Good Actors — Sommer Browning

Good Actors is a one-woman performance of the poet Sommer Browning’s third poetry collection, Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). It is funny, moving, irreverent, sexy, and funny (again). It explores the boundarylessness of genre but also our human roles—where do our roles and performances end and “real life” begin? How do we transition between art and life when life itself is a creative act? Where are the edges? Do we ever know what the hell we’re doing? It's a bit Spaulding Grey and a bit Maria Bamford and a bit Sleater-Kinney. The text is grounded in everyday life and centers subjects such as divorce, motherhood, loss, and sexuality all filtered through popular culture and a wry sense of humor. The performance is directed and produced by Aaron Angello and features bold, vibrant animations created specifically for the text by filmmaker Kelly Sears.

Throughout 2023 and early 2024, I performed Good Actors at the Tucson Fringe Festival, Hood College, Rhizome in DC, Seattle University, The Blue Room in Nashville, CPR: Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NCSU, Buntport Theater in Denver, and at the Fort Collins Book Festival. You can watch a recording of a performance in Denver below.

Buntport Theater, Denver, March 25, 2023. Shot and edited by Kim Shively.

Aaron Angello is a professor of English and theatre at Hood College, where he directs the theatre program and teaches courses in creative writing, modern and contemporary poetry, film and media, and drama. He is also creative director of the Endangered Species (theatre) Project and founder of the Frederick Shakespeare Festival. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals, and he is the editor of The Synergistic Classroom: Interdisciplinary Teaching in the Small College Setting. His genre-defying book The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications was published in April 2022 by Rose Metal Press.

Sommer Browning is a poet, writer, curator, and artist. Her latest book is Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). She’s the author of two other collections of poetry, Backup Singers and Either Way I’m Celebrating, as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book, You’re On My Period (Counterpath), and others. In 2017, she founded GEORGIA, an art space in her garage in Denver. She has performed all over the country, including in standup comedy clubs and in theaters with GASP, a poetry theater group. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Hyperallergic, Lit Hub, Bomb, jubilat, Chicago Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker living in Denver, Colorado. She is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Moving Image at University of Colorado Boulder and her work as been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, The Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco International Film Festival, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, among other places.