A visit to the eccentric sideshow at Coney Island USA was a great trip. Now the show is OPEN again to the public and the performances are every Fri. through Sun. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jelly Boy the Clown backstage after his show.
Jelly Boy the Clown is currently writing his autobiography. Look out for it next year at your local bookstore.
Connecting up with friends from out of town is always fun. A week ago Geoff was in town from Austin and we met up in Prospect Park. Here is the interview I conducted with this young energetic magician/sideshow performer and internet ‘twitch’ show host.
The wonders of the internet! I am always amazed at the simple things in life and how technology has enabled us to talk and record conversations and interviews with people all over the world. Today I was talking to and did a great interview with clown/teacher/author Joe Dieffenbacher who resides in Oxford, UK. His professional work as a clown spans over 3 decades and he has taught at some very prestigious schools as well. His new book “Clown ~ The Physical Comedian” is a great textbook for working on a clown show.
Available from Amazon, Bloomsbury, and Bookshop.org.
Here is one of Joe’s wonderful videos with his students performing.
I absolutely adore laughter. I love feeling it, sharing it, hearing it, and provoking it. It’s my passion, which is why I’ve spent so much time with clowns, clowning, teaching others to clown, and writing about my art. I know that there’s so much more to this ancient and heart-warming art, but it’s still the joy of laughter that motivates and inspires me.
You can discover more about Caroline HERE!
Coney Island USA presented a wonderful evening of discussion and interviews. Hosted by Adam Realman and featuring photographer/publisher Jim R Moore and writer/producer/performer Trav SD. The discussion topic was the new book from Vaudevisuals Press ~ “Rose’s Royal Midgets and Other Little People of Vaudeville.”
For more information and/or to purchase the book “Rose’s Royal Midgets and Other Little People of Vaudeville” click here.
So many other great events happening at Coney Island USA!
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Ao Lan Guo, Brendan Schwartz, Guillermo Contreras, John Titus, Maria Müller & Rosalie Neal
October 29, 8pm EDT
October 30, 10pm EDT
October 31, 10pm EDT
*Please note that the showtimes are in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
Runtime: 75 minutes, with talkback to follow* If you require live captioning for the show, please email whereareyou.theatre@gmail.com at least three days before the scheduled performance.
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Join Jim Turner & Ellie Covan for a mutual birthday Raising Cain wrap party, with surprise guest Deb Margolin, special edition Bingo, and the raffle stops here!
UPCOMING OTHER EVENTS ~ RAISING CAIN
Sun, Oct 25 at 1, 2, & 3PM (EDT) | Live Outdoors
Take a walking tour with Peculiar Works Project through the Lower East Side streets & experience real live theater, music, dance & more!
Mon, Oct 26 at 7:30PM (EDT) | Virtual Live
Doyens Richard Bach & Michael Howett shepherd a virtual Donor Dinner! Cook along with them or simply simmer in their brassy banter & scandalous stories!
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Karen McCarty and I have known each other for quite sometime. When I heard that her grandmother was a ‘midget’ performer with Rose’s Royal Midgets I couldn’t believe my ears. I am publishing a book on this unique performing company and with this interview I had first hand information about a company that has been gone for years. A company of 25 midgets that performed World-wide for many years.
Trained as a young girl in dance and singing she was quite an asset to the company once she was employed by Ike Rose.
“Healthy Humor is a Not for Profit Performing Arts Organization whose performers create joy, wonder, and laughter for hospitalized children nationwide.”
For more information on Rose’s Royal Midgets!
Coming in November – Check out this site to preorder the book!
What do you get when you cross a nerd comedian with a nerd-averse Mother who is funny as f*ck? You get Deb Margolin’s JUST GIVE ME ONE-HALF HOUR WITH MY MOTHER, a comedy of mourning and retrospection, with a deep bow to the power of jokes to connect a body in the diaspora to the mother country, or to the Mother herself! In addition to the lamentation and yearning, there are jokes told one after the other! These are ACTUAL JOKES! No one tells straight-up jokes anymore
Written & Performed by Deb Margolin
Directed by Merri Milwe
Technical Director and Technical Designer: Chayton PabichBackstage
Crew and Advisors: Ginny Mayer & Mark Gaudet
Deb Margolin is a playwright, actor, and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of numerous plays, including Imagining Madoff, Turquoise, and Bringing the Fishermen Home, as well as 10 solo performance, plays which she has toured throughout the US, the most recent of which is 8 STOPS, a comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion! 8 STOPS takes a long, humorous, tender look at motherhood, the suburbs, the fear of death, and the inheritability of ideas. Deb was honored with an OBIE award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, the Kesselring Playwright Prize for her play Three Seconds in the Key, the 2008 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award and the Richard H. Broadhead Prize for teaching excellence at Yale University, where she is Associate Professor (adj.) in the undergraduate Theater Studies Program. Commissions include the NY Public Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, PS122, The Jewish Museum of New York, and Dixon Place.
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An assortment of puppeteers perform various scenes from the 358-year-old traditional English puppet show, Punch & Judy (n.b. for adults only)
“Kamikaze” is a term Drama of Works uses for its themed puppet slams, based around one story/event/play. A multitude of puppet artists are given sections of the story to reinterpret and create with wild abandon. Then it is presented in order. No one knows how it will come together until the night of the show.
Puppets Come Home! is a series designed to celebrate Coney Island’s 150-year legacy of puppetry & provide a platform for contemporary cutting-edge puppeteers. Produced in collaboration with Coney Island USA.
Go here for the show on August 13th @8 pm!
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