Pat Addiss: Humble Guru

January 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

I don’t know all the answers. I mean I’m not some Great Guru. I just know what I know. I just know what has transpired in my life. You have to take chances . . . I will expire before I retire.

Reinventing Yourself: An Inspirational Talk Targeted for Women +50: When act one of life finishes, how do you raise the curtain on act two? Discover careers and ideas you never dreamed of.

Pat Addiss, Theater Producer, didn’t start out wanting to be a theatrical producer.  She was busy running the promotion company she founded, but after 30 years, she handed the reins over to her daughter.  Then in 2005, after ‘learning the tools of the trade,’ Pat went on to produce more than 18 Broadway and Off-Broadway productions including: “Spring Awakening,” “Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike” and “Desperate Measures.”  And…she’s never looked back!

We do not have equal rights, Ladies. It’s up to us to stick together and fight for our rights and help each other and help young people coming up. I think that’s so important. ~ Tony Award-Winning Broadway Producer Pat Addiss was interviewed by TV Journalist and Theatre Critic Roma Torre at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts October 2022.

Pat Flicker Addiss is a native New Yorker. She was a child model and actress. Went to Finch College where she majored and graduated in honors in Costume Design and Merchandising. She married the love of her life and hoped to have 6 children, 5 of her own and one adopted. However, it was not the dream of her husband who really did not like children or the confines of married life, so 10 years and 3 children later they separated. He became a dead beat ex and she was forced to make a living for herself and children. After great despair and low self image, she started her own Company Pat Addiss Enterprises which designed and manufactured all items and widgets with Corporate names and logos. An impressive mix of diverse clients ie ChaseBank, Manufacturers Hanover, Reader’s Digest, Nestle, Renault , Kravis Center, Wall Street Journal, Ms Magazine, NBC, Ashford and Simpson. Johnnie Walker. Bacardi.

​With her profits, she was able to educate all of her children in private schools and cater to her passion of travelling the world to over 54 countries. When most people retire, Pat gave her company to her daughter Wendy (who still runs it) so she could start producing Broadway plays. The first was Little Women starring Sutton Foster. She is still at it with her latest new play Jane Anger starring Michael Urie. Is involved in the development of a new musical Carpathia, starting from scratch. In October she is being honored with LPTW Oral History that will be filmed for the archives of Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. With a colleague, Magda Katz, she has initiated a formula to connect women through YaYa lunches, dinners and now the addition of upscale tea. She loves to speak to women over 50 “How to Reinvent Yourself.”

Jane Anger by Talene Monahon starring Michael Urie In “Jane Anger,” a new comedy by Talene Monahon, everyone is fed up with the endless waves of sickness and quarantine. The year is 1606, and we are in England, which is enduring another outbreak of the plague. But for one man, a late-career William Shakespeare, there are graver concerns: writer’s block.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW) is a membership organization championing women in theatre and advocating for increased equity and access for all theatre women. Our programs and initiatives create community, cultivate leadership, and increase opportunities and recognition for women working in theatre. The organization provides support, networking, and collaboration mechanisms for members, and offers professional development and educational opportunities for all theatre women and the general public. LPTW celebrates the historic contributions and contemporary achievements of women in theatre, both nationally and around the globe, and advocates for parity in employment, compensation, and recognition for women theatre practitioners through industry- wide initiatives and public policy proposals.

Any women working in the theatre industry are eligible to join LPTW. For more information on upcoming events and to join LPTW, visit http://www.theatrewomen.org

Addiss, a long-time member of LPTW, has produced more than 20 plays on and off Broadway. Many of these have won or were nominated for a Tony, notably: A Christmas Story; Promises, Promises; Passing Strange;  Little Women; Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life; Bridge and Tunnel; Spring Awakening; 39 Steps; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; and Eclipsed. View her complete Broadway credits here.

​

  • BOARDS:

NJ REP, Vala, Women in the Arts & Media Coalition

​

  • BROADWAY SHOWS

Little Women​

Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life

Bridge & Tunnel

Spring Awakening

Passing Strange

39 Steps

Vanya, Sonia, Masha & Spike

Promises, Promises

Gigi

Love Letters

Eclipsed

War Horse

A Christmas Story

​

And my favorite Off-Broadway show:

Desperate Measures, currently playing around the country.

Make a contribution to Vote Mama today »

Vote Mama is the first PAC in the country dedicated to increasing the political power of Democratic moms.

We believe that our country needs more moms representing our neighborhoods, our communities, and our families because we know that they are dedicated to investing in equitable solutions for future generations to come.

Vote Mama helps progressive moms break barriers to running for office by disrupting the systems that hold women back through providing direct financial support, mentorship, and endorsements.

DONATE NOW to help us elect brave pro-choice Democratic mamas – up and & down the ballot and across the country!

​

​

Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Educational Theater, Episodes, Featured News, First Online with Fran, Interviews, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting, Podcasts, Recent News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Coni Koepfinger & Dan Carter: LIVE FROM THE BARDO: My Dinner With Mary

October 27, 2021 by Leave a Comment

The Greeks believed that theatre was threefold: to entertain, to educate, and exalt the human spirit. And if we’re going to exalt the human spirit we’re gonna have to understand that we can only do that through love. ~Coni Koepfinger

Coni Koepfinger, a 2021 recipient of the Olwen Wymark Award by the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain, is currently playwright-in-residence at both Manhattan Rep and Cosmic Orchid and has worked with several other notable NYC companies such as Theatre for the New City, The Secret Theatre, the New York Unfringed Fest, Broadway Bound Festival and Pan Asian Rep. She has connected hundreds through her virtual programs Airplay and Determined Women. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild, a former board member of the International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP) and a chair for the League Professional Theatre Women (LPTW) and currently sits as Media Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation. As a very prolific indie artist, Coni’s work has been published and produced all over the globe.

Dan Carter served over thirty years as a university theatre administrator at Penn State, Florida State, and Illinois State, also serving as Artistic Director of Pennsylvania Centre Stage, Producing Director of Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and co-founder and Artistic Director of Appalachian Theatre Ensemble. He is Past President of the National Theatre Conference and the National Association of Schools of Theatre and is Immediate Past Dean of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. He served Actors’ Equity Association for four years as Area Liaison from the State of Florida and is a recipient of the Society of American Fight Directors’ Patrick Crean Award. As a long-standing member of the National Theatre Conference, Dan Carter can be seen in the video archive of their Living Legacy Project.

Ever since I was a little girl, I felt that there was more to the story.  That a curtain would lift and, well, something more would be revealed.  My sister swore that I used to go into my bedroom closet and disappear, then show up again several hours later. As I grew up, I continued the practice, but localized my travels in dreams.  It wasn’t until college that my waking life and fantasies began to merge… And thus, my quest became clear- the theatre of the awakened dream. Walking into your dreamlife, can be risky… so I decided to bring my dreams to life.

Writing plays became my way of communicating with all life-  from the ordinary people to the sublime consciousness… all of which seemed to operate on the same plane for me.  It was clear that we are all human life forms that can conform, reform or deform to the energetic stimulus around us-  but when we PERForm- we are able perfect the form, taking it to a higher creative state. I was always surrounded by art. My sister, my cousin, my uncles… Music, painting, drawing was like bread and water. Passion, yes. Madness, yes. But I wanted to know more…  What was   beyond the curtain?  Why is art so important to the human experience? 

It was not until this play, LIVE FROM THE BARDO: MY DINNER WITH MARY, with the help of my brilliant co-author, Dan Carter, that I now have an answer.

The search for the inexplicable and metaphysical began influencing my playwriting in the early 1990s… In the play CANDLEDANCING, about the voice of St. Julian of Norwich, a medieval anchoress, there is a line… “ When you ask God to be your dance partner- the music never stops.” Well that sure makes life simpler but where exactly is God when I am in question? In 2019, I began to explore the concept of the Bardo-  a Tibetan Book of the Dead term that explains the Christian notion of purgatory, the place in between this life and next. It became clear to me that there in the Bardo, existed THE BARDO THEATRE, the place where the scenes of life were crafted by the ascended artists for those still living on Earth. So what does this have to do with Art here and now.  Hmmmm…

LIVE FROM THE BARDO: My Dinner with Mary is a new, provocative show that dares to peek beyond the stage doors of death. In this evolutionary look at life, death, memory, and imagination, two veteran actresses are now mysteriously reunited over the brainchild of creating art from their real lives. Revisiting their separate and disparate memories, they weave a tale worthy of their upcoming appearances in eternity at The Bardo Theatre, just beyond the veil in the Great Hall of the Players Club. As conduits of Divine Destiny, the spirits of legendary actors Joseph Jefferson, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, and Jose Ferrer emerge from their portraits to inspire these actresses as they move into their next incarnations onto a higher stage of existence and offer us a refreshing look at what’s beyond the stars. Written by Coni Koepfinger and Dan Carter, starring Mary Ellen Ashley and Mary Tierney, and directed by Dan Carter, this exciting new play will be presented by Theater for the New City January 13-23, 2022.

In  MY DINNER WITH MARY, two estranged friends, Mary and Mary Ellen, reunite.  We ask why?   I say to Dan, “Maybe Mary is dying?” He says, “Write the scene.”   I do and it starts to work. Then he says, “What if Mary Ellen is already dead?” Perfect! And of course, I imagine her in the Bardo. She’s auditioning for the “role of a lifetime” at The Bardo Theatre. But how does she communicate with these great, eternal artists?  What do they sound like to us?  To the audience. Where is this voice of the great beyond? The play is set in a dream, a fever dream, but dinner begins at THE PLAYERS CLUB. Here we are surrounded by memory of the actors whose portraits don the walls of The Great Hall.  And once again Helen Hayes, Jose Ferrer, Katharine Hepburn, Joseph Jefferson begin to speak beyond the walls of time… As they speak to us through Art.

DONATE TO “MY DINNER WITH MARY” https://theaterforthenewcity.net/donate/

In  MY DINNER WITH MARY, two estranged friends, Mary and Mary Ellen, reunite.  We ask why?   I say to Dan, “Maybe Mary is dying?” He says, “Write the scene.”   I do and it starts to work. Then he says, “What if Mary Ellen is already dead?” Perfect! And of course, I imagine her in the Bardo. She’s auditioning for the “role of a lifetime” at The Bardo Theatre. But how does she communicate with these great, eternal artists?  What do they sound like to us?  To the audience. Where is this voice of the great beyond? The play is set in a dream, a fever dream, but dinner begins at THE PLAYERS CLUB. Here we are surrounded by memory of the actors whose portraits don the walls of The Great Hall.  And once again Helen Hayes, Jose Ferrer, Katharine Hepburn, Joseph Jefferson begin to speak beyond the walls of time… As they speak to us through Art.

FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/theaterforthenewcity/videos/676985693261876
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158862481639425&set=a.10151202450204425

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159635787121092&set=pcb.10159635878786092

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUYSrQAlYJd/

Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Featured News, First Online with Fran, Interviews, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Joan Kane & Gary Morgenstein: Taking a Bite of a Sweet Divide

January 21, 2021 by Leave a Comment

I believe we’re broken. Everybody is broken in some way. Everybody has a story to tell. There are cracks in us…Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken objects by highlighting their cracks with golden powder. . . the original object is even more beautiful than before it was broken…America is going to be even more beautiful; we’re looking at our brokenness. And I really believe with my heart and soul that we’re going to be even more beautiful after this. ~Joan Kane

GARY MORGENSTEIN’S
A BLACK AND WHITE COOKIE
 IS A NEW OFF-BROADWAY COMEDY/DRAMA
ABOUT AN AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSTAND OWNER ENCOURAGED TO FIGHT HIS EXORBITANT RENT INCREASE BY AN ECCENTRIC JEWISH RADICAL  

DIRECTED BY JOAN KANE, THE PRODUCTION NOW PREMIERES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21 AT 7:00PM/ET AS PART OF TFTNC’s ON THE AIR SERIES
&  SUNDAY, JANUARY 24 AT 3PM/ET ON THE EGO ACTUS WEBSITE

Incorporating the pandemic experiences of the past eight months into their production that Covid-19 brought to a halt in March, the award-winning Ego Actus Theatre Company will still present Gary Morgenstein’s new drama A Black and White Cookie, but in an updated version that is set against the backdrop of New York City reopening, post-pandemic. The play’s schedule has been updated. The premiere will air as part of Theater for the New City’s virtual On The Air series. It is now slated for Thursday, January 21 at 7:00PM/ET, with an additional performance on Sunday, January 24 at 3PM/ET.
 
Directed by Joan Kane, A Black and White Cookie was originally scheduled to premiere at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Theater for the New City on March 26, 2020. There are plans to stage the show at TFTNC when in-person performances are again allowed in New York City. 

The cast features Morry Schorr (Modern Family/ABC-TV), Roslyn Seale (The Color Purple/National Tour), Julie T. Pham (The OA/Netflix), Chris Collins-Pisano (Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation/Off Broadway) and Mansoor Najee-ullah (Mulebone, G.R. Point, The Mighty Gents/Broadway).

Harold Wilson, a gruff, conservative African American senior, has finally reopened his East Village newsstand following the coronavirus lockdown. Then an exorbitant rent increase forces him to close after 30 years and reluctantly retire to Florida with his niece. Enter Albie Sands, an eccentric 1960s Jewish radical, who persuades Harold to fight the landlord. Overcoming their many differences, Harold and Albie form a powerful and unlikely friendship to confront corporate greed – and prejudice. 

Said Gary Morgenstein: “For this new production, it was important to update A Black and White Cookie by layering in the terrifying burden of the pandemic to portray a city struggling to come into the light. While the play reflects hard truths about fear, disease and bigotry, it’s ultimately positive and uplifting. What the world needs now more than ever is love and understanding, and faith in ourselves, and each other. If these two stubborn old guys can come together, so can all of us. You just gotta believe.”

Gary Morgenstein’s (playwright) novels and plays have been featured in national media from the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Parade Magazine, the New York Post, Sports Illustrated to NPR. His sixth novel A Fastball for Freedom, the sequel to his critically-acclaimed dystopian baseball-science fiction A Mound Over Hell (“1984 Meets Shoeless Joe”), will be published by BHC Press on March 25, 2021. In addition to A Black and White Cookie, he is the author of the stage dramas Saving Stan and A Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx, and the off-Broadway sci-fi rock musical The Anthem.  Morgenstein is developing the scripted television series Joyland, set during the tumultuous 1960s, with veteran network executive Russell Friedman and the award-winning Broadway performer and director DeMone Seraphin, who will direct the pilot episode on Zoom in early 2021.
 
Joan Kane (director) is the founding Artistic Director of Ego Actus and directed I Know What Boys Want at Theatre Row, Six Characters in Search of an Author in Oslo, Norway and Kafka’s Belinda in Prague. She also directed both Safe and what do you mean at 59e59 Theaters and in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, getting four star reviews for each. Kane was awarded Best Director in the 2016 United Solo Festival was named to the Indie Theatre Hall of Fame by nytheatre.com. She has also directed plays and readings for the Lark, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the NY Fringe Festival, Theater for the New City, Urban Stages, Workshop Theater, Nylon Fusion, Abingdon Theatre, Oberon Theatre, the Samuel French Short Play Festival, the Midtown International Festival and The Actors Studio. Joan has an MFA in Directing from The New School, an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. She is a member of The New York Madness Company, the Dramatists Guild and the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers. Kane recently directed two plays during the Ego Actus Survival is Insufficient 10-play reading series.
 

KINTSUGI is the Japanese art of repairing broken objects by highlighting their cracks with golden powder.  Often undertaken as a form of art therapy to encourage resilience, the art of kintsugi follows a slow and painstaking process that requires patience and concentration. Day after day, week after week, step after step, the object is cleaned, gathered, cared for, mended and celebrated.  The object becomes even more beautiful then it was before it was broken. Its about accepting and celebrating our brokenness.

ABOUT EGO ACTUS
The award-winning international production company Ego Actus (Latin for “My Way”) was founded in 2009 by Joan Kane and Bruce A! Kraemer, who created an independent theatre company dedicated to creating art for art’s sake. Since then their shows, which have been presented in New York City and Europe, have been nominated for 61 awards, winning 21. Ego ActusOff-Broadway shows have included Play Nice! at 59e59 Theaters, I Know What Boys Want at Theatre Row and Sycorax, Cyber Queen of Qamara at HERE, with other critically acclaimed productions at Theater for a New City, Urban Stages, and the WorkShop Theater. The European productions included Safe and what do you mean at the Edinburgh Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Kafka’s Belinda and The Telegram in the Prague Fringe festival, while The Metamorphosis was performed in Prague and Budapest. Their two reading series have included Off the Page, seven scripts read to live audiences at TornPage and Survival is Insufficient, 10 scripts seen on Zoom.
Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Educational Theater, Featured News, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

All About Image/We Are The Elite

September 25, 2019 by Leave a Comment

All About Image

Marcina Zaccaria’s All About Image/We Are The Elite

Directed by Tony Tambasco

 

A drama written in the present time, taking place in New York City and other parts of the U.S., All About Image/ We are the Elite is a journey of the people who make images. In the process of capturing and making these images, the characters explore their personal relationships while re-affirming their aesthetic principles.

What they see is under critique. What they present is a complete outpouring of their entire vision.

Part of the New York International Fringe Festival

Photos courtesy Steven Pisano

Kraine Theater

85 East 4th Street

New York, NY 10003

View Map

October 3 @ 7:00pm

October 4 @ 7:00pm

October 5 @ 5:15pm

October 6 @ 5:30pm    

Featuring:

David Arthur Bachrach *

J. Dolan Byrnes *

Frances McGarry *

Jeff Burchfield *

Don Carter *

Catherine Luciani

Milton Lyles II

Nana Ponceleon

Akin Salawu

Lourdes Severny

Kelsey Shapira Katy Wilson
* Appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association


Further details at Fringe BYOV.

Tickets available through Eventbrite. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Featured News, First Online with Fran, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting, Recent News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

OLD RINGERS: a new comedy by Joe Simonelli

January 28, 2019 by Leave a Comment

old ringers revised outside

A Hilarious Comedy By Joe Simonelli

Directed by Carol Dorn

It’s Golden Girls meets Calendar Girls in this semi-sequel to Men Are Dogs where four senior women try to fight the shrinking economy and their shrinking pocketbooks by investigating alternative means or generating income.  
A wrong number leads to interesting possibilities in this adult bawdy comedy.

*Mature Audiences Only*

.fran on phone mouth open

February 1 ~ 23
Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm
Sunday February 10th & 17th at 2pm

GET TICKETS

Cabaret Seating ~ Bring Food & Drink

Doors open one hour prior to curtain 

Featuring:
Frances McGarry
Linda Seay
Laurel Lettieri
Stefanie Rosenberg
Sarah Ahearn
Mark Rubino
and Joshua Adelson

Filed Under: Featured News, First Online with Fran, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,