Blog Post
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Cabaret Room: KESTUTIS NAKAS / JUDITH REN-LAY, presented by TWEED, 7:00pm, cash cover
September 19 2021, 7:00 pm-8:30 pm
$20$20 music cover CASH ONLY at the door, $20 food/beverage minimum per person, proof of vaccination and a photo ID required
MAKE RESERVATION
“Velvet and the Captain” debut the cabaret act they hope will take the world by storm. But have they worked out all the kinks? Why is the dummy in charge? What’s fair anyway? You better shut up. Or else. Let Velvet’s Republic be a warning to anyone who would take up the dark art of ventriloquism.
Kestutis Nakas is a writer, performer, director, and teacher whose work has been presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep, La Mama, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, 8BC, The Kitchen, Highways, Prop Theatre and numerous other national and regional venues. Performance works and plays include RIP, No Bees for Bridgeport, Railroad Backward, Remembrance of Things Pontiac, My Heart, My President, Hunger and Lightning, and The Andrew Carnegie Story. In the 1980’s, he was active in New York’s East Village performance scene. His Gates of Dawn performance space showcased New York performers. He has taught at NYU, UCLA, CUNY, the University of New Mexico and is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. His performance text about urban beekeeping, No Bees for Bridgeport, was published in Animal Acts, Performing Species Today, an anthology of new performance edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes, University of Michigan Press. A bilingual edition of his critically acclaimed tragi-comic cycle: When Lithuania Ruled The World was published by Aukso Zuvys publishers, Vilnius , in February 2017. In December 2017, Channel D, his new solo piece debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In June 2018, in honor of the centennial of Lithuanian independence, he presented a staged reading of all four parts of When Lithuania Ruled the World at HOWL Happening, New York City. Kestutis Nakas lives in Chicago with his wife and son.
Judith Ren-Lay “As the Crone Flies”
The language and sound poet is back with the next installment of her CRONE SERIES begun in November 2019 with a return to performance (from years of recovery after a run-in with a speeding cab) with “Crone of Thorns.” Ren-Lay delivers a cacophony of words and sounds that spill out of her with the rapidity of a rabid badger. She has been a fixture in the New York performance art world since the early 1980’s when she hit The Pyramid Club with “Songs Off the Fringe.” A bessie winner and septuagenarian she is glad to be alive, much less performing.
The language and sound poet is back with the next installment of her CRONE SERIES begun in November 2019 with a return to performance (from years of recovery after a run-in with a speeding cab) with “Crone of Thorns.” Ren-Lay delivers a cacophony of words and sounds that spill out of her with the rapidity of a rabid badger. She has been a fixture in the New York performance art world since the early 1980’s when she hit The Pyramid Club with “Songs Off the Fringe.” A bessie winner and septuagenarian she is glad to be alive, much less performing.
JUDITH REN-LAY has been making art in New York City for four decades, showing in a variety of mediums including dance, performance art, music, drawing, poetry, photo collage and digital photography.Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, she moved to NYC in 1975 to study with Merce Cunningham and Viola Farber among many others, and danced as a leading soloist in the company of Gus Solomons jr until 1980 when she began developing live performance works integrating site-specific installation, movement, spoken text, light, and original music for which she was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for outstanding creative achievement with “The Grandfather Tapes” in 1985. She has received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Franklin Furnace, and The Kitchen, and her archives are currently part of the permanent collection in both music and dance at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.Mostly showing in New York City, she has made site-specific full evening, solo works at LaMama E.T.C, Performance Space 122, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place, The Knitting Factory, Franklin Furnace, Roulette, The Performing Garage, The Roof of Riverside Church, The Warren Street Performance Loft, Westbeth, Theater for the New City, ReCherChez, A Clear Space, The Ohio Theater, Henry Street Settlement, The Kitchen, The Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Snug Harbor, and the legendary performance art venues of the 80’s – The Pyramid Club, The Mudd Club, 8BC, CBGB’S, The WOW Cafe, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. Her extensive body of work has also been seen in Denver, New Haven, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Monica, Chicago, Cleveland, Kutztown, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Switzerland.In 2002 a CD of original vocal compositions “Out Of Nowhere” was released by the Knitting Factory to critical acclaim, considered one of the ten best jazz albums of the year, “Some of the most amazing sounds I’ve heard a human make” (Jazz Review.com)Gallery Exhibitions include solo shows at SB Digital Gallery NYC “DANCES WITH LIGHT” (digital photography – 2010) the SpaceCase Gallery/PS122 “CORNERS OF A ROOM” (double photo collage – 1997) and “OFFER THE STROKE/STROKE THE OFFER” (drawings – 1995) as well as group shows at the New Arts Program Salon in Kutztown, PA (2001, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2019.)
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