travsd

This Friday: A Memoriam for the Astor Place Riots

Friday, May 10, 2024 at 5:30pm EDT

Admission FREE
75 minutes

UNDER St. Mark’s Theater
94 St. Mark’s Place, just east of 1st Avenue, NYC

Every theater-lover should know the story of the Astor Place Riots of 1849, but it’s about much more than a fight between partisans of the two biggest actors of the day (the Yank Edwin Forrest and the Brit William Macready). Thousands participated in the brawl, leaving 30 dead and nearly 50 injured. If at first blush this street battle seems particularly insane (and all violence is insane), it must be remembered that live theatre was the primary entertainment back then, and this clash was really just the match that ignited a much wider, volatile culture war, one that in its way presaged later such explosions in our own time, from Biggie vs. Tupac…to January 6.

Meet the dueling Macbeths who started it all, hear from local upstarts who fanned the flames of controversy, and say the names of the dead with us. We’ll mark the occasion with ceremony & satire, songs & scenes, and will close with a procession to the site where it happened.

It’s being presented by friends at the Peculiar Works Projects. I’ll be joining PWP’s Ralph Lewis, Catherine Porter, and Barry Rowell, as well as some folks you may know such as Zero Boy, Maria Dessena, Mike Hilgers, Basil Rodericks, Jenny Selig, and Dan Lane Williams.

To RSVP and get more information, go here.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.