"Y" was developed by Irene Glezos and Brad Calcaterra in an ongoing workshop called “Risk” under Brad's direction at the Sally Johnson Studio over the course of one year. In “Risk,” a group of solo performers meet on Mondays to explore their truth in front of each other.  We call it "Live Diary" or "Stand Up Drama."  Out of these improvisations, characters emerge, and stories begin to take shape. We believe that the things we want to hide from or about which we are ashamed are actually the seeds of our creativity.  The performer’s improvised material is videotaped each week, then transcribed and shaped into the play.   The attempt is never to impersonate but rather to engage an archetype, and through the character, to find ways of telling our own truth.

“Y” is a solo play that explores the inner landscape of a woman who took the name Marilyn Monroe.  It’s about a longing for self in a world strongly bent on defining and possessing us, a world where others are sure they know us even if we aren't sure we know ourselves.  Weaving truth with imagination -- and with liberal use of free association, alter egos, pill-induced manic episodes, and, especially, an open heart  – “Y” follows MM as she tries to solve her own death.  We like to call the process by which we arrived at this play, and, for that matter, the playing of it:  "making proper use of the crazies."

"Y" was first workshopped at The Sally Johnson Studio at 25 West 23rd Street in New York City starring Irene Glezos, directed by Brad Calcaterra and stage managed by Lee Michael Buckman.  It was also performed as part of Frigid Fest NYC 2009 at Under St. Marks Theatre.  "Y," the film is currently being submitted to film festivals.   

Here's an excerpt from what Backstage had to say:

"For exactly 60 minutes, actor Irene Glezos sits bolt upright on a stool, her platinum wig teased this way and that. She wears what used to be called a foundation garment, one that generously accentuates her curvaciousness. There is literally nothing else on stage but a sleek bucket holding a bottle of what is ostensibly sparkling wine, from which she periodically pours into a martini glass. She then holds the glass, always with perfect poise, right at the level of her eyes. Before uttering one word in that familiar girlish whisper, before the tiniest sliver of narrative leaves her lips, we know this is Marilyn Monroe.

…Clearly, she's dead: The piece's title refers to the type of incision typically used on autopsied women. This Marilyn, moreover, details and wistfully rues the manner in which her internal organs were supposedly disposed, and she offers a lament for how the official attribution of her death -- to barbiturate-induced suicide -- may have been, as some historians have argued, a cover-up for President John F. Kennedy initiated by his brother Robert, then the U.S. attorney general.

Y, Marilyn Unstitched isn't merely a chat-and-remember session with the ultimate Hollywood misfit. Other characters in the play, which Glezos created with director Brad Calcaterra, continually elbow themselves into the storytelling like cheap shots of tequila. They include Monroe's mentally unstable mother, Gladys, and a cameo from Jean Kennedy Smith, another toothy sibling in the Kennedy clan…. Each character is crystalline -- Glezos has a real facility for voices and faces…

…[T]he piece is about Marilyn, for a final time, helping people enter her psyche."

Reviewed by Leonard Jacobs