A beautiful spring night brought out some of the usual suspects and a few new friends to enjoy the ambience of the Ellington restaurant on 105th & Broadway and the craic to be had at another Irish American Writers & Artists salon.
The salon got underway with an affectionate satirical tribute to Pope Francis by Ron Vazzano, whose recollections of Francis’s early headline-grabbing humility and Everyman persona inspired Ron’s comic 2014 essay featuring some imaginative fake headlines of his own: Pope Francis “Stands in Line at Motor Vehicles . . . Lives In a Studio Apartment With His Dog, Assisi. . . Fired From His BouncerJob. . . for always turning the other cheek and never checking ID’s at the door.” You can check Ron’s online MuseLetter for the full text.
Next up, André Archimbaud — whose Irish heritage is hidden inside his mother’s mother’s maiden name — presented quick hits of humorous observation about life, love, religion, divorce and his overall “attempts at levity for these trying times.”
Sarah Fearon was on hand to try out a new scenario she’s working up for her loopy character, Snazzy Peabody, the real estate agent who’s a legend in her own mind. A member of the IAW&A board, Fearon herself is a top New York City real estate agent as well as a playwright and comedian. The irrepressible Snazzy is headed to Off-Broadway this fall as part of the United Solo Festival at Theatre Row. Check out Sarah’s website: sarahfearon.com.
Singer/songwriter Daniel Harnett left the guitar home this time to unleash his inner beat poet. He read two pieces, one a musing on sitting and standing and the other on doing the dishes. Info on the full scope of his music and art can be found at danielharnett.com.
Melanie Beth Curran is a singer/songwriter/instrumentalist as well as a collector and archivist of Irish-American song, from Sea Shanties to modern ballads. She performed a cappella “The Hills of Glenswilly” learned from an old Paddy Tunny recording, and followed that with a rousing original entitled “Molotov” about a rebel lass named Francie. Curran will be appearing at the East Durham Irish Festival on May 24, and at Connolly’s Rockaway Beach on the 31st, and in Brooklyn on June 7 at The Good Fork Pub in Redhook. For future dates check melaniebethcurran.com.
Actor/ director/ playwright Thom Molyeaux started off the second half of the salon with the opening monologue of a new play he is working on, an adaptation of Earnest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” Set on the night Hemingway committed suicide, he needs to tell the truth of who he is and the “The Lost Generation” of World War I, and the closest he can get to that truth is through his first novel and the tragic love affair of the impotent Jake Barnes and the bewitching Lady Bret Ashley. In the play, Hemingway narrates and seven actors bring the characters to life.
The author of three poetry chapbooks, Marcia B. Loughran is working on a fourth in those creative moments she can set aside from her duties as a nurse practitioner. She put us “safe inside someone else’s memory” with her reminiscences of spring driving trips and other verbal family snapshots, ending on a different note with an arresting piece entitled “To the Man Who Shattered the Storefront Window on Thanksgiving.”
Marcia then teamed up with playwright Sheila Walsh for a reading of Walsh’s one-act play, “O Holy Night,” a sweet and sassy exchange between two old friends on Christmas Eve — one a religious skeptic alienated by the misbehavior of their parish priest, the other still a believer bent on persuading her friend to accompany her to midnight Mass. As in all of Walsh’s work, the laughs were hearty and frequent. A recent staged reading of her new full-length play “The Deep Purple” was a great success (interested producers contact sheilawalshplaywright.com).
Long-time West Village denizen and veteran host of spoken word events around town, including IAW&A salons from time to time, Gordon Gilbert read two segments from his play, “Monologues From the Old Folks Home.” Both were reflections on the passage of time, seemingly inexhaustible in childhood, and how “summers are the hardest” when pondering the loss of a child and thinking of what might have been.
John Munnelly — musician, thinker, writer, improvisor, singer and hot-sauce maker — played host for the evening and provided the musical finale by performing three of his original songs, the first with a title inspired by the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: “Just 'Cause I Sing (Don’t Mean I’m Happy).” It was followed by “I Hate This [expletive] Song,” and “And They Say That They Know Me.” You can access John’s saucy thoughtfulness, Munnelly Mutters, at substack.com and his thoughtful sauciness at hattwood.com.
