AN EVENING WITH

JACK kerouac

By david a. mCelroy

and Steve A. Rowell

PERFORMED BY David A. mcelroy

DIRECTED BY cHRIS jURIE

with the support of

the jack kerouac society

                                             

JACK  KEROUAC

                                                                                                             

“The universe! The solar system! The planet Earth! North America! The United States!  New York state! New York City! Manhattan Island!  Downtown! The Village!... Eat your heart out Thorntan Wilder!  There is a lobby.  The air is heavy and uncirculated.  Dust hangs in the air.  A single naked bulb the only light throws shadows into every corner.  A two day old newspaper lays crumpled in the only chair...  The three of us burst in.  Our conversation continuing from the street.  The dust is set into motion.  The bulb begins to swing.  The newspaper cries out-“The jokers wild have arrived!”  Up the stairs.  Hands run along the banister polishing it with our palms.  The stairs creek out an anthem.  Watch the hole in the fourth step.  We reach the door and open it, closing it behind us, shutting out the conventional world, the world God created, and we make a new world in that room, a world of our own creation.  One cat would begin to read, another to play and the air in the room would change.  Another cat would pull that air in, dissect it, mix it with his own and spew it back into the room.  Someone else would pick it up and the whole wonderful process would start all over again-into the night and until the next morning.  It was like a bottle of wine that would never empty, or a joint that would never burn down.  We would stay high on each others thoughts... And that room could have been floating alone in the emptiness of space-with our minds forcing out the vacuum because nothing else mattered.”

 

“David McElroy gave life to an

intensely personal inner portrait of

complex and conflicted Kerouac.

The script lays bare a tortured,

sensitive soul wrestling with

the demons of his past and finding

solace in booze and drugs.

A sharp depiction of a

misunderstood American icon.”

--John Goring

PRT president

 

If you think you know who Jack Kerouac was...think again. An Evening with Jack Kerouac

brings the retrospective of Kerouac's time to the stage and explores how Kerouac viewed his own life

and the events of his age.  The play opens in July of 1969,  just three months before he died at the

]age of 47. Jack Kerouac, the father of the "beat 

movement," was to appear on the television

show:  William F. Buckley's "Firing Line." He

believed he was there to read some of his

poetry. Kerouac was asked instead to discuss

the hippies and their present day politics.

Kerouac had always been a political

conservative, heavily influenced by his

Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's

yielded their spotlight to the hippies of the

1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against

everything the hippies stood for. Although he

was a profound influence on the youth of the

'60s Kerouac largely disavowed the hedonism

and drug use of the '60s counterculture. His

poetry and novels continue to influence young people decades after his death. 

Battling alcoholism for years,he knew his time left was short.

A contemplative time, he was determined to straighten out all the misconceptions

that his work had created and he wanted his voice to ring out to a troubled world.

PERFORMANCE DATES

March 20 - Chapters, Winter Park, Florida

March 27 - Chapters, Winter Park, Florida

April 17 - Narrows Art Center, Fall River, Mass.

April 18 - Narrows Art Center, Fall River, Mass.

April 24 - Kerouac Society, Orlando, Florida

April 25 - Kerouac Society, Orlando, Florida

July 31 - West End Theatre, Glouster, Mass.

August 1 - West End Theatre, Glouster, Mass.

August 2 - West End Theatre, Glouster, Mass.

  David A. McElroy and Steve A. Rowell bring Kerouac’s brilliant, yet tortured life to the stage

in this demonstrative one man show. McElroy, portraying Kerouac takes “the spotlight”

that illuminates Jack’s life as the road experience it was, and how he only wanted to observe 

and write those observations.

---The Jack Kerouac Project

 Reading at Chapters in Orlando, Florida

 

For booking   INformation:

Steve A. Rowell

PHONE - 407-321-1498

E-Mail STEVEAROWELL@YAHOO.COM