Celebration of the Life of Tom Murrin
Posted June 1, 2012 at 3:00 pm
June 3, 2012 at 2pm
Please join Tom’s wife Patricia Sullivan for an afternoon of words, videos, and performances in honor of playwright and performance artist Tom Murrin on Sunday June 3 at 2 – 4 pm. Brief reception to follow. Graciously hosted by Tom’s first theater home, La MaMa, in the Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East 4th Street, 2nd floor.
Chris Tanner (#109)
June 30, 2012 at 3pm
Chris Tanner has been part of the La MaMa family since 1979. He has worked and collaborated with John Vaccaro, Sebastian Stuart, Everett Quinton, Lance Cruce, Julie Atlas Muz, Penny Arcade, Maria Irene Fornes, Cyndi Lauper, David Lynch, The New Stage Theatre Company, Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Mabou Minds and The Wooster Group. During the last 10 years, he has been performing with Karen Finley’s Make Love, a touring cabaret show in memorial of the 9/11 attacks. He is also a painter, visual and collage artist and has had over 20 solo shows in New York and abroad. To see his work, visit http://christophertannerart.com/
EMERGENYC 2012
June 26, 2012 at 7pm
EMERGENYC 2012: La MaMa and The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics presents the final, multidisciplinary performance-presentations by students of its yearly Emerging Artist Program (EMERGENYC) led by George Emilio Sanchez. For more info visit www.emergenyc.org
ABOUT EMERGENYC
EMERGENYC, the Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program, trains New York based emerging artists through a yearly program of workshops, lectures and other events. With an emphasis on activist performance and drawing on the experience of distinguished artists, activists and scholars, the program encourages participants to take interdisciplinary leaps, mix styles and traditions, and develop incisive new work at the intersection of performance and politics.
ABOUT THE HEMISPHERIC INSTITUTE
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics is a network of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists dedicated to exploring the relationship between performance and politics in the Americas. In addition to EMERGENYC, the Institute’s initiatives include graduate level courses, work groups, conference-festivals (Encuentros), a Digital Video Library (HIDVL), archives, an online journal (e-misférica) and more. For more information visit www.hemisphericinstitute.org.
That Beast of Festive Skin
June 25, 2012 at 8pm
Alexandra Tatarsky was born and bred in New York City. Her work is often inspired by Russian absurdism, messianic yearning and alchemical failures. She has performed in theaters, circus tents, galleries and stairwells in New York, Portland and Eastern Europe. She is a member of MAMAL, an art collective based in TriBeCa, and The Mauricios, an ongoing dance project devoted to silence and very small movements. Alexandra is also co-editor of the Reed College Erotic Review and Baruch Atah, a journal of Russian Jewish translation.
“That Beast of Festive Skin” is a solo show giving voice to those resilient creatures who perform at the flourishing open mic scene in the fiery pits of Hell. Please join us for an evening of uplifting torment as Alexandra Tatarsky workshops several infernal characters for La Mama’s Poetry Electric Series. Featuring Laila Caron, Levi Stone and others.
La MaMa 50 Big Bash
June 24, 2012 at 6pm
Evening Performance Honoring
Philip J. Smith & Robert Wankel of The Shubert Organization
Co-chairs: Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman
Directed by Michael Mayer
Emcee by Andre DeShields
Followed by Post-Show Reception
At NYU Skirball Center
566 La Guardia Place
The Celestial Hurl
June 19, 2012 at 7:30pm
by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko
Directed by George Ferencz
A psychodramatic ride through the afterlives of poisoning victims. What goes down always comes back up.
Featuring: April Armstrong, Chris Johnson, Jennifer Koller, Matt Luceno, Kim Merrill, Juliet O’Brien, Karen Sunde & Anni Weisband
Pua Ali`i `Ilima
June 19, 2012 at 7:30pm
Pua Ali’i ‘Ilima, a hālau hula (school of Hawaiian dance) based in Honolulu and New York City celebrates the 35th anniversary of the founding of the school with performances at the Millenium Stage at The Kennedy Center (DC) on June 18th, La MaMa (NYC) on June 19th and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Beckett, Mass.) on June 20th on the Indside/Out Stage. Under the direction of nā kumu hula (master teachers of Hawaiian dance) Vicky Holt and Jeffrey Takamine, the cast of 20 plus dancers and chanters from Hawai’i, Vancouver, Washington and New York City, will also include slack key artists Andy Wang (New Jersey), Claudia Goddard (New York) and steel guitarist Chris Davis (Connecticut). Hula kahiko (ancient style Hawaiian dance), hula ‘auana (modern style Hawaiian dance) and hapa haole (songs composed in English about Hawai’i) will transport you to our islands and share the history and stories of the fire goddess Pele, King David Kalākaua and the last Queen of Hawai’i, Lili’uokalani.
Lost in Staten Island, More Tales of Modern Living
June 15 – July 1, 2012
Written by Richard Sheinmel
Music and Lyrics by Clay Zambo
Directed by Jason Jacobs
Get lost in Staten Island with Mitch Mitchell and his Mom as they journey through an extraordinary day. After the death of his brother, Mitch must return home to accompany his mother on a day full of difficult but necessary tasks. Alternately humorous and heartfelt, the drive takes them to unexpected places, where nerves are bared, secrets revealed, and confessions made. Although he grew up in “the forgotten borough,” he finds the familiar roads hard to navigate when landmarks change.
Part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival / June 7–15 / queerny.org
June 28: A panel discussion with American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
Moderated by Damon L. Jacobs, Licensed Marriage Family Therapist
The Etiquette of Death
June 14 – July 1, 2012
A Chris Tanner Production
Directed by Everett Quinton,
Choreographed by Julie Atlas Muz,
Death is a messy and terrifying horror. Or, it can be a quiet, unapologetic thief in the night. For the past twenty-five years, living in the East Village, I’ve been surrounded by death. I’m obsessed with how the dying and those who love them behave in the face of it. When you explore the artifice and manners that surround this unruly journey – the etiquette of death — the outcome can be absurd,paradoxical, wrenching, and at times, hilarious.
I’ve asked a group of artists I admire to help me put together a collage of scenes, songs, poetry, music and dance that explores the “Etiquette of Death”.
Contributing texts and compositions by:
Penny Arcade, Lance Cruce, Angela DiCarlo, Jeremy X. Halpern,John Jesurun, Beena Kamlani, Taylor Mac, Stephen McCauley, Martha Girdler, Stephen Lott, Agosto Machado, Edgar Oliver, Brandon Olson, Greta Jane Pedersen, Everett Quinton, Jon Ritter,Penny Rockwell, Tony Stavick, Sebastian Stuart, Chris Tanner
Dramaturgy by:
Leonie Ettinger, Daniel Nelson, Everett Quinton and Penny Rockwell
Creative Team:
Director: Everett Quinton
Choreographer: Julie Atlas Muz
Musical Director: Jeremy X. Halpern
Assistant Director: Daniel Nelson
Assistant Choreographer: Jezebel Express
Production Stage Manager: Leonie Ettinger
Costumer Designer: Becky Hubbert
Lighting Designer: Susan Hamburger
Set Designer: Steven Hammel
Prop Designer: Chuck Hettinger
Wig Design: Perfidia
Backstage Manager: Fabiyan Pemble-Belkin
Assistant Stage Manager: Brielle Simone
Press Rep: David Gibbs
Band:
Keyboards: Jeremy X. Halpern
Guitar: Barry Seroff
Guitar: Matt Buscher
Bass: Jason Smith
Drums: Yonatan “BizKeL” Oleiski
Brass: Brad Madsen
Reeds: Carras Paton
Cast
Agosto Machado, Kirstan Clifford, Sarah Kraynik, Chris Tanner, Angela DiCarlo, Beth Dodye Bass*, Jezebel Express, Angie Hobin, Joseph Mahan, Eugene the Poogene, Mike Russnak, Chris Sharp, Greta Jane Pedersen, Brandon Olson*, Everett Quinton*, Machine Dazzle, Matthew Crosland, Lance Cruce, Jeremy X. Halpern, Robert Appleton
Part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival / June 7–15 / queerny.org
Write On
June 11, 2012 at 8pm
David Mills host WRITE ON (An evening of Poetry and more Poetry) featuring Kim Coleman Foote, Ilka Scobie, Norman Stock, Jeff Wright, and Phyllis Wat.
David Mills
David Mills has a master’s in creative writingfrom New York Universityand is a cum laude grad of Yale University. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Fence, Jubilat, Callaloo, Rattapallax, Aloud Poets from the Nuyorican Café, Harvard University’s Transition Magazine, Obsidian III, Brooklyn Railand Hanging Loose Press to name a few. He is a 2010 Queens Poet LaureateFinalist. His collection the Dream Detective is a small press bestseller. He has won NYFA, Breadloaf, Henry James, Brio (Bronx Recognize’s Its Own), PALF( Ghana ’s Pan-African Literary Forum), Hughes/Diop and Soros Fellowships to travel to Poland to write poems about the Holocaust. He has also recorded his poetry on RCA records with jazz artist Steve Coleman. Working with a jazz band, he opened for Chick Corea and David Sanborn at the Vienna Jazz Festival performing his poetry. He was featured on the PBS documentary “Slammin.”. He has written book reviews for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Rolling Stone. He also lived as writer-in-residence in Harlem Renaissance luminary Langston Hughes’ landmark Harlem home. His poems have been displayed at the Venice Biennale and the German Documenta art exhibitions. He was an audition writer for Sesame Street. The Julliard School of Drama commissioned and produced a play written by David Mills. Urban Stages commissioned Mr. Mills to write a play about the life of Frederick Douglass. He was commissioned to write the narration for an Italian dance theater piece—the Tarantella.
Kim Coleman Foote
Kim Coleman Foote is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Obsidian, The Literary Review, Black Renaissance Noire, and elsewhere. Honors include the Rona Jaffe Foundation/Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Pan African Literary Forum Africana Creative Nonfiction Award, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for prose. She has also been awarded residencies with VCCA and Hedgebrook and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University. She is currently working on an African-female-centered novel about the slave trade in 18th-century Ghana, where she was a Fulbright Fellow.
Ilka Scobie
Ilka Scobie is a poet who teaches in the NYC school system. Her recent work appears in LiveMag, Vanitas, Poetry in Performance, Italian Marie Claire and artnet.
Norman Stock
Norman Stock is the author of two books of poetry: Buying Breakfast For My Kamikaze Pilot (Gibbs Smith,1994), winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Contest, and Pickled Dreams Naked (NYQ Books, 2010). His poems have appeared in The New Republic, College English, The New York Quarterly, The New England Review, Denver Quarterly, Verse, and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies and textbooks. The recipient of awards from the Writer’s Voice, Poets & Writers’ Maureen Egen Writers Exchange, the Bennington Writing Workshops, and the Tanne Foundation, he has also been a Bread Loaf fellow, a Sewanee scholar, and a finalist for Poet Laureate of Queens. Formerly the Acquisitions Librarian at Montclair State University, from which he retired in 2005, he lives with his wife, Lydia Chang, a clinical psychotherapist, in Jackson Heights New York.
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is best known as a poet and author of 11 books. Most recently his collection of sonnets called Triple Crown has been accepted by Spuyten Duyvil Press. He is also an impresario, musician, artist and eco-activist. He recently had a show at Tribes Gallery and curated another at AC Institute in Chelsea. He hosts monthly parties in the East Village’s Dias y Flores Community Garden. A long-time publisher as well, he produces Live Mag! www.livemagnyc.com
Phyllis Wat
Phyllis Wat’s most recent poetry is out in Ping Pong Magazine. She has three books in print — “Shadow Blue” from Hot Water; “The Fish Soup Bowl Expedition” from Ten Pell Books; and “The Influence of Paintings Hung in Bedrooms” from United Artists. She is an editor of the online magazine Press 1 which comes out three times a year, and is the publisher of Straw Gate Books.
Love, Christopher Street – Readings, Receptions, and Signings
June 8, 2012 at 7-9pm
Love, Christopher Street
Edited by Thomas Keith
Introduction by Christopher Bram
pub. date: June 2012 from Vantage Point Books
available from your local retailer, online and independent booksellers
406 pages — 6 x 9 — $18.95
Representing some of the most talented writers at work today, the 26 original essays in Love, Christopher Street encompass revealing, intense, profound, funny, personal, and queer reflections that span forty years of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender life in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Together these essays create an LGBT love letter to New York City from native New Yorkers, American transplants, and international writers. This book continues the Lambda Award-winning series of LGBT tributes to great cities.
Just a few of the quintessentially queer essays include the Rev. Irene Monroe’s account of the hot summer night in 1969 when she witnessed police raiding the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street and the drag queens who fought back; Bob Smith’s memoir of his life as an out stand-up comedian in the 1980s and how he has kept his fierce humor while faced with the diagnosis of ALS; Penny Arcade’s saga of being a runaway in NYC and taken in off the streets by gay men who introduced her to Warhol’s Factory; Ocean Vuong’s chronicle of how he went from being a couch-surfing college student to homeless in Penn Station; and civil rights activist Brendan Fay reveals what took him all the way from Ireland to “Finding Jesús on Christopher Street.”
readings, receptions, and signings
Friday June 8th from 7:00 to 9:00 pm
at the Visual AIDS annual Pride Month Exhibition
La MaMa La Galleria, 6 East 1st Street (2nd Ave./Bowery)
with Christopher Bram, Rev. Irene Monroe, Nicky Paraiso, Eddie Sarfaty, Shawn Syms, Bob Smith & Judy Gold, Charlie Vázquez, & others
Other events:
Wednesday June 13th from 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Barnes & Noble, West 82nd St. & Broadway
with Brendan Fay, G. Winston James, Rabbi Andrea Myers, Ocean Vuong, & others
Wednesday June 27th from 6:30 to 9:00 pm
The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., room 410
sponsored by Out Professionals and OP-LYNX
with Mark Ameen, Christopher Bram, Martin Hyatt, Fay Jacobs, Michele Karlsberg, Rev. Irene Monroe, Charles Rice-González, Bob Smith & Judy Gold, Charlie Vázquez, & others
Escape
June 7 – June 24, 2012
by Creation Production Company
Written by Susan Mosakowski
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
Set Design by Lauren Helpern
Lighting Design by Traci Klainer Polimeni
Costumes by Sarah J. Holden
With Carlo Albán, Lauren Fortgang, Susan Louise O’Connor, Ted Schneider, John Sharian, and Samantha Soule
Lying in wait with a shotgun, Gus, an unemployed elevator repairman, keeps his neighbors and his wife in the crosshairs. Next door lives an actress—a Marilyn Monroe look-alike—held captive by Daddy, a universal terrorist on the run. And in the next apartment, the grandson of Harry Houdini struggles to free himself from his own chains. Release is on everyone’s mind, but can anyone ever escape?
Monday Nights with Julie Taymor
June 4, 2012 at 7:30pm
Tony Award-winning Lion King and Spider-Man director Julie Taymor will be the final artist featured in the Monday Night series at La MaMa.
The event will include clips from Taymor’s productions and an in-depth look at her career, from her work with LaMaMa to Broadway. Taymor staged her Balinese-inspired Tirai at La MaMa in 1980.
Diane Wondisford will moderate.
Julie Taymor
In 1998, Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony® for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor’s direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs. For her latest Broadway production, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and co-book writer. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony® Awards. Other theatre work includes The Green Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty’s Taken. Taymor’s feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002, her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, earned six Academy Award® nominations, winning two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, in Across the Universe. Julie’s most recent film, The Tempest, had its North American premiere at the 48th New York Film Festival in October 2010, following a world premiere at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. Taymor’s adaptation of the William Shakespeare play features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina. Beyond the theatre and screen, Taymor has directed five operas internationally including Oedipus Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production. A subsequent film version premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won her an Emmy® award. Taymor also directed Salome, The Flying Dutchman, Die Zauberflöte (which has been in repertory at The Met for six years), The Magic Flute (the abridged English version of Die Zauberflöte, which inaugurated a new PBS series entitled “Great Performances at The Met”) and Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel. Taymor is a 1991 recipient of the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship.
Haunts
June 1 – June 10, 2012
Directed and conceived by Geo Wyeth in collaboration with the cast and crew
Nineteenth century American gynecologist James Marion Sims, famous for perfecting his procedures on enslaved African women, encounters his biracial transgender great-great-great grandchild in a collapsed and imagined dream space. Based on Wyeth’s own family lineage, Haunts retraces a contradictory history of violence and ironic inheritance through an incantation of dreams and embodied recollection. Using his body as a point of converging histories, Haunts displays Wyeth’s virtuosity and dynamic presence.
Made possible through residencies at Ars Nova Theater (2009) and the Performance Art Institute (2011)
Developed through support of the Jerome Foundation’s Travel & Research Grant (2011)
Crew:
Elizabeth Orr, Visual Collaborator/Set Design
Mariana Valencia, Costume consultant
Barbara Samuels, Lighting Designer
Performers:
Tanisha Thompson
Sam Miller
niv Acosta
& Karel Van Beekom (saxophone)
Part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival / June 7–15 / queerny.org
When Clowns Play Hamlet
May 24 – June 3, 2012
Written By Harry Koutoukas
Directed by Ozzie Rodriguez
Music Composed by Joseph Blunt
Performed by Matt Nasser, Sara Galassini and Jenny Lee Mitchel
In honor of Ellen Stewart/ Harry Koutoukas/ Tom O’Horgan
Three-star Circus performers reduced to the status of Clowns rehearse their Act in the backyard of a second-rate circus. When a wild and jealous “panther-baboon” escapes and the circus is threatened, our heroes decide to confront “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” to save their way of life. Armed with music and humor in the most unlikely circumstances they perform their beloved “Clown Act” and find the courage to face insurmountable odds.
Written by Harry Koutoukas, the show was first produced at La MaMa by Ellen Stewart in 1967. The original cast included Jeff Weiss, Mary Boland and Beverly Grand. Music was composed by Cosmo and performed by Tom O’Horgan.
Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis
May 24 – June 10, 2012
Wed – Fri at 8pm
Sat at 7pm & 10pm
Sun at 7:30pm
*Opens on Thursday, May 24th
“I’m not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a drag queen, not a transsexual—–I’m just me, jackie”
Mx. Justin Vivian Bond and Bridget Everett, Cole Escola, Steel Burkhardt in
Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis
With music from the Glitterbox of Max’s Kansas City to Warner Brothers and more!
Collage by Scott Wittman and Tony Zanetta
Lighting by Aaron Spivey
Designed by Scott Pask
Staging by Joey Pizzi
Musical direction by Lance Horne
Conceived and directed by Scott Wittman
At certain performances special appearance by Penny Arcade, Jayne County, Cherry Vanilla & Agosto Machado
http://snatchesofjackie.tumblr.com/
Part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival / June 7–15 / queerny.org