Donald Barthelme Humors You
Devised and Directed by Olivia Facini
From Stories by Donald Barthelme
(Theaterlab, April 2025)
Facini staged a handful of the titular postmodernist writer’s short stories with a physicality that matched their tone—goofy and rigorous but never self-serious.
- The Brooklyn RailCritical Praise for Barthelme
We were thrilled to get a rave review in the Brooklyn Rail.
Meet the Team
Director and Deviser: Olivia Facini
Composer of Original Music: Conner Duke
Production Stage Manager: Guadalupe Chavezmalagon
Performers: Zachary Desmond and Lucas Iverson*
Lighting Designer: Xuewei (Eva) Hu
Graphic Designer: June Buck
Rug pulls and morbid humor twist the plot along, and Facini’s direction meets such corkscrewed prose.
- The Brooklyn RailAbout the Show
In Donald Barthelme Humors You, the Genius contemplates his genius, a schoolteacher reflects on his class pets’ untimely demise, and Balloon Man schemes on making a balloon so strong that Pin Lady will never be able to pop it, even if she hugs him for a hundred years.
Welcome to the world of Donald Barthelme’s subversive, hilarious, and absurdist short stories, which we’ve adapted for the stage and which we will perform for you—before your eyes! Allow us to show you impossible circus acts, children with the wisdom of adults, adults with the petulance of children, and even a little tulip craze!
Humor us for just an hour, and let us humor you.
It all makes for a funny dance, so if at times the text confounds, look to the bodies. They’ll still befuddle, but, like Barthelme’s stories, also bewitch... Facini opts for directorial dynamism...
- The Brooklyn RailMore About Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme wrote subversive, hilarious, and absurdist short stories. (If you’d like to get a sample of one, try The School.) Though Barthelme has largely disappeared from the public consciousness, the humor, bite, and perceptive social observation of his prose have only deepened with time. Barthelme blends verbally acrobatic dialogue with carefully rendered social tableaux, surrealist settings, and intricate descriptive passages.
A Side Note about the Piece
Originally, I conceived of this piece as a one-man show that would feature David Greenspan, a talented actor/theater maker and icon of the downtown experimental theater scene. (The Brooklyn Rail review of Barthelme actually compares it with one that Greenspan's 2022 production of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts!) But, due to scheduling issues that arose out of a labor strike at another venue (drama!), we won’t be able to work together on the piece. I hope to work with him on another piece soon.
