Part autobiography, part art history lecture, part psycho-therapy session, part stand-up comedy routine, and fully brilliant, revealing, engaging, and funny, 300 Paintings, written by and starring the consummately likeable, open, and friendly Sydney comedian and artist Sam Kissajukian, is now playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at Vineyard Theatre, following sold-out award-winning runs at the Edinburgh and Australian Fringe Festivals. No surprise there; the same should be expected in NYC.
Delivered in a fast-paced non-stop direct-address format, with frequent interactions and constant eye contact with the audience, the highly personal one-man show, filled with humor, heart, and insight, explores a five-month manic episode in 2021 (at the height of the COVID pandemic), when the irrepressible Kissajukian, then in his mid-30s, decided to give up his career in stand-up to become an artist, moved into a windowless former cake factory, holed himself up there, and created the eponymous 300 paintings without any previous artistic training or awareness of his bipolar state – which was later diagnosed, and, he tells us, came as no surprise to his family and friends (just one example of the hilarious self-deprecating humor that kept everyone in the theater laughing out loud and appreciating his inherent ability to laugh at himself).
Wearing casual clothes and moving actively around the stage – furnished in a minimalist style with a large-scale projection screen placed at a slight diagonal, a black pedestal with a glass of water, and background footlights that bathe two sections of backwalls in changing solid colors (with Oona Curley credited as scenic and lighting specialist) – Kissajukian takes us through a chronological month-by-month visual survey of the art he produced, analyzing its content and inspiration, changes in the scale, materials, and media he used, the importance of how a work is framed (as with the show’s sleek modern design), and the reception he received from the subjects of his portraits, prospective buyers, and the potential business partners he contacted with his conceptual plans, in a series of phone calls and digital meetings that he riotously recounts and re-enacts.
Though notably counter-intuitive in his reasoning, the explanations for his unconventional choices (such as rejecting a $10,000 offer for his work, only allowing 24 hours to launch a creation then moving on to another the following day, branding himself as “Pisscasso,” and his idea of making the winners of an auction its losers and the losers its winners) do follow a decidedly off-beat but ingeniously logical progression and come full circle in his overactive mind (and he’s got the diagrams to prove it, even if they remain unclear to those shown them). To paraphrase Shakespeare, there’s method in his mania and an incredibly prolific output of amazingly masterful art, which has now, deservedly, garnered him major exhibitions and international recognition (the press images of him posing in a beret, looking more like Che Guevara than a 19th-century French artist, are sidesplitting), as has his triumphant return to the stage with this deeply reflective and highly entertaining solo show.
The enthralling monologue also extends into an astute discussion of the need for approval (with a story about a childhood teacher that has stayed with him), the differences between expressing himself through comedy versus art, and which of the two allows him the greater freedom to share his truth.
With a PhD in Art History and a husband who has a Master’s degree in Psychology, I expected that 300 Paintings would be of great interest to me; it far exceeded my expectations and, judging by the reaction of the audience, it did everyone else’s as well. Before leaving the stage, Kissajukian invites us to stay (for a reason that is totally in keeping with his sense of humor and thought process) for a curated exhibition of his actual paintings in the Vineyard’s lobbies and adjoining rooms, and to speak with him about his art, life, and performance. It’s a must-do opportunity following a must-see show, so don’t miss it – it will make you admire him and his extraordinary talents even more.
Running Time: Approximately 85 minutes, without intermission.
300 Paintings plays through Sunday, December 15, 2024, at Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $37.80-85.32, including fees), go online.