her) is a queer producer, organizer, and lighting designer. Barbara’s innovative, intersectional, and antiracist design-forward approach to creating live events aims to unearth the human condition while destabilizing harmful power structures. Samuels is currently developing projects with Kedian Keohan and Becca Blackwell. She served as the General Manager of OBIE Award-winning 13P from 2008-2012, and as Producing Director of Morgan Gould and Friends from 2014-2018. In 2016, in addition to being a Target Margin Institute Fellow, The Interval named Barbara a Woman to Watch. Samuels currently runs the Wingspace Mentorship Program. She holds a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.F.A in Lighting Design from NYU. Proud member of USA Local 829. 2022-24 WP Producers Lab. New Georges Affiliated Artist.

About Greg Corbino

Greg Corbino (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist, puppeteer, and educator. His work investigates how object performance and sculpture crafted from refuse material and engaged by community can create queer ecologies of care and action in public space. It is deeply invested in nature and aspires to be zero waste, creating work from recycled, found and salvaged materials as an act of repair. Gregory is a long time collaborator with Peter Schumann and The Bread and Puppet Theater where he was a full time company member from 2012-2016. He has worked with Xaviera Simmons, Cecilia Vicuña Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok, Reverend Billy, Savitri D and The Stop Shopping Choir, Amy Trompeter, John Heginbotham and Cathy Weiss. As a designer and fabricator his work has been seen at The Guggenheim Museum, The High Line and The Queens Museum, The Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Smithsonian Institution. Residencies have included LMCC Arts Center Governors Island (NYC), QueerLab (Rome) Isadora Duncan Dance Center (Greece) and Togo Village Art Museum (Taiwan).

About The Bushwick Starr

The Bushwick Starr is a nonprofit theater that cooperatively nurtures the creative spirit that has defined our neighborhood for decades. In creating close communion with professional and student performing artists to develop original work, we cultivate an electric space for embodied performance that respects and reflects the community that surrounds us. Since 2007, the Starr has served as a destination for bold and engaging performance. Past Seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as Ryan J. Haddad, Whitney White, Jeremy O. Harris, Heather Christian, Diana Oh, The Mad Ones, Haruna Lee, Clare Barron, and Daniel Fish. The Starr will establish its permanent home at 419 Eldert Street in 2024, creating a lasting cultural asset for Bushwick and for artists, students, and audiences across New York City. For more information, please visit thebushwickstarr.org/campaign.

About Soho Rep

Soho Rep provides radical theater makers with productions of the highest caliber and tailor-made development at key junctures in their artistic practice. The organization elevates artists as thought leaders and citizens who change the field and society. Artistic autonomy is paramount at Soho Rep; the organization encourages an unmediated connection between artists and audiences to create a springboard for transformation and rich civic life beyond the walls of its theater.

Critics continue to herald Soho Rep as a go-to theater destination for new and original works. New York Magazine says, “this indispensable theater offers more excitement per chair than any space in town,” Time Out New York says, “Soho Rep is the best theater in NYC,” and The New York Times describes Soho Rep as “form-twisting, boundary-breaking, and acclaimed” and says, “The downtown powerhouse… regularly outclasses the work done on many of the city’s larger stages.” The Village Voice named Soho Rep the “Best Off-Broadway Theater Company,” and the company was listed in Travel Magazine’s “10 Essential Off-Broadway Theaters.”

Soho Rep won the “Best Theater in NYC” award for the Time Out Best of the City Awards 2021. Time Out New York wrote, "Soho Rep isn’t the last word in downtown experimental theater: Better than that, it’s often one of the first words, championing major voices at key points in their careers…And Soho Rep’s low ticket prices, including 99¢ Sundays, help keep some of the city’s bravest, boldest and wildest theater within the reach of all New Yorkers."

Soho Rep has also been honored with a Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement. Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered 21 OBIE Awards; the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical; 18 Drama Desk nominations; two Kesselring Awards; The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc’s Sixty Miles To Silverlake; and a special citation in The New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s 2012-13 awards. Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, commissioned by Soho Rep and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theater artists such as David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Debbie Tucker Green, Aleshea Harris, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Daniel Alexander Jones, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Young Jean Lee, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and Anne Washburn.

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