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

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 (America/New_York) | 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

Actors Fund Affordable Housing Workshop
2018-03-20 14:00 - 16:00, 2018-04-24 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
2018-03-20 16:00 - 18:00, 2018-04-24 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)!

East-West: Celebrating 50 Years of Beyond Baroque
2018-03-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
WINTER WEATER: THE GALLERY IS CLOSED TODAY DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER AND TONIGHT’S EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED FOR LATER THIS SPRING. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.
Hosted by Puma Perl
Happy Birthday, Beyond Baroque! Join Howl! Happening in celebrating a half-century of art and poetry with a gathering of East-West performers paying tribute to the rich mix of literary tradition, commitment to emerging artists, and community-building that Beyond Baroque represents. Founded as a magazine by poet George Drury Smith in the waning days of the Beats, Beyond Baroque is one of the nation’s most influential grassroots incubators of the literary arts, contributing to the early development of Tom Waits, Wanda Coleman, the artist Mike Kelley, the seminal punk band X, actor Viggo Mortensen, and many others. Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Raymond Carver, and Patti Smith are some of the literary luminaries who have passed through.
Beyond Baroque enjoys a distinguished history of reaching out to diverse groups in and out of Los Angeles and offers a fascinating variety of literary and arts programming, including readings by poets and touring authors, free writing workshops, art exhibits, and youth education. So many of us have experienced their warm welcome on the West Coast, and we are honored to return the hospitality. We look forward to another 50 years of cutting edge poetry, literature, and art. Richard Modiano, Jon Hess, Amber Tamblyn, Bob Holman, C. Bain, Mahogany L. Browne, and David Tomas Martinez bring their brilliance and dedication to the party
C. Bain is a gender-liminal writer-performer. His full-length poetry collection, Debridement, was a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle Awards. He currently works to create beautiful, interdisciplinary, intersectional performance texts via Tiresias Projekt. tiresiasprojekt.com
Mahogany L. Browne, a Cave Canem, Poets House, and Serenbe Focus alum, is the author of several books, including the recently published illustrated book Black Girl Magic (Roaring Brook Press). She is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. She’s also artistic director at Urban Word NYC and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country.
Jon Hess has been a creative force as a director, producer, and writer for nearly two decades. Jon teaches directing and producing workshops as director-in-residence at Emerson College Los Angeles Center. He also leads screenwriting seminars and workshops and has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University.
Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, recorded his Mouth Almighty album In With the Out Crowd at Beyond Baroque, celebrated his 60th birthday there 10 years ago, and generally considers it his bicoastal bohío (that means “hut” in Nuyorican). He taught at Princeton last semester and is just back from the International Kolkata Book Fair in India. bobholman.com
David Tomas Martinez is the author of Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Columbia University. davidtomasmartinez.com
Richard Modiano is executive director of the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center and has been a member of the Industrial Workers of the World since 1974: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Puma Perl is a widely-published poet and writer, and has four solo collections in print. She is the producer and creator of Puma Perl’s Pandemonium, which brings spoken word together with rock and roll, and she performs regularly with her band Puma Perl and Friends. She also writes for The Villager.
Amber Tamblyn is an author, actress, and director who has been nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. She is the author of three books of poetry, including the critically-acclaimed best seller Dark Sparkler (Harper Perennial). Tamblyn is currently working on her fourth collection of poems and a debut novel due out on Harper Perennial in 2018.

John Kelly The Dying Game
2018-03-22 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Film sequences by Anthony Chase for live performance works by John Kelly 1984–1993
Video works by John Kelly 2000–2014
The heightened realities of life and death have consistently informed John Kelly’s performance works. Beginning his career in the clubs of New York’s East Village, this proclivity for the grand gesture and epic consequence was exhibited in short performances such as The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1981), Orpheus and Eurydice (1981), Death of Marat (1984), Narcissus (1983), Death In Dallas (1983, about the Kennedy assassination), St. George Killed the Dragon (1985), and The Forces of Destiny (1983).
As his career developed, he continued to create more complex works based on similar themes. These gestures were also informed by the loss of a lover in 1982 to the AIDS epidemic. Loss and struggle affected the community in which he worked, informing Kelly’s choice of subject matter while addressing issues of life and death both directly and metaphorically.
Kelly’s early collaborations with filmmaker Anthony Chase resulted in a significant body of work, creating film sequences as 8mm and 16mm projections for his live performance works. Most of these have not been seen publicly since their premiere. Also included in the program are recent video works by Kelly.
Film sequences by Anthony Chase for live performance works by John Kelly 1984-1992
PASS THE BLUTWURST, BITTE (1984) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘The Death of Egon Schiele’, 2:30 B&W Super 8mm film
DIARY OF A SOMNAMBULIST (1985) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘Party’ and ‘Transformation Scene’, 5:30 B&W Super 8mm film
GO WEST JUNGER MANN (1984) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘East German Graffiti Artist Dreams of Rapunzel’ and ‘The Dying Swan’, 3:30 B&W Super 8mm film
FIND MY WAY HOME (1988) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘Do Not Kill Yourself’, 1:50 B&W Super 8mm film
LOVE OF A POET (1990) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘Dream’ and ‘Dirt’, 5:00 B&W Super 8mm film
MAYBE IT’S COLD OUTSIDE (1991) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘Visit to the Doctor’, 2:38 B&W Super 8mm film with hand coloring
DIVINE PROMISCUE (1992) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘Mona Lisa Visits the Graveyard’, 2:00 B&W Super 8mm film
LIGHT SHALL LIFT THEM (1993) Anthony Chase and John Kelly
‘The Audition of Vander Barbette’, 7:00 16mm B&W
Video works by John Kelly 2000–2014
BROTHER (2000) John Kelly
‘This Solid Ground—T Cells’, 3:05 color video with analog animation
MUSE ASCENDING A STAIRCASE (2012) John Kelly
‘The Dying Swan Boy’, 5:30, HD video, color and sound
‘I’m Lost to the World’, 5:02 HD video, color
THE ESCAPE ARTIST (2014) John Kelly
‘You Only Live Twice’, 4:00 HD video, color
Image: Film still from Diary of a Somnambulist (1986). L-R: George M. Carter, Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!), Philly Abe, George Carstens, Hapi Phace

Tight 5
2018-03-23 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A Comedy Series hosted by Greer Dworman
Featuring
Amelia Bande
xtian w
Liz Charky
José Rivera Jr.
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.

Photo: Catherine Galasso

Writers Block 2018
2018-03-29 | 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

Downtown Music Productions La création du mondeand Mahagonny Songplay
2018-03-29 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Part of Howl!’s annual Writers Block staged reading and performance festival
For Tickets to Downtown Music Productions
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
Howl! Happening is pleased to present an evening with the Downtown Chamber & Opera Players as part of Writers Block, a festival of staged readings and performances to benefit the Actors Fund. The festival is a benefit for the Howl! Emergency Life Project (Howl! HELP), which provides 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.
Get your tickets here.
Kurt Weill was born on March 2, 1900 in Dessau, Germany. He was the son of the Jewish cantor of a local synagogue. The Mahagonny Songspiel marked the beginning of Weill’s collaboration with Brecht, whom he met in 1927 and whose poetry stirred him deeply. Lotte Lenya has described her husband Weill’s feelings of wanting to bridge the wide gap between composers and the great public. With Brecht, he searched for new ways of accomplishing this goal. Challenging attitudes with fresh approaches, the repertory stirred a great deal of controversy. His other collaborations with Brecht include The Threepenny Opera, which enjoyed an overwhelming popularity in the United States when it was presented to theatre audiences after Weill had emigrated.
Mahagonny was intended by Weill and Brecht to represent a mythical place—for Germans, it was usually a place in America. It was a sort of utopia of the petite bourgeoisie—a world where hedonistic pleasures coupled with society’s growing political turmoil led to eventual chaos and total ruin. The Mahagonny Songspiel premiered in July 1927 in Baden Baden, last on a program of operas by Toch, Milhaud, and Hindermith. Part of the audience was enthusiastic; others were both shocked and disgusted by the piece. Brecht prepared the cast for the worst. Whistling in Germany is the most severe type of disapproval, and so Brecht supplied all his cast members with whistles of their own, so they could whistle right back—which they did!
By the early 30s, political tensions in Germany had come to a full boil. Nazi demonstrations and general protests grew to great proportions, particularly over Weill’s musical play Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake). Further performances were canceled. Both Weill and Lotte Lenya were advised to leave. They ran away to France where they stayed a short time before leaving Europe forever and coming to the United States. There, Weill continued composing and wrote for the Broadway stage with other librettists until his death in 1950. His music in the United States was less acerbic than in Germany. He was capable of great stylistic diversity; his genius was that he adjusted musical lines, rhythms, and harmonies to the specific needs of every dramatic piece he created.
The Downtown Chamber Players in Mahagonny Songspiel include Justin Vance and Steve Lyon on clarinets, Stephen Fillare on violin, Robbie Harvey on alto saxophone, Clyde Daley and Terry Szor on trumpets, Ron Hay on trombone, Peter J. Saleh on percussion, and Elizabeth Rodgers on piano, with Mimi Stern-Wolfe conducting.
The piece is sung by four men who intend to travel to Mahagonny—a place where things are supposed to be ideally beautiful—and two women who are disillusioned with the Old World and keep searching for material happiness. Life in Mahagonny is described—we see characters drinking; playing cards; whoring; seeking dollars, boys and whiskey; getting bored. God, one of the four men, is threatened after he orders them to Hell. But they say they are already there. Protest marches are staged; the city goes up in flames. The moral of the tale is quietly spoken in the finale by Bessie. The characters have demonstrated their excesses and limitations.
CAST
Charlie: Charles Calotta, tenor
Billy: Justin Michael Austin, baritone
Bobby: Jorell Williams, baritone
Jim, God: Charles D. Carter, bass
Jessie: Karla Simmons, soprano
Bessie: Darcy Dunn, mezzo-soprano
STAFF
Musical Direction: Mimi Stern-Wolfe
Stage Direction: Katrin Hilbe
Projection Design: Klay James-Enos
Costume design: Cathy Small
Lighting Design: Carter Edwards

The PABST BLUE Full Moon Show with Aru Hanger
2018-03-31 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

We all know we live in a world that values branding. Individuals, corporations, the social networks are abuzz with commodification. Aru Hanger is interested in how history progresses in a material driven culture.

Outside, on the sidewalk in front of Howl! Happening, he’ll disrupt the public consciousness of the assembled crowd and passersby with a performance that takes the branding of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer as its central focus and radiates out to reflect on how we view and interact with history as a concept.

Scored rather than “scripted”, the performer is hopeful that he’ll provoke interaction and that the assembled crowd will join in. We love a performer who uses beer as metaphor!

About Tom Murrin and the Full Moon Show
Every Month on The Full Moon, The Full Moon Show is held at Howl Happening: An Arturo Vega Project at 4pm Sharp
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.

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

Gallery Closed
2018-04-01 | NY

Philly Abe This Side of Heaven
2018-04-04 - 2018-05-06 | NY
Opening Reception: Wednesday April 4 / 6–8 PM / Free
. . . a hybrid practice that has consistently harnessed both punk irreverence and graffiti transgression to channel demons. . . into the exquisite, glowing collages. —Jenifer P Borum, Raw Vision magazine
Artist and performer Philly Abe (July 8, 1949–January 30, 2018) was a vortex of energy and core member of the Howl! Happening Tribe. Whether performing on the street outside the gallery in the impromptu and wacky Full Moon Show, cheering on her friends at events and exhibitions, or just being her own chaotic, colorful self, Philly/Kondor8 was a visionary who never stopped creating and reinventing herself through her performances, collages, and paintings. This Side of Heaven pays tribute to her work and life, as we mourn her passing with a memorial exhibition.
Philly was born in 1949 and grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She attended Penn State and received a degree in educational communications. Always a rebel rouser, she was involved with some anarchist groups in the late 60s, and in the 70s she moved to Toronto with her then-husband who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. There she became involved with documentary radio, studied dance with Lindsay Kemp, and opened a punk store before heading West to more adventures. She made her way to San Francisco, where she met Mike and George Kuchar, with whom she would later make several films. Eventually, in 1983, she moved to the Lower East Side, which was to be her home until her untimely death.
Once in New York, Philly was fully engaged in the nightlife and cultural scene. She performed at the Pyramid, Area, Limbo Lounge, 8BC, Danceteria, and did what it took to get by in the no holds barred atmosphere of creativity and community that reigned before the era of gentrification. It’s reputed that early on she even “slept on the stage of ABC No Rio.”
In January of this year, she was the recipient of an Acker Award, a tribute to the avant-garde arts community who praised her work and life “in defiance of convention.” Her bio from their program outlines her creative trajectory: She was part of 7 Days of Creation at ABC No Rio in 1983, and the New Leonard Beach Hotel Project of artist-decorated rooms in Miami Beach in 1989, both exhibitions curated by Allied Productions. She was the star of many films by director Todd Verow and his muse for more than two decades. Notable Verow films starring Philly include Once and Future Queen, The Trouble of Perpetual Deja-Vu, and most recently This Side of Heaven (2016). She starred in Agent of Paradise by Mary Bellis and was involved in screenings at Naked Eye Cinema. Her film credits also include appearances in the films of Jack Waters, Carl George, and Mike Kuchar.
In the 90s Philly fronted the punk band Eager Meat, which recorded the album America is a Theme Park. In 2004, she co-founded the noize/art collective Infinity SS (Saint Stanton) with Stanton Street artist friends Carlucci ‘The Magician’ Bencivenga, Steve Ellis, James Curtright, Chris Morrow, Craig Klein, Kosuke Aoki, Mayuka Nobuta, and Dave Vulcan. They collaborated on art and their noize band performed at The Knitting Factory, Arlene’s Grocery, and CBGBs.
For the Acker Awards, she described her work as “old style thrown against the wall of now—spray paint noize markers collage—with one foot in the Stone Age and the other in string theory.” Her work was featured on the cover of Raw Vision issue #66 in 2009, and in exhibitions with Christina Varga in Woodstock, New York, and Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chelsea.

Catalyst Quartet - CQ@Howl!
2018-04-05 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A Performance Series by the Catalyst Quartet
Turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life, Strum sounded like a handful of American folk melodies tossed into a strong wind, cascading and tumbling joyfully around one another.
—Jessie Montgomery album review, The Washington Post
Howl! Happening is pleased to continue the ongoing performance series by the Catalyst Quartet—CQ@Howl! This evening CQ presents a number of meditative pieces that offer the listener an opportunity to reflect and look inward during these tumultuous times. Seeking to inspire a sense of common understanding and desire for peace, the quartet will perform works that are contemplative and emotionally charged, including Philip Glass 3rd String Quartet, the Barber Adagio and Credo by Kevin Puts. The program will also include short readings by playwright, scholar and teacher Robbie McCauley. The series brings to life the reciprocal connection and common mission between Howl! Happening and the Catalyst Quartet to explore the intersections of art, music, performance, social justice, immigrants, equality, and community activism. In the intimate space of the gallery, the quartet will perform highlights from their current concert season, special sneak peek presentations, and collaborative works in process. The members of the quartet are Jessie Montgomery and Karla Donehew Perez, violins; Paul Laraia, viola; and Karlos Rodriguez, cello.
Each happening in the series will offer an opportunity to experience CQ and the inner workings of a string quartet through performance, conversation, and direct engagement with the artists. This season’s highlights include contemporary and 20th century works from their Hemispheres programs, music of North and South America, works in process from their spoken word project, and much more. Future performances in the series to be announced!
About The Catalyst Quartet
About Jessie Montgomery

Petrarch in Love: Poetry Reading with Penny Arcade, Anthony Haden-Guest, Nemo Librizzi, and Ilka Scobie Video Projections by Luigi Cazzaniga
2018-04-06 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Friday, April 6, 2018 / 7 PM / Free
Petrarch in Love
Poetry Reading with Penny Arcade, Anthony Haden-Guest, Nemo Librizzi, and Ilka Scobie
Video Projections by Luigi Cazzaniga
Join Penny Arcade, Anthony Haden-Guest, Nemo Librizzi, and Ilka Scobie in an eclectic poetry reading of their work to celebrate Spring and honor the April 6, 1327 meeting of Italian poet Petrarch and his beloved muse Laura.
Petrarch composed 366 poems based on his unrequited love for Laura, whom he saw only once on a Good Friday, when she was illumed by the light shining through the window of the cathedral where he served as a cleric. The poet’s free and romantic spirit remains a lyrical inspiration and informs this evening’s readings. Considered one of the fathers of humanism, Petrarch traveled widely for pleasure and is known as “the first tourist.” Video projections by Luigi Cazzaniga begin and end the event.
Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura occupies a rare position in America’s avant-garde, contributing to the creation of new art forms every decade of her 50-year career. She is an internationally-respected poet, essayist, performance artist, actress, and experimental theater maker. With her longtime collaborator of 26 years, Steve Zehentner, she co-helms The Lower East Side Biography Project: Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia, an oral history video documentary project that has broadcast and cybercast weekly since 1999 every Monday at 11 PM via Facebook at @LowerEastSideBiographyProject
Luigi Cazzaniga, born in Milan, Italy, has lived and worked in New York for 30 years. His recent work has been exhibited in the Bronx No Commission; Greenwich Art Center, CT; Caravaggio Art Festival, Italy; and Shankill Arts, Ireland. His 2017 interview with Oliver Stone was broadcast in Italy on RAI 3. His projections have been shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Biennale di Soncino, and the Bowery Poetry Club.
Anthony Haden-Guest is a British writer, reporter, cartoonist, curator, and performer. He was born in Paris, grew up in London, and has long lived in New York. His books include True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World; The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night; and two books of cartoons and rhymes, The Chronicles of Now: The Way We Live Now and In The Mean Time: The Other Ends of the World.
Nemo Librizzi was born in New York City in 1970. Radio DJ, filmmaker, and painter, he has recently published two books: a memoir in Facebook post format titled “book”, and Benjamin’s Silver Cup, a fictional novella.
Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker, a poet who writes about contemporary art for Artlyst (London), The Brooklyn Rail and Whitehot. She has co-curated international art shows in Soncino, Italy with her husband, photographer Luigi Cazzaniga. A teaching poet, she has worked in city public schools for many years.

The Cutouts: Keith Patchel and The Venus Orbit with Poet Bob Holman
2018-04-12 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Thursday, April 12, 2018 / 7 PM Free
A Performance
Howl! Happening is pleased to present a very special evening with Keith Patchel, The Venus Orbit, and poet Bob Holman. The Venus Orbit is a multimedia instrumental ensemble founded by award-winning NYC-based film composer Patchel. The performance at Howl! Happening will be the debut of Patchel’s The Cutouts (Matisse), a new music song cycle using the poetry of Bob Holman—who will be performing—and based on Henri Matisse’s cut paper works, along with abbreviated versions of Modern Music with Electronica and other Patchel compositions. Featured performers include Sayaka Aiba, musicians Clara Francesca and Cantata Fan, with projections by Alexis Kandra.
The Cutouts (Matisse) is Bob Holman’s third chapbook with PeKa Boo Press, located in Woods Hole, MA. The series is edited by poet Eric Edwards and features cover and frontispiece art by Rebecca Edwards. The 50 miniatures in the book are ekphrastics—art inspired by other art—in this case the eponymous work with scissors and colored paper that occupied Matisse for the last 14 years of his life.
Bound by a wheelchair due to polio, he created bold, striking, imagistic, brilliantly-colored shapes that were first collected in a project called Jazz. “You see as I am obliged to remain often in bed because of the state of my health, I have made a little garden all around me where I can walk…. There are leaves, fruits, a bird,” he wrote. Matisse generally cut the shapes out freehand, using a small pair of scissors and saving both the cut-out sheets and remaining scraps of paper.
Holman’s poems take Matisse’s freestyle handling of paper and sets it free to dance and form poems of tenderness and whimsicality—reminiscent of nursery rhymes, love songs, and fragments of jazz, orchestral, rock, and folk stylings. Keith Patchel’s music moves from echoes of Messiaen and Satie to contemporary classical and rock. The resulting work is a wash of intricacy and color that conjures the sea, the sky—and the paper they are made of. Like Matisse’s cut paper works, Holman and Patchel’s songspiel is a vibrant, playful bite of astonishment. “Time for lunch, Henri/So eat your breakfast/Blue apple/Green coffee/Yellow fingers.”
Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project
6 East First Street (Between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
917 475 1294
contact@howlarts.org
Gallery Hours: Wed–Sun, 11 AM–6 PM

Todd Verow This Side of Heaven
2018-04-13 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Film Screening
As part of the tribute to Philly Abe’s life and work, Howl! is pleased to present a screening of This Side Of Heaven, a film by Todd Verow. Philly’s roommate, dear friend, and artist collaborator, Verow describes the impetus for the movie:
We decided to make This Side of Heaven when our landlord was doing everything he could to try to get us evicted. Our way of coping with the harassment and absurdity of it all was to make a movie. It was cathartic and exhausting. Every day when we were shooting, we would wake up and I would spend an hour doing Philly’s makeup and hair. We would go over the scenes while I did this, and she would get into her character. When we were done for the day, we would both just collapse on the floor, exhausted physically and emotionally. It was the last movie we finished together.
In This Side of Heaven, V (Philly Abe), an older trans woman, is desperately trying to hold on to her rent-stabilized apartment in New York City. She has endured many tragedies involving former lovers, friends,
and acquaintances over the 26 years she has lived in her rat-, roach-, and junkie-infested building. She has survived corrupt landlord after corrupt landlord, but her struggles have left her agoraphobic and reclusive. As V tries to maintain her sanity, she is visited by her friend and mentor Lili (Brandon Olson), who consoles her and tries to get her to work on a new cabaret show. However, V knows those days are over; she is no longer interested in performing.
Meanwhile, V’s property manager, Shawnith (Jayne Nicoletti) continues her nefarious efforts to evict her or get her to move out. In retaliation, Alexxx (Penny Arcade), V’s upstairs neighbor, tries to get her to be more active in the political fight against gentrification, but V resigns to stay put.
Her only connection to the outside world comes through interactions with various delivery boys who bring groceries and necessities. Most of them take advantage of V or rob her, but one of them, Christian (Justin Rodriguez), becomes her friend. He eventually agrees to move in with her, but just as things seem to be turning around for V, Shawnith resorts to violent means to get her out of the building once and for all.
Also screened will be One Last Scene, new short film Verow made with Philly before her death.

Eszter Balint & Stew I Hate Memory
2018-04-19 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A musical journey through the winsome past of Eszter Balint
Thursday, April 19, 2018 / 7 PM / Free
Friday, May 18, 2018 / 7 PM / Free
Friday, June 22, 2018 / 7 PM / Free
Howl! Happening is pleased to present an evening of songs and stories called I Hate Memory! A wistful travelogue of the winsome past of EB, which brings together two legendary downtown creators, Eszter Balint (The Star) and Stew (The Director). Featuring an anti-cabaret which co-stars the Streets of New York and the Late 20th Century, and which features appearances by family, film and fame, immigration, joy, theater and shame, dance floors, open doors, avant-garde life, papaya ice cream and the Shah of Iran’s wife. A reluctant memoir served on bed of song and dirt, with a punk aperitif and Jimmy Carter for dessert.
Eszter sings and plays guitar and violin, while Stew does the quieter singing and plays guitar, with Vincent Sperrazza on drums and Kato Hideki on bass.
I hate memory
I hate memory
I hate memory
Memory’s a predator
Eszter Balint is a singer-songwriter with three critically-acclaimed solo albums. She grew up as a member of the legendary avant-garde theater company Squat Theatre. She’s had featured roles in films by Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, and Steve Buscemi—including a role alongside David Bowie—and has recently starred in a six-episode arc in Season 4 of Louis CK’s TV show Louie. Jon Pareles of The New York Times has said of her work: “Miss Balint has her own film noir sensibility as a songwriter. She slips inside her characters to project their restlessness and longing.”
Singer-songwriter Stew is a founding member of the band The Negro Problem, and a Tony and Obie award-winning playwright and composer (Passing Strange).

Pat Irwin Music for Electric Guitar and Piano
2018-04-20 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Pat Irwin has been living and working in New York City since the late 70s. He was a founding member of 8-Eyed Spy (with Lydia Lunch), and the Raybeats. As a longtime member of The B-52s, he performed with the band from 1989–2008. His new band is called The PI Power Trio.
Pat has written music for film and television, including the HBO series Bored to Death and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. He is currently composing the score for the new Netflix series The Good Cop. His composer credits include music for hundreds of cartoons, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Rocko’s Modern Life, Pepper Ann, and Class of 3000.
Music for Electric Guitar and Piano will feature new compositions, as well as several pieces composed for film and television.
About Pat Irwin

Once & Future Queen A film by Todd Verow starring Philly Abe
2018-04-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
An entertainingly appalling, cheerfully nihilistic portrait…comically bodacious actress Philly may remind viewers of the Divine of the early John Waters films, but her performance here is tougher. —THE TENNESSEAN
Howl! Happening is pleased to present Todd Verow’s award-winning film Once & Future Queen starring Philly Abe. The screening is part of the events celebrating her life and memorial exhibition This Side of Heaven.
Anti-Matter (Philly) is the queen of nothing, the ruler of nowhere, the monarch of cyphers—in other words, she’s too cool for you—but can you put her up for the night? Drifting through the Lower East Side like the death rattle echoes of rock and roll, she’s on a desperate, desolate mission to get her band together and finally conquer something…anything. Her manic manipulations and chaotic philosophies never seem to gel in the present—she’s either a step behind or two steps ahead. Her therapist (Brenda Velez) can’t help her. Anti-Matter just wants to get drunk with her A.A. buddy (Eric Sapp).
Old friends (Jennifer Blowdryer, Kid Congo Powers) don’t want anything to do with her. New “friends” (Lee Whittier, Tia Sprocket) simply don’t know what to do with her. Bored with the dangling fly striptease of fame that has eluded her whole life, she’s nevertheless only alive onstage—dreaming of a place where no one will unplug that amp, threaten her life, or shove her out the door in the morning. Of course, her rampant drug and alcohol use and frequent homelessness don’t help—plus she isn’t getting any younger and has been married more times than Liz Taylor. As her connections to reality slip away in the haze of her traveling sideshow lifestyle, the inferno of celebrity and self-destruction seductively beckon.
You may leave this latest Todd Verow feature feeling vaguely unclean, but if you haven’t been entertained, it won’t be for the lack of effort of Verow and New York scene queen Philly. If you’re not glued to your seat as Anti-Matter drinks, f**** and pill-pops her way across the Lower East Side, you’ll be running for the door. —LA WEEKLY
Todd Verow’s Once & Future Queen is a woman destined to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, somehow turning that into a fashion statement. If you’ve ever felt used and abused, underappreciated, scraped off the sidewalk, or simply horny, Anti-Matter has some advice for you. She’s been there, done that, and doesn’t give a shit. Or so she says.
What the press is saying:
…DV filmmaking icon Todd Verow’s Once & Future Queen stars Philly as a down-and-out rocker seeking fame and friendship. The film’s episodic structure and dense sound design, as well as Verow’s visual acumen, make this one of his strongest films to date. —RES MAGAZINE
Whether she’s draining the booze from an alcoholic friend’s pad (“to remove all temptation for you”) or sullenly raiding the refrigerator of one of her three ex-husbands (“he’s just pissed because I pulled a knife on him”), Anti-Matter is the pitch-perfect intersection of where narcissism crosses arrested ability. —THE DALLAS OBSERVER
…Vivid and unpredictable…a fascinating bundle of contradictions. —THE CHICAGO READER
About PHILLY ABE
Philly Abe (1949-2018) was a multifaceted artist living in NYC. Her acting credits include many films with the Kuchar Brothers (George and Mike Kuchar) and Todd Verow. She was an intuitive performer. While working on a CBC radio documentary on Lindsay Kemp, she was offered a scholarship with the troop and never looked back. Ritual and trance are an important part of her work, in an unending chain from political street theater in the 60s to underground film. Her mercurial androgynous performances have gained her a cult following around the world.
About TODD VEROW
Todd Verow was born in Bangor, Maine, on November 11, 1966. He started acting and directing plays as a child, and making movies while attending Rhode Island School of Design. He made short experimental films and worked as a cinematographer before making his feature film debut with Frisk, which had its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in the Forum 20 years ago. Starting his own production company Bangor Films, Todd has directed over 20 features and numerous shorts, establishing himself as the most prolific auteur emeritus of the New Queer Cinema. He is fiercely independent, and chooses to finance, write, produce, direct, photograph, and edit his own movies.

Michael Lally's Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017
2018-04-25 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Book Launch
Howl! Happening is pleased to celebrate the publication of Michael Lally’s “Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017, the definitive collection of verse from a poet who bridges the rhythms and message of the Beats, the disarming frankness of the New York School, and the fierce temerity of activist authors throughout the ages.
The event will feature a short reading by Michael Lally and a few words from Eileen Myles, who wrote the introduction to the book. Published by Seven Stories Press.
A former jazz musician, Hollywood actor, and radical organizer, New Jersey-born Michael Lally has worn many hats over the course of his life. But throughout it all, he has written accessible, deeply-felt poetry. Themes of identity, love, success, and failure pervade through his body of work, but always with wry humor and the simple grace that is the mark of deep thought. Lally is the recipient of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. He is the author of 30 books of poetry and prose, including Stupid Rabbits (1971), White Life (1980), It’s Not Nostalgia (1999), and Swing Theory (2015).
Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, performer, and art journalist. Their 20 books include Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 reissue of Cool for You and I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, four Lambda Literary Awards, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing. Currently, they teach at NYU and Naropa University and live in Marfa, TX and New York.
Photo: Gus Van Sant, edited by Stewart Cauley.

We Remember Philly
2018-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
In our own madcap way, Howl! Happening salutes Philly Abe in a series of candid film clips, remembrances, and performances. In the clips by Elizabeth Nichols, Philly expounds on lipstick, landlords, laughter and more while close friends like Hapi Phace, Miss Joan Marie Moossy, Hattie Hathaway, Salley May, Todd Verow, Steve Ellis and others take off from these moving images to spotlight an aspect of her over the top personality and big heart. The evening begins with a ritual by Gail Thacker invoking her irrepressible spirit.
image: Todd Verow

Disconnected Touch A Full Moon Show
2018-04-29 16:00 - 16:30 | Howl! Happening, 6 East 1st Street, New York City, NY, 10003, United States
A Full Moon Show Hosted by Rani O’Brien
The Full Moon Show: A Tom Murrin/Alien Comic Invention
Missed Connections
I was sitting on the BDFM train heading down to the East Village toward my favorite coffee spot, Blue Bottle, when I saw you delicately bolstering your chiffon scarf (which matched the natural rouge of your cheeks). You sat next to me, crossing your legs, sporting the hip displacement of Fosse himself. You wore a velvet blazer with a button that read “East Village Evictee: I Made Noise!” with a City Lore book bag featuring a painting of the Can Man. We caught eyes, awkwardly over our shoulders. You glanced down at my Patagonia vest—your eyes rocketed to my REI backpack, then to my Lulus—as if to tell me I was emblematic of everything you stood against. I was the problem. Only then did you give me the deepest look I have ever been graced with. Our thighs touched. For a moment I thought our entire beings would too. An alert popped up on my phone—it was a live pic of my friend’s baby dancing naked at Coachella. I laughed. When I looked back to you, you flew off the subway car faster than I could ask for your Instagram handle. Yet, you looked back with that soul piercing gaze.
Don’t miss the connection: Join Rani O’Brien and Jazmine Corneille, Sophia Gutchinov and Dana Stern on the sidewalk outside Howl! Happening, so we can slide into each other’s Direct Messages.
Disconnected Touch
Directed by Rani O’Brien
Devised by and featuring Jazmine Cornielle, Sophia Gutchinov, and Dana Stern
Additional sound by Matthew Sells
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. Starting in the mid 80s, 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 onstage 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

Cream-Pie-In-The-Phace Full Moon
2018-04-29 19:18 - 20:00 | NY
Hosted by Hapi Phace in Praise of Philly
When the moon hits your eye like a banana cream pie it’s…
The Full Moon Show: A Tom Murrin/Alien Comic Invention
Starting at 7.18 Sharp
Calling all dimensions! Join Hapi Phace for a moonrise non-linear performance pie-in-the-face ritual inspired by the memory of Philly Abe—his longtime art and life collaborator and neo-shamanistic a-go-go dance partner—to celebrate the Cream-Pie-In-The-Phace Full Moon, in conjunction with the exhibit Philly Abe: This Side of Heaven (April 4–May 6, 2018) at Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.
Hapi Phace is a performance personality and tapR-mâché™—his proprietary “dry papier-mâché” method that employs cardboard and duct tape—sculptor from Queens. (Well, actually, he is from normal parents.) Hapi and Philly co-wrote and performed together—and in—each other’s pieces, primarily during the 80s downtown nightclub scene. Later, Hapi ventured into Way-Off-Broadway theater, while Philly wove through multiple creative circles, most prolifically with experimental and independent filmmakers, especially The Kuchar brothers—George and Mike—and Todd Verow.
Philly Abe (1949-2018) was an iconic downtown personality, artist, tenants’ rights activist, and decades-long Ridge Street neighbor of Tom Murrin, the originator and omphalos of The Full Moon Show. Like Tom, Philly’s artistic energies and output found outlet in the discarded and unnoticed. Both artists imagined rags, remnants, and refuse into an art form that spanned a universe from the slapstick to the shamanistic.
Dress Code: spontaneously-combustible color combinations; fairy wings, demon horns and petroglyphic face paint; Tibetan skull anything; fun-fur ass-less leotards; black turtleneck sweater, skull-and-crossbones-print ski pants, and a Breton top; 80s 14th Street off-the-rack rubber chickens; non-binary mismatched socks and roadkill; come-as-you-are and leave-as-you-weren’t; rhinestones, bustier, and cat-eyed glasses.
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.
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

Full Moon Show
2018-05-01 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)

The Poetry Project: The Inaugural Allen Ginsberg Symposium
2018-05-03 - 2018-05-05 | Poetry Project, 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY, United States
The Poetry Project, Howl! Arts, and the Allen Ginsberg Estate are proud to announce the inaugural Allen Ginsberg Symposium.
From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, The Poetry Project held an annual symposium that featured readings, talks, panels and workshops. This spring, the Project is thrilled to reinvent this three-day event and expand its mission to provide a forum and network for our literary community. Allen Ginsberg saw the Project as a place where people could articulate their relationship to the most important national and global problems of the time, and believed that the planet needed imagination and the avant-garde spirit of poetry to survive.
“After the thrill of the 50th Anniversary celebration last year and another energetic New Year’s Day Marathon, The Poetry Project looks forward to making the symposium an annual opportunity to bring poets together at the church,” says executive director Stacy Szymaszek.
Featuring readings, panel presentations, and workshops by Anselm Berrigan, Ken Chen, Samuel R. Delany, Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves, Erica Hunt, Rin Johnson, Filip Marinovich, Sharon Mesmer, Lara Mimosa Montes, Alice Notley, Julie Ezelle Patton, Trace Peterson, Ed Sanders, sam sax, Patricia Spears Jones, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker.
All events take place at St. Mark’s Church. Readings and panel are free. Workshops are sliding scale $20–$50. Space is limited in the workshops and pre-registration is required; please visit The Poetry Project website to register.
The Poetry Project, Ltd.
St. Mark’s Church | 131 E. 10th Street
New York, NY 10003
P: 212.674.0910 | F: 212.529.2318
www.poetryproject.org | info@poetryproject.org

Verbolia Historika Phylissima Eternia
2018-05-06 17:00 - 20:00 | NY
A Public Potlatch of Philly Memories
As Philly Abe’s memorial exhibition This Side of Heaven draws to a close at Howl! Happening, the public is invited to bring and share a treasured Philly story, and to take a new one home. The evening ends with Philly’s last wish: her wonderful collection of trinkets and oddities will be distributed in the gallery as mementos to her friends and admirers.
Mingling, gossiping, merry making 5–7 PM
Hot mike at 7 PM
