QUEER MEMOIR: SUBWAY
With storytellers: Danielle Abrams, Kelli Dunham, Michele Hunt, Shareef Hadid Jenkins, Bryn Kelly, Genne Murphy and Charlie Vázquez
Saturday, November 13 & 8:30pm. $5-7 suggested donation. Please note there was NOT a wheelchair accessible room available this day, so for this ONE TIME ONLY this is not a w/c accessible event, although it is all ages.
RSVP on Facebook HERE.
BIOS :
DANIELLE ABRAMS is an interdisciplinary artist who works in performance and video. She is a monologist, talk-show host, ballroom dance teacher, ballerina, and a stand-up comedian of yesteryear. Family and social histories are the material Abrams kneads to create contemporary moments with people and places. She channels a multiracial cast of family members, and incites participatory extravaganzas. Abrams’ characters wax poetic from park benches, barbeque “butch burgers”, and lead Conga lines through a Borscht Belt mirage. She utilizes the tropes of personae to inquire about social relationships and cultures, challenge our reliance upon origin and biography, and reveal the frolic, poignancy, tensions, and revolutionary potential that is created at the intersection of diverse communities.
KELLI DUNHAM is a ex-nun, butch-identified stand-up comic and author of four books of humorous non-fiction, including two children’s books being used by a conservative home schooling association in their science curriculum. She has appeared on Showtime, the Discovery Channel and was once asked to emcee a livestock auction. Her website is kellidunham.com. She is the co-founder, with Genne Murphy, of Queer Memoir. To celebrate her 15 year anniversary of leaving the convent, her one woman show “Bad Habit” (sistermercy.com) which premiered at the Fresh Fruit Festival will be returning to New York on 10/23 as the Bad Habit Brunch. This time there will be dancing girls.
SHAREEF HADID JENKINS has been writing plays since the 2nd grade but never finished a single one. One day in his senior year at Temple University, Shareef woke up at 5am from a dream of 3 Women telling their stories of mothering one boy whom they loved and raised the best way they could. When Shareef woke up from that dream the women were still talking and his first play “The Three Mothers of Zachary”, was born. Shareef currently lives and writes on Harlem, New York, and is Artistic Director of Gladys Productions. His latest play, Crystal-meth, 2 boys and a Tranny It’s all about “Getting Your Life” debuted in last years Philly Fringe Festival and you can “FOLLOW” Shareef’s work every day on his blog www.shareefHadidJenkins.blogspot.com
MICHELE HUNT Michele Hunt lived in NYC from 1999-2007, experiencing the wonders of the subway pretty much every day while working in the jewelry district of Manhattan (along with a brief period of working on the Upper East Side). Now living in Portland, Oregon, she works in a new career as a banker (!) and practices on her photography.
BRYN KELLY is a theater artist, producer, writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. She recently wrapped a production of ANTIGONE with an all-transgender cast (Theater Transgression); played Rosalind in AS YOU LIKE IT at the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe with a cast of Manhattan Community College drama students; and, most recently, will have played Shelby in a very emotional presentation of a scene from STEEL MAGNOLIAS at Sugarland under the direction of avant-auteur Heather Acs. Though she has given public memoir readings before, this is the first time she has presented in the dramatic idiom *(with the exception of that piece about sucking dick in the stacks of the Ohio State University library system, which received rave reviews) Let’s just hope for the best, shall we?
GENNE MURPHY is a Philadelphia native, playwright, and arts educator. She is the co-founder, with Kelli Dunham, of Queer Memoir (queermemoir.com). She’s passionate about the intersection of the arts, social change, and community-building. Genne works for Philadelphia Young Playwrights, a local arts education non-profit, and is involved with initiatives to expand new play development in her hometown.
CHARLIE VAZQUEZ is a radical Bronx-bred writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His fiction and essays have been published in various anthologies and have appeared in print and online publications such as The Advocate, Chelsea Clinton News, New York Press, and Ganymede Journal. Charlie hosts a monthly reading series called PANIC! (in the East Village), which focuses on unusual and original fiction and poetry. He is a former contributor to the Village Voice’s Naked City blog and a retired experimental musician and photographer. His second novel Contraband, was published by Rebel Satori Press in spring 2010, and his third, Corazón, is wrapping up for future publication. He is also working on a short story collection and co-editing a gay Latino fiction anthology with novelist and cultural producer Charles Rice-González. Info: http://www.firekingpress.com/
Queer Memoir 