In partnership with the MFA Writing for the Screen and Stage program.

By Eliza Bent, directed by Susan E. Bowen

Thursday, May 19, 2022 | 7:00 p.m.

In 2014 Eliza Bent did a one-night performance, Fire the Hire, in which she dressed as her Boss doing stand-up about what a bad employee and bride-to-be she was. Eight years later, Bent revisits this pivotal performance, a portrait of her work and life and asks: Is Enlightenment possible?

Eliza Bent is a playwright and performer whose plays are indeed “bent,” meaning “different from normal; strongly inclined; changed from an originally straight condition.” Bentertainments include solo-ish works Toilet Fire (Time Out New York Critics’ Pick), Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen; plays Indeed, friend!, The Hotel Colors (L Magazine’s best of 2013); adaptations The Beyonce, (Payne Award for Excellence), She of the Voice; and hybrid affairs (Real Talk / Kip Talk, Blue Wizard / Black Wizard (published by Sam French). Bent’s shows have been developed/ workshopped/ commissioned/ produced at the Abrons Arts Center, Clubbed Thumb, the Bushwick Starr, JACK, the New Ohio, the Atlantic Theatre, and New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door Series. Residencies include MacDowell Colony, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace, New Georges, Target Margin, Casa Zia Lina, Pilot Balloon, and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor.  More about Eliza at https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/eliza-bent/.