Ambassador Productions & Provincetown CabaretFest 2019 is proud to present this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, SHARON McNIGHT in Gone, But Not Forgotten. Provincetown CabaretFest 2019, (May 29 – June 2, 2019) is an annual event, which this year, stated producers Patricia Fitzpatrick and James Locke, “promises to be the biggest festival to date with over 40 cabaret performers, musicians & master class coaches descending on Ptown for our four-day festival.” Celebrating its 19th year, CabaretFest has grown to become the largest gathering of cabaret performers in New England. CabaretFest is popular with theatre-goers and audiences who cherish an intimate evening of live music, woven together with patter, warmth, wit and feelings.
SHARON McNIGHT, this year’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award-winner, will bring in her hit show, Gone, But Not Forgotten, to Pilgrim House on Friday, May 31 at 7pm.
Sharon McNight made her Broadway debut in 1989 in Starmites, creating the role of Diva. She received a Tony Award nomination as “Best Leading Actress in a Musical” for her performance and is the recipient of the coveted Theatre World Award for “Outstanding Broadway Debut.” New York Magazine’s John Simon said, “Sharon McNight is a winner” and Al Hirschfeld did a caricature of her.
The singer/comedienne’s regional credits include Amanda McBroom’s Heartbeats at the Pasadena Playhouse and an award-winning Dolly in Hello, Dolly! at the Peninsula Civic Light Opera (a role she repeated in her hometown, Modesto). Sharon was Sister Hubert in Nunsense in LA & San Francisco, where she received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for “Best Performance in a Musical.” She is the narrator of the documentary, There That Night, the story of the Provincetown, Massachusetts fire & was featured in the A&E documentary, It’s Burlesque, for her research on Mae West and Sophie Tucker.
She has played from Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall and anywhere the check doesn’t bounce. She has won six San Francisco Cabaret Gold Awards, 3 Cable Car Awards, a MAC Award, a Bistro Award and received a Nightlife Award from New York’s critics for her Best Musical Comedy show, Ladies, Compose Yourselves! featuring songs by “living” female composers. Other shows include Betty, Betty, Bette, celebrating the screen legends Grable, Hutton and Davis; Songs to Offend Almost Everyone, a throwback to the party records of the ‘50’s mixed with political and social satire and Gone, But Not Forgotten, a tribute to the late ladies of stage and screen – Merman, Martha Raye, Madeline Kahn, Patsy Cline and Judy Garland. In contrast is The Sophie Tucker Songbook, which contains the music of the one-woman show based on the show business legend. Songbook debuted at New York’s Rainbow and Stars as part of the ASCAP Sunday night showcase. Since then, she developed it into a one-woman musical, Red Hot Mama, which was workshopped at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Theatre and finished a successful three month run Off-Broadway at the York Theatre.
She has six solo recordings to her credit. Her eclectic repertory ranges from blues to country (yes, she yodels) to good old-fashioned entertainment. The Los Angeles Times called her “one of the great wonders of the musical stage.” She is most noted for her movie reenactment of The Wizard of Oz and for being one of the few real women to impersonate Bette Davis.
As an only child, her parents kept her busy with all kinds of lessons: ballet, tap, hula, social dancing, flute and piano. She has been the forefront in the fight against AIDS since the early ‘80s and was featured in Randy Shilt’s book And the Band Played On. She was chosen twice as the honorary chair of the San Francisco AIDS Emergency Fund and was one of two heterosexual women chosen as the Grand Marshall of San Francisco’s Gay Parade.
McNight has been a master teacher at the Eugene O’Neill Center and is currently on the faculty of the Cabaret Conference at Yale University. She was recently chosen as one of the “50 Most Influential People in Cabaret” by NiteLifeExchange.com – “A tireless performer who will drop everything to perform in any benefit with a cause, the Tony-nominated McNight can sing anything and make it her own!”
She says the greatest day of her life was the day she quit smoking.
McKnight will also offer a master class during the festival.
Information about the festival can be found on the CabaretFest website & at the website of Pilgrim House.
www.provincetowncabaretfest.com
