PREVIEW: I Want To Speak To Your Manager (How I Was Radicalised And Became…Karen) – Brighton Fringe
From social media pile-ons to public rows over what women are ‘allowed’ to say, the figure of ‘Karen’ has become one of the defining and most loaded stereotypes of modern culture in recent years. But who gets branded with the label, and what does it really mean? Can you have a male Karen or is it just misogyny in disguise?
These questions are at the heart of I Want To Speak To Your Manager (How I Was Radicalised And Became…Karen), a provocative new one-woman theatre show coming to The Actors as part of Brighton Fringe this May.
Written and performed by Holly Hughes, the 60-minute production promises a sharp, funny and unsettling look at how ordinary lives can become caught up in today’s culture wars, and how easily women, in particular, can find themselves caricatured, dismissed or demonised.
You’ve heard this woman in a café, complaining her extra-hot-skinny latté isn’t hot enough. You’ve seen her in a restaurant, demanding dishes that aren’t on the menu. You’ve met her in the ALDI car park, where her SUV takes up multiple spaces: the dreaded Karen. This debut one-woman-show from internationally-acclaimed slam poet and accidental keyboard warrior Holly Hughes is a bold, hilarious and brutally honest interrogation of who gets to be angry in today’s society. After all, what is so wrong with holding people accountable? When broligarch losers are destroying the world, is being a Karen REALLY that bad?
Blending theatre, social commentary and dark humour, I Want To Speak To Your Manager (How I Was Radicalised And Became…Karen) explores radicalisation, identity and the politics of public outrage through a distinctly contemporary lens. The title may raise a laugh, but beneath it lies a set of serious questions about conformity, dissent, online discourse and who gets heard, or shouted down.
Brighton Fringe has long been home to bold, politically charged work, and this looks set to be one of the festival’s more thought-provoking offerings, a show likely to spark debate long after the curtain falls.
Details
I Want To Speak To Your Manager (How I Was Radicalised And Became…Karen) at The Actors, Brighton Fringe.
Dates: The production runs at The Actors on Thursday 14 and Friday 15 May at 6pm.
Venue: The Actors Theatre, 4 Prince’s Street, Brighton
Tickets: Tickets are £11 standard and £8 concessions. Tickets all 241 at Brighton Fringe.
Accessible: Assistance Dogs Welcome. Steps to the theatre.
Age suitability: 14+ (Guideline), with brief references to sex.
Babes in Arms policy: Under 2’s are allowed in for free on the lap of a guardian.
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