TWEED

TWEED was founded in 1983 by its artistic director, Kevin Malony. The producing organization
began by presenting the early plays of Sam Shepard, Eugene Ionesco, and Tennessee Williams, as
well as original adaptations of the works of Dorothy Parker, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and Mary
Shelley, among others.

In 1984, with the East Village gallery and club scene thriving, TWEED was one of the first companies
to embrace performance art and bring work from that arena, particularly that seen in nightclubs,
and produce it in legitimate off-off Broadway theaters. For over a decade, the company presented
a curated festival of new works, the TWEED New Works Festival. It presented the early work of many
emerging artists of the time, including Bill Russell, Lisa Kron, Diana Son, Adrienne Kennedy, Mac
Wellman, Joshua Fried, Mark Dendy, Edgar Oliver, and John Kelly. Watchface appeared in four of
these festivals, including the one celebrating the festival’s 10th anniversary.

The name TWEED was chosen to describe a company that wove together a wide variety of live
performance, including performance art, original plays and musicals, dance theater, and
category-defying extravaganzas. TWEED has produced under the names TWEED Theaterworks,
TWEED Ensemble, Club Etc., T.W.E.E.D. (Theater Works Emerging/Experimental Directions or The
Wildest Entertainments Ever Devised), and just plain TWEED. After more than three decades –
beginning in tiny, late night East Village dives and moving on to premier Manhattan venues –
TWEED continues to produce innovative and unusual live theater.

Malony, TWEED’s first and only artistic director, quotes their mission statement: “TWEED unearths raw,
yet sophisticated, socially relevant artists and material and ushers them to the threshold of
acceptability, and often beyond, to cast an irreverent mirror on contemporary culture.”
Ongoing endeavors include the TWEED Music Series, which has featured Antony (Antony and the
Johnsons), Kate Pierson (The B-52’s), Nora Jones, Annie Golden, Joey Arias, Lana Cantrell, and
many other downtown musicians. The TWEED Fractured Classics Series, a popular cult
phenomenon, presents readings and full productions of classic plays and films employing unique
casting choices. Their iconic reading of the film Caged starred Isabella Rossellini, Lily Tomlin, Joan
Rivers, Carole Shelley, Charles Busch, Wallace Shawn, and a dozen others.

TWEED has also produced most of John Epperson’s shows as Lypsinka, since his days of
revolutionary drag performance at the Pyramid Club. These productions range from original early
works such as Dial M for Model and Ballet of the Dolls to film spoofs Imitation of Imitation of Life and
Lypsinka IS Harriet Craig to Lypsinka’s classic solo endeavors, Lypsinka! The Boxed Set and As I Lay
Lyp-synching. Other TWEED highlights include Dykebar The Musical by Lisa Kron and Tom Judson,
Jingle Belles with Lady Bunny, Sherry Vine, and Varla Jean Merman, and John Kelly’s Paved
Paradise: The Music of Joni Mitchell.

Watchface performances at TWEED:
Camden
More Songs of Desire and Despair
The Music Project
P.O. I Love You
Septaphonic
Twins
Woolworth’s