Chanteuse: A Survival Musical, a new solo show written and performed by Alan Palmer, is set for a limited engagement Off-Broadway run, from Tuesday, July 11 through Sunday, July 30 at HERE Arts Center, The play is directed by Dorothy Danner, featuring music by David Legg,
Chanteuse is the story of a gay man’s struggle to avoid being sent to the Nazi concentration camps. He takes on his late landlady’s identity and becomes a chanteuse in the supper clubs of 1930s Berlin. Although the piece takes place nearly 100 years ago, the issues of Jewish, gay and trans persecution are disturbingly current.
Chanteuse also infuses pop-up art gallery elements within the theatre, informing audiences of what happened to the members of the LGBTQ+ community in Europe at the time of the Nazi Party regime. Additionally, the exhibit spotlights the current rise in vitriol directed towards the LGBTQ+ community in America and around the world.
Very little has been written about the tens of thousands of homosexuals, who were the damnedest of the damned, the outcasts among the outcasts, in the concentration camps. There are only estimates of figures. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, nearly 50,000 were convicted of the crime of homosexuality. The majority ended up in concentration camps, and virtually all of them perished.
Alan Palmer is most known to TV audiences as Corcus on “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” Other television credits include Bravo’s “The People’s Couch,” “Jon Benjamin Has A Van” for Comedy Central, “Hot Springs Hote” and “Compromising Situations”, among others. New York Credits include The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber with Michael Crawford at Radio City Music Hall, the Off-Broadway shows Bernie’s Bar Mitzvah, Making Waves, Songs the Girls Sang and his one-man show Fabulous Divas of Broadway.
Performances of Chanteuse are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday at 7:00 PM. Matinee performances are on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 PM.
Tickets are $50 and can be ordered online at https://ci.ovationtix.com/219/production/1163291 HERE Arts Center wants everyone to have access to groundbreaking art, so there are ten tickets priced at $10 available for each performance on a first come, first served basis.
HERE Arts Center is located at 145 Sixth Ave, NYC
