Simon's Rock, Bard College, Great Barrington, MA
June 8-26, 2022
GB Public Theater 2022 stage season begins with four new solo performances that run for over five weeks. All feature stories of humanity and demonstrate the power of a single voice.
Included in this series is the premiere of Will LeBow’s raconteurial jewel, "The Bard The Beat The Blues" (June 8-26), directed by company Artistic Director Jim Frangione and featuring the accomplished actor-musician LeBow, storytelling and versifying his creative arc, from his family’s acting roots to his life on stage--all presented with funny asides, anecdotes, screen media and musical interludes. In this mesmerizing, quickly-paced hour of storytelling, audiences will fall under the spell of a marvelous entertainer and musician; we move along with LeBow from his ancestry in the Jewish ghetto of Vilna, Lithuania to Brooklyn, where his grandfather acted in Yiddish theater, to growing up in 1950s, heading off to City College, discovering Shakespeare, being introduced to the nightlife in the heyday of Greenwich Village, the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other influences that led him to a lifelong career on stage.
In his story, LeBow weaves bits from Shakespeare, Chekov, August Wilson, Mississippi John Hurt and Scott Joplin, the stream of anecdotes and life-lessons accompanied by LeBow at the keyboard, playing his own bluesy music. It’s a seamless performance by a fantastic storyteller, loaded with laughs, heart, bite, and historical commentary. It recounts the world and road as they unfolded for LeBow, why it’s ill-advised to bite our tongues when others tell us to, and, in his words, why this “nutzo, farkakte world” with all its randomness and unseen possibilities is the best world to be born in, if you have the creative bones to deal with it.
