“Let’s review the men my mother had sex with in the last days of 1961…the ones we know about.” Abby’s birth is the result of her parents swinging through the 1960s with wild key parties, martinis, and Manhattans. Their frolics leave Abby with one burning questions: “Who’s my daddy?” Can state-of-the-art DNA paternity testing finally provide Abby with the answers? Written & Performed by Abby Stokes. Directed by Gretchen Cryer. Winner of “Best Direction of a Play” United Solo Festival 2017.

Starting off her sprightly one woman show A Good Girl Doesn’t by pulling a drugstore paternity test out of a plastic bag, writer and performer Abby Stokes sets up the journey she’ll take her audience on with this question: “Who is my biological father?” Part of The ONE Festival at the Clemente theater on the Lower East Side, A Good Girl Doesn’t is a rollercoaster ride through the 1960s and ’70s. Ms. Stokes was the youngest child of swinging parents who earnestly partook in the sexual revolution: swapping partners, imbibing lots of booze and having key parties. (For those of you who don’t know, a key party is when guests put their keys in a bowl and then randomly draw keys at the end of the evening to see who they’ll go home with after the party.) Deftly directed by Gretchen Cryer, the doyenne of solo shows like I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, Ms. Stokes developed A Good Girl Doesn’t in Ms. Cryer’s “Writing for Solo Performance” class. Well-shaped and written with some great twists and turns to her story, including a powerful explosive confrontation near the end, Ms. Stokes has obviously benefitted from having Ms. Cryer so involved in the creation and rehearsa …Read more