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A Tribute & Celebration of Jack Kerouac at Gunther's Tap Room in Northport on the 40th Anniversary of his Death.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . Jack's Last Call: Say Goodbye to Kerouac honored by ZEITFUNK, New York Festivals, & Communicator Awards Wins Audie Nomination See News and More... for all award information.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Jack's Last Call: Say Goodbye to Kerouac is now available as a one-hour special program for public radio stations. Broadway star Len Cariou plays a featured role in the audio play directed and produced by award winning audio dramatist Sue Zizza. This 59-minute production is currently available free to stations at The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and at The Content Depot.
The audio play, recorded in part at Gunther's Tap Room, one of the celebrated author's favorite Long Island drinking spots, was created in conjunction with the many celebrations around the 50th anniversary of the publishing of On The Road and was adapted by Zizza and playwright Patrick Fenton from an earlier Fenton-penned stage production, Kerouac's Last Call. Fenton's stories and articles have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, New York Newsday, and the Daily News. It wasn't until Fenton's newspaper articles, and his aforementioned play, that fans and scholars learned about this important turning point in Kerouac's life.
Based on more than 12 years of research about Kerouac's Queens and Long Island lives, Jack's Last Call blends both the facts of that last night from tape recordings made by a friend of Kerouac's with other occurrences throughout Kerouac's life. Listeners meet the shy, sensitive, complicated Kerouac who fled his own fame in 1957 after On the Road was published. Jack's Last Call also introduces the listener to the many important people who shaped his work including his mother Memere, father Leo, daughter Jan, brother Gerard, friend Neal Cassady and many others. Tony Award winning actor Len Cariou plays the journalist who is writing his story, which opens in August 1964, at the moment when Kerouac's life was moving toward its end and he prepares to leave his Northport home to live in Florida with his mother Memere.
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Jack's Last Call Synopsis |
The drinking, the fame that grew after On the Road was
published, the battles with his family; these parts of Jack Kerouac's
life, which made him a cultural icon of the American 50's, are well
known to many. But there is another part of Kerouac that only a few
villagers from the quiet hamlet of Northport on Long Island had the
chance to see up close. This is the Kerouac presented in Patrick
Fenton's original audio play Jack's Last Call: Say Goodbye to Kerouac.
On
this last Long Island night, Jack thinks back to the America he saw
riding alongside Neal Cassady as they drove back and forth across the
country. As the memories play through his mind, Jack receives a series
of soul-searching phone calls from his daughter, Jan, who is desperate
to connect with the man she believes to be her father.
It's an honest portrayal of, and an elegy to, a man whose writings helped shape a generation and a nation.
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Available for broadcast free to public radio stations, beginning October 1, 2009, on Content Depot. Visit www.prss.org. Also available, now, for broadcast free to public radio stations on The Public Radio Exchange (PRX). Visit these links for information. .
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Call (516) 658-0423 or E-mail: jackslastcall@gmail.com
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Funding provided in part by Midsummer Sound Company, LLC and The Beckerman Archives.
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