QUENTIN CRISP: The Naked Bon Vivant!
A 100th Birthday Celebration

SANTO'S PARTY HOUSE 96 Lafayette Street Saturday March 7, 2009 7 to 10pm Show starts at 7:30pm Admission: $20

The fabulously flamboyant and witty gay icon Quentin Crisp (who died in 1999 at age 90) gets a party fit for a queen. The lively literary salon includes readings, recollections and performances by some of Crisp’s most ardent admirers. The Naked Bon Vivant! is produced by Joe Birdsong (owner of the dearly departed bohemian stronghold Rapture Café), in association with Phillip Ward and the Quentin Crisp Archives. Proceeds from the event go to funding the archive.

Hosting the event is drag-queen performer Linda Simpson. The line-up includes celebrity journalist Frank DeCaro, post-modern cabaret singer Adam Dugas (Weimar New York, The Citizens Band), Anne Hanavan (Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black), East Village musician/playwright Paul Korsinsky, guitarist-songwriter Gordon Gano (of the pioneering folk-punk group Violent Femmes), Radical Fairie dance troupe Pixie Harlots (Lustre), performance artist Amber Martin (Rapture Cafe's Wig Shop), LGBTQ blogger and activist Eric Leven, actor/dancer Jack Ferver (Dance Theatre Workshop Studio Series, Strangers With Candy), ground-breaking queer Latino poet Emanuel Xavier, photographer Bobby Miller, the divine Lavinia Co-op, glam rock musician Paul Bernstein and his Wide Stance band, West Village crooner Chris Lowe, erotic poet and blogger Guy Kettelhack, and others. Providing music is DJ Baby K.

The evening also includes screenings of excerpts of film and video starring Mr. Crisp. An auction of Quentin Crisp photographs by David Turner, Marcus Teo, and Martin Fishman. Special non-QC photographs for the night by the incredible and fantastic Joe Oppedisano too! Awesome!

Quentin Crisp is the author of the classic—and flamboyantly eccentric—coming-of-age memoir The Naked Civil Servant. The award-winning 1975 film version, starring John Hurt, made him an instant international celebrity. Mr. Hurt reprises the Crisp role in the recently completed movie An Englishman in New York (for which Mr. Hurt just won Best Actor at Berlin's International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival), written by Brian Fillis for Leopardrama and England's ITV. This BBC television biopic is to be released in Spring 2009, and will also star Denis O'Hare as Phillip Steele (an amalgam of two close friends and confidants of Mr. Crisp: Phillip Ward and Tom Steele); Jonathan Tucker as artist Patrick Angus; Swoosie Kurtz as Quentin’s American agent Connie Clausen; and Cynthia Nixon as performance artist Penny Arcade.

There are many reasons to join together and celebrate the life and legend of one of our cultural and literary icons, and hero and mentor to many at large. The centenary of Quentin Crisp's birth was December 25, 2008, and this November 21st will be the 10th anniversary of Mr. Crisp's death. The 30th anniversary of his first U.S. appearance was December 21, 2008, at The Players Theatre here in New York City. This month, February 2009, is the 30th anniversary of the studio recording of Mr. Crisp's one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp. Quentin’s final book, The Dusty Answers, will be published for the very first time this year, and his pink fedora will be on display in London's Victoria and Albert Museum in February through May in the "Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones" exhibition.

So, a party is necessary to celebrate Quentin Crisp at 100!
Sport your scarf! Don your fedora! Come join the birthday party!

QUENTIN CRISP: The Naked Bon Vivant!
A 100th Birthday Celebration

SANTO'S PARTY HOUSE
96 Lafayette Street

Saturday
March 7, 2009
7 to 10pm

Show starts at 7:30pm
Admission: $20

Click here for directions.