Puffy Hair written & performed by Zoë Geltman directed by Julia Sirna-Frest
Performance History Vancouver Fringe Festival, September 2023 The Tank, November 2021: set & costumes by Enver Chakartash and lighting by Sarah Lurie Big Art Group's SFX Festival, February 2018 The PIT, December 2017 Uncanny Valley, August 2017
PUFFY HAIR is a night of existential stand-up performed by an id. Using Vaudeville-cum-Fosse dance moves to investigate one woman's ambivalent and tortured relationship to the male gaze, which she alternately cozies up to and execrates, it is a catharsis of self-hatred, body dysmorphia, and self-aggrandizement. A vigorous dose of lipstick smears and shoulder pads. A marriage between Joan Rivers and gastrointestinal turbulence. A struggle to hold space for the existential pressure of a bun. A boopity boop.
"Zoë Geltman's 'PUFFY HAIR' transforms beyond stand-up comedy to shocking and delicious intimacy... [the audience is] invited into Geltman's extravagant mind palace of feminine guts and glory... she zips and bops around the space, capturing a caricatured showman's energy akin to Joan Rivers meeting Liza Minnelli... The writing plays like a vigorous plea for intimacy with herself, a self-deprecating, self-aware routine as investigative and piercing as anyone's truest inner monologue talking to themselves in a mirror." -Nataline Rine, Onstage Blog
"Add wigs, impromptu handstands, plenty of always-relatable self-loathing, and a fascination with everyone from Joan Rivers to Bob Fosse and you've got something that sounds almost as awesome as lunch with Sarah Silverman. Or Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls." - The Georgia Straight
"A Fabulously Feral Feminist Fantasia... with Farts," Culturebot
Malicious Compliance written by Amara/AJ Brady directed by Julia Sirna-Frest
WP Pipeline Festival at WP Theater
Performed by Jade Jones, Nora Schell and Lorinda Lisitza
Produced by Precious Wilson-Gay SM Kyra Bowie Lights Megan Lang Set Erica Zhang, Music Xander Browne, Costumes Ásta Bennie Hostetter and Jules Kulaya Sound Chris Darbassie
Mo and Yuri sit under an almost non-existent potted tree named Beckett, waiting impatiently for the next phase of their career — the next part of their journey. Delores sings a song about the blood the land craves, a callous warning that the blood is the only thing that will allow them to ascend to the glory Mo and Yuri believe is possible. Inspired by Waiting for Godot, Malicious Compliance tells the story of two artists desperately waiting for a change that may cost more than they’re willing to give, or worse may never come.
Sea Fraud written by Zoë Geltman directed by Julia Sirna-Frest
The Brick Theater
Performed by Zoë Geltman, Maggie Katz and Ugo Chukwu. SM Blaze Ferrer, Set Christopher Heilman Costumes Ásta Bennie Hostetter, Lights Ebony Burton, Sound Jeff Aaron Bryant
A surrealist jaunt through office politics, friendship, the writing process, and the very strange experience of being a person living and eating in America.