Adam Brace, the prolific British director known for his astute collaborator with stand-up comedians and other performers in a series of acclaimed monologues opening on Broadway next month, died in London on April 29. . he was 43 years old.
His partner Rebecca Fuller said his cause of death at the hospital was complications from a stroke.
10+ years, Brace worked with up-and-coming comedians and actors, as well as a dozen established, mostly British comedians and actors to create a thematically and structurally more ambitious set than a traditional stand-up set. I created a stage show. A tradition of shows featuring American monologists such as Eric Bogosian, Colin Quinn, and Mike Verbiglia.
A former playwright, Mr. Brace helped edit the show into what the audience wanted with his sophisticated ear.
‘He cared about more than jokes and laughter,’ said American comedian Alex Edelman, whose show Just For Us is set to open June 22 at the Hudson Theater after an Obie Award-winning Off-Broadway production. It has also been performed in London and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an annual performing arts festival. “He took care of an intangible that could turn a good comedian into a great comedian.”
Edelman, who has worked with Brace on two other solo exhibitions, adds: He took these personal stories and translated them into accessible shows. ”
“Just for Us” tells how Mr. Edelman decided to infiltrate a group of white supremacists in Queens after he came to the attention of them online. Last year, Laura Collins Hughes of The New York Times praised it as “a lively and wise monologue provocation” about “race and identity in American culture.”
Mr. Edelman’s show’s move to Broadway follows months after its opening in London’s West End. “One Woman Show” Liz Kingsman’s theatrical parody about a playwright who decides to write and stage a confessional monologue.was nominated for Olivier Award fOr the best entertainment or comedy play, opening Off-Broadway next month at Greenwich House Theatre.
“With my show, he changed everything,” the Australian-born actor and author Kingsman said by phone. “It may have been a show that didn’t have a lot of depth, but together we dug in and figured out everything underneath and everything we wanted to say in the best possible delivery.”
She adds:
For Mr. Brace, directing a one-man comedy show like Mr. Kingsman meant primarily being a dramaturge, the literary editor of the play. He had that job at the Soho Theater in London before becoming his assistant director.
“The term ‘director’ is not a useful or accurate term in comedy, but it is one we are stuck with right now,” he told British performing arts publication The Stage in 2022. I’ll do anything. “
“What we’re doing is shaping the whole event. It’s hardcore dramaturgy and, at the most complex level, co-creation.”
Adam George Brace was born on March 25, 1980 in London. Before Adam was born, his father George, an architect, died in a bicycle accident. His mother, Nicola (Sturdy) Brace, was a theater administrator. In his teens, Adam stuffed his theater season announcements into envelopes and watched the productions.
His paternal grandmother developed an interest in theater by taking him to the Edinburgh Festival.
After graduating from the University of Kent with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama in 2002, she taught English as a foreign language in South Korea and acted in a children’s theater in Kuala Lumpur. He also worked for the Irish Post as a gardener, security guard and journalist. In 2007 he completed a Master’s Degree in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London.
While studying for his master’s degree, he traveled to Amman, Jordan, where he studied ‘Stovepipe’, which turned out to be his first feature-length play. The story of the recruitment of British private military contractors during the Iraq War and the ambush that kills one of them was published in England in 2008. A reviewer for The Daily Telegraph wrote of the 2009 production that Brace’s screenplay “reveals a sense of tense dialogue and progressively crafty structure.
His next play, They Drink It in the Congo (2016), portrayed the efforts of young white Londoners to celebrate Congolese culture and start a festival to raise awareness of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was his last work. Also, from 2011 until 2013 he was an associate at the Gate Theater in London, from 2013 until 2016 he was an associate at the Nuffield Southampton Theatres, where he was a dramaturge, and most recently at the Soho Theater. was theater.
He also works regularly with Fuller and Louise Mothersall’s Sh!t Theater, whose performance art includes music, comedy and multimedia elements.
“We called him our director,” Ms. Fuller, who performs under the name Rebecca Biscuit, said by phone. “He helped me see the invisible connections.”
In addition to Ms. Fuller, Ms. Brace has a mother. his brothers, Tim and Alex Hopkins; and his father-in-law Nigel Hopkins.
Edelman said that after the show, he and Brace would evaluate how well they executed several goals, including whether they found the right balance between stillness and momentum.
On Brace’s death, he said:
