FREDDY

Written by Deborah Lawlor
Directed by Frances Loy
Movement and Dance Director Cate Caplin
Produced by James Bennett, Stephen Sachs, Simon Levy for the Fountain, & by Leslie Ferreira, Louie Piday for LACC Theatre Academy
Starring Marty Dew Mel England Alexandra Fiallos Jamal Hopes Tristen Kim Katie McConaughy Jackie Mohr Lamont Oakley Connor Clark Pascale Justice Quinn Savannah Rutledge Brianna Saranchock Trenton Tabak Jesse Trout Susan Wilder

 The Fountain Theatre & The Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy present

The world premiere of a new play by Deborah Lawlor

SEPT 27 – OCT 14, 2017

“PHENOMENAL! SEXY!” – Hollywood Times

“A COMMANDING PRODUCTION.” – LA Dance Chronicle

“AN AMAZING WORLD PREMIERE!” – BroadwayWorld

RAVE! – LA Dance Chronicle – “A production that dancers and anyone interested in dance should see… beautifully directed by Frances Loy… strong acting talents… [Marty] Dew gives a powerful portrayal of a sensitive and gentle man haunted by personal demons and driven by many sexual desires… A COMMANDING PRODUCTION.” – Jeff Slayton

RAVE! – The Hollywood Times – “PHENOMENAL… fiery, sexy, relatable and all-around enjoyable…If you want to see an eccentric, short, and beautiful production filled with a great story and choreography, go see “Freddy” at the Caminito Theatre.” – Meg Taylor

RAVE! – Paris/LA – “[A] 50-MINUTE FANTASIA… part theater, part dance, part happening.” — Barlo Perry

RAVE! – BroadwayWorld –  “AN AMAZING WORLD PREMIERE… directed with perfect wild abandon… capture[s] the explosive spirit of a passionate artist and a turbulent era.” — Shari Barrett

RAVE! – Hollywood Revealed – “EROTIC AND VISUAL… a FIRST-RATE, JOYOUS celebration of an accomplished, though short-lived life.” — Peter Foldy

RAVE! – Grigware Reviews – “don’t be surprised if you find it OFF-BROADWAY some day” — Stan Mazin

Greenwich Village, 1964, based on a true story. A naïve young woman falls under the spell of Fred Herko, a brilliant ballet dancer of extraordinary charisma and talent and a fiery denizen of Andy Warhol’s Factory. Freddy fuses theater, music, dance and video to capture the explosive spirit of a passionate artist and a turbulent era.

Presented off-site at the beautiful Caminito Theatre
Los Angeles City College
855 N. Vermont Avenue, LA. 90029
Free Parking!

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 Lawlor, who began her career as a dancer, choreographer and actor in New York, was a personal friend of Herko’s.

“I carried around all those memories for a very long time before I finally sat down to write,” she says. “Freddy and I were students of Jimmy Waring together, and we were both involved with the Judson Church, which was at the heart of the downtown dance scene. Freddy was a brilliant talent and good friend to many people. His death shocked us all.”

Fred Herko (1936-1964) was a central figure in New York’s downtown avant-garde. A musical prodigy, he studied piano at the Juilliard School of Music before switching to ballet at the age of twenty. In 1956 he won a scholarship to study at American Ballet Theatre School and within a few years was dancing with established choreographers including John Butler, Katherine Litz, Buzz Miller, Glen Tetley and James Waring. He was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, presenting six of his own works in the group’s concerts between 1962 and 1964 and dancing in works by Al Hansen, Deborah Hay, Arlene Rothlein and Elaine Summers. He was a co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre, which staged one-act plays by poets and provided a podium for happenings by Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow and Robert Whitman; dances by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown; music by La Monte Young, John Herbert McDowell and Philip Corner; and films by Brian De Palma, Stan VanDerBeek and Andy Warhol. Herko starred in seven of Warhol’s earliest cinematic experiments in 1963, including Jill and Freddy Dancing, Rollerskate/Dance Movie and Salome and Delilah. His untimely death in 1964, at the age of 28, robbed New York’s underground scene of one of its most exuberant and versatile performers who was equally at home performing Comb Music by Fluxus composer George Brecht or camping it up in Rosalyn Drexler’s musical comedy Home Movies.

“Freddy was always conceived as an off-site project because it requires a larger performance area than what we can offer at the Fountain,” explains Lawlor’s co-artistic director, Stephen Sachs, who is an alumnus of the LACC Theatre Academy. “In addition to sharing their remarkable facility, this collaboration gives Academy students the opportunity to work with professional actors and designers, and it gives us the chance to mentor young people who will become theater artists of tomorrow.”