Ao Lan Guo, Brendan Schwartz, Guillermo Contreras, John Titus, Maria Müller & Rosalie Neal
PERFORMANCES – LIVE STREAMING ON ZOOM
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.
In 1934, Sammy Fuchs opened a saloon at 267 Bowery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Surrounded by flophouses and missions, Sammy’s Bowery Follies catered mainly to the homeless, the penniless, and the generally down and out.
That changed somewhat in the early ‘40s after a surprising customer passed through: a monocle-wearing gentleman who turned out to be a British lord tired of the fussy formality of the uptown clubs.
Sensing a new market, Sammy acquired a cabaret license, built a stage, hired some aging vaudevillians, and began advertising his bar as the “Stork Club of the Bowery,” a nod to the famed nightclub uptown.
The plan worked. Fancy folks, tourists and celebrities began seeking out Sammy’s, looking for a chance to loosen their ties and slum it a little bit in the Gay Nineties-themed dive. It was not uncommon to find a socialite in an opera gown wedged between a sailor on shore leave and a passed-out drunk.
Sammy recognized the importance of atmosphere, and served free food and drinks to some of his more colorful regulars (characters with names such as Prune Juice Jenny, Box Car Gussie and Tugboat Ethel, the “Queen of the Bowery”) to preserve the ambience.
The notable photographer Weegee made Sammy’s one of his regular shooting grounds and even held his book launch parties there.
By the end of World War II, Sammy’s was serving some 100,000 customers a year, as literal busloads of tourists were dropped off outside, eager to drink and sing along with hobos, dwarves and assorted misfits.
Sammy Fuchs died in 1969. A year later, the bar finally closed. The closing ceremony was attended by over 700 loyal patrons.
While I was there absorbing the atmosphere and drinks, a midget walked in… he was about three and a half feet. I invited him for a drink. He told me that he just arrived from Los Angeles, where he had been working for a Browns & Williams Tobacco Co’, walking the streets dressed as a penguin.
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.”
Thom Wall is here to tell you what it is and HOW to do it!
JUGGLING – WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO DO IT! by Thom Wall
“I realized that there was no resource that taught contemporary juggling techniques,” Wall says.
“The books that were already available focused on “this old style of juggling performance or juggling training, where you just throw the throw, it does this and then it just works,” he says. “Whereas juggling pedagogy in the past 30 years has completely changed.”
One of the funniest, if not the funniest comedic actor of all time being interviewed on network TV by Gene Shalitin 1980. So much fun watching him change accents and talk about his career.
He is best remembered for his role of inept French police Inspector ‘Jacques Clouseau’ in the “Pink Panther” series of films (1964 to 1982). The last of that series, “Trail of the Pink Panther” (1982) was made after his death, using film clips and unseen footage from his earlier “Pink Panther” movies. Born Richard Henry Sellers in Southsea, Hampshire, England, his parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. During World War II, he enlisted in the British Army, where he met future actors Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Michael Bentine. Following the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music and impressions (he played the drums), which led to his doing impressions on BBC television’s “The Goon Show.” Moving rapidly into a series of British comedy films during the mid-1950s, he quickly caught widespread audience appeal, and each successful role led to more and better films. Following British comic tradition of doing multiple roles in the same play, he was adept at performing multiple roles in his movies, including his hilarious “The Mouse that Roared” (1959) (playing three different parts), the black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), (playing an pragmatic RAF officer, a wimpy United States President and a weird German scientist), and “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1979) (playing the roles of Rudolf IV, Rudolf V, and Syd Frewin). In 1959, he won the British equivalent of an Oscar for his role of ‘Fred Kite’, a labor leader in “I’m All Right, Now,” (1959), and in 1979 he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role of ‘Chance Gardiner’ in his film, “Being There” (1979). He was married four times, to Ann Howe (1951 to 1961), to actress Britt Ekland (1964 to 1968), to Miranda Quarry (1970 to 1974), and to actress Lynn Frederick (1977 to his death in 1980).
Some wonderful videos here for those that enjoy ‘sideshows’ & ‘carnivals’.
An excerpt from History Channel’s Weird US series focusing on the American’s sideshow. Featuring a wonderful interview with Ward Hall. From 2007.
A walkthrough of the Gibsonton, Florida sideshow town museum. Originally broadcast on Travel Channel.
A Carnival Museum! | The International Independent Showman’s Museum | Riverview, FL– Shot by ‘ViewfromTheCheapSeats‘.
From the wilds of Coney Island, some history here in a few videos to whet your appetite for sideshow!
Coney Island Sideshow and Amusement Park – New York City History 1940
Shot in 2009 but this amazing Sideshow Venue – Coney Island USA – is still very wonderful – (once the Covid-19 issue is over the ‘Sideshow by the Seashore‘ will resume!
Philippe Petit – WTC highwire walk – 46th Anniversary – August 7th, 1974
On one of our visits to the top, it was so windy I couldn’t believe Philippe wanted to go up there. We climbed the 110 flights and when we arrived on the top floor (below the roof) the wind was so strong that debris was flying all over and coming into the entrance we needed to use for access to the roof. We finally climbed the wooden ladder that led us to the roof (still unfinished concrete) and Philippe walked cautiously across to the other side of the roof. I remained near the entrance with camera in hand. A huge wind came and blew Philippe off his feet but he was able to hold onto one of the concrete columns and prevent from being blown away like a leaf in the wind. I was petrified! I had never seen Philippe walk on a wire before I agreed to help him with this crazy caper. The rest is history and with the help of Jean Louis Blondeau (pulling an attaching the cable from one tower to the other successfully!), Philippe was able to fulfill his dream of walking on a wire (1″ thick) between the North and South towers of the not yet completed World Trade Center.
One of the scariest and mind-boggling things we did was to rent a helicopter service to fly over the top of the towers. I hung out the side window and took this photograph. We flew up the Hudson River and had spectacular views of the city and the towers. These photographs were used by Philippe later to plan the actual ‘day of’ strategy.
