Emily Weitzman to Bring FURNITURE BOYS To The Edinburgh Fringe
Directed by Kate Doyle, the solo show blends clowning, spoken word, and comedy at the Fringe.
Boyfriends are armchairs. Lovers are lampshades. The ex you can't get over is a futon you can't quite fold back into place. In Furniture Boys, writer and performer Emily Weitzman conjures an absurd, hilarious and unexpectedly moving world where relationships are reimagined through the objects we live with - and leave behind.
Blending spoken word, comedy, clowning, documentary and oral history, the show begins in a surreal landscape where Weitzman's exes are furniture and her memories a cluttered storage room. Comparing boys to ottomans and sofa-beds proves as ridiculous as it is revealing. What begins as pure playful absurdity evolves into a layered exploration of love, loss, and impermanence, exemplified by a beloved broken chair Weitzman can't quite bring herself to part with.
With a feminist lens and an inventive structure, Furniture Boys asks what we hold onto, what we discard and what we might try to repair. This production identifies that what we seek in a partner isn't unlike what we need from our furniture: sturdiness and softness, stability and support, endurance and the hope of repairing what's broken.
Weitzman comments, Boys and furniture are much more similar than you think: A clock can tell you the time, a boy can tell you the time, too. You can turn on a lamp and you can turn on a boy. Chairs and boys both have arms, legs, backs. Many people have said they left the show and went home to hug their favourite ottoman or name their favourite lamp.
Director Kate Doyle adds, We all need to clean out our metaphorical storage room sometimes, and the way Emily digs into her own clutter with gusto makes her such a winning heroine. As she unearths and unpacks and dusts off, her metaphors start to reveal the seriousness of her themes. There's melancholy, there's fury, there's the open-hearted wish to be understood. Do we all need a soulmate? Or do we just need a comfortable chair to hold us as we are?
Written and performed by Emily Weitzman and directed by Kate Doyle, Furniture Boys won Theatre's Choice at Off-Broadway's SoHo Playhouse and the Fringiest Show Award at the Orlando Fringe FestN4. Performances will run August 5-30.
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