Q&A with Plus 1 Solo Show Fest's Felicity Seidel

The spring 2014 Plus 1 Solo Show Festival features five 20-minute solo works and musical guest Todd Kramer.  The festival line up:

• Unmolested? by Lynn Bixenspan
• Lucky Chick by Felicity Seidel
• Solo Show by David Meyers
• My Unsexy Life as a Wall Street Analyst by Yangyang Guo
• Sleep Well by Glynn Borders

The festival runs for 2 shows, May 11 and 12 at 8 PM at The Bridge Theatre.  There is an intermission. Purchase $20 tickets online or by phone at 212-868-4444.

We asked the lovely and talented Felicity Seidel a few questions, and here is what she had to say:

What inspired you to write this solo show, Lucky Chick?

Felicity Seidel, Lucky Chick

My crazy life!  By the time Matt Hoverman had an opening in his solo show writing class (http://www.matthoverman.com/Teaching_Home.html), I could barely contain my stories.  I had been chomping at the bit to write for quite a while.

But as I discovered, it's not nothing to find classic story structure in real life events, especially your own.  For me, the writing process starts out with introspection, it's shapeless and descriptive -- hopeless for a solo show.

Matt gave me the invaluable gift of seeing that it's when you start to inject structure and persona it pops to life.  He taught me that by pushing specific elements to the foreground, defining characters, finding arcs, highlighting conflict and struggle and taking some creative leaps for fun, that you have something that stands up on its feet.

Give us your elevator pitch.
Lucky Chick is one girl's funny and tumultuous adventure that starts in the midst of an Irish street gang in NYC, winds its way to a Grateful Dead concert in Alaska, where life makes a sharp turn after being plucked from the audience by the band, and winds up amidst power, drugs and money in the world of a big-time cocaine dealer... all by the age of 18.  What!?

Dream big and tell us what you want to do with your piece in the future.
To dream big is to work hard.  I like the idea that if you've lived it, you own it.  Now write it, check your fear at the door, and see what comes.  I've already jumped back into class with Matt Hoverman, where I'm pulling apart and expanding the twenty minutes I'll be performing in the Plus 1 Festival this weekend.

My plan is to end up with a full-length piece, somewhere between 50 and 60 minutes, a 'buckle up and hold onto your hats' roller coaster ride of a story with multi-media aspects (music, projected images and so on), that can play both at festivals and in a run on its own.