PAST.PERFORMANCES.

DIRECTING.CONCEPTION.CHOREOGRAPHY.

Toilet Bowl Love & Friends Variety Extravaganza!!! Cambridge Chronicle Preview   Thursday, July 21 The Cantab Lounge Cambridge, Central Square   Featuring Toilet Bowl Love (solo clown-toilet performance by Naomi Bennett) Hosted by Marc Zegans Burlesque performances by – Rose Noir & Kristen Minsky (TropiGals); Stella Swingline (The Femme Show, TraniWreck) Storytelling by Brendyn Schneider Musical performances by SHADWELL; and Degan (A Bit Much) Bathroom Photography Exhibit by Emily Falcigno Handmade Jewelery for sale by Bri Crofton   For one night only, Naomi Bennett brings together a multitude of talented and oddball performers to celebrate her last performance in Cambridge – before moving to the west coast. Featuring the final performance of Toilet Bowl Love. Formerly Nomi Sparks (of TraniWreck) and a founding member of the Grindhouse Marionettes (Boston's own human marionette troupe), Naomi Bennett brings her absurd sense of humor to life in Toilet Bowl Love. Miss Bennett explores the fantasies, mishaps, and downright strangeness that - apparently - happen to all of us, in the bathroom! Toilet Bowl Love, was called "absolutely mesmerizing," and audiences were nothing short of screaming with laughter when the shorter version was seen at the 2010 New England Fringe Festival, so don't miss the last Cambridge performance of this full-length (clean) toilet-based comedy!   Hosted by poet and ringmaster Marc Zegans, this night of neo-vaudevillian madness will feature burlesque performances by Rose Noir & Kristen Minsky (of the TropiGals), conquering the hearts of New England with high kicks, back flips, and vocals to boot; and by Stella Swingline, burlesque performer extraordinaire with The Femme Show and TraniWreck.   With storytelling by Brendyn Schneider – Writer. Storyteller. Somnambulist – whose stories have been featured at ImprovBoston, the Lizard Lounge, the Cyclorama and other venues around New England.   Solo musical performaner to open the evening will be SHADWELL, whose band (of the same name) was winner of Boston Music Spotlight’s 2009 Battle of the Bands and selected as one of their “Top 10 Local Bands to Watch in 2010.” Later in the evening, A Bit Much bandleader and frequent co-conspirator with Miss Bennett, Degan, will grace the stage with his solo musical performance. Degan “pens the songs that we would all pen if we weren't so easily embarrassed - distracted, overwrought, and so dishonest that honesty emerges in spite of itself.”   Seeing things differently, Emily Falcigno tops off the evening with a photography exhibit exploring different points of view, specifically a study of bathrooms from around the world!

Eurydice

Independant Drama Society Directed by Lindsay Eagle Choreographed by Naomi Bennett Boston Center for the Arts, The Plaza Black Box Theatre April 22-30, 2011

Toilet Bowl Love

FULL LENGTH SHOW - PREMIER!!! Created and performed by Naomi Bennett With artistic support from Jennifer Hicks, Alisia L. L. Waller, and Bronwyn Sims Atlantis Playmakers Burlington, MA Friday & Saturday, April 1 & 2, 2011 New England Fringe Festival

Atlantis Playmakers Burlington, MA. October 8, 2010

pool

Mobius Boston, MA. January 21 & 22, 2011   Work in Progress showings FEED FUND The Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA. November 22, 2010   Concieved and directed by Naomi Bennett. Featuring Li Feng, Jason Jedrusiak, Marlena Merrin, Shawn Paulling, & Brent Walton. Music by Clinton Degan. Performance poetry by Sarah Pearlstein.   Inspired by Mark Ravenhill's play pool (no water), N. Bennett explores themes of jealously, resentment, and emotional absence. An original performance drawn from the experiences of the cast and creative team, pool explores the dark feelings that linger at the edges of our thoughts – that we do not talk about – when we hate what we should love, feel resentment to what we should feel joy, or feel detached from what is most important.   Created collaboratively with the ensemble, with original music by Clinton Degan (of A Bit Much), and performance poetry by Sarah Pearlstein, Bennett combines theatrical forms of Interplay, Contact Improvisation, Butoh-inspired movement, original text, and video to move the audience through an abstract story of group mentality versus the individual expression and the dark (yet secretly exciting) world of resentment, jealousy, and emotional absence.

Support/Control Shared Choreographers' Concert

Co-choreographed and performed with Alisia L. L. Waller of And So No Sin Performance Troupe The Dance Complex, Cambridge, MA. October 15 & 16, 2010

Searching for Molly Pye...

Green Street Studios, Cambridge, MA June 11 & 12, 2010 Concieved and directed by Naomi Bennett. Starring Alma Baumwoll, Nina Shayer, Jim Banta, Laurel Picard, & Naomi Bennett. Spoken Word written and performed by Giuliana Funkhauser and Sarah Pearlstein.   Work in Progress showings

FEED FUND. April 24, 2010, Redtail Collective, Boston, MA. Dancers: Alma Baumwaol, Nina Shrayer, Jim Banta, Laurel Picard, and Naomi Bennett. Spoken Word: Giuliana Funkhauser, Sarah Pearlstein. MC: Alisia L. L. Waller. Special Thanks: Brent Walton, Irina Peligrad, Kuma Lisa & The Redtail Collective   Mobius Works in Progress. January 30, 2010. Boston, MA. Dancers: Alma Baumwell, Jason Jedrusiak, Jim Banta, Nate Stoddard, and Naomi Bennett. Spoken Word: Giuliana Funkhauser, Sarah Pearlstein. Special Thanks: Brent Walton & Steve Head   EFFECTUS. December 12, 2009. Boston, MA. Solo dance by Naomi Bennett. Special Thanks: Emily Black & Jason Jedrusiak   Though childhood memories are often clouded and fantastical, N. Bennett searches back to learn more about of her mother, lost to cancer when she was four years old. Miss Bennett uses dance, film, music, spoken word, and often unstable paper structures to express her journey through this performance, and to explore the greater theme of grief, loss, and moving on.   The audience is invited to step outside themselves, to experience an abstract view of a body riddled with cancer, visualized and physicalized through video, dance, and spoken word. As this first section dies, the search through childhood memories begins. A faint sound of prayer. A ritual that sustains hope. The music progresses. Layered with video and words. Movement becomes more frantic. Everything, eventually, torn down. Paper piece of memories across the stage. Memories. Images. In the end we all find ways to move on. To cope. To live and forget. Or remember.

Eye Spy

A dance inspired by gravity, that grew into so much more... Created, choreographed, and performed by Alma Baumwoll & Naomi Bennett Movment Research Lab, Open Performanc Series, DTW Studio, New York, NY May 19, 2010

Beatnik Cafe

A Beatnik Revue: Musical Revue of the Jazz Beat Generation by Namaya the jazz poet Directed by Naomi Bennett   Richmond Shepard Theater, New York, NY April 11, 2010   PRESS Rutland Herald, "Beatnik Café - Is one hip, high-caliber theatrical event." Take a trip back in time to visit the Beatnik scene of cool jazz music, Jack Kerouac, and poetry of the 40s to the 60s live at the Richmond Shepard Theater located at 309 E 26th Street at 2nd Avenue NY, NY.   Beatnik Café will star living legends of the Beat Generation: Sheila Jordan the jazz legend and friend of Charlie Parker, Lillie Bryant Howard jazz & blues singer with Swan Records, and Richmond Shepard appearing as Lord Buckley.   Beatnik Cafe is a high-energy musical revue which features the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Cannonball Adderley, and other prominent musicians from the mid l940’s through the early sixties. It is a journey through the Bebop to the Beatnik era; songs including Twisted, Yip Rock, and the scathing social commentary of Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn. If you liked Smokey Joe’s Café, you will love this!

Kulandia: The Remains of the Planet

Written by T. Namaya Directed by Naomi Bennett   Hooker Dunham Theater, Brattleboro, VT August 15, 2009   as part of the 24 hour Play Festival hosted by Strong Strong Coffee Stage, in collaboration with the Arts Council of Windham County, and Hooker-Dunham Theater & Gallery.

PERFORMANCE.

Juddertone

with Alisia Waller and And So No Sin Performance Troupe Boston University Dance Theater, Boston, MA November 13 & 14, 2009

Engagement the first part of three part series for The Wedlock Project Space 242, Boston, MA September 25, 2009   Performance: Romeos Living in a hetero-centric world, intimacy between two men is confined to the realms of confrontation and competition. There is solitude—grasping each other’s hands, the tension is visible. The gaze is leveled, strength tested, the desire is first to overcome. Somewhere within, another struggle exists. An alienated self, seeking to expose the desire for love. Engagement begins with struggle.

PRODUCING. Dancing the Beast Choreography by Alisia L.L. Waller And So No Sin Performance Troupe Mobius, Boston, MA December 4-6, 2009

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