Sad Boys in Harpy Land
Friday, September 26 & Saturday, September 27, 7:30 pm
PS21 Pavilion Theater
Next weekend, self-proclaimed “experimental clown artist” Alex Tatarksy brings their brilliant, unhinged clown play Sad Boys in Harpy Land to PS21 for two nights.
A hilarious and deranged adaptation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Mission—a novel about a little boy who wants to be a theater artist but isn’t very good at it—the piece has drawn universal critical praise since premiering in 2023:
“A thrilling and frenetic mental breakdown of a show.” — New York Times
“Brilliant…a demented clown show/unhinged cabaret/deranged improv, but also a fearless exploration of self-loathing that will stick with me for a very long time.” — New York Times, 24 Things That Stuck With Us in 2023
“Tremendous…superb…making heartbreaking fun of their own ineffectuality as an artist.” — New Yorker, This Year’s Best Theatre, 2023
“Hilarious self-loathing, deranged interrogation, and explosively brilliant political satire.” — New York Theatre Guide (five stars)
“If this is hell, I don’t want to be saved.” — David Cote’s Best Theater of 2023
Embracing the spiral, the unfinished, and the broken bits, Tatarsky ushers audiences through a series of empirical vignettes to examine how depression often masquerades as individual malady—when it might be better thought of as a shared sadness.
Capacity for each performance is limited, so advance tickets are recommended.
Alex Tatarsky, Creator/Performer
Called a “hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones) and “one of the most exciting and hilarious performance artists around” (ArtSpace), Alex Tatarsky makes performances in the uncomfortable in-between zone of comedy, dance-theater, performance art, and deluded rant–sometimes with songs. Tatarsky experienced fleeting fame as Andy Kaufman’s daughter and used to perform as a mound of dirt. Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, their live performances are highly responsive to venue and audience, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity. Venues include La Mama, MoMA PS1, Playwrights Horizons, The Kitchen, The Whitney and many bars and basements. As curatorial fellow at the Poetry Project, they organized a series on the poetics of rot. Research interests include bootlegs, hellscapes, and compost. @tartar.biz