“A very mad and quite funny uncle,
who amuses you with his antics,
frightens you with his intensity and
charms you with his tales of the
fantastic.”
-Charleston City Paper
Piccolo Spoleto Festival
q
Contact Us
For answers to your questions, or to
book Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of
Terror, get in touch:
Wild Baboo Productions LLC
Ansonia Station
P.O. Box 230651
New York, NY 10023-0651
p. 212-414-5050
e. [email protected]
www.JoshuaKane.com
Edgar Allan Poe’s
Tales of Terror
about the show
“A voice that mesmerizes…” — NY Daily News
C
elebrate the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth by cheering away
an evening with tales of revenge, madness and despair. By popular request this all Poe Version of
Kane’s Gothic at Midnight will be available in both staged and recital formats.
j
Joshua Kane performs such tales as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, Hop-Frog, The Masque
of the Red Death, The Raven, and more! Punctuated with lively anecdotes about the author and his swift
descent into madness, this performance also encompasses the humor and banter that audiences have
always loved in Kane’s performances. A 50 minute version plus Q&A is also available for student matinees.
Innovative promotional opportunities (e.g., a blood drive) and eye-catching graphics make promoting this
show a pleasure for presenters. As part of our promotional blitz, we provide study guides and Poe trivia
contests for local radio stations.
q
Praise for JOSHUA KANE.
“Joshua it was a privilege to work with you from start to finish. Your
passion, graciousness, and enthusiasm is contagious. From the moment we started talking with each other,
through the closure of your show, you displayed professionalism, and a level of excitement that was truly
appreciated by a presenter opening a new facility. I appreciated your willingness to do all of the small and
extra things to make the experience a rewarding one for all involved.”
— Brian M. Kendall, Program Coordinator, City of Las Vegas, Office of Cultural Affairs
“Your performance was technically brilliant, expressive, and thoroughly enjoyed by all in attendance.”
—Denise Nelson Nash, Assistant Vice President for Public Events, California Institute of Technology
“…the quality of your show and the positive reaction that we received from the
public was wonderful.” — Richard Feldman, Vice President and General Manager
Arts Center of Coastal Carolina, Hilton Head, SC
“Savvy, witty, and spell-binding, Joshua Kane’s performances . . . put both his remarkable
voice and deep understanding of horror literature at the service of wondrous and expansive
entertainment… He brings life, intelligence, sensitivity and humor to
everything he touches.” –Peter Straub, best-selling author of Ghost Story
“One of the most original and provocative performers
I’ve seen in years. The characters he gives birth to on stage are
simply unforgettable.”
–Deborah Sommers, Quick Center for the Arts
“A very mad and quite funny uncle,
who amuses you with his antics,
frightens you with his intensity and
charms you with his tales of the
fantastic.”
-Charleston City Paper
Piccolo Spoleto Festival
q
Contact Us
For answers to your questions, or
to book Tales of Terror, get in
touch:
Wild Baboo Productions LLC
Ansonia Station
P.O. Box 230651
New York, NY 10023-0651
p. 212-414-5050
e. [email protected]
www.JoshuaKane.com
Tales
of
Terror
An Evening of Hilarity & Horror
about the show (Formerly Gothic at Midnight)
C
j
heer away an evening with tales of revenge, madness, and
despair! Drawing from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens and Ambrose Bierce,
Joshua Kane takes delighted audiences on a roller-coaster ride of spine-tingling thrills and
laughter.
Reared on the performances of Orson Welles and Charles Laughton, Kane developed a lifelong passion
for the mating of classic literature and solo performance. Tales of Terror allows him to indulge in two of
his passions: blowing the dust off the classics and giving people nightmares. Kane brings a potpourri of
performance styles to the show, from high drama to intimate banter with the audience.
Innovative promotional opportunities (e.g., a blood drive) and eye-catching posters and fliers make
promoting this show a pleasure for presenters. As part of our promotional blitz, we provide presenters with
study guides and Horror Trivia Contests for local radio stations.
q
Praise for tales of terror.
“A compelling performance – thrillingly intense one minute, hilariously funny the next. The
audience loved him.” – Adele Adkins, Maine Center for the Arts
“[T]he highest quality experience possible for community and presenter alike… Josh is one of the most
magnetic personalities I have ever experienced on a stage. He breathes new life into century-old theatrical
conventions, channeling the essence of acting from a time when the latest in technology included the
flicker of gaslight. This is what theater was meant to be.”
–James O’Connell, Wausau Area Performing Arts Foundation, WI
“Traditions from multiple eras merge on stage: the evocative radio dramas of
Vincent Price and Orson Welles, the precision scare timing of Alfred Hitchcock and the gifts of a good
old-fashioned storyteller.” – Mountain Times, Park City, UT
“Joshua leaves no stone unturned in his approach to delivering a truly unique audience
experience which he custom tailors to each performance situation.
He is in possession of the rare ability to capture an audience in a moment and hold their rapt
attention throughout the performance. If you are looking for a performance that creates lasting
connections with your audience, I offer my highest recommendation for Joshua’s
repertoire.”
— Robert Steele, Executive Director,
Community Arts Center, Williamsport, PA
Contact Us
For answers to your questions, or to book
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror, get
in touch:
Wild Baboo Productions LLC
Ansonia Station
P.O. Box 230651
New York, NY 10023-0651
p. 212-414-5050
e. [email protected]
www.JoshuaKane.com
ResidencieS
campus for your program.
The talk prior to the show
was an inspiration to them
and the insights you shared
helped prepare them to fully
appreciate the language,
motivation, and provocative
nature of Poe’s work.”
—Denise Nelson Nash,
Assistant Vice President for
Public Events,
California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena
Schools are so
burdened with “teaching
to the test” that the arts and the
creative process are inevitably
short changed. I am always
amazed by the powerful
changes that take place when
In recognition of his
I’m invited to work with
work with young people,
schools, both at the arts center
in 1994 the Connecticut
and in the classroom. Students
State Commission on the Arts
labeled as “learning disabled”
named Kane a
produce pages of imaginative
Master Teaching Artist.
writing; singing and speaking
“I was particularly pleased
voices open up; Shakespearean
with your educational program highlighting
verse becomes easy; and limiting beliefs are
the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I have found
vaporized.
it difficult over my twenty-plus years of
presenting, to find opportunities that are
The time I spend connecting with students
both engaging and rewarding for junior high/
and teachers in my workshops and theatrical
middle school students, and this program
residencies is the most pleasurable part of my
did the trick. They were engaged both with
work. When I conduct a residency I have the
the work and with you as a performer, and
satisfaction of knowing that I’ve been both an
the blending of those two elements held the
immediate “Vitamin B shot” and that I’ve also
rapt attention of a challenging age-range
left behind tools that will last a lifetime.
of audience members. I would not hesitate
to enthusiastically recommend this to any
“Joshua… taught junior high students how to
never be bored, how to increase their retention educational program, as a literature and
performance-based event.”
capacity, and how to bring inanimate objects
—Joseph A. Ferlo, Executive Director,
to life on the page. The students couldn’t wait
Grand Opera House, Oshkosh, WI
to share their compositions…, and they were
visibly awed by a ghost story that had folkloric
“What is special about Mr. Kane’s workshop
roots in Alaskan Inuit traditions.”
– Teri Orr, is that it draws out of participants an
Eccles Center, UT appreciation for their own communities, as
well as for others.” – Forward, National Edition
“Thank you for taking the time to meet
with the high school students we brought to
About Joshua Kane
toured internationally and has played limited runs at off-Broadway’s
Raised in an illegal boarding house and obsessed from an early age with historic Lambs Theatre and the Neighborhood Playhouse.
books, magic, spoken word, fire-eating and the theatre, Joshua Kane was
destined for a career on the stage, or as an international spy.
Since 1991, Kane has run his own theatrical production company
that exclusively produces his unique one-man shows, in which he
He is a classically trained actor who has studied with such brilliantly blends the power and dramatic sweep of solo theatre with
luminaries as Stella Adler, Bobby Lewis, Marcel Marceau, and Patsy the ancient art of storytelling, creating compelling and provocative
Rodenburg. A member of Actors Equity Association, Joshua has performances.
Charleston City Paper June 3, 1998 Spoleto Festival, SC
An Evening With
Your Mad Uncle Kane
by Sam Adams
I
n the middle of Joshua Kane’s one man show,
Gothic at Midnight, the lights go down and he begins
his recital of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.
To this point you have heard a few grisly tales, been
hypnotized by Kane’s deep, rich voice and laughed
quite a bit between stories at his friendly banter.
In other words, you are an unsuspecting puppet in
the hands of Joshua Kane.
From here on in, I advise you to hold tight to
your programs. One audience member, obviously a
little rigid with fright, dropped his program,
causing it to slither down a few steps and
come to rest right behind
my seat. Fortunately, I had
the presence of mind
not to turn and look,
for were I to do so, I
am positive that instead
of the program would
have been the old man
with his wandering
eye or worse still,
the murderer and
his axe, his stare
intent....
The other
remarkable aspect of
Kane’s The Tell-Tale Heart
is the heartbeat that
rises very softly during his
conclusion. What’s remarkable about this? Doesn’t every
production of The Tell-Tale Heart use
a heartbeat during the conclusion? No, every
production doesn’t. More specifically, Joshua
Kane’s doesn’t.
“Sound effects?” says Kane. “We don’t use sound
effects.”
And therein lies the magic of Joshua Kane’s Gothic
at Midnight. He turns theatre bills into axe murderers
and pulls heartbeats from your imagination. And when
each story finishes and the house lights come up, he
turns that tinge of fear into laughter with jokes about
anything from the local wildlife to a late-arriving audience member.
“I took a lesson from Alfred Hitchcock,” says
Kane. “You can only scare your audience to a certain
point. Then you’ve got to let them rest a moment. It’s
like a roller coaster.You have to give them the long
slow journey up before you plunge them down.”
To this end, every story in Gothic at Midnight is
not intended to frighten. There are fairy tales from
Ireland that charm and even a quick recital of poetry
to round out the evening. “It is one thing to stretch
an audience’s sensibilities,” says Kane. “It is another
ting to snap them.”
Which is why Kane introduces the audience not
only to the macabre, but to himself as well. He tells
amusing tales about his grandmother and grandfather
and his Jewish-Russian roots. “The family stuff is a way
to let the audience get to know me personally,” says
Kane. “If they’re going to spend two hours with no
sets and no costumes, they deserve to get to know
me.”
The sparse decoration of the stage is no
impediment to Kane’s performance. In fact, the
open set, consisting of only a table, a stool, a
candle, a few miscellaneous items and a sarcophagus, allows the audience
to indulge fully in Kane’s
resonant voice.
“My show was deigned
for the spectacle-weary
audience,” says Kane, who
nonetheless relishes the dark
nature of his performance.
“Since I’ve taken the stage
at the Emmett Robinson
Theatre,” says Kane, “20
old men have been murdered, I have set fire to
about 60 people, and about
240 have died.”
It’s not, however, the
body count that scares you.
The deaths almost come as a
welcome relief putting both the tortured character
and the suspense-riveted audience out of their suffering. The real fright comes from within. “I rely on
the audience to do most of the work,” says Kane. “To
fuel the show with their imagination, I provide the
skeletons, they flesh out the experience.”
For any fan of gothic tales and gothic horror,
Joshua Kane’s show is the Piccolo event to attend.
As he says, “I invite my audience to spend an evening
in the parlor of a mad uncle.” A very mad and quite
funny uncle, who amuses you with his antics, frightens
you with his intensity and charms you with his tales
of the fantastic. CP
Joshua Kane will perform Gothic at Midnight: A Tribute
to the Masters of the Macabre on June 4 at 11 pm.
June 5-6 at 8 pm. $15. $12 for students.The June 4-5
shows will be in the Recital Hall at the College of Charleston.The June 6 show will be in the Emmett Robinson
Theatre at the College of Charleston.
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
DENISE NELSON NASH
ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT
FOR PUBLIC EVENTS
January 8, 2009 Dear Joshua, It was a pleasure to welcome you back to Caltech for your appearance in Joshua Kane performs Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror. As anticipated, your performance was technically brilliant, expressive, and thoroughly enjoyed by all in attendance. I also want to thank you for taking the time to meet with the high school students we brought to campus for your program. The talk prior to the show was an inspiration to them and the insights you shared helped prepare them to fully appreciate the language, motivation, and provocative nature of Poe’s work. Again, thank you for a wonderful performance. Cordially, Denise Nelson Nash Assistant Vice President for Public Events 1200 E. CALIFORNIA BLVD., MAIL CODE 332-92 PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91125
TELEPHONE (626) 395-3836 FAX (626) 395-1787 E-MAIL: [email protected]
COMMUNITY
ARTS CENTER
January 6,2009
To Whom It May Concern:
This is an open letter of recommendation for Mr. Joshua Kane. I have had the pleasure of
working with Joshua when he performed his "Tales of Terror" show at the Community Arts
Center in November of 2008. Our technical and marketing staff thoroughly enjoyed
Joshua's professionalism, attention to detail, and indefatigable commitment to his art and
perhaps more importantly to the process. Joshua leaves no stone unturned in his approach to
delivering a truly unique audience experience which he custom tailors to each performance
situation. He is in possession of the rare ability to capture an audience in a moment and hold
their rapt attention throughout the performance. If you are looking for a performance that
creates lasting connections with your audience, I offer my highest recommendation for
Joshua's repertoire.
Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me at (570) 327-7653
or rsteele@,pct.edu.
Sincerely,
Robert Steele
Executive Director
220 West hutth
WilliamsparZ PA 17701
Phone: (5M)327-7653
FiaDc (EIO) 327-7663
~ . a d k . c ~ m