A b b y   B e n d e r

The quirkiest show about “the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” Turkey was a playful and powerful performance about the agony, monotony and unintended comedy that accompanied Bender's attempt and almost successful process of quitting smoking. Featuring choreography on a cast of fifteen as well as video, music, and theatre, Turkey (a dramatization) locks horns with the demons of nicotine addiction, those self-proclaimed experts with all the answers on fighting it and the emotional rollercoaster that becomes the path to giving up that bad thing you love to death. This farcical dance-theatre uses the metaphors of space travel and the hyper-empowered vocabulary of self-help to usher the audience through conflicted feelings of rootlessness and self-determination. The piece is brought to pitch-perfect life through subdued color, a smoke-filled stage, ashen costumes and a sparse but symbolic set of ladders and ropes.

 

Conceived and choreographed by Abby Bender

Performed by Katie Federowicz, Natasha Ross, Lyz Merida, Jonathan Ciccarelli, Marisa Gruneberg, Rebecca Frank, Bathsheba Squires, Tradon Turner, Sara K. Edwards, Reshma Patel, Marissa Metelica, Sarah Lannon, Janessa Olsen, Michael Fritz and Abby Bender. Script by Jeremy Wilson, Abby Bender, and Michael Fritz.

Video by Becca Frank and Will Carlough with guest appearance by Anne Harris.

Original music by Eli Orling.

Lighting Design by Andrew Dickerson.