Gooder Than Gold
Her dad died. And then she killed everything else.
“Blackly funny and brutally vivid, Gooder than Gold is a sharply observed memoir-come-to-life, voiced by a master storyteller.”
@joshilyn_jackson, NYT bestselling author of gods in Alabama and Never Have I Ever.
Debuting at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Bedlam Theatre, Gooder than Gold is a true-life story about a prodigal daughter of Appalachia who lost it all and found what matters, while keeping time with the songs in her head.
Want an up-close look at a gal using lessons she never wanted to learn to blow up her whole freaking life? This is the show to see. Perfect for folks who have been lost and found in the big love of those closest to them and the secrets they didn’t know they were keeping.
This deeply personal new work craves an audience that has a soft spot for irreverent humour and deep introspection. The setting is both a sanctuary and a crime scene. There’s a revelation here, behind a two-way mirror and under stained glass, if you’re looking for a little redemption of your own. Can she get a witness?
Perfect for fans of the work of writer/performers Michaela Coel, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Hannah Gadsby, the latest and greatest from an artist featured in the New York Times Critics’ Pick show Inanimate, NYC theatre veteran Tressa Preston’s Gooder than Gold is a world premier cussin’ and cryin’ live action memoir with music that encourages wailing in Wal-Mart, laughing at funerals, and finally choosing yourself, for heaven’s sake.
“A remarkable presence on the stage”
“A three-tissue show”
“The best and most poignant theatre I’ve ever experienced”
“A good continual kick in the teeth”
“Takes the idea of feminism to a place I’ve not seen before”
“Strong, human, uncomfortably funny”
Get A behind the scenes look At the Development of The work
“I suppose we have to start where it all starts. And where it ended. In Kentucky. And before anyone makes a fried chicken joke, my mother’s mother actually did know Colonel Sanders before his KFC fame.
I can’t remember if that was before or after she left her husband and 5 daughters and drove a Vega Station Wagon to California to marry her pen pal who was serving time in Folsom Prison. He had knocked over a liquor store. (Her second husband, I mean. Not Colonel Sanders.)”
“When a good old boy prick on the Board of Directors I ran took issue with me ‘speaking when not spoken to’ and being in general an uppity woman whose face he didn’t like, my nephew began researching native pernicious bugs that could be planted to infest his house. Very biblical.
My sister’s eldest took the long game and began planning a political campaign to oust him from office. My niece, the most savage of us all, quietly plotted arson. That is love I can feel.”
“The City made me hard in all the right places. New York isn’t magical for the bright lights of Broadway reasons people think. It’s magical because literally anything can happen at any moment—you could turn a corner and bump into the person who makes you a millionaire, or you could get stabbed and left in a gutter.
Rolling the dice like that can make you feel electric. It was not always the healthiest of relationships, but New York loved me too.”
“It's alarming how arousing simple competence is when you have been screaming into the void. It can just walk in with amazing hair and expensive sneakers and REMEMBER YOU FROM WHEN YOU WENT TO GRADE SCHOOL TOGETHER and be completely appropriate in its sympathies and chaste one-armed hug.
The literal only thing he is giving is complete professionalism and basic kindness, and it’s all I can do not to try and take his pants off.”
Bring Gooder than gold to you
With an artist talk back after the show!
“I suppose we have to start where it all starts. And where it ended. In Kentucky. And before anyone makes a fried chicken joke, my mother’s mother actually did know Colonel Sanders before his KFC fame.
I can’t remember if that was before or after she left her husband and 5 daughters and drove a Vega Station Wagon to California to marry her pen pal who was serving time in Folsom Prison. He had knocked over a liquor store. (Her second husband, I mean. Not Colonel Sanders.)”