Mr. Bengson, who exudes a defensive deadpan calm that hints at demons scrambling beneath, sums up their chronicle with the jaunty disclaimer, So here it is, the sound of introverts pining! That may not sound like much fun. sleeknoteScriptTag.type = 'text/javascript'; Sometimes there are wounds so deep that they never all the way heal, he said. By | The Off-Broadway production will now play until June 5. Presented by Z Space and piece by piece productions with Encore Theatre Company, the show is conceived and created by married couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson, who double as a band called. So, youre welcome, Louie., The Bengsons married 10 years ago, three weeks after their first date. March 12, 2022, By This year has really been about connection, and we have connected to people all over the world in a very real and humbling way.. But seemingly off-the-cuff stage patter in the beginning later becomes needed background for plot points in the play. Just by being so real and powerful, and serving as kind of an emotional catharsis for our own time of global trauma, "My Joy is Heavy!" Working in the first few months of the pandemic at Shaun's parent's home in Dayton, Ohio, they mustered as much uplift as they could for "The Keep Going Song," a show presented (virtually, of course) through the Actors Theater of Louisville. Even days afterward, having heard the songs only once, I get a surge of visceral pleasure every time one of them runs through my head. We made the whole piece on our cell phones, filming each other and things that were going on.. Other "Arena Riffs" are "The Freewheeling Insurgents" by Psalmayene 'Psalm" 24, which begins March 31 at 7 p.m. and "A More Perfect Union" by Rona Siddiqui April 14 at 7 p.m. Information can be found here. | Abigail and Shaun Bengson are a married composing and performing duo based in NYC and VT who have performed across the country and around the world. All this is supposedly taking place in the 1940s, but the period setting never becomes important or even discernible, and of course it has no bearing on the musical style. Theyre people with a lot of pain and a lot of damage, she said, but also a lot of strength and a lot of magic., They are also so intertwined, personally and professionally, that they share a bio in the program for The Lucky Ones., Is that gross? Ms. Bengson asked recently, in the tone of someone checking to make sure she doesnt have lipstick on her teeth. | In Hundred Days, real-life married couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson (the duo behind Ars Nova's The Lucky Ones) detail the story of how they . Shaun's fast and folky acoustic-guitar strumming and Abigail's delightful alt-rock vocals establish a beautifully resonant intimacy and then swell into a magnificent full-ensemble sound with the drums thundering and the ensemble singing in transcendent unison. Terence Wilton and Max Hutchinson Will Star in West End Return of, Jesse Williams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, More Confirmed to Return to Broadway's, Broadway Shows Will Require COVID-19 Vaccines for Employees Under Actors Equity Agreement, Ali Stroker, Larry Owens, More Among Little Islands NYC Free Festival Headliners, Tony Awards, Sidelined by the Pandemic, Sets September Date for 4-Hour Celebration, New York to Lift Capacity Restrictions on Broadway and More Beginning May 19, SBA's Grant Program for Shuttered Venues Operators Delays Application Process. September 1, 2021. Either way, the closest Ms. Bengson has felt to how she did before her family cracked apart is with the artistic family behind The Lucky Ones, a show that allows her to spend time again in her childhood Eden, if only in her imagination. | Writing music together has been a profound way that we learn about each other, and what we think about the world, and how we think about ourselves. By Ms. Bengson says that she and her husband are both profoundly introverted, but you wouldnt know it from talking with them. They also star in the show, with a full band and chorus who take on roles in the story as needed, and they deliver the songs with such quirky exuberance that it's impossible to resist following wherever they want to take the narrative (with a smart book by Kate E. Ryan). When not writing, Keith can be found playing with his daughters, Jordan and Cassidy. s.parentNode.insertBefore(sleeknoteScriptTag, s); Hundred Days, the luminous musical memoir by the Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, is an everyday horror story with a very provisional happy ending like so many chapters of human existence. We wrote our first song together on that first night, Abigal said. Hundred Days now takes place entirely in New York City (mostly in Astoria, Queens), with lots of internal detours into the twisty corridors of each partners mind. Three of their singles have been featured on "So You Think You Can Dance" (FOX). The more the piece evolved and the more collaborators got involved, the more the couple moved toward an honest and real portrayal of their feelings, fears and everything in between. Stephen Mallatratts adaptation of Susan Hill's novel will again play London's Fortune Theatre. La Jolla Playhouse announces the cast and creative team for Hundred Days, book by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, music and lyrics by The Bengsons, directed by Anne Kauffman, with movement direction by Sonya Tayeh. The Bengsons. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. That was 13 years ago, and today, the dynamic duo composes and performs together around the world. Natan Zamansky By | The immersive theatrical experience resumes performances at The McKittrick Hotel. Eleven years ago, Abigail and Shaun Bengson met. We never hear about any war going on, and Christine Crook's costumes aren't noticeably informed by that period. March 20, 2021 Shaun and Abigail Bengson met in New York City at a party and after talking, decided to start a band together. Not all the songs are like that, certainly; there's a lot of stylistic variety while maintaining a distinctive unified sound. Dan Meyer | | | Part of that was an awareness, new to Mr. Bengson, of what a fragile thing a family can be. By The stage managers are Amanda Spooner and Christopher Kee Anaya-Gorman. "It's not easy, it's not easy, but it's the way I want to live," Abigail said. May 25, 2022, By By Were interested in seeing if we can look at that loss as an opportunity to see the divinity in one another.. Ms. Bengson, 35, has a tale to tell about the autumn she was 15, when her family shattered and the seemingly safe Eden she grew up in was lost forever. Ars Novawill celebrate its 20th Anniversary and honor its foundersJenny & Jon SteingartatNova Ball, Ars Novas annual benefit-turned-party of the season. July 29, 2021. Yet she is terrified of compounding anyones anguish. For tickets and information visit zspace.org. Their theater work includes. Recent notable theatre interviews include legendary actor Ben Vereen, Broadway make-up artist Angelina Avallone and the extraordinary Idina Menzel. By var sleeknoteScriptTag = document.createElement('script'); Logan Culwell-Block By You can read more of his theater writing. Some of those tapes, she said, have been to prison and back cassettes on which her budding-songwriter self set down in music the fraught emotions she couldnt speak. | The Bengsons nightmare scenario is to have family drama break out in the audience, where they would have to witness it from the stage. Even the notion of miscarriage is for some reason socially shrouded in silence, leaving shattered would-be parents to mourn alone. can be accessed on the Arena Stage YouTube channel. Andrew Gans The story looks at embracing uncertainty, taking a leap, and loving as if you only had a hundred days to live. October 20, 2020. Wearing a black leather biker jacket over a slinky white dress, the long dark haired Ms. Bengson has an alluring presence, a powerful voice and plays drums. window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'AW-10891449219'); As we enter the second year of pandemic, theater companies have largely shifted from live performance spaces to film and video producers. The production opened on Wednesday, November 2, and will conclude as scheduled this Sunday, November 27. February 3, 2022, By Ancram Opera House presents AN EVENING WITH THE BENGSONS at the Circa 1799 Barn in Ancramdale. They have appeared at venues across the country and around the world. The long-running favorite returns to the Orpheum Theatre. And with those words, Mr. Bengson and his wife, Abigail the other half of the folk-rock duo the Bengsons, the indie-theater darlings who created the show for Ars Nova attempt to draw a cloak of privacy around themselves and the people they love. Shaun Bengson, Abigail Bengson, Jeff Augustin, Joshua Kahan Brody, Billy Eugene Jones, Chris Myers From: Photos: Go Inside Opening Night of WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE SEA at Manhattan Theatre Club | The letters pile up outside, but if they unplug the radio and the phone, they're disconnected. That changed a few times as our lives changed, as she ran with us as things kept evolving.. "So at the time, we started writing music as a way to process those feelings and get closer and move through all the fear.". Dan Meyer First he attended college at Indiana University (studied Ethnomusicology & Traditional Indiana Fiddling), then after graduation Shaun moved to New York City as a part of the city's teaching fellows program. Im like, here I am, sending tapes to them, 20 years later.. A half-hour into an emotionally delicate interview, there was a soft knock on the front door: Ms. Gancher, bringing over some eggs in the shell. Blocking belongson the stage,not on websites. Then, they dreamed bigger: a Broadway musical! By Like Hundred Days, The Lucky Ones is directed by Anne Kauffman and has a book co-written by the playwright Sarah Gancher, who is the Bengsons neighbor across the hall in Ridgewood, Queens. September 13, 2021. February 3, 2022, By Abigail said in a phone interview. November 9, 2020. | June 24, 2021, By You have entered an incorrect email address! Is it possible to tell the truth kindly? Ms. Bengson said. Hello friends!Here's our official Tiny Desk Contest 2020 submission!THE BENGSONSAbigail and Shaun Bengson are a married composing and performing duo who have performed across the country and around the world. Their theater work includes Sovereignty Hymns (La Jolla Playhouse), The Keep Going Song (Actors Theatre of Louisville), My Joy is Heavy (Arena Stage), Hundred Days (La Jolla Playhouse, New York Theatre Workshop, US Tour), The Lucky Ones (Ars Nova), Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (ATLs Humana Festival; Manhattan Theatre Club), Anything That Gives Off Light (Edinburgh Theatre Festival), Youll Still Call Me By Name (New York Live Arts, Jacob's Pillow), and Iphigenia in Aulis (Classic Stage Company). Abigail once served as a background singer for Tune-Yards, but her expressive warmth is also memorable from her role in HBO's "High Maintenance" a year ago, as Kim, the intimacy coordinator who meets an asexual magician. "So letting love win in the battle between love and fear, something we all experience every day. Theres a line near the start of the new musical The Lucky Ones thats a deliberate hedge an explanation of the rules of the show that also leaves those rules a little murky. Critical reception of The Lucky Ones has been mixed, with Jesse Green of The New York Times calling it a gawky, powerful work in progress, while Sandy MacDonald, in Time Out New York, found it harrowing.. "Hundred Days" runs at La Jolla Playhouse's Mandell Weiss Forum until oct. 21, 2018. Such music is a natural vehicle for the torturous ambivalence of falling in love as young, brooding artists steeped in mortal thoughts. And the sound of Ms. Bengson wailing like a banshee as she considers the mangling trap that is love will echo in your ears for days to come.
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