December 26, 2015
SaraSolo Festival 2016 sets schedule – Tickets on sale now!
Exciting national and international solo artists to perform in January
SARASOTA, FL — After a warmly received 2015 inaugural season, the SaraSolo Festival returns in January 2016 with an eclectic mix of solo performances by compelling national and international artists. The Festival runs Jan 23-24 and Jan 30-31 at the historic Crocker Memorial Church. For tickets and more information go to www.SaraSolo.org.
“I perform in festivals all around the world, and am proud to count SaraSolo as one of them,” says Bill Bowers, a renowned Solo Artist who received rave reviews last year. “It is an excellent festival with an enthusiastic, supportive audience – even in its first season. Just think, in five years SaraSolo easily could be one of the top festivals in the country!”
The 2016 Festival will offer an array of 16 delightful and provocative 45-90 minute performances — musicals, cabaret, comedies, performance art, dance, and improv as well as historical, biographical and poetic plays.
Extraordinary performers include local Sarasota favorites Carolyn Michel and Christine Alexander; multi-disciplinary artists trained in Italy, Australia, and Mexico; a psychotherapist and playwright; artists who create and perform original shows throughout the country; Equity actors and Broadway pros. Music and dance performances showcase fingerpicking guitar, story-telling with piano, and solo women dance artists from around the country.
“These solo flights were a lot of fun. We can’t wait until the next SaraSolo festival takes off.”
– Marty Fugate, Longboat Key Observer
Last year’s popular “Betwixt” series of workshops will return during the week between the weekend shows, offering training to develop and hone the performance skills of novices and professionals. SaraSolo Festival artists will teach the arts of cabaret singing; solo performance writing; story telling; stage presence and more.
SaraSolo is presented by Gotta Van Productions, an independent non-profit theatre company created by Ann Morrison, Blake Walton, and David Coyle, which is dedicated to the development and presentation of solo performances and new small-cast plays that illuminate the human condition, especially that of those who are perceived as “other than.”
Gotta Van believes in affordable theatre (in traditional and non-traditional spaces) that supports diversity, collaboration, and the transformative power of intimate theatre for both artists and audiences. Gotta Van’s venues include festivals, fringe theatre, educational outreach, flash mobs, video, and online media.
Gotta Van Artistic Director Ann Morrison and Associate Artistic Director Blake Walton are award winners in the world’s largest solo performance festival, The United Solo Festival in NYC.###
Join Us
We would like you to be informed, become involved and be a part of our performances and events.
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Announcing
SaraSolo 2016
January 23-January 31, 2016
Performances will be held at
Crocker Memorial Church, 1260 12th St, Sarasota, FL
with “Betwixt Week” events at various other venues.
Saturday 1/23 & Sunday 1/24
Performances at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, and 7pm
Monday 1/25 through Friday 1/29
“Betwixt Week” during which we will hold workshops, master classes, demonstrations and discussions.
Saturday 1/30 & Sunday 1/31
Performances at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, and 7pm
Tickets are on sale now! click “Buy Tickets” below
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Our Exciting list of Performers
For tickets, click on the link where indicated or go to “Buy Tickets” above.
Saturday Jan 23, @1pm
Christine Alexander
Next… (a completely improvised one-woman show)
Improvisation / All but children
Join Christine Alexander, Sarasota’s Queen of Improv, as she presents a one-woman show as a radio host. She will use the audience as her “callers” looking for advice. Who knows what will happen? Not you, not the callers, – and certainly not Christine.
Video: https://youtu.be/G4Bp_1U4jkA
Saturday Jan 23, @3pm
Sola (Group of 6)
SOLA: An Evening of Solo Dances by Women
Dance / All
This performance by the group called Sola showcases the work of 6 female dance artists from around the country. Utilizing text, video projection, and pure physicality, the works come together to create a performance that celebrates intergenerational approaches to art.
Saturday Jan 23, @5pm
Lisa Seldin Dontzin / Cookie Harlin, Director
Fairytale Facts
Comic Play / All
An autobiographical piece born from an actor’s
nightmare. It examines beauty and aging through the
perspective of always being a stepsister and never being
Cinderella.
Promo: https://youtu.be/TTFKcDlBx-M
Saturday Jan 23, @7pm
Carolyn Michel / Howard Millman, Director
Women I Have Loved
Play / All
A pastiche of favorite characters Carolyn has played
through the years, with excerpts featuring Dorothy Parker, Rose, Bev, Trudy, Ann Landers, and other wonderful characters (both real and fictional) whom she has grown to love – key visits on her journey as
a character actress.
Sunday Jan 24, @1pm
Irene Garibay Sanchez
Soft Body Under the Bones of the Bed
Performance Art / adult
This work explores the elements that compose our physicality and materiality, characterized by a slimy and tender sheet of bacterial cellulose. Interactions with this quasi-skin brought Irene to contemplate the process of fermentation and to relate this process to our constantly developing existence.
Sunday Jan 24, @3pm
Becca McCoy / James Weaver, Pianist
The Pearl in the Hogwaller
Cabaret / all
Becca went from being a working actor in urban Chicago to moving sight-unseen to rural Palatka, Florida (population 10,000), as a stay-at-home mom. She repurposes existing songs into a fresh cabaret context that illustrates the universal theme of “Bloom Where You’re Planted.”
Promo: https://youtu.be/aLInd2wUN2U
Sunday Jan 24, @5pm
Stevie Coyle
Mythos, Pathos, Nash & Jung, or “How I Survived The Great Folk
Music Scare of 1961.”
Music & story / all
A singer-songwriter, granted, but minus the itchily self-revelatory lyrics and squishy major-7th chords. Stevie’s act has been described as “Chet Atkins, Jorma Kaukonen and John Hartford play mumbledy-peg with Ken Nordine, Dan Hicks, and René Descartes in Dave Barry’s back yard.” You’ll just have to see for yourself.
Sunday Jan 24, @7pm
Wayne Hosford
New York States of Mind
Music & Story / All
A journey to, at, and from New York – but not quite therapy. It features working with Billy Roy, composer and accompanist, who helped Wayne on his journey from pop to Broadway. He has appeared with such greats as Christine Andreas, Len Cariou, Ann Hampton Callaway, Michael Feinstein, Dorothy Loudon, Marilyn Maye, Jay Mohr, and Neil Sedaka. He has accompanied Brent Barrett, Brian Bedford, Faith Hill, Cloris Leachman, Margaret Whiting, and the legendary Julie Wilson.
Website: http://www.waynehosford.com/wbh.php
Saturday Jan 30, @1pm
Zach Dorn
An Excruciatingly Ordinary Toy Theater Show
Performance Art / Teen, Adult
Zach weaves journal entries into peculiar tales by manipulating digital cameras through toy-sized streets filled with paper puppets. A lonely puppeteer stalks the child of two notorious celebrities; a three-foot ghost plagues an eight-year-old boy’s fragile psyche; and an opera-singing landlord refuses to return a security deposit. These stories will explode onto the stage in this modern exploration of Toy Theater.
Website: http://www.zachdorn.com/
Saturday Jan 30, @3pm
Vanessa Webb
The Regina Monologues
Historical & Improvisation / All
Birthed from her final thesis project, this piece manages to combine two of Vanessa’s favorite things: Elizabethan history and audience interaction. Be welcomed to an intimate evening with Queen Elizabeth Regina Gloriana, Queen of England, Ireland, Wales and the Colony of Virginia in the New World. Elizabeth sets the record
straight on subjects that have titillated a curious public for centuries. Be prepared to laugh (and maybe even participate) as The Regina Monologues recall the life, loves and “virginity” of this most intriguing of Tudors.
Video: https://youtu.be/OBYZLTO8-C0
Saturday Jan 30, @5pm
Alan Brasington
The Poem of My Life
Poetic Play / All
This Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained actor will present a before-birth journey through the looking glass to boyhood and manhood with doubt and wonder.
Saturday Jan 30, @7pm
Aja Niesenson / Michael Aman, Director
5 Years Later
Cabaret / All
A burgeoning jazz singer revisits Bologna, Italy, where she began her career and left behind an Italian man: one American Girl; one Mammoni (mama’s boy); and a sexy jazz club. It’s one spicy meatball.
2014 United Solo Festival Award Winner
Sunday Jan 31, @1pm
Flying Solo Returns
Todd Berrien, Kaylene McCaw, Lori Shannon, and Jan Wallace
Various / All
Four writer/performers present works that are in the “development” stage. Some of these deeply personal pieces had their beginnings at the 2015 Festival. Each will be honed in a workshop during the Betwixt Week and then take flight in front of a first audience who will see and hear excerpts from the minds and hearts of Todd Berrien, Kaylene McCaw, Lori Shannon, and Jan Wallace.
Sunday Jan 31, @3pm
Lynne Bernfield / Pam Wiley, Director
Bashert – Some Things Are Meant To Be
Autobiographical Musical / All
Do you believe in magic, kismet, karma, miracles? Don’t decide until you have seen this one-woman original musical, filled with stories of things which shouldn’t have happened – but did.
Sunday Jan 31, @5pm
Jenny Aldrich / Don Walker, Director
Lillian: Memoirs & Moments
Biographic play / teen, adult
“Everyone’s memory is tricky and mine’s a little trickier than most.” – Lillian Hellman the American dramatist and screenwriter. Renowned for her success as a playwright on Broadway, she was also well-known for her left-wing sympathies and political activism and as the lover of author Dashiell Hammett.
Sunday Jan 31, @7pm
Clara Francesca / Timothy Reynolds, Director
Mrs. Marx
Play / all
“I’m Jenny Marx. I was born on February 12th 1814 and married the ardent poet and philosopher Karl Heinrich Marx. We had a seven-year engagement, seven children, and shared everything – except whom we could love.” Karl has taken a mistress. Jenny is lost – inside the body of a male, inside the body of a female, inside the body of who she once was. This is a hyper-comic historic piece exploring theatricality of subverted selves, with dark humor underlying it.
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Who We Are
Gotta Van Productions, Inc. is a nonprofit independent theater company dedicated to developing and presenting solo and small cast plays in traditional and non-traditional venues.
The Team
Ann Morrison, Artistic Director
David A. Coyle, Managing Director
Blake Walton, Associate Artistic Director
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SaraSolo 2015, the inaugural season of the SaraSolo Festival,
celebrating the solo performer in a variety of artistic forms.
SaraSolo 2015 is a project conceived by Gotta Van Productions, Inc., in collaboration with the United Solo Festival in New York.
Artistic Director Ann Morrison and Associate Artistic Director Blake Walton of Gotta Van Productions are members of the United Solo Academy in New York were encouraged to start a version of the United Solo Festival to be presented in the Gulf Coast area, with a dream of expanding it in the future to include a retreat for solo artists to develop and hone their craft with other like-minded artists.
In our inaugural season we have invited a select group of participants from around Florida and the United Solo Festival in NY to present their shows in the old historical Crocker Memorial Church in Sarasota, FL. The old church is now a part of the Sarasota Historical Society.
Plus, what we have named the “Betwixt Week” occurs between the two weekends of Solo Performances at the Festival. Taking place at various other venues, it provides a series of lectures, master classes, and other experiences designed for those who are interested in honing their knowledge of and experience with solo performing.
OFFERINGS
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