Saturday, April 20, 2024
Performances, Readings, Book Signing
SOLD OUT
The evening showcases the talent and personalities featured in the book “We Started a Nightclub”: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It, published by Damiani in association with Some Serious Business. The jam-packed evening includes performances, readings, bar dancing, and other happenings by Pyramid alumni and friends. Program begins at 6:30 PM with DJs Matt Shipp and Phil Painson.
Books, special limited-edition t-shirts, and Not the Same Old Shit (#ntsos) necklaces will be for sale at the event. This special pre-publication event is produced by Some Serious Business in association with Kevin Malony of theatreTweed and Bonnie Stein of GOH Productions. Special thanks to our partner MOMENT NYC and their support for our collective musical legacy. MOMENT NYC’s mission is to interpret, support, and celebrate music diversity through exhibition, education, and performance.
ACT 1: 7:30 PM
JOSHUA FRIED Performance
JOSHUA FRIED literally kicks off the evening with a performance on his wireless shoe. An early Pyramid sound tech and performer, Fried went on to be an award-winning musician and producer, remixing the likes of Chaka Khan and They Might Be Giants, and the youngest composer to be featured in the book American Music in the 20th Century—but he never lost that Dadaist groove. He’s brought his Musical Shoes and Musical Steering Wheel to Lincoln Center, Europe, and a Tokyo Museum, yet, as he puts it, “my paradigm is forever THAT stage, that audience—as eager to be challenged as to shake their asses—of Pyramid 1982.” His loops, now digital, are as funky and hypnotic as ever, and he’s bringing out the original wireless shoe to debut brand-new work.
JOHN JESURUN Performance
JOHN JESURUN and Company will perform excerpts from his acclaimed serialized play Chang in a Void Moon, that premiered at the Pyramid in 1982 and is now in its 68th episode. Before the Pyramid, Jesurun worked as an assistant producer for the The Dick Cavett Show. Other projects by the MacArthur fellow include Faust/How I Rose at BAM; Philoktetes at Soho Rep; the video for Jeff Buckley’s song “Last Goodbye”; Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury at Japan Society; and “Shatterhand Massacree and Other Media Texts,” published by Performing Arts Journal.
In a Pyramid press release from ‘83 included in “We Started a Nightclub,” Chang is described as “A LIVING SOAP, week after week the saga of Svettlana, Picablo, Chang et al. unfolds. A ‘true-life story,’ CHANG rings with Passion, Intrigue, Deception, Love and Death.”
WELCOME: co-authors Susan Martin and Kestutis Nakas
EDGAR OLIVER Performance
Edgar Oliver is a poet, playwright, actor, and storyteller, who has been active in New York’s downtown theatre and performing-arts community since the early 1980s. He will be reading from his one-man play East 10th Street. In his review of East 10th Street, Ben Brantley of the New York Times called Edgar “a living work of theatre all by himself.”
Born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, Edgar has lived and worked in New York City since 1977. He began performing in New York at the Pyramid in the mid-1980s, alongside artists including Hapi Phace, Kembra Pfahler, Samoa, and playwright Kestutis Nakas. Over the past 30 years, he has produced work that Hilton Als of the New Yorker has called “emotionally grand.”
As a playwright, many of Oliver’s plays have been staged at La MaMa and other downtown New York City venues. Among his most important achievements are four acclaimed one-man shows: East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (directed by Randy Sharp of the Axis Theatre), Helen & Edgar (directed by Catherine Burns of The Moth), In the Park, and Attorney Street (both also directed by Randy Sharp). After its initial New York run, East 10th Street traveled to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a Fringe First Award, and to the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina.
HOLLY HUGHES Reminiscences
Holly Hughes is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose work maps the troubled fault lines of identity. Her combination of poetic imagery and political satire has earned her wide attention and placed her work at the center of America’s culture wars. In “We Started a Nightclub” she says: “The sense was that it [the Pyramid] was ground zero of the East Village, the most important club in the most important neighborhood in New York City for artmaking at the time. It might have been Carnegie Hall for how good it felt.”
KRISTI ROSE and KATY K
Kristi Rose is the Queen of Pulp Country, and she continues to hold court in Music City, USA and around the globe. Kristi wowed audiences with her tremendous voice and stage persona at the Pyramid, and at clubs like CBGBs and the Peppermint Lounge. Katy K performed in the early 1980s New York City club scene with the likes of John Sex, Craig Vandenberg, and Joey Arias. She was well known for introducing crinolines and bouffant notions to crowd people out of the dance floor. Kristi and Katy both moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in the early 1990s: Kristi for her music career and Katy for her fashion boutique, Ranch Dressing.
LYDIA LUNCH Spoken-Word
The American singer, poet, writer, actor, and perennial contrarian says in “We Started a Nightclub”: “I felt right at home at the Pyramid. The audience didn’t know whether to scream, cry, masturbate, or shit their pants. Perfect. The Pyramid allowed me the opportunity to not only showcase other performers, but to perfect the art of out-heckling even the most obnoxious assholes who occasionally attempted to interrupt my harangues.”
ACT 2: 9:00 PM
HAPI PHACE Performance
Performance artist Hapi Phace was the host of the Pyramid’s Sunday gay-themed Whispers, and performed in works by other artists at the Pyramid and many downtown venues. Hapi Phace and His Karload of Klowns is a pataphysical clown troupe featuring Palimpsesto (Jorge Clar), Poppers (Gail Thacker), and The Mime (Nora Burns). KoK is a dadaist take on an improv-circus act, with lots and lots of props.
EILEEN DOVER Reading Brian Butterick
Eileen Dover is a writer, actor, and performer living in New York City. She first encountered Brian Butterick/Hattie Hathaway at the Pyramid and Jackie 60 in the early 1990s. Dover has been a nightlife personality for decades and is writing a memoir about those crazy times. Dover worked with Hattie on the Reading for Filth series and also in Jackie Curtis’ Glamour, Glory and Gold—The Life and Times of Nola Noonan: Goddess and Star at Howl! Happening. After Hattie passed away, Dover continued the Reading for Filth series, paying tribute to Pyramid icons Dean Johnson and Hathaway. Dover and artist Gail Thacker are in the process of creating season two of their podcast. Most recently, Dover worked and costarred in The Village! A Disco Daydream by Nora Burns. Dover originates from South Boston, Massachusetts, where she defied hatred and bullying and, of course, the Catholic Church, of which she has proudly been excommunicated.
JAMES “TIGGER!” FERGUSON Tigger! as Tawny the Tigress
“The Godfather of Neo-Boylesque” has performed in New York City since 1988 and around the world since 1993. Ferguson is a pioneer of the 1990s burlesque renaissance, who won the first-ever Mr. Exotic World/King of Boylesque title at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in 2006. He debuted as Tigger! at the Pyramid in the mid 1990s. He has since headlined festivals all around Europe, Australia, and North and South America. His act was banned in Rome. In addition to shows at theaterTWEED, Tigger! has performed in original shows with Taylor Mac, Julie Atlas Muz, Penny Arcade, The Talking Band, and Target Margin Theater.
RIMBAUD HATTIE
Rimbaud Hattie is an art-song collective involving chanteuse Heather Litteer; performance artist John Kelly; and Julie Hair and Doug Bressler, two members of the pivotal 1980s art-rock band 3 Teens Kill 4. Rimbaud Hattie was formed out of the deep love of Brian Butterick, also known as Hattie (Hattie Hathaway was his drag persona that was born at the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge). Each of the four artists in this band had creative relationships with Brian, whether it was music, poetry, theater, or performance. One mission they share is to keep the spirit of Hattie alive through an ongoing collaboration of music and performance.
ANN MAGNUSON A Medley of Memories
Ann Magnuson is a proud Pyramid alumna and the original Club 57 manager. As an artist, actor, musician, writer, curator, and all-around multimedia shapeshifter, Magnuson has garnered critical and mainstream success. She recently guest-curated a major MoMA exhibition on the legendary Club 57, and was the first performance curator at PS1 (now MoMA PS1) as well as a major player in the downtown art and music scene of the 1980s, performing at the Pyramid many times.
Magnuson has appeared in many films and TV shows alongside stars like Harrison Ford, John Malkovich, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Jamie Lee Curtis, and David Bowie. She starred in the film Making Mr. Right (1987)—a new Blu-ray edition recently released by Kino Lorber features commentary by Magnuson and director Susan Seidelman.
Combining her skills in writing, performance, and collaboration, Magnuson’s musical career has been exceptional, with her songs and spoken-word pieces at the heart of the post-punkband Pulsallama, the faux-metal band Vulcan Death Grip, the “psycho-psychedelic” band Bongwater, and three solo albums. Last year, she released the country-folk song “Ghost Cat,” backed by musicians from her native West Virginia (and featuring harmonica from Nashville legend and West Virginia-native Charlie McCoy). Magnuson is currently working on new art, video, music, and writing projects, including new music from Vulcan Death Grip, who debuted as a bonafide band at the Pyramid.
“We Started a Nightclub”: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It by Brian Butterick, Susan Martin, and Kestutis Nakas is published by Damiani Books in association with Some Serious Business. Designed by Jeff Streeper of Modern Identity, the book is available in bookstores, online, and for sale in Europe through Damiani Books.