1-900-SELFPLEX: Transgender Alter Egotist

FRINGENYC// Alex DeFazio’s new play 1-900-SELFPLEX explores how the imagination informs both gender identity and environment in a “stripped down” production @ Cherry Lane Theatre.

Photo: Robert A. Terrano. Pictured: Patrick Martin in '1-900-SELFPLEX'

Nothing is at it seems in 1-900-SELFPLEX. In the play, Alberta Lesale, a 40-year-old writer, singer, and self-proclaimed sexpert finds more than she bargained for when she assumes the identity of an unlikely alter-ego Jeremy: a transgendered, 14-year-old boy.

As suspicious about Jeremy’s identity arise, so do the multiple personalities inside Alberta — think Toni Collette in Showtime’s ‘United States of Tara.’ And in order to sustain both the fame she’s amassed as a result of self-delusion of being a trans-man Alberta finds that Jeremy influence threatens to over take her own identity — JT LeRoy style.

But what is identity anyway or gender identity, if not an evolving social construct? Right? Perhaps DeFazio can inform us.

1-900-SELFPLEX performs at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) on Monday, August 17 at 2:00pm; Tuesday, August 18 at 5:00pm; Thursday, August 20 at 8:15pm; Saturday, August 22 at 4:15pm; Thursday, August 27 at 9:15pm; and Friday, August 28 at 4:45pm. www.elixirproductions.org.

ABOUT ELIXIR:
Committed to telling queer stories on stage, Elixir Productions Theatre Company’s FringeNYC 2007 production of To Be Loved was praised by playwright Theresa Rebeck as “full of remarkable sensitivity and wit.” Martin Denton of NYTheatre.com called it “complex and perverse”; Mark Bly of Arena Stage found it “haunting”; and playwright Michael MacLennan (The Shooting Stage, Showtime’s Queer As Folk) “astonishing, trenchant, extremely relevant.” The company’s 2005 production, Radium, was cited by The New York Times for its “inventive Pinteresque structure” and earned high marks from The Village Voice, which called it a “nuanced, powerful production.”

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