Written by Cynthia Kaplan, playwright and star of Cindy of Arc
I came up performing comedy, commentary, theater, and music in the alternative scene in 1990s and early 2000s New York. Moonwork, Surf Reality, Cucaracha, Luna Lounge, Dixon Place, Naked Angels, the Knitting Factory, Joe’s Pub, and a lot of venues that were someone’s apartment the rest of the day. This led to a side career (i.e. the one where I made money) as a humorous essayist, first on the Op-Ed pages of the NY Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer and then in two collections of essays, Why I’m Like This: True Stories and Leave the Building Quickly, as well as in many magazines and anthologies. I went on to write some comedy for TV and film and continued performing and acting in independent films and off and off-off Broadway plays. I had actually gone to drama school, where I learned Shakespeare and Checkhov and to speak from my diaphragm, all surprisingly useful skills.
Currently, I perform regularly in clubs and theaters with my award-winning band, The Cynthia Kaplan Ordeal, which, admittedly, is sometimes just me, and I co-host the long running Ruthless Comedy Hour at Stand Up New York.
Sometimes people ask me what’s the story with the singing. The story is that I already sang and played the guitar, and when I started doing comedy I realized that some jokes work really well as punch lines in songs, that there is comedy in great rhymes, and that people really love music. I love music. Also, sometimes you can sing something that would be just beyond the pale to say. The music adds the right amount of deniability, not that, as you will see, I’m big on denial. Songs like We Were the Donner Party, Merry F**king Christmas, You’re the Nazi, and Letter from Doctor Randall Berkhauser (don’t ask, okay, ask) fall into this category.
I worked on Cindy of Arc throughout the pandemic, managing to do a Zoom reading/singing for Naked Angels Theatre Company, performing alone in my clothing/Zoom closet with my guitar. If you remember when Albert Brooks got the chance to anchor in the film Broadcast News, it was like that.
In the fall of 2020 our director, Dani Davis, had the genius idea of borrowing a barn on Cape Cod and shooting Cindy of Arc like a concert film, or so we believed, having never done that before. It had a lovely life at the Cinequest Film Festival. Honestly, though, the best part was being sequestered with the band and some artsy Cape Cod folks who showed up in masks with film cameras and an emotional support puppy.
When theaters reopened we mounted two workshop productions, six months apart, which went better than we could have hoped. Okay, that’s ridiculous, they went as well as we’d expected, because we think the play is really good. For Seattle we’ve added a drum kit, and you are going to go nuts over how much we sound like the love child of the Killers, Pearl Jam, and Tom Lehrer, had they been a threesome. In fact, Eddie Vedder gets a shout out in the show, so you might want to come just for that. Also, we’ll be talking Nazis, because they just can’t seem to quit us.
About the fundraising thing: Cindy of Arc is a comedy and rock music extravaganza about the stories men have concocted since the dawn of time and will probably still be telling until the Twelfth of Never as their proof for why they must run the world into the ground. Right now, the idea that a woman should not have bodily autonomy is one of those stories. So, we here at Cindy of Arc Dot Org decided to put other people’s money where our mouth is by partnering with reproductive and women’s rights organizations and raising money and awareness for them. I read recently that Alex Edeleman raised 3.5 million dollars for Covid relief with a pandemic Zoom show, which is incredible. We’ve raised about $9000 so far. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you are one of the 18 women whose abortion we paid for, you probably feel okay about it. And we’re just going to keep at it.
The under 50s working on the show forced me onto Tik Tok. The result of that can be seen on my Tik Tok show, Today in the History of the Patriarchy @cindyofarc. More about me can be found at www.cynthiakaplan.com.
We hope to see you at the show! Nowhere else will you find the answers to some of the most pressing questions of our time: Why are there no Jews in Whoville? What is a scold’s bridle? What is the meaning of Lady Justice’s blindfold and bared breast?*
One last thing: It is a hard, hard truth that my dear friend, the beloved Seattle-based filmmaker Lynn Shelton, is not here for this. We spent many years writing and performing shows together in New York as part of the renowned four-woman group Denise. I know she would have cheered to see me at Intiman. The guitar I’m playing tonight was bought in a pawn shop near Pike Place Market, just before meeting Lynn for dinner.
See you soon,
Cynthia Kaplan
*Because when the Romans tested a blindfolded, one ball out Mister Justice, they realized it was stupid and degrading and that nobody would respect him.
Director Madeleine Olnek, Susan Ziegler, Lynn Shelton, and Cynthia Kaplan, at Sundance Film Festival
Cynthia Kaplan in her early performance days in NYC.
Cynthia Kaplan at Ruthless Comedy Hour with Karen Bergreen
Original poster design for Cindy of Arc.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING: We have not yet been reviewed by the critics, but here’s what people have said about me, my writing, and my show:
“The perfect convergence of rock and roll trop and middle class Jewish psyche…Witty, angry, sparkling…Transcendence happens.”
—Bob Garfield, Bully Pulpit
“Cynthia Kaplan is the funniest, funkiest white girl I’ve seen. Cindy of Arc takes you on the hilarious journey (with rockin’ songs) of an unapologetically smart-ass woman.”
—Nancy Giles, Emmy- winning contributor, CBS News Sunday Morning
“Kaplan has always made me laugh. No small feat.”
—Lewis Black
“Cindy of Arc is amazing. The band is so hot. You are going to have a ball. Cynthia Kaplan is a genius.”
—Judy Gold
“Ms. Kaplan is epically funny, and hyper-intelligent…The show is filled with politics of the left wing sort, word play, and a world view shaped in equal parts by being a woman and a Jew…Make sure to buy for your friends that might want to go. If your friends don’t then find better friends and go with them.”
—Gordon Nash, Folk Music Notebook Radio
About the writing:
“Hilarious.”
—The Village Voice
“Striking a note somewhere between David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen, Kaplan spins traumas personal and professional for maximum laughs… a literary star.”
—People Magazine
“Knee slapping hilarious… Fans of David Sedaris or Anne Lamott will appreciate (Kaplan’s) quirky way of looking at life’s intricacies.”
—USA Today
“Quick-witted, neatly written and unapologetically grandiose… in the spirit of Dorothy Parker… (Kaplan) renders weird and rowdy scenarios with style.”
—The New York Times
“…a self-assured, unified work that’s sexy in the best sense: mature, candid and real. Often compared to David Sedaris, the actress/writer combines droll humor with hard-won sentiment…”
—Seattle Weekly
“Alternately hilarious and poignant… Kaplan has a great ear for the spoken word, the cadence of modern speech.”
—The Boston Globe
