Writers Block Festival Returns To Howl! Happening

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is pleased to present the annual Writers Block 2018 Festival. Created to showcase the vision of contemporary writers, performers, and artists, many of whom got their start in the nightclubs, seminal performance spaces, and theaters associated with the EV/LES, the festival showcases some of the most important playwrights and performers in theater today. New works in progress are presented at this intimate, ultimate downtown theatrical event. Writers Block 2018 runs throughout the year with a week of short plays and one-acts in the fall, and various blocks of full-length plays over the year.

The festival is a benefit for the Howl! Emergency Life Project (Howl! HELP), providing emergency financial assistance and social service support to artists who have made or continue to make their careers in New York's East Village and Lower East Side arts communities. 100% of the proceeds from ticket sales benefit the Actors Fund.

"Howl! HELP is an integral part of Howl Arts' vision to provide a safe haven for artists from our neighborhood," says Jane Friedman, founder of Howl! Happening. "Writers Block is both a creative outlet and a benefit to insure the health and well-being of our community." Howl Happening also hosts free, monthly health care and housing workshops presented by the Actors Fund. For information and updated schedule of events: howlarts.org.

Upcoming performances include:

Friday, February 23, 2018 / 7 PM / $10
Melba LaRose After the Wall: A Polytheatrical Extravaganza
After the Wall, a multicultural, multidimensional, multidisciplinary, multimedia play about walls around the world and throughout time, takes the stage in a one night only preview at Howl! Happening. With comedy, drama, song, dance, projections, and soundscapes that envelop the audience, this theatrical extravaganza aims to shake us up and start the conversation. Written and directed by avant-garde Off-Off-Broadway legend Melba LaRose, the play is an epic wild ride through history. For Tickets to Melba LaRose

Thursday, March 29, 2018 / 7 PM
Downtown Music Productions and Mimi Sterne Wolfe present a performance of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel.

Thursday and Friday June 14 and 15, and Sunday, June 17, 2018 / 7 PM
Kestutis Nakas When Lithuania Ruled the World
A play cycle in four parts, When Lithuania Ruled the World will be presented in its entirety in a series of staged readings at Howl!. The play traces the rise of the Lithuanian Empire in the Middle Ages. Written in Nakas' trademark "iambic funtameter" style, the play is by turns tragic, comic, romantic, ridiculous, and grotesque. The play invokes the myths, legends and world view of the medieval Lithuanians, the last pagans of Europe, who built a polygot, tolerant, multicultural empire while resisting conquest and forced Christianization by the crusading Teutonic Knights. The first three parts of this sprawling work were presented in New York's East Village at the Pyramid Club, La Mama, and Anthology Film Archives in the 80's and early nineties. Part 4 was presented at The Chicago Cultural Center in 2003. The reading of the play at HOWL will feature a cast of East Village luminaries and be the first time the entire play cycle has been presented in its entirety.

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project
6 East First Street (Between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
917 475 1294
contact@howlarts.org
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sun, 11 AM-6 PM