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Amy Oestreicher - Page 2

Amy Oestreicher

Amy Oestreicher is a PTSD Specialist, Audie award-nominated playwright, performer, and multidisciplinary creator. Amy overcame a decade of trauma to become a sought-after trauma-informed teaching artist, author, writer for The Huffington Post, international keynote speaker, RAINN representative, and health advocate. She has given three TEDx Talks on transforming trauma through creativity, and her story has appeared on NBC’s Today, CBS, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen Magazine, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and MSNBC, among others. A singer, librettist, and visual mixed media artist, she dedicates her work to celebrating everyday miracles, untold stories, and the detours in life that can spark connection and transform communities. Amy has toured her autobiographical musical, Gutless & Grateful, to over 200 venues from 54 Below to Barrington Stage Company since its 2012 NYC debut, as well as a mental health program for colleges, conferences and organizations. She is currently developing her full-length play, Flicker and a Firestarter, which just had its first AEA Staged Reading, and More Than Ever Now, a play based on her grandmother's story of survival. She most recently premiered her one-woman multimedia musical, Passageways, at HERE Arts Center, for which she created music, book, lyrics, and artwork.

As the 2014 Eastern Regional Recipient of Convatec’s Great Comebacks Award and WEGO Health  “Health Activist Hero”, and WeGO Health Expert, medical community, speaking for National WOCN conferences and the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, and writing for the official print publication of the UOAA.  She has devised programming for the Transformative Language Arts Network National Conference, the Eating Recovery Foundation, the 40th Anniversary New England Educational Opportunity Association Milestones Conference, three Annual National Mental Health America Conferenceand others. She has been the featured keynote speaker for national conferences including the Pacific Rim Conference of Diversity and Disability, the International School of Social Work Conference, and Women of Resilience.

As a playwright, Amy has received awards and accolades for engaging her audiences in dynamic conversation on trauma’s effects on society, including Women Around Town’s “Women to Celebrate” 2014, BroadwayWorld “Best Theatre Debut,”  Bistro Awards “New York Top Pick, and the “Singular Award” at the Sarasolo Theatre Festival, presented annually for a “performance that is exceptionally uncommon, groundbreaking, original and inventive.” Amy has performed excerpts of her solo oral history Play, Divers, as part of Brooklyn's immigrants and Exile, Beechwood Art's Giving Voice, Dixon Place, Seekonk Storytelling Television Special, and Museum of Jewish Heritage Festival of Untold Women. She is a cabaret and theatre reviewer for BroadwayWorld, Her theatre education essays and monologues have been published in Creative Pedagogy journals, as part of a theatre curriculum for high school students in the Philippines. Her play, "We Re-Member" honoring the immigration stories of her grandparents, has been performed in twelve states, amd her full-length Play, Factory Treasure, has been performed at the Philadelphia Arts Center, Identity Theatre, LIU, The Depot, and Actors Theatre of Newburyport. Her short plays have been published by the Eddy Theatre Company and finalists in Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Short Play Festival, as well as NYC Playwright’s Women in the Age of Trump.

Amy’s collaboration with Beechwood Arts on the immersion salon, “Resilience and the Power of the Human Spirit”, has traveled around the world to health and arts facilities as a public installation, incorporating her monologues, art, writing and recipes to express the life-altering detours and ultimately the invaluable gifts of her resilient journey.  Amy is also an active artist and teacher in the Jewish community, being honored by United Way in 2005 for her music programs at Hollander House, completing artist residencies at Art Kibbutz, and delivering “Hope, Resilience & Biblical Women” keynotes for synagogues and religious schools.  She is a teaching artist with Brooklyn's Community World Project, and trained ACTSmart, a Playback Theatre troupe in Amherst, MA.  She is also a passionate arts education advocate, a successful mixed media visual artist, a continuing education studio arts teacher, and her artwork has been shown in esteemed galleries in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Chicago, San Diego and New York, as well as published in national publications including Conquer, Topology and Cargo Literary. She has recently published her memoir, My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful. See more at www.amyoes.com.

 

 

 






Artemis Theatrical Aims to Give a Voice to Women-Identifying Storytellers Through Collaboration and Cabaret
Artemis Theatrical Aims to Give a Voice to Women-Identifying Storytellers Through Collaboration and Cabaret
January 31, 2017

Last year, Manda Leigh Blunt graduated from New York University with a dream many musical theatre writers share: to get their work seen and heard. All it took were inspiring words from another female artist to launch something truly ground breaking, just a few months later. "My friends and I attended a session with Judith Light, which was incredible," Blunt recounted. "A lot of what I was hearing, especially from the other women who attended, echoed what I had felt and had been hearing in the conversations all around me at NYU. Once you graduate, there seemed to be so few opportunities as a musical theatre writer still in the development process. You can have these big 29-hour readings or productions---if you get that---but there are fewer in-between moments where you can get yourself heard in a supportive environment, where a women-identified writer can say, 'This is where we are in this draft, and we're using this opportunity to move forward.'" So Blunt decided to do something about it. By that August, she founded Artemis Theatricals, a non-profit company with the mission to empower women storytellers in musical theatre through curated cabarets and additional styles of performance.

BWW Review: Theresa Kloos' REASONS TO BE UNSUCCESSFUL at The Metropolitan Room Succeeds with Quirky Comedy and Charm
BWW Review: Theresa Kloos' REASONS TO BE UNSUCCESSFUL at The Metropolitan Room Succeeds with Quirky Comedy and Charm
September 14, 2016

In her tour de force, one-woman show REASONS TO BE UNSUCCESSFUL at the Metropolitan Room on September 2, comedian Theresa Kloos used her endearingly quirky sense of humor to bring the audience closer than we ever could have hoped for, in a night of comic showtunes, sassy pop songs, and spunky rock beats. UNSUCCESSFUL debuted in June as a follow-up to her first show, REASONS TO BE UNPRETTY, which was her first 'exploration of the trials and tribulations of a funny, albeit awkward girl growing up in Cleveland.' This time around, Kloos is back with lessons learned and a powerful message to share--- infused with her humor, of course.

BWW Review: Michael Feinstein and Marilyn Maye Give a Master Class in 'Summertime Swing' at Feinstein's/54 Below
BWW Review: Michael Feinstein and Marilyn Maye Give a Master Class in 'Summertime Swing' at Feinstein's/54 Below
September 6, 2016

Summertime brings to mind nighttime fireflies, lemonade that makes your lips pucker, rocking chairs creaking on the front porch, and, like the famous Porgy and Bess tune of the same name, melodies that trickle into the night. Summertime Swing is the latest masterpiece and collaboration at its finest by the legendary Michael Feinstein and Marilyn Maye, evoking a sultry, steamy love letter to the fleeting season and a prime example of craft, art, and passion. The moment I walked into the dining room at Feinstein's/54 Below, where Summertime Swing played through September 1 a fashionably dressed gentleman greeted me with, 'It's a fantastic show.' The packed house was already alive with thrilling enthusiasm as they eagerly waited for the show to start. When you attend a show headlined by a golden age cabaret great and a prolific 'music revivalist' who happens to have the venue named for him, you come expecting to be no less than entertained. Summertime Swing elevated the art of summer entertainment tenfold--- a tribute to anything we could hope for in the last days of summer.



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