Justin Elizabeth Sayre's MY BEATNIK YOUTH: A SOLO RIFF Announces Guest Poets, Livestream And More

La MaMa Experimental Theatre will welcome playwright and performer Justin Elizabeth Sayre back to the revitalized Club Space with their new work, My Beatnik Youth: A Solo Riff.  Fashioned after a Beat Era poetry reading, this play with music will be directed by Fempath, fresh off their success with Club Shortbus, a live adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell's 2006 film. Musical director Tracy Stark will lead a jazz trio. Evan Spigelman serves as lighting designer.

My Beatnik Youth will feature different guest poets throughout the engagement including Candystore (4/14), Heather Johnson (4/15 and 4/21), Ayaz Muratoglu (4/16), Ianne Fields Stewart (4/17), Heather Denton (4/22), Ashley Escobar (4/23), and Matt Proctor (4/24). The schedule is subject to change. The performance on Sunday, March 17, scheduled to be livestreamed on HowlRound, will feature a post-show talkback with downtown legend Penny Arcade.

This new solo work from Justin Elizabeth Sayre, who has debuted two other solo pieces at La MaMa (Love's Refrain – 2016, To Build a Soul – 2021), will tell the tale of a teenager obsessed with the Beat Generation named Jay. After a serious drunk driving accident, Jay is placed in the psych ward to avoid charges and contemplate what brought them towards this brush with death. During this month-long hospitalization, Jay will face their own demons and the demons of those suffering around them. Throughout this time, Jay draws upon the world of the Beat Generation, from works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to the incredible music of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

“While this play is a fiction, it remains a very personal work,” says Sayre. “For me, My Beatnik Youth is about poetry, mental health, and the ability to see the dark but still choose to see the light.” Sayre has written before about their own battles with mental illness. “But throughout all the struggles that are inherent in a piece like this, I believe I'm ultimately telling a story of hope. For me that's what the Beat Generation was about. As is the case with any Romantic movement, the Beat Generation was looking to celebrate our humanity at the beginning of the Atomic Age. I think that message, especially in our digital age, has so much resonance. This play is celebration of the beauty and fragility of human resistance and the drive to find our own luminosity.”

Tickets

My Beatnik Youth: A Solo Riff is written and performed by Justin Elizabeth Sayre and runs March 14 – 24, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 3:30 PM at The Club at La MaMa, located at 74 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003. The show is roughly 90 minutes. Tickets are $30 for adults; $25 for students and seniors; first ten tickets for every performance $10 each (online, advance sale only; first come, first served). Tickets available at www.lamama.org or (646) 430-5374.

About the Artists

Justin Elizabeth Sayre is a playwright and performer who Michael Musto called, “Oscar Wilde meets Whoopi Goldberg.” Sayre is a fixture of the downtown cabaret scene in New York, first with their long-running variety show, The Meeting (Bistro Award winner and two MAC nominations). They are currently in residency at Joe's Pub at the Public with their new variety show, “Assorted Fruit.” As a playwright, Sayre's work has appeared at Dixon Place, The Wild Project, Celebration Theatre, Dynasty Typewriter, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Their 12-part-epic Ravenswood Manor, a camp-horror-soap-opera, was called “a sharply written and well-acted exemplar of the horror-comedy genre” by The Los Angeles Times. Sayre has written a series of YA novels, Husky, Pretty, and Mean, released by Penguin Books, and From Gay to Z: A Compendium of Queer Culture, just released by Chronicle Books. Sayre has written for television, working with Michael Patrick King on his hit CBS comedy, “2 Broke Girls” and Fox's “The Cool Kids.” Sayre also appeared on HBO's “The Comeback” with Lisa Kudrow. They are NYCLU artist ambassador and a 2023 MacDowell Fellow. 

Fempath is a director, writer, performer, and intimacy choreographer based in New York City. She is the creator of the monthly event Club Shortbus: An Immersive xxperience (@club.shortbus) adapted from John Cameron Mitchell's 2006 film Shortbus. In 2018 her critically acclaimed autobiographical protest play Jet of Blood premiered at Zoo Venues, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (“This might not be justice, but it's as powerful a response as an artist can give” – The Stage). In 2021, she directed the world premiere of Jonathan Dawe's erotic opera Being Ariodante at the Italian Academy. As a performer, highlights include: America in John Cameron Mitchell's radio musical Anthem, “Sasquatch” in Roddy Bottum's Sasquatch the Opera, and a principal role in Adrienne Truscott's (Still) Asking For It at The Public Theater. Other collaborations include: Lincoln Center, Guthrie Theatre, The New Group, Ars Nova, Geffen Playhouse, Powerhouse Theater, New York Stage & Film, The Tank, Theater for the New City, and La MaMa. SAG-AFTRA, SDC Associate Member. MariMoriarty.com. 

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. La MaMa's 62nd “Radical Access” season comes on the heels of our 61st season when we re-opened our newly-renovated, original theater at 74 E. 4th St. The building's $24 million makeover provides the return of the fully accessible Club, a new Community Arts Space for neighboring groups in the East Village, and an expanded public lobby and galleries. Our “Radical Access” initiative builds an infrastructure of opportunity that supports new ways of connecting us to people and communities around the world, expanding our means of connectivity and providing space where artists and digital tools converge from multiple points of entry.  

La MaMa has been honored with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, the 2018 Regional Theatre Tony Award, and most recently a 2023 New York Drama Critics' Circle Special Citation. We are a creative home to artists and resident companies from around the world, many of whom have made lasting contributions to the arts, including Blue Man Group, Bette Midler, Ed Bullins, Ping Chong, Jackie Curtis, André De Shields, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, Diane Lane, Playhouse of the Ridiculous, Tom Eyen, Pan Asian Rep, Spiderwoman Theater, Tadeusz Kantor, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Mabou Mines, Meredith Monk, Peter Brook, David and Amy Sedaris, Julie Taymor, Kazuo Ohno, Tom O'Horgan, Andrei Serban, Liz Swados, and Andy Warhol. La MaMa's vision of nurturing new artists and new work from all nations, cultures, races and identities remains as strong today as it was when Ellen Stewart first opened the doors in 1961.

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