Can a divorcee find happiness at Fisherman’s Wharf on New Year’s Day?
Trust San Francisco to recycle everything including a 1950’s virgin. Houston (formerly Barbara) Robertson is a gutsy 79 year old storyteller who must have been the inspiration for the saying, “put your big girl panties on and deal with it.” Her one hour Fringe play wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining if she had kept them on.
Robertson has morphed from housewife and mother to divorcee to grad student to office worker to Ribbons the Clown to standup comic and raconteur.
“I’m not the new 65,” says Robertson, “I’m the new 79.” She is definitely not your grandmother’s stereotype of a senior citizen as she tours North America with her autobiographical monologue as part of her second adolescence.
Robertson doesn’t exactly fit the profile of a preacher’s daughter either and the ‘Parental Guidance” classification is ironically accurate as she definitely could have done with a senior guidance counsellor as she experimented with booze, men and drugs in her acting out phase when her marriage ended abruptly.
Houston Robertson.
Imagine someone in a colourful clown costume in San Francisco’s beautiful Grace Church on the first day of the year and the first day of the rest of her life. Fringe goers can eradicate the word old from their vocabulary after witnessing Robertson live out her victory on stage.
She was a runaway from her prescribed life at the age of 47. Her skills as a voice over artist are put to good use in her solo performance.
The echoes from her past of bully husband and men she meets are believable. Her story is real as evidenced by the reactions of women in the audience.
Robertson uses her personal journey of mid-life reinvention to affirm women who have been through her situation and to reach young women who might still think marriage is the answer.
She shares her emotional wisdom to create a new rite of passage for mature women who lived in an era of repressed female sexuality. Robertson conveys a ‘just watch me’ attitude as she recounts her life after marriage to a man who just wasn’t that into her.
To know more about this dynamic resilient survivor you can read her memoir, Paper Chain Confessions, available from Amazon:
Warnings: Sexual Content (that’s an understatement)
Venue #5 Son of Warehouse – 140 Rupert Ave. side entrance
Showtimes:
Fri. Jul 15, 2016 – 1:45 p.m.
Sat. Jul 16, 2016 – 6:45 p.m.
Mon. Jul 18, 2016 – 12:00 p.m.
Tue. Jul 19, 2016 – 5:00 p.m.
Wed. Jul 20, 2016 – 10:15 p.m.
Fri. Jul 22, 2016 – 3:30 p.m.
Sat. Jul 23, 2016 – 8:30 p.m.
