RiverArts presents “Kindness Committee” A new play written and directed by Melanie Hoopes

DOBBS FERRY, NY: Set at a concert on a cold winter night, Kindness Committee sneaks us into the minds of seven audience members connected by varying degrees to one another. As the musician performs, each character’s inner world ignites. Some desire, others despise. One mourns, another commits to a life of living without a past. One warns of the limits of “kindness” while another embodies the act of forgiving. All of them peel away layers of their past as they reach for a sustainable present.

Kindness Committee delves deep into longings and forebodings, and examines the increasing importance of strengthening our community as our social, political and environmental problems mount.

Inspired by a concert by Bay Area-based singer/songwriter John Elliott, Hoopes creates a fictitious world of characters interacting with one another, the music and the afterglow it creates. Elliott generously lends his music to weave through Kindness Committee, allowing the audience to be transported to the concert the characters attend.

Melanie Hoopes, a Hastings-on-Hudson resident, brought us last season’s zoom performance of Six Feet, a play about living in the age of Covid. With Kindness Committee, Hoopes asks us to once again examine the present moment. As we accept our current reality, we ask ourselves how we want to live moving forward. What must we fortify and what gets recycled? Like Six Feet, Kindness Committee is darkly funny and sure to reverberate.

“John’s performance four years ago with Common Ground Concerts started it all. His breathtakingly honest and personal songwriting awed me. He exposes his regrets and defenses, no matter how misshapen or how ugly, but then treats his past with kindness and compassion. He sends the audience off to do an inventory of their own, with the same open-hearted approach. he invites the audience to do their own inventory with the same open-hearted approach. I began writing Kindness Committee to explore how others may have experienced John’s show but somewhere along the way it became a treatise on community. My conclusion is simple and needs to be screamed from the rooftops and tattooed on our arms: We are all we have. The survival of all beings and our beautiful planet depends on the strength of our relation to one another.”

Artistic Director Kate Ashby says “ We are excited to once again partner with Melanie to present this new work. Melanie’s writing holds a special combination of insight, depth and compassion. She interweaves the experiences of her characters in a way that is sure to resonate with our audiences, leading us all to consider ways we can make our world and our community a better place.”

DETAILS:

Friday March 18, 2022

Saturday March 19, 2022

Time: 7:00pm

South Presbyterian Church

343 South Broadway, Dobbs Ferry NY

Tickets: $25.00

Further Information and Tickets:

https://riverarts.org/event/kindness-committee-friday/

https://riverarts.org/event/kindness-committee-saturday/

All attendees will be required to show proof of vaccination at the door. Until further notice, attendees will be required to wear masks at all indoor RiverArts events.

About Melanie Hoopes, Writer and Director

Melanie Hoopes is a writer whose credits include Six Feet: A Play About What’s Between Us (RiverArts), Lethal Lit (IHeartRadio, EEP), One Giant Leap: The Apollo Moon Landing 50 Years On (The New York Times) and  Bloodline (Netflix). She is the creator and writer of the long-running New York-based episodic stage show, Laurie Stanton’s Sound Diet, a dark, modern twist on Prairie Home Companion. Her public radio credits include This American Life, Here’s the Thing and Unfictional. She is a producer and host of Yesteryear: Stories from Home, a podcast about the history of living in a small village on the Hudson River. She lives in the Rivertowns with her family.

About John Elliott, Composer

A native of Minnesota now living in California, John Elliott has a worldwide following as a singer-songwriter. The Austin Chronicle writes John Elliott is “a legend among songwriters…bold and brave…his shows are not to be missed.” Cory Frye of the Corvallis Gazette-Times writes that Elliott has, “an affection for the malleability of language, the clever twists of phrase, an appreciation for the liquid kinship between rhythm and sounds — how they collide in beautiful violence, how they stand as ideas and images — even if they ordinarily wouldn’t deign to dance together or be seen in the same room.”

While John has toured internationally since 2006 and his songs have been prominently heard on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, and Californication, he remains an independent, unsigned, and unaffiliated artist, and he is proud of that fact. Calling himself a “songcyclist” for his eco-friendly propensity for pedaling his bike from one small venue to the next, Elliott continues to build a dedicated following the old-fashioned way: one new believer at a time.

Chuck Schiele of The San Diego Troubadour says, “John Elliott’s lyrics get in, make their statement, kick you in the teeth, and get out before they start talking too much…And this lends to the urge of rolling any track to its beginning for another spin.”

About RiverArts

Dedicated to inspiring the Hudson River communities to come together through art  for over half a century, RiverArts has been the catalyst that connects performers, musicians and art-makers with Rivertowns audiences. Motivated by a belief in the power of art to express, transform, and bring joy to our lives and our community, RiverArts’ programs connect artists with audiences through exhibition, performance, conversation and education. The free, five-town Music Tour and Studio Tour expand our combined annual local and metro area audiences to 20,000.