Temporary Girl: The Office Christmas Party

“Chicago-based solo performance artist Lisa Kotin works in some of America’s premier blue-chip companies as a temp–a position that has given her enough material to create two witty shows based on her experience in corporate America. Carmela Rago, Chicago Reader April 21, 1995

Her new two-act show, Temporary Girl: The Office Christmas Party, is a sequel to her 1992 hit, Temporary Girl, and is a multimedia endeavor in which Kotin plays five characters who are much like women all of us have met. For the most part they are the cogs in the wheels of the corporate world: secretaries, receptionists, word processors, and, of course, temps. Kotin’s characters are authentic and likable, though at times she paints them unflatteringly. Like most intelligent women stuck in dead-end situations, they resort to various forms of subterfuge or bitchiness to survive. Kotin’s portrayals are sometimes sketchy–her comedic depictions, like much physical comedy, are done in broad strokes–but always polished, strangely haunting, and sad”

Back from her recent European tour, we are proud to present the American premiere of The Office Christmas Party, Lisa Kotin?s long awaited second act to her internationally acclaimed one woman show, Temporary Girl. Jeannette Byne (stein), woman of the ?90?s, ?Lone Jew and Temp from Hell,? is forced to work the switchboard during the office Christmas party, while the cast of dysfunctional corporate characters introduced in the first act receive their Christmas comeuppances. Mixing film, mime, monologue and voice-over, Kotin creates a seamless blend of slapstick and satire, comedy and pathos which Michael Arditti of the London Evening Standard calls ?technically expert and visually witty? and led Carmela Rago of the Chicago Reader to label her ?one of the tightest performers working in Chicago.?