Iris Bahr’s Stories From the Brink comes to Chutzpah! Plus Spring Edition, March 19
One-woman solo show follows the creator’s own near-death experiences, from her childhood in the Bronx to travels in Israel, Asia, and South America
Iris Bahr, Stories From the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures. Photo by Allison Michael Orenstein
As part of the Chutzpah! Plus Spring Edition, the Chutzpah! Festival presents Iris Bahr’s Stories From the Brink: My Festive Near-Death Adventures—one woman’s true tales of near death, unfiltered and in snackable form—at the Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre on March 19 at 7 pm.
From award-winning performer and Chutzpah! Festival favourite Bahr comes this wild, touching, and hilariously poignant journey through her own adventures, including (but not limited to) war zones, elder caregiving, a white-water disaster, incompetent Scottish physicians, and a childhood in the Bronx that involved a Yeshiva by day and bacon and the Guggenheim by night.
The story traces several stages of Bahr’s life, from her fragmented Bronx upbringing to time spent in Israel, Asia, South America. Life comes full circle when she returns to Tel Aviv, now taking care of her mother with dementia. As always, Bahr masterfully combines humour, pathos, and storytelling to take the audience on a journey that is funny, heartbreaking, and life-affirming all at once. Stories From the Brink is a true tale of adventure, escape, thrills, terrors, and evolution through perpetual movement.
Bahr is an award-winning actor, writer, and director. With over 50 TV and film credits to her name, she is best known for her recurring role on Curb your Enthusiasm as Rachel Heineman, for starring in the award-winning series Hacks as Perla, and for her series Svetlana, executive produced by Mark Cuban. Stories From the Brink won a Frankie Award at the Montreal Fringe Festival.
Her debut solo show DAI (enough) won the Lortel Award, garnering nominations for two Drama Desk Awards and a U.K. Stage Award along the way. DAI ran off Broadway, and had a world tour which included sold-out runs in London, Edinburgh, and across Latin America in Spanish. Bahr’s most recent solo show, See You Tomorrow, was just nominated for a Helen Hayes Award and has been touring across the U.S. and Canada.
The Chutzpah! Plus Spring Edition is on from March 19 to 23, and welcomes performers from across the globe. Tickets to see Stories From the Brink and more details are available online.
Post sponsored by Chutzpah! Festival.
Related Articles
At The Cultch, The Search Party play’s strong performances, dry wit, and inventive staging capture the disorientation of addiction and the stories we tell ourselves about it
Story follows the passionate affair between penniless playwright Will and beautiful young woman Viola de Lesseps
Cyborg teenagers struggle with the same fears about technology that their human counterparts do in this visually spare, idea-charged production by UBC Theatre
Based on an early Agatha Christie story, the play focuses on a woman’s impulsive marriage to a charming mystery man
Multifaceted theatremakers Munish Sharma and Gavan Cheema bring an eight-year-long project to completion by working beyond stage conventions
Actor Brian Markinson says Lloyd Suh’s script takes artistic liberties with the life of Benjamin Franklin
With warped sitcom rhythms, Caroline Bélisle’s new play brings together two old friends to contend with contemporary ambivalence about bringing children into the world
Eighty shows in all, as Italy’s Teatro Telaio sets up an ARCHIPELAGO installation, plus pow-wow, hip-hop, and massive puppets
Award-winning play by Susanna Fournier offers an unsettling, witty update of fairy-tale themes as old as Pinocchio and the Pied Piper
Provocative solo show follows a woman who’s focused on fixing the lack of diversity in the serial-killer space
In the Theatre Conspiracy production copresented by Touchstone Theatre, a South Asian man finds self-expression through dance
Director Mindy Parfitt finds inspiration with local implications in the darkness, wit, and honesty of Duncan Macmillan’s acclaimed play
In the endearing new Metro Theatre production, a five-sister team of performers creates an exceptionally strong and funny ensemble
Arts Club production centres a married couple that recounts the good, the bad, and the ugly of spending 50 years together
Care of Théâtre la Seizième, the work examines how female friendships must adapt to the pressure of raising a new life
Based on the true story that inspired Beauty and the Beast, play centres Catherine de Medici and the man who awakens her wild side
Next season includes high-camp spoof Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Tracey Power’s premiere The Elvis Christmas Comeback Special, and the newly named Lindsay Family Stage
On Our Feet staged reading captures the slow-burning suspense of the famed author’s psychological thriller
One-woman show draws on Marguerite Duras’s novel to tell the story of a French mother in 1930s Indochina
Tracey Power’s musical revue poses open-ended questions at the Firehall Arts Centre
In Hannah Moscovitch’s spare, blunt two-hander at The Cultch, tension lives not only in what is being said, but in how it is being said and who is saying it
