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NEXT: ✨ IF MEMORY SERVES ✨ NYC 11/15
SOBRIETY, SEX, AND PROFOUND STUPIDITY... the horrors are indescribable, but you’ve still got to serve! And if memory serves, NYC comedian Michael John Ciszewski made a fine mess of things before getting sober.
Help him remember everything he wishes he could forget—from transformative pop culture and hookups with radical leftists to queer villainy and accidental car theft. Make new memories on the scorched earth of a gay youth quite literally WASTED in this hilarious and searingly honest hour of comedy JAM-PACKED with LAUGHS about anxiety, identity, relationships, and the inscrutable conundrum of existence!
Heralded as “superbly written and immaculately performed” and “hilarious and brutally honest,” IF MEMORY SERVES debuted to a sold-out house in Brooklyn in February 2024 before acclaimed engagements in Fort Lauderdale, Boston, and sold-out encores in Manhattan.
IF MEMORY SERVES is HOT off a critically acclaimed, audience favorite breakout run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Just the Tonic, one of the UKs leading comedy presenters! Named #50 on a list of the top 100 shows at EdFringe 2024—out of 3600!—by Fringebiscuit. the show was also nominated for the Queer Performer’s Award and awarded four star reviews from A Youngish Perspective and BingeFringe Magazine, who called the show “slick, sensitive and deeply enjoyable,” and lauded Ciszewski as “equal parts engrossing storyteller as he is whip-smart comic!”
IF MEMORY SERVES is the fourth solo hour from “a one-of-a-kind storyteller” that’s earned raves from critics and audiences with “its unmatched blend of pop culture, pathos, and silly queer-assery!” Ciszewski has previously packed raucous, rapt houses in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Provincetown MA, and New Jersey.
IF MEMORY SERVES is directed by Noah Simes (Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare, The Penumbra Podcast) and produced by Brian Dudley.
November 15, 2024 • 8:30pm
The PIT, NYC • Buy Tickets
Michael John (he/him) is a queer actor and comedian born, raised, and returned to New York City after launching his career in Boston and London.
Celebrated as “equal parts engrossing storyteller as he is whip-smart comic” by Binge Fringe Magazine, Ciszewski’s comedy is rooted in queerness and healing. His debut solo show Everyone is Dying and So Am I premiered in July 2019 and then enjoyed sold-out performances in Boston and at Manhattan's Theatre Row and United Solo Theatre Festival—spotlighting the best in international solo performance. It was subsequently nominated for the festival’s audience award. His second solo effort The Sun is Sleeping was a full-length film composed at the start of the pandemic era that screened in virtual events from late 2020 into 2021.
His hit third solo hour Lovefool premiered in 2022 and has since played in venues ranging from proscenium and black box theatres to comedy clubs and festival stages in New York City, Boston, Providence, Provincetown, Jersey City, and Philadelphia. In Summer 2023, it enjoyed an eight-date tour of the Northeast on which it was named a Critic’s Pick by the Provincetown Independent and sold out Brooklyn’s Pete’s Candy Store.
Ciszewski’s fourth hour of comedy If Memory Serves debuted in February 2023 to a sold-out house in New York City before touring to Fort Lauderdale and Boston. In August 2024, it enjoyed a month-long run in Edinburgh, Scotland, presented by leading UK comedy producer Just the Tonic at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it earned both critical and audience raves.
Both Lovefool and If Memory Serves are available for booking now by reaching out to xomichaeljohn@gmail.com
Michael is a member of the staff of ArtsEmerson at Emerson College’s Office of the Arts. He trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and is a proud graduate of Boston University’s B.F.A. Theatre Arts program. Find him at xomichaeljohn.com—or @xomichaeljohn, wherever social media happens.
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