Sarah’s performing, plus special guests Gloria Steinem Jan 17th, Seth Godin Jan 18th, Sway of MTV Jan 23rd, Dj Rekha Jan 24th, Kurt Andersen of Studio 360 Feb 1st, environmentalist Majora Carter Feb 4th, novelist Nathan Englander Feb 7th, actor and activist Rosario Dawson Feb 11th, Def poet Beau Sia Feb 14th, author Neil Gaiman Feb 15th, and DJ Spooky Feb 28th!

More guests to be announced. Click image below for tickets. Please come early, we’ve been selling out and seats are first come, first served and there may be SRO for latecomers.

Back in November Sarah did a little “Giving Thanks”-themed evening at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe to show her appreciation for all your support since she started there. Sarah (and her characters!) loved hanging out with everyone so much that ‘they’ have added new dates in January and February (and are calling it “New Year, Nuyorican”) to ring in 2011.

These performances will include some of the multicultural characters you’ll know if you saw Bridge & Tunnel, and some characters brand new to the stage. There will be material in development, improv, plus intimate Q&A with the lovely audience! Special guests may stop by among other surprises: the show will change from night to night.
Please check out Sarah’s calendar at to see the dates and purchase tickets. General admission is $20. Student tickets available night of the show with student ID for $12. All shows begin at 8pm.

Happy New Year!

Details:

Every show at 8pm.
Tickets $20 in advance and at the door
$12 with student ID the day of the performance

Info: 212.505.8183
Tickets: 212.780.9386

14 performances:
Monday, January 17
Tuesday, January 18
Friday, January 21
Sunday, January 23
Monday, January 24
Friday, January 28
Saturday, January 29
Tuesday, February 1
Friday, February 4
Monday, February 7
Friday, February 11
Monday, February 14
Tuesday, February 15
Monday, February 28

Bridge & Tunnel is Sarah’s Tony® Award-winning solo show, which was originally produced off-Broadway by Oscar-winner Meryl Streep and enjoyed sold-out runs both on Broadway in 2006 and Off-Broadway in 2004. Based on a piece commissioned by the National Immigration Forum and the Ford Foundation, Bridge & Tunnel examines the lives of a diverse group of immigrants from various backgrounds framed by one event: an annual poetry reading.

The idea for the piece was conceived by Sarah and Steve Colman (Tony® winner for Def Poetry Jam On Broadway), her husband and creative collaborator, based on their shared experience as participants in the multicultural performance poetry community. As plans to mount Bridge & Tunnel were developing, human rights organization Equality Now connected Sarah and Meryl Streep when Sarah performed for one of their benefits. Sarah was floored when Streep offered to support Bridge & Tunnel, which she called “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen”. The piece premiered Off-Broadway at The Culture Project and moved to Broadway produced by Boyett Ostar, Eric Falkenstein and Micheal Alden, continuing with much of the creative team which included Tony Taccone of Berkeley Repertory Theater as director and Steve Colman as assistant director. In addition to wide critical claim, Bridge & Tunnel set a one-day record for ticket revenues Off-Broadway and recouped its initial investment on Broadway within eight weeks.

Surface Transit was Sarah’s first off-Broadway solo show, which drew upon the diverse group of people in her family and neighborhood growing up in Queens, and was loosely framed by her Q46 bus commute to school. Sarah wove the stories of a multicultural cast of characters into a cleverly connected narrative filled with unexpected twists that explored community, prejudice, violence, art and activism in late 20^th century New York.

Sarah first developed some of her most popular characters in Surface Transit: Ms. Lady, an older, black woman who is homeless; Lorraine Levine, an elderly Jewish grandmother; Rashid, a young black male aspiring rapper who is “addicted to rhyming” and in a recovery program for it; and Keisha Ray, a young independent black woman who is frustrated by the misogyny in music. In Surface Transit, Keisha Ray performs Sarah’s celebrated poem “Your Revolution”, which was banned by the FCC for “indecency”; a ban that was later overturned after Sarah became the first artist in history to sue the FCC for censorship.

Surface Transit enjoyed sold-out runs at venues including the Nuyorican Poets Café in NewYork City where it was developed with director Gloria Feliciano; The American Place Theater where it was presented by Wynn Handman; Performance Space 122; The Kennedy Center’s AFI Theater; the Berkeley Repertory Theater; and The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa. Surface Transit won a Helen Hayes Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

Women Can’t Wait! is Sarah’s second one-person show. It was commissioned by the human rights group Equality Now and the Ford Foundation, which provided a grant to fund Sarah’s research, writing, and performance of the piece. Women Can’t Wait! premiered at the International “Beijing +5” United Nations Conference on Women’s Rights in June, 2000. The piece exposed laws which discriminate against women around the world. Sarah portrayed eight women from eight different countries, including the United States, and their struggle to turn the personal devastation caused by discriminatory laws into a force for positive change. The experiences of the women and girls from Japan, India, Uruguay, Israel, Jordan, France, Kenya and the United States depicted in the piece were based on numerous real life events and interviews. Following its first performance, Women Can’t Wait! was featured in The New York Times and landed Sarah on the cover of Ms. Magazine.

Sarah continued to perform the piece for audiences across the country and the world including United Nations delegates; in five cities throughout India; in Slovenia; in Mexico; and for the Supreme Court of Nepal in Kathmandu as part of a historic campaign in which Nepali activists and Equality Now partnered to advocate for laws supporting women’s human rights.

In 2005, Sarah premiered A Right to Care, which was commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, alongside keynote speaker President Jimmy Carter at WKKF’s 75^th Anniversary Conference. With the goal of addressing issues of ethnic, racial, and economic disparities in health care, Sarah and Kellogg partnered to create an informative show which highlights the multicultural and class dimensions of our national health care crisis. The daughter of two physicians, Sarah approaches the issues in the piece from the standpoint that health care and public health are not only matters of equal access to high quality services for all, but of broader racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities. Sarah currently performs A Right to Care for organizations including universities, schools of public health, philanthropic foundations, grass roots community groups, and conferences around the United States.

Sarah recently returned to her United Nations School roots by becoming the first ever Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF on Violence Against Children. In this capacity, Sarah is currently traveling and performing a piece developed specifically for UNICEF which is based on the recent Secretary General’s report on violence against children. Sarah premiered this original piece in 2007 as UNICEF’s representative before members of Parliament from more than 100 countries gathered in Bali, Indonesia, and will continue to travel internationally, performing the piece to highlight these issues worldwide.

Sarah is in the process of researching and developing a new solo show commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater. Between the Off-Broadway and Broadway runs of Bridge & Tunnel, Sarah was honored to receive the commission to create a new work for the stage. She looks forward to making use of this extraordinary opportunity to collaborate with one of the world’s premiere theater institutions, and expects to complete writing early next year.

“An Evening with Sarah Jones”

In addition to her full-length one-person shows, Sarah is frequently invited to perform specially created versions of her character monologues for various functions and organizations such as community groups, educational and university conferences, corporate retreats, and non-profit benefits. Recent performances have ranged from private events for entertainment companies such as Time Warner and the CBS Corporation to hosting the Gotham Independent Film Awards to appearances for the National Down Syndrome Society, Planned Parenthood, and Sakhi for South Asian Women.