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Good and Gaslit

Written by: Deborah Cincotta
Directed by: Kendall McDermott
Produced by: Double Cappuccino Productions LLC

Winner of the Producers' Encore Award at the 2023 Hollywood
Fringe Festival,Good and Gaslit tackles the knotty issue of
gaslighting in a show that's entertaining and enlightening.
Following its sold-out premiere in Los Angeles, this all-female
production uses intelligence, humor and wit to tell a modern story
of self-discovery, shedding light on the various dimensions of
gaslighting in many a woman's everyday life. 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's unique.

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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. ​

Press

"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 recognizing 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

www.britishtheaterguide.com

"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

www.NorthWestEndUK.com

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