Cady Huffman, Orfeh & More Set For New York Musical Improv Festival 11/14

The Magnet Theater announces casting for an evening of music and improve comedy to benefit Gilda's Club New York City on Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 7:30pm at The Helen Mills Theater, 139 W. 26th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), NYC.

All proceeds from the benefit performance will go to Gilda's Club New York City to raise funds and awareness for people living with cancer. The show features an all-star, all-female cast of of Tony-award winners performing alongside NYC's finest improv comedians, gathering together for one night to honor the comic legacy of Gilda Radner. The line-up includes:

Tony Award Winner Cady Huffman (The Producers, Steel Pier, Will Rogers Follies)
Tony Award Nominee Orfeh (Legally Blonde, Saturday Night Fever, Footloose)
Kate Pazakis (Jerry Springer the Opera at Carnegie Hall, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Mostly Sondheim at The Duplex)
Jill Bernard's Drum Machine, the award-winning, fully-improvised one-women musical
Generation G, an all-female cast of top comedy improv/musical improv performers, featuring special guests from the world of Broadway and television. Cast: Tara Copeland, Jill Bernard, Jess Elaina Eason, Colleen McHugh, Desiree Nash, Ashley Ward.

The Benefit Performance for Gilda's Club NYC is part of the Magnet Theater's second annual New York Musical Improv Festival which runs from November 12 - 13, 2010 at 254 W. 29th Street, ground floor (between 7th and 8th Avenues), NYC.

More than 13 teams from New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Las Vegas, and Minnesota will create fully-realized musical theatre, in on-the-spot performances, including Baby Wants Candy (Chicago/NYC), Choral Rage (NYC), Diamond Lion (NYC), FACE (NYC), Generation G (NYC), Jill Bernard's Drum Machine (Minneapolis), The Made Up Musical (NYC), Miracle Baby (NYC), North Coast! (NYC), Reset List: An Improvised Rock Experience (Chicago), Trudy Carmichael's Musical Mixer (Las Vegas/NYC), VEAL (NYC), Vox Pop (Washington, D.C.) and, direct from Broadway's Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and on-screen appearances opposite Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, and Alec Baldwin, Jeff Hiller with his Dream Team (NYC). Tickets are $0-$25 and are available at www.brownpapertickets.com or by phone at 800-838-3006.

VEAL and Choral Rage
Friday, November 12 at 6pm - Tickets $15

VEAL is a regular performer at NYC's Players Theater. Based on an audience suggestion, Veal creates characters, scenes and songs, weaving them together with energy, enthusiasm and -- yes -- jazz hands. Founded at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

Join the prolific pros of Choral Rage on a journey to the depths of your imagination; to those secret places in the recesses of your brain that only the bravest dare shine a light on.

Vox Pop and The Made Up Musical
Friday, November 12 at 8pm - Tickets $15

Vox Pop picks up where the spoken word leaves off. These three musical improvisers bring audiences to new heights where eagles cry on a mountain high and you have to say "I love you" in a song. We explore the ins and outs of human relationships using only improvised songs - dialogue need not apply.

The Made Up Musical is the longest running improvised musical in NYC. Every Friday night, The Made-Up Musical sings and dances its way onto the Magnet Theater stage with a one of a kind musical comedy every week! After an interview with an audience member, the cast weaves together a full one-act musical, complete with all the songs, trappings and melodrama you'd expect to find from our friends on Broadway.

Reset List: An Improvised Rock Experience and Diamond Lion
Friday, November 12 at 10pm - Tickets $15

Reset List presents a completely improvised rock concert where chord progressions, lyrics, harmonies, dance breaks, and all that goes on in between is made up on the spot. Audience suggestions fill out the set list each night. No song is ever sung twice and every night is a brand new show with a completely new set list.

Some of New York's top improvisers create a fully improvised musical out of thin air. It's more awesome than a lion - it's a Diamond Lion. The added twist - one talented improviser with NO musical improv experience joins the cast for that one show only - and keeps up with the pros.

Trudy Carmichael's Musical Mixer
Friday, November 12 at Midnight - Tickets FREE

Trudy Carmichael's Musical Mixer challenges you to try your lady (and manly) luck at making up music side-by-side with some of the finest Musical Improvisers in the country! Anyone can sign up to perform - even if it's your first time. Keep your bankroll stashed because admission to the Mixer is 100% free! Hosted by Vegas Lounge Legend and Lush Miss Trudy Carmichael and the incomparable Frankie Keys, tickling the ivories.

The I.P.O. (Initial Public Offering) and TBA - New and Emerging Performers
Saturday, November 13 at 5pm - Tickets $10

Miracle Baby and TBA
Saturday, November 13 at 7pm - Tickets $15

One of the first musical improv groups to become a resident house team - performing Friday nights at the Magnet Theater, Miracle Baby takes an audience member's suggestion and uses it to create a world full of bold heroes, outrageous villains, and larger than life personalities. Who sing.

FACE and Baby Wants Candy
Saturday, November 13 at 9pm - Tickets $15

FACE has been breaking new ground like no other show in NYC right now. Fusing improvised jazz music, comedy, drama, dance, and song, FACE celebrates improvisation. The four musicians (upright bass, keyboard, drums, saxophone) and five actors perform without rules or restrictions, not only surprising the audience, but surprising the performers themselves.

Baby Wants Candy has established itself in New York and Chicago as the only musical improv group to perform a fully-improvised one-act musical with a full band. Based on a single audience suggestion of a title, the actors and musicians work together harmoniously to deliver a hilarious evening's entertainment.

North Coast! and Jeff Hiller's Dream Team
Saturday, November 13 at 11pm - Tickets $15

Now that the east coast/west coast beef has subsided, North Coast! is stepping up to throw down. Watch as New York's only freestyle rapping, beatboxing, long-form improv team performs a fully improvised "hip hopera" right in front of yo mouf. You bring your favorite rap lyric and North Coast! will make your gut bust and your head bop. And if you don't know, now you know.

Top performers create a one-night only Dream Team hosted and curated by Jeff Hiller. Veteran New York comedian/actor Jeff Hiller takes the stage with his own "dream team" of top talent. Direct from Broadway's Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and on-screen appearances opposite Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, and Alec Baldwin, Jeff is inviting his favorite performers from musical improv and Broadway to create a one-night-only, comedic free-for-all to close out the NY Musical Improv Festival.

SPECIAL BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
Sunday, November 14 at 7:30pm - Tickets $25 (includes open bar)
All proceeds will benefit Gilda's Club New York City.

Tony Award Winner Cady Huffman (The Producers, Steel Pier, Will Rogers Follies)
Tony Award Nominee Orfeh (Legally Blonde, Saturday Night Fever, Footloose)
Kate Pazakis (Jerry Springer the Opera at Carnegie Hall, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Mostly Sondheim at The Duplex)
Jill Bernard's Drum Machine, the award-winning, fully-improvised one-women musical
Generation G, an all-female cast of top comedy improv/musical improv performers, featuring special guests from the world of Broadway and television. Cast: Tara Copeland, Jill Bernard, Jess Elaina Eason, Colleen McHugh, Desiree Nash, Ashley Ward.

Drum Machine is Jill Bernard's award-winning one-person unscripted musical featuring multiple characters in scenes, monologues and songs accompanied by the mad beats of the Zoom-Rhythmtrak 123 which Bernard calls "nature's finest drum machine." The show opens with an audience interview that is woven into a suggested historical period.

Tara Copeland brings together a new generation of women performers who bring the laughs hard and fast. A veteran improviser and performer, Tara is a member of the group Mother, who invented the forms The SleepOver and The Soundtrack and the group Ms. Jackson (2004 ECNY Best Improv Group). Tara has also appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Best Week Ever, and the movie College Road Trip. She performs regularly with Baby Wants Candy and The Made Up Musical.

Proceeds from the performance will benefit Gilda's Club New York City. Gilda's Club New York City creates welcoming communities of free support for everyone living with cancer - men, women, teens and children - along with their families and friends. Their innovative program is an essential complement to medical care, providing networking and support groups, workshops, lectures and social activities, all free of charge. They provide their program in beautiful, non-residential homelike settings: their clubhouse is a four-story brownstone on West Houston Street in Manhattan, and they have three satellite locations in Brooklyn, two in the Bronx and one in Manhattan as part of their community satellite program. Visit www.GildasClubNYC.org for more information.

Magnet Theater hosts a variety of performances and special events by the best of New York's improv masters and visiting International Artists on Mondays through Sundays at 254 W. 29th Street, ground floor (between 7th and 8th Avenues), NYC.

Magnet Theater arrived to further define Chelsea's "comedy corridor" in March of 2005. Founders Armando Diaz, Ed Herbstman, and Alex Marino came together with The Common goal of teaching improvisation and sketch writing, while developing and presenting fantastic comedy shows and other diverse entertainments and art. Magnet Theater's founders studied under long-form Chicago improv guru Del Close at ImprovOlympic and have since helped to shape the New York comedy scene dramatically through teaching, performing and presenting comical theatrics individually and together.

For more information, visit www.nymif.com.

Photo Credit: Monica Simoes

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