Robert Cucuzza Directs One-Woman Show at Son of Semele

Susan Tierney performs a solo work at Son of Semele this weekend. (Image: Courtesy of the artist)

Robert Cucuzza, a Los Angeles theater artist and CalArts alum (Theater MFA 11), directs a solo show in L.A. as part of the Son of Semele Ensemble’s first Solo Creation Festival. The fest, which wraps this weekend, featured nine performers in three distinct programs.

Robert Cucuzza

Cucuzza, who directed and revamped the Actors Showcase at CalArts and performed in Elevator Repair Service’s epic Gatz at REDCAT in 2012, collaborates with Susan Tierney, a seasoned storyteller and an alumnus of New York’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Together, they bring a theatrical edge to seven of Tierney’s true-life stories to the stage. In this piece, her vignettes all revolve around the theme of “falling.” Cucuzza describes them further in an email:

Did your father fall off a roof and die? Have you ever plummeted down an elevator shaft? How about fallen from the sky with a busted parachute? No? Ever have your best friend jump from a window and kill himself? Experience a fall from grace into exotic dancing? Did you watch the Twin Towers come crashing down? No? Maybe one or two of those things? Susan Tierney had them all. And she got up every time and kept going. You know why? Because life matters, despite all that’s crashing down. …

The other performers during the festival’s third and final weekend include Melissa R. Randel’s The Women of “The Hat” and Abby Schachner’s You’re Not Nothing.

The Solo Creation Festival, developed to provide artists a means to present diverse solo theater works, runs this Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 5 pm.