Brooklyn Reading Works presents Funny Pages: An Evening of Humor curated by Marian Fontana on Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 8PM at The Old Stone House of Park Slope. A $5 donation includes wine and refreshments.
Author Marian Fontana knows funny and she is bringing together a great group of comic writers for this night of hilarity with Marian, Don Cummings, Ellen Ferguson, Gianna Messina, Billy Frolick, and Blair Fell.
DON CUMMINGS’ critically acclaimed plays have been produced on both coasts: His play, The Fat of the Land was a semifinalist for the Kaufman & Hart Award for new American comedy. A Good Smoke was a semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill theater conference. It had a reading at The Public Theater in New York starring Meryl Streep and Debra Monk and has been optioned for Broadway. Piss Play is about Minorities so it’s Really Important was produced in the Summer Cringe Festival of 2009 where it received the Golden Pineapple award for best play. His latest play, Live Work Space, opens soon in Los Angeles. His collection of nonfiction essays are loosely held together in his yet-to-be-published memoir, Open Trench, named after his blog. He has acted in a lot of plays and been on a lot of sitcoms and writes movies and TV shows. Mr. Cummings is a graduate of Tufts University, The Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of The Dramatists Guild and the Ensemble Studio Theater Writer’s Unit. www.doncummings.net
ELLEN FERGUSON writes the “Diversity in the News” column for McSweeney’s, and her nonfiction has also been published in Diversity Prep, Publisher’s Weekly, and SPY. Her McSweeney’s column has been widely reprinted online. Her poetry can be found online on identitytheory and the Brooklyn Reading Works, and in print in Long Island Quarterly. Before she started teaching English, Satire and Nonfiction in New Jersey and New Hampshire, she worked at The New Yorker Magazine and SPY.
BLAIR FELL has written for the television series Queer As Folk, andthe emmy-award winning Public Television show California Connected.His plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun,From The Hip, Bargains and Blood, The Ballad of Little Girl Jesus etal have been performed around the world and have received numerousawards. He has written charity and award show speeches for hundredsof celebrities, as well as the GLAAD Awards, Vimeo Awards and TheTrevor Project. Along with writing for a number of pop culturewebsites, he writes a fiction blog called subwaysaints.com and the webseries Burninghabits.com. His work can also be seen on blairfell.com.
MARIAN FONTANA has been a writer and performer for over 20 years. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and most recently in the Guardian and on Salon.com. Her memoir, A Widows Walk published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster, was chosen as the Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 by People magazine and the Washington Post’s Book Raves of 2005. She most recently completedher second memoir, The Middle of the Bed.
Her essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Time of My Life for Random House. She is currently collaborating on a musical.
BILLY FROLICK’S screenwriting credits include DreamWorks Animation’s MADAGASCAR. He has written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and Salon.com, and is the author of four book-length parodies, including The Ditches of Edison County, a national bestseller.
GIANNA MESSINA is a writer, producer and comedian who got her start as a baby model. Her work has appeared in Dossier and Atlanta Style & Design magazine. She has performed stand-up at the Punchline in Atlanta and at the Metropolitan Room in New York and co-hosted the No Rules radio show with comedian Stu Levine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University Crouse College of Art and the High School for the Performing Arts where she majored in Drama. Gianna lives with her cat Clementine in Brooklyn in order to be closer to good bread and cannoli. She is gluten-free intolerant, enjoys the 3rdperson format of biographies and blogging on giannamessina.com.
In the cozy upstairs room at the Old Stone House, experience the reading series that Conde Nast Traveler called: “The Best Place to Chase Fiction with a Bit of History.
“Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House: Reconstructed from a 1699 Dutch farmhouse that played a key role in the Revolutionary War. Once a month you can hear up-and-coming Brooklyn writers discuss themes ranging from “Make Mine a Double”—on women and drinking—to books by war veterans (336 Third St.; 718-768-3195).”
It’s great night out for anyone who wants to be entertained and enlightened by acclaimed and emerging artists, and meet others who enjoy the same.
The Old Stone House
336 Third Street
718-768-3195 or 718-288-4290 for information and interviews
Between Fifth and Fourth Avenues
Due to construction in the park, enter from the Fourth Avenue side of the house.