Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez’s long running serial drama
Coming July 14, 15, 16, to The Kitchen in NYC
Brooke O’Harra directs and Nicky Paraiso music directs
It’s happening in JULY! The 2015 performance of And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, the acclaimed collaborative serial performance, written by Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez, will be presented over three nights, July 14, 15, 16, at the Kitchen in New York City. This long running collaborative work appeared and reappeared in New York City (and Allentown, PA) under many titles over three decades–And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Hot Keys, Come Clean, The Confessions of Conrad Gerhardt, and Spring Offensive.
In the original performance of the work, Weiss performed all the roles but over time he and Martinez began casting actors and non-actors and by 2008 hundreds of people had performed alongside Weiss in this perverse, scary, hilarious, sex-filled and sexy serial drama that follows a charming serial killer through the queer underbelly of the city. Conrad Gerhardt, sometimes in tandem with his alter ego Bjorn Zoltar and, in later iterations, his son, Billy, who is a hustler and also a serial killer, moves gloriously, passionately and violently through show business from the stage to Walt Disney as well as through the AIDS crisis (referred to as the “taint” in Weiss and Martinez’s dramas). Showing at Good Medicine & Company, the storefront theater that Weiss and Martinez ran out of their 10th Street apartment and also at Café Cino, LaMama, the Performing Garage, Naked Angels and PS 122, these serials were celebrated by loyal audiences and participants.
Brooke O’Harra, Nicky Paraiso, and Kate Valk have banded together with the support of the Kitchen to stage three evenings of Jeff and Richard’s work. They have assembled a cast of about 50 people, many of whom worked with Jeff and Richard in the 80s and 90s, to reengage the work. Weiss will appear in the production, in various cameo performances, throughout the three-day run.
