In Partnership with the Catskill Center
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A Literary Salon and Gala
Erased Women of the Catskills
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What if we heard their voices?
What if we had their wisdom?
What did they know that we need to know today?
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One Night Only! June 28 at 7pm
Woodstock, N.Y.
(Located at a private venue, address provided when you RSVP.)
This Event is a Fundraiser to Support the
10th Annual Halloween Journey by Cara Cruickshank.
Purchase tickets in advance.
Be a "Friend" $45, a "Crush" $60, or a "Lover" $75.
Seating is Limited. Dinner, Dessert, and Wine Included.
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Join us for a unique evening of discourse, artistic performances, panel discussion with Q & A, wine and cuisine exploring the lives of four extraordinary historic women of upstate N.Y.
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Scroll down to meet our Featured Guests
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Café de la Culture is a grassroots nonprofit production company that brings meaningful conversations via literary salons, panel discussions, theater and live performances to audiences hungry to
create and incubate vital ideas and new vision. Founded by Catskills local Cara Cruickshank, Cafe de la Culture promotes women’s advocacy, cultural diversity and community building, internationally.
Cafe de la culture offers salons and events in Paris, France and has toured to Los Angeles, N.Y.C., San Francisco, Portland, and Denver and Boulder.
It comes to Woodstock for the first time in anticipation of the 100th
anniversary
of the passage of the 19th Amendment,
guaranteeing and protecting women's constitutional right to vote and in support of the
10th Season of the Halloween Journey,
which highlights luminary historic women of the Catskills.
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MEET THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
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Cara Cruickshank
Cara Cruickshank is a Brazilian/American living in France. As a woman living in 3 cultures, she has a first-hand, intersectional view on cross-cultural themes relevant to modern women. She began her professional career at age 10 as Little Cosette and Little Eponine on Broadway in the musical Les Misérables, along with multiple singing performances at The United Nations General Assembly. Her experience in dance, classical voice and theater is extensive, encompassing a variety of disciplines, with training both in the U.S. and abroad. She has independently produced, directed and/or choreographed over 60 independent productions in the U.S. and abroad (including Turkey, France and Brazil), focused on diversity and women's empowerment. Her works have been consistently celebrated and media acclaimed. Cara founded Café de la Culture in 2011 to promote diversity, arts and community conversations. She recently showcased her original, ensemble theater play, The Alchemy of Imperfection, in Paris, France with standing ovations, encores and media acclaim. Since then, she has toured this multimedia production across the U.S., alongside a panel discussion on the topic: “Courageous Vulnerability: How Can Men Support Women to Speak Up and Be Seen?” in honor of
#MeToo
and
#TimesUp
. Each event is locally cast and curated with artists, activists, academics and experts from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Launching with sold-out performances in Los Angeles and Boulder, the event has most recently been presented in Denver, San Francisco, Portland and most recently The Laguardia Performing Arts Center in N.Y.C., where it also sold out -with rave audience reviews. Cafe de la Culture is now booking performances nationally in the U.S.
www.cafedelaculture.com
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MEET OUR FEATURED ARTISTS
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Andrea Frierson
Andrea Frierson is a two-time Helen Hayes Award nominee, a Library of Congress award winner (Ethnographic Research) and a Dramatists Guild Fellow. Broadway credits include:
The Lion King
; Erzulie, Goddess of Love in the original Broadway cast of
Once on This Island
;
Bring in ‘Da Noise/Funk
;
For Colored Girls
.... and
Marie Christine
at Lincoln Center Theater. Andrea’s solo show,
Me & Ella,
ran at York Theatre in NYC 2017). Television credits include:
Allegra’s Window
(Nickelodeon);
Quantico
;
Elementary
; and
POSE
(FX). She is currently working on a new solo show at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock.
www.andreafrierson.com
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Dennis Yerry
Dennis Yerry is a musician, composer, arranger and musical director whose career has encompassed a myriad of musical genres. He composed and musical directed the theatrical production of "Black Elk Speaks" in Denver, CO and L.A., in which he also performed. His film and TV credits include performances for the Ken Burn's documentaries, "Lewis and Clark" and "The West". He is currently the musical director and composer for "Unto These Hills", the outdoor drama in Cherokee, NC. As a pianist he has played such well-known venues in NYC as the Knickerbocker, the Waldorf-Astoria, Tavern on the Green and Sign of the Dove. He is proud to have collaborated and worked with some of the finest musicians, actors and choreographers in the world today, including Jack DeJohnette, Kenny Burrell, Jason Marsalis, Pete Seeger, David Amram, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, R. Carlos Nakai, James Earl Jones, Joseph Fire Crow, Valerie Naranjo, Sloan Wainwright, Dorothy Papadakos, Dan Brubeck, Perry Robinson, Roswell Rudd, Ann Osmond, Michael Greyeyes, Joan Henry, Laura Dean and Marla Bingham to name a few.
www.dennisyerry.com
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Maryanne DiPalma
Maryanne DiPalma began her performing arts career at the age of 4 in ballet, then numerous other dance forms, leading to musical and dramatic theatre, and several years with the Pennsylvania Ballet Company. She was a working ‘triple threat’ stage and screen performer on the East and West Coasts, as well as choreographer and director. A retired school teacher in public and private schools and schools of the arts, Maryanne continues to teach dance, yoga, pilates and other fitness classes and acting. Also a guidance counselor in schools, she later separately counseled individuals and families, and most recently also works with individuals, couples and groups as a certified Energy Medicine Practitioner.
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MEET OUR FEATURED PANELISTS
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Sheila Isenberg
Sheila Isenberg is the author of five non-fiction books, including four biographies. She is a former award-winning reporter, press secretary, organizer of women’s groups, adjunct professor at Marist College, media director for the Woodstock Comedy Festival (raising money for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking), and leader of reading & discussion groups for New York Humanities. She is a member of PEN, the Authors’ Guild, and Women Writing Women’s Lives. Sheila has appeared in several documentaries and on multiple media platforms, and has lectured widely. She is currently working on a new book,
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: Women’s Fascination with Crime and Outlaws
. Her website is
www.sheilaisenberg.com
and she can be reached at
sheila.isenberg@gmail.com
.
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Bambi Lobdell
Bambi Lobdell received her Bachelor's in Secondary English Education from SUNY Oneonta and a Masters and PhD in English from Binghamton University. In addition to her work with Medieval Literature, Greek Drama, Mythology, and Folklore, Dr. Lobdell studied gender and queer theories in order to fully research the life of Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell. Her background in queer theory enabled her to successfully argue that Joe Lobdell was a transgender man, not a Passing Woman or Lesbian as gender theorists had done in the second half of the twentieth century. Dr. Lobdell has presented her work on Joe Lobdell at the Queer Studies Conference at UCLA, the New York Folklore Society's Legends and Tales Conference at Binghamton University, the Second Biennial Conference on Women and History in Northeast Pennsylvania at Scranton University, and the 2008 Fantasia Fair in Provincetown, MA. Her essay
Queering the Space Around Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell
was published in the journal Phoebe, and recently she was interviewed on her book,
A Strange Sort of Being
, by The Advocate magazine.
http://lucyjoe.com/
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William Klaber
William Klaber is a part-time journalist. He lives in upstate New York on a hill overlooking Basket Creek, a short way upstream from where Lucy Lobdell lived 160 years ago. The farmhouse he bought with his wife, Jean, in 1980 had a history with Lucy's legend, but he didn't know that till years later when he sat down for breakfast with a longtime local historian who told him Lucy's story and showed him a leather satchel filled with recollections, newspaper articles, and letters about her, gathered over the years. In this collection was a copy of a self-written account of Lucy's early life that the historian had found in an unmarked box in a library basement. Despite his continued searching, the historian never found the memoir that Lucy had promised to write. Explaining that he had always thought to write a book of his own about Lucy but no longer felt up to it, the historian then handed the satchel to the author.
www.amazon.com/William-Klaber
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White Feather
White Feather
was initiated into the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge by her elder and mentor Yehwehnode-2-Wolves, Twylah Nitsch in 1985. A holistic nurse for 30 years, dancer, Buddhist practitioner, and herbalist, White Feather is certified by Grandmother Twylah to teach the wisdom wheel teachings. White Feather teaches: Seven Directions Movement Meditation.
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MEET OUR INTERNS AND CO-HOSTS
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Maya Howard
Maya Howard is Polish-American and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a rising senior art history major at Bard College. She is planning on writing her senior thesis on representations of women in Polish fairytale and folk illustrations during the Communist era. She is excited about the curatorial aspect of this internship.
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Lena Soussan
A Franco-American graduate in both Film and Acting, Léna has traveled all the way from Paris to intern with Café de la Culture, and is excited to be helping host the Erased Women of the Catskills Gala, in which she hopes to help write these women back into history
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SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Ian Cruickshank and John Holland.
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Thanks also to Our Interns Julia Morgado from Sao Paolo, Brazil and Audrey VanBlarcom from Pine Hill, N.Y.
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OUR MISSION
We bring multimedia performances, and powerful community conversations to diverse audiences hungry to create and incubate vital ideas and new vision. We work with luminary thinkers and creators, city by city, to help their communities become more informed on #MeToo topics, illuminate women's and minorities' voices, and to inspire and transform collaborative solutions into action.
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If you can't join us for this event, please consider making a
tax-deductible donation
to help us in fulfilling our mission to create more performances and public events that educate, entertain and inspire community building and action that honors diversity.
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Take a look at the incredible line up of artists, activists and luminaries that joined us in Portland!
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Recently in San Francisco
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Take a look at the incredible line up of artists, activists and luminaries that joined us last week in San Francisco!
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Take a look at the incredible line up of artists, activists and luminaries that joined us last week in Denver and view our conference panel!
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Cara Cruickshank | Cafe de la Culture | 720-935-2540 | cafedelaculture.com
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