George & Martha

Karen Finley, the most controversial woman in performance today, officially inaugurates the new Collective: Unconscious theater complex in Tribeca with, George & Martha. This broad two-character political satire combines the real-life antics of George Dubya and Martha Stewart with Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? duo (and a touch of George and Martha Washington). This co-production between Collective: Unconscious and P.S. 122 stars Finley as Martha and newcomer Neil Medlin (the self-described “Paris Hilton of Performance Art”) as George.

George & Martha is set during a secret rendezvous in a hotel room in New York City during the Republican Convention. Here, they air their embittered legal and political woes into the intimacy of their private relationship. The tragedies and personal triumphs of these self-created icons become intertwined. Their internal struggles become a nightmarish battleground. Bin Laden hides in Bush’s bowels. Martha creates invisible nose hair scissors. Bush relapses into a coke binge and Martha flies into a rage over having to drink from a plastic glass. Their pathos and suffering become connected in their symbiotic need to be loved.