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Event
33 & 1/3 Cornelia Street
Our friends Kathleen Chalfant, Drama Desk and Obie Award winning actor, and Bob Holman, poet and founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, will do the very first reading of a new play, 33 & 1/3 CORNELIA STREET, by another friend, acclaimed playwright Alvin Eng. The play portrays the life and times of two legendary New Yorkers, Joe Gould and Alice Neel. Gould was a proto-Beat poet, immortalized in Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker profile for writing "the longest book ever-written" -- or did he? Holman brings his performance poet chops to the role of Gould, while Kathleen plays his friend, Alice Neel, the iconic downtown painter, who once painted Joe with three penises. (You decide!) A discussion of the new work and a reception will follow.
In a 2001 essay, City Lore executive director Steve Zeitlin wrote, "Gould, in fact, was using the term "oral history" a decade before it was officially coined by Alan Nevins at Columbia University . . . Gould wrote of collecting 'bushwa, gab, palaver, hogwash, flapdoodle, and malarkey' we would call it urban folklore . . . But even the dozens of folklorists, cultural specialists and journalists currently working collectively to document the City's traditions and culture could never match Joe Gould's legendary and seemingly nonexistent oral history."
With such a kindred tie to Gould, playwright Eng is overjoyed to launch 33 & 1/3 CORNELIA STREET with a reading that will support the new City Lore Gallery. This is the second work of Eng's "Portrait Plays" cycle of historical dramas about artists and portraiture. The first, THREE TREES, about Alberto Giacometti and Isaku Yanaihara, had a well-received 2013 Off-Broadway production with Pan Asian Repertory Theatre at the West End Theatre.
The City Lore Gallery is a 28 year-old dream finally realized on April 3rd, 2014 with the opening of our inaugural exhibition: Moving Murals: Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper's All-City Graffiti Archive, which will be on view at the reading. Founded in 1986, City Lore's mission is to foster New York City and America's living cultural heritage through education and public programs. We document, present, and advocate for New York City's grassroots cultures to ensure their living legacy in stories and histories, places and traditions.
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LocationCity Lore Gallery Space (View)
56 E 1st Street
New York, NY 10003
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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