The comic Jacqueline Novak wears the same outfit each time she performs her solo show, “Get on Your Knees”: a loose gray T-shirt, jeans, and a broken-in pair of white-and-gray sneakers. The clothes allow her a kind of anonymity and neutrality, as well as comfort. “Get on Your Knees” is part standup act, part coming-of-age story, and part philosophy lecture. It is also an athletic feat, so she often wears a sports bra, a practical choice that nonetheless warranted extensive consideration before a performance one evening in the summer of 2021. Novak had dedicated the previous four years to the show, but she was still tinkering, refining, and annotating each creative decision she made, particularly as she anticipated taping the show for a Netflix special. “I love sports bras,” she said in front of a mirror in the greenroom at the Cherry Lane Theatre, in the West Village, where she was doing a ten-week run. “But there’s this belief, inherently, that I’m not supposed to be wearing a sports bra. Do you know what I mean? It’s too athletic.”
Novak, who is prone to self-narration, doubled back: “But then I’m, like, why do I feel the audience is owed a separation of my breasts?” Novak is forty-one, but she has a girlish face and a long-standing interest in elaborate skin-care rituals that, to an audience member, might make her look like the high-school version of herself she explores in the performance.
Denne historien er fra January 22, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 22, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
THE FOOTBALL BRO
Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.