Hilary Chaplain (USA)
„A Life In Her Day“
Saturday, Dec. 6th (7.30 pm)
Photo: Hilary Chaplain
Austrian premiere
Without words
Actress: Hilary Chaplain
Director: Avner Eisenberg
Unconventional and outrageously funny, A Life In Her Day is a wonderful mix of physical comedy and serious theatre about a Jewish woman in her publicly shared private world. An original amalgam of Lucille Ball and Charlie Chaplin, Hilary Chaplain is a quirky physical comedienne who exposes her most intimate moments as she chases the elusive promises of happily ever after. Audiences engage and participate in her wild theatrical antics and ultimately find themselves transported, moved and enriched by this extraordinary evening on the stage.
In transforming simple objects into human companions, Hilary’s character gets caught up in an alternate reality. While pouring a bowl of cereal, out pops a prize: a big diamond ring. From here a lifetime ensues in the course of an hour in a lovely and humorous portrait of a woman who wants the same thing as everyone else – to be loved. One thing leads to the next until she’s at the altar marrying a lamp with a paper towel veil and a dress made from the lampshade. Her adventures continue with a Hawaiian honeymoon, giving birth to a son fashioned from a roll of paper towels, and becoming a rabbi wearing a Hostess Snowball yarmulke performing a bris on her newborn. In the end, the audience is left with the sense that everything she needs can be created and that all she really needs is herself.
„A Life In Her Day“won the “Excellent Award for Solo Show” (New York International Fringe Festival).
Hilary Chaplain has been recognized as one of America’s foremost professional physical comediennes, performing her original solo and ensemble work for over a decade throughout the US, Canada, South America ,Europe and Asia. Uncovering the humor in everyday life, Hilary’s extraordinary work has won accolades worldwide. She is also a founding member of the New York Goofs (est.1998) appearing with them in prestigious New York venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, the American Museum of Natural History, Symphony Space, and on tour at Wolf Trap with Bob McGrath from Sesame Street.
As an actress, Hilary was an original cast member in Bill Irwin's Largely/New York and appeared on Broadway and at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park as the Goddess Ceres in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest directed by George C. Wolfe. Regionally, Hilary has worked with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with Israel Horowitz’s Gloucester Stage Company. She also played a featured role in the 1994 Oscar winning movie Forrest Gump, a lawyer on Law and Order Criminal Intent and made a special appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.
Hilary was an adjunct professor of clowning at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for eight years and has taught numerous workshops in clowning and physical comedy. Known as "Nurse Nice", she has been entertaining hospitalized children with the renowned Big Apple Circus Hospital Clown Program® (since 1987) and has been invited to teach Hospital Clowning internationally.
With “A Life in Her Day” it’s Hilarys first appearance in Austria.
Chaplain manages to go beyond mere slapstick and develops a sympathetic character that the audience can latch on to.... Time Out New York
I strongly recommend that everyone go and see Hilary Chaplain’s one-woman-and-a-few-props-show, this wonderful wacky and quirky story of you, or of your cousin, your girlfriend, your ex-wife… nytheatre.com
It’s beautifully funny and sad, and very human… Charleston City Paper
Hilary Chaplain isn’t your typical clown. You laugh all the way through “A Life in her day”… South China Morning Post