About the Performers
Lisa Faith Phillips
Lisa Faith Phillips has toured with her original comedy shows to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Washington D.C.’s Capital Festival, Dublin, Ireland, Los Angeles, New York and Findlay, Ohio. She has been a Participating Artist at The Cherry Lane Theater and Manhattan Punch Line’s Comedy Corp in New York as well as theater companies in Barcelona and London. Her plays At All Times and All-Nude College-Girl Revue had extended runs in New York. She is currently writing her first novel The Russian Tea Room.
Phillips holds a B.A in French and Economics from Wellesley College, M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and currently is studying music theory at Juilliard.
Five Stars and Best of the Fringe! “An incredible storyteller her show is fascinating to watch and to listen to. - DC Metro Theater Arts
“Wildly funny…mixes absurdism and social satire to hilarious results”- Jaime Lubin, The Huffington Post
Outrageously funny…devilishly clever and wildly entertaining” - Newyorkcool.com
John Di Martino
John Di Martino is a composer, arranger, jazz pianist, producer, and educator, based in New York City. He is described as a "shape-shifter", for his creativity across musical genres.
"John's soul and being come straight through to his music, the jazz world needs him!"
- Sheila Jordan, NEA Jazz Master
"John Di Martino is one of my absolute favorite pianists today. His music is an honest outpouring of light! "
- Benny Green, Jazz Pianist
"John di Martino's middle name should be 'taste', for he conveys that quality in both solo and supportive roles, in jazz and Latin music."
- Ray Barretto, NEA Jazz Master
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Ellen Mandel
Ellen Mandel has written music for over eighty plays at the Antaeus Theater (Scenie award: music for Top Girls) and Actor’s Co-op in LA, plus in NYC: Phoenix, Mint, Jean Cocteau Rep (Resident Composer), Pearl, and many regionals, received numerous best music nominations, and performed in Savvy Secrets of Successful Mistresses with Lisa Faith Phillips at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Ellen’s latest compositions are “Hopper Haiku” a set of 13 songs inspired by Edward Hopper paintings with music by Ellen and lyrics by Daniel Neer.
The NY Times calls Mandel’s songs to poems by E.E. Cummings, Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats, Charlotte Mew, and others “ardent, spiky, and refreshingly organic.” Her theater music is “remarkable for consistent invention, compositional resource, and apt theatricality,” Village Voice. Dizzy Gillespie called Ellen a “wonderful musician.”
T Spoon Phillips
T Spoon Phillips, the guitarist known around the New York City music scene as “Spoon,” has regularly appeared solo and with acoustic-oriented acts, including the Highland Shatners, Spoonville, and the Paul Ukena Trio, at venues like the Caffe Vivaldi, the Path Cafe, the Living Room, Barbes Brooklyn, Freddy’s Back Room, and others.
Spoon was the guitarist for the house band on the Natural Coffeehouse Radio Hour, on Public Radio, and founded the NYC rock band the Cheese Beads, and spent much of the his earlier years appearing on countless bills at many of the legendary music venues including CBGB’s, the Knitting Factory, McGovern’s, Fez under the Time Cafe, the Space at Chase, the Actor’s Playhouse (Midnight Vaudeville), the Atlantic Theater (Dog and Pony Show New York), Westbeth Theater Center, and Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Learn more about T Spoon Phillips and his music at tspguitar.com.
Mariah Bonner
Mariah Bonner is a recording artist based in Baltimore, Maryland, with a repertoire in French and English, ranging from American standards, French ballads, musical show tunes and new material. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to France with her family at the age of ten. She studied ballet and theatre in Paris as a teenager and started a career in fashion modeling. Mariah graduated from The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and discovered there the art of telling stories through song.
She pursued her artistic career in Los Angeles, playing in a variety of films such as The Social Network and the Universal Soldier series, and on television in series like Scorpion and Rules of Engagement. She founded and led a play-reading group, Blue Tiger Salons. One day, on a film set, the director noticed her humming a tune, and asked if she would like to record the original song he had written for his short film, “Ma Cité, Mon Histoire.” She had found her vocation!
Mariah has recorded two albums with composer and pianist, Marcus Dagan, who is her musical director.
"Mariah’s performance stole our attention and our hearts. She had a commanding presence that captivated her audience." Daniel L.
"Mariah’s performances are electric!" - Jennifer D.
Lilla Crawford
Lilla Crawford made her feature film debut as Little Red in Disney’s film adaptation of Into the Woods opposite Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp. She made her Broadway debut as Debbie in Billy Elliott and then was cast from a nationwide search of over 5,000 young performers in the title role of the 35th anniversary revival of Annie directed by James Lapine. You can currently catch her on Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin on Max/HBO and Raven's Home (Disney Chanel). Past credits include Netflix’s The Who Was? Show (series regular), the lead in a half hour comedy pilot for ABC, the lead role of Sunny in Nickelodeon’s animated series, Sunny Day, Bull (CBS), Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS), Blue Bloods (CBS), and Forever (ABC). Lilla recently graduated from New York University with a BFA in Film and TV Production at the Tisch School for the Arts. She trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade and regularly performs improv and sketch comedy around NYC.
Jennifer Rawlings
Jennifer Rawlings has appeared on TV, in the film “I AM BATTLE COMIC” and in three TEDx talks. Using her humor as a way to tackle serious subject matter, she was named as one of the “21 Change makers of the 21st Century” by Women’s E News. She has performed entertaining the troops in over 350 military shows in dozens of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Bosnia. Jennifer’s powerful directorial debut: “Forgotten Voices: Women in Bosnia” received critical acclaim and screened at film festivals worldwide, prompted her award-winning solo show “I ONLY SMOKE IN WAR ZONES “.
Marcus Dagan
Marcus Dagan is a composer, singer, pianist and recording artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. His music has taken him across the world, and he has cultivated a discerning audience through the years, with his unique lyrical interpretations and original material. He has been Mariah's musical director since October 2018,and is thrilled to be playing with her again at Pangea as part of Make America Laugh And Sing Again!
Robin Hirsch
Robin Hirsch is a former Oxford, Fulbright and English-Speaking Scholar, who has acted, directed, taught, and published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a two-time NYFA Fellow, recipient of numerous awards for writing and producing, and holds a joint Ph.D in Literature and Theatre. But the titles of which he is proudest are self-bestowed: Minister of Culture, Wine Czar, Dean of Faculty at the Cornelia Street Café, which he opened with two other artists on the weekend of July 4, 1977 and closed on January 1, 2019.
Robin is the author of LAST DANCE AT THE HOTEL KEMPINSKI "one of the best books ever written on the long arm of the Holocaust," Jewish Book News FEG: Stupid Poems for Intelligent Children "searingly smart and challenging" (New York Times), and The World Passes Through, stories from the cafe.
Cornelia Street Cafe is now "in exile" having been forced to close by vile landlords, but had recent pop ups in Brooklyn, the Meatpacking District, and the Bitter End.
Photo by Anna Morris.
Emma Lavandier
Hailed for her “excellent voice and spot-on performance” (Huffington Post), her “bright sound and affecting delivery”, and for delivering a "captivating performance" (Voce di Meche), French native mezzo-soprano Emma Lavandier has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall (Weill recital hall), Symphony Space, the Sheen Center and the Cell Theatre in New York City. Highlights of past seasons include the Witch (Hansel and Gretel), Rosina (The Barber of Seville), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus), Nicklausse (Les contes d’Hoffmann), and Orfeo (Orfeo ed Euridice). Emma is a member of the Professional Women Singers Association,and has recently joined the professional ensemble Quadrivium based in Paris..
About the Performers in Make America Laugh and Sing 2020
Stan Baker
Stan Baker is an actor, comedian, musical book-writer and lyricist. His work includes productions, workshops, readings, commissions, and/or solo performances at venues such as The Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, La Mama E.T.C., Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, P.S. 122, The Lark, The York, HOME, Columbia U., Cornelia St. Café, The Bitter End, Catch a Rising Star, Studio 54, and many others.
Stan started doing his act The Human Television as a street performer in Washington Square Park.
"Clever, subversive, and gut-bucket funny." - The Village Voice "Voice Choice"
"Hits close to home." - WCBS-TV
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Michael Lydon
Michael Lydon, a composer known to millions as the Handsomest Man in the World, is a pioneering rock writer and a founding editor of Rolling Stone. His eyewitness account of the Stones’ 1969 tour, The Rolling Stones Discover America, is an Amazon Kindle Single. Lydon has written Rock Folk and Ray Charles: Man and Music, and he often performs as a singer-songwriter with the jazz combo on his CD, Love at First Sight.
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Natalie Smith
Natalie Smith is a singer, songwriter, actress, and playwright. A lifelong New Yorker, she draws on the energy of the city to inform her work and performs regularly in the five boroughs and beyond.
Natalie's original music blends pop, rock and American folk influences and is rooted in her classical and jazz piano training. She released her first studio album, “Take My Piano,” in the fall of 2015, available on iTunes.
Natalie made her Broadway debut in the critically acclaimed, Tony award- winning production, One Man Two Guvnors. She is currently developing a one-woman show with a series of deeply imagined characters who tell a contemporary musical fairy tale for all ages.
Natalie earned her BFA in acting from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and has studied voice, classical piano, and songwriting.