Performance

ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT’S (STILL) ASKING FOR IT

Adrienne Truscott’s (Still) Asking For It (A Stand-Up Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!) is a sex-positive, seriously funny, unflinching and nuanced show about rape culture. Its first iteration, performed in 2013, was a ribald provocation that came for everyone: comedians, rapists, lazy rape-apologists, and the ding-a-ling chodes who think women aren’t funny. 

Demanding "widespread" awareness of our culture's shortcomings, Asking For It was integral to increasing the volume of the conversations that fueled the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. It laid the groundwork for Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette and, in the midst of seemingly never-ending accusations against men in positions of power, not to mention “apologies”, “second chances” and “comebacks” by celebrities and other public figures, Asking For It has become more painfully relevant with time. Truscott wryly notes the irony: it's a goldmine for a comedian, and a nightmare if you're a woman.

Dressed only from the waist up and the ankles down, “brilliantly bold” (Times UK) creator Adrienne Truscott will be joined onstage by cast members Shamika Cotton (The Wire), Jenn Kidwell (Underground Railroad Game), and Mari Moriarty (Jet of Blood). The run will also feature different special guests - comedians, sexual assault survivors, anti-harassment allies and more - at each performance. Those guests include Scott Adsit, Mariam Bazeed, Becca Blackwell, Carolyn Castiglia, Kerry Coddett, Amanda Duarte, Ophira Eisenberg, Negin Farsad, Martha Graham Cracker (aka Dito Van Reigersberg), Marisela Grajeda Gonzalez, Jenn Harris, Jeff Hiller, Krishna Istha, Nikole Marone, Aparna Nancherla, Gus Solomons jr, Dane Terry, and Neruda Williams.

(Still) Asking For It reveals how jokes tickle, thrill, enrage, or rile – when the storytellers bring vastly different lived experiences to the same provocative material. Imagine The Aristocrats if it were rooted in material that matters...and performed without pants.

Writer Adrienne Truscott Director Ellie Heyman
Sound & Video Design Carmine Covelli  Lighting Design Cha See Costume Design Haydee Zelideth
Photos Sarah Krulwich for The New York Times

“[Truscott] asks us to imagine what a culture of vengeful survivors might look like, and what would happen if all those who had been terrorized by rape culture rose up. She means it as a terrifying thought experiment, but the audience surged to its feet as the lights blacked out, ready to answer her call.”

— Helen Shaw, TimeOut New York

“Attunement to the boundary between fantasy and action: that’s what constitutes true agency…That is the imaginative space (Still) Asking For It creates, and creating that space is one of the highest functions of art.”

- Miriam Felton Dansky, Artforum