OCEAN CITY — I Am the Gentry, a one-woman show shedding light on gentrification, will take center stage at the Ocean City Center for the Arts on 94th Street on Saturday, Aug. 26 at 7 p.m. The show is directed by Ocean City native Chelsea Thaler and written and performed by Cara Gabriel.
I Am the Gentry is comprised of humorous and poignant vignettes that chronicle one woman’s adventures and foibles as she makes a home for herself in a Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Her beagle takes on a pair of pit bulls; she dances at a neighborhood shrine to Michael Jackson; she strolls her baby through an arrest-in-progress; and she celebrates her first real Mother’s Day by covertly house hunting in the ‘burbs.
Author and actor Cara Gabriel is currently a theater professor at American University and has been performing an abridged, solo version of I Am the Gentry to sold-out crowds since 2013, where it appeared at The Atlas Intersections Festival in Washington, D.C.
Thaler is an Ocean City local who graduated from Worcester Prep in 2010 and received her B.A. in performance from American University. Currently working in New York City and Washington, DC., she directed the New York and D.C. productions of I Am the Gentry, which played to sold-out audiences off-Broadway and at the Capital Fringe Festival. This is the first chance for her hometown to see a performance Thaler has directed.
The Washington Post praised the “humor and humility” of I Am the Gentry, and called the text “tough and immediate.” The Washington City Paper called the work “poignant, episodic, and often very funny,” while “succeed[ing] admirably at talking comfortably about uncomfortable topics — race, class, money, education, (and the ways they all play into the story of Washington, D.C. gentrification).”