Staged Reading of Inspiring True Animal Stories
Please note that this event has been rescheduled from Nov 1-2, 2019 to April 21, 2020. More information will be available soon.
Join Compassion Arts for the launching of a new performing arts program, ANIMAL STORY, a staged reading for reconnecting audiences to animals through the power of story.
The ANIMAL STORY debut will feature a performance by multi-media artist, composer, musician, animal advocate, and performer Michael Harren, who will be presenting a one-person staged reading of selected true stories written by animal advocates who devote their lives to animals as well as personal stories written in a workshop by ordinary people who care deeply for the animals in their lives. The multi-media reading, directed by Emerie Snyder, brings meaningful stories together with music and visual imagery to create a snapshot of the ways animals shape people’s lives.
Tickets and Registration
Ticket and registration information TBD.
About the Stories
ANIMAL STORY focuses on the true stories of people who care deeply about animals. The stories, presented by Michael Harren and directed by Emerie Snyder, are woven together as a short anthology with visual arts and music and performed as a one-person multi-media piece. Stories in the program range from writings by ordinary individuals from a true storytelling workshop, to stories excerpted from published works written by animal advocates and people who devote their lives to caring for animals, as well as people who became advocates for animals after experiencing a profound shift in consciousness.
The selected readings in the performance give voice to experiences with animals who have changed people’s lives in meaningful and transformative ways. This educational, heartfelt, and thought-provoking narrative tapestry takes the audience on a journey of healing and reflection to form new perspectives about other animals and ourselves, presented through the performance artistry of Michael Harren.
About the Production Team
Michael Harren
ANIMAL STORY host, emcee, and multimedia artist Michael Harren is a Brooklyn-based composer/ musician and performer, as well as an animal advocate and Compassion Arts Co-Director for NY. Michael is the creator of the original one person play The Animal Show, which was performed as a national tour at venues across the country in 2017 and at Dixon Theater NYC. He is the author of The Animal Book and musical director for Sandra Bernhardt and Cabaret for a Cause as well as a Culture and Animals Foundation grant honoree. Michael has performed at Symphony Space, Joe’s Pub, and Judson Memorial Church, among other venues, and has an extensive catalog of music and songs on numerous recordings available through his website.
Emerie Snyder
ANIMAL STORY director Emerie Snyder has been a vegan and animal advocate for over 16 years and is a Brooklyn-based theatre director and creator of new performance work, focusing on site-responsive theatre, relationships between visual art and theatre, and solo performance. She has directed new plays by contemporary playwrights including Michael Sean Cirelli, Erin Breznitsky, Anton Dudley, Lally Katz, Davy Rothbart, and Gwydion Suilebhan. Her current projects in development include Exhibit, an immersive gallery tour performance; This is Like That, a slide lecture play by Michael Sean Cirelli; and Dutiful Victims, a site-specific theatre experiment inspired by Eugene Ionesco’s Victims of Duty. Emerie is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and the Arts Curator for Warren Saint Marks Community Garden in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and was a 2019 Resident Artist at Elsewhere in Greensboro, NC.
Ellie Sarty
ANIMAL STORY producer and program coordinator Ellie Sarty is the founder of Compassion Arts and executive director of Compassion Arts Festival. A longtime animal advocate and a singer-songwriter for over 35 years, as well as an advisory board member of Culture and Animals Foundation, Ellie first realized her vision to use the arts for animal advocacy when she received a CAF grant to create her CD project Top of the Food Chain, many years ago back when dinosaurs walked the earth.
With a catalog of over 200 songs, Ellie has written and recorded music for plays, CDs, film and documentaries, and numerous solo or partnered projects, and has had her original songs co-published with the late Grammy winning producer Phil Ramone. Ellie was part of a small group of U.S. musicians to perform at the Children of Chernobyl Benefit Concert at Dynama Stadium in Minsk, BSSR in 1991 in the former Soviet Union. For the past three decades, she has performed, coordinated, created, produced, or participated in hundreds of events, projects, and concerts to benefit animals, the environment, programs for women, social justice, humanitarianism, and ahimsa peace. You can hear more from her on the new Compassion Arts podcast coming this fall.