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MIDNIGHT COLESLAW’S TALES FROM BEYOND THE CLOSET!!!

Join drag-vamp, Midnight Coleslaw (and her talking-skull-sidekick, Boner) as she hosts a campy and titillating evening of queer horror-comedy including a chair made out of skin that turns into a humanoid third-wheel in a couple’s relationship, a father back from the dead to make sure his little (unbeknownst to him lesbian) girl is thriving, and an aging queen’s party of disappearing guests. Exit the closet and enter the theater—if you dare!!!

Presented by The Tank | 312 West 36th Street

May 31st - June 23rd, 2024 | Tickets on sale now—click HERE.

Artist Statement

My work explores the cracks between the boundaries of what’s “real” and what isn’t—by fusing the two I attempt to locate my own existence within the realm of the fantastic. I’m a lyrical playwright who loves the campy, melodramatic and surreal I am also interested in making work that transcend traditional beliefs around gender identity, sexuality and self-actualization. My plays are not defined completely by who I am as a queer person, however, many of them dramatize the shifting relationship between deviant culture and heteronormativity. Ultimately, I write to find myself, in my own life and in the lives of others---to subvert death with magic--to embrace grief through imagination.

Bio

Joey Merlo is currently the artist-in-residence at the William Steeple Davis House in Orient, NY. He is a theater maker and educator who has worked all over the world including Greece, Peru and Ghana, where, in collaboration with Ghanian activists and students, he filmed a documentary on the illegality of homosexuality called Voices. Joey is a New York Foundation for The Arts Playwriting Fellow and a former artist-in-residence at Abingdon Theater Company. Recent projects include: The “Brilliant/Highbrow” (NY magazine) off-Broadway engagement of On Set with Theda Bara starring David Greenspan and directed by Jack Serio at The Brick in a Transport Group/Lortel co-production. Joey has been awarded grants from The Puffin Foundation, NYSCA and The Merchant/Ivory Foundation. They hold a BFA from NYU, Tisch’s Experimental Theater Wing and an MFA from Brooklyn College.

Work