Diversionary Theatre Presents 'Dead From New York: It’s Pepper & Sam' Beginning 10/21

Looking to change-up your Halloween routine? Hoping to escape the macabre and the ridiculous? Diversionary Theatre has the antidote or the answer for whatever you crave-Dead From New York: It's Pepper & Sam! Smart, hip and hilarious, Pepper & Sam will bring their downtown New York act to Diversionary beginning Friday October 21, 2011.

Billed as the ghosts with the most! The ghouls with the goods! The Apparitions from Prohibition - Pepper & Sam are back from the grave with a 90 minute rock n' roll-vaudeville review with a whole new outlook on life ... and death.

Virtuosic, rock n' roll-vaudevillians Pepper Mills & Play It Again Sam were touted in cities from Wichita to Schenectady before their tragic demise in a blazing theater fire. Stuck playing the purgatory circuit for over 80 years, these two lost souls have toured Heaven and tempted Hell, and now they're back from the grave with brand new bodies and decades of new material. Pepper & Sam will resuscitate classics by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer and breath new life into songs by R. Kelly, Green Day, No Doubt, The Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer and of course, Queen!

Pepper and Sam are the creation of performer/authors Salty Brine and Justin Levine and their mutual interest in finding ways for music and theater to collide. Their work explores matters of life, death, time, gender and sexuality, all while breaking down preconceived notions of theater, cabaret, and drag.

Salty Brine (Pepper Mills) is a New York City based writer and performer. He has been creating and performing Pepper and Sam shows with the astoundingly talented Mr. Justin Levine since 2005. NY Credits: Thanksgiving! A! Pageant! (Writers David McGee/Stephanie Johnstone), The Infernal Machine (CSV w/ Te Ilum), Straight Talk (Dixon Place), Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge (HERE Arts Center), Oh The Horror! (Naked Angels), Extra Virgin (Under St. Marks), Othello (Dreamscape). Salty cut his teeth hosting the weekly rock 'n roll, gender-bending karaoke show at legendary Queens dive bar The Albatross. Faculty member, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, NYU.

Justin Levine (Play-it-again Sam) works as a writer, composer, actor and musician in New York City and around the country. This past winter, he was Musical Director and performer in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson both at the Public Theater and the Jacobs Theater on Broadway. Most recently he served as associate music director for Here Lies Love, a new musical by David Byrne. His own musical Bonfire Night (book, music &lyrics) received a Martel Workshop at New York Stage and Film last summer, directed by Alex Timbers. Justin has been the co-creator of "Pepper and Sam" with collaborator Salty Brine for the past five years. Their most recent show, Death by Vaudeville has been performed all over the city, including the Summer in the Square mainstage at Union Square Park. He received a commission from Naked Angels for a gospel/soul musical about the life of Madam C.J. Walker with book writer Kara Lee Corthron. When not working on theater, he tours with the Clinton Curtis Band, for which he plays keys, guitar, mandolin, accordion, banjo, among other things.

For tickets or information, call the Diversionary box office at 619.220.0097 or visit www.diversionary.org.

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