About This Show

THE ANARCHIST’S GIRLFRIEND walks the Bowery in late 1970’s-early 1980’s New York City when the bohemian underground was downtown and the city a far more gritty and random place. Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s divine “Idiot,” the AG is a clairvoyant Brooklyn Go-Go Girl who designs clothes of the future. Whether an innocent, simpleton, or genius depends on the projections of others and her encounters reflect her society—art, politics, business, religion. Both retro and prescient, this novel of ideas satirizes New York’s underground and the America of any time.
The AG’s roommates include her beloved Anarchist, a silkscreen artist, who wants to resolve Ireland’s “troubles” with organic food, and nihilistic Sandy, a video vérité switchboard operator who wants to make her art “real.” The story also involves the Llama, who’s in the religion business, and Wayne, his employee, a deaf mute journalist with a nose for truth. All agendas intersect when Sandy obtains financing for a mysterious operation.
Developed in the art bars of the Lower East Side, The Anarchist’s Girlfriend is part of that art and literary movement. Yet the AG’s passage is eternal. Innocence is not lost but transcended.

There’s a thin line between memoir and fiction, and Peter Cherches walks it in Autobiography Without Words. We follow the main character, variously known as Pete, Mr. Cherches and Peter Cherches, through the big and small adventures of life, from childhood crimes and punishments to trips to India and Mars.