Sara Felder Presents A QUEER DIVINE in Lobby Spaces, Begins 4/15

Performance artist and juggling diva SARA FELDER stars in a new solo comedy A Queer Divine, performed at five different locations throughout Philadelphia beginning April 15 through April 26. A whimsical and moving reflection on art, grief and revelation, A Queer Divine also examines the symbiotic role of audience and artist and the communal art of performance.

Performances, all at 7:00 PM, are Thursday, April 15 at Mishkan Shalom (4101 Freeland Avenue); Tuesday, April 20 at the Gershman Y (Broad and Pine Streets); Thursday, April 22 at International House (3701 Chestnut Street); Saturday, April 24 at The Wilma Theatre (Broad and Spruce Streets); and Monday, April 26 at the Painted Bride Art Center (230 Vine Street). Tickets, $20/regular, $15 discount rate are available at brownpapertickets.com

A Queer Divine is funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. It was developed in part with support from the Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program at 1812 Productions.

A Queer Divine explores transitions - between birth and death, between Brooklyn and Manhattan, between ballet and modern dance. It exists in the space where life happens when we're waiting, on the subway platform, on the sidewalk, in the theater lobby. Integrating juggling moves, circus shtik and object-play with an original sound score, Felder learns about love, creativity, commerce, class, race, growing old and dying.

A Queer Divine was inspired by advice about artistic creation that Martha Graham gave Agnes De Mille after de Mille's success choreographing Oklahoma: "No artist is ever pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

"I perform A Queer Divine in lobby spaces, which are transition places where you wait for something else. A Queer Divine is about what happens on the way; it's about the great waiting room of life," said Felder. "And the great waiting - waiting for someoNe You love, or even yourself, to die -- can be poignant and upsetting as well as rich and filled with memories. A Queer Divine posits dance, being of the body, as the antithesis of death, which is the end of the body. I examine the positions of ballet, but also the positions of life - how your body stands on a subway ride or watches a dance concert or dies."

Felder will also offer a workshop on solo performance, "Amusing the Muse" on Sunday, April 25 from 1-6 p.m. The cost for this workshop is $50, and registration is available by emailing sara@sarafelder.com.

Sara Felder is a Philadelphia-based juggling diva, playwright, humorist and solo theater artist. She was a featured act in Joel Grey's Borscht Capades, performed with San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus, and toured Nicaragua and Cuba with the Women's Circus and Jugglers for Peace. Most recently she opened for Joan Rivers at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia. Her solo theater pieces have earned recognition from the Independence Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation and the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. Using her signature style of addressing important social issues with humor, juggling grace and shtik, her solo shows have tackled such topics as a Jewish lesbian wedding, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abraham Lincoln and depression/bi-polar disorder.

David O'Connor is a Barrymore-nominated director and lighting designer who has won critical and popular claim for Master Harold...and the Boys, The Lonesome West, and The Government Inspector at Lantern Theater Company, and The Seafarer and Peter Pan at Arden Theatre Company. A Queer Divine" marks his third collaboration with Felder.

For further information, call 215-735-7356 or visit www.sarafelder.com.

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