A butt-kicking, heart-breaking, raucous Vaudevillian Cabaret!
From the Bengsons
Show Description: Abigail Nessen Bengson & Shaun McClain Bengson's Ain’t That Good News is a raucous vaudevillian cabaret, full of roaring music and impassioned characters. The Bengson duo evoke the quintessentially American stories of the immigrant and the outcast and play at the heart of the political struggles of our age through a melding of the musical forms of Tin Pan Alley, the Old South, German Weimar and rock and roll. The show is constantly evolving. As the Bengsons travel, they trade songs and drinks for new stories from the personal to the divine, and shift the work to reflect where they've been, and each new community they're in. Directed by David Eppel.
Most Fringy Thing: This funny, sexy, and moving musical adventure follows a young couple as they travel around the world, with stories of the folks they've met from the townships of South Africa to the dumps of Tijuana.
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Artist/Company Bio: The Bengsons are the best in vaudevillian indie folk and rising stars in the NYC experimental music and theater community. They have performed their original shows, performances pieces and original musicals, Ain't That Good News and The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels, across the country and around the world. They have appeared to acclaim at such venues as Culture Project’s Women Center Stage (NYC), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), terraNOVA Collective’s soloNOVA Arts Festival at The Daryl Roth Theater (NYC), La MaMa E.T.C. (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), BRIClab (Brooklyn, NY), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Town Hall Theater (Middlebury, VT), The Thacher School (Ojai, CA), the Tijuana Christian Orphanage (Tijuana, Mexico) and the Market Theater (Johannesburg, South Africa). The Bengsons are also activists and teachers, who have taught students in NYC's public schools and Cambodian immigrants in Massachusetts, as well as internationally, including at the Market Theater Lab of Johannesburg, ZA, the Tijuana Christian Orphanage of Tijuana, Mexico, and ASAPROSA, in Santa Ana, El Salvador.
Hails from: Middlebury, VT / Brooklyn, NY
60 Second Preview:
Praise for the Bengsons:
"Not only a tremendous musical talent, but also a raw honesty and sincere righteousness." THE NEW YORK TIMES "Inspired... worthy of Bob Fosse's Cabaret work, as funny as it is horrifying." EDGE Entertainment
“Friendly, fresh-faced and downright enchanting... audiences are bound to sit up and take notice.” Addison Independent
“Beautiful and artful.” NYTheater.com “A rare and compelling talent.” Rachel Chanoff, Artistic Director of Celebrate Brooklyn and MASS MoCA “Tremendous vocals and a range of stunning and diverse musical stylings... Would bring tears to even Charles Manson's eyes.” Brandon Lucy Campos, My Feet Only Walk Forward
Half-full, half-empty, who cares? Is the water yours or theirs?
From Digital Nada
Show Description:TV on pedestal, projection screen behind. Documentary on Cincinnati’s water interrupted live in person by...
Who exactly? Madman? Priest? Blake-spouting, butoh-dancing, country-western balladeer or just another gray-suited P&G boy wrapped in a wisteria wreath?
“Mommy,” he asks, “what ever happened to the largest stained-glass rose window west of the Alleghenies? Who killed King John, Mommy? And why is Fountain Square so 3CDC ugly? Mommy, when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? Restraint chairs in jail and cancers in the street? Gee whiz, mommy, ain’t enclosures neat?”
“What?” you say.
"Half-full, half-empty, who cares? Is the water yours or theirs?"
For the first time in thirty odd years together, acclaimed documentarist Barbara Wolf (“Degrees of Shame”) and CEA Hall of Famer Michael Burnham (Corpus Christi) set out to make a duet of their solos. Turns out they couldn’t even begin without their friend Demi Tsasis.
Come see.
The Most Fringy Thing: A collage -- spoken, danced, recited, sung – gets heaved at a well-meaning water documentary the way you might throw coke at a horror movie if too excited. Eat? Drink? Breathe? Care about the rent we pay to live in us? Come be entertained. Fringy? Its blade is sheathed in lace.
Artist/Company Bio: Digital Nada is what happens when documentarist Barbara Wolf and collaborator Demi Tsasis join theatre worker Michael Burnham to make a truly portable piece. Barbara makes narrowcast organizing videos – “Degrees of Shame” and others – designed to give public voice to groups and issues concerned with what she thinks is Justice. She believes there’s no such thing as objective reporting and does her best to re-tilt tilted scales. Michael makes plays – Corpus Christi and others – that he thinks need to be spoken aloud in his town. Demi’s work is driven by emotional influence and meaning. Ms Wolf is happy that as she gets older the video equipment gets lighter. Mr Burnham is happy that as he gets older he can still carry himself. Ms Tsasis isn’t old, yet is sometimes happy.
