fifty sons and daughters

This year we present stories from Vermillion's early New York days filled with odd jobs and characters, hopes and cringe moments. Revisiting those hard times proves to be an arduous negotiation. The tight places she had to navigate unscathed. The bureaucratic hassles. The joys of the New York art scene. And above all, how does one do justice to her younger self and the people she encountered?

In Fifty Sons And Daughters or How I Taught Freshmen to Read we go back to 2006 when for a year I taught English to college students. What you will hear tonight is just a fragment from the field notes that I'm shaping into a book.

As always with my experimental work your repeat attendance is welcome since this text evolves/shape shifts.

Vermillion is an independent performer, writer and artist born in Transylvania who has been active in the New York City cultural community since 2001. Her work has been presented at the Immigrant Theater Festival, Galapagos Art Space, Manhattan Theater Source, IWAS,The Field, Theater for the New City, The Moth, Stage Left, Bowery Poetry Club, and Chashama.

For several years she focused on her visual art, exhibiting work at the Outsider Art Fair, showing in galleries, publicly buried herself in bottles during her residency on Governors Island, created and curated internationally The Mushroom Show in 2023 and the 2026 Unfurling: Coming Out Of Isolation in NYC and London.

Her return to the theater has been a serendipitous process, with her solo storytelling show, On Cats and Dogs and Other Family Revelations, successfully premiered at the 2024 NYC Fringe Festival. Its various iterations are performed at Under St Marks Theater. Right now on hiatus.

During her residency, she develops evenings of inventive monologues, some soulful, some naughty, under the working title Book Spines Broken By My Purring Cat. This year’s volume, Fanging My Way Thru America encompasses her early New York days filled with odd jobs and odder characters.

As part of Under St Marks Theater revival of the vibrant improvisation programming that existed before Covid, Vermillion and her Lovely Shoes improv team hosts the monthly Lovely Shoes and Friends variety show third Tuesdays, 7 p.m..

Vermillion is honored to be a resident of this OBIE award winning theater.

@vermilion.nyc