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40-Year-Old Attempts to Cheat Death in Immortality at Fringe NYC
By Ernio Hernandez
17 Aug 2004
A desperate procrastinator attempts to find life's loophole on death in Immortality performing at the New York International Fringe Festival through Aug. 29.
The production, directed by Lisa Deo, performs at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art in downtown Manhattan.
In an existentially anxious state on the eve of his 30th birthday, playwright-performer David Fairhurst wrote Immortality then shelved it for another decade until his 40th birthday drew near. "All the same old feelings of angst and inadequacy and dread resurfaced," admitted the scribe to Playbill On-Line, "so I decided to dust it off and try to produce it somewhere.
"Immortality is a comedy of existential dread — the obsessive monologue of a would-be writer, 40 years old and embarrassed by his own lack of accomplishment, who senses the inevitable getting closer and closer," Fairhurst explained. "A paranoid, hypochondriacal procrastinator desperate to find a way to cheat death and live forever, to leave a permanent mark on the world... even if it kills him."
The Amalgamated Memories presentation in association with Magnus Et Parvus Productions stars the author with the voices of Colleen Carroll, Jon Freeman, Joan Porter Hollander and Debbie Jaffe.
Fairhurst purports the show's subject "is literally universal: We're all going to die someday; we all want to leave behind something that will last — so how do you do that? Is it even possible? Immortality takes the spiritual, existential angst that everyone has felt at one time or another — usually alone, in the dark, at four o'clock in the morning — pulls it out of the closet kicking and screaming, puts it under a spotlight, and dares the audience to laugh at it."
Playwright Fairhurst has appeared as an actor in New York and regional stagings, independent films and on television's "Law & Order" and "Ed." As a writer, he has worked as a newspaper columnist and editor and has placed thrice in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences' Nicholl Fellowship competition. He is a former member of the '80s band Splitting Headaches.
Director Deo has directed Reading Zimbabwe and When a Storm Comes at the DR2 Theatre, Some of My Parts at PSNBC/HERE, and the Boomerang Theatre Company Hamlet New York City park outdoor tour. She recently served as a visiting artist at the Walden Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky where she staged and designed several productions including The Ghost Sonata.
For tickets to Immortality at the Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art, 86 Walker Street (one block south of Canal St.), call (212) 279-4488 or (888) FringeNYC (outside New York). For more information, visit www.amalga.net or www.FringeNYC.org.
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