Saturday December 12th, 9pm
Tribes Presents: Will McEvoy Brings Jazz
BYOB

Contributions at the door *

Flin van Hemmen -drums, Kenny Warren -trumpet, Will McEvoy- bass, David Grollman -drums, Brad Henkle - trumpet

Sunday Dec 20, 4-6 pm

Reading/Book Party for Appearnaces Magazine #28

Featuring: Jill Rapaprt, Susan Scutti & Ron Kolm and Hosted by Jim Feast

December 18th & 19th at 8pm
December 20th at 7pm
“An Evening with Melba Phelps Belk”

Written by James D’Entremont. With Christine Donnelly, Richard Sheinmel and Nomi Tichman
Melba Phelps Belk is a character created by James D’Entremont and embodied by Christine Donnelly. Delivering a lecture in an evangelical church basement, Mrs.Belk gives the audience a comprehensive look at the End of Days, a time of “earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, mudslides, mass murder, gay weddings, plagues of locusts, explosions, epidemics, piracy at sea, Dust-Buster abortions, nuclear terrorism, condom distribution to pre-school toddlers, and widespread use of pharmaceuticals made in France” Her talk encompasses recipes, celebrity gossip, ecstatic shout-outs in bygone Aramaic tongues, inspirational songs and everything you need to know about the Christian Right. $10

James D’Entremont’s An Evening with Melba Phelps Belk is a 90-minute evisceration of the Christian Right, with music by Barry Oremland. The play targets Christian celebrity culture, religious merchandising, the role of Endtime prophecy in American politics, and — as sales of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue surge heavenward — the entire Palin clan. Christine Donnelly, Richard Sheinmel and Nomi Tichman will perform this new work under David Vining’s direction at the East Village art space A Gathering of the Tribes for three nights in December.

Melba Belk (Christine Donnelly), is a televangelist, a best-selling Christian author, a purveyor of very special survival snacks, and one of Alaska’s former governor’s closets friends. The play depicts a lecture she delivers in an evangelical church basement a week before Christmas. Brimming with holiday spirit, she gives her audience a colorful look at the impending carnage of the End of Days, explaining the role our forty-ninth state is slated to play in the coming Apocalypse. She also shares recipes, dishes celebrity gossip, speaks in tongues, sings dysfunctional hymns, identifies the devil’s minions on earth, and reveals the none-too-surprisng identity of the Antichrist.

An Evening with Melba Phelps Belk is the perfect counterpoint to the antics of Glenn Beck and the exploding popularity of reactionary movements like the Tea Party Patriots. Hilarious though she is, Melba lays out in chilling detail the twisted dogma of the Endtimers, whose God is, you had better believe it, a vengeful, punishing God.

A Gathering of the Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts and alternative points of view traditionally overlooked by mainstream media. Located on the Lower East Side of New York City, Tribes has been in existence since 1991. In that year, Steve Cannon, poet, playwright, novelist, and retired professor from the City University of New York, converted a portion of his apartment into an informal salon. Since then, Tribes has evolved into a performance venue and meeting place for artists and audiences to come together across all artistic disciplines.

A Gathering of the Tribes is located at 285 East Third Street, 2nd Floor (between Avenues Ca nd D). Performances are at 8:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, December 18-19, and at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $10. For information, call: 212-431-7137 .

Sunday, Dec. 20th, 4:00 to 6:00 pm.
Gathering of Tribes presents a
Reading/Book Party for
Appearances Magazine #28

Featuring:

Jill Rapaport, Susan Scutti & Ron Kolm

Hosted by Jim Feast
Sunday, Dec. 20th, 4:00 to 6:00 pm.

At
A Gathering of Tribes
www.tribes.org
Writers bios:

Jill S. Rapaport is a writer of fiction and nonfiction
prose, as well as plays, essays, poems and songs. Her work has been
published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies including
Found Object, Global City Review, Resister, Lungfull!, the St. Marks
Poetry Project Newsletter, Red Shift, the National Poetry Magazine of
the Lower East Side, Milk, IKON, Red Tape, Sensitive Skin, New
Observations, and others. Rapaport has read at St Marks Poetry Project, the Public Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, Teachers and Writers, the Knitting
Factory, the Ear Inn, the Fales Library, ABC No Rio, La Mama, CBGB’s
Gallery, and other places in New York and elsewhere.

Susan Scutti only writes when she feels like it. Despite this lack of … whatever, she has published a collection of short stories, The Renaissance Began with a Muted Shade of Green, two novels, Second Generation, and A Kind of Sleep, and a chapbook, We Are Related. She manages the blog: #http://octoberbabies.wordpress.com.

Ron Kolm is one of the founding members of the Unbearables literary collective, and an editor of several of their anthologies; Crimes of the Beats, Help Yourself! and The Worst Book I Ever Read. He is also the co-author, with Jim Feast, of Neo Phobe, and the author of the Plastic Factory and Welcome to the Barbecue. Kolm’s papers were purchased by the New York University library, where they’ve been catalogued in the Fales Collection as part of the Downtown Writers Group.

285 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10009-7813
(212) 674-3778

These events were made possible by David Hammons and Salon 94