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Canadian Comedy Award Winner Sandra Battaglini presents the premiere of her solo show CLASSY LADY 8 NIGHTS ONLY! JUNE 14-24
Award-winning Toronto funny woman Sandra Battaglini premieres her sixth solo show, Classy Lady, for 8 nights only from June 14-24 at the Alumnae Theatre, directed by creative partner and colleague Phil Luzi. Her last solo presentation – Hard Headed Woman – played to sold-out audiences at The Diesel Playhouse and garnered her a Canadian Comedy Award.
Since then, Sandra has transformed from a Hard-Headed Woman to a Classy Lady – and her perspectives on things have certainly been refinedŠ well, at least evolved. Classy Lady chronicles Ms. Battaglini's rise to ladyhood; but just what does that mean to this sharp-witted, opinionated, Italian-Canadian traditionalist?
Classy Lady is Battaglini's newest and boldest, and dare we say, classiest solo presentation to date. It is a one-woman show that explores the social construction of the term 'classy lady' by satirizing the often unrealistic and absurd expectations made upon women.
What does it mean for a woman to have class and what kind of a woman are you if you don't have class? Sandra dissects and satirizes society's prescriptions on how to be a 'classy lady', revealing the inherent hypocrisy of laying down codes under which a woman must live by. She characterizes her own versions of 'Classy Lady' archetypes in video segments: The Call Girl (phone operator by day, call girl by night), The Martyr ("Poor me! Look at all that I have sacrificed to give you a good life!"), The Contessa (Sandra's great great grandmother was a Contessa herself!), The Miner (Sandra explored women's roles in the nickel mining industry during World War II for her Master's thesis; her clown personna Nickelicious will tell you what it's like to travel to the depths of the earth as well as her views on inequality and resilience).
In 1999, Sandra Battaglini enrolled at The Second City Training Centre and fell in love with improvisation. Shortly thereafter, Sandra fearlessly entered the comedy scene and became known for her off-beat and outrageous character invention. Since than, Sandra's art practice has crossed several disciplines including clown, vaudeville, circus, sketch, stand-up and performance art. For more than 10 years, she has churned out dozens of solo turns and collaborated with some of Toronto's foremost satirists.
Classy Lady is the third in a trilogy of shows that began with A Small Battalion of Soldiers (Canadian Comedy Award nomination), followed by Hard Headed Woman (Diesel Playhouse and travelled to the LA Comedy Festival; Canadian Comedy Award for best solo show. Other past works include her solo show The Upside Down Widow (2005 Chicago Improv Festival) and Hangin with Jesus (2007 Toronto Festival of Clowns). She is part of Toronto's sketch troupe The Specials, was part of the 2005 Toronto production of the Vagina Monologues with Shirley Douglas and Rachel McAdams, appears in the film Running Mates with Henry Winkler and is a touring comic with Yuk Yuks.
Phil Luzi writes and hosts the outrageous monthly variety show, The Sal & Sandy Show with Sandra Battaglini at The Underground Comedy Club, and is a member Toronto's shameless troupe of musical satirists, The SPECIALS. Select theatre credits: the title role in Othello (Theatre Passe Muraille), Nino in a Canadian tour of Mambo Italiano, Tony in Tony n' Tina's Wedding (The Second City, Toronto), and Adam Lazarus' Bleed which opened the 2012 Rhubarb Festival. TV & Film credits: The Path to 9/11 (ABC) with Harvey Keitel, The Devil's Tail (Ardent Pictures) which has garnered international attention on the film festival circuit and Nimby, winner of Atom Egoyan's Toronto Urban Film Festival.
"The Sudbury-born performer's a natural comic she knows how to get to the honesty of a scene, the pain that makes us laugh all the harder." -Glenn Sumi, NOW MAGAZINE
Canadian Comedy Award Winner Sandra Battaglini premieres her new solo show
CLASSY LADY
Directed by Phil Luzi
June 14-24, 2012 – Thursday-Sunday at 8pm
Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley Street
Tickets: $25 plus applicable taxes & services charges
Box Office: 416-591-1417 OR online at brownpapertickets.com www.brownpapertickets.com
For more info: www.sandrabattaglini.com
Video trailer for Classy Lady:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtohvDkwP4Y
DETAILED BIO:
Sandra's art practice has crossed several disciplines including clown, vaudeville, circus, sketch, stand-up and performance art. For more than 10 years, she has churned out dozens of solo turns and collaborated with some of Toronto's foremost satirists. Born and raised in Sudbury, Sandra began experimenting with theatre while in university in the mid 90s, where she played lead roles in Pirandello and Dario Fo plays. She completed a Masters thesis in history that explored women's wartime contribution at INCO (International Nickel Company) and then moved to Toronto to study marketing. Both of these experiences have richly inspired her writing.
While at her first marketing gig, a fellow co-worker recommended enrolling in a class at The Second City Training Centre in 1999 to improve her 'business skills' and she fell in love with improvisation. Shortly thereafter, Sandra fearlessly entered the comedy scene and became known for her off-beat and outrageous character invention. She dabbled with stand-up in early 2001 but it wasn't until she studied baby clown with Sue Morrison in 2003 that she was able to focus on all aspects of the self and her naturally occurring emotions and impulses. She then began to approach her work with 'wild abandonment' – a term Sue Morrison uses to coach her students to delve deeper into their clown and themselves. A clown persona emerged by the name of Neri FlyMe – a widow in search of new love.
Between 2001 and 2006 Sandra created five solo shows, positioning her as one of the city's most inventive and brazen solo show creators. Her first show, Teasing out of the Abyss (directed by Second City Alum, Lisa Brooke) – interweaved story telling and character monologues. It opened with a letter to Michael Jackson, that lead into digressions of her Italian Canadian family mythology and showcased her Russian alter ego, Vag – a 'comedic erotica' writer. Her second show, A Small Battalion of Soldiers (directed by Mark Andrada) – became the first in a trilogy, culminating in this year's presentation of Classy Lady. A Small Battalion of Soldiers is the literal translation of Battaglini's last name. In this show, Battaglini foregoes the use of character and incorporates clown and stand-up to reveal a more honest portrait of her life, with all of its melodrama and absurdities. She begins this tour de force with a mini history video segment about Sudbury. According to scientists the history of Sudbury began 2 billion years ago with a BANG, caused by a massive 10km wide meteorite, traveling at 75 km/hr, slamming into the earth's crust with the force of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs. The narrator in the video asks: "Close your eyes and imagine what would emerge 2 billion years later." Sandra then busts onto the stage with a choreographed dance number to Michael Jackson's Thriller, and then waxes philosophical on the Toronto mayoral race, thongs and cement.
In 2004, Sandra created her first solo clown show with Sue Morrison entitled, On the Theory of Everything. Overwhelmed by too much information, household chores and the unhappy marriage between string theory and Einstein's theory of relativity, Battaglini's clown persona, Neri Flyme, lays herself out as the constructive destroyer trying to understand the fragments of her universe.
She then went on to write her second solo clown show in 2005 with Mark Andrada that premiered in Chicago, called The Upside Down Widow. In this piece, Battaglini, played an Italian widow, whose husband just died and the audience was invited to the funeral. It ended with her scattering his ashes all over the audience with confetti canons.
In 2006, Battaglini staged the second part in the trilogy that began with A Small Battalion of Soldiers called Hard Headed Woman that won her a Canadian Comedy Award. Without the pretense of the red nose, Battaglini begins her journey with Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas – laying him squarely to blame for her family's neuroses. Fresh from a gig at a pharmaceutical ad agency, Sandra took equal shots at BIG pharma, BIG business and the idea of family, unveiling the idiosyncrasies that make us all human.
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