CUOMO (2022)
Devised and Performed by Tess Dworman
Presented by the BOFFO Festival in the Fire Island Pines
Photo by Matt Grubb and Nir Arieli
In CUOMO, Tess Dworman performs a live reenactment of Andrew Cuomo’s first public remarks after resigning as governor of New York.
In his speech, which was originally delivered in a Black church in Brooklyn, Cuomo seeks guidance from God to navigate his experience of being canceled after several women accused him of sexual harassment and the subsequent call for his resignation.
Dworman inhabits the spell of Cuomo’s delusion and the poetry of his defensiveness as he wrangles his words and actions into a bewildering lesson on suffering, truth, and virtue.
Through Dworman’s queer body and on this gay beach, Cuomo’s fall from grace is neither forgiven nor re-canceled, but repurposed as a rite of failure.
