NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH LEWIS BLACK to Return to The Laurie Beechman

It is with great pleasure that The West Bank Café announces NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH LEWIS BLACK, presented in The Laurie Beechman Theatre on Thursday, December 31, from 6 to 10 p.m.

Lewis will once again toast to the year gone by and rant us into the new. Lewis will be joined by Broadway's Liz Callaway and comedian John Bowman.

The West Bank Café is located at 407 West 42nd. St., at Ninth Avenue. Tickets are $175 plus a $60 food and beverage minimum per person. For tickets, go to lauriebeechmantheatre.com.

The Laurie Beechman Theatre has a rich tradition of presenting cutting-edge work, which has played a role in shaping American theatre and live performance. Since the 80's, the theatre has staged numerous plays and hosted a myriad of live performance events spanning 35 + years.

Lewis Black is known as the king of the rant, Lewis Black uses his trademark style of comedic yelling and animated finger-pointing to skewer anything and anyone that gets under his skin. His comedic brilliance lies in his ability to make people laugh at the absurdities of life, with topics that include current events, social media, politics and anything else that exposes the hypocrisy and madness he sees in the world.

Receiving critical acclaim as a stand-up, actor and author, Lewis Black has performed for audiences throughout Europe, New Zealand, Canada and The United States. In 2012, he performed eight sell-out shows at The Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway.

Lewis has taped four specials for the Comedy Central Presents series, co-created Last Laugh with Lewis Black, presided over Lewis Black's The Root of All Evil, and continues to perform Back in Black on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. His popular appearances on Comedy Central helped to win him Best Male Stand-Up at the American Comedy Awards in 2001.

Increased exposure from The Daily Show eventually generated a record deal with Stand Up! Records. His first CD, The White Album, was released in 2000 to much critical acclaim. Lewis followed with eight more, six under the Comedy Central Records label. He has been graced with 5 Grammy nominations and two wins for his work. The first nomination came in 2006 for Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues, the second in 2009 for Anticipation. In 2007 he won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album for The Carnegie Hall Performance and in 2011, his second for Stark Raving Black. His 2012 release, In God We Rust (Comedy Central Records) was also nominated for a Grammy.

He's filmed two specials for HBO, Black On Broadway and Red, White and Screwed. The latter was nominated for an Emmy in 2007. He had a regular feature for two seasons on Inside the NFL (for which he earned a Sports Emmy) and in 2006 was honored to be asked to participate in Comic Relief.

In 2009 Lewis filmed his first feature length concert film, Stark Raving Black at the Fillmore Theatre in Detroit. The film had a limited run in theaters across the US and Canada in the summer of 2010. At the end of the theater run, premium movie channel EpixHD picked up the film for its channel along with the accompanying documentary Basic Black. Both are still aired regularly and can be found in the EpixHD on demand queue. 2011 found him producing his second full length concert, In God We Rust, which also still airs on EpixHD. In August 2013, he recorded his ninth stand-up special Old Yeller: Live At The Borgata.

In 2006, Lewis had a break out year as an actor. He co-starred with Robin Williams in Barry Levinson's Man of the Year (Universal Pictures), appeared as "the fake dean of a fake college" in Steve Pink's Accepted (Universal Pictures) and as the harried airport manager in Paul Feig's Unaccompanied Minors (Warner Brothers). Most recently Lewis has lent his voice to the character of Anger in the blockbuster animated film Inside Out (Pixar).

Liz Callaway is an American actress and singer, famous for providing the singing voices of many female characters in animated films, such as Anya/Anastasia in Anastasia, Odette in The Swan Princess, and the Adult Kiara in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. Callaway made her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim's short-lived but now famous Merrily We Roll Along (1981). This began a long-term professional relationship with Sondheim: Callaway has performed in a number of live concerts in his honor, appeared with Sondheim on Inside the Actors Studio and also played the role of Young Sally in the Lincoln Center concert production of Follies Additional stage credits include Lizzie in Baby (for which she earned a Tony Award nomination), The Three Musketeers, The Spitfire Grill (for which she earned a Drama Desk Award nomination), Sunday in the Park with George, Evita, Cats, and Miss Saigon. Liz also performed in The Look of Love, a 2003 musical revue of the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Callaway also had her own children's television show on WNEV-TV in Boston, Ready to Go, which ran from 1987 to 1991. She left this series in order to begin rehearsals for Miss Saigon on Broadway.

She has performed various cabaret acts at Joe's Pub, Rainbow & Stars, the Russian Tea Room, and the Lincoln Center in New York City, and at the Donmar Warehouse in London, among other venues.

Callaway's solo recordings include Anywhere I Wander (1993), The Story Goes On (1995), and The Beat Goes On (2001). She released her fourth recording, Passage of Time, for the record label PS Classics, on October 20, 2009 which featured an appearance with her sister Ann Hampton Callaway. The album has garnered[citation needed] rave reviews.

John Bowman, a comedian and actor, has appeared in many television shows including "Seinfeld", "Ellen", "LA Law", and "Miami Vice". His live Theater credits include a number of shows in New York, sharing the stage with James Earl Jones, Bruce Weitz, and Leslie Uggams, as well as working with directors, Jack O'Brian (Tony Winner), Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Robert Wilson. As a Stand-Up comic, he appeared as the last "debut" comic on the "Tonight Show with Johnny Carson", as well as numerous spots on MTV and A&E and others. He has been called "An emotional quick change artist"- NY Magazine, and "Always Fascinating"-NY Times. John is currently touring with Lewis Black, where he is developing a performance style that includes three Shetland Sheepdogs, who among other things, re-enact the tragic mauling of Roy, of Seigfreid and Roy. In short, he's a genius.

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