July 8 – 10, 2016 Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8pm
KO KABARET
We’re celebrating our 25th Anniversary with a 3-day Gala/Cabaret/Variety Show featuring an extraordinary group of Ko Festival alums, performed in a scenic installation by Nic Ularu and KoFest artists. We’ll be living up to our motto “the Ko Festival…where the only certainty is surprise!”
COME JOIN US FOR THE FESTIVITIES! There’s a different lineup each night. Why not see all three?
Please note, no typical Sunday matinee because of the 4pm performance of THE LITTLE FARM SHOW.
Appearing all 3 nights (with different material each night in)
DREW THE DRAMATIC FOOL
Help! Help! I Know This Title is Long, But Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me! (2009), Ko Kabaret (2011) & workshop leader (2009)
silent comedy & mask
ONAWUMI JEAN MOSS
Sunday Afternoon Family Storytelling Series (1992) Seriously…What Did You Call Me? (2015)
storytelling
KALI QUINN Unfortunately Kali Quinn has had to cancel for personal reasons.
CANDICE SALYERS
Rehearsal Residency Artist (2009)
dance and apparitions
FRIDAY will also feature appearances by:
Shoshana Bass of SANDGLASS THEATER One Way Street (2003), D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2012), workshop (2013)
puppetry
Members of THE PERFORMANCE PROJECT’S “FIRST GENERATION ENSEMBLE”
Tenderness (2106), fo n’ ale (we must go) (2013), Rehearsal residency 2012, Ripple Effect (2010),
sneak preview of material from Tenderness
JUBILITH MOORE of THEATRE NOHGAKU
Rehearsal Residency Artist & Workshop 2015
contemporary Noh theater
SOKEO ROSS (Everett Company)
Freedom Project (2016), From Refugee Camp to Project (2015)
solo performance/dance
NICK SLIE of MONDO BIZARRO
Loup Garou & Workshop Leader 2010
solo performance/music
SATURDAY will also feature performances by:
SARA FELDER
If I Can’t Juggle It’s Not My Revolution (2016), A Queer Divine (2012), June Bride (2010), Out of Sight, (2009) + workshops 2009, 2010, 2012 & 2016
juggling/solo performance
EARSAY (both JUDITH SLOAN and WARREN LEHRER)
CROSSING THE BLVD (2015), YO MISS! (2014)
solo performance/projection/sound
NADIA PARVEZ MANZOOR
Burq Off! (2015)
solo performance/comedy
JUBILITH MOORE of THEATRE NOHGAKU
Rehearsal Residency Artist & Workshop 2015
contemporary Noh Theater
SHOSHANA BASS of SANDGLASS THEATER
One Way Street (2003), D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks (2012) puppetry workshop 2013
puppetry
SUNDAY will feature appearances by:
TANNIS KOWALCHUK of NACL THEATER
10 Brecht Poems (2003)
solo performance with music
SARA FELDER
If I Can’t Juggle It’s Not My Revolution (2016), A Queer Divine (2012), June Bride (2010), Out of Sight, (2009) + workshops 2009, 2010, 2012 & 2016
solo performance/juggling
EARSAY (both JUDITH SLOAN and WARREN LEHRER)
Crossing the BLVD (2015), YO MISS!(2014)
solo performance/projection/sound
NADIA PARVEZ MANZOOR
Burq Off! (2015)
solo performance/comedy
GERARD STROPNICKY
Director of Touchstone Theater’s If At ALL (2003) & annual Story workshops since 2014, Guest Director for Sandglass Theater 2016
talking about his recent work with story in Uganda to heal the wounds of genocide
Schedule subject to change.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Shoshana Bass approaches her artistic life with afierce conviction in the power of the creative act, and it’spotential to transform, engage, and heal. Having been raised in a traveling family of internationally acclaimed puppeteers, she has spent her life witnessing and in dialogue with artistic voices of diverse cultures, heritages, and perspectives.
She has training and experience in performative mediums ranging throughout dance, theater, puppetry and circus. Her diverse background makes her flexible in collaborating with many aesthetics. She is a graduate of Naropa University. Shoshana has performed and choreographed in Poland, the Virgin Islands, Germany, and the United States. She was a full time company member of Frequent Flyers® Productions, and the Salsako dance company. She currently resides in Vermont where she is embracing the lineage of building her home from an old trolley car, and learning as much as she can from her parents. She will be performing WHEN I OUT ON YOUR GLOVE at Ko July 22-24. Read more…
Drew the Dramatic Fool reinvents the ancient art of 
brilliant bumbling. Inspired by a thousands-of-years old tradition of royal jesters, vaudeville eccentrics, silent film comedians, animated cartoons, theatrical clowns, and imperfect humans everywhere, Drew offers amusement relevant for today‘s audiences by giving them laughter built on a range of human emotions, from joy to fear to despair and back to joy again.
Drew‘s life-long personal tension between drama and foolishness gelled while studying Theatrical Clowning under the tutelage of John Towsen at Ohio University. Left speechless after his academic achievement, Drew continued his studies with Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and recently completed his MFA.
Drew has performed in theaters and festivals all over the U.S.. Highlights include The Arden Theatre at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, The Palace of Variety in Times Square, and The NY International Festival Of Clown-Theatre at Westbeth Theatre Center. Drew has created five one-man shows including The Psychology of Clumsiness (twice picked as Critic‘s Choice by The Chicago Reader). For more on Drew visit dramaticfool.com
Sara Felder is a performer, playwright and teacher 
who, over the last 3 decades, has created a body of work that juggles personal narrative, circus shtik and social justice. She has toured with San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus, Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades and her own solo theater shows. Felder’s international touring includes Jugglers for Peace in Cuba, the Women’s Circus in Nicaragua, and at Festivals of Jewish/Yiddish Culture all over the world. Using her signature style of addressing important social issues with humor, grace and circus routines, her solo shows have tackled such topics as a Jewish lesbian wedding (June Bride), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Out of Sight), and grief (A Queer Divine) — all seen in previous seasons at Ko. She also tacked mental illness in Melancholy, A Comedy. Click here for more on her upcoming performances at Ko.
Tannis Kowalchuk is co-founder and artistic 
director of NACL Theatre. Originally from Canada, Tannis trained in the ensemble physical theatre practices of Primus Theatre and Odin Teatret. She has created and performed in 16 NACL productions, and, in 2014, she directed The Weather Project, a large-scale theatre performance with a cast of over 75 professionals and community members. She currently tours salon performances of Shakespeare’s Will, by Vern Thiessen, directed by Mimi McGurl. Past works include STRUCK(2013), a devised multi-media performance about stroke, presented at Cleveland Public Theatre and HERE in NYC, Self Portrait at County Fair (2009), by Mike Geither, The Lost Book of Lakewood House (2009), a site-specific performance about the history of the Catskills, The Uncanny Appearance of Sherlock Holmes (2008) in the role of Dr. John Watson, presented at HERE (NYC), andThe Mystery of Lakewood House (2007). Other significant performances include The Confessions of Punch and Judy, created and performed with Ker Wells with director Raymond Bobgan, 10 Brecht Poems, a collaboration with Leese Walker of Strike Anywhere (Ko 2013), and The Passion according to G.H., a solo performance based on the novel by Clarice Lispector directed by NACL artistic director Brad Krumholz. In 2008 she became a mother and began growing flowers on Willow Wisp Organic Farm. Tannis is a graduate of The University of Winnipeg theatre department and was a core member of Primus Theatre, a prominent experimental theatre troupe based in Canada from 1990-97. Click here more on Tannis, NACL and their The Little Farm Show performance at Ko
Warren Lehrer (EarSay) is a writer, artist and 
performer known as a pioneer of visual literature. He has received many awards for his books and multimedia projects including: The Brendan Gill Prize, The IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year Award, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, The International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, a Media That Matters Award, and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller, Ford, and Greenwall Foundations. His work is in many collections including MoMA, The Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. A frequent lecturer, performer and keynote speaker, Lehrer is a full professor at SUNY Purchase, and a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author grad program at SVA. With Judith Sloan, he co-founded EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY. A Life In Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley is Lehrer’s 10th book, his first novel. For more visit http://www.earsay.org/
Nadia Parvez Manzoor ( is an actor, writer and 
producer. She spent her earlier years in a Pakistani Muslim home in North London, and has since moved from Singapore to Dubai, from Boston to her home base in Brooklyn. She has created and acts in the popular web series Shugs and Fats. She is also a talented street dancer, and her skills include Popping, Hip Hop, Bollywood, and Bhangra. Manzoor graduated from Boston University with an MA in Social Work, where her passion was to merge the arts and social reform. Her one woman show, Burq Off!, is a manifestation of this intention. Her interests lie in asking provocative questions, and in challenging the status quo. To further fuse her interests in performance and social justice, she founded Paprika Productions, an all-female production company that produces works by brave, curious women.
Jubilith Moore A graduate of Bard College, Jubilith 
Moore is a performer, director,writer, teaching artist and producer for the theatre who has devoted her professional life to exploring the ongoing life of traditional Japanese and contemporary American theatre. She has studied Noh with Richard Emmert, Akira Matsui, Shiro Nomura and Kinue Oshima and Kyogen with Yukio Ishida and Yuriko Doi. She is a Founding Company Member of Theatre Nohgaku and from 2001 – 2014 was Artistic Director of Theatre of Yugen. She is the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship, TBA’s CA$H award as well as TCG’s Future Collaborations and Leadership University grants. Jubilith has been honored with the Ana Itelman Prize as well as the Carter Tobin Prize for performance. Her production of This Lingering Life was honored with 8 Theatre Bay Area Award nominations including Outstanding World Premiere Play. She has served on the Board of the Network of Ensemble Theatres (NET) and she currently sits on Theatre Nohgaku’s Steering Committee. Zhadi Dates and Poppies, the piece she directed in a rehearsal residency at Ko last summer recently had hits world premiere at Boston University. Click here for more on Theatre Nohgaku
Onawumi Jean Moss is a master storyteller whose personal and original stories, shaped by rich content and soulful rhythms, embody familiar, thought provoking realities. This Tennessee native’s first stories were learned from her parents and in church. Her mother, a self-taught reader conveyed, by example, the inherent relationship of context and story and life-lessons. Her father, a natural-born comedian, told riveting night-sky stories as well as eerie, sometimes funny, ghost stories. Onawumi holds numerous storytelling awards including the 2005 Zora Neale Hurston Award, the highest given by the National Association of Black Storytellers (NABS); the 2007 Brother Blue and Ruth Hill Award, from the League for the Advancement of New England Storytellers and has recently been nominated for the National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Her involvement with the Ko Festival began 25 years ago as a performer in the Sunday Afternoon Family Storytelling series that was a part of Ko’s very first season. Since then she was has been a key member of the KoFest community, taking many of our 6-day intensive workshops, attending performances and playing an articulate part in the post-show discussions and civic dialogues that follow each of the Ko performances. In addition, Onawumi provided the voice-overs for Connie Congdon’s original comedy Is Sex Possible? that closed Ko’s “Age & Aging” season. Click here to visit her website
Performance Project: “First Generation” 
Ensemble is an intensive, arts and youth leadership development program in Springfield, MA that provides a platform for young adults to claim a public voice in their community, and beyond. First Generation brings together youth ages 15-22 who identify as “first generation,” for research, self-reflection, artistic training, and dialogue. Forming an artistic ensemble, the group creates multilingual performances that address social and cultural issues First Generation addresses the complexity of embracing individuality while honoring one’s family and community cultures. First Gen performances and events invite audiences to participate in dialogues about generational issues, and about how racism, economic oppression, bigotry, media and violence can sever youth from their cultural origins. The work of First Generation is rooted in the belief that our cultural legacies and family histories are sources of strength as well as struggle.
Performance Project members have been attending Ko performances for over a decade. Click here to read more about their upcoming performances at Ko.
Kali Quinn is a facilitator of creative discovery, 
innovative storytelling, physical play, and community dialogue. Her two solo shows that look at the movement of grief and intergenerational reconciliation have been performed at universities and festivals throughout the country. Kali is from Buffalo, NY and now lives in Providence, RI where she has taught clown, mask, movement, devising, and creative leadership at Brown University and worked as Stateside Faculty for Accademia dell’Arte (Arezzo, Italy). Kali has facilitated Compassionate Creativity at: Creative Medicine Series at Brown University, McDonogh School, United Natural Foods, Pearl Theatre Company, Celebration Barn, New England Center for Circus Arts, MIT, Duke University, Putney School Summer Programs, Vermont Academy, Connecticut College, Boston University, Emory College, Bucknell, Clowns Without Borders in Guatemala & Grupo Galpão in Brazil. Kali served on the Board for the Network of Ensemble Theaters from 2009-2014 and received training at the University of Rochester, with an MFA from Dell’Arte International in Northern California. Kali has recently returned from a cross-country book tour 
promoting her new book I am Compassionate Creativity. For more on Kali visit http://kaliquinn.com
Sokeo Ros was born in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, arriving in the United States at the age of three. Sokeo has been a member of Everett Company 1999 and is the Director of the Everett hip hop dance program and Director of the hip hop dance troupe, Case Closed!, which he founded in 2004. He teaches hip hop dance classes at Everett School and is a member of the Friday Night Live comedy improv troupe that performs weekly at Everett Stage. He founded and hosts Open Stage, a monthly showcase for community artists.
From Refugee Camp to Project, a solo autobigraphical show premiered at the Ko Festival of Performance last summer and is currently touring, most recently to the Fury Factory Festival in San Francisco. After his performances at Ko, Sokeo was awarded the New England Foundation for the Arts Rebecca Blunk Award. He will be performing at Ko in FREEDOM PROJECT July 29-31. Click here for more on Sokeo and here for more on Freedom Project.
Candice Salyers has enjoyed performing with a variety 
of choreographers, including Li Chiao-Ping and Victoria Marks. Her solo performance work has been shown in the U.S., U.K., Estonia, Ireland, and the Czech Republic. Her current solo project explores different physical and conceptual perspectives on female sainthood. She was one of 10 US artists selected to participate in an international exchange between National Dance Project (US) and Culture Ireland (IE). Her Ph.D. work explored intersections of dance performance and environmental philosophy, and she also holds an MFA and MDiv. She was recently invited to speak at the Society for European Philosophy, and her publications include contributions to Tanz, Bewegung, und Spiritualität and The Journal of Environmental Philosophy. She is delighted to be back at KoFest to celebrate its 25th season.
Nick Slie lives and works on the disappearing wetlands of coastal Louisiana. An actor, director, writer, educator and community activist, he is co-founder and 
co-artistic director of the New Orleans-based performance collective Mondo Bizarro. Nick’s performance work ranges from physical theater to multi-disciplinary solo work, from digital storytelling to collaborative ensemble productions. In the last two years, Slie has collaborated on a vast array of local and national performance projects, including as co-creator/performer for Mondo Bizarro’s Loup Garou, Flight and Catching Him In Pieces; co-creator/performer for the national tour of Uprooted: The Katrina Project; co-director for Olive Dance Theater’s Brotherly Love; co-producer of The State of the Nation Art and Performance Festival and co-creative director of Mondo Bizarro’s post-Katrina story project, The I-10 Witness Project. Nick is a frequent collaborator with ArtSpot Productions. He serves on the board for Alternate ROOTS and is the former board chair for the Network of Ensemble Theaters. Click here for more info.
Judith Sloan (EarSay) is an actor, audio artist, writer, radio producer, human rights activist, educator and poet whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. For over twenty years, Sloan has been producing and presenting interdisciplinary works in audio and theater, portraying voices often ignored by the 
mass media.Her commentaries, plays, poetry and documentaries have aired on National Public Radio, New York Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago, PRI, BBC, and listener sponsored stations throughout the U.S. Sloan has received awards for her audio mixes, radio documentaries and work with various musicians integrating storytelling, acting, sampling and multiple languages into symphonic pieces, live performance with actors and musicians, and radio. Her multi-layered theater work has been produced in theatres and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad including: LaMama E.T.C, The Public Theatre, The Theatre Workshop (Edinburgh, Scotland), The Smithsonian Institution, the Market Theatre (Johannesburg, SA), etc. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Theatre Week, The London Stage, San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Sloan is a member of the faculty at NYU’s Gallatin School. For more visit http://www.earsay.org/
Gerard Stropnicky is in his 42nd year as a multi-faceted theatre professional. After Northwestern, he studied with Alvina Krause, and in 1978 co-founded Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE), where he worked for the next 35 years, becoming Emeritus in 2012. He’s acted in over 100 productions, and directed 70 to date, including classic, contemporary, new and original plays at BTE and elsewhere. He’s written, co-written or devised a score more. Letters to the Editor, culled from 200 years of letters to local newspapers, was published as a play by Baker’s Plays/Samuel French and as a trade paperback by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. In rural communities, mostly in Appalachia and the deep South, he writes and directs large-scale site-specific productions featuring diverse community casts employing local story to celebrate, challenge, and address intractable issues. Several were co-written with poet and playwright Jo Carson. Recently he worked with communities in Uganda and Rwanda, with support from a Network of Ensemble Theaters Travel Grant, as well as a TCG “In the Lab” grant, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He was named USA Lowe Fellow in Theater in 2010. For his service to the autism community, he was the 2010 Temple Grandin Award winner.In addition to directing WHEN I PUT ON YOUR GLOVE for Ko this summer, he will be teaching his 4th workshop at Ko. It runs July 11-16. Click HERE for more…