A Throwback to NYC of the 70s and 80s Through Obie Award-Winner Ain Gordon’s New Piece, Radicals in Miniature — Feb. 23 & 24 at Fairfield’s Quick Center | Press Releases

FAIRFIELD, Conn. (February 14, 2019) — Radicals in Miniature is a series of performance-odes to a group of icons from New York City’s latter 20th century "alternative" culture. In this humorous and touching new work , Ain Gordon partners with Josh Quillen to pay homage to "a panoply of 'unfamous legends' via alternative elegies to the under-sung."

Ain Gordon – a three-time Obie Award-winning writer, director, and actor – grew up as the son of artists in Greenwich Village’s "alternative" culture of the 1970s and ’80s, experiencing first-hand the LGBTQ and cultural tastemakers that shaped how we reflect on those times. Gordon brings the all-but-forgotten neighborhood denizens and local legends to the fore. Included among the play’s 20 characters are punk drummer David Hahn; dance reveler Elaine Shipman; python-hugging club performer John Sex; and disco artist Sylvester. These people, however marginalized posthumously, had a profound influence on Gordon, a native New Yorker who lives there still.

Co-created by Gordon and composer-percussionist Josh Quillen, Radicals in Miniature feels like a podcast come to life as both artists dive into the stories of those who shaped their communities and lives. According to The New York Times, "The people Mr. Gordon portrays weren’t successful or all that skilled, but they were around while he was learning what an artist is and does, and how a gay man lives and dies. By telling their stories — in alliterative, associative prose that can sound a lot like poetry — Mr. Gordon is, of course, telling his own. This is autobiography disguised as séance, masquerading as eulogy, camouflaged as performance."

Ain Gordon is a Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting who appeared in the original Off-Broadway and touring productions of Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell . Gordon also wrote for NBC’s Will & Grace . Josh Quillen is a composer and performer-in-residence at Princeton University with Sō Percussion. He is also co-director of the percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and is the director of the New York University Steel Band. Quillen’s work has been featured on the Quick Center stage with both Sō Percussion and Adele Myers and Dancers.

Radicals in Miniature was developed at Baryshnikov Arts Center & Vermont Performance Lab. The work has recently toured New England, supported in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) in which the Quick was awarded a grant to support educational and community programs that will take place with local Bridgeport schools and LGBTQ organizations in the days leading up to the performances.

Two performances of Radicals in Miniature will take place at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University on Saturday, February 23 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, February 24 at 3:00 p.m. Radicals in Miniature is a Pick Up Productions Co(s) performance sponsored, in part by NEFA and WPKN. Tickets are $40/ $30 for Quick Members. For more information or to reserve your seat, visit www.quickcenter.com or call the box office at 203-254-4010 or toll free at 1-877-ARTS-396.

Picture: Josh Quillen; Credit: Paula Court

Fairfield University is a modern Jesuit Catholic university rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from the U.S. and across the globe are pursuing degrees in the University’s five schools. Fairfield embraces a liberal humanistic approach to education, encouraging critical thinking, cultivating free and open inquiry, and fostering ethical and religious values. The University is located on a stunning 200-acre campus on the scenic Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.