FringeNYC 2013: Talk to me about Shame
Talk to me about Shame is a multimedia solo performance that draws on traditions of story telling and audience participation to transform the experience of shame from one that is isolating into one that is empowering, community building, and healing.
Official production websiteShow details/ticketing at FringeNYC
Review by Lillian Meredith · August 10, 2013
Before the start of Talk to me about Shame, co-creator and performer Julian Goldhagen joins the audience in the house. He greets friends, meets new people, and is generally charming and casual, establishing an atmosphere of ease. He manages to do this, it must be added, while wearing nothing but a large diaper and blue toenail polish.
Goldhagen is a young performer with a gift for storytelling and enough natural confidence and charisma that he is able to make a solo show about the experience of shame – a recipe for maudlin confessional awkwardness if there ever were one – into an enjoyable and effective hour-long communal experience.
Goldhagen has a driving desire to talk about shame. For the past two years (he tells us, still diaper-clad) he has been working on this project, exploring shame as a concept, both in his own life and through the experiences of his friends and family. He wants to create a space where it is acceptable and safe for a group of people to investigate this painfully isolating emotion together.
He proceeds to lead us on a journey through different kinds of shame – his childhood fear of his own otherness, teenage sexual trauma, and adult embarrassment. He punctuates these personal tales with questions for individual audience members, voiceovers from interviews with friends and family, and vaudevillian showmanship.
The result is an earnest piece that manages to feel personal but not confessional, political but not didactic, and includes the audience without becoming uncomfortably participatory. Goldhagen and his co-creator/director Kevin Hourigan (who manages the staging with an appropriately light touch) have developed a play that never feels maudlin or trite, that is humorous, open, and occasionally surprising, complete with unexpected bursts of joy.
There are, of course, missteps. Inviting an audience member onstage to share a story of shame is an uncomfortably voyeuristic experience for the rest of us, and there is an attempted post-shame celebration that falls short of its rousing goal. These stand out, however, precisely because the rest of the piece is so simply and expertly controlled, so meticulously designed to make us feel, as Julian repeats, “safe, loved, and of value.” It is easy to forgive these mistakes because they are nothing more offensive than failed experimentation.
And that, ultimately, is what is beautiful about this piece. It is an experiment. It is a passion project. It seems born from a place of sheer curiosity and genuine interest, and while the backbone of the story is Julian’s experience, he and Hourigan are not trying to explain shame to a captive audience. They really do seem to just want to talk.
Preview: Interviews with Artists from Talk to me about Shame
We're asking artists from each show to answer questions about themselves and their work to help our readers get a detailed advance picture of the festival:
All About My Show · Kevin Hourigan (Director)
- Complete this sentence: My show is the only one in FringeNYC that...?
My show is the only one in FringeNYC that is unashamed of its own shamefulness. - What do you think this show is about? What will audiences take away with them after seeing it?
This show is a community engagement piece that seeks to transform shame from an experience that is isolating, traumatizing, and debilitating to an occasion for community building, empowerment, and celebration. In order to create Talk to me about Shame, Julian conducted scores of interviews with people from a diverse array of populations in New York City and abroad about their experiences with shame. The piece is comprised of excerpts from these interviews, accounts of Julian's own experiences, and moments of audience engagement, all woven together to create a piece of theater that directly challenges our audiences to reexamine their relationship to guilt, shame, and identity constitution. - Who are some of the people who helped you create this show, and what were their important contributions to the finished product?
Julian has of course been the force, the heart, and the life of this piece. Through and through it is his. Rachel Sussman has ensured the show's vitality through her guidance as our associate producer, and Ali Perkins has been our key communicator, mediator, and organizer and has grounded our process. Absolutely crucial to the process of building this show were all of the brave individuals who volunteered to be interviewed for this project. Their generosity and vulnerability in sharing their stories with us has offered us the foundational material for this piece. We are incredibly grateful for their courage in giving voice to their shame. We believe that these conversations about shame are a direct extension of this piece as an active work of art. It is our hope that continuation of these conversations will function to further generate social discourse around shame, and that the individuals with whom this piece engages feel liberated and empowered by the experience of speaking their experiences aloud. - Tell us about the process you used to achieve your vision of this play in this production.
At its core, this piece of theater is predominantly storytelling. We amassed a large quantity of material for this piece, composed of Julian's experiences, excerpts from interviews, fragments of critical essays by prominent scholars, and bits of physical performance. In our rehearsal room, we worked to synthesize all of these components to create a unified theatrical performance. None of the script was ever written down; we always worked orally. - Are there any cautions or warnings you’d like to make about the show (e.g., not appropriate for little kids)?
Yes. With a grain of salt, because this piece is largely about overcoming the forces that have made all of this content shameful in the first place: This show features full frontal nudity and strong sexual content.
The Folks Back Home · Julian Goldhagen (Other)
- Who are your role models as an artist?
Tim Miller, for his unapologetically political story telling. Marina Abramovic, for her acute use of herself in her work. Young Jean Lee for her simply stated humanity. Blue whales, for their size and songs. - How has the place where you grew up influenced your work as an indie theater artist?
I grew up in a small town full of upper middle class, white, heterosexual, able-bodied Republicans. It instilled in me a need to create work that promotes compassionate communication, transgresses social norms, and inspires grassroots change. - Are you a New Yorker? If not, would you like to be?
I pay too much in rent to say that I am not a "New Yorker." But I'm not really a New Yorker. It's not so important to me one way or the other--I'd rather people just think of me as a nice person and someone they would want to invite to parties. - Who would like your show the best: Mom, Dad, High School Teacher, College Roommate?
My mother, my father, my high school drama teacher, and my college roommate have all seen my show. My grandmother liked it the best. - Where would be your ideal working environment: New York in 2013, Shakespeare’s Globe, the theater of Sophocles and Euripides, Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theater?
The theatre of Sophocles and Euripides. I love working outside, Greece is beautiful, people really philosophized back then, and I look good in sandals.
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