by my friend David Heilbroner, who’s co-hosting my return engagement at KGB Bar on April 10 with his wife and filmmaking partner Kate Davis: “It wasn’t until Kate and I heard our friend Ashton Applewhite’s brilliantly funny and smart “This Chair Rocks,” that I realized how much I’d bought into the party line about the reality of aging in modern America. We all think we know: the grim quartet of dementia, depression, disability, dependency. But as Ashton trenchantly makes clear, this is the stuff of myth and needs to be debunked. Which she does in spades.
“This one-hour, one-woman “show” (not quite sure what to call it) is part monologue, part consciousness-raiser and it is as funny as it is revelatory, managing to be both personal and universal as it dispels myth after myth about our “declining years.” In a word, Ashton wants us to wake up to the ageist messages that surround us, cheer the hell up, and push back. It’s a bit of wisdom that needs to get out there and into the conversation-sphere.”