Introducing the award-winning, two-woman show:
GOOD and GASLIT
Written by
DEBORAH CINCOTTA
Directed by
KENDALL MCDERMOTT
Performed by
DEBORAH CINCOTTA
&
KENDALL MCDERMOTT
British Theater Guide
Sell Out Show
2023
Winner
Producers' ENCORE Award
Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
August 21 - 26, 2023
theSpace at Surgeons Hall, Theater 2
Nicolson Street | Edinburgh, Scotland
Hollywood Fringe Festival
June 4 | 17 | 24, 2023
Stephanie Furey Studio Theater
Melrose Ave | Los Angeles, CA USA
And to think, you thought you were going crazy...
Winner of the Hollywood Fringe Festival's prestigious Producers' Encore Award 2023
Gaslighting, a manipulative tactic pervasive in our modern lives, is the subject of a new theater show that is as entertaining as it is enlightening. GOOD and GASLIT uses humor, wit and heart to take the audience on a journey of self-discovery, exposing the many facets of gaslighting and offering insight on how to overcome the gaslighting in your own life. The show sets the stage for a woman’s clever examination of her experience in Hollywood, in parenting and beyond.
“Good and Gaslit” opens on the rehearsal of a one-woman show about gaslighting (imagine Ingrid Bergman in therapy after filming the movie, "Gaslight"). As the young director directs the untrained middle-aged performer, the director is pulled off stage, pressured by the launching her own budding career. The reluctant, middle-aged performer uses the director’s absence to share her many experiences of gaslighting throughout her life. Why must women so frequently navigate gaslighting behavior by those closest to them? Can any of us stop the generational loop of gaslighting? How will she overcome the messages in the gaslighting and learn to believe in herself? The protagonist’s hilarious real-life anecdotes overlap with an unexpected, on-stage relationship with the show’s director. It’s a show within a show, inspired by a true life. It’s as powerful as it is unique.
The show is brought to you by a multi-generational female duo who like to debate whether art imitates life or vice versa. Written by Deborah Cincotta, an experienced TV producer and first-time theater performer; and directed by Kendall McDermott, a student director at Wesleyan University and first-time Fringe director. The show’s creative approach to discussing the generational issues between women makes for an additional layer of comedy and contemplation.
If this show doesn’t help stop the gaslighting in your life, it's not because they didn't try.
This is a show for everyone!*
*This show was designed to be inclusive of all genders because the only way to put an end to this madness is with everyone on board. But... this show is really empowering for women because, unfortunately, women bear the brunt of gaslighting. See the show and you'll see what we mean. We're tempted to say it's a bit of a "feminist-call-to-action" but when we use the word "feminist," it makes some men feel like they're being attacked and then women get blamed for creating a culture that encourages misogyny and, voila, we're back in that good old-fashioned do-loop. This is what we mean when we say it's gonna takes a village.
Written by: Deborah Cincotta
Directed by: Kendall McDermott
Performed by: Deborah Cincotta & Kendall McDermott
Produced by: Double Cappuccino Productions LLC
KENDALL C. MCDERMOTT
A student director at Wesleyan University (class of '25), McDermott is directing "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comic of 1812" for SpikeTape Theater Group in Fall '23.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023 Press Reviews
"It is an express train of anecdotes slickly put together from real events with others “inspired by real life”. A wholesale rejection of “America's goddess of domestic perfection” Martha Stewart’s concept of an idealised wife and mother is bluntly orchestrated, but is so fluently expressed as to generate whoops from those who have had to learn to let ourselves down from that unsustainable cross, that contrivance be damned.
Overall, the text plays as an eye-opening treatise on everything from being pressured to have children, gaslighting by social media or in the workplace and the generational loop of gaslighting between parents and children, the latter made evident between [Deborah] and the director of the play she has stepped into at short notice, her daughter, Kendall.
This double power dynamic also serves to illustrate that such behaviour isn’t always intentional and can equally happen between friends. If we are, at our own volition, changing our behaviour to please others, that self-destructiveness should also be interrogated.
Amidst very brief periods of rehearsal for her daughter’s production, there is a cameo of Debbie’s husband which will resonate with many wives and partners, and we are introduced to Debbie’s alter ego, Tania, a straight-talking woman who calls out bullshit when she sees it, although it is hard to imagine why a person as forthright and eloquent as Debbie wouldn’t do so on her own account.
Whilst some of the mother-daughter interaction sounds unnatural, Deborah writes with intelligence and comic intuition so the laughs are part wry and part out loud. It’s a good balance for delivering a message that can be hard to hear—that we should be responsible for recognising gaslighting when we hear it and claim the right not to believe the negative messages conveyed through it. Cincotta’s stance emerges from a feminist angle and is something of a call to arms to women, but her message is relevant to all genders."
British Theater Guide
"The result is enjoyable, appropriately irreverent, and pleasantly never overly bitter. [It] entertains without becoming burdensome, thanks to an elegant and profound script that aims to expose while staying true to pure entertainment... [The chemistry between mother and daughter] is evident and creates an atmosphere of intimacy and distinct feminism that is comforting.
The performer shines with her charisma."
North WestEnd UK
