Close Up is Metropolitan Playhouse's fourteenth collection of solo performances inspired by the lives of East Village residents. Drawn from interviews with the theater's neighbors, these verbatim monologues are "great theater....storytelling at its best" (Hi Drama) that capture "the face of the East Village – with all its grit, darkness, ferocity, and yes – life-saving beauty" (TheaterScene.net). To date, the theater has celebrated the lives of 92 neighbors through the series.
Presented together as a set of complementary stories, the three monologues are detailed portraits of real-life neighbors in their own words. They are also powerful individual dramas, telling unique stories of ambition and conflict, fueled with resolutions and revelations, and driven by unexpected philosophies.
The subjects of this year’s portraits are:
Restaurateur Rafik Bouzgarrou, Tunisian-born owner of the popular restaurant Bin 141 on Avenue A, who opened Angelina's Café on the block in 2002 and has served Mediterranean-inspired meals through economic and pandemic ups and downs since
Berklee College of Music-trained jazz and standards crooner Nick Drakides, a foremost Sinatra impersonator who has been featured by NPR's This American Life, as well as a one-time bartender at The Four Seasons
Marcia A. Richard, author of M!ss D!agnosed, a memoir of addiction and recovery, is a certified Peer Specialist from the Howie the Harp human services training program.
