FRIGID New York to Present A SACRILEGIOUS LESBIAN AND HOMOSEXUAL PARADE

Direct from Ireland and a sell-out run at the 2014 Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival, this solo performance from multi-talented artist Brian Fleming runs from February 19th - March 9th for six shows only at UNDER St. Marks as part of the FRIGID New York Festival. Combining spoken word, costume, projection, live music, and quite bad dance, A Sacrilegious Lesbian and Homosexual Parade takes you on an unforgettable romp through 14 years of Irish LGBT celebration and struggle associated with New York's only all-inclusive St. Pat's For All parade in Queens, New York, an alternative to the city's annual St. Patrick's Day march down 5th Avenue.

Presented as part of the FRIGID New York Festival, the production also honors a significant turnaround for New York's annual St. Patrick's Day parade. For the first time since 1991, an LGBT group has been permitted to march in this year's parade on March 17, just months before Ireland votes on marriage equality. Fleming is a straight Irishman, who has travelled from Co Clare each March to participate in and be enthralled by the St. Pat's For All parade since 2001 and completed an MA thesis about it in 2014.

Brian Fleming is a percussionist, producer, and theatre maker. Specializing in Irish and West African percussion, he has recorded over 40 albums and performed with many well-known Irish musicians including Davy Spillane and The Chieftains, and international artists such as Mamady Keita and the Afro-Irish group Tig Linn. Fleming is credited in the Guinness Book of World Records 2001 as the creator of the "Millennium Drum," the world's largest drum. He is co-director of the Big Bang Festival of Rhythm in Dublin. He has played in every country in Western Europe and in Scandinavia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, the US, Japan, India, Thailand, Singapore, Cuba, Gambia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Rwanda, and Korea. He is the author and performer of three successful one-man theatre shows: Gis a Shot of Your Bongos Mister (2011), Have Yis No Homes To Go To (2013), and A Sacrilegious Lesbian and Homosexual Parade (2014), all of which premiered with sell-out performances at the Dublin Fringe Festival and went on to play at venues around Ireland and in New York. Fleming has worked extensively in theater and dance in Ireland, including with the National Theatre Company, The Abbey Theatre, Barabbas, Macnas, and Dance Theatre of Ireland with whom he toured to Korea, London, and Minnesota. He has also performed with Donal O'Kelly at the Beaver Creek Theatre Festival in Colorado.

Raymond Keane is a founding member and Artistic Director of the multi award-winning Barabbas Theatre Company. A Sacrilegious Lesbian and Homosexual Parade marks Raymond's third collaboration with Brian Fleming, having previously directed his Gis a Shot of Your Bongos Mister and Have Yis No Homes To Go To. Keane's work as actor, writer, and director has appeared in almost every Irish theater as well major festivals from Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Belfast to London, Edinburgh, Wales, France, Denmark, Africa (Zimbabwe and Zambia), New Zealand, and the United States (New York, Washington, Kansas, Chicago, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Connecticut). Currently, Keane collaborates with Sarah Jane Scaife (Company SJ), producing the works of Samuel Beckett. His plays have been presented at the Dublin Fringe Festival, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, the River to River Festival in New York City, the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival in London, and in Tokyo, Japan. His works will feature at The Barbican Beckett Festival in June 2015. Keane lectures at the National University Ireland Maynouth/Gaiety School of Acting Dublin, The Lir Academy of Dramatic Arts Dublin, and at the School of Drama at Trinity College, Dublin. He is also the External Examiner at Conservatory of Music and Drama at the Dublin Institute of Technology.