The phrase “kill your darlings” usually refers to the painful necessity of cutting the sentences, scenes, or ideas a writer loves most for the sake of the larger work. Often misattributed to William Faulkner, “murder your darlings” was first uttered by the hilariously named Arthur Quiller-Couch in his 1916 book, On the Art of Writing.
For comedian and performance artist Amanda Duarte, it became the foundation for an entire live show. “God, there are just so many dead darlings piling up around my feet,” Duarte says, recalling the moment the concept first crystallized while she was revising a play years ago. “I thought, ‘I have all these dead darlings. I know every other creative artist does too. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a forum for these pieces that don’t really fit anywhere else but that were created with such love and energy and passion?’”
On May 30 at Unicorn Bar in Kingston, Duarte revives “Dead Darlings” for a “Mayday Edition” produced by Beth Lisick and Jodi Lennon, the duo behind 2024’s More Than a Feeling Comedy Festival. The evening gathers writers, comedians, and performers to exhume abandoned monologues, cut scenes, failed concepts, embarrassing drafts, and artistic near-misses—work deemed too strange, flawed, vulnerable, or unmarketable to survive the normal editing process.
Photo: Ethan James Green
The lineup includes comedian, writer, and musician Dave Hill; Greta Kline, best known as the songwriter behind Frankie Cosmos; and New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman, whose books and profiles have chronicled figures ranging from Meryl Streep to Jeremy Strong.
Duarte herself has long occupied a singular niche in the Downtown Manhattan performance world, blending comedy, political satire, theater, confessional monologue, and cabaret into a style that feels both deeply literary and gloriously unhinged. Though closely associated with New York’s Downtown scene, Duarte has quietly been part of the Hudson Valley creative migration for years. “The Downtown to Kingston pipeline is real,” she says. “I’ve been up here for almost 15 years.”
These days, when she’s not performing, writing, or doing voiceover work, she spends time gardening and working as a steward for the Woodstock Land Conservancy. But “Dead Darlings,” which originally ran for five years at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan, still carries the DNA of the old downtown experimental-performance ecosystem: a little chaotic, emotionally naked, and deeply communal.
The original incarnation of the show emerged during a different political and cultural moment, Duarte says—one marked by “a very fighting spirit” and aggressive satirical energy. The revived version arrives from a more vulnerable place.
“Now the energy is very much we are as artists and as people, we are presenting aspects of ourselves that we have for some reason felt embarrassed or ashamed or we felt have been rejected or neglected,” she says. “We are taking those aspects of ourselves and we are offering them up to the collective for celebration, healing and love.”
That vulnerability is central to the show’s appeal. Audiences aren’t simply watching polished performances; they’re witnessing artists expose material that failed—or at least material its creators believed had failed.
“Quite often the people who brought in the worst pieces, the truly, ‘What even is this?’ pieces, have been the people that have gone on to the greatest success,” Duarte says. “The people I know that have achieved the most commercial and professional success are bar none the ones who have worked the hardest, generated the most output, and had the attitude of, ‘Oh no, this is terrible. I’m cutting it and I don’t give a fuck.’”
The format itself is loose by design. Duarte opens the evening with material of her own, guests present their dead darlings, and somewhere in the middle there may be a game, an audience-participation bit, or—as planned for Kingston—a live pianist playing performers on and offstage.
Over the years, the show has generated its share of legendary moments. Duarte recalls Cole Escola performing a parody monologue inspired by a Blythe Danner pharmaceutical commercial; composer Stephen Trask debuting a cut song from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”; and Michael Schulman reading never-before-heard love letters between Meryl Streep and her college boyfriend to a transfixed audience. “It was literally like hearing a religious text read for the first time,” Duarte says.
For all its comedic framing, “Dead Darlings” ultimately functions less as a roast of bad art than as a collective argument against perfectionism. Duarte believes audiences respond because the show taps into something larger than entertainment. “If you have that tendency and that fear of vulnerability, then just watching somebody present something like this is extremely inspiring,” she says. “You really can’t fail in this show. Whatever you’re going to do, it will not fail as long as you’re not afraid of failing.”
If the May 30 performance lands the way Duarte hopes, “Dead Darlings” may not remain dead for long. “We are toying with making it a regular show,” she says. “If people want us, we would love to keep it going.”
“Dead Darlings: Mayday Edition” will be at Unicorn Bar in Kingston on May 30 at 5:30pm. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.
