PlayCo Holds Cabaret Gourmet Gala Featuring Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret

The Play Company (PlayCo; Founding Producer Kate Loewald, Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw) announces the chefs and artists scheduled for their 2019 gala, Cabaret Gourmet: Radiance,on Monday, April 29th at Sony Hall in Midtown Manhattan. Philadelphia's "most beloved drag character" (WHYY) and "Drag Queen King" (the Philadelphia Inquirer) Martha Graham Cracker-embodied by Pig Iron Theatre Company co-founder Dito van Reigersberg-will dazzle guests with indefatigable wit and hirsute beauty as this year's Mistress of Ceremonies. Martha and her band, the Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret,will give a special live performance.Participating chefs and restaurants will include Chef Michael Han/Ortzi, Chef Mark Mata/The Writing Room, The Ribbon, Chef Alexander Harris/Emma's Torch, Chef Hugue Dufour/M. Wells, Chef Caranda-Martin/Serengeti Kitchen, Chefs Ejhadji and Cheikh Cisse/PonyBistro, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, and Tableside Italian Cook Shoppe.

PlayCo is thrilled to honor non-profit social enterprise and restaurant Emma's Torch, and its executive director and founder Kerry Brodie, as well as Insecure's Season 3 breakout Alexander Hodge-in keeping with this year's celebration of chefs, artists, food lovers, and change makers who inject light and energy into their respective fields.

For 16 years this has been a unique and popular event in the NYC benefit calendar, raising vital funds for the award-winning, not-for-profit theatre company with a mission to engage New Yorkers in a dynamic, global experience of contemporary theatre, bringing vital new plays from around the world to NYC stages. This is PlayCo's biggest fundraiser of the year, with a vibrant mix of stars from theatre and culinary arenas focused on raising crucial funds for their adventurous productions.

The Host Committee includes: Katherine Alford & Robert S. Johnson, Doughba Hamilton Caranda-Martin, Michael Fedele & Douglas Wurth, Sarah & Matt Frazier, and Andrew Friedman.

The locally sourced beverage offerings will include a unique curated wine selection as well as beer provided by Sixpoint Brewery of Brooklyn, New York; spirits by Edinburgh Gin; adult sodas by GuS; and artisanal coffee by JoeCoffee.

About Martha Graham Cracker/Dito van Reigersberg

Martha Graham-Cracker is famously "the tallest and hairiest drag queen in the world." Her monthly cabaret series at L'Etage in Philadelphia has been running for over 13 years. Along with her extraordinarily tight band, she has performed regularly at a wide variety of venues including Joe's Pub, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Union Transfer, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Trocadero Theatre, World Cafe Live, The Afterglow Festival in Provincetown, and the Mayor's Reception Room in City Hall. She also recently created a vaguely autobiographical show of original songs about books, libraries, and lost love entitled Lashed but Not Leashed, premiered at the Kimmel Center and presented at Joe's Pub during Under the Radar Festival and the Guthrie Theater.

Martha's alter-ego Dito van Reigersberg is a co-founder of Pig Iron Theatre Company, a physical-theatre company that has created over 30 original pieces in its 24-year history. He has performed in almost all of Pig Iron's productions since 1995, including the OBIE-winners Hell Meets Henry Halfway and Chekhov Lizardbrain. He has also created and performed with Headlong, Azuka, Mauckingbird, Bearded Ladies, Arden Theatre Company, Rude Mechs, and Nichole Canuso Dance Company. He is a Barrymore Award recipient for Best Ensemble for Mission to Mercury and for Best Choreography for Cafeteria (Pig Iron), a Barrymore nominee for Best Actor in a Musical for Hedwig (Azuka), as well as a Helen Hayes Nominee for Best Leading Actor for Hell Meets Henry Halfway. With his Pig Iron cohorts Dan Rothenberg and Quinn Bauriedel, he was named a Pew Fellow (2002) and a Knight USA Fellow (2010). A graduate of Swarthmore College, he trained at The Neighborhood Playhouse and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance.

About the Honorees

Kerry Brodie/Emma's Torch

Kerry founded Emma's Torch in 2016 after serving as Global Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and Director of Communications at the Israeli Embassy. A graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education, Kerry won the Wusthof Award for Leadership and was named ACCSC Graduate of the Year. She holds an MA from Johns Hopkins University and an AB from Princeton University. Kerry was named one of City & State's 40 Under 40 in 2018.

Emma's Torch provides refugees with top-notch culinary training, ESL classes, and interview preparation in classes run out of their Caroll Gardens restaurant. The non-profit social enterprise helps refugees make a successful transition into an industry in which their cultural heritage and cuisine can be celebrated, while fostering community and supportive relationships. Nearly all Emma's Torch graduates seeking full-time careers were placed in culinary jobs in 2017 and 2018.

Alexander Hodge

Alexander is a SAG-AFTRA actor and writer of mixed-race heritage (Singaporean/Irish). An alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts conservatory program, he has worked on many projects across theatre, television & film. Last year, Alexander could be seen as the recurring character "Andrew" in season 3 of HBO's Insecure. He was a member of ABC's 2017 Talent Showcase, and has appeared in ABC's Modern Family, NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, CBS's Bull, HBO's High Maintenance and the feature film ABE (Sundance 2019).

About The Play Company (PlayCo)

The Play Company is an OBIE Award-winning Off-Broadway theater production company. Since launching in 1999, PlayCo has produced 36 new plays from the United States, Italy, Palestine, Germany, Romania, Poland, Sweden, Japan, India, Russia, Chile, Mexico, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. PlayCo develops and produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, advancing a dynamic global experience of contemporary theater and expanding the American theater repertoire.

As the only New York company regularly producing outstanding contemporary plays from around the world alongside new American work, PlayCo's distinctive international programming links American theatre with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays.

Recent productions by PlayCo include Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas' haunting Recent Alien Abductions, Lee Sunday Evans' New York Times Critics' Pick production of Stefano Massini's Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya, the sold-out run of Amir Nizar Zuabi's critically-acclaimed Oh My Sweet Land, Guillermo Calderón's Villa, Christopher Chen's Caught (Obie award for Playwriting, 2017), Maria Milisavljevic's Abyss, Kyle Jarrow & Lauren Worsham's The Wildness, Debbie Tucker Green's generations, Aya Ogawa's Ludic Proxy, Antonio Vega's The Duchamp Syndrome, and more.

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