There are riches in Emil Amok: 69, but you’ve got to negotiate a lot of clutter to get to them.
In his anecdotal stand-up set, writer and performer Emil Amok Guillermo adopts an alienatingly hyperactive persona, his delivery is all over the place, and many of his cappers don’t land.
But he’s not messing around with his content, which is, at times, both funny and moving.
It’s grounding and important to get Amok’s first-person account of what it’s like to be brown in CDTA 34’s America (Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s America, to use Amok’s term): the weirdness of having relatives who support Trump, and the destabilization of Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship after what looked like progress in the arc of racism.
There’s a lovely bit about Amok’s relationship to his trans daughter. When she wants to get feminizing facial surgery, he says, “You’re already Filipino. Isn’t that feminine enough?” (Hey! He said it, not me. And I appreciate his transgressiveness.)
When the bandages come off, he says, touchingly, “Beautiful.”
At the performance I attended, Emil Amok: 69 settled down gradually after its rattletrap beginning.
Remaining performances: Sept 6, 7:30; Sept 10, 5:00; Sept 11, 9:25; Sept 12, 6:15; Sept 14, 4:20. Tickets
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