[Capdist-announce] GB Public Solo Fest premieres Will LeBow's The Bard The Beat The B; ues

[GBPT]

*For Immediate Release*

*Contact: Mike Clary*

*MrMikeClary1 at gmail.com*

*518-267-0683*
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*June 2, 2022*



*Great Barrington Public Theater Solo Fest Premieres Will LeBow’s The Bard
The Beat The Blues. A master actor’s muses and music take him from
Greenwich Village and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Shylock, Malvolio and Ma
Rainey.*



GB Public Theater 2022 stage season begins with four new solo performances
that run for over five weeks. All feature stories of humanity and
demonstrate the power of a single voice.



GB Public is proud to include in this series the premiere of Will LeBow’s
raconteurial jewel, *The Bard The Beat The Blues *(June 8-26), directed by
company Artistic Director Jim Frangione and featuring the accomplished
actor-musician LeBow, storytelling and versifying his creative arc, from
his family’s acting roots to a his life on stage--all presented with funny
asides, anecdotes, screen media and musical interludes. In this
mesmerizing, quickly-paced hour of storytelling, audiences will fall under
the spell of a marvelous entertainer and musician; we move along with LeBow
from his ancestry in the Jewish ghetto of Vilna, Lithuania to Brooklyn,
where his grandfather acted in Yiddish theater, to growing up in 1950s,
heading off to City College, discovering Shakespeare, being introduced to
the nightlife in the heyday of Greenwich Village, the poetry of Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, and other influences that led him to a lifelong career on
stage.



In his story, LeBow weaves bits from Shakespeare, Chekov, August Wilson,
Mississippi John Hurt and Scott Joplin, the stream of anecdotes and
life-lessons accompanied by LeBow at the keyboard, playing his own bluesy
music. It’s a seamless performance by a fantastic storyteller, loaded with
laughs, heart, bite, and historical commentary. It recounts the world and
road as they unfolded for LeBow, why it’s ill-advised to bite our tongues
when others tell us to, and, in his words, why this “nutzo, farkakte world”
with all its randomness and unseen possibilities is the best world to be
born in, if you have the creative bones to deal with it.



Will LeBow’s musical pictorial memoir *The Bard The Beat The Blues* is
onstage seven times only, in rotation with the other solo performances,
from June 8-June 26, Thurs.-Sun., 7:30pm and 3pm, in the Liebowitz Black
Box Theater, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 84 Alford Rd, Great Barrington,
MA 01230. Ticket reservations are encouraged and can be made on the Great
Barrington Public Theater website
<https://www.greatbarringtonpublictheater.org/>.


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*###*

*Will LeBow* has had an accomplished, decades-long career on stage and
screen. His credits include BROADWAY: *Act One*. OFF-BROADWAY: *Mrs. Miller
Does Her Thing*, *Nocturne* NYTW Drama Desk Nomination. REGIONAL:* Ma
Rainey's Black Bottom, Sonia Flew,* *The Rivals, The Cherry Orchard, The
Corn is Green, Love's Labour's Lost *(Huntington)*; The Merchant of Venice,
The Birthday Party, Full Circle, We Won't Pay We Won't Pay, Picasso At The
Lapin Agile, Ubu Rock, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Uncle Vanya, Animals
and Plants, Romance, Duck Variations, Marvelous Party, (*ART); *Once in a
Lifetime *(ACT); *Glengarry Glen Ross, Twelfth Night *(MRT); *Abduction
>From the Seraglio, Ariadne Aux Naxos,* (Boston Lyric Opera); *Porgy and
Bess,* (BSO);* Polar Express, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, *(Boston
Pops); Film/TV: *What Doesn't Kill You, Next Stop Wonderland, Home Movies,
Dr.Katz: Professional Therapist.*


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*Will LeBow, credit GBPT*

*Jim Frangione* (Director): After more than ten years developing new plays
with Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Jim is proud to be working alongside the
many talented and dedicated colleagues at Great Barrington Public Theater.
Last summer with the Public, Jim directed Mark St. Germain’s new play, *Dad*,
as well as the East Coast premiere of David Mamet’s, *The Christopher Boy’s
Communion*. He directed Anne Undeland’s play, *Lady Randy*, for WAM
Theatre; *Romance* at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater; *Private Life* at
HERE Arts in NY; and *An Evening of Shorts* by Mamet, Pinter and
Silverstein at the ART/Harvard Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.
Jim’s play, *Flight of the Monarch*, premiered at Gloucester Stage Company
in 2017. His play, *Breakwater*, the second in a trilogy of Cape Cod plays,
received its premiere in 2019 as part of Great Barrington Public’s
inaugural season (Berkshire Theatre Critic’s Nomination). Jim has acted for
over 35 years; On and Off-Broadway, in National Tours; in many plays with
the Atlantic Theater Company and at regional theaters such as: The Mark
Taper Forum, Long Wharf, The Alley Theater, Berkshire Theatre Festival, The
Humana Festival of New Plays—most recently in *Prairie Du Chien* at
Atlantic and *Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike* at Shakespeare &
Company. His film work includes *Joy, Transamerica, Spartan, Heist, State
and Main, The Spanish Prisoner, Homicide, Suits, Claire Dolan and Maryam*.
Jim is also an award-winning audiobook narrator performing over 400 titles.

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Great Barrington Public Theater Artistic Director Jim Frangione, credit GBPT

 Great Barrington Public Theater
<https://www.greatbarringtonpublictheater.org/> was founded by Artistic
Director Jim Frangione and Executive Director Deann Simmons Halper to
create opportunities for theater artists in the Berkshires and neighboring
regions. Great Barrington Public Theater recognizes the many excellent
playwrights, actors, directors, designers, administrators and technicians
living in the Berkshires and surrounding areas. Our objective is to bring a
mix of new and contemporary plays to the stage in a variety of formats; to
generate and foster creative and rigorous opportunity for local theater
artists, while engaging our theatergoing public with new and contemporary
readings, workshops, and fully staged productions, involving local talent
as often as possible, and always keeping ticket prices affordable.
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