alternately thoughtful and disquieting, outlandishly funny and often frightening … a psychological breaking point too hard to handle and wonderful to witness
Menu
Meet Dan: His parents talk to stuffed animals. He lost an armwrestling match against a drag queen. And all the customers in Wal-Mart know he has scabies.
Nicknamed “Li’I Sedaris” by the Berkshire Valley Advocate, this gay 21-year-old left Cincinnati’s CityBeat saying, “See him now. You’ll be hearing from him later.”
Meet Dan Bernitt, the creator of Yelling at Bananas in Whole Foods.
Know this: Bananas is a funny comedy with a necessary warning about how we consume media.
In the video above, he discusses how this play can help start a conversation on your campus about thinking critically, building bridges between multiple perspectives and ideologies, and laughing about ourselves as we atone for our mistakes.
★★★★½ … ONE OF THE MOST FULLY ENGAGING PERFORMERS YOU’LL SEE
AN ENDEARING, HEART-BREAKING, ILLUMINATING, RICHLY-LAYERED STORY
HARSH, FUNNY, AND UNFORGETTABLY ABSURD
Explore the range of audiences, academic disciplines, and student services you can involve
Instead of a lecture talking at students, use the power of an engaging story to drive home important first-year student skills like responsibility, decision-making, cultural sensitivity, and handling conflicts.
Encouraging critical thinking from the start is crucial for any student's development. This play shows — with great humor — what happens when we fail to question our assumptions and the information we consume.
The psychoanalyst Carl Jung didn't believe that people had ideas—instead, ideas have people. The play shows what happens when ideology takes hold of one's mind, and the person refuses to let go until he reaches rock bottom.
Dan's creative work focuses on why people behave the way they do. Several social science fields of study will see their concepts revealed in the story, including psychology, economics, cognitive science, public policy, and even terrorism and security studies.
As Dan learns more about how climate change will impact the food supply, he falls into a trap of "eco-anxiety," an immobilizing fear about the future state of the world. This play addresses one possible resolution to the dread faced by many students in these disciplines.
Dan's tale takes place when he was in graduate school. Being a student can be fraught with life changes, stress and anxiety, and crises. Some lessons of the play are to work through our emotional issues, develop strong relationships, and prioritize self-care and personal responsibility.
The world needs people who can look at a situation objectively, determine each story's authenticity, and illuminate its truth. As your students will find in Dan's story, irresponsible media can destroy its viewers, and the truth can save a life from destruction.
In addition to his work as a touring performing artist, Dan has worked in marketing, sales, project management, and human resources. He brings an interdisciplinary approach to how the performing arts can inform a variety of career paths.
As Dan's emotional journey goes on, traumas pile up until his eventual breakdown makes sense. No one lives in isolation. Part of an inclusive campus is building a culture of curiosity: how can I better understand someone and what's happened in their life?
(Also, Dan's gay. Neat!)
Dan Bernitt is an award-winning playwright, performer, and teaching artist.
Hailed as “one of America’s next great monologists,” he’s been performing and touring his work in venues across the United States since 2004. He’s also performed internationally in Ireland and Italy.
A recipient of the Robert Chesley Award for Lesbian and Gay Playwriting, his books, Dose: Plays & Monologues and Phi Alpha Gamma, were named finalists for the Lambda Literary Award.
Regularly a guest teaching artist at colleges and universities, he has served on the faculty at Amherst College and Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts and is currently assistant professor at Christian Brothers University in Memphis.
In the clip above, Dan’s considering leaving an artist residency in Taos, New Mexico, until he meets a former 1990s infomercial personality who changes the trajectory of his visit—and his life.