ANTIDOTE TO RIVERDANCE HITS HOLLYWOOD

The Bad Arm - Confessions of a Dodgy Irish Dancer

ANTIDOTE TO RIVERDANCE HITS HOLLYWOOD FRINGE
PRESS RELEASE: June 6, 2010
The Bad Arm – Confessions of a Dodgy Irish Dancer – a one-woman comedy with Irish Dance – written and performed by Máire Clerkin, directed by Dan O’Connor, hits
Theatre Asylum Lab for six performances in the Hollywood Fringe Festival.
6320 Santa Monica Blvd. LA, CA 90038 (just west of Vine St)
June 19 at 4:00 PM & 11:30 PM,
June 20 at 7:00 PM,
June 25 at 5:30 PM
June 27 at 2:30 PM and 7:00 PM
BUY TICKETS on-line at www.hollywoodfringe.org / or phone 866 811-4111
For more info visit www.maireclerkin.com/badarm.html Tickets $10
Download Press photos/View video clips www.maireclerkin.com/gallery.html
Press Contact: [email protected] / 310-801-5520

The Bad Arm – Confessions of a Dodgy Irish Dancer is an uproarious one-woman play by London-Irish dancer-performer Máire Clerkin. Amid astounding bursts of rhythm and physical theatre, this ugly-duckling-never-quite-swan recounts her experiences of sex and booze and rock and roll like only a convent-educated Irish catholic girl can.

If you thought all Irish dancers were curly-haired cutie-pies with perfect posture, meet a scowling misfit from London in this outrageous antidote to Riverdance.

Máire Clerkin jumps in and out of Irish dancing shoes, clicking and kicking her way across the stage in this percussive account of being English in Ireland, Irish in England and a pink-haired punk in a grey city. Pungent vintage photos of not-so-swinging London illustrate Clerkin’s woeful but hilarious personal history as the disappointing daughter of a successful Irish Dancing teacher in 1970s London. Clerkin’s ‘glorious riffs of traditional Irish dance… animated impersonations and snapshot transitions…’(LA WEEKLY) deliver an hour of rich, dark comedy.

“The focal point of Clerkin’s coming of age saga is her right elbow… a “bad arm” that her mother says is responsible for her placing poorly in competitions…keeping both arms slammed into one’s body emerges as a metaphoric constriction in a world that Clerkin captures so meticulously.”
Stephen Leigh Morris, LA Weekly
“An English-born Irish girl in London…at times poignant and at times hysterically funny.”
Brooke Alberts, Folkworks Magazine

Máire Clerkin is the founder of London-based companies The Hairy Marys and Clerkinworks Irish Dance Theatre, which toured extensively in Ireland and the UK. Credits include Dancing on Dangerous Ground at Radio City Music Hall; and Music Makers on BBC TV. She moved to California in ‘03 and creates award-winning choreodrama nationwide.

Director Dan O’Connor is an actor, writer and improviser. Co-founder of Impro Theatre (LA Weekly’s top ten Best Theatre of 2009), he is co-director of Jane Austen UnScripted, Shakespeare UnScripted and Sondheim UnScripted.

www.maireclerkin.com
For further info contact Máire Clerkin on 310 801 5520