REAL TALK / KIP TALK Series to Launch Next Month at Abrons Arts Center

REAL TALK / KIP TALK is a series of live talk shows about the state of contemporary performance in New York City, conceived and hosted by Kippy Winston, media mogul, Internet sensation, and citizen of the world.

The first episode will be taped on Dec 3 at 8pm at the Abrons Arts Center Playhouse.

REAL TALK / KIP TALK explodes the theatrical form and invites audiences to take part in a live, taped talk show that is equal parts fireside chat and greenroom grit. The first portion of the evening features interviews with a coterie of special guests including Claire Mazur (Of a Kind co-founder) andMarguriete Wade (Full Court). Then comes a live screening of Winston film initiative "Artistic Directors on Divans Dunking Donuts," in which Eliza Bent interviews Niegel Smith (the Flea). After a commercial break, wherein the greenroom comes to the stage, a roundtable unfolds in which "real talk" about the performance field happens between guests you have definitely heard of and also admired-including Sarah Benson (Soho Rep) and Leah Nanako Winkler (Kentucky) among others.

Be ready to step and repeat while enjoying fine company and some sensible eats. Come for the laughs, stay for the talk, and leave with a swag bag and a swagger in your stride.

Real Talk / Kip Talk is conceived by Kippy Winston and directed by Modesto Flako Jimenez. Real Talk / Kip Talk features set and lighting design by Christopher Bowser, live video by David Pym, sound and stage managed by Skylar Fox, and associate produced by Caroline Gart. "Artistic Directors on Divans Dunking Donuts" is filmed by Eva von Schweinitz and executive produced by Eliza Bent.

Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street). F/J/M/Z trains to Delancey/Essex stop. B/D to Grand Street stop. More information at www.abronsartscenter.org/on-stage/shows/real-talk-kip-talk-world-premiere. Tickets: $15.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

KIPPY WINSTON (conceptual design)
World citizen and internet sensation, Kippy Winston is a media mogul who is everywhere and nowhere representing everything and everyone. As a mover and shaker and cultural tastemaker, Winston has high fived with world leaders, strutted down catwalks, danced in piazzas, and experienced more live performance than this Kippy would care to admit. Linguist and lover of puns, Kippy's musings on art, life, and la cultura have taken on unique forms over the years and have included a web log, or flog (faux blog), a late gossip column "Just Ask Kippy," and of course the seminal-and semi-autumnal-publication The Radish (Prelude '13 and '14). Most recently, Winston has steered a robust press agency repping all manner of artisti known and about-to-be-discovered garnering reviews in such esteemed outlets as the Gray Lady among others. An Andy Rooney of the PoMo age, a Gadfly of the Gilded era, a Muckraker with the Mostess, and an Elaine Stritch that'll have you in stitches, Kippy transcends genre, form, and content. Journalism meets hedonism in Winston's word play(s). [wink!] "Hey world. Here I am. Kippy Winston and loving life."

MODESTO FLAKO JIMENEZ (director)
?Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised theater director, writer, poet, actor, producer, and educator. ATI & HOLA Award Winner for 2015 and 2016, NY Times and Wall Street Journal profiled, 'Flako' is best known for original productions and three signature festivals - Ghetto Hors D'Oeuvres, One Catches Light, and Oye! Avant Garde Night! - produced with his company Brooklyn Gypsies Collective. Flako has appeared on TEDxBushwick, Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Charlie Rose Show. Favorite: Early Shaker Spirituals (Wooster Group), Last Night At The Palladium (Bushwick Starr/3LD), Yoleros (Bushwick Starr), Conversations Pt.1: How To Make It Black In America (JACK), Oye For My Dear Brooklyn (The Performance Garage/Wooster Group), Upcoming: Furry by WilLiam Burke (Bushwick Starr), Samara by Richard Maxwell (Soho Rep; dir. Sarah Benson)

Eliza Bent (executive producer "Artistic Directors on Divans Dunking Donuts")
Eliza Bent is a playwright and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Bent is a 2016 SPACE on Ryder Farm Working Farm resident writer, a MacDowell Colony fellow, a 2016 Target Margin Institute Fellow, a Bay Area Playwrights Finalist, a New Georges affiliated artist, and an alum of Project Y Playwright's Group and TerraNova's Groundbreakers group. Bent is a former senior editor at American Theatre magazine, where she still writes, a frequent performer with the Obie-award winning company Half Straddle, and an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College where she received an MFA in playwriting. Her plays include: On a Clear Day I Can See to Elba (New Ohio's ICE Factory), Toilet Fire (runs at Abrons Arts Center, the Brick and JACK, Time Out New York Critics' Pick), The Beyonce (Breaking String Theatre, 2014 Payne Award for Outstanding Theatrical Event), Blue Wizard / Black Wizard (Incubator Arts Project / Other Forces 2014 festival), The Hotel Colors (Bushwick Starr, L magazine's 25 best stage shows of 2013), Karma Kharms (or yarns by Kharms) (Target Margin Lab at Bushwick Starr) and Pen Pals Meet (Iranian Theatre Festival at the Brick).