[Capdist-announce] Fort Salem Cabaret Nov 7

[Jay Kerr]

NIGHT OF COMEDY AND MUSIC IN SALEM CABARET

SALEM, NY – A night of comedy and music opens Fort Salem Theater’s Fall at the Fort Cabaret Series on Saturday, November 7, at 8 PM.  All in the Family stars comedian Adam Kerr, who was last seen on the Fort’s Mainstage in Significant Others, in 2012. The son of Fort Salem’s artistic director, Jay Kerr, Adam is joined by his step-mother, singer Lynne Kerr, and the Kerr’s “theater daughter,” Jessica O’Keefe, who grew up onstage at Fort Salem and has starred in six Mainstage productions since 2007, when the Kerr’s reopened the renovated summer stock theater in Southern Washington County. 

            Ten years into his career as a professional funny man, Adam Kerr has opened for comedy icons Robert Klein, Gilbert Gottfried, and Kevin Meany. He performs regularly at the Catch a Rising Star comedy clubs in Princeton, NJ, Providence, RI, and Reno, NV; at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City; in Manhattan at the Laugh Factory, Dangerfield’s, and the Friars’ Club; and has been seen locally at Long Trail School, Christ the King in Greenwich, and opening for Benita Zahn in her first-ever solo cabaret at Fort Salem in 2007.

            “When Adam was five years old,” his father notes, “his mother and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. His answer: ‘A stand-up comic.’ It was his first big laugh!” No surprise, much of Adam’s material is about family: how his WASP family of origin ill-prepared him to spar with his Italian-American mother-in-law, and, now, how having a son with a new sister on the way tends to change the patterns of a guy’s life. 

            After looking and sounding like a 60’s folksinger during her college years in the mid-70’s, Lynne Kerr embarked upon a career in pharmaceutical advertising, and, achieving some success, decided to leave the office grind once a week for singing lessons. She found vocal instructor Jay Kerr, who spent most of his work hours coaching aspiring Broadway performers for auditions, and who welcomed a gainfully employed student like Lynne, able to afford regular, frequent paid sessions.

            “Good teachers don’t develop their students’ voices. God does that,” claims Kerr. “The good teacher finds a way for their singers to free the voice to reach its greatest potential. I had to marry her and stop charging for lessons before she found her beautiful sound.”

            In All in the Family, Lynne, known for her CD and show, Songs My Husband Wrote, will be performing only one Kerr song, complemented by works written by Carole King, Barry Manilow, and Amanda McBroom.

            Jessica O’Keefe trained for the stage under Quentin and Kathy Beaver, who owned Fort Salem prior to 2007. Since then, she has played a Crachit kid in A Christmas Carol, the good fairy in The Wiz, a worn-out waitress in Breakfast Epiphanies, a sudden heir to a farm in Corn! The Musical, a young diva in The Young Divas, and an office-worker who wins the boss’s son (and the lottery) in Winning The Lottery.

            “I hear her voice when I write music,” says Kerr, who wrote most of the shows Jessica has performed in at the theater. “She asked for a part this past summer, which would have gone into rehearsal three weeks after she delivered her first baby.” Although she withdrew from the production six months into her pregnancy, Fort fans who saw Dracula’s Grandmother this summer will recall the character who had just given birth and kept leaving the stage to feed the baby. Director Kerr assures his audience that “once Jessica is onstage for this cabaret, she will not be leaving until her set is over.”

            Doors for All in the Family open at 7:30 PM on Saturday, November 7, for coffee and dessert served by Norene and Fred’s. The show is at 8:00 PM. The $25 ticket includes refreshments. More details on the website (fortsalemtheater.com). Because space is limited, reservations are required. (518) 854-9200.            




Comedian Adam Kerr

Singer Lynne Kerr

Singer Jessica O'Keefe

Thanks.
Jay Kerr
Artistic Director
Fort Salem Theater
jay at fortsalemtheater.com
(518) 854-9200
Txt: 212-582-5118



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