Spicer Says: Help Fund (& Go See!) the Theatrical Premiere of 'Billy the Kid'

A handful of our favorite New York theater artists are bringing Jack Spicer's poem "Billy the Kid" to life! It will premiere in July at Mount Tremper Arts Summer Festival of Contemporary Art and Performance. Created by Brendan Connelly, Brooke O'Harra, and Lisa D'Amour, and featuring songs by Brendan Connelly, performed by Connelly and (also-poet) Rick Burkhardt. "SPICER brings together a host of longtime The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf collaborators, including performers Becca Blackwell [at top!] and Laryssa Husiak, to theatricalize 'a poem somebody could hide in/with a sheriff’s posse after him.'"

JACK SPICER'S BILLY THE KID

Spicer says: “Get those words out of your mouth and into your heart”.

Spicer says: “Nonsense is an act of friendship.”

Spicer says: "Sex should be a frightening experience, like a dirty joke or an angel."

JACK SPICER'S BILLY THE KID is a performance that works to conjure and honor Jack Spicer: the poet, the activist, the renegade genius who died too young. We've transformed Spicer's poem Billy the Kid into a series of songs, and have woven them together with excerpts from his lectures on poetry. Three outlaws--Are they poets? Are they gunslingers? Are they three parts of Jack Spicer?--meet in a room on the edge of some American frontier. Aliens, aliases and renegade desires (poetic, sexual) rise to the surface; manifestos are subverted/inverted/perverted in search of a language that can queer their world.

What else! Your help is needed to finish the show! You can shill out at the Two-Headed Calf & Lisa D'Amour's Kickstarter Page. If you're on the east coast this summer, you should certainly drive out to the Catskills for the world premiere. More info on the full lineup (also includes 600 Highwaymen, Cynthia Hopkins, and ICE (!)) is here.