Talkbacks Announced For The Dirty Blondes Staged Reading of Mae West's SEX

FRIGID New York @ Horse Trade in association with The Dirty Blondes will present special talkback events, following their staged reading of Mae West's infamous stage play, SEX, directed by Courtney Laine Self. The readings will take place at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Avenue and Avenue A) September 29-October 2 with performances Thursday through Sunday at 7pm. Tickets ($17) may be purchased in advance at www.horseTRADE.info .

SEX Talkback Schedule

Thursday, September 29 at 7pm
Kick off the opening night with some badass feminist poetry by Maya Osborne and guests, and stay after the show to grab a drink and talk with the cast.

Friday, September 30 at 7pm
Native New Yorker LindaAnn Loschiavo is a journalist, dramatist and Mae West Historian.

Saturday, October 1 at 7pm
Juniper Fleming previously directed, produced, and performed in an all sex worker revival of SEX, at Dixon Place Theater this past June.

Sunday, October 2 at 7pm
Veronica Varlow is a siren born of the 1940s Fantasy of Pinup Girls and Femme Fatales. Beguiling and beautiful, Varlow weaves a spell upon her audiences like none other.

During its Broadway run, SEX by Mae West, about a sharp-witted prostitute looking for true love, was shut down and West was jailed for lewdness and the corrupting of youth. The Dirty Blondes will examine this play to find out just how extreme it was then, and how it's still relevant today.

The cast will feature Alan Dronek, Stephen Elrod, Travis Emery, Alexandra Frost, Lauren Riddle, and Susannah Jones, in the role originated by Mae West.

Juniper Fleming is an artist currently living in Detroit. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2014, and she is currently attaining her MFA in Photography at Cranbook Academy of Arts. She was awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Fellowship in 2013. Her film,Predatory Prostitute has been screened in the 28th MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, the 2015 Sex Worker Film and Art Festival, XPOSED International Queer Film, and will soon show at Berlin's Porn Film Festival. This past June, she also dipped her toes in theater, directing, producing, and performing in an all sex worker revival of Mae West's play, Sex, at Dixon Place Theater in NYC. http://juniperfleming.com/

Native New Yorker LindaAnn Loschiavo is a journalist and dramatist, who specializes in writing transgressive roles for the actress. Two of her plays areDiamond Lil, Queen of the Bowery and Courting Mae West, based on true events when Mae West was jailed because of her plays. She blogs about Mae West and Texas Guinan and is currently at work on a new bio and her second documentary film about Ms. Guinan, a West 8th Street resident who was a famous speakeasy hostess during the 1920s and who starred onscreen in Warner Brothers' Queen of the Night Clubs (1929) and Broadway Through a Keyhole (1933). http://maewest.blogspot.com

Veronica Varlow is a siren born of the 1940's Fantasy of Pinup Girls and Femme Fatales. Beguiling and beautiful, Varlow weaves a spell upon her audiences like none other. She has graced stages from Paris to Prague, from Berlin to Brussels, from Austria to Australia. This year marks her eighth world tour with musician Emilie Autumn. She was recently featured on an entire episode of MTV's Emmy Award Winning Show, MADE for her inspiring story and cabaret artistry. In her spare time, she plots world domination. http://dangerdame.com/

THE DIRTY BLONDES The Dirty Blondes' mission is to produce theater that furthers the right conversation at the right time with the right people. Through this mission, artists are responsible for using their work to participate in a dialogue that bears on their experience and pushes the conversation further - creating stark, challenging and emotional truthful pieces of theater.

FRIGID NEW YORK @ HORSE TRADE is a theater development group with a focus on new work that produces a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater every season. FRIGID's Resident Artist Program offers a home to a select group of Independent theater artists, pooling together a great deal of talent and energy. FRIGID New York grew out of the annual FRIGID Festival, the first and only festival of its kind in New York City to offer artists 100% of their box office proceeds, and Horse Trade Theater Group, a self-sustaining theater development and management group.