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Event
BUST: STARRING LAUREN WEEDMAN
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT LAUREN WEEDMAN'S SHOW BUST
"Lauren Weedman is the funniest woman alive"
- The Stranger
"...she's just plain funny, physically and verbally."
-The New York Times
"Laugh-out-loud show..."
-LA Times
"A horrific, hilarious journey...Weedman...has seemingly swallowed a cast of hundreds."
- Seattle Weekly
"Comedy is clearly one of Lauren Weedman's gifts -- the other is specificity. For an autobiographical solo performer who portrays herself as a self-involved goofball who's constantly putting her foot in her mouth, she has a remarkable ability to empathize with a galaxy of characters, from twitchy meth addicts to piggish Hollywood directors.
Bust, directed by Allison Narver, is a study in such empathy. Weedman -- an actor and former Daily Show with Jon Stewart correspondent who lives in Los Angeles -- volunteers to be an inmates' advocate in a women's jail. She wants to help people, right some wrongs, and "do something that isn't about me." Her primary task is to listen, but talking is what she does best, sometimes with (brilliantly) disastrous results. While searching through the byzantine hallways of a social services building, looking for her prison orientation, she talks loudly on her cell phone about a recent incident involving "really, just the tiniest amount of cocaine" and making out with a stranger in a bathroom. Turns out she's blaring her sordid story into the open doorway of the orientation. "Um, you're talking to your sponsor?" the volunteer coordinator asks hopefully. Minutes later, Weedman jokes that she signed up "because a women's jail is the only place where I have a shot at being the prettiest girl in the room."
It's easy to forget that Weedman is a solo performer, evoking the conflicting moods of a roomful of people all by her lonesome. In two scenes, she enacts a string of inmates' friends and relatives, sitting along the bulletproof visitation wall, talking on the telephone receivers to the prisoners. She wheels herself from station to station in a rolling chair becoming, in seconds, an old woman praying, wanting to press her hands on the Plexiglas but disgusted with its grime, then a screaming woman with a screaming child, then a randy man insisting "lemme see that ass," then her slouching self. She leaps from one persona to the next, bounding across gaps of race, class, and gender like an acrobat."
-The Stranger
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LocationTHE WOODS
6637 Milwaukie Ave
Portland, OR 97202
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 21 |
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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