A poem and mistake Freaky Friday meets the classics at Edinburgh Fringe
A desk, a chair, a microphone and one female body. US playwright Cheri Magid is set to take audiences at The Edinburgh Fringe on a magical rollercoaster ride of transformation gender, sexuality, and desire, with the UK premiere of her critically-acclaimed play, A Poem and a Mistake.
Directed by respected Mexican-American theatre, television, and film director Michelle Bossy and performed by award-winning actor Sarah Baskin, A Poem and a Mistake blasts into the Scottish capital this Summer for a run at The Assembly Rooms from July 31 to August 24.
This whiplash black comedy tells the story of Myrrha, an eager grad student, as she challenges her professor about the fifty sexual assaults in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. When he profoundly misunderstands her, their physical altercation suddenly transforms him into a version of Myrrha and plunges him into the stories themselves. Immersed in an Ovidian landscape, the two face a magical and terrifying confrontation with their own gender, sexuality, and desire.
Sarah Baskin dynamically morphs into gods, goddesses, boyfriends, girlfriends, tricksters and fiends, transporting the audience from a classroom to the mythic realm and everywhere in between. Freaky Friday meets the classics in this whiplash black comedy that cuts to the duality in all of us: aggressor and victim, teacher and student, god and mortal.
Writer Cheri Magid says: “It’s head-spinning to think that the second most adapted book in Western literature has all these assaults in it that have been translated out and made consensual. It’s enough to make you swear off romcoms altogether. But Sarah and I both felt that the best way to upend patriarchal story tropes was with pratfalls, Bugs Bunny-like chase scenes and karaoke. And the audience reactions so far have shown us that they are there to laugh as much as to think and feel.”
Cheri Magid (writer) writes for theatre, television, film and opera. Her plays have been seen in New York at Primary Stages, New Georges, The New Group, The Women’s Project and Rattlestick, regionally in the US at South Coast Rep, People’s Light and Theatre Company, The Road Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse among others, and internationally at Austrailan Center for Contemporary Art in Melbourne and the Museum of Asian Art in Corfu, Greece. She also wrote on the Emmy award-winning children’s show Arthur and is an Associate Arts Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch.
Sarah Baskin is an award-winning actor and filmmaker from Montreal, now based in NYC. Recent screen work includes A Family Affair (Netflix, opp. Zac Efron), Ramy, Gossip Girl (HBO), The Equalizer (opp. Queen Latifah), and indie films screened at Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Telluride, and NYFF. On stage, she’s worked with Roundabout, 59E59, Urban Stages, American Repertory Theatre, and more.
She thrives in new play development, with favorite collaborations including Joan Tewkesbury (Retrospective), Hannah Rittner (The Unbelievers, Three Women Mourn the Apocalypse), and Cheri Magid, with whom she co-created A Poem and a Mistake.. As a director, her debut short Les Câlins Cheaps (Cheap Hugs) played at 30+ festivals worldwide. Her second, i want to go to moscow — a dark comedy and Chekhov homage — is currently on the festival circuit.
Michelle Bossy (director) is a critically acclaimed award winning Mexican-American theater, television, and film director. Theater Michelle directed includes Smile, The Oxy Complex, There and Back, Every Good Girl Deserves Fun, Sex of the Baby, Un Plugged In, and Sarajevo’s Child. Her films include 18, She Grinds Her Own Coffee, The New 35, Friendly Neighborhood Coven, Ladies Lounge, Miracle Baby, Incurable, klutz, Chance of Showers, Antisemite, and The Trespassed. Under the Lantern Lit Sky and Nobody’s Home are Michelle’s feature films.
Michelle has directed for Disney and produced for Univision. She directed music videos for Yassou and Brooke Josephson. Michelle directed the series There’s a Special Place in Hell for Fashion Bloggers and The Broadway Babies Show. Michelle co-created the musical High School Confidential for Primary Stages, where she was the Associate Artistic Director for a decade. She holds the first directing degree from Webster University. Member: Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and SDC.