A one-woman show that’s “funny, moving, irreverent, sexy, and funny (again)”

What’s the difference between life and performance? Role and responsibility? Art and life? Do we ever know what we’re doing? These questions will be explored hilariously in a genre-bending performance about the beauty and impossibility of being human.

Poet Sommer Browning brings her one-woman performance “Good Actors” to the Libraries on Wednesday, April 10 at 7:00 p.m. in the Hunt Library’s Teaching and Visualization Lab. The show draws upon her third poetry collection published in 2021 by Birds, LLC, turning the often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, irreverent book into a boundary-pushing and culturally relevant play directed by Aaron Angello and featuring bold animated projections by Kelly Sears. Angello will adapt the work to the immersive Libraries space.

The event is free and open to the public; pre-registration is required.

Browning’s text is grounded in everyday life and centers subjects such as divorce, motherhood, loss, and alternative sex and sexuality—all filtered through popular culture and a wry sense of humor. It's a bit Spaulding Grey and a bit Maria Bamford and a bit Sleater-Kinney. 

Conceptually, the play is a staged, lived embodiment of the poems in the book. It explores the boundarylessness of genre but also our human roles—where do our roles and performances end and “real life” begin? How do we transition between art and life when life itself is a creative act? Where are the edges?

Browning, Angello, and Sears will also lead a two-session Art United workshop of poetry and visual art for members of the NC State community on Friday, April 12 from 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 13, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in the Hill Library Fishbowl Forum. They will work through feelings of climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety, as defined by The Handbook of Climate Psychology as “heightened emotional, mental, or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system.”

Participants will work on individual and collaborative poems, comics, and zines. After the workshop, participants can choose to share their work through a Libraries gallery exhibit or through zines to be shared with the campus community. The workshop is free to students; pre-registration is required.

No previous poetry or art experience is required, and all materials will be provided. All workshop participants will receive complimentary tickets to Small Island Big Song, a concert featuring eight Indigenous artists from across the island nations of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, a region at the frontline of the climate crisis (Friday, April 12, 7:30 p.m. in Stewart Theatre). We’ll also feed you dinner and lunch.

About the author and collaborators
Sommer Browning is a poet, writer, curator, and artist. Her latest book is Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). She’s the author of two other collections of poetry, Backup Singers and Either Way I’m Celebrating, as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book, You’re On My Period (Counterpath), and others. In 2017, she founded GEORGIA, an art space in her garage in Denver. She has performed all over the country, including in standup comedy clubs and in theaters with GASP, a poetry theater group. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Hyperallergic, Lit Hub, Bomb, jubilat, Chicago Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. 

Aaron Angello is a professor of English and theatre at Hood College, where he directs the theatre program and teaches courses in creative writing, modern and contemporary poetry, film and media, and drama. He is also creative director of the Endangered Species (theatre) Project and founder of the Frederick Shakespeare Festival. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals, and he is the editor of The Synergistic Classroom: Interdisciplinary Teaching in the Small College Setting. His genre-defying book The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications was published in April 2022 by Rose Metal Press.

Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker living in Denver, Colorado. She is Assistant Professor of Film at University of Colorado-Boulder and her work as been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, The Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and The Ann Arbor Film Festival, among other places.