News: "Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter" Comes to FRIGID 2020

Image provided by Heather Quinlan
The 2020 FRIGID Festival is fast approaching, with performances beginning on February 19 at the Kraine Theater and UNDER St. Marks in the East Village. In the lead-up to this annual showcase for storytellers, solo shows, and short works, we will also be highlighting some of the productions on offer. Next up is Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter.

Where: The Kraine Theater
85 East 4th Street, First Floor
New York, NY 10003

When: WED, FEB 19 @ 5:30 |
SAT, FEB 22 @ 6:40
WED, FEB 26 @ 7:10 
FRI, FEB 28 @ 5:10
SUN, MAR 8 @ 12:10

What: Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter is written and performed by award-winning storyteller Robin Bady. It explores the story of 9-year-old Robin Bady, who in 1960 wrote a pitch letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover detailing her qualifications as the next Eliot Ness. Hoover's reply was, perhaps needless to say, not encouraging: "As you already know, only men can be Special Agents,” Hoover informed her. “But women can be secretaries." 

Unbeknownst to young Bady, however, for two years, starting in 1953—a few months after the Rosenberg trial—Hoover's FBI had terrorized her father after Sen. Joseph McCarthy branded him a Communist spy—along with 40 other Jewish scientists who worked at Ft. Monmouth, where Julius Rosenberg had also worked.

Now, Bady must unravel the mystery of how the fall-out lingered over her family and seek a missing letter that exonerated her father. Will it be a letter that helps heal her family? Or will it lead to a dead end?

Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter is a show about one daughter’s fearless investigation into her family's past in order to make sense of the present. Bady’s account of a time not so long ago is deeply personal, uniquely compelling, and rings an uneasy bell of recognition today.

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