Howl! Arts

Howl! Is Closed - Have a Great Holiday
2017-12-21 - 2018-01-09 | NY

Samoa Candy Coated Evil
2018-01-10 - 2018-02-11 | NY
An Exhibition Curated by Kembra Pfahler
Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 10, 6–8 PM
In a poisoned, jaded world, this show is a limitless panacea. Samoa’s vocabulary is so innately understandable by anyone with a heart that still beats. And loved by those of us who understand that art and music and performance can create change, rather than just swell our pockets or decorate our rooms. It’s art that serves a purpose, and Samoa’s work does just that—one show at a time. —Kembra Pfahler
Howl! Happening is pleased to present Candy Coated Evil, a solo exhibition by the multifaceted Samoa, curated by artist and performer Kembra Pfahler. The exhibition encompasses the full range of Samoa’s diverse art forms—an installation recreating his now-legendary Candy Coated Evil store, which opened in 1996 within East Village landmark The Pink Pony; costumes and props from his performances and music groups; and paintings that capture his deep experience of living in New York City.
A major element of the artist’s show are live events—performances by Samoa and Kembra Pfahler, as well as a panel discussion, and an evening of video and film. (See dates below.)
Born in Hiroshima, Japan, he formed his first rock band, Johnny, while still in high school and curated numerous music events before moving to Tokyo, where he acted in underground theater and TV dramas. Doing extreme performance in Tokyo in the late 70s, he invented his name—imagining Samoa as an idyllic paradise where he’d someday live. It was in Japan that he began creating his flamboyant costumes. He won a grand prize in 1978 at a popular disco in Tokyo, dressed as a large can of roach spray while surrounded by a coterie of friends in cockroach costumes. He moved to New York in 1980.
In the Candy Coated Evil exhibition, Samoa constructs his experiences of coming to the dystopic landscape of the Lower East Side. As Pfahler puts it, he’s “a heroic artist and immigrant without the word ‘fear’ in his vocabulary.” The complex emotions he expresses about this experience can be seen throughout his work.
Radical and outrageous, he has been an active participant in extreme alternative interdisciplinary art culture for decades. He was one of the first performers at the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge—where he learned English by performing with friends Tanya Ransom and Frederic, and watching early performances by legends like Ethyl Eichelberger and John Sex—a first wave of punk performance heroes that are historicized widely in the art world today. He stood out singing and playing his original music on his signature Gibson guitar at Wigstock in the early 80s; in 1984, his rock opera, Under the Bad Star, premiered at La MaMa. The opera featured his over-the-top sets and costumes; the backing band included members of the alternative post-punk band Jawbreaker. Many of his wildly eccentric costumes and other DIY artifacts from this period will be on display.
In 1990—with Pfahler—he founded the legendary theatrical shock rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Samoa was responsible for writing all the music for the band, which continues to wreak havoc wherever they perform today. As much a theatrical troupe as a band, New York’s TVHKB (named in homage to the B-movie scream queen) mixes their punk roots with elements of vaudeville, psychotronic films, and futuristic burlesque to arrive at their signature identity.
In his paintings, the subjects he chooses to portray—James Baldwin, Nina Simone, First Nation Chief Wolf Robe, Ken Takakura (a Yakuza movie star), and many more—draw attention to racial and social issues in vivid color, with bold images that capture the hopes, fears, wonder, and pain of his American experience.
In curator Pfahler’s words: “The oddness that emerges…his particular type of rage at the injustice that inhabits our world sneaks beautifully into every crevice of his canvases. Not unlike his songwriting and costume making…it’s all Samoa…part prophetic soothsaying and part gilded advertisement for a new world….”
PERFORMANCES AND LIVE EVENTS
Saturday, January 13: Performance by Kembra Pfahler and a performance by Samoa
Sunday, January 14: Panel discussion
Thursday, January 18: Video/film screening
Thursday, February 8: Samoa performance
Sunday, February 11: Closing night ceremony
About Samoa
About Kembra Pfahler

Samoa and Kembra Pfahler Living Will
2018-01-13 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | NY
An Evening of Performances
Living Will brings Samoa and Kembra together to present their “unbrandable brand of performance”—sharing stories and surprising new identities and characters with memorable gravity—while remaining uniquely and inimitably themselves! Samoa and Kembra first met and performed together in the early 80’s at the Pyramid, Danceteria, Limbo, ABC No Rio, and other legendary clubs.
To celebrate the opening of Samoa’s exhibition Candy Coated Evil, the artist will present Pornocchio 2017, an updated version of a piece he performed throughout the 80s and 90s on the club circuit. A strange and disturbing tale of love between Diet Pepsi and a little doll called Linda, Pornocchio showcases Samoa’s multivalent talents.
Kembra revises Ghost Having a Ghost, her first performance at ABC No Rio. She will also perform two classic numbers—Bowling Ball Piece and 917-803-7178. The costumes, music, and props for these pieces were all created by Samoa and Kembra.
For the climax of this epic night, the two will present Living Will, a piece that delivers the surprise and shock that Karen Black enthusiasts crave, with new text by Kembra, and music and props by Samoa. As the title suggests, the finale is a moving, poignant, and poetic rumination on life and death. Not to be missed!
You know when you’re stricken, you’re stricken quickly,
So we not die like you lived
Ri tu al is tic al leeeeeee
Shrink and freeze my head
Turn it into a cane
Burn my body
Scatter the remains
Take my ashes to Bali
I can’t afford to go now
Ri tu al is tic ah leeeeee
—Lyrics from Living Will

Samoa Candy Coated Evil Panel Discussion
2018-01-14 16:00 - 18:00 | NY
With Samoa, Kembra Pfahler, Brian Luman, Spencer Sweeney, and Militia Vox

Hello everyone, welcome to Samoa’s first one-person show, which I helped organize at Howl! Happening. We decided to have a panel discussion during the Candy Coated Evil show where we spoke about Samoa’s work, but the artist himself wants us to talk about OUR work as an artistic, activist community.
Photographer Brian Luman, a champion of water preservation, will be one of the panelists. As he puts it regarding his own state of affairs: “I’m someplace between who I was and what I hope to become. A year ago, something happened to me on the land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. I saw what I could be. I saw what I always imagined we could be together. I saw that Water is the thing that unites us with the land and each other.” Without clean water there is no survival…nowhere for flowers to live. In Samoa’s words, there would be “no place to abide by and preserve, to love and have life exist.”
Painter Spencer Sweeney and singer Militia Vox will also serve as panelists. Two other sorts of activists—although I doubt they’d call themselves that, please forgive me—but what you both do truly activates people. Let’s give the word “activist” a little modernity for the sake of our visit on the 14th of January.
Militia is the 4-octave-range vocalist for an all-female homage band called Judas Priestess. Like athletes, these girls pump their way through songs like swimmers going fast in ice-cold water—with fierceness and fearlessness—doing something most people would be afraid to do. When I was a kid, I would sing along to Rob Halford…it’s really hard to sing Judas Priest songs. A classically-trained pianist, Militia has played with the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Nancy Sinatra. One of my favorite quotes from Militia is “disgrace your stereotypes.”
Spencer has a history as someone who has, for decades, provided spaces for people to activate their right to express themselves. He’s been ahead of the art game as a revered painter with a strong connection to community. To have an actual space to create community, Spencer created a venue in the early 2000s—Santos Party House. Like they say in Hawaii, he manifested this place to life, generating a million fantastic, memorable nights a chalkboard could never erase. He launched a dance party called 718 Sessions, featuring old-school DJs from historical clubs like The Paradise Garage and having them interact with younger DJs and musicians. Lately, Spencer’s focus has been on producing a free, intergenerational drawing night with live free-jazz musicians from legendary groups such as Sun Ra…coming in to blow the minds of all that stay and draw and share their techniques with one another. I say drawing is a rapidly-growing, vital form of communication, important in these years where we are being convinced by the media that all is well if we are indulge in brands forced by greedy capitalists, intent on contaminating the tears—the Water—falling from our eyes.
Samoa asked if we could bring Performance Art 101, the Know Wave radio show I’ve been doing for a couple of years, to Howl! Happening and feature the panel discussion within the program. He likes the circle we form when we speak to each other in the show. There’s no hierarchy like there would be on a regular talk show. No leaders, just a group of people sharing their experiences and how they got to do what they do. As a young girl, I went to an art school called School of Visual Arts…what I wanted to speak about on Performance Art 101 was essentially everything that I didn’t get out of the school. (Brian, unsurprisingly, had a similar feeling about going to school to become an artist….) When I was asked in art school to define what I was, I said “availabist,” or someone that makes the best use of what is available.
When you are an artist, you do your work. You work within the scope of sharing production tools and many unwritten codes. I think Brian Luman, Militia Vox, and Spencer Sweeney make up for a very astute trio of experience sharing…all with the impetus to do music, art, or activism as a way of “cultural preservation,” like Spencer says.
And so, these three artists will answer questions from visitors to Howl! Happening on January 14th at 4 p.m., for the recording of a Performance Art 101 radio show. Spencer’s going to Glasgow and Beijing for some art shows, Melish is working on records and touring, and Brian has been most generous with his time to help “memorganize”—wait, that’s a computer word accident…thanks Apple…you fucking big brother type of rotten unhatched egg. Brian’s helped me think through and speak about this day…so, thanks again.
Reminding us to consider our similarities and not our differences, and also that we can only speak about things we’ve actually experienced, I express with grace and humility that I will “minulate”—a tinier version of “moderate”—the panel. As I said before, there’s no moderator, there are no leaders—we are looking for consensus on decisions which change the way we relate to time.
Brian, we are all so excited to hear about your travel experiences; Militia you’ve been so graceful with your willingness to speak with all of us at Howl! And thank you Spencer for coming to Samoa’s panel as well.
Thank you so much,
Kembra Pfahler TVHKB
and SAMOA

Actors Fund Affordable Housing Workshop
2018-01-16 14:00 - 16:00, 2018-02-20 14:00 - 16:00, 2018-03-20 14:00 - 16:00 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
Did you know that New York City is planning to build or preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing by 2026? This two-hour seminar for performing-arts and entertainment professionals provides an overview of government-subsidized housing in New York City, which is available for both low- and middle-income households. Complex information is broken down into simple, straightforward steps. While the applicant pool for these affordable units is highly competitive, this seminar will help you avoid common mistakes and get organized and prepared to apply. The following questions will be addressed:
How do you find and apply for affordable housing?
What are the eligibility requirements? (Income, household size, credit, housing history, etc.)
How does a housing lottery work?
Can you get on a waiting list?
How do you document your income if it fluctuates year to year?
How can you best prepare yourself for an interview?
What are your options if you are denied?

Actors Fund Insurance Drop In Workshop
2018-01-16 16:00 - 18:00, 2018-02-20 16:00 - 18:00, 2018-03-20 16:00 - 18:00 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
The Insurance Doctor Is In!
Questions about a health insurance bill?
Don’t understand your insurance and can’t get a straight answer?
Need some advice on how to negotiate medical debt?
Our insurance expert will answer your questions during a one-on-one consultation. Vincent Musolino, Health Benefits Specialist at the Artists Health Insurance Resource Center, is an unbiased Navigator with the NY State of Health Marketplace and has over 12 years of medical billing and insurance experience.
Consultations are about 20 minutes and by appointment only.
Please RSVP to vmusolino@actorsfund.org with Subject: Insurance Doctor Is In
Also, bring any documents in question (bills, explanations of benefits, your insurance policy)!

The Actors Fund Every Artist Insured
2018-01-17 18:30 - 20:00 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
Finding Affordable Coverage in a Changing Insurance Landscape
Can’t make heads or tails of the news about health care changes and want to know how they affect New Yorkers?
Need some advice on whether you qualify for free insurance, or the $20/mo plan?
Wondering when Open Enrollment starts and ends? (Spoiler: it’s probably not when you think)
Then this session is for you!
This free workshop will help you understand ‘Obamacare’ and the proposed changes, provide you with clear guidance on what all your options are, and answer your burning questions! Open to anyone in visual and performing arts and entertainment.
Please note: This seminar does not provide information about Medicare enrollment.
Questions answered include:
· What are my options in 2018?
· How could changes affect me?
· How much will plans cost in 2018?
· Am I eligible for a subsidy or the $20/mo plan?
· Am I eligible for free insurance?
· How do I estimate sporadic income?
· How do I pick a plan?
· Where do I get care if I’m uninsured?

Samoa and Kembra Pfahler Video and Film Screening
2018-01-18 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Samoa and curator Kembra Pfahler host an evening of films in conjunction with Candy Coated Evil, including Samoa’s shorts My Way to Hell and Until the Day I Die, as well as performance videos from the 80s and music videos by their band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.
My Way to Hell is the story of a character named Karen, who is obsessed with fame and tries to lead her band into stardom—but the band members have no intention to follow her wishes. Brokenhearted, she goes into a dark depression. The film features trans star Jack Curious, Samoa, Kari Krome, Walter Cassidy III, Amanda Pollock, Dick Manitoba, and Kembra.
Until the Day I Die is the story of a female Jesus rising against an evil dot com CEO, who wants to control the world by forcing commercial power upon civilians while the corporate media and puppet politicians are blindfolding the public. Jesus fights back with special powers, recruiting people for massive anti-corporate demonstrations. The battle beings…but is there any hope for saving humanity? The film stars Leslie Matuko Molson, Jim Graham, and Dave Buchwald.
The music video program features “Mr. Corporation” by The Lonely Samoans. Samoa describes this number as “the hit country song” from the band’s first album Here Come the Lonely Samoans, which addresses the hypocritical existence of young professionals in a corporate world.
The evening will also include a screening of music videos by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, including the rare “Chopsley Rabid Bikini Model”, a video clip filmed in the late 90s when the band toured with The Cramps and Alice Cooper and opened a stadium show in Las Vegas. When Academy Award-nominated director Simeon Soffer caught wind of the buzz, he offered to meet the band in Vegas to make a video.
For the filming, Simeon rented a $25-an-hour helicopter: Kembra and Samoa got dressed up and held on to dear life, flying around filming the other band members. The video is high-caliber Karen Black—strange couture classic rock, with Samoa donning his Candy Coated Evil designs. An alternate version of the video, made for MTV Europe, will also be shown. This iteration features a handcrafted set by Ned Ambler, and Samoa in more amazing Candy Coated Evil outfits, playing a futuristic robot-musician who plugs electric guitar chords into his own flesh while Kembra freestyles directional, non-melodic vocals.
“Mr. Twilight”, TVHOKB’s first video, will also be projected. Directed by the legendary Steve Daughton, the clip employs his self-taught color modification techniques, which later on became a paradigm in low-tech video making. Michael Wilson, the “Tattoo Man”, appears in the video alongside Kembra and Samoa. Wilson was a part of The Voluptuous Horror throughout the 90s, and has since passed on due to complications with diabetes.
Photo credit: Michael Levine

Amy Lawless and Angela Veronica Wong
2018-01-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Publication Party for Two New Poetry Collections
Howl! Happening is pleased to celebrate the publication of two new poetry collections: Angela Veronica Wong’s elsa: an unauthorized autobiography, published by Black Radish Books, and Amy Lawless’ Broadax, published by Octopus Books.
Wong’s elsa: an unauthorized autobiography unfolds the story of a fictional 18th-century French demimondaine and mistress of Louis XV. Meditating on gender, identity, and the precariousness of women’s lives against the scrim of patriarchal power and capital, the foils of the sonnet form and storytelling shape Wong’s critique. Both adhering to and breaking the structures of rhyme and meter—like Elsa wearing and divesting herself of corset and panniers—Wong’s sonnets shift between the politics of the French court and the streets of New York. Navigating the shoals of female embodiment, the poems slip between then and now, narrated and narrator.
Amy Lawless takes inspiration from Annie Dillard, who writes in her essay The Death of the Moth, “You can’t be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax.” In her new book, Lawless goes at her life in an attempt to understand the pain and how to live in this fucked-up world. Broadax begins in the guileless moments of the poet’s childhood and constellates outward, only to return to the same life through adult eyes. Lawless reflects on her life with the help of The Incredible Hulk, Prince, Žižek, Mishima, and especially her family.
Publisher’s Weekly on elsa: “Wong explores the confines and contradictions of patriarchy, the injustices of imperialism and class division, and the fever-pitch potential of revolution. […] The poems and the relationships described therein witness intersecting sex and violence; there are predators and prey, though these designations are constantly in flux and precarious in the face of revolt. […] As an imagined history, this book is rich with sensory detail and shrewd interpersonal politics; as a screed on the perpetual cycle of objectification, it is timely and stirring.”
Publishers Weekly on Broadax: “Lawless’s ax strikes at misogyny and its inherent brutality in this exceedingly clever collection on being fearless in a world where fear is weaponized to keep women compliant.”
About Amy Lawless and Broadax
Amy Lawless is the author of two books of poems, including My Dead (Octopus Books). Her third poetry collection Broadax is forthcoming in the fall from Octopus Books. A chapbook, A Woman Alone, is just out from Sixth Finch Books. With Chris Cheney, she is the author of the hybrid book I Cry: The Desire to Be Rejected, from the Pioneer Works Press Groundworks series (2016). Lawless’ poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2013, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion, and the Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press). Poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Volta, Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, jubilat, The Inquisitive Eater, and elsewhere. She received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2011 and lives in Brooklyn.
About Angela Veronica Wong and elsa
Angela Veronica Wong is a poet, writer, artist, and educator based in New York City. Her most recent book of poetry is elsa: an unauthorized autobiography (Black Radish Books, 2017). Chapbooks include the Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship winner Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter. Poems have been anthologized in Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation and Best American Poetry (in collaboration with Amy Lawless). Wong’s fiction has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Duende, and smoking glue gun. Her performance work has been featured in independent galleries in Buffalo, Toronto, and New York. She was named a Poets & Writers debut poet for her first book of poems, how to survive a hotel fire.

Rene Ricard Four Years On
2018-01-24 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
With Raymond Foye, Easy Keys, Gerard Malanga, Anne Waldman, Richard Hell, Anselm Berrigan and More
Howl! Happening is pleased to present Four Years On, a multimedia evening organized by Rene Ricard’s close friend, publisher, and executor Raymond Foye. As we approach the fourth year of Ricard’s death, interest in the work of this poet, painter, and critic continues to grow. A mainstay of the New York art scene, Ricard starred in numerous Warhol films, including Chelsea Girls (1966).
The evening includes a live performance by Brooklyn-based band Easy Keys, who will perform songs from their new LP, Rene Ricard. This album sets to music Ricard’s poems of tragic love, jealousy and betrayal, drugs and dissipation—and the poet’s redemption through writing and art. The celebration also commemorates the new bilingual edition of Ricard’s first book, 1979-1980, published by Éditions Lutanie in Paris, which was edited and translated by publisher Manon Lutanie, and Rachel Valinsky, an independent curator and writer based in Brooklyn.
Raymond Foye will interview legendary poet and writer Gerard Malanga, who was responsible for collecting and editing Rene Ricard: 1979-1980 when he was director of publications at Dia. Rene Ricard’s first public reading in New York was with Malanga, at Izzy Young’s Folklore Center in 1965.
Special guest readers will include Anne Waldman, Richard Hell, Anselm Berrigan and others to be announced. A short film starring Rene Ricard by Rita Barros will also be screened.
www.easykeysworld.com/music

The Mayhem Moon
2018-01-31 16:00 - 16:30 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
A Stinkmetal and May Production
In homage to Tom Murrin’s Luna Macaroona Full Moon Shows
Production Director: Tony Stinkmetal
From the luminous minds of the MAYHEM sisters Salley May and Nancy May Perry comes this skeleton key to the locks that keep you in and out. Performed by Agosto Machado, Pedro J. Rosado, Jr., Annie Lanzillotto, Aru Hangar, Simba Yangala, Nina Ndjemba Elemva, Salley May and Tony Stinkmetal. The Mayhem Moon will take place in the gallery at 7 PM (instead of the sidewalk shows at 4).
You know that dream? The one where you’re on a prison planet and the inmates only know one joke…
The one where an ICE agent, a doctor, and a scary clown walk into a bar and the bartender says, “Why the long shadow?”
Then come the birds. They’re crashing against the windows.
You open the window to let them out. They fly free.
You try to follow them but the bars are too close together.
And you’re locked out.
The Mayhem Moon will punch that dream in the face.
Insiders will be exiled, inmates will take office, jesters will ascend to the throne.
MAYHEM is coming to the rescue.

About Tom Murrin and the Full Moon Show
Howl! Happening houses the archives of Tom Murrin. Murrin, aka the Alien Comic, is known as the Godfather of Performance Art. Every full moon, Tom performed the Full Moon Show in honor of his moon goddess, Luna Macaroona. When he had a club date that fell on the full moon, he’d wrangle his friends to perform as his guests—pushing the careers of such groundbreaking performers as David Cale, David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris, Blue Man Group, Ethyl Eichelberger, Lisa Kron and many others. If not, he performed on the street for passersby, transforming the pedestrian atmosphere with his madness and magic. Howl! Happening’s monthly series continues that tradition, with performances in the gallery and surprise pop up performances on the street.
About The Tom Murrin Archive
Howl! Happening is the repository of the Tom Murrin Archive comprising masks, costumes, scripts, correspondence, photographs, and tapes of performances going back to the early 70s. Murrin (February 8, 1939 – March 12, 2012) also known as The Alien Comic and Jack Bump, was a performance pioneer whose life and work inspired both artists and audiences for over 40 years. He was a member of the first generation of La MaMa playwrights. Tom wrote four plays performed through La MaMa and produced by John Vacarro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, including the offbeat hit, Cock Strong, which toured with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Troupe to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.
Under the guidance of rock manager Jane Friedman, Tom began to perform under the name Alien Comic, opening for acclaimed punk bands in rock clubs such as CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. As Alien Comic he performed in such venues as The Pyramid, 8BC, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, and more. Since the mid 80s, he’s created, performed, and curated a series of variety nights at Performance Space 122, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and Dixon Place, called The Full Moon Show. His plays Sport-Fuckers and Butt-Crack Bingo were produced at Theater for the New City and La MaMa and directed by David Levine. Tom was the first performance artist to appear on stage at the original Dixon Place location at 37 East First Street in 1986.
Photo copyright Eric McNatt 2016

Full Moon Show
2018-01-31 16:00 - 16:30 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
Every Month on The Full Moon
4pm Sharp

About Tom Murrin and the Full Moon Show
Howl! Happening houses the archives of the late Tom Murrin. Murrin, aka the Alien Comic, is known as the Godfather of Performance Art. Every full moon, Tom performed the Full Moon Show in honor of his moon goddess, Luna Macaroona. When he had a club date that fell on the full moon, he’d wrangle his friends to perform as his guests—pushing the careers of such groundbreaking performers as David Cale, David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris, Blue Man Group, Ethyl Eichelberger, Lisa Kron and many others. When dateless and unbooked, he’d perform on the street for passersby, transforming the pedestrian atmosphere with his madness and magic. Howl! Happening’s monthly series continues that tradition, with performances in the gallery and surprise pop up performances on the street.
About The Tom Murrin Archive
Howl! Happening is the repository of the Tom Murrin Archive comprising masks, costumes, scripts, correspondence, photographs, and tapes of performances going back to the early 70s. Murrin (February 8, 1939 – March 12, 2012) also known as The Alien Comic and Jack Bump, was a performance pioneer whose life and work inspired both artists and audiences for over 40 years. He was a member of the first generation of La MaMa playwrights. Tom wrote four plays performed through La MaMa and produced by John Vacarro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous, including the offbeat hit, Cock Strong, which toured with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Troupe to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.
Tom began to perform under the name Alien Comic, opening for acclaimed punk bands in rock clubs such as CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. As Alien Comic he performed in such venues as The Pyramid, 8BC, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, and more. From the mid 80’s on, he created, performed, and curated a series of variety nights at Performance Space 122, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and Dixon Place, called The Full Moon Show. His plays Sport-Fuckers and Butt-Crack Bingo were produced at Theater for the New City and La MaMa and directed by David Levine. Tom was the first performance artist to appear on stage at the original Dixon Place location at 37 East First Street in 1986.
The Full Moon Show is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement / Creative Learning, supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. LMCC.net
Photo copyright Jim R Moore (www.vaudevisuals.com)

Tight 5
2018-01-31 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A Comedy Series hosted by Greer Dworman
Featuring:
Alex Rodabaugh
Sara Gibbons
Doug LeCours
Rachael Warner
Presented by HOWL! Happening, Tight 5 is a comedy series curated and hosted by comedian and performer Greer Dworman. A come-as-you-are comedy show billed with performers willing to try stand-up for the first time ever. Universally agreed upon as the scariest thing anyone will ever do (questionably an exaggeration), Tight 5 prompts performers to “Try it. Just try it!” or “Let go and let god!”
Greer Dworman is a Chicago-born now Brooklyn-based performer and maker. Her work has been presented in venues across Chicago and now emerging within the New York performance community as part of CATCH, Movement Research at the Judson Church, SHELTER Talk Series, Salonathon Chicago, and Brink! at Dixon Place, among others.
Dworman presently and passionately investigates comedy and pop culture in her work, grappling with larger ideas in the world located in personal narrative, concerning herself with the Right Now.
She received her BFA in Dance Making from the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.

The Lonely Samoans
2018-02-08 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Performance with Special Surprise Guests
In conjunction with his exhibition Candy Coated Evil, Samoa brings The Lonely Samoans, his off-beat country band, to perform live at Howl! Happening. Why country music, you ask? “It is a perfect vehicle to express the daily struggle and despair of a poor American life like mine,” says Samoa. “Also, country music could use a little yellow blood,” he adds. The performance illustrates important aspects of Samoa’s exhibition: the intersection of performance and social commentary in his work, and his very particular take on American cultural institutions and icons as seen through the eyes of an outsider.
Samoa was born in a tiny fishing village in Hiroshima, Japan, with a wandering soul. While watching the moon landing on TV, he promised himself he would one day seek opportunity in the land of the free—America. Along the way, he discovered that in this land the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, while independent ideas and colorful cultures are replaced by corporate logos. “It was time to make a stand for myself,” Samoa says. He carefully assembled top-notch musicians to stand up and fight back.
The Lonely Samoans deliver their unique take on modern country music—heavy-handed political messages delivered in a barely comprehensible accent—with bits of love and heartbreak and a hilarious sense of humor.

Third Eye Film Festival
2018-02-16 17:30 - 21:30, 2018-02-17 16:00 - 20:30, 2018-02-18 14:30 - 19:00 | NY
The 2nd annual Third Eye Film Festival will showcase 34 films in horror, fantasy, and spiritual genres from 9 different countries. Of these selections, 24 films were created by female filmmakers!
Our selected films were created predominantly by female-identifying Directors or Cinematographers as represented by our Female Eye category. We are proud to break stigmas by elevating powerful female-driven content in genre filmmaking. TEFF also endorses unconventional storytelling with our Spiritual category. This category is home to genre-fluid films about humanity, the intangible, and what lies beyond, supporting the marriage of art and personal truths.
Don’t miss your chance to check out this amazing lineup of ‘otherwordly’ films!
February 16–18, 2018
2/16 5:30PM – 9:30PM
2/17 4PM – 8:30PM
2/18 2:30PM – 7PM
Screenings will start 30 mins after doors open.
FREE Admission!
For more info: www.thirdeyefilmfest.com

Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago
2018-02-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Screening and DVD Release Party
Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago tells the astonishing story of a gay Puerto Rican kid growing up in a Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood, who got on the subway one day and began an odyssey that helped shape the musical landscape across New York and around the world. Directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex, the film tells the story of Michael Alago, a cherished New York City icon. From rubbing elbows with New York scene makers as an underaged teenager at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, to being the architect of a rock ‘n’ roll renaissance as the 19-year-old talent booker at the legendary Ritz, and making history as the 24-year-old A&R exec who signed Metallica, the biggest metal band in a generation, Alago was on fire.
Working with artists ranging from White Zombie and Johnny Rotten to Cyndi Lauper and jazz legend Nina Simone, Alago was driven by a love for great music…ANY great music…and the artists loved him back. Passion and excess would bring Alago crashing into the twin reapers of substance abuse and AIDS, but surviving them both he reinvented himself as an art photographer—healthy, sober, and as passionate as ever. Told by Alago and the artists whose careers he helped build, and illustrated with an exquisite collection of personal photographs, Who the Fuck Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago tells a tender, loving, honest, and insane story of a man who loved new music so much he had to bring it to the world, and lived to talk about it. Barely.
About the Film
About Drew Stone

Paging Tom Murrin!
2018-02-22 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
An Evening of Readings and Performances with Friends and Colleagues
Howl! Happening is pleased to present an evening celebrating the life and work of the late, great comic genius, Tom Murrin. Often called the “Godfather of performance art,” a stellar lineup of friends and colleagues will read and perform short essays, interviews, and one act plays that reflect on his life, work, and influence. Featured readers and performers include:
Performance artists Salley May and Tony Stinkmetal
Critic and writer David Cote
Playwrights Erin Courtney, John Jesurun, and Katie Hathaway
Directors David Levine and Lucy Sexton
Performer/Curator Nicky Paraiso
Photographer Patricia Sullivan
Murrin, who performed for many years as Alien Comic, cast his spell on generations of East Village artists and pioneering a brash, hilarious, and prop filled tradition of performance art. The works written and performed on this evening form the basis for a book-in-progress on Murrin written by his wife, Patricia Sullivan. Come prepared for an evening of laughter, history, and inspiration!
About the Performers
David Cote is an arts reporter, playwright and opera librettist. He covers theater and other things at The Village Voice, What Should We Do and American Theatre.
Erin Courtney‘s Obie award winning play A Map of Virtue, produced by 13P and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, was described by the New York Times as “one of the most terrifying plays of the past decade”. Her other plays include I Will Be Gone, Alice the Magnet and Demon Baby. She teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College.
Katie Hathaway is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her plays and musicals have been performed and developed at Ars Nova, Yale Institute for Music Theater, The Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, The Flea Theater, New Dramatists, The Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place, Joe’s Pub, and the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, an alumni of Barnard College and has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. She sunlights as a music teacher at St. Ann’s School.
John Jesurun is a playwright/director/media artist. Since 1982 text, direction, design for over 40 pieces including Chang in a Void Moon, Philoktetes and Shatterhand Massacree. “Distant Observer” his collaboration with Takeshi Kawamura premieres at La Mama March 16. Webserial “Shadowland” on Vimeo.
David Levine is an artist and OBIE-winning theater director. As David Soul, he collaborated with Tom Murrin (as Jack Bump) on five increasingly lurid dramas. His exhibition Some of the People, None of the Time will open at the Brooklyn Museum in May.
Agosto Machado, performer, artist, activist and witness, is best known for his work with Ellen Stewart’s La Mama ETC, and his association with Jack Smith, Mario Montez, Jackie Curtis, John Vaccaro , Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Marsha P Johnson, Ronald and Harvey Tavel, Ethyl Eichelberger and Peter Hujar.
Salley May is a NYC-based performance artist since 1987, a long-time curator of Performance Space 122’s Avant-Garde-Arama series, and a teaching artist of theater workshops with mentally disabled populations. She ran the HOWL Happening Gallery Tom Murrin Full Moon show series with Tony Stinkmetal, and is cofounder of MAYHEM company with her sister Nancy May perry. She remains committed to the work and spirit of Tom Murrin/Alien Comic.
Nicky Paraiso is a Director of Programming at La MaMa and the Curator for the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. He is an accomplished actor and singer and was recently awarded a 2018 TCG Fox Actor Fellowship.
Lucy Sexton is half of the dance performance duo DANCENOISE, director of Tom Murrin’s one-man show, and performs solo as The Factress.
Patricia Sullivan, Tom Murrin’s widow, is a photographer whose work has been exhibited in NY and LA and published in Time Out NY, New York magazine, and Paper. She is working on a book about Tom Murrin.
About Tom Murrin and the Tom Murrin Archive
Howl! Happening is the repository of the Tom Murrin Archive comprising masks, costumes, scripts, correspondence, photographs, and tapes of performances going back to the early 70s. Murrin (February 8, 1939 – March 12, 2012) also known as The Alien Comic and Jack Bump, was a performance pioneer whose life and work inspired both artists and audiences for over 40 years. He was a member of the first generation of La MaMa playwrights. Tom wrote four plays performed through La MaMa and produced by John Vacarro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, including the offbeat hit, Cock Strong, which toured with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Troupe to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.
Under the guidance of famed rock manager Jane Friedman, Tom began to perform under the name Alien Comic, opening for acclaimed punk bands in rock clubs such as CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. He performed in New York City clubs and theaters as The Alien Comic, appearing in such venues as The Pyramid, 8BC, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, and more. Since the mid 80s, he created, performed, and curated a series of variety nights at Performance Space 122, and later at the La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and Dixon Place, called The Full Moon Show. His plays Sport-Fuckers and Butt-Crack Bingo were produced at Theater for the New City and La MaMa and directed by David Levine. Tom was the first performance artist to appear on stage at the original Dixon Place location at 37 East First Street in 1986.
image courtesy of Jim Moore

Writers Block 2018
2018-02-23 | NY
An Annual Festival of Staged Readings and Performances to Benefit the Actors Fund
Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is pleased to present the annual Writers Block 2018 Festival. Created to showcase the vision of contemporary writers, performers, and artists, many of whom got their start in the nightclubs, seminal performance spaces, and theaters associated with the EV/LES, the festival showcases some of the most important playwrights and performers in theater today. New works in progress are presented at this intimate, ultimate downtown theatrical event. Writers Block 2018 will occur throughout the year with a series of short plays and one-acts over several days, and blocks of full-length evenings.
The festival is a benefit for the Howl! Emergency Life Project (Howl! HELP), providing emergency financial assistance and social service support to artists who have made or continue to make their careers in New York’s East Village and Lower East Side arts communities. 100% of the proceeds from ticket sales benefit the Actors Fund.
“Howl! HELP is an integral part of Howl Arts’ vision to provide a safe haven for artists from our neighborhood,” says Jane Friedman, founder of Howl! Happening. “Writers Block is both a creative outlet and a benefit to insure the health and well-being of our community.” Howl Happening also hosts free, monthly health care and housing workshops presented by the Actors Fund. For information and updated schedule of events: howlarts.org.
Performances include:
Friday, February 23, 2018 / 7 PM / $10
Melba LaRose After the Wall: A Polytheatrical Extravaganza
After the Wall, a multicultural, multidimensional, multidisciplinary, multimedia play about walls around the world and throughout time, takes the stage in a one night only preview at Howl! Happening. With comedy, drama, song, dance, projections, and soundscapes that envelop the audience, this theatrical extravaganza aims to shake us up and start the conversation. Written and directed by avant-garde Off-Off-Broadway legend Melba LaRose, the play is an epic wild ride through history. For Tickets to Melba LaRose
Thursday, March 29, 2018 / 7 PM / $20
La création du monde & Mahagonny Songplay
La création du monde by Darius Milhaud
Downtown Chamber & Opera Players
Mimi Stern-Wolfe, Conductor
and
Mahagonny Songplay (1927)
Notes from Lys Symonette of The Kurt Weill Foundation
Music by Kurt Weill
Text By Bertolt Brecht
Thursday – Sunday, June 14 – 17 / $20
When Lithuania Ruled the World by Kestutis Nakas

Melba LaRose After the Wall: A Polytheatrical Extravaganza
2018-02-23 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Part of Howl!’s annual Writers Block staged reading and performance festival
For Tickets to Melba LaRose
After the Wall, a multicultural, multidimensional, multidisciplinary, multimedia play about walls around the world and throughout time, takes the stage in a one night only preview at Howl! Happening. With comedy, drama, song, dance, projections, and soundscapes that envelop the audience, this theatrical extravaganza aims to shake us up and start the conversation. Written and directed by avant-garde Off-Off-Broadway legend Melba LaRose, the play is an epic wild ride through history. The plot spirals past a comic prehistoric tribal council; ancient Mesopotamia; a hot trip through the desert with the lost tribes of Israel; the flight from the cotton fields of the Old South; valiant survival through humor in Sachsenhausen, Berlin, before, during, and after the wall; a samba through the military regime in Brazil; a crossing of the US-Mexico border; and a culture clash in a Prague café—landing in a university classroom where we learn about the biggest wall of all in outer space. A professor’s young daughter then opens her arms to an envisioned utopia, where there are no walls between us. Limited Space.
You will laugh, cry, learn, question, and feel inspired—you might even get up and dance! The non-traditionally cast ensemble includes Tinuke Adetunji, Colette Ambo, Carmela Davis, Michelangelo del Rosario, Olya Grynko, Evangeline Ramos, and Krystal KC Wilson. Lindsay Shields is the play’s multimedia designer. The choreography is by Luigi protégé Francis J. Roach. Frances Eldred designed the costumes; Victor Vauban Junior serves as stage manager. After the Wall will premiere this fall at SynerFest, a festival of art culture innovation in Valencia, Spain. (See bios below)
Writer Block 2018 is a benefit for the Howl! Emergency Life Project (Howl! HELP), providing emergency financial assistance and social service support to artists who have made or continue to make their careers in New York’s East Village and Lower East Side arts communities. Howl! HELP is administered by the Actors Fund and 100% ticket sales benefit the Actors Fund. For information and updated schedule of events: howlarts.org.

BIOGRAPHIES
Melba LaRose (Writer/Director)
A survivor of the Warhol days, “Queen of Off-Off-Broadway,” and a legend in her own mind, Melba LaRose was the original Nola Noonan in Jackie Curtis’ Glamour, Glory & Gold: The Life & Legend of Nola Noonan, Goddess & Star. Her supporting players in that camp epic were Curtis and the glamorous Candy Darling. Following that, she starred in Jackie’s musical Lucky Wonderful. She escaped to the Left Coast (taking her life with her) in the 70s, in a full-length black velvet coat, hot pants, and ripped fishnets—the strangest thing that ever got off the bus. (“It took 10 years to get the glitter out of my hair!,” she says.) Contrary to popular dish (which according to Doric Wilson was started by Harry Koutoukas), it turned out she wasn’t a drag queen after all. She was accepted into Lonny Chapman’s renowned Group Repertory Theatre. Nearly lulled into lobotomy by ocean waves and persistently sunny days, she began writing and directing and was soon on a plane back to Gotham. Besides film and television, she has toured internationally with the Obie award-winning NY Street Theatre Caravan. In 1982, she founded NY Artists Unlimited, a multicultural nonprofit dedicated to taking professional theater to underserved audiences. Melba is artistic director and also writes, directs, and sometimes appears in productions. In 2006, she created Downeast Arts Center in the East Village and gave birth to the Bad Plays Festival, which morphed into the International CringeFest, an annual escapade of irreverent, naughty, politically incorrect, satirical plays and musicals. She is in four editions of Who’s Who and has received numerous honors, grants, and awards. LaRose is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, Dramatists Guild, A.R.T./New York, League of Independent Theater, International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts, AEA, SAG-AFTRA. For the past five years, she has been ensconced in developing her magnum opus After the Wall.
Olya Grynko is a New York-based actress and model. Originally from Ukraine, she moved to the Big Apple six years ago to pursue dreams of acting. She is an active member of New Women New Yorkers—a nonprofit organization that supports and empowers young women immigrants in New York.
Carmela Davis got the acting bug in college while studying engineering and trained at the Harlem Theatre Company. At Auburn University, she was the head of the Black Student Association. Fighting for equal rights, access, and funding is an extension of her sense of justice. “True justice elevates the fact that all people are of value in this universe and on our planet,” she says. This play combines her beliefs and passion for acting, while moving others to action. She has been with the company for 15 years and is treasurer of the board.
Evangeline Ramos will be making her acting debut in After the Wall. She has ventured into acting with the help of her mother, Carmela Davis. Ten-year-old Evangeline is a world traveler, visual artist, and a New York City public school student, who hopes even children understand the play. She wants to encourage children to become involved in making their world a better place.
Krystal Kc Wilson is a Bronx native and is excited to be working as an actress in this project. Being a black woman in America, she has seen her fair share of walls face to face and takes any and all opportunities to tear them down one by one. She thanks her family and friends for the support and for being there through thick and thin.
Adetnuke Chmieliauskas (Tinuke Adetunji). In the actress’ own words: “Both of my parents are from West Africa. My dad is from Nigeria and my mom is from Liberia. I received my Bachelor’s degree in theatre arts performance from Marymount Manhattan. I describe myself as a spontaneous, vocal performer, who uses her body as a way to show what’s going on inside. Performing is my way of being a voice for the unheard, and that is why I fell in love with After The Wall.”
Colette Ambo is a performing artist from the Commonwealth of Dominica. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in multimedia and performing arts from Lehman College, and proud to be a part of this important project.
Michelangelo Del Rosario is an actor from the South Bronx with a plethora of interest and aspirations within the artistic community. Recent shows include Bandroom and Macbeth. He is grateful to be working with NY Artists Unlimited on taking this much-needed awareness to the world and hopes audiences will leave with a positive message they can share with everyone.
Francis J. Roach (Choreographer) is a protégé of jazz legend Luigi; he has choreographed in every aspect of show business. For more than 35 years, he has taught dance and is now artistic director of Luigi’s Jazz Centre in NYC. Francis also teaches Luigi technique throughout the U.S. and in other countries. He has choreographed numerous productions for NY Artists Unlimited and is excited to be working on After the Wall.
Lindsay Shields (Multimedia Designer) serves as co-chapter director of New York Thespians and teaches drama at Flushing High School in Queens. She has been involved with social justice and theatrical projects in the U.S., India, Thailand, and Cambodia. She holds degrees in theatre from Brevard College, NYU, and Southern Oregon University, as well as a certificate in Intercultural Communication from Macquarie University. Follow her on Twitter @ActingPolitical
Frances Eldred (Costumer) has been with the company for 20 years as both actress and costumer. She has designed for many of the company’s productions and is excited to be working on the current project, which she feels is the most important to date.
Victor Vauban Junior (Stage Manager/Performer) is a former circus performer from Brazil in an eternal romance with the world of the arts. He’s a playwright who once in a while explores the stage as an actor, dancer, and director, as a way to share his passion with the world.

John Kelly Sideways into the Shadows
2018-02-28 - 2018-03-25 | NY
An Exhibition in Conjunction with Kelly’s Performance Time No Line at La MaMa
Opening Reception: February 28, 6–8 PM
Howl! Happening is pleased to present a rare look into the heart and art of a consummate creator: John Kelly’s Sideways into the Shadows. Resonating and in conversation with Kelly’s major new performance work Time No Line at La MaMa (February 22–March 11, 2018), Sideways into the Shadows is a journey through Kelly’s creative life that exposes both the unfolding of his artistic process and the generational rupture and emotional cost of the AIDS pandemic.
The exhibition consists of intimate and revealing journal entries, rendered by hand on various sized panels, and a memorial wall of lovingly-drawn portraits of friends and loved ones Kelly lost to AIDS. “Beginning in 1982, my friends and colleagues were dying,” says Kelly. “AIDS has framed my story to an unavoidable degree. Their absence remains part of my work.”
The 70 hand-rendered transcriptions of dated journal entries are drawings on paper, mounted on panels installed as a horizontal timeline. Alternating raw and honest, funny, provocative, and deeply felt, the drawings illuminate his artistic trajectory and reveal the intertwined worlds of clubs, drag, gender, sex, and Kelly’s own creative and personal process of navigating incomprehensible loss. Filled with ideas, sketches, poems, and plans for performances, the pages—going back to 1976—are also full of humor, gossip, observation, and cultural commentary as he witnessed the world around him transform.
The memorial wall of portraits is comprised of 40 graphite drawings on paper mounted on panels—renderings of gifted individuals that were part of Kelly’s life and creative circles—including such cultural luminaries as Sam Wagstaff, Hugh Steers, Peter Hujar, Cookie Mueller, Charles Ludlam, and Ethyl Eichelberger, as well as other individuals whose legacies have received less attention. The impulse behind these portraits stems from Kelly’s habit (as a survivor of the AIDS epidemic) of pondering a scenario where his generation had not been lost to the epidemic, a world in which they would be flourishing and in their prime. As a balm to this tantalizing but painful fantasy, Kelly pays tribute to the men, women, and trans folk who held crucial and supportive roles in his life and work as it unfolded over the past 36 years.
Together with the performances at La MaMa, this exhibition displays one artist’s personal journey—his choices, doubts, creative processes, and triumphs—making art that consciously tells stories, witnesses, and demonstrates a unique activism and commitment in the face of absolute catastrophe.
As Kelly explains, “From this vantage point, it was a challenging time. It’s still hard to get my head around it. This exhibition and Time No Line are my way to process the entire range of how my personal experiences and the arc of my artistic career intertwined into a coherent whole during a time that was both exhilarating and tragic.”
Leaving behind his early focus as a dancer, Kelly attended the Parsons School of Design in the 70s, eventually immersing himself in the thriving Downtown and East Village scene, including his debut at the Anvil in 1979 and subsequent creative development in clubs such as Club 57, the Pyramid, 8BC, and Danceteria. He has had an extensive career as a performance and visual artist, musician, and poet. His visual art has been exhibited at Alexander Gray Associates, New York; The Arts Center at Governors Island, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Kitchen, New York; MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the New Museum, New York, among other venues.
The Museum of Modern Art acquired two filmed versions of Kelly’s early performance works, created in collaboration with filmmaker Anthony Chase, in 2017.
Residencies include The American Academy in Rome, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Bard College, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, MASS MoCA, Park Avenue Armory, Yaddo, Civitella Ranieri, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.
ABOUT JOHN KELLY

The Full Moon Show: The Worm Moon curated by Rani O'Brien
2018-03-01 16:00 - 16:30 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
A Tom Murrin/Alien Comic Invention
The goddess Luna Macaroona is back for the Worm Moon, the first of two full moons in March. For the occasion, she’s conjured up the spirit of the 1900s by inviting a modern-day vaudevillian hip hop show, Rebirth of Rabbit’s Foot, to bring us into a new and brighter 2018.
Rebirth of Rabbit’s Foot uses old-time song and dance numbers, music, stand-up, hip hop, and dance to examine our presumptions about performance style, city living, and race. The show joyfully allows the audience to settle in for a ride that gets you dancing, laughing, and thinking.
Curated by Rani O’Brien.
Created by Jordon Waters. With Austin Bower, Devon Lumar, Melany Smith, Stephen Straub, and Chris Trinidade.

About Tom Murrin and the Full Moon Show
Howl! Happening houses the archives of Tom Murrin. Murrin, aka the Alien Comic, is known as the Godfather of Performance Art. Every full moon, Tom performed the Full Moon Show in honor of his moon goddess, Luna Macaroona. When he had a club date that fell on the full moon, he’d wrangle his friends to perform as his guests—pushing the careers of such groundbreaking performers as David Cale, David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris, Blue Man Group, Ethyl Eichelberger, Lisa Kron and many others. If not, he performed on the street for passersby, transforming the pedestrian atmosphere with his madness and magic. Howl! Happening’s monthly series continues that tradition, with performances in the gallery and surprise pop up performances on the street.
About The Tom Murrin Archive
Howl! Happening is the repository of the Tom Murrin Archive comprising masks, costumes, scripts, correspondence, photographs, and tapes of performances going back to the early 70s. Murrin (February 8, 1939 – March 12, 2012) also known as The Alien Comic and Jack Bump, was a performance pioneer whose life and work inspired both artists and audiences for over 40 years. He was a member of the first generation of La MaMa playwrights. Tom wrote four plays performed through La MaMa and produced by John Vacarro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, including the offbeat hit, Cock Strong, which toured with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Troupe to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.
Under the guidance of rock manager Jane Friedman, Tom began to perform under the name Alien Comic, opening for acclaimed punk bands in rock clubs such as CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City. As Alien Comic he performed in such venues as The Pyramid, 8BC, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, and more. Since the mid 80s, he’s created, performed, and curated a series of variety nights at Performance Space 122, and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and Dixon Place, called The Full Moon Show. His plays Sport-Fuckers and Butt-Crack Bingo were produced at Theater for the New City and La MaMa and directed by David Levine. Tom was the first performance artist to appear on stage at the original Dixon Place location at 37 East First Street in 1986.
Photo copyright Eric McNatt 2016

Fame is a Disease: An Exhibition of Arturo Vega's Work
2018-03-07 - 2018-03-12 | NY
New Work by Brett De Palma and Scooter LaForge Especially Commissioned for the Show
FEDERAL COURT OFFICERS STRIKE AGAINST 149 “HIPPIE” DRUG ADDICTS OF BOTH SEXES 53 Deposited at Court; Those Freed Were Encouraged to Take the Path of Righteousness— Headline from El National, February 13, 1971
The headline above from the Mexico City newspaper chronicles an infamous moment of violence against artists, intellectuals, and homosexuals by the authoritarian regime under Mexico’s “perfect dictatorship.” A stranger who came to town to escape this repression, Mexican-born artist Arturo Vega (October 13, 1947–June 8, 2013) made his way to New York City to study English, philosophy, and photography at the New School for Social Research in the early 70s.
While working on his first painting series in New York, he met and befriended members of the Ramones, who would soon play their first gig and become leaders of the punk movement. Widely known for his work with the band (he was referred to as the “fifth Ramone”), he would go on to design their ubiquitous logo, based on the Great Seal of the United States, that has virtually defined the transgressive punk rock aesthetic and become one of the most enduring symbols of that era.
And while the popularity and commercialism of the Ramone’s logo has overshadowed Vega’s origins as an artist in the social and political struggles of the late 60s and early 70s, Vega was always a prolific painter and printmaker who drew inspiration from widely disparate sources—creating artworks that co-opted and questioned symbols of power. Exploring his broader impact and contextualizing his work as a visual artist, Fame Is a Disease features paintings from Vega’s series Insults and Empire, as well as other iconic work reflecting his sense of humor, acutely attuned ear for language, and outsider’s eye on American social history, propaganda, consumerism, and popular culture.
In numerous group shows since the 70s, Vega’s work has recently been the subject of one-person exhibitions at CBGBs 313 Gallery, New York City (1992); Raleigh Studios, Miami Beach (curated by Sandra Schulman in 1994); Galería OMR, México, D.F. (2011); Casa Redonda, Chihuahua (2012); and at Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project, beginning in 2015 and continuing into the present. He was the subject of a major retrospective at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Florida in 2016.
Howl! Happening also houses The Arturo Vega Archive. Exploring this hidden artistic treasure trove, Fame Is a Disease also features newly commissioned work by Howl! Happening artists Brett De Palma and Scooter LaForge, riffing on the themes and message of Vega’s work in their own inimitable style.

Art is everywhere but there is never enough Art. Art has stopped being a chronologically correct string of schools and isms and is being born all the time, everywhere; Art connects to the eternal demanding fast changes and a reckless appetite for truth, justice and a better way of life. —Arturo Vega
Spring Break Art Show
March 7–12, 2018 / Preview Day: March 6th
4 Times Square, NYC (Chashama) / Entrance at 144 West 43rd Street
Daily Hours: 11am – 6pm

Robert Heide 25 Plays
2018-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A Staged Reading and Book Signing
25 Plays from Fast Books capture his singular, existentialist ‘60s disposition. The plays often dramatize the (sometimes irreconcilable) struggle between individuality and the unbreakable continuity of time and existence. —Ben Shields, The Brooklyn Rail, 2017
Howl! Happening is pleased to present an evening celebrating the work of Robert Heide. The event features Heide’s American Hamburger, directed by Ralph Lewis of Peculiar Works Project, and a presentation by the author. Heide is a seminal playwright in the Off-Off-Broadway coffee-house theatre movement. His plays have been produced in New York’s Greenwich Village at the famed Caffe Cino, and in the East Village by Ellen Stewart at La MaMa, and Crystal Field and George Bartenieff at Theater for the New City. Irene Fornés and Julie Bovasso’s New York Theater Strategy at Westbeth and Lynne Meadow’s Manhattan Theatre Club have also presented his plays, as well as many other venues.
His early studies began in the theatre department at Northwestern University. In New York, he studied for two years with Stella Adler, who then sent him to apprentice with John Houseman at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, CT; he studied as well with Uta Hagen and with director Harold Clurman.
His mentor and close friend Edward Albee invited him to become a member of the Albee-Barr-Wilder Playwrights Unit. In the 1960s, he acted in Andy Warhol’s films Camp and Batman Dracula, both with Jack Smith. Warhol filmed Heide’s Caffe Cino play The Bed as a split-screen movie which premiered at Jonas Mekas’ Filmmakers’ Cinematheque. As a member of the Playwrights/Directors Unit at the Actors Studio, he attended sessions conducted by Estelle Parsons, Ellyn Burstyn, and Horton Foote.
Click here for to the complete Brooklyn Rail article “Entering the Lightbulb with Robert Heide”,which traces his artistic trajectory.
About Robert Heide

Duncan Hannah Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies
2018-03-15 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Publication Party
…the author’s enthusiasm for la vie bohème and general disdain for the square world at times reads like a cross between a glam-rock Kerouac and a stoned Holden Caulfield (in the best possible way). —Kirkus Reviews
Howl! Happening is pleased to present an evening with Duncan Hannah and friends to celebrate the publication of Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies (Knopf, 3/13/18), by celebrated painter Duncan Hannah. The book is a rollicking and vividly immediate account of his life in 1970s New York—a lost (and increasingly mystical) world of freedom, squalor, and artistic achievement.
Hannah arrived in New York City from Minneapolis in the early 1970s as an art student hungry for experience, game for almost anything, and with a prodigious taste for drugs, girls, alcohol, movies, rock and roll, books, parties, and everything else the city had to offer. Throughout the decade he kept lively, shockingly well-written journals chronicling his experiences, which now jump off the page with a brilliant and expressive immediacy. A louche, sometimes lurid, and incredibly entertaining report, his notebooks are full of outrageously bad behavior, naked ambition, gender-bending celebrities, fantastically good music and evaporating barriers of taste and decorum. Hannah crosses paths with Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol, and dozens of other night clubbers of lesser fame. But at the book’s center is a young man in the mix and on the make, determined to forge an identity for himself as an artist while being at risk from his own heedless appetites.
Told with a painter’s eye for detail and a raconteur’s gift for storytelling, Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies is a time capsule from a scary, seedy, but irresistible time and place.
PRAISE for TWENTIETH-CENTURY BOY
“Duncan Hannah’s Twentieth Century Boy is an unfiltered portrait of the artist as a young horndog, blessed or cursed with Bowie-like androgyny, and half the time ‘hopped up on Pernod and amphetamines.’ Amazingly—in these diaries from an extended adolescence—the prose is hopped up, too, and as disorienting as the intense downtown streets of New York City in the 70s they so accurately sketch. That these pages were written by a raw boy painter and not an eminence grise master of the art of memoir is key to their magic and mystery. A Pillow Book from a decade when no one ever slept.”
— Brad Gooch, author of Smash Cut and Flannery
“Artist Duncan Hannah came to New York at 17, ambitious, angelic, straight and–according to his hugely entertaining diary–priapic. Despite being stoned or hungover more often than not, he found time to grow as an artist and record his adventures in absorbing detail, including memorable encounters with Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Ned Rorem.”
—John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
“In early ‘70s downtown NYC, Duncan Hannah was one of the wild boys, precocious and impossibly gorgeous…These diaries, hidden away for ages, are like the Dead Sea Scrolls of a mythological Lower Manhattan underground, where the New York Dolls glitter-rock brigade made way for the CBGB revolution of Patti Smith and Television. With gobs of Warholian gossip and passionate listings of all the most radical records, books and films of the day, Twentieth Century Boy immerses the reader in a history of beauty from the Nouvelle vague to meetings with David Hockney. As the writing progresses from rat-a-tat teen beat to more adult considerations, we glean Duncan’s romance and eventual providence: to be cool is not the point, being an artist in love with the universe is.”
—Thurston Moore, co-founder of Sonic Youth
“A dandy, a flaneur, a rock ‘n’ roll wastrel wandering Candide-like through the dangerous undercurrents of the 1970s: if Duncan Hannah didn’t exist, you’d have to invent him”
—Jon Savage, author of England’s Dreaming and 1966
“When you come to New York City a wide-eyed artist only to discover you’re the cutest and most talented tyke in town, you meet lots of people—David Bowie, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed to name just a few—and interesting capers ensue. In Twentieth-Century Boy these adventures are recounted in prose that is eloquent and funny, written by a teen wise beyond his years. Duncan Hannah’s journals bring back the adolescence that most of us wish we had.”
— Gillian McCain, co-author of Please Kill Me
