Playwright-performer Ed Schmidt, appears in Edward , playing in independent bookstores across Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, beginning on Wednesday, January 21 through March 1, for a total of twenty-five performances.
The title character, Edward O’Connell, a former high school English teacher who believed in “the vital role that literature plays in the development of a well-rounded life,” makes bookstores an ideal backdrop for his story to unfold. In Edward, a box filled with twenty-seven ordinary objects becomes a profound reconstruction of one man’s life.
Edward O’Connell died twelve years ago, at the age of seventy-three, and left behind a box containing twenty-seven objects: among them, a 1940 Chevrolet owner’s manual, a one-eared Mr. Potato Head, a Nader/LaDuke campaign button, and a heavily annotated copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Each object tells a story. Audience members sit around a table, on which the objects lie, and choose the order in which the stories are told by Schmidt. Each night, Edward’s life is reconstructed anew.
Ed Schmidt is best known for the four solo shows he wrote and performed for small audiences in non-traditional spaces: The Last Supper, in his kitchen and dining room; My Last Play, in his book-lined living room; Our Last Game, in a locker room on The Lower East Side; and Edward, in apartments and homes throughout Los Angeles and New York.
For a full schedule and tickets ($40), go to edschmidttheater.com/tickets.
