Broadway's Judy Kuhn, Mo Rocca and More to Get 'IN YOUR FACE' in NYC This Fall

Whether you're in Honolulu, Bushwick or Beijing, New York is in your face. And, that's what In Your Face - New York's live performance show and podcast is all about.

This fall, In Your Face - New York reveals once again why this town is the capital of the world. Taking place at Merkin Concert Hall (129 W. 67th Street, New York), the two shows - one slated for October 22nd at 5PM; the next on December 6th at 7:30PM- will feature songs and sketches performed by some of the city's most talented actors, writers, singers and musicians.

TV personality Mo Rocca hosts the October show, which also includes heralded Broadway actress Judy Kuhn (Fun Home, Fiddler on the Roof, Passions, The Mystery of Edwin Drood); Bianca Bosker, (author, The New York Times Best Seller Cork Dork, and Kevin Bleyer (writer The Daily Show; speechwriter for Barack Obama and Bill de Blasio).

The following show in December features CBS Sunday Morning's Nancy Giles as host and performances by Julie Klam (author, The Stars in Our Eyes - a book about our obsession with celebrities) and others.

Additional line up details will be announced later this fall.

In Your Face - New York, an episodic live show and podcast that aims to capture the city's energy through sketches, songs, and monologues by an array of New York artists and writers. Creator Martin Sage, together with his producing partner Joseph Steinberg, have presented earlier episodes at St. Ann's Warehouse and Symphony Space - each time engaging a different guest host and lineup of participants - now taking the stage at Merkin Concert Hall for the Fall shows.

"As much as New York City changes, one thing about it remains indisputably true: not even a lifetime spent here is enough to take in the city's unparalleled array of people, cultures, attractions, and stories," says Sage. "It's why tourists come here, and one of the primary reasons why residents of the city find it so hard to leave, even though it often feels like a place no sensible person would choose to live."

Tickets for the performances cost $25-$35 and are available now at www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/in-your-face-new-york.

Accompanying the live performance will be Title to Come, a serialized novella with each chapter written by one of New York's talented writers. A chapter will be read on stage during each episode of In Your Face--New York, and then will be included on the show's website so fans can follow the story from episode to episode. The New Yorker writer Patricia Marx, Peter Ackerman, Jonathan Santlofer, and Patricia Volk will pen installments of the novella.

ABOUT THE CAST AND CREW FOR IN YOUR FACE - NEW YORK:

For a decade, Martin Sage produced The Thalia Follies-A Political Cabaret, which he created with his friend Isaiah Sheffer, founder and Artistic Director of Symphony Space. Sage conceived of In Your Face - New York after Sheffer passed away in 2012. He staged the pilot episode at St. Ann's Warehouse with brilliant Tony and Obie award-winning writer/performer Sarah Jones, WNYC's Brian Lehrer, actor/director Bob Balaban, and others. In another place and time Martin together with his wife Sybil Adelman Sage wrote for TV shows including Northern Exposure, Magnum PI, Anything But Love and a dozen pilots, each of which could have been called You've Got to Be Kidding.

Mo Rocca is best known for his off-beat news reports and satirical commentary. Currently a Correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, he's also a panelist on NPR's hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! and the host of Foodography on the Cooking Channel. Mo spent four seasons as a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and four seasons as a correspondent on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The former president and author of Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Show, Mo is no stranger to the stage, where his credits include the roles of Vice Principal Douglas Panch in Broadway's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Doody on the Southeast Asia Tour of Grease. Mo began his career in TV as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning PBS children's series Wishbone. He went on to write and produce for other kids' series, including ABC's Pepper Ann and Nickelodeon's The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss- a pre-school series combining the whimsy of Seuss characters with the magic of Jim Henson puppetry. He is the author of ALL THE PRESIDENTS' PETS: THE STORY OF ONE REPORTER WHO REFUSED TO ROLL OVER. A native of Washington, D.C., Mo earned a bachelor's degree at Harvard and resides in New York City.

Judy Kuhn is a four-time TONY Award nominee. She most recently starred as Golde opposite Danny Burstein in Bart Sher's critically acclaimed revival of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. In 2015, Judy starred as Helen Bechdel in the Tony Award winning production of Fun Home (Tony & Drama League Award Nominations), a role she created in the original Off-Broadway production at The Public Theater (2014 Lucille Lortel Award). Also on Broadway she starred in The Roundabout's hit 1993 revival of She Loves Me (Tony Award Nomination), Chess (Tony & Drama Desk Award Nominations) and Les Miserables (Tony & Drama Desk Award Nominations), Rags (Drama Desk Nomination), Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors (Lincoln Center Theatre), Alan Menken & Tim Rice's King David, and the original cast of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (NYSF).

Josh Bazell started writing his debut novel, Beat the Reaper, while studying medicine at Columbia. The result is a "composite hellhole" of hospitals he's worked at, starring an eccentric protagonist, a hit man turned physician. His In Your Face-New York segment "Sorry You Asked" with Brian Lehrer explored why we don't eat the city's pigeons.

Bianca Bosker is an award-winning journalist and the author of the New York Times bestseller CORK DORK: A WINE-FUELED ADVENTURE AMONG THE OBSESSIVE SOMMELIERS, BIG BOTTLE HUNTERS, AND ROGUE SCIENTISTS WHO TAUGHT ME TO LIVE FOR TASTE, which has been hailed as the "KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL of wine." She has written about food, wine, architecture, and technology for The New Yorker online, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The New Republic, among other publications. She previously authored ORIGINAL COPIES, the first definitive account of China's "duplitecture" movement and a critically acclaimed exploration of China's copy culture. Described as "fascinating" by the New York Review of Books, ORIGINAL COPIES (University of Hawaii Press/Hong Kong University Press, 2013) continues to be featured in leading publications and was selected as a Book of the Year Award finalist by Foreword Reviews, in addition to being named one of Gizmodo's Best Books of the Year. Bosker co-founded The Huffington Post's tech section and served as the site's Executive Tech Editor until 2014. Her writing has been recognized with multiple awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, as well as the Society of Professional Journalists. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, graduated from Princeton University, and currently lives in New York City. Her lesser-known exploits include training alongside butlers in Chengdu, obsessively collecting graphic novels, and pairing wines with takeout (see #pairdevil).

Kevin Bleyer is a multiple Emmy, Peabody, and Writers Guild Award-winning television writer/producer, a former writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a contributor to President Barack Obama's speeches, the author of the best-selling ME THE PEOPLE: ONE MAN'S SELFLESS QUEST TO REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION, a co-author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller EARTH: THE BOOK, and the co-author, with Governor Bill Richardson, of HOW TO SWEET-TALK A SHARK. In 2008, he became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2014, he served as a Fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

Nancy Giles is an American actress and commentator, best known for her appearances in the series China Beach and on CBS Sunday Morning. Giles was a member of the Second City Touring Company, and was the announcer and co-host of Fox After Breakfast. She has had guest roles on shows including The Jury, L.A. Law, Spin City, Law & Order, Dream On, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Additionally, Nancy appeared in the 1985 Broadway production of the Charles Strouse Musical Mayor.

Julie Klam grew up in Bedford, New York. Don't be confused if you see that her brother, the author Matthew Klam, says he was born in Katonah, New York. Katonah is in the town of Bedford, and she can call it whatever she wants. After attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and interning at Late Night with David Letterman, Julie went on to write for such publications as O: The Oprah Magazine, Rolling Stone, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, and for the VH1 television show Pop-Up Video, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Special Class Writing. Currently she writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the magazines that haven't folded. Her latest book THE STARS IN OUR EYES: THE FAMOUS, THE INFAMOUS AND WHY CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT THEM (Riverhead Books) was released in July 2017. Julie lives in New York City with her daughter, her Dan Davenport, and a variety of cute dogs.

Patricia Marx has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1989. She is a former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats, and is the author of several books, including the novels STARTING FROM HAPPY and HIM HER HIM AGAIN THE END OF HIM (both of which were finalists for the Thurber Prize) and numerous children's books, among them NOW EVERYBODY REALLY HATES ME and MEET MY STAFF. Her latest book, LET'S BE LESS STUPID: AN ATTEMPT TO MAINTAIN MY MENTAL FACULTIES, was published in July, 2015. Marx was the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon. She has taught screenwriting and humor writing at Princeton, New York University, and Stonybrook University, but mainly she does errands and looks things up on Wikipedia. She was the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2016 she hosted In Your Face-New York together with her emotional support goat Xanax.

Jonathan Santlofer is a writer and artist. He has published five novels, including the bestselling THE DEATH ARTIST, numerous short stories, edited several anthologies and is the Director of the Center for Fiction's Crime Fiction Academy. He is also a painter who has exhibited worldwide.

Patricia Volk is the author of the memoir STUFFED: ADVENTURES OF A RESTAURANT FAMILY, as well as four works of fiction. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Bennington College. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York, The New Yorker, and Playboy. She lives in New York City.

Peter Ackerman co-wrote the movies Ice Age and Ice Age 3 and is currently a writer and producer on the TV show, The Americans. He has authored two books with Max Dalton. Their first, The LONELY PHONE BOOTH, was selected for the Smithsonian's 2010 Notable Books for Children and adapted and produced as a musical at the Manhattan Children's Theater. His web-series The Go Getters can be seen on www.thegogetters.net.