Purgatorio Ink's Something Something Uber Alles, written and performed by Assurbanipal Babilla, premieres at NY's The Emerging Collector, March 5.
Something Something tells the story of an ordinary New Yorker, except for the fact that he looks exactly like Adolf Hitler. Finding himself the subject of adulation by a Hitler-worshipping cult, the man is at first aghast but, then slowly decides to come to terms with the hand that fate dealt him.
Babilla, artistic director of Purgatorio Ink,is originally from Iran, where in the 1970s he was one of the country's leading avant-garde directors. When the fundamentalist revolution erupted in 1979, he fled to America. He has since written and directed plays in Los Angeles and New York, and toured his work to Poland, Boston, Baltimore, Seattle and Portland.
Something Something marks the directorial debut of Ink company member, David Cote. Cote has been with the company since 1993 and recently toured in Richard Foreman's Pearls for Pigs.
Previous Purgatorio works include Dog Spelled Backwards, Suddenly Something Recklessly Gay and Othello And The Circumcised Turk at such venues as La MaMa, PS 122 and the Vineyard. Most recently Purgatorio presented Babilla's Born Again Killer or Dead Women Talking at NY's KGB as well as, part of NY's First Annual Fringe Festival. Something Something Uber Alles opens Mar. 5 at The Emerging Collector, for reservations call (212) 502-8617.
-- By Sean McGrath
