About the Performers

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

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.”

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.

  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 “.  

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.

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 

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.