Erin Markey's A RIDE ON THE IRISH CREAM Extends Run at Abrons Arts Center

Due to popular demand, Abrons Arts Center extends the world premiere of Erin Markey's A Ride On The Irish Cream, a sharp and playful,performance art musical about the role childhood plays in our adult intimacies. Directed by Jordan Fein, A Ride On The Irish Cream stars real-life couple Becca Blackwell (Doris Duke Impact Award Recipient) and Markey, a "magnetic diva," (The New York Times). It features a live, four-piece band playing original music composed by Kenny Mellman, Emily Bate and Markey. The show began as part of the American Realness festival (Jan 13-17), opened on January 20, and will now close on February 6. In The New York Times, Jason Zinoman wrote about Markey, that "in a fevered glance, she moves between seduction and terror, and with the rise of an owlish eyelid, she pushes gentle vulnerability into cartoonish ridiculousness."

A Ride On The Irish Cream is a musical anchored inside the memory of a Michigan backyard on the bank of the Kawkawlin River. A live band and original score become the space for the thrills and terrors of a relationship between Reagan (Markey), a vainglorious self-made girl, and Irish Cream (Becca Blackwell), her family's pontoon boat/horse. They are in love, but when their relationship is tested by dust ruffles, sex for money, severe T-storms, and a secret cellar, the only way to stay together is to remember all the parts of themselves their bodies tried to forget.

Performances of A Ride On The Irish Cream will take place January 19 - February 6 (see above schedule) at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand St, Manhattan). Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or visiting abronsartcenter.org.

The creative team for A Ride On The Irish Cream includes Barbara Samuels (lighting design), Enver Chakartash (costume design), Adam Rigg (set design) and Dan Rider (sound design). Musical direction is by Emily Bate, musical composition is by Emily Bate, Erin Markey and Kenny Mellman, and will be performed live by Ian Axness, Emily Bate, Mike Marcinowski and Chenda Cope.

About the Artists

Erin Markey (Reagan, Writer, Creator, Co-composer & Lyricist) is a New York based performance artist, comedian, writer and composer named a "magnetic diva" by the New York Times and a Time Out New York Top Ten Cabaret Performer 2013-2015. Her work has been shown at BAM, Under The Radar Festival (Public Theater), New Museum, PS122, Bard Spiegeltent, New York Comedy Festival, San Francisco Film Society, and regularly at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater. She is the recipient of a 2014 Franklin Furnace Grant and a 2012 NYFA Cutting Edge Artist Award. She won an Eliot Norton Award for Outstanding Performance in 2013. In development for A Ride On The Irish Cream, she has been a resident artist at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Mount Tremper Arts and Baryshnikov Arts Center. She is a member of the Obie Award- winning theater company Half Straddle and is performing in and co-composing music for the company's upcoming Ghost Rings at New York Live Arts in April 2016. As an actress, she has appeared in numerous live and film/video driven projects. For a complete list, type "Reese Witherspoon" into an imdb search. She currently teaches at New York University.

Becca Blackwell (Irish Cream) is a NYC based trans actor, performer and writer. Existing between genders, and preferring the pronoun "they," Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expend our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D'Amour. Becca is a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award 2015 and recently wrote a solo show They, Themself and Schmerm that will be having a run in the upcoming spring of 2016.

Jordan Fein (Director)is a Brooklyn based theatre and opera director. Directing credits include War Lesbian (HarunaLee/Dixon Place), The Dixon Family Album (Williamstown Theatre Festival: Boris Sagal Fellow 2014), The Rake's Progress and L'Elisir D"Amore (Curtis Opera Theatre), Dialogues of the Carmelites (Opera Philadelphia), Rags Parkland (Ars Nova Ant Fest/Jack), Edibles Inc. (Incubator Arts Project). Jordan was the Associate Director on Rodger and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (Bard Summerscape, dir. Daniel Fish) and The Elephant Man (Broadway and The West End, dir. Scott Ellis). This spring Jordan will return to Curtis Opera Theatre (Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts) to direct a new production of Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro. He currently teaches at New York University, Playwrights Horizons Theater School. jordanfein.net

Emily Bate (Co-composer/Musical Director/Vocalist/Guitarist) is a singer, composer and harmony fanatic based in Philadelphia. Her current projects include Going Down Mount Moriah, a theater piece based around an 8-voice women's choir; a series of "zingles" (zine + single) combining writing and music; and acoustic chamber-math duo Jonagold.

Kenny Mellman (Co-composer) is in The Julie Ruin. Fronted by Kathleen Hanna, of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre fame, they released their critically acclaimed debut album Run Fast in September 2013 and have toured extensively since then. They are currently recording their 2nd album. Mr. Mellman was , for many years, one half (with Justin Vivian Bond) of the Tony nominated and Obie and Bessie winning act Kiki and Herb. His show Kenny Mellman Is Grace Jones toured the US, Australia and the UK and his one man musical about gay bashing and homophobia, Say Sea Boy You Sissy Boy? was commissioned by Dixon Place. He co-wrote the musical At Least It's Pink with Michael Patrick King and Bridget Everett at ArsNova. He also, with Everett and Neal Medlyn, co-created Our Hit Parade, a downtown NY deconstruction of the pop charts which ran for 4 sold-out years at Joe's Pub.

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