“Excellence Award” for Solo Show, New York International Fringe Festival
“Sort of a Lucy Ricardo - Little Tramp Hybrid”
Time Out NY
A Life In Her Day, created by Hilary Chaplain with Avner Eisenberg, and directed by Avner Eisenberg, is available to tour worldwide. The show runs for one hour with no intermission and is best played in an intimate theatrical setting. The production is technically flexible and includes costumes, a simple set and a simple light plot. One technician can easily run the show.
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.
“Chaplain manages
to go beyond mere slapstick and develops a sympathetic character that the audience can latch on to.“
“It's a piece on human condition . . . It's about my struggle maintaining my dignity, and being taken seriously as a woman, while stumbling upon minor stumbling blocks and always coming out the winner.“
