Nancy Agabian: My Gay Family and The Crochet Penis (hit plays in New York)

Must see if you are in New York on 18-19 July 2008.

*source: Bread & Water Theatre and Indymedia (Rochester IMC)

Each one-woman show is a unique take on what it is to be a bisexual woman in the modern world. My Gay Family tells the coming-of-age story of a shy, funny, Armenian-American bisexual girl who flees her small town of Walpole, Massachusetts to tell the stories of her family of one gay brother, one lesbian sister and two homophobic parents. The Crochet Penis is a much more biting play as it deals with Nancy’s life in the wake of her grandmother’s death, a woman of courage who survived the Armenian Genocide. In this emotional time she confronts her issues of sexuality, love and loss.

After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Studio Art in 1990, Nancy Agabian moved to Los Angeles, where she wrote and presented the poems and solo performance texts collected in Princess Freak. Her writing has also appeared in numerous anthologies. With Ann Perich she formed the folk-punk duo Guitar Boy, their CD Freaks Like Me was released in 2000. In that year she also received the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann fellowship to attend Columbia University’s writing program, from which she graduated in 2003. Her master’s thesis, Me as Her Again, is a memoir that explores the influence of her Armenian-American family on her coming-of-age and will be published by Aunt Lute Books in 2008. Since Dec. 2002, she has been coordinating Gartal, a literary reading series for Armenian-American writers at Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village. In 2007, Ms. Agabian traveled to the Yerevan State University in Armenia where she conducted researched and lectured on the topic “Writing Armenia: Personal Stories” on a Fulbright Scholarship. She currently teaches creative non-fiction writing at Queens College in NYC.

The encore performances of The Crochet Penis and My Gay Family will be presented at 243 Rosedale St. (New Life Presbyterian Church) on July 18th and 19th, 2008 at 8:00pm.