STORIES AROUND THE TABLE. An evening of stories from 7 extraordinary women

A powerful, surprising and fascinating evening of stories from Karen Ludwig, Joyce Aaron, Dawn D ‘Arcy, Nancy Gabor, Christina Maile, Shami Chaikin, and Diane Spodarek.

Bios
Karen Ludwig , actor, director, writer, teacher .
Performs, directs, writes and teaches in NYC. Her B’way credits include PRELUDE TO A KISS with Steve Guttenberg and John Randolph, BROADWAY BOUND with Joan Rivers, THE DEVILS with Anne Bancroft, THE BACCHAE with Irene Pappas and many plays at the Public Theater.
She was a member of Andre Gregory’s Manhattan Project for two years and performed THE SEAGULL and Wallace Shawn’s OUR LATE NIGHT with the company throughout the United States and Europe. Her first film was Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN, (Meryl Streep’s lover) THIRTEEN DAYS opposite Kevin Costner and most recently, THAT AWKWARD MOMENT.
TV includes NYPD BLUE, ER, ELEMENTARY, and many LAW AND ORDER episodes. Ms. Ludwig is very proud of her work as Ethel Rosenberg in HBO’s CITIZEN COHN opposite James Woods after which she helped raise money for the Rosenberg Foundation for Children. She just completed her solo show, WHERE WAS I? directed by Dorothy Lyman.
She produced/directed UTA HAGEN’S ACTING CLASS/DVD; available on Amazon.

More info on Karen Ludwig here

Joyce Aaron is an actor, director and teacher. She is a graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse where she studied with Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham. She received an Obie in 1975/76 for her performance in Acrobatics which she directed and co-wrote with Luna Tarlo. She was a member of the Open Theatre for many years, working closely with Joseph Chaikin and touring internationally. She lived and worked with Sam Shepard after he cast her in his first play, Up to Thursday, at the Cherry Lane Theatre. She was in the original production of America Hurrah by Jean-Claude Itallie and played it at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She worked with Peter Brook at the Bouffes in Paris and Jerzy Grotowski in Denmark. She lived in Amsterdam for a number of years where she taught and directed in the Dutch theatre and TV and ran her own private workshops. In 2002 she performed in Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, directed by Joseph Chaikin at the Cherry Lane Theatre.
Working with Joseph Chaikin was a source of un-ending inspiration.

Diane Spodarek is a Canadian-American artist & writer who grew up in Detroit. Her creative work is archived in The New Museum and she is the recipient of numerous awards including an NEA and three NYFA artist’s fellowships.

Nancy Gabor, director and acting teacher. Directed ‘Lost and Found,’ by Paul Binnerts, an on-site performance at Westbeth after Hurricane Sandy. She collaborated with Joseph Chaikin for years and directed him in ‘The War In Heaven,’ Sam Shepard/Joe Chaikin, and ‘Texts for Nothing,’ Samuel Beckett. She has taught and directed internationally and is a Master Teacher at the Amsterdam Theater School. She was an Associate Professor in the theater program at Princeton and offers private coaching and weekend workshops. Nancy is the creator of ‘The Core Technique

Dawn D ‘Arcy is an actor, writer and bass player. She joined Karen Ludwig’s earlier incarnation of this group, at the time called Word of Mouth, almost 20 years ago where she wrote, collaborated and performed under Karen’s wonderful direction. Acting credits include “The Queens”, performed at Alliance Francaise and directed by Estelle Parsons. Stage managing credits include Yeats’ translation of Oedipus at the Actor’s Studio with Al Pacino, Dianne Wiest, David Strathairn and Mary Beth Hurt.

Bass playing highlights include a performance on the lower East Side with the Detroit punk band, The Dangerous Diane Band. She is filled with gratitude to be spending her Wednesdays writing with these brilliant, beautiful women.

Christina Maile co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, one of the first feminist theater companies in New York City. Her landscape architecture work has been published in Garden Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine, as well as ON- Site Journal in Canada. As a printmaker, she is a recent recipeint of among others, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant as well as Joan Mitchell Foundation Studio grant. Her print work was featured in the juried exhibiton at the 2016 International Print Center in New York City, and published in the Fall 2016 issue of San Francisco Journal of Peace. She is included in the online database of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art and the Brooklyn Museum.
More info on Christina Maile here and here