Cupcakes & Performances Set For TerraNOVA Benefit 4/2

terraNOVA Collective is set to host an evening to benfit terraNOVA Collective Thursday, April 2 at DR2 Theatre and D-Lounge 103 East 15th Street. This extra special evening will begin with a Welcome Reception at 7pm in the DR2 Lobby with chocolate and desserts from some of New York’s finest bakeries including Magnolia Bakery & Tonnie’s. The Mainstage Performance will begin at 8pm in the DR2 Theatre.  Performances will include Roger Bonair-Agard (HBO's Def Poetry Jam) and previews from the upcoming 2009 soloNOVA Arts Festival, including: Preston Martin (Fun Design with Svelte) and magician Jeff Grow (Creating Illusion). Concluding the performances, packages will be up for sale including tickets to some of the hottest Broadway shows as well as NY & NJ sporting events.

At 10pm join us downstairs in the D-Lounge for Subterranean, terraNOVA Collective’s monthly party featuring a variety of performers, including spoken word, music, burlesque, magic, storytelling, short play readings, vaudeville acts and DJs.

"For anyone who has never experienced terraNOVA’s programming, this is the evening to join us. Featuring morsels of all kinds of theater – there is something for everyone," said Jennifer Conley Darling, Artistic Director.

Among the artists performing at Subterranean are autoharpist and singer Julia May Jonas (Nellie Tinder, La MaMa ETC., PS 122) and guitarist Andrew Dinwiddle playing vintage country music, comic and drag performer Maddy Mann (aka Ryan Migge) (Dixon Place, BAXX), extraordinary bouffon clown Red Bastard (Joe's Pub, Clown Theatre Festival @ The Brick Theater), Abigail Nessen Bengson & Shaun McClain Bengson (BRICstudio, LaMaMa Cafe) and DJ Ruzzle D playing Jamaican rocksteady/reggae/dancehall classics.

An Evening to Benefit TerraNOVA Collective is brought to you by terraNOVA Collective's Board of Directors and Host Committee: Max Berenstein, James Carter, Jennifer Conley Darling, Kathleen Fiorello, Elizabeth Klemmer, Danelle Lindvall, Jaimie Mayer, Laurie Melton, Anne Perryman, Jan Potter, Paul Slee, Kecia Voorhees, Scott Wilcox, Tamilla Woodard

Tickets for the entire evening are $75 and are available at www.terranovacollective.org or by calling TeleCharge at 212-239-6200. Tickets for Subterranean only are $20 (+1 drink minimum) and can be purchased at the door prior to the show. terraNOVA Collective is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization $45 of each $75 ticket is tax-deductible. All proceeds go to benefit the 2009 soloNOVA Arts Festival.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a native of Trinidad and Tobago and a Cave Canem fellow. He is the author of two collections of poetry, tarnish and masquerade (Cypher Books 2006) and GULLY (Cypher Books 2009). He is co-author of a third collection, Burning Down the House (Soft Skull Press 2000). A two-time National Poetry Slam Champion, Roger is also co-founder and Artistic Director of the LouderARTS Project. He is poet-in-residence with VisionIntoArt, an inter-disciplinary performance ensemble, for whom his work is regularly commissioned and with whom he has toured several universities nationally, as well as the Mt. Aetna Jazz Festival (Catania, Italy) and music festivals in Milan, Italy and Belgrade, Serbia. He is also writer and performer of the critically acclaimed one-man show MASQUERADE: calypso and home, produced by terraNOVA Collective.

Preston Martin (Svelte, Creator) is an excitable theatre artist living in Williamsburg. He has a strong affinity for making music playlists and then dancing to these playlists. He has been working alongside Obie-winner Elizabeth Swados for four years creating issue-oriented theatre in musical form. With Swados and the cast he has written and performed in the cultural revue Political Subversities, seen at Joe's Pub and the Culture Project (characters include Anderson Cooper, a Gay Person, Another Gay Person and Bjork). Also with Swados he has written for, performed in and assistant directed The Reality Show: NYU, a musical comedy PSA preparing incoming freshmen for life and college in the city. Martin was most recently seen as the title character in Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera at The Flea. Other favorite roles include G in Twelve Ophelias (McCarren Pool), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Tisch), Soldier in Dispatches (Naked Angels), Spider Girl in Spider Operas (with Taylor Mac and Swados) and Evil in Vaclav Havel's The Conspirators (opposite Kathleen Turner). He has also performed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, PS122 with Mabou Mines, the San Remo, National Underground and St. Mark's on the Bowery. BFA NYU/Tisch.
Jeff Grow entertains guests with intimate sleight of hand miracles and presents stage magic for hundreds, and he delights guests in a presentation that transcends simply puzzling people. The rich simplicity and direct nature of Jeff’s performance makes it accessible to a wide scope of audiences from Fortune 500 companies to up-and-coming arts festivals. Elegant sleight of hand and surreal mind reading mix together to explore the diverse facets of the art of illusion.  Jeff has been featured in award winning films, and national and international commercials for Progressive Insurance, Computer Associates, Absolute Poker and others.  He is a featured performer at New York City’s top venues and events.  Chrysler Corporation, Jive Records, Eileen Fisher, the National Football League and a plethora of private clients have all incorporated Jeff's outstanding magic into their principal events. He is a regular performer at Monday Night Magic, the longest running off-Broadway show of it’s kind and his stage shows have been presented in venues through out New York City and Europe.

Julia May Jonas is Nellie Tinder. Nellie Tinder has attempted the creation of instructive and appropriate art since 2003.  She has shown dance theater and solo shows and original plays at venues including Galapagos Arts Space, Brooklyn Information & Culture, WAX at University Settlement, The Bushwick Starr, Here Arts Center, Tonic, La Mama ETC. and Performance Space 122.  Julia received schooling in drama but attributes her greatest education to a lazy love of lying down and reading, lying down and watching movies, lying down and listening to music and singing and dancing to pass the time.

Andrew Dinwiddie has had the pleasure of performing for David Neumann’s Advanced Beginner Group, Big Dance Theater, Stacy Dawson, Nellie Tinder, Sibyl Kempson, Karinne Keithley, Ken Nintzel, Richard Maxwell, Kate E. Ryan/13P, Jenny Seastone Stern, Chris Yon and others. Andrew’s choreography has been presented at high-class places like the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, BAX, St. Ann’s Warehouse and PS122.  With Jeff Larson, he co-curates Catch (catchseries.org), a terrific performance series that will destroy your mind. Andrew’s currently developing Get Mad at Sin!, a live reenactment of a hard rocking, hellfire-and-brimstone sermon by Jimmy Swaggart, slated for the Chocolate Factory Theater in 2010.

Maddy Mann (Ryan Migge) is a 15 year old junior at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. School activities include: Speech & Debate (dramatic interp, club secretary), French Club, the God Squad (Our Lady's award-winning dance troupe), the Croonsaders (show choir), Chorus (secretary), Theatricks (Our Lady's version of Cirque du Soleil), Psweaty Psalms (Our Lady's sinfully funny improv and sketch troupe), Key Club, Honor Society, Jonsing for the Jo Bros club (president and founder), and DDR club (VP). Before attending Our Lady, Maddy was home-schooled by her father until she was 13.

Red Bastard (Eric Davis) Grotesque in nature, often physically deformed, the bouffon is the outcast shunned by society and told to live outside of the village.   On rare occasions, he is asked to perform for the pleasure of those who previously persecuted him. On these occasions the bouffon willingly accepts. (What choice does he have?   Perform or be killed!)  Thus this hideous creature enters the circle of society once more, light on his feet, eternally smiling with hateful eyes.   Charming, entertaining and smart, he plans to take the piss out of you all!
In 2007, Mr.  Davis was nominated for a Golden Nose for Clown of the Year in New York.  In addition, he was a Finalist for the NY Comedy Festival’s Andy Kaufman Award, and the award winning director and co-writer of The Bouffon Glass Menajoree, which was nominated for Best Director, Best Script, Best Ensemble and Best Production by the NY Innovative Theatre Awards.  Mr. Davis is a Founder and Co- Director of the NY Clown Theatre Festival, an international festival celebrating and promoting the art of contemporary theatrical Clown. (www.bricktheater.com).

Abigail Nessen Bengson & Shaun McClain Bengson are teachers, students, writers, collectors, mediators, and above all else, conduits and interpreters though which social change can take place. Our commitment is to make excellent, relevant and challenging art in “high risk” or neglected communities and continue that work by bringing it to artistic centers (London, Edinburgh, NYC) so that the voices of these communities can be heard. For the last 5 years Shaun and Abigail have each devoted their lives to serving communities through art. They have written musicals with teenagers with autism in NYC, organized intra-gang concerts with gang members in El Salvador, and performed original works so exciting and moving that Broadway and off-Broadway theaters produce it even though it contains subject matter they usually shy away from.

terraNOVA Collective is a vibrant playground for artists devoted to innovative new and original theatrical works. Its multi-layered development process, solo arts festivals, and productions serve to nurture and liberate our community.