A high-energy solo performance blending sharp character work, physical comedy, and quickfire costume changes follows Lolo – daughter of a hardworking single mother and raised by TV – as she recounts past dates to see where she went wrong. With no father figure and a head full of silver-screen love stories, she’s stumbled from one romantic disaster to the next. Set in Lolo’s childhood bedroom after a failed career move, performer Lauren O’Brien takes on 18 characters, drawing from real, imagined, and exaggerated dating stories. Winner of the Audience Choice Award at the NYC Fringe Festival 2024, Lolo’s Boyfriend Show uses minimal set and maximum versatility – featuring projections, music, and fast-paced transitions – to explore identity, love, and self-worth through the lens of a modern woman navigating romance.
Lolo was meant to be on a dream tour. Instead, she’s back in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by old costumes, dashed hopes, and the ghosts of many failed relationships. Her psychic promised fame, but what she got was a cancelled show and a return ticket to her mum’s house. Raw, darkly funny, and painfully familiar, Lolo’s Boyfriend Show is a one-woman deep dive into heartbreak and the thin line between self-destruction and self-reinvention.
Lauren O’Brien said, “Lolo was born from my life – maybe in the same manner Athena was born from Zeus’s head! But she gradually became her own entity. She now has her own history, needs, desires, and feelings. She knows how to dance on the surface… and do a deep dive with killer emotions. I hope that audiences leave feeling energized and empowered to change poison into medicine in their own lives.”
Lauren O’Brien is a New York-based performer and writer whose multidisciplinary work spans theatre, music, and live art. She began her stage career as a founding member of avant-garde troupe Terra Incognita under director Polina Klimovitskaya, developing original works rooted in psycho-physical practice. She has performed regionally in To Kill a Mockingbird (Mayella), Angels in America (Harper), The Odyssey (Athena), and A Wrinkle in Time (Mrs. Whatsit), and has toured extensively across the US, Canada, and Europe as both a solo theatre-maker and punk-poet. Her musical work includes two rock/poetry albums (Inconsequential Dream and Panic) and a punk-cabaret release, The Devil’s Girlfriend, which was adapted into a touring theatrical piece in Germany. Her first solo theatre show Jaxx & Lolo won two awards at the 2020 NYC Frigid Festival. Lolo’s Boyfriend Show, her latest work, premiered at the 2024 New York City Fringe Festival, where it won the Audience Choice Award.
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