SMART GALS PRODUCTIONS: The Speakeasy

Sunday, July 31st
(& the last Sunday of Every Month)

8:00 until 10:00 in the evening
Mt. Hollywood Underground
4607 Prospect Avenue
(Underneath Mt. Hollywood Church in Silverlake,
corner of Prospect and Rodney, one block North of Hollywood Blvd. and one block east of Vermont Ave.... Enter on Rodney.)

Gents and Dames welcomed with equal regard!
Admission:
$7.00 (general)
$5.00 (members)
Bookmarks $10.00*

Passwords & such:
310.572.7347
www.smartgals.org

Mix, mingle, swoon, shine, speakeasy!

*Keeping this all on the QT, we don't sell booze, but we do sell
bookmarks. Do I make myself mysterious enough here?
We don't sell booze, but we do sell bookmarks.

Pack $15.00 for a full night. And hush!

10 dead poets. 10 live performers. 2 teams. The Suicide Poets vs. the Natural Death Poets Slam at the Speakeasy promises grueling, fast-paced, nonstop free and not-so-free verse action. Featuring performances by Chris Davidson, Felicia Taylor E., L. Flint Esquerra, Katy Hickman, June Melby, Perla Melendez, David O’Shea, Rob Roberge, Barrie W. Ryan, Marla Smith and Lori Yeghiayan. We will bring you real, dead poets, anonymously performed to create a level playing field. Was that Bukowski? Can you be sure? Sounded a little more like James Dickey to me. Surely, those artful, overarching sorrows can only be Sylvia Plath? Not pithy enough to be Parker? Too sweet to be Sexton? You be the judge. In fact, you could be the judge, as three judges will be randomly selected from the audience. Rousing revelry will surely ensue. The evening’s bookmark artist is Sasha Isaac-Young. Cookies and lemonade will be served, she said knowingly.

Password is “Stop that rhyming and I mean it.”

June Melby is a poet, composer, and comedian who has been heard on National Public Radio, published in National Lampoon Magazine, the LA Weekly, in numerous anthologies, and in three chapbooks including Tub Toys on FarstarFire Press. She has had sold-out performances in London, Munich, Hamburg, Amsterdam; was the winner at Edinburgh National Poetry Day Poetry Competition, and headliner at the Bristol Int‚l Poetry Festival. Her U.S. performances include: The UCLA Armand Hammer Museum; Beyond Baroque; The Seattle Bumbershoot Arts Festival; Seattle Poetry Festival; and the Nuyorican, The Knitting Factory, and CBGB's, in New York City. She recently released a full-length studio album of spoken word and music with her band, June Melby and Her Future Enemies which is available on her website:
www.junemelby.com.

Perla Melendez is a second year Literature and Bookarts double major in the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. She is 19 and enjoys hula hooping, cooking with friends, writing, tree climbing, the sound of Portuguese, and much more.

Rob Roberge is a novelist, screenwriter, and director, and plays in a rock ‘n roll band. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Literary Review. He lives in California. Want more? Please visit www.robroberge.net

David O'Shea has worked as an actor in NY and Los Angeles for 25 years, a Santa Claus at the Beverly Center and Azuza for four seasons and drove a taxi in NYC for seven and a half years. He tells his taxi and Santa stories at theatres and cabarets throughout Los Angeles. He is currently looking for WWII veterans who would like to have their memories recorded and copied on CD for free (as a tribute to Mr. O'Shea's late father, a veteran of Patton's 95th Infantry). If you know anyone who would be interested, please contact Mr. O'Shea.

For two years in the mid-eighties Barrie W. Ryan studied very advanced clowning techniques at the Dell Arte School of Physical Theater, located in the distantly northern redwood jungles of our state. More recently, he got an MFA in writing from CSULB, where he learned to prune.

Felicia Taylor E., is an Actress and Singer with theater, film and tv credits. Some local theaters she's had the pleasure of working with have been the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Deaf West Theater, the MET Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, Will & Company & the La Mirada Theater for the Perfoming Arts. She's honored to be among those that are bringing the spirits of the "Dead Poets" alive!

Marla Smith did not exist until April 2000, when she met Christine Louise Berry, at the Are You Interested? Taxation show. Since then, Marla has written pieces and performed them with Smart Gals Productions in such noteworthy shows as: Are You Interested? Labor, Are You Interested? Mother's Day, and Are You Interested? Back to School. As one of the Molly's in the Smart Gals Production of Bloomsday, Marla attended each and every book club meeting where we read Ulysses, and helped cut down the text with Christine for the Molly segment, and is on the Smart Gals Board of Directors. You can usually see Marla "loaning books" in the "Library" on the last Sunday of every month at the Smart Gals Speakeasy, where she performs her duties as the Librarian.

Sasha Isaac-Young will soon begin production on her first feature film;a documentary examining the American foster care system from foster children's perspective. Sasha graduated from USC with an MFA in Film Production. There she wrote and directed several short documentary and fiction films including "Foster Stories" which recently won best short documentary at the Urbanworld film festival in New York. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BFA in Printmaking and a BA in Acting. Having grown up in Seattle, she spent most of her formative teen years in a mosh pit. Happily she left the city at about the same moment grunge died. Sasha is very honored to participate in the Smart Gals Speakeasy and hopes her bookmarks travel through many pages of all sorts of interesting stories.

L. Flint Esquerra once wrote a poem about his Navajo code-talking bus driver. It won a contest and was printed up and placed on buses all through out Salt Lake City, Utah. Lately though, he's just been writing and directing really strange theatre pieces. He's appeared in SmartGals projects as a 5th-year high school senior/former crack baby who was adopted by a fading soap opera star who moved to Italy but left him to be raised by the maid, and also as one of the Leopold Blooms. He's not sure if he can go to the new "Bad News Bears" movie because he liked the original one so much.

Katy Hickman Katy Hickman is a proud member
of Dog Ear, a local playwright's collective. Her short play, Lucky, for the Virginia Avenue Project, will be staged August 19-21 at UCLA's Little Theatre. Another short play, Layered Bob, will appear in The Witching Hour opening at the Met Theatre on September 23rd.

Lori Yeghiayan is pleased to be performing once again on a Smart Gals stage - past appearances with the Gals include: Are you Interested? Loosely Based on Love, Labor and Mother's Day. She has also performed at regional, small and very small theatres throughout California including the La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego, Moving Arts in Downtown LA and the ASK Common Ground Festival. Lori holds an MFA in Acting from the University of California, San Diego.