Abraxas Stage Company Presents the World Premiere of CRAZY H
By: Robert Diamond Feb. 18, 2009
Abraxas STAGE COMPANY is pleased to announce, as part of the South Street Seaport Winter Theatre Season, the premiere of a new musical CRAZY HEAD SPACE, directed by Errickson Wilcox. CRAZY HEAD SPACE will play a five-week limited engagement @Seaport (210 Front Street), presented, in part, through the generous support of General Growth Properties. Performances begin Thursday, March 12 and continue Saturday, April 5.
CRAZY HEAD SPACE is a theatrical tribute to people living with mental illness, a musical tour of psychological disorders. Experience insanity at its most heightened, raw, and naked state. Based on the Diagnostic Statistical Manual by the American Psychiatric Association (the DSM IV), it runs the gamut A- Z; each letter of the alphabet tackling a different disorder. Celebrate mental disorder and in turn, the parts of ourselves that are often closeted, edited, or marginalized.
The production features choreography my Matthew Neff, scenic design by TBAand lighting design by Jason Scott. Michelangelo Sosnowitz is the sound engineer and Nick Meo is the stage manager.Tickets for all performances are $18. There is also a “Seaport Season Pass” for $40, which is good for admission to every performance at the South Street Seaport Winter Theatre Season.
For tickets, call Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or on the web at www.smarttix.com.
For information and a complete performance schedule, go to the Dog Run Rep website at www.dogrunrep.org.
ELISABETH S DAVIS (Lyrics and Music) is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and more recently, the NYU Masters' program in Drama Therapy. She wrote and directed Crazy Head Space at the Stella Adler Conservatory in 1994 and put it on hold for some years in order to write more
marketable works like Shelf Lives, a musical about a woman who gives birth to a pineapple. Currently she works at Elmhurst Hospital Center on an inpatient unit for adolescents. There she employs drama, art, music and poetry to promote healing as a Drama Therapist. She is an instructor at the New School University in their Creative Arts Therapy department. Her greatest accomplishment thus far has been learning to hold onto the sanity within the insanity. Her greatest
ambition is to serve the community that understands and taught her how.
MICHELANGELO SOSNOWITZ (Music) It was noticed at a very young age that Michelangelo Sosnowitz, (his real name) was extremely gifted at the piano. At the age of six Michelangelo began composing music, and to the wonder of his teachers and peers alike, Michelangelo was also repeating songs and passages he heard on the piano, by ear, verbatim. And so began Michelangelo's immersion into music; from intense classical study to hours of improvisation, it was clear that Michelangelo's passion was the piano. By thirteen, Michelangelo had won the Young Concert Artists International Piano Competition and the Project Mozart Award for Young Composers in the same year. And that was the year Michelangelo also got his first bedroom 'four-track', to start recording his songs.
By the time he was eighteen, Michelangelo had effectively recorded four ninety-minute tapes worth of music that circulated generously throughout his High School. He was awarded the Greenwich Jazz Festival Solo Award for outstanding musicianship, was selected an All State Finalist for vocals, and at sixteen, Michelangelo won The Connecticut Songwriting Competition for his song "Standing in the Snow".
Michelangelo then went on to NYU and quickly fell into a career of theater and film scoring, winning three "Best Score" awards in three years at the First Run Film Festival in New York City. To date, Michelangelo has written music for HBO, VH1, The History Channel, USA Network, Telemundo, PBS, Phillips Norelco, Garnier Fructîs, Acuvue, the main theme for the CONCACAF Champion's League soccer tournament, (as well as all of their commercials) the score to Independent Films , Industrial Films, Off-Broadway Theater, Off-Off-Broadway Theater, Children's Theater, Public Radio, Commercial Specs, Television Pilots, Children’s Video Games, World Documentaries, Rock/Pop demos, Elevator Muzak (seriously!), Video Magazines, Classical Pieces, Dance Pieces, Aerobics Music (seriously!) and music for the Jumbotron at Madison Square Garden, (sung by the Harlem's Boy's Choir). During this time, Michelangelo also put an all-star band together and started performing in New York City's world-renowned live music scene.
With his band, Michelangelo has performed at numerous music festivals and concerts, as well as a non-stop stream of steady shows in New York City and the East Coast. His music has been played on hundreds of college radio stations across the United States, making CMJ's Top 100 Most Added List at #11, and featured on several commercial AAA and Internet radio stations as well. His last three albums have been greeted by highly enthusiastic reviews, and achieved "featured artist" position on cdfreedom.com, cdbaby.com, FreeplayMusic and NIMBIT. Michelangelo's music has also been selected for NIMBIT's Holiday Party compilation, First Spinz Radio’s Rock/Pop collection, and Cooper Studio's Popkomm 2005 compilation and Midem 2008 compilation. His music was heard recently in the David Blaine ‘Street Magic’ special on ABC.
Michelangelo wrote the lead tease music to the HBO miniseries, ‘Generation Kill’ as well as the original title sequence music to the History Channel shows ‘The Works’ and ‘Battles BC’. Michelangelo's music has been signed to several publishing catalogs and has been featured on Television and in Film. www.michelangelomusic.com
Errickson Wilcox (Director)
Abraxas Stage Company is a New York-based social impact theater company dedicated to the development of dynamic new voices in American theater. Abraxas debuts exciting, innovative works while also building awareness, mobilizing action and delivering portions of its proceeds toward under-served community causes. As part of The Company's goal to fuse art with social impact, Abraxas supports local causes that resonate with critical social themes expressed in its theatrical
productions. The Company, which seeks to engage and inspire its audiences, operates as a non-profit organization that sources funding through production revenues, grants, investors, and private donations.
The Company's founder and Executive Director, Kendra Leigh Landon, is a theater graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and was a student of the Stella Adler Conservatory and the Experimental Theater Wing of NYU. A professional actress and an active proponent of non-profit theater, Ms. Landon founded Abraxas in January of 2009, inspired by her parents' passion for the arts and commitment to community involvement. She dedicates Abraxas and its continuing mission to their loving memory.
Winter Theatre at South Street Seaport is part of Seaport Semester, an eclectic series of classes, performances and programming created for infants, families and seniors, alike, and made possible with the support of General Growth Properties in conjunction with an array of community-based partners, including, but not limited to, Church Street School for Music and Art, Dog Run Rep Theater, Downtown Babies, Montauk Theater Productions, Seaport Music Radio and Tada! Youth Theater. The Seaport Semester activities run through June 2009.
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