The Fisher Center at Bard Presents Brokentalkers and Adrienne Truscott’s Unruly Parody Masterclass, April 3–6, Immediately Following Performances At NYU Skirball In New York City
The Fisher Center at Bard, one of the country’s leading multidisciplinary producing houses, presents Masterclass, from Brokentalkers (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) and Adrienne Truscott (2024 Spiegeltent emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters). Blending together Truscott’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other. This “playful provocation…joyfully burlesque[s] the ugliness of machismo in art and in life” (The Guardian). It comes to the Fisher Center just after an engagement in New York City at NYU Skirball, on March 28 and 29. With Masterclass, the Fisher Center continues a close relationship with Truscott, who this year also returns to the institution’s beloved annual SummerScape festival, as the emcee of its Spiegeltent programming.
Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play. Using real-life examples of unnamed divisive but celebrated playwrights, Masterclass takes from existing footage, publications, and interviews to let these very artists reveal uncomfortable truths about themselves, and by extension, our culture.
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).
Masterclass was written and created by Brokentalkers co-artistic directors Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan, and Adrienne Truscott. The creative team includes Eddie Kay (movement director), Rachel Bergin (creative producer), Sarah Foley (costume designer), Dara Hoban (lighting designer), Ellen Kirk (set designer), and Jennifer O’Malley (sound designer).
Masterclass performances take place:
Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 pm
Friday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Saturday, April 5 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday, April 6 at 3 pm
Tickets are available here.
After the performance on Sunday, April 6, there will be a post-show discussion with the writers and creators of Masterclass: Feidlim Cannon and Adrienne Truscott, in conversation with Gideon Lester, the Artistic Director of the Fisher Center. The Sunday, April 6 performance of Masterclass—as well as the post-show talk—will be ASL-interpreted.
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
Masterclass is created with funding from Arts Council of Ireland and is a co-production with Project Arts Centre, Mermaid Arts Centre, and Dublin Fringe Festival.
International Touring is kindly supported by Culture Ireland.
Masterclass premiered at Project Arts Centre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2021.
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, Andrew E. Zobler, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, the Educational Foundation of America, the Smokler/Hebert Family Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
Post Date: 03-07-2025
Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play. Using real-life examples of unnamed divisive but celebrated playwrights, Masterclass takes from existing footage, publications, and interviews to let these very artists reveal uncomfortable truths about themselves, and by extension, our culture.
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).
Masterclass was written and created by Brokentalkers co-artistic directors Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan, and Adrienne Truscott. The creative team includes Eddie Kay (movement director), Rachel Bergin (creative producer), Sarah Foley (costume designer), Dara Hoban (lighting designer), Ellen Kirk (set designer), and Jennifer O’Malley (sound designer).
Masterclass Schedule
Masterclass performances take place:
Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 pm
Friday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Saturday, April 5 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday, April 6 at 3 pm
Tickets are available here.
After the performance on Sunday, April 6, there will be a post-show discussion with the writers and creators of Masterclass: Feidlim Cannon and Adrienne Truscott, in conversation with Gideon Lester, the Artistic Director of the Fisher Center. The Sunday, April 6 performance of Masterclass—as well as the post-show talk—will be ASL-interpreted.
About Brokentalkers
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. Some of their notable works include: Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy & Silver Stars.
To date, Brokentalkers have presented work in Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, New Zealand, and the U.S.
About Adrienne Truscott
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
Funding Credits
Masterclass is created with funding from Arts Council of Ireland and is a co-production with Project Arts Centre, Mermaid Arts Centre, and Dublin Fringe Festival.
International Touring is kindly supported by Culture Ireland.
Masterclass premiered at Project Arts Centre as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2021.
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, Andrew E. Zobler, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, the Educational Foundation of America, the Smokler/Hebert Family Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
Post Date: 03-07-2025