This very special performance of Sean’s one man show If It Bleeds It Leads is a dress rehearsal for his New York City premiere at Theatre Row on October 10 as part of the United Solo Festival.

Shae D’lyn, accomplished television, film and stage actor (Dharma and Greg, Boardwalk Empire, Vegas Vacation, Arthur Miller’s The American Clock) is taking her lifetime of experience and success into the director’s chair for this production.

The show is two 45 minute sets with an intermission.

Additionally Shae and Sean are both excited to be joined by local artist and superb poet Ifetayo Cobbins, who will open the night reciting her original poems.

Shae and Sean both live in Hudson and are thrilled to bring the show to The Spotty Dog.

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IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS
Generations of my family have been journalists. That’s how I got a job shooting television news overnight in New York City as a one-man camera crew despite the fact that I was a twenty-one-year-old, two-time college dropout living in Westchester with my parents.

Set against the ultra violent, unstable times of New York City in 1993, If It Bleeds It Leads is the true story of my time coming of age chasing murder, mayhem, and love behind the wheel of an auctioned-off cop car on the streets of the biggest media market in the world.

Ride along, stand on the corners…meet the people, the cops, the firefighters, the perps, the victims and the denizens of the night that shaped my very personal journey into the American caste systems of money, race and privilege.

New York filmmaker Joshua Zeman (Cropsey, Sons of Sam) describes If It Bleeds It Leads as “a memoir of a time in New York City best described as the Wild West.”

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Love and the Fear of Love is made of fables, stories, and tales based on specific words and phrases. Dig in to court procedurals on the meaning of love, the true meaning of trouserdom, and original fables such as The Man, the King, the Girl and the Spider.

NORMAN DOUGLAS
norman douglas does way too much, even tho he says he does as little as possible.
he lives alone to sleep in the very large apartment he calls home while advocating communal lifestyles.
he writes poems on the street and says he’s not a poet.
he uses human languages to say that language fails to create the true realm of the unspeakable.
he knows we’re not even people and says the planet would still be perfectly invaluable without nominally sentient animals who are so scared of love that they don’t even need to validate while they value everything else they ain’t got.
mostly he treks lots of stories just like folks you know. plus, he wants to not want.
also, he pays rent in hudson, new york, usa, earth, outer space.

KAREN SCHOEMER
Poet Karen Schoemer contributes words and vocals to a number of bands, including Sky Furrows, Jaded Azurites, Ivan the Tolerable and Karen & Peter. A former music critic for the New York Times and Newsweek, she is the author of Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with 50s Pop Music and the poetry chapbook Sparrowbush Bread.

ANDREW AMELINCKX
Andrew Amelinckx is a freelance journalist who has previously written three historical true-crime books. He held down a variety of jobs, from bartending in New Orleans to burlesque dancing in New York City, before spending a decade as an award-winning investigative crime reporter for several news organizations, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Berkshire Eagle. His work has appeared in Insider, Smithsonian.com, Men’s Journal, Modern Farmer, and elsewhere. He has an MFA with distinction in painting from Pratt Institute. Andrew lives with his wife, Kara, and dog, Dashiell, in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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Alissa and Kimberly will be discussing Alissa’s new book, Bootstrapped Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.

Bootstrapped is an unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled

The promise that you can “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is central to the story of the American Dream. It’s the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition.

Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions—from “grit” to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe—Quart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need.

Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quart’s lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed, Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives.

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ALISSA QUART
is the author of five acclaimed books of nonfiction, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023), Squeezed, Republic of Outsiders, Hothouse Kids, and Branded. She is the Executive Director of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She is also the author of two books of poetry Thoughts and Prayers and Monetized. She has written for many publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and TIME. Her honors include an Emmy, an SPJ award and a Nieman fellowship. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.

KIMBERLY CUTTER
is a journalist, novelist, and creator and host of The Control Variable: American Propaganda, an investigative podcast series that takes an unprecedented look into the history and science of propaganda to better understand the events of January 6, 2021. She is the former Executive Editor for Harper’s Bazaar and the former West Coast Editor for W Magazine. Cutter has written for many publications including The Wall Street Journal, Elle, Vanity Fair, New York, AD, Marie Claire and Vogue.com. She lives in the Hudson Valley.MORE