Not Just for Shock Value: Show featuring Ishah Janssen-Faith

Ishah Janssen-Faith writes to invite any one in the NYC area to see the new show she is in, Not Just for Shock Value: A Femmes-Clowns Assemblage. Press release is below for more information.

Ishah adds that there will be a talk back after the Sunday, April 22nd 3pm show. If people are interested, all the women clowns and the Director will be in attendance.


Six Figures Theatre Company is proud to present the World Premiere of Kendall Cornell’s Soon-To-Be-World Famous Women’s Clown Troupe in

NOT JUST FOR SHOCK VALUE: A FEMMES-CLOWNS ASSEMBLAGE
April 7 – 28 at the West End Theatre

(March 20, 2007) Not Just for Shock Value: A Femmes-Clowns Assemblage is an astounding, all-women clown spectacle that will receive its world premiere April 7–28 at the West End Theatre, 263 W. 86th Street. Created and directed by Kendall Cornell.

"The mystery of women clowning!” says Bill Irwin, Tony-award winning actor and clown. “Different things are funny but it's easier not to think so. Man in a dress, almost always a laugh. Woman in a tux, not as often (but sometimes!). Kendall Cornell and her clowns are waist deep in all these questions -- plumbing the mystery.” Not Just For Shock Value, with its nine women clowns, opens a distinct, new terrain in humor.

Akin to the likes of Lucille Ball and Giulietta Masina, the troupe unrolls an “assemblage”: a humorous series of visual vignettes, short sketches and madcap dance numbers. In the realm of the modern clown movement, it zig-zags between broad humor and the darkly satirical. Not Just for Shock Value is the next wave in circus: all the acts are clown, and all the clowns are women.

Kendall Cornell’s Soon-To-Be-World-Famous Women’s Clown Troupe trained with Ms. Cornell, and clowned under her direction on assorted projects, including an event commissioned by Cirque du Soleil for the NYC opening of Corteo. Kendall Cornell is a veteran clown in her own right and has toured her dynamic solo clown pieces, The Maneater, Glamourpuss, and P.S. de la Resistance in NYC and abroad. Ms. Cornell has worked extensively with David Shiner (Fool Moon, Cirque du Soleil) in directing the U.S. version of the circus-theatre spectacle, Pomp, Duck & Circumstance.


Not Just for Shock Value previews Sat Apr 7 at 7:30pm and Sun Apr 8 at 3pm. It opens Thu Apr 12 at 7:30 and continues Sat Apr 14 at 7:30, Sun Apr 15 at 3, Wed Apr 18 at 7:30, Sat Apr 21 at 4:30 and 10, Sun Apr 22 at 3, Thu Apr 26 at 7:30, and Sat Apr 28 at 3 & 7:30.

All performances are $20 (except for pay-what-you-can previews April 7 and 8) and take place at The West End Theatre, 263 West 86th Street (between Broadway and West End Avenue - 1 train to 86th Street, ½ block west). Tickets go on sale at the box office one hour before showtimes, or may be purchased in advance via Smarttix -- (212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.

The Not Just for Shock Value performers include Melinda Ferraraccio, Kathie Horejsi, Emily James, Ishah Janssen-Faith, Mona Le Roy, Judi Lewis Ockler, Julie Plumettaz, Maria Smushkovich and Virginia Venk.

Six Figures Theatre Company, now in its 14th season, is dedicated to providing opportunities for women theater artists and developing quality theatrical work by women and other underrepresented artists. Six Figures’ spring 2007 season also includes Flashback, a new verbatim theatre piece by Penny Coleman, Elana Michelson, and Patricia Lee Stotter, and Ding-Dang in Space!, a postmodern country comedy cabaret.