QUILT, A Musical Celebration To Be Presented At At Judson Memorial Church

In celebration of Stonewall's 50th Anniversary, Candid Theater Company, Judson Memorial Church, The Greenwich Village Orchestra, The West Village Chorale, MJP Theatrical, Metro Baptist Church, The NAMES Project Foundation/NAMES Memorial AIDS Quilt, and NYC Pride 2019 | WorldPride NYC | Stonewall50 have partnered to present a community-led professional presentation of QUILT, A MUSICAL CELEBRATION to benefit the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and Frontline AIDS (formerly the International HIV/AIDS Alliance).

QUILT, A MUSICAL CELEBRATION will be presented Friday, June 21 at 8 pm; Saturday, June 22 at 2 pm; Saturday, June 22 at 8 pm (VIP Cocktail Reception); and Sunday, June 23 at 4 pm at Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South, NYC). This one-weekend, four-performance-only presentation, will feature actors, singers, and performers representing a cross-section of the HIV activist community and community organizations. Tickets are $50-$65 ($50 for Saturday's VIP Reception) and can be purchased by visiting www.quiltmusical.org.

QUILT, A MUSICAL CELEBRATION is a unique and affecting work that celebrates and remembers both those who died from AIDS and those who have survived or been left behind. Based on true stories from friends and loved ones who were left behind, the musical is a living history for a new generation. This special presentation of QUILT, pairs community arts organizations with professional and amateur artists from around the country and is a celebration of the people, the laughter, and the tears, surrounding the deadliest plague in American History.

QUILT was first produced in 1992 in conjunction with the NAMES Project and the Smithsonian Institute as a means to celebrate the lives of people affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis. By honoring not only the people who lost their battle with this devastating pandemic, but also paying reverence to the people who love them and carry on their legacies. Too often the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS are viewed through the narrow lens of the people lost and the first-tier survivors (spouses, parents). QUILT takes a deeper look at the connective tissue of family (birth-family and chosen-family) and how this disease affects all of us in one way or another.

QUILT, A MUSICAL CELEBRATION has a book & lyrics by Jim Morgan, book by John Schak

music by Michael Stockler, directed by Justin Kirkeberg with music direction by Barbara Yahr, orchestrations by Brandon Kaplan, vocal direction by Henco Espag and produced by Mark Perry.

"This fundraiser is an opportunity to provide much-needed resources in the boots-on-the-ground efforts to fight to the pandemic. It's also a chance to remember that, while we've made vast improvements in the prevention and treatment of the virus, there is still no cure, and all of our communities need to be diligent in educating our communities about the realities of the virus and its impact. Even with the fabulous strides we've made, infection-rates have been increasing in the African American1 and Latinx communities."

QUILT director, Justin Kirkeberg

The following community partners are donating their time, talents, and resources, in order to live their missions of making this world a better place. This production is truly an example of the community coming together to do good for the community.

CANDID THEATER COMPANY dedicates itself to producing theater that addresses current political, social and ideological concerns. We develop new plays from concept to performance and explore existing texts in a modern sensibility. Candid Theater Company believes that theatre and all the arts should be accessible to everyone. So if we can't bring Mohammad to our mountain, we bring our mountain to Mohammad. We perform wherever our target audience is. Over the years we have performed in bars, churches, community centers, battered women's shelters, and prisons. We develop each production for the audience at hand, speaking to the events in their lives, and aim to empower the audience to create change in their worlds.

JUDSON ARTS: For decades, Judson has served as a home for experimental, boundary-pushing art. In a city bursting with budding artists, the ever-growing scarcity of open, inviting space is especially disheartening. So Judson Arts continues to pursue our nurturing artistic mission: We offer a haven for creative bursts that may evaporate in a puff of smoke, may send sparks flying, and may explode our comfortable complacency. And we cherish every one of these moments as sacred. The results are continually astonishing. Artists walk back out of our doors having incubated startling new trajectories in dance, theater, music, and visual arts. Along the way, they irreversibly transform us, our practice, and our commitment to a vibrant future of shared, embodied experience.

GREENWICH VILLAGE ORCHESTRA was founded in 1986 by a group of musicians from the New York Metropolitan area. We are a 70-person community orchestra made up of accountants, actors, artists, attorneys, carpenters, editors, physicians, professors, programmers, retirees, riverboat gamblers, scientists, secretaries, students, and teachers. For over thirty years, the Greenwich Village Orchestra has had a single purpose: to bring the best possible performances of great music to our audience. The GVO is committed to making music at the highest possible level and dedicated to enriching the lives of our players and our audience. Our performances are emotionally charged, exhilarating experiences that delights our audiences and the performers alike.

THE WEST VILLAGE CHORALE is a 70-piece choir made up of talented avocational singers with varied professional backgrounds but one shared goal: to make beautiful music. Our members give voice, leadership, and passion to the Chorale. We perform several concerts per year, with repertoire ranging from traditional choral staples to contemporary pieces (including several world premieres and commissions in recent years). We host an annual Caroling Walk that regularly sends hundreds of singers out around the Village, and a series of weekly Summer Sings (which recently completed their 47th summer), which allow the many choral singers in the area the chance to get together and sing some classic pieces while the choruses are summer hiatus. And because we are lucky enough to make music in New York, we've also had the opportunity to participate in a variety of other activities-including singing with Patti LuPone and indie rock band Sky-Pony at the 2016 Park Avenue Armory Gala, and other private events.

THE NAMES PROJECT FOUNDATION, established in 1987, is the international custodian of The AIDS Memorial Quilt. Its mission is to preserve, care for, and use the AIDS Memorial Quilt to foster healing, heighten awareness, and inspire action in the struggle against HIV and AIDS. The NAMES Project Foundation works with hundreds of partners across the country to orchestrate more than 1,000 displays every year in schools, universities, places of worship, corporations and community centers. Panel making remains a vital element of The NAMES Project as new panels arrive at our offices daily. Free panel-making workshops unfold around the country and every Sunday afternoon at the national headquarters. In 2005, The Quilt was deemed an official American treasure with the awarding of the prestigious "Save America's Treasures" Federal Grant. With this award, The Quilt is now recognized as part of America's priceless historic legacy, an enduring symbol that defines us as a nation and is an important component of our culture and heritage that helps to explain America's past to future generations. Currently, there are 10 NAMES Project chapters in the US and more than 11 international affiliates around the world. From San Francisco's Castro Street to Vatican City, from Taipei to Uganda, from inner-city schools to the United Nations Headquarters, The Quilt has called on the world to respond to AIDS with compassion and resolve.

NYC PRIDE 2019 | WORLDPRIDE NYC | STONEWALL50, Heritage of Pride organizes the official New York City LGBTQIA+ Pride Week events. It is a non-profit organization that began producing New York City's Pride events in 1984, building on the work of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, who organized the first March in 1970. That march brought national attention to 1969's Stonewall Riots, one of many occurring in the US at the time. What began as a March has grown to more than a dozen events which comprise NYC PRIDE week including The March, The Rally, PrideFest, and Pride Island- a multi-day cultural experience (evolution from Dance on the Pier: 1987-2017). Pride Island is the final event held each year. Starting on June 24, 1990, that closing event has culminated with the second largest annual fireworks display in Manhattan, bested only by Macy's 4th of July Fireworks. During Pride Month many facets of the community gather and join voices. In 2017, ABC7 broadcast three hours of HOP's Pride March for the first time, also making some content available on the Internet. The run time of the March was 9 hours, 38 minutes. The broadcast was nominated for a 2018 New York Emmy Award. HOP's works toward a future without discrimination where all people have equal rights under the law. They do this by producing LGBTQIA+ Pride events that inspire, educate, commemorate and celebrate their diverse community.

CALLEN-LORDE COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER is dedicated to providing medical health care to the city's LGBTQ population without regard to ability to pay. The facility offers a variety of services, including dental care, HIV/STD testing and treatment, mental health services, women's health services, transgender hormone therapy, and medical case management support. Callen-Lorde is also home to the Health Outreach to Teens (HOTT) program, which serves youth between the ages of 13 and 22 in an on-premises clinic and a fully equipped medical van. Callen-Lorde is the only primary care center in New York City created specifically to serve LGBTQ communities. Callen-Lorde's grassroots heritage dates back nearly 50 years to the St. Mark's Community Clinic and the Gay Men's Health Project, two volunteer-based clinics that provided screening and treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases. These clinics merged in 1983 to form Community Health Project, a mostly volunteer-staffed, episodic care program housing the nation's first community-based HIV clinic. The center has grown both in size and scope since these early days: from a 2,500 square-foot space inside of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street that primarily worked with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, into a comprehensive primary care center housed in more than 3 locations, including the 6-floor, 27,000 square-foot 18th Street facility that it moved into in 1997. In 2015, during National Health Center Week, Callen-Lorde was one of 266 health centers identified under the Affordable Care Act as a Federally Qualified Health Center, for providing primary care to a medically underserved population. In a proclamation announcing these awards, President Obama declared, "This week, as we recognize the 50-year anniversary of the first community health centers being established in America, let us remember that health care is not a privilege for the few among us who can afford it, but a right for all Americans -- and let us recognize the vital role health centers across our country play in carrying us toward greater health for our people."

FRONTLINE AIDS (formerly known as the International HIV/AIDS Alliance) established in 1993 as the International Alliance Supporting Community Action on AIDS and later renamed the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, Frontline AIDS is a global partnership of nationally-based organizations working to support community action on AIDS in developing countries. These partners help local groups and other organizations take action on AIDS, and they are supported by technical expertise, policy work and fundraising carried out across Frontline. It engages in a range of international activities such as support for operations research, training, good practice development, policy analysis, and advocacy. The organization reaches more than 1.3 million people each year. It stresses the importance of working with people who are most likely to affect or be affected by the spread of HIV. These are often people from marginalized groups who are the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach.

METRO BAPTIST CHURCH/SANCTUARY ARTS is a Christian community where all are welcome regardless of gender, age, sexual identity, ethnicity, social standing, education, or economic status. We believe that everyone is created by God in the likeness of God to be a full participant in God's redemptive plan. The Sanctuary Arts Initiative at Metro Baptist Church seeks to provide a haven for local artists through collaborative partnership, accessible space, and lasting community. Metro Baptist Church affirms the talents of individuals in the congregation and wider New York community, and aims to integrate their creativity into the wider mission of Metro Baptist Church and Rauscenbusch Metro Ministries. For more information about Metro Baptist Church and the Sanctuary Arts Initiative, visit our website at http://mbcnyc.org/ministries/sanctuary-arts

MJP THEATRICAL is a professional theatrical production company that works within existing arts and business structures to democratize theater at all levels of production.

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