“Fair State,” January 22 through February 1

Thursday, January 22, through Sunday, February 1

Riverside Theatre, 119 East College Street, Iowa City IA

Returning to Iowa City's Riverside Theatre with her first solo show in years, area favorite Megan Gogerty – a co-star in last spring's The Lifespan of a Fact – performs her self-written autobiographical play Fair State from January 22 through February 1, this debuting dramatic-comedy monologue production designed by Chris Rich and stage managed by Meenakshi Chinmai.

When comedian Gogerty loses her charming, unreliable, alcoholic father, she unearths evidence of her family’s ancestral ties to the founding of the state of Iowa. Were they hearty immigrants making a new life on the frontier? Or a collection of self-satisfied boot-strappers complicit in destruction and erasure? And why choose? As Gogerty examines Iowa’s past in Fair State she lays bare the secrets that haunt her and her sisters. What do we do with our problematic relatives? With our problematic history? We tell the truth.

A playwright and comedian, Gogerty was a recipient of the Cloris Leachman Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, and her solo show Lady Macbeth & Her Pal played the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and won the Audience Pick of the Fringe at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Her play FEAST. was named as a Critic’s Pick by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, while Gogerty's play Bad Panda (Theatre Without Borders, Beijing; Iron Crow Theatre Co.; WordBRIDGE Boomerang Playwright honoree) is published by Original Works Publishing and was translated into Spanish for a five-month run at Foro Lucerna del Teatro Milan in Mexico City. In addition, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution listed her solo show Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant in their yearly Top Ten Best Plays.

Gogerty's musical drama Love Jerry premiered at Actors Express in Atlanta and was produced in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, where it won three Talkin’ Broadway Citations and four NYMF Excellence Awards including Excellence in Writing (Book). Her short play Super Hot Raven and Raven II: The Ravening is published in the anthology The Best American Short Plays of 2015 by Applause Books. Other plays include: Housebroken (Riverside Theatre, Hollins University); and Save Me, Dolly Parton (Riverside Theatre, Synchronicity Theatre; named among Best Plays in Atlanta by Creative Loafing). Gogerty was a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow, a WordBRIDGE alum, and she earned her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently teaches playwriting and comedy studies at the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is a regularly returning visiting faculty for the Playwright's Lab at Hollins University.

Megan Gogerty stars in Iowa City's Fair State from January 22 through February 1, with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. There will also be a talkback with Gogerty, hosted by Miriam Gilbert, following the January 25 afternoon performance. This post-show event is free, open to the public, and you do not need to attend that day’s production to attend the talkback. Admission to Fair State is $18.42, and more information and tickets are available by calling (319)259-7099 and visiting RiversideTheatre.org.