Deb Margolin Brings 8 STOPS to Dixon Place

Deb Margolin will perform her one-woman show, 8 Stops, at Dixon Place on Saturday, June 16th, in a one-night-only performance benefitting the longstanding downtown non-profit performance venue. Margolin is a playwright, actor, and co-founder of the Split Britches Theater Company. 8 Stops, directed by Jay Wahl, is the newest of Margolin's many solo shows, all ten of which she has toured throughout the United States.

8 Stops was inspired from Margolin's experience riding a Philly subway alone, on the way home from a basketball game. In that subway, she encountered a seven-year-old Scottish boy, a child who was scared and upset. "His father had brought them to the United States, and his mother wasn't with them and they were living with his father's girlfriend and they were planning to get married," said Margolin in a 2015 BroadwayWorld article about the show. "I realized I had eight stops to raise this kid. Eight stops to let this kid know that he was loved, and lovely, and beautiful." Margolin transformed her real-life encounter into a genre-defining piece she now describes as a "comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion."

In all her work, Margolin endeavors to engender this same quality of compassion. She views performance as a "theatre of inclusion," a type of art that breaks down day-to-day, superficial identities, allowing the audience to see the performer as a real human being, rather than a category. "Anyone can do it!" she proclaims on her website. Margolin spreads her theatrical, humanistic creed not only as a performer and writer, but as a teaching artist. She currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Undergraduate Theatre Studies Program at Yale, a position for which she won the Richard H. Broadhead Prize for teaching excellence, and has taught as an artist in residence at many other institutions in and outside the U.S.

Over the course of her remarkable career, Margolin's work has been commissioned by a variety of theatres, including Dixon Place, where she returns on June 16th at 7:30 for a benefit performance of 8 Stops. Tickets are $32 and available both in person and at the door. $72 ticket s are also available, and include a reserved seat and snack pack. All proceeds will support Dixon Place's artists and mission of supporting the creative process of new performance, visual, and literary work through all stages of development. Dixon Place is located at 161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey.