Mad Jenny’s Love Und Greed Mad Jenny & the Society Band

About This Show

Mad Jenny’s Love Und Greed is a modern Weimar cabaret & features songs from life in Berlin from the 1920s & 1930s by Mischa Spoliansky, Brecht/Weill, Eissler, Claire Waldoff & more. The music explores love, money, sex, gender, woman’s rights & surviving all of this in a city & a time of great uncertainty & great danger. It may well be our time, too. The ensemble is of the past, but warning of the future.

About the artists

Jenny Lee Mitchell aka Mad Jenny is an actress & cabaret performer who spent many years performing throughout Europe in operetta & musical theater, as well as performing in devised theater & clown. She studied clown with David Shiner & theater at NYU. In NYC, she has performed at HERE, 59E59, St. Ann’s Warehouse, La MaMa, 3-Legged Dog, The Brick, Theater For The New City & Dixon Place. Jenny has become greatly interested in works created & performed in the concentration camp Theresienstadt & has performed programs of this material with Untitled Theater Company #61 at various consulates & centers. Jenny translates many of the songs in the Mad Jenny repertoire from German into English.

Maria Dessena (arrangements, piano & accordion) has served as Music Director for various theater productions, rock ensembles & cabaret shows, most recently including Vaclav Havel’s Hunt for a Pig at 3LD Art & Technology Center, Money Lab (Love und Greed: featuring Mad Jenny and the Society Band) at HERE Arts Center & Robert Honeywell’s Mass at the Brick Theater.  She collaborates with a number of New York performers, specializing in multi-language European cabaret acts. Maria’s transcriptions & arrangements have been published by Woody Guthrie Publications & The Richmond Organization.  Her arrangements for rock & jazz orchestra are performed regularly at various NYC nightlife events such as Le Poisson Rouge. Maria graduated from Indiana University School of Music in 2000.

Patrice Miller is a director, choreographer & writer who specializes in interdisciplinary new performance work & re-imagining classics. Her work has been presented with the IPA at The Brooklyn Museum, Prelude at CUNY Graduate Center, SUNY Stonybrook, with UTC61 at La MaMa, 3-Legged Dog, HERE Arts Center, Theater Row, The Brick, Dixon Place, NYC Fashionweek, 571 Projects, the 68th Street Subway Stop & in city parks. Credits include In Pieces, The Pig or Vaclav Havel’s Hunt, Money Lab,  ELE↓↑TOR & Maggie Cino’s Decompression. As a performer, her credits include Urban Bush Women’s Place Matters: A Look at Displacement, Martha Bowers’ Angels and Accordions, Gemini Collisionworks premiere of Richard Foreman’s George Bataille’s Bathrobe. Upcoming: Paul Auster’s City of Glass at the New Ohio.

Pandora is known as the Grecian Goddess of Burlesque. Her fan dances are world renowned & harken back to the time of music filled jazz halls, flappers & dandies dancing fast to soulful rhythms. Pandora’s dancing entrances & captivates audiences across the country.

Under Artistic Director, Djahari Clark, Desert Sin weaves narratives through movement while embracing the beautiful & the grotesque. With expertise in numerous disciplines of theatre & movement, Desert Sin harnesses this medium, coupling visual spectacle with gripping choreography. Desert Sin develops characters & stories with innovative interpretations.  www.desertsin.com

Soprano Andrianna Smela has performed eclectic repertoire encompassing Early Music, Zarzuela, & improvisational opera. Currently, she collaborates with pianist Maria Dessena in performances of unique Classical Cabaret programs. The duo has performed at the Metropolitan Room, the Liederkranz Club, the Singer’s Forum in New York City & The Jazz Bar in Edinburgh, UK, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Concert experience includes: Belinda in Dido and Aeneas with the Bronx Opera & Mařenka in The Bartered Bride with the Liederkranz Foundation, as well as Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria & Bach’s Magnificat with the West Islip Symphony & Sophisticated Strings. Andrianna graduated from the IU School of Music.

Wednesday, Jan. 13 at 7:30pm

General Admission
$12 in advance
$15 at the door

Students / Seniors /  ID NYC
$10 

Estimated Runtime
70 minutes

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Credits

Featuring Special Guests
Desert Sin, Andrianna Smela & Pandora Burlesque

Arrangements, piano & accordion
Maria Dessena

Concept, translations, vocals & clarinet
Jenny Lee Mitchell aka Mad Jenny

Staging & Choreography
Patrice Miller

Movement Consultant
Gregg Goldston

Photo credit
Daniel Murtagh (top)
Mark Shelby Perry (bottom center)
Mark Glenn (bottom right)

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