‘Cross My Heart’ – Crosses It and Touches It

By Ernest Kearney  —  This Hollywood Fringe (HFF23) has not had a sweeter show, and the ingredients that went into making a success of Cross My Heart are few but well-selected.

First, there is the engaging and skilled Hannah Aslesen who connects with her audience the instant she steps before.

Second is the honest and sincere story of a relationship facing great difficulty, and here that relationship is between Hannah and her eleven-year-old self.  Most of us have struggled to achieve harmony between our youthful expectations forged in the naivety of childhood and that reality constructed for us in the non-union sweatshop of adulthood.

Hannah’s task is somewhat more formidable in that she must explain to the eleven-year-old very devout and very judgmental Christian Hannah how it is she would end up at thirty the clearheaded, very secular, and very happily gay Hannah.

Fringe Award-Gold Medal-The TVolution

And finally, to portray her eleven-year-old self we have a young puppet Hannah worked, wonderfully, by Puppeteer and Director Cole Wadsworth.

The results are a show surfeit of sweetness, sincerity, substance, and style with drollic delights to boot.

That’s a Gold Medal in my book…

****

Cross My Heart
played during the
Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023

***

For Hollywood Fringe Festival Details, Cross My Heart Show Information Click HERE.

HFF2023
Written by

An award-winning L.A. playwright and rabble-rouser of note who has hoisted glasses with Orson Welles, been arrested on three continents and once beat up Charlie Manson. His first play, "Among the Vipers" was a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition and was featured in the Carnegie-Mellon Showcase of New Plays. It was produced at the NPT Theater in Ashland, Oregon and Los Angeles’ celebrated Odyssey Ensemble Theatre. His following play, “The Little Boy Who Loved Monsters” was produced at The Hollywood Actors Theater, where he earned praise from the Los Angeles Times for his “…inordinately creative writing.” The play went on to numerous other productions including Berlin’s The Black Theatre under the direction of Rainer Fassbinder who wrote in his program notes of Kearney, “He is a skilled playwright, but more importantly he is a dangerous one.” Ernest Kearney has worked as literary manager or as dramaturge for among others The Hudson Theater Guild, Nova Diem and the Odyssey Ensemble Theatre, where he still serves on the play selection committee. He has been the recipient of two Dramalogue Awards and a finalist or semi-finalist, three times, in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition. His work has been performed by Michael Dunn, Sandra Tsing Loh, Jack Colvin and Billy Bob Thornton, and to date, either as playwright or director, he has upwards of a hundred and thirty productions under his belt, including a few at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as puppeteer. Kearney remains focused on his writing, as well as living happily ever after with his lovely wife Marlene. His stage reviews and social essays can be found at TheTVolution.com and workingauthor.com. Follow him on Facebook.

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