Brooklyn Tavern
Theater
Join us for our
Season 2024-25 Gala
on August 25th at
Brooklyn Art Haus!
BROOKLYN TAVERN THEATER
Brooklyn Tavern Theater creates original, immersive musical theater shows that are accessible and affordable to the local community in a tavern environment!
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The idea of Brooklyn Tavern Theater is to make original musical theater possible for artists and accessible to the local community. For over four years now, we have been doing shows at neighborhood bars and other alternative spaces in Brooklyn.
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Support our work by attending our 2024-25 Gala Fundraiser at Brooklyn Art Haus
and / or donating to our GoFundMe!
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Thank you for supporting accessible, innovative theatre in NYC!
Caitlin Caruso Dobbs, Aaron de Rose and ensemble of The Joe Hill Revival
@ The Greenroom42, NYC
"The Joe Hill Revival" brings the story of executed IWW songwriter and union activist Joe Hill into our 21st century through its contemporary musical language and a participatory tavern environment.
Songwriter and activist Joe Hill often rewrote the words of church hymns and popular tunes of his time, converting them into songs of protest and activism. Extending that approach, this show often resets Hill's lyrics using the musical language of our time. But although the show's music is an amalgam of hiphop, bluegrass, folk, blues and country, it is held together by the voice of Hill and the ideas he and the IWW represented. Although Joe Hill was a Swedish immigrant, in this revival he is played by an African-American actor. The show is narrated by Hill's contemporary, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a firebrand activist, a leader of the IWW at the time of Hill's arrest, and the inspiration for Hill's song, "The Rebel Girl."
But "The Joe Hill Revival" is not just a political or historical tale. It is also a love story.
Artistic Director
Dan Furman
Dan hails from Old Hickory, Tennessee (just outside Nashville). He began playing piano and composing music at an early age and went on to study composition and jazz piano at Oberlin Conservatory. Following college, he spent 10 years as a political and union activist working in industrial jobs from steel fabrication to mattress making. After moving to New York in 2003 to play jazz, he began writing for music theater as well. He spent four years in the BMI Lehman Engels Musical Theater Workshop. Furman is founder of Brooklyn Tavern Theater, which puts on original musicals in taverns in Brooklyn and beyond. He is composer/lyricist/bookwriter of "Impossible But True," "Joe Hill Revival" and composer and lyricist for "Ybor City" (with Anita Gonzalez, bookwriter) and Sign In the Six O'Clock Sky (with bookwriter Arnold Schulman). Another project is "The Proust Virus," a stage musical about video game characters who question the meaning of life after Proust's work is uploaded into their game. He lives in Brooklyn with neuroscientist Kim Allen and two bunnies. He works as a jazz pianist and vocal accompanist at clubs and acting schools in Manhattan. (www.danfurman.com, www.brooklyntaverntheater.com)
Director of Upcoming Production "Walls to Windows"
Jerome Harmann-Hademan
Jerome is a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway, national and international tours, regional theater. Currently on Broadway in The Notebook the Musical as well as narrating audio books for Penguin Random House. Some favorite projects include: A Soldiers Play, the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, The Laramie Project, The Life of Adam Clayton Powell, the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, The Long Dance at The Meisner Theater, Es Geht Mir Gut, ANight At The Circus, Swing The Musical (Broadway Company) with Ann Hampton Callaway, Kiss of The Spiderwoman with Chita Rivera, The Fantasticks, The Full Monty with Elaine Stritch, Ragtime, Jesus Christ Superstar with Billy Porter and Emily Skinner, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with Andreas Bieber, Floyd Collins, Dreamgirls, Once On This Island, Five Guyʼs Named Moe, Smokey Joeʼs Café, The Man of La Mancha, Evita with Flo Lacy, Evita with Rebecca Storm and Cats. On television, Uncle Gary in CBS’s FBI, Chris Vegaʼs boxing coach on ABCʼs Ê»One Life To Liveʼ, Cable com exec, NBCʼs 30 Rock, Federal Agent Smith on ABCʼs “All My Children”. Voiceover: ‘Teenaged Euthanasia” Cartoon Network, Bayer AG., AT&T, Ê»The Green Jacketʼ, 'Measuring Upʼ and Ê»Eveʼs Placeʼand ‘A Taste of Honey’. Direction and choreography include: Dan Furman’s ‘The Joe Hill Revival’ at The Brooklyn Art Haus, Ê»The Anselmo Awards at Jazz at Lincoln Center, featuring Ann Hampton Callawayʼ, Ê»Anselmo Awards featuring Regis Philbin’,Ê»The Rocky Horror Picture Showʼ Essen Germany, ‘Mixed Messages’ by Anton Spivak, HB Studios New Playwrights Series, NYC, ‘The Gershwin Galaʼ International Tour, Ê»Benefiz Konzert fur Kinder Krebsʼ, Ê»Caritas Foundation - A Few Good Friends’, Aachen-Alsdorf, BRD, The Delivery Girls at Harlanʼs & the Metropolitan Room, apprentice choreographer for The Dance Theatre of Harlem Sunday Open Houses’ and apprentice choreographer to the Companie du Danse Eddy Toussaint in Montreal.
Our newest show...
Walls to Windows
Walls and Windows is a musical theater exploration of the lives and art of Edward and Jo Hopper. Edward Hopper is the enigmatic artist who painted "Nighthawks," which has been referenced in TV shows, movies and has become a cultural meme of urban isolation.
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What is it about Hopper's work that continues to provoke a response in us nearly a century later? How was Jo's art affected by her marriage and partnership with Ed for the next 40-odd years? Jo's beloved cat, Arthur; Ralph Waldo Emerson, artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and two gangsters from a story by Ernest Hemingway join Ed and Jo to explore these questions. The presentation at Brooklyn Art Haus will include Punch and Judy puppetry and large-screen projections of the Hoppers' paintings.