Karen Akers, Trezana Beverley & More to Take Part in Urban Stages' 39th Annual Benefit STORIES & SONGS

Urban Stages will present its 39th annual benefit, taking place on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023 starting a 6:30pm at the legendary club The Players - 16 Gramercy Park South, NYC.

This year's benefit, Stories and Songs, draws attention to Urban Stages' growing artistic community with a night of performances by some of their most celebrated artists. Flowing cocktails, dinner, live music and a live after-dinner auction will be part of the gala. Auctioneer Nicholas Lowry from Swann Galleries returns to head the exclusive auction with golf outings, vacation destination, award-winning wine and theater tickets on the block.

Performing artists include Broadway and cabaret star Karen Akers, Sam Norkin Drama Desk Award-Winner Mary Bacon, Tony Award-Winner Trezana Beverley, songwriter and humorist John Forster, singer and multi-hyphenated talent Elizabeth Hayden - Passero, multi-Instrumentalist, composer and educator Mary Spencer Knapp, Latin Grammy-Nominated Peruvian singer Araceli Poma and music director and composer Alex Rybeck,

Tickets are partially tax-deductible and all proceeds will go to Urban Stages' programming. Since 1984, Urban Stages has championed diverse artists and new works on its award-winning Off-Broadway stage. The theater has received multiple awards, nominations and recognition for its critically acclaimed plays, musicals and music festivals. Primary to its mission, Urban Stages seeks to eliminate the socioeconomic barriers that prevent many from engaging in art, theater and education. In addition to its Off-Broadway stage, Urban Stages, through its Outreach Program, tours multilingual workshops, plays and more to libraries across the city, reaching thousands of New Yorkers annually with free arts programming.

Tickets, Tables & More Information: urbanstages.org
212.421.1380 for questions
Tickets are partially tax-deductible.

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More about the performers -

Karen Akers

one of America's most arresting and successful concert and cabaret stars, has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Russia. She has appeared in prestigious venues worldwide and in the Tony Award-winning musical Grand Hotel and in Nine for which she won a Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination.

Mary Bacon

received the Sam Norkin Drama Desk special award for her performances as Patti in The Public's Coal Country, and as Susan in Nothing Gold Can Stay with Partial Comfort, and for the span of her NYC career. She recently starred in Urban Stages' Eleanor and Alice by Ellen Abrams. She reprised

Trezana Beverley

is the recipient of the coveted Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She is a veteran actress and prolific director, singer and educator. Ms. Beverley was last seen at Urban Stages in Eleanor and Alice by Ellen Abrams.

John Forster

John Forster'S songs encompass the worlds of theater, cabaret, comedy and children's music. He is a 2023 MAC Award winner for
"The Zoom Song" and a 4-time Grammy nominee. His songs have been recorded by such artists as Faith Hill, Rosanne Cash, Judy Collins, Dave Van Ronk and Christine Lavin, among many others.

ELIZABETH HAYDEN - PASSERO

is a singer, actress, producer, director, casting director, and interior/set designer. She has starred in musicals and sung with orchestras and in cabarets across the country. This January, she directed Casting Aspersions at Urban Stages and is now in rehearsals to star in a production of Noel Coward's Fallen Angels.

MARY KNAPP

is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and actor. She is founder of children's music education project The Nightingale Fam as well as cabaret soul band Toot Sweet and free form punk band Death Sneeze. Mary made her Broadway debut as actor/accordionist in the 2016 production of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.

ARACELI POMA

is one of the most representative artists of the new generation of Peruvian music. Her most recent project Afro-Andean Funk - a new band with bassist/producer/composer Matt Geraghty -received a Latin Grammy nomination for their debut album The Sacred Leaf. Araceli's first Latin Grammy nomination was in 2020 for the album The Warrior Women of Afro-Peruvian Music.

Alex Rybeck

is a music director, composer, arranger and pianist, best known for his work in concerts and cabarets, on recordings, and in the theater.

More about Urban Stages

Urban Stages is an award-winning, not-for-profit, Off-Broadway Theatre Company founded in 1984 by current Artistic Director Frances Hill. For 39 years, Urban Stages has produced dozens of world, American, and N.Y. premieres including Pulitzer Prize Finalist Bulrusher (2007) by Eisa Davis. We have been honored with awards, nominations and recognition from the Drama Desk, Obie Awards, Audelco, Outer Critics Circle and more. Plays produced at Urban Stages also often move on to larger venues and/or publication. Eleanor and Alice :Conversations Between Two Remarkable Roosevelts (2022&23), Gratitude by Oren Safdie (2022), Charmed Life from Soul Singing to Opera Star by Lori Brown Mirabal (2021) Bars and Measures by Idris Goodwin (2019) were critically acclaimed. Death of a Driver (2019) by Will Snider went on to a regional production at The Salt Lake Acting Company. In our 2017/18 season, A Deal by Zhu Yi (world premiered at Urban Stages) toured China and Dogs of Rwanda by Sean Christopher Lewis (New York premiered at Urban Stages) toured regionally. Other notable productions include the world premiere of the musical Langston In Harlem by Walter Marks (music and book) and Kent Gash (book and direction) garnered a Drama Desk Nomination, a Joe A. Calloway award and 4 Audelco awards including Best Musical Production of 2010. Critically acclaimed hits Mabel Madness by Tony-winner Trezana Beverley (2016), Communion by Daniel MacIvor (2016) and Angry Young Man by Ben Woolf (2017) which transferred to the John Drew Theatre at Guild Hall in East Hampton have premiered at Urban Stages. In addition, Unseamly, by Oren Safdie (2015), was an N.Y. Times Critics' Pick. Jim Brochu's Character Man (2014) was nominated for a Drama Desk and an Outer Critics Circle award for Best Solo performance and Honky (2013) by Greg Kalleres saw a regional run at San Diego Rep and was televised nationally on PBS in late 2015. 1996's Men on The Verge Of A Hispanic Breakdown by Guillermo Reyes and Minor Demons by Bruce Graham both moved to commercial theatres. Chili Queen, a play by newscaster Jim Lehrer, transferred to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (1989). My Occasion of Sin (2012) by Monica Bauer won critical acclaim when it moved to Detroit Rep. Bill Bowers has toured regionally and internationally with his two Urban Stages' premieres blending mime and theatre - Beyond Words (2012) and Under A Montana Moon (2002)! Some Urban Stages premieres have even been developed into film and television projects such as Scar by Murray Mednick, Conversations with The Goddesses by Agapi Stassinopoulos, and Cotton Mary by Alexandra Viets. In addition to plays and musicals, annually we hold a music festival - Winter Rhythms - that features famous and up-and-coming Cabaret, musicians, lyricists and other music artists. In 2016, Winter Rhythms was honored with the Bistro Award for Outstanding Series, and in 2015, it received the Ruth Kurtzman Benefit Series M.A.C. Award from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs.

Tickets, Tables & More Information: urbanstages.org
212.421.1380 for questions
Tickets are partially tax-deductible.

Above $200 of each ticket is tax deductible.

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