This winter and spring, Joe's Pub - a program and venue of The Public Theater - is honoring new voices in musical theater through a variety of shows. From Broadway performers in concert to new musicals presented in the concert setting, there's something for every fan of musicals happening this season. Audiences are invited to celebrate the art of musical theater in non-conventional yet intimate ways with returning artists and new faces alike at Joe's Pub.
Part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival
January 16 & 17 at 7:00PM
$20 Public Supporters / $25 Regular
When Ryan J. Haddad was five, he founded an acting troupe called The Haddad Theater and forced his family to put on plays. Their living room antics drew such an audience that they eventually moved to the stage of the local community center, where hundreds of people paid a dollar to watch them read from notecards, sing to karaoke tracks, and execute excruciatingly long scene changes. Over eight years, Haddad would write (steal), direct (not tell anyone his vision), and star (star) in 10 "productions" alongside his relatives. In Falling For Make Believe, he tells tales of The Haddad Theater in a witty, whimsical memoir full of showtunes, exclusively showtunes. Directed by Julian Fleisher, with music direction by Billy Stritch and Henry Koperski, the show is a celebration of childhood dreams and a family learning to love the spotlight. Haddad will probably cry during this performance, which also features Kristen Krak and a magical guest.
Part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival
January 20 at 7:00PM
$30 Public Supporter / $35 Regular
A play-on-words, The Jam: Only Child pays homage to Daniel Watts's great-grandmother who, after making jam from scratch, would share with others what she was unable to consume herself. The Jam: Only Child is Watts' continuation of that legacy blending elements of stand-up comedy and compelling storytelling with his original spoken word, often set to music and/or dance. "The Jam: Only Child is the product of two years of therapy," says Watts. "I have an analogy about therapy suggesting that it's like inviting a stranger to the attic of your mind and having them help you clean it out. I realized that being an only child and a latchkey kid in a single parent home contributed to excess storage in my attic and therapy helped me sift through a lot of it and, ultimately, let some things go. By sharing my story, I hope to inspire others to go through their attics in an effort to both examine the cost of holding on and experience the healing power of letting go."
January 20 at 9:30PM
$15
Alex Boniello, star of Broadway's Dear Evan Hansen and the Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening, makes his solo show debut at Joe's Pub.
Combining pop punk, hard rock, and folk music styles, Alex presents a concert featuring the songs that shaped him as a musician and actor, while re-imagining numbers from the Broadway shows he is known for. Alex will also present new original music live for the first time in his career.
Music directed by NYC music scene favorite Emanuel Ayvas (Emanuel and the Fear, Pale Ramon). The evening will also feature special guests, including friends, co-stars, and a band of Broadway musicians.
Alex Boniello currently stars as Connor Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. Other Broadway: V/O Moritz in Deaf West Theatre's Tony nominated revival of Spring Awakening. Other theatre: Lin-Manuel Miranda's "21 Chump Street" (This American Life/BAM); Stilyagi (Vassar/NYSAF), Million Dollar Quartet (Papermill Playhouse); Cruel Intentions the Musical (LPR), Brooklynite (Vineyard Theater); Here's Hoover! (Abrons Arts Center); I Am Harvey Milk (Lincoln Center); and the national tour of Green Day's American Idiot. Select TV: Marvel's "Jessica Jones," "Happyish," "Welcome to Greenpoint," "Saturday Night Live." Film: Alt Space, Contest, Detachment. Alex is also a Tony Award winning Producer for his work on the 2019 Best Musical, Hadestown.
Saturday, January 18 & Sunday, January 19 at 7:00PM
$30
Loren Allred is best known for her jaw-dropping vocal performance of "Never Enough" on the Oscar nominated and Grammy award winning "The Greatest Showman" soundtrack and film. "Never Enough" debuted at #88 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was ranked #3 by Entertainment Weekly as one of the "Best Songs from Movies of the 2010s". The song has amassed more than 500 million worldwide streams and the soundtrack has gone on to sell more than 1.8 million copies in the United States. In early 2019, Loren joined Michael Bublé's Love album for a duet of "Help Me Make it Through the Night." She will appear alongside chart-topping songwriter, producer, and maestro to the stars, David Foster, as part of his An Intimate Evening PBS Concert Special and album in November 2019. With her debut single set for release, written by Oscar, Grammy, and Tony winning songwriting duo Pasek & Paul, her star will only continue to rise.
Saturday, January 18 at 9:30PM
$25
"I don't want to just survive. I want to live." Told through the soundscape of a contemporary score amalgamated with traditional Chinese folk music and Mandopop, EASTBOUND is a new bilingual musical about the unexpected meeting of two brothers from opposite sides of the world, their quests for survival, and the power of choice.
Performed by Zachary Noah Piser (B'way: Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked), Jessica Tyler Wright (B'way: War Horse, Sweeney Todd, Company), Ya Han Chang, Xiaoqing Zhang, Zachary Infante (Off-B'way: Alice by Heart; Regional: Kiss My Aztec) and Cheeyang Ng (Tour: Vocalosity).
Born and raised in Singapore, Cheeyang Ng is an award-winning singer-songwriter who has performed around the world, including Lincoln Center with Carole King and Carnegie Hall with a cappella group Vocalosity. They are the first Singaporean to headline a concert at Joe's Pub and Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center showcasing their original music and their songs have been performed around New York, including The Duplex and Feinstein's/54 Below. They are a graduate of Berklee College of Music (BMus) and NYU (MFA). Musicals in development include EASTBOUND (Village Theatre Festival of New Musicals, NAMT Writers Grant, NYTB IMPACT Award) with Khiyon Hursey, ONLY US (Drama League Residency) and THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD (Live & In Color) with Eric Sorrels. Select credits include: 2019 ASCAP Foundation Lucille & Jack Yellen Award, 2019 Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, 2019 Prospect Musical Theatre Lab and 2018 Front and Center with Tom Kitt.
Khiyon Hursey is a writer and composer based in Los Angeles and New York. A 2014 graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Songwriting, he recently finished a stint as a staff writer for Netflix's romantic musical drama, SOUNDTRACK. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation's Irving Burgie Scholarship, Bart Howard Songwriting Scholarship, a 2016 NAMT Writers Grant, a 2016 - 2017 Dramatists Guild Musical Theater Fellow, 2017 Space on Ryder Farm Residency, 2018 Johnny Mercer Songwriter's Project residency, 2019 ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop with Stephen Schwartz, and the 2019 Rhinebeck Writer's Retreat.
Sunday, January 19 at 9:30PM
$25
What happens when you grow up in New Orleans, you're a Pastor's son who's gayer than Christmas, and you love Rock N' Roll? It makes for an electric night of hilarious stories and some deep south soul singing.
Joey Taranto got his break starring in Rock of Ages on Broadway. Since then he has appeared in the original casts of both Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark and Kinky Boots. He also appeared in the Emmy Award winning cast of Jesus Christ Superstar live on NBC and most recently Bat Out of Hell at City Center.
Directed by Nathan Peck
Music direction and arrangements by Brian Usifer
Sunday, January 25 at 4:30PM & 7:00PM
$25
What would Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, and Malala Yousafzai sound like if you heard them sing? Find out in "Well Behaved Women," a new collection of songs by Carmel Dean (composer of the award-winning musical Renascence). These women - and more - will be brought to life by some of Broadway's leading ladies, and through these powerful, and often hilarious songs, will celebrate the ways in which their bad-ass behavior helped them make history.
Thursday, January 30 at 9:30PM
$30
The Skivvies are Lauren Molina and Nick Cearley, award-winning NYC actor/musicians doing stripped down versions of eclectic covers and comedic, genre-hopping mashups. Not only are the arrangements stripped down - cello, ukulele, glockenspiel, melodica - but the Skivvies literally strip down to their underwear to perform. It's undie-rock at its finest. Featured in People Magazine's Hottest Bodies Issue as the Most Playful performers, The Wall Street Journal calls them "highly original...smart...ingenious." Molina (Rock of Ages, Sweeney Todd, Candide) and Cearley (Pageant, A Midsummer Night's Dream, All Shook Up) started The Skivvies on YouTube becoming sensations with their covers of artists like Robyn, Carole King, and Rihanna. Their live show, featuring Tony winning special guests, is wildly fun, packed with big voices and crazy harmonies. But no pants.
Guests on January 30 include Brennyn Lark, Claybourne Elder, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Logan Hart, Kuhoo Verma, Max von Essen, and Natalie Walker!
Presented in association with Musical Theater Factory (MTF)
Sunday, February 2 at 9:30PM
$20 advance / $30 at the door
It is the night before the Apocalypse and Fari, an Android-Unit turned space-time-continuum anarchist is at the center of the devastation. An evening of songs and scenes from the genre-bending score and time-twisting book of Metropolis, an Afrofuturist musical, by AriDy Nox and Brandon Webster.
AriDy Nox is and has always been a storyteller whose imagination is rooted in the shared experiences of black femmes who have resisted and continue to resist colonial violence. A multi-disciplined storyteller based in Brooklyn, her tales are offerings of radical imagination intended to function as small parts of an ancient, expansive, awe-inspiring tradition of world-shaping, created by and for black femmes. They have their MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and their BA in Comparative Women Studies from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Brandon Webster is a Brooklyn Based ComposerDramaturg that focuses on writing new musicals that center black bodies in stories that skew both realistic and fantastical. Brandon is also the NYC Musical Theatre Editor for TheTheatreTimes; a global theatre portal that has published over 2,400 articles covering theatre in 80 countries and regions. BMI Musical Theater Workshop Alum Class of 2013. BA regular participant in the MTF POC Roundtable. 2017 MCC Theater Artistic Fellow and Student of Xavier University of Louisiana.
Musical Theatre Factory is a 501(c)3 non-profit artist service organization dedicated to developing new work in a collaborative atmosphere-free from the pressures of critical or financial success-that dismantles oppressive ideologies towards collective liberation through powerful and joyful story and song.
We center musical theatre makers of excellence who exist in the intersections of underrepresented groups while providing all access programming and support for musical theatre makers to collaborate and grow together. In 5 years, MTF has been part of the development lifecycle for 130+ new musical theatre works with more than 900 volunteers amassing over 15,000 combined service hours.
Tuesday, February 4 at 7:00PM
$25
Directed by Hannah Ryan (Resident Director, Hamilton), Riot Song is a thrilling new docu-play with music, recounting the tragedies and triumphs of New York's LGBTQ community through the voices of those who witnessed them first-hand. Riot Song blends hours of interviews with real-life figures from Greenwich Village's queer movement, interwoven with thrilling new gospel and R&B-infused songs by Matthew Dean Marsh (We're Only Alive for a Short Period of Time at The Public Theater) and award-winning journalist/playwright Oscar Lopez.
Wednesday, February 5 at 7:00PM
$25
An intimate pageant of song and banter featuring Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald of Passing Strange fame performing songs and telling stories from the aforementioned Tony award winning musical as well as selections from The Public Theater's The Total Bent. This career spanning cabaret will also feature songs from works never performed in New York, along with generous sprinklings of musical treats for OG fans.
Monday, February 17 at 9:30PM
$30
Life Jacket Theatre Company presents this one-night-only concert of songs showcasing the vibrancy of NYC's hidden LBGTQ+ community in the 1920s-1930s. With infinite heart, surprising joy, and breathtaking pride, these songs reflect the diverse flourishing queer communities that pulsed beneath the surface of NYC between the two world wars. Pulling from music written over 30 years before Stonewall, this cabaret revives a long-lost songbook of LGBTQ+ voices, many of which have been forgotten or intentionally erased from history.
These songs provide a sneak preview of Life Jacket's upcoming production of The Gorgeous Nothings, an investigative play that tells the real-life stories of a group of gay men quarantined in the infamous homosexual wing of the city's former prison on Roosevelt Island.
Directed by Travis Russ, Music Directed by Nehemiah Luckett, Developed and Presented by Life Jacket Theatre Company, with Special Guest Performers to be announced.
February 23, 25, 28, March 3, 5, 10, 19, 12, and 13 at Various Times
$35-$45
One woman. Two personalities. It's not about being right...it's about WINNING.
Just in time for the start of the presidential primary season, Ryan Raftery returns to Joe's Pub for his fifth consecutive run, premiering his new celebrity bio-musical comedy IVANKA 2020. Inspired by the classic film The Manchurian Candidate and the beloved animated film Anastasia, Raftery's latest piece is a satirical commentary on what is arguably the most fascinating political landscape the United States has seen in decades.
IVANKA 2020 tells a tale that begins in turn-of-the-century imperial Russia, where a young girl named Anastasia receives a jewel-encrusted whistle as a gift from her doting grandmother. Unbeknownst to all within the golden palace, a courtier by the name of Rasputin has placed a curse on the whistle, allowing him to control the mind of the young girl, bringing about the sabotage needed to destroy the powerful family. Cut to almost a century later, where Russian government officials have discovered the whistle and its powers and set out to interfere with yet another powerful political family. This time, it will be another favored child in another golden palace that would be entangled in a game of international political espionage and her name...is Ivanka.
February 29 at 9:30PM
$25-$30
Hilarious! Witty! Entertaining! Naughty! are just a few words that describe Disco, Dicks And Dykes!
New York born and bred Performer, Singer, Songwriter, Composer, Comedian and now Playwright Kelli Sae stars in this cutting edge one woman show. "Disco, Dicks And Dykes!" tells the story of Kelli Sae's fascinating journey and the coming of age of a young woman growing up in New York City. In a side-splitting, comedic fashion she details the bumpy road of life defining events navigating her way through the music industry and discovering her sexuality. Backed by an incredible live band, Kelli's performance and euphonious voice leave you feeling uplifted and transported.March 16 at 7:00PM
$20
How do you get through the night? Cabarettist Molly Pope faces the literal and the metaphorical question on a nightlong musical mental agility course. Locked in her 6th floor walk-up, this solo musical delves into what she'll do to make it to the dawn; coping with being a human person, the bi-polarcoaster, and wind chimes. Named "one of downtown cabaret's most adventurous performers" (New York Times), Molly Pope brings her neo-retro musical sensibility to original songs written with Jim Andralis & Larry Krone, Lance Horne, Erato Kremmyda, Brian Nash, Martha Redbone, and music director/collaborator Matt Aument. "Polly Mope" is a wry look inside what can happen when you find yourself stuck alone with yourself on a long, sleepless night.
"Polly Mope" premiered at the Philadelphia's Kimmel Center in May 2019 and was developed in part at the Afterglow Festival, the Orchard Project, Joe's Pub/Kimmel Center Residence, Greenwich House Music School's "Uncharted Series."
May 22 at 7:00PM
$20
There's hardly any other artist who comes so close to David Bowie as Sven Ratzke. In his brand new show "Where Are We Now," Ratzke dives into the universe of the legend. Reimagining and rearranging the songs in his own style, pared down in an intimate setting with just Ratzke and his virtuoso pianist Christian Pabst, Ratzke makes them his own, revealing their purity and beauty, transcending the big Bowie themes in an evening that is soulful, surprising, and highly entertaining.
Sven Ratzke arrives to Joe's after capturing the hearts of audiences in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and at La Mama in NYC.
ONLINE joespub.com / PHONE 212-967-7555
IN PERSON The Public Theater Box Office, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC
NOTE There is a $12 food / two (2) drink minimum per person per show, unless otherwise noted.
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