A night of true tales told live 

January 10, 2012
Doors open at 6:30pm, Show starts at 8pm
at Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St, NW,Washington, DC, 20009 (near corner of U Street)
$15 cash at door – PRE-SALE CLOSED FOR THE DAY. PAY CASH AT DOOR.

• Must be 21 and must have ID.
• Bring-your-own-food. When possible, we will arrange a food truck and let you know on Facebook and Twitter.
• Full bar – credit or cash
• There is an ATM on the premises.
• Wheelchair accessible

Driving: Parking on the street or paid lot next door for $15.

Metro: Take Green or Yellow line to U St/Cardozo and exit on 10th Street side. Walk two blocks east (away from African American Civil War Memorial. Turn left at 8th St. (you’ll see bright yellow  Tropicana Restaurant. ) Town is less than a half a block on the right.

Open mic is full.

Thanks to Alexander Morozov for photographing our shows.

My So-Called Jewish Life
DATE:	Wednesday, December 21, 2011
TIME:	7:30 pm
Courtesy of bottledancers.com Sixth & I and SpeakeasyDC present the third annual night of funny, poignant, powerful, and peculiar autobiographical stories about all things Jewish, not-so-Jewish, and wanna-be Jewish on the second night of Chanukah.   Storytellers include: Adam Ruben, a stand-up comedian and rabbi impersonator. Ophira Eisenberg, one of New York Magazine’s “ten new comedians that funny people find funny.” Rabbi Jonathan Roos, Senior Rabbi at Temple Sinai. Hannah Seligson is a journalist and the author of A Little Bit Married: How to Know When it’s Time to Walk Down the Aisle or out the Door and New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches. Jerome Copulsky, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Director of Judaic Studies at Goucher College. Amy Saidman, SpeakeasyDC’s artistic executive director, is a two-time recipient of the artist fellowship award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Amy has survived Camp Moshava, High School in Israel, and Aish haTorah.
ADMISSION: Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 on the day of the event. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

Watch last year’s show featuring  Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe, speechwriter David Litt, Washington Post journalist Spencer Ackerman, blogger Danny Harris, and magazine editor Karen Sommer Shallet. (not shown NPR reporter Alix Speigel).

Pre-sale closed. Pay cash at the door. 

A night of true tales told live
December 13, 2011
Doors open at 6:30pm, Show starts at 8pm
at Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St, NW,Washington, DC, 20009 (near corner of U Street)
$14 pre-sale, $15 cash at door

• Must be 21 and must have ID.
• Bring-your-own-food. When possible, we will arrange a food truck and let you know on Facebook and Twitter.
• Full bar – credit or cash
• There is an ATM on the premises.
• Wheelchair accessible

Driving: Parking on the street or paid lot next door for $15.

Metro: Take Green or Yellow line to U St/Cardozo and exit on 10th Street side. Walk two blocks east (away from African American Civil War Memorial. Turn left at 8th St. (you’ll see bright yellow  Tropicana Restaurant. ) Town is less than a half a block on the right.

Thanks to Alexander Morozov for photographing our shows.

Seats are all sold out for both shows. There may still be some standing room. Call Atlas box office at 202-399-7993

Sat Dec. 3, 2011
2 shows:
7 or 9pm
At Atlas
1333 H St, NE
$25 regular admission. $20 students/seniors.
Join our mailing list and follow us on facebook for other discounts.

SpeakeasyDC’s second annual showcase of the best stories of the year! An absolute Don’t-Miss event. Last year’s was phenomenal. Relentless funny, smart, and moving – and this year’s will be too!

Announcing the final 8!!

L to R top: Joseph Price, Nancy LeRoy, Mike Kane, Adam Ruben
L to R bottom: Erin Myers, Topher Bellavia, John Kevin Boggs, Dan Sullivan (So good – all of them!)

HOW THIS WORKS

Our trusty nominating committee nominated 16 stories from more than 100 told on SpeakeasyDC’s stage in the last 12 months. These stories were screened by our stellar panel of judges (see below for more info) and they chose the final 8 who will be invited to perform in the second  Top Shelf extravaganza on Dec 3, 2011 at the Atlas (1333 H St, NE). We will announce final eight on Nov 8 at our next show (Iron Chef: Stories about cooking, eating, and secret ingredients at Town), then on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

ELIGIBILITY

All original stories told at any official SpeakeasyDC event between August 10, 2010 and October 11, 2011 are eligible to be nominated for the 2011 Top Shelf, with the following exceptions:

• Members of the Top Shelf nominating committee, the Top Shelf judging panel, and SpeakeasyDC staff (not including teachers) are ineligible.
• Story Salons, class showcases, any class or training session, and SpeakeasyDC fundraisers are not considered eligible “official SpeakeasyDC events” for the purposes of Top Shelf.
• Stories told at My So-Called Jewish Life are ineligible.

OUR JUDGES

Our judges were selected for the good looks, charm, and discerning minds. They are “outside” judges, in that they are not intimately involved in SpeakeasyDC in any way, so, unbiased. We are psyched to have the input of Rhome Anderson (aka DJ Stylus/former Going Out Guru for Washington Post), Jon Gann (founder of the DC Film Alliance /DC Shorts Festival), Bonnie Shaw (Dean of the DC chapter of The Awesome Foundation), Chris Klimek  and (Theatre Critic for Washington City Paper).

JUDGING CRITERIA

Story Crafting (50%)

• Is it a story (vs. anecdote, stand-up routine, lecture, etc.)?
• Does it have the elements of a good story (conflict, action, characters, insight meaning, change)?
• Is the story visual? Can you picture the scenes described?
• Is the story suspenseful? Does it have high stakes?

Performance (25%)

• Is the teller authentic?
• Does the teller have vulnerable or revealing moments?
• Is the performance entertaining or moving?

Originality (25%)

• Is the story memorable?
• Is the story surprising?
• Is the story crafted or structured in an interesting or unusual way?

TWO NIGHTS ONLY Nov 11 and 12, 2011 8pm at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room $18 in advance, $20 at the door.  1725 Columbia Rd, NW, Washington, DC 20009

Also check out Up the Funny - two story workshops with Margot and Giulia on Sunday, Nov 13

Giulia Rozzi is a NYC based writer, comedian, actress and producer  raised in Boston by two adorable Italian immigrants. Her very personal, blunt, and animated comedy has earned her the honor of being named a Moth GrandSLAM champion, one of the Frisky’s ”Top 15 Comediennes You Should Be Laughing At” and a two-time ECNY Best Female Stand Up nominee. She’s appeared on MTV, Vh1, Italian MTV, CNN and in her original web series themessage-board.com . She co-hosts/created the highly acclaimed humorous sex-themed storytelling show (and now also a podcast) Stripped Stories and the bi-monthly Brooklyn based comedy show Dive Comedy. She has written for Playgirl, BUST, Glamour, XOJane.com, TheGLOC.net, NY Press, Lifetimetv.com, Lemondrop, AOL.com, Takepart.com and the MTV series Silent Library where one of her ideas (licking cocoa butter off a mans hairy back) made Snooki vomit (so proud!) She has also contributed essays to the anthologies My Parents Were Awesome  and Mortified: Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic. She is currently working on her first memoir about her depressed, drunk, divorced quarter-life crisis.  More at www.giuliarozzi.com.

Margot’s off beat, brutally honest, fearless comedy has earned her the title of Moth Grandslam Champion, two ECNY nominations for “Best Female Standup,” and an additional nomination for “Best Storyteller.” However, Margot’s most prized accomplishment remains winning $1664 on “The Price is Right.”

Margot appeared regularly as various characters, including the cult favorite Gynoblast  on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” in addition to appearances on VH1′s Best Week Ever, Jimmy Kimmel Live, ESPN’s “Cheap Seats,” AMC, the Style Network, E!, Comedy Central, MTV and NBC Broadband. Additionally, she can be heard as the voice of “Fox” on the Spike TV cartoon “The Team,”  as a featured comedian on Comedy Central.com’s “Weekly Evil,” and a regular guest on Sirius XM Radio. She has appeared in about a dozen commercials including Lowe’s Hardware, Bertolli Frozen Dinners , and Mohegan Sun Casino.
Every month she and Giulia Rozzi co-host the wildly popular, monthly, sex-themed storytelling show “Stripped Stories” at the UCB Theatre, where she also is a frequent monologist in Assscat. A three time Moth Storyslam  winner, Margot has been featured in Glamour Magazine, and the books “Fifty Dates Worse Than Yours” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes. She has written online for the Lifetime Network, College Humor.com,  EHow.com,236.com, the Frisky.com  and in print for Playgirl Magazine and the NY Press . She has just completed her first book, about being the gigantic weird girl growing up on the Jersey Shore.
http://www.margotleitman.com
http://www.strippedstories.com

Jessica Delfino is a NYC based comedian, musician, performer and writer who plays many instruments ranging from the flying V ukulele to the rape whistle. She grew up in  Damariscotta, Maine and went to art school in Philadelphia where she studied animation. Jessica decided to try stand-up comedy when a comedian she met said females couldn?t do comedy. Soon after, she moved to NYC, started playing chess a lot and performing at comedy clubs and on any stage she could find. That morphed into playing music into the subway. She began bringing her guitar on stage and making videos which led to getting publicly denounced by the Catholic League, and banned by Youtube, and then unbanned. She’s performed on ABC?s ?Good Morning America?, The Sundance Channel, Fox News? ?Red Eye?, in the Reading & Leeds Festival, Montreal Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Fest, Dublin Comedy Festival, London?s Soho Theatre and has had a whole ton of fun and adventures. It hasn?t all been rainbows and unicorns, but even the shitty parts are probably better than your job.

TWO NIGHTS ONLY Nov 11 and 12, 2011 8pm at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room $18 in advance, $20 at the door.  1725 Columbia Rd, NW, Washington, DC 2000

Sold out. Some standing-room tickets may be realeased at 8

Also check out Up the Funny – two story workshops with Margot and Giulia on Sunday, Nov 13

Giulia Rozzi is a NYC based writer, comedian, actress and producer  raised in Boston by two adorable Italian immigrants. Her very personal, blunt, and animated comedy has earned her the honor of being named a Moth GrandSLAM champion, one of the Frisky’s ”Top 15 Comediennes You Should Be Laughing At” and a two-time ECNY Best Female Stand Up nominee. She’s appeared on MTV, Vh1, Italian MTV, CNN and in her original web series themessage-board.com . She co-hosts/created the highly acclaimed humorous sex-themed storytelling show (and now also a podcast) Stripped Stories and the bi-monthly Brooklyn based comedy show Dive Comedy. She has written for Playgirl, BUST, Glamour, XOJane.com, TheGLOC.net, NY Press, Lifetimetv.com, Lemondrop, AOL.com, Takepart.com and the MTV series Silent Library where one of her ideas (licking cocoa butter off a mans hairy back) made Snooki vomit (so proud!) She has also contributed essays to the anthologies My Parents Were Awesome  and Mortified: Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic. She is currently working on her first memoir about her depressed, drunk, divorced quarter-life crisis.  More at www.giuliarozzi.com.

Margot’s off beat, brutally honest, fearless comedy has earned her the title of Moth Grandslam Champion, two ECNY nominations for “Best Female Standup,” and an additional nomination for “Best Storyteller.” However, Margot’s most prized accomplishment remains winning $1664 on “The Price is Right.”

Margot appeared regularly as various characters, including the cult favorite Gynoblast  on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” in addition to appearances on VH1′s Best Week Ever, Jimmy Kimmel Live, ESPN’s “Cheap Seats,” AMC, the Style Network, E!, Comedy Central, MTV and NBC Broadband. Additionally, she can be heard as the voice of “Fox” on the Spike TV cartoon “The Team,”  as a featured comedian on Comedy Central.com’s “Weekly Evil,” and a regular guest on Sirius XM Radio. She has appeared in about a dozen commercials including Lowe’s Hardware, Bertolli Frozen Dinners , and Mohegan Sun Casino.
Every month she and Giulia Rozzi co-host the wildly popular, monthly, sex-themed storytelling show “Stripped Stories” at the UCB Theatre, where she also is a frequent monologist in Assscat. A three time Moth Storyslam  winner, Margot has been featured in Glamour Magazine, and the books “Fifty Dates Worse Than Yours” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes. She has written online for the Lifetime Network, College Humor.com,  EHow.com,236.com, the Frisky.com  and in print for Playgirl Magazine and the NY Press . She has just completed her first book, about being the gigantic weird girl growing up on the Jersey Shore.
http://www.margotleitman.com
http://www.strippedstories.com

Jessica Delfino is a NYC based comedian, musician, performer and writer who plays many instruments ranging from the flying V ukulele to the rape whistle. She grew up in  Damariscotta, Maine and went to art school in Philadelphia where she studied animation. Jessica decided to try stand-up comedy when a comedian she met said females couldn?t do comedy. Soon after, she moved to NYC, started playing chess a lot and performing at comedy clubs and on any stage she could find. That morphed into playing music into the subway. She began bringing her guitar on stage and making videos which led to getting publicly denounced by the Catholic League, and banned by Youtube, and then unbanned. She’s performed on ABC?s ?Good Morning America?, The Sundance Channel, Fox News? ?Red Eye?, in the Reading & Leeds Festival, Montreal Comedy Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Fest, Dublin Comedy Festival, London?s Soho Theatre and has had a whole ton of fun and adventures. It hasn?t all been rainbows and unicorns, but even the shitty parts are probably better than your job.

A night of true tales told live

November 8, 2011
Doors open at 6:30pm, Show starts at 8pm
at Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St, NW,Washington, DC, 20009 (near corner of U Street)
Pre-sale closed – buy tickets at door for $15 cash. ATM on premises.

• Must be 21 and must have ID.
• Bring-your-own-food or get some from BBQ Bus. You may bring food in, but not drinks since you can get drinks at Town
• Wheelchair accessible

Driving: Parking on the street or paid lot next door for $15.

Metro: Take Green or Yellow line to U St/Cardozo and exit on 10th Street side. Walk two blocks east (away from African American Civil War Memorial. Turn left at 8th St. (you’ll see bright yellow  Tropicana Restaurant. ) Town is less than a half a block on the right.

To sign up for open mic

Fill out  the online form in advance using the drop-down box to indicate the night you want to perform. You will have seven minutes to tell your story. We are strict about this, so don’t go over or you will be cut off. Also, you must tell a true story (again, it’s not a stage for stand-up, poetry, readings, fiction, or folktales) and you must incorporate the theme. You will be contacted 3-4 weeks before the specified show to arrange a  free (and mandatory) coaching session with our Education Director, Stephanie Garibaldi.  She can be reached at stephanie@garibaldi.com if you have any questions (Please do not use this address to sign up. This is only for questions.)

Thanks to Alexander Morozov for photographing our shows.

Spend Halloween with SpeakeasyDC and  Dance Place with a family-friendly afternoon of true and traditional stories about ghosts and other scary things. Featuring veteran storytellers Bill Mayhew, Ellouise Schoettler, and Michael Cotter, plus  SpeakeasyDC debuts by Emily Ruskowski and Kristala Pouncy.

$17 for Dance Place members, seniors, teachers, and artists.
$10 for students. $22 general public.
1 free child ticket (under 12) for each paying adult. Dance Place is located near Brookland Metro  - Red Line
3225 8th Street Northeast, Washington, DC   MAP

Find out more about adult-only show on Saturday, Oct 29, 2011 at 7:30 and 10pm

Spend Halloween with SpeakeasyDC and Dance Place listening to true stories about frightful encounters, terrifying moments, and spooky predicaments including shark attacks, crazy basement ladies, and unsolved murder mysteries.  Featuring stories by Kathryn Brand, Stephanie Garibaldi, Derek Hills, Cindy Kane, Brian Leonard, Jennifer Luu, Caitlin McIntyre, Eritrea Pitts, and S.M. Shrake.

Two shows on Oct 29, 2011 –  7:30pm and 1opm (adults only) $17 for Dance Place members, seniors, teachers, and artists. $10 for students. $22 general public.
Dance Place is located near Brookland Metro  - Red Line
3225 8th Street Northeast, Washington, DC   MAP

Find out more about family-friendly show on Sunday, Oct 30, 2011 at 4pm.

Prepare your local-loving selves for Scoutmob, that nudge you need to get out the door and do your local thing. We deliver interesting tidbits, city gems and places through their daily email + website + mobile app. They exclusively support local businesses and creativity (like Speakeasy),  which supports local commerce. In return, they support you with crazy-good savings. Sign up and everybody wins.

PRE-SALE CLOSED. BUY TICKETS AT DOOR. $15 CASH. No guarantee of seating. The earlier you arrive, the better chance you have. 

A night of true tales told live

October 11, 2011
Doors open at 6:30pm, Show starts at 8pm
at Town Danceboutique
2009 8th St, NW,Washington, DC, 20009 (near corner of U Street)
$14 pre-sale, $15 cash at door

• Must be 21 and must have ID.
• Bring-your-own-food. When possible, we will arrange a food truck and let you know on Facebook and Twitter.
• Full bar – credit or cash
• There is an ATM on the premises.
• Wheelchair accessible

Driving: Parking on the street or paid lot next door for $15.

Metro: Take Green or Yellow line to U St/Cardozo and exit on 10th Street side. Walk two blocks east (away from African American Civil War Memorial. Turn left at 8th St. (you’ll see bright yellow  Tropicana Restaurant. ) Town is less than a half a block on the right.

To sign up for open mic

Fill out  the online form in advance using the drop-down box to indicate the night you want to perform. You will have seven minutes to tell your story. We are strict about this, so don’t go over or you will be cut off. Also, you must tell a true story (again, it’s not a stage for stand-up, poetry, readings, fiction, or folktales) and you must incorporate the theme. You will be contacted 3-4 weeks before the specified show to arrange a  free (and mandatory) coaching session with our Education Director, Stephanie Garibaldi.  She can be reached at stephanie@garibaldi.com if you have any questions (Please do not use this address to sign up. This is only for questions.)

Thanks to Alexander Morozov for photographing our shows.

Tentative line-up (alphabetical order)