Blogging Bloodworks: Dufault

I think I’m trying to be more honest about where things come from.

Anyway.

I really, legitimately loved newspaper comic strips when I was younger. Garfield. Fox Trot. For Better or for Worse.

But there was one comic (not in the newspaper) that when I was young I found really unsettling.

Richie Rich, you are such a fucking asshole.

And I really do find the comic uncomfortable to read, partially because of weird class issue crap, but also because holy shit, Richie Rich is actually an enormous d-bag to Cadbury the Perfect Butler.

So that partially inspired this play.

Anyway.

Maybe seventeen or so years after the last time I read a Richie Rich comic, I was chaperoning ninth graders through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And I saw this:

Which is an excerpt from the Book of the Dead.

It’s a scene I find pretty beautiful and haunting.

I was sort of dumbstruck by it.

And then I had to go because we found out that Kevin Olivo (not his real name) was trying to touch a nude statue’s breasts.

So Richie Rich and the Book of the Dead merged together into this play called The Tomb of King Tot.

But that’s all bullshit.

Because the play’s actually about the intersection between grief and humor. And was written during a weird period of time when I was between living situations, and was often eating at this strange little Egyptian diner. The food made me feel sick. But I’d eat it all the time.

That’s the real secret origin of King Tot. Terrible, terrible Egyptian diner food.

Come see the play.

It stars some serious theatrical titans, including:

Lucy DeVito. Curran Connor. Brad Bellamy. Megan Hill.

I’m mesmerized by the fact that I tricked all these people into getting together in the same room and saying words out loud.

Directed by the furiously talented Larissa Lury.

The play’s followed by another at 9pm by the wonderful, kind, very impressive Darcy Fowler.

Sorry to gush.

The Tomb of King Tot

Wednesday, June 26th
7 PM
The Ma Yi Rehearsal Space (260 West 35th St, 2nd Fl.)

Oh! Also! This is the final Bloodworks night! Oh man!

What does that mean?

Drinking (definitely). Great people celebrating a series of great feats put on by this great group before we all scatter off into the summer. I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to miss it.