Three Rooms Press & RWM Playwrights Lab in conjunction with the New York Howl Festival presentWOMEN OF THE BEAT GENERATION: An Evening of Beatnik Theater & Poetry featuring a staged reading of “MEMO FROM ALLEN GINSBERG”
a play by Larry Myers directed by Kat Georges
Saturday, September 5, 2009, 7 p.m. at Saval Auditorium
101 Murray Street between Greenwich and West
NEW YORK—“Memo from Allen Ginsburg,” a new play by award-winning off Broadway playwright Larry Myers, makes its Manhattan debut in a staged reading directed by Kat Georges at Saval Auditorium in Tribeca on Saturday, September 5 at 7 p.m. The play highlights an evening of Beatnik Theater & Poetry and is a featured event of the New York Howl Festival. Admission is free.
The focus of the evening will be on Women of the Beat Generation, who, Myers contends, “were not just an echo of Ginsberg’s Howl, not just the ‘muses’ they’ve been labeled but original, dynamic voices that are only now receiving notice for their large body of creative work.” Discussions by Beat scholars and poetry will follow the play.
Myers’ “Memo from Allen Ginsberg” features characters representing some of the leading Beat figures including Ginsberg, Carl Solomon, Harold Norse and Neal Cassady. But these “boys” meet their match in the form of a bevy of unheralded Beat women. The play focuses on mental illness as a real social issue & the belief that women were the bedrock of the All Boys Beat Club: inspired & inventive yet denied full expression during that timeframe.
Featured actors in the play include Janice Bishop, Peter Carlaftes, John Derrick, Leo Dority, Ken Eckert, Tom Fenaughty, Kat Georges, Matthew Hupert, Ronnie Norpel, Lillian Rodriguez, Richard Wilt. Poets include Beat scholar George Wallace and Thomas Fucaloro.
Dr. Myers—an award-winning Off-Broadway playwright and Associate Professor at St. John’s University—continues his efforts to bring New York theater professionals and established literary figures to the Manhattan St. John’s campus to provide a forum in which students can interact with working pros. Myers directs The Jack Kerouac Literary Group. His various Kerouac plays have been produced in New York, New Jersey & in Lowell (Kerouac’s hometown). The critically acclaimed “Jack Kerouac: Catholic” was directed by Kat Georges at Saval last season.
Saval Auditorium is at 101 Murray St. (between Greenwich and West St. in Manhattan) inside St. John’s University. Doors open at 6:45, the show begins at 7. Take the #1 train to Chambers Street, walk down two blocks, over two. Email threeroomspress@mac.com for info and reservations.
