Cat Dwyer’s photos from the Artists Without Walls’s Showcase, 3/26/14. The names of the photographed appear above the photo.
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Billy Barrett
Jerry O’Sullivan
Jerry O’Sullivan and Connie Roberts
Tara O’Grady, Miguel Vias, Brendan Connellan and Alessia Sushko
Warren Malone
Maeve Higgins
Noah Hoffeld
Joe McElligott, Charles R. Hale and Niamh Hyland with students from Lehman College
Noah Hoffeld and Salina Sias
Kate McLeod
Bernadette Fee and Pat Coyne
Intermission
Brendan Connellan and Alessia Sushko, who recently starred in Brendan’s DEATH, PLEASE! and Miguel Vias will be performing a staged reading of a short play written by Brendan called GASH. This will, no doubt, be a witty romp.
We’re pleased to announce that Irish comedian Maeve Higgins will be joining us. Here are a few reviews of Maeve’s work. “Maeve Higgins is rarer than a blessing of unicorns … she is original and relatively calm, her observations are pithy, her wit delicate, her persona oddly alluring and deftly honest.” The Irish Times, 2010 “Throughout the whole hour, the room is filled with laughter at Maeve’s risqué and highly intelligent act.” The Irish Independent. Maeve will be telling a story about a school of malevolent dolphins she came across in Rotorua, New Zealand.
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Singer/songwriter Salina Sias, who performed at AWoW’s first Showcase last year, will be back previewing songs from her new album “New Day Coming,” which will have its official release day later in 2014. We’ve previewed a few of the songs and the listeners are in for a treat. Joining Salina will be cellist Noah Hoffeld.
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Kate McLeod will be reading a personal essay that taps into a few memories about her last summer at a camp she attended where, as she see it, she was a “misfit.” Kate wrote the piece because she believes that it is the smallest moments in life that carve the deepest gauges in our souls and create who we become. “It’s not the big events; it’s the passing comment, the little moments,” she said.
Vera Hoar’s photos from Tuesday’s Artists Without Walls’ Showcase at The Cell Theatre. Names appear above the photos.
Connie Roberts, Tom Myles and Joe McElligott
Erin Layton
Karl Scully
Jack O’Connell and Joe Goodrich
Bernard Smith
The Cajuns
Charles R.Hale, Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy and Brendan Fay
The Smiling Faces of AWoW
Come be entertained by a very talented group of artists on Monday, March 3, 7pm at The Cell Theatre, 338 W 23rd St., NYC. More on the performers coming up. Photo montage by Vera Hoar
Colin Broderick’s dark Irish comedy Father Who, opens on Wednesday, February 26 and runs through March 9 at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Place. Tickets can be purchased by calling OvationTix 866 811 4111.
Tara O’Grady and her Black Velvet Band will begin performing at LOCL Bar Thursday, February 27 in the new upper west side hotel NYLO at 2178 Broadway and 77th from 8:30-11:30pm.www.nylohotels.com
Artists Without Walls Showcase will be at The Cell Theater, 338 West 23rd St., on Monday, March 3rd 7pm
Mary Lou Quinlan will be performing her solo work, The God Box, A Daughter’s Story, adapted from her New York bestselling book, at the Cherry Lane Theater on March 3rd at 7PM. Mary Lou will donate all ticket proceeds to Gilda’s Club NYC, the free cancer support center in the West Village. Come out to this story of mothers and daughters. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll want to call your mother. For tickets www.gildasclubnyc.org
Artists Without Walls’ next Showcase at The Cell Theater will be on Tuesday, January 28th, 7pm. It’s sure to be a great evening of entertainment and conviviality, which will include presentations from actors Aedin Moloney, John Duddy, Nick Garr and Andy Baldeschwiler, musicians Yuri Juarez and Michael Brunnock, writer Mary Lannon, playwright Joe Davidson, and storyteller and seanchai Jim Hawkins.
And we’re very much looking forward to enjoying our evening’s guest host and emcee, voice-over artist and actor Caroline Winterson.
“Absolutely amazing night. Thank you so-so much for all that Artists Without Walls does. It was a stellar line-up filled with love, light and laughter.” Author Honor Molloy
Last Thursday’s “Showcase at The Cell” opened with two works that were recently performed at Lehman College as part of the Artists Without Walls’ performance of “Rise Up Singing: Women in the Labor Movement.” Honor Finnegan opened with a rousing rendition of Jack Hardy’s “Ain’t I a Woman,” and spoken word artist Koro Koroye followed with a poem she wrote for “Rise Up” called “Sickness of Freedom” about the struggles of African American women after the Civil War. Koro added an additional poem, “I Can Write About That Too.” Her performance, which highlighted the art of storytelling and spoken-word, was filled with energy, passion, and strength.
Drummer Scott Kettner followed with a dazzling blend of Brazil and New Orleans sounds in a pandeiro solo that pulsed with rhythm and energy. His drumming seamlessly blends the Louisiana second-line sound with a Brazil-ified backbeat. Neatly juxtaposed between Scott’s music and a theater piece to follow, Gary Ryan beautifully read a passage about the self-sacrifice of Percival’s sister, from “The Quest of the Holy Grail.”
Kate McLeod, producer of New York City’s “Bacon Theater Festival,” presented two short works from the festival. First, Kirby Sybert, Anna Smeragliuolo and Rob Ackerman performed Ackerman’s six-minute play “Forgiveness,” a rhapsody on the guilty pleasures, spiritual overtones, and persuasive powers of the world’s most compelling pork product…bacon. Doug Shapiro and Cristin Hubbard were also on the “bacon plate,” singing the high notes and the deep bass for Rob Hartmann and Kate’s short opera—an AWoW first—“One Weird Trick.” A couple in trouble find their way back to loving each other through a bacon cleanse. (That’s right a “bacon cleanse.”) To say it succinctly, the talented duo of Shapiro and Hubbard nailed it.
Nestled snugly into the middle of a talented and diversified lineup, producer and editor Sam Adelman presented several sequences from “That Daughter’s Crazy,” a new documentary starring Rain Pryor. Using footage from her autobiographical one-woman show, and mixing that with family interviews, an entertaining portrait emerges of a confused, multi-racial child of a celebrity icon. The full film is an official submission for the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.
Young singer/composer Brían Farrell from County Leitrim Ireland kicked off the second half of the evening. The singer-songwriter performed two of his own acoustic rock songs “Moondance” and “Try,” and rounded out his set with a Roy Orbison cover of “Mystery to Me,” which was written by Bono. Clearly, Brian’s a star on the rise.
Jose Roldan performed a scene from his one man show “Father Forgive Me for I Have Sinned,’ an award winning auto-biographical coming of age story of a young Latino boy who grew up in the South Bronx of New York City in the 80′s/90′s. Jose masterly took the audience on a roller coast ride of emotion, from hilarity to poignancy and back. Positively brilliant work.
Honor Finnegan stepped up once again and sang two witty, topical, seasonal songs: “Snow Day,” about the need to pause and “Jesus’s Birthday,” about rampant holiday consumerism. Accompanied by guitarists Aviv Roth, she closed with Internet Junkie – a satirical blues number, about “internet addiction.” Not only is this lady talented, she’s incredibly versatile. Great performance.
Honor Molloy closed the Holiday program reading a piece from her novel “Smarty Girl – Dublin Savage.” It’s 1966 and Noleen O’Feeney goes wandering among the market stalls on Moore Street. She gets an earful from a tangerine dealer about the first Christmas Eve. This was Honor Molloy at her absolute best, instantly transporting the reader—shes’ as good at doing that as anyone I’ve heard—to another time and place, in this instance, the streets of Dublin.
The next Artists Without Walls’ Showcase will be at The Cell Theater, January 28th, 7pm. For more information about Artists Without Walls write to info@artistswithoutwalls.com. Happy New Year to all.
Artists Without Walls’ member Honor Finnegan, a recent winner of the New Folk Song Songwriting Contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival, has been making a splash in the Northeastern regional folk scene with her original songs and ukulele playing. Combining elements of musical theatre, comedy, traditional folk, and poetry, Honor is “cooler than the other side of the pillow.”
Honor Finnegan was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and learned to appreciate a variety of people and music living in a mostly African American neighborhood and sitting in the back seat of her single mother’s car listening to the radio for long periods of time. When Honor was eleven her dream of being an actress came true when she was cast in the first National Tour of “Annie”.
Honor is a regular attendee at the late, great Jack Hardy’s songwriter’s exchange, which has nurtured the talents of Suzanne Vega, and Shawn Colvin to name but a few. Honor recently performed this incredible version of Hardy’s “Aint I A Woman” at an AWoW Showcase at NYC’s Cell Theater.
For more information about Artist Without Walls contact info@artistswithout walls.com
Cat Dwyer’s photos from Wednesday night’s “AWoW Showcase at The Cell.” Names appear above each photo.
Nadia Parvez Manzoor
Eimear O’Connor
Maggie O’Farrell
Deni Bonet
Pamela Herron
Liv Mammone and Connie Roberts
Brendan Connellan
There’s a fascinating line up planned for this week’s “AWoW Showcase.” Imagine your favorite singer-songwriter – with a violin and a better sense of humor. You’ve just described Deni Bonet. Not every classically-trained musician plays the violin like an air guitar! Deni Bonet is a college radio favorite who’s performed with the likes of Cyndi Lauper, R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan & Robyn Hitchcock and fits her string & vocal skills into ironic, catchy alternative pop. This past week Deni opened for the Eagles in Washington and Pittsburgh and we’re thrilled she’ll be joining us.
Maggie O’Farrell’s debut novel, After You’d Gone, was published to international acclaim, and won a Betty Trask Award, while her third, The Distance Between Us, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award. Maggie will be discussing and reading from her recently published Instructions for a Heatwave.
Poet Connie Roberts, who has referred two wonderful poets in the past, Koro Koroye and Ciara Thompson, will be introducing poet Olivia Mammone a professor of creative writing at Queens College. Liv has opened for poets such as Martin Espada, Mayda del Valle, and Lemon Anderson and was an actress in and co-writer of Words: a Drama in Poetry which sold out the Gene Frankel Theater in New York City. Liv, who is also an editor for American Book Publishing, has had her poetry appear in Message in a Bottle and Wordgathering Magazine.
Dr Éimear O’Connor is an art historian, curator, lecturer, art advisor and archivist. She was born and lives in Dublin, Ireland. O’Connor began her professional career as a visual artist and has exhibited in Ireland, Denmark and North America. She specialized in site-specific work, and has also designed album covers, book covers and stage settings. Eimear will be discussing her new book titled Sean Keating: Art Politics and Building the Nation.
Pamela Herron, skilled in Butoh, commonly referred to as the “dance of darkness,” and who dances with The Vangeline Theater will be making her first appearance at an AWoW Showcase. Butoh, which is concerned with creating movement that is distinct and different from Western influences, is characterized by slow, controlled movement and images that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes grotesque.
Frequent AWoW contributor Brendan Connellan, off his recent success with his play Pompa Pompa, and just returned from his honeymoon in Japan, has written some thoughts on his honeymoon. Given Brendan’s wit and pithy observations this is sure to be both entertaining and captivating. And reuniting with Brendan, although presenting separately, is one of the stars of Pompa Pompa, Improv artist Nadia Parvez Manzoor. Nadia believes that Improv has the potential of transforming culture in a significant way. What will she be doing? Probably making it up on the fly.
For all that, and maybe a surprise or two, join us at The Cell Theatre, 338 West 23rd Street, Wed., 7pm. It’s sure to be a great evening.
