More Details About Comedian Judy Gold: Mommy Queerest
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The creator of 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, comedian Judy Gold, is back in this edgy, multi-media memoir with original music featuring her hilarious takes on being a working gay mom and raising two boys in New York City.
As a 6-foot-3, Kosher, gay, award-winning comedienne, and mother of two boys, Judy Gold isn’t your stereotypical mother. In this utterly candid, comedic new play, Judy leaves no subject unturned: from her frail, but still boisterous, elderly Jewish mother to anti-depressants, gay marriage and of course what she truly thinks about her kids—they’re annoying, expensive and they better pluck out her chin hairs when she’s in the Hebrew Home for the Aged. Gay or straight, black or white, Jew or non-denominational neurotic, this show will have everyone rolling in the aisles with laughter.
Judy Gold, who won two Emmy-Awards for writing and producing “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” is also a well-known performer, twice nominated for The American Comedy Award’s funniest female stand-up comedienne. Her most recent TV special is a half-hour show for LOGO and she is featured in the HBO documentary “All Aboard.” Gold’s many stand-up specials include “Comedy Central Presents: Judy Gold,” Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd Stands Up” and her half-hour HBO special, for which she received a Cable Ace Award. She has also been in many films and TV shows: The Aristocrats, “Law & Order,” “The View,” “Sex in the City,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” and “The Conan O’Brien Show,” to name a few. She has hosted the GLAAD Media Awards, which aired on LOGO and VH1, Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time,” and HBO’s “At the Multiplex with Judy Gold.”
Judy Gold worked with writers Eric Kornfeld and Bob Smith on the book, with song lyrics also by Eric Kornfeld. Kornfeld is a writer, song parodist, and stand-up comedian who has previously worked with Rosie O’Donnell, Caroline Rhea and Judy Gold. He wrote and co-created Kiss My Brass with Bruce Vilanch for Bette Midler and is currently the main writer for Midler’s smash Las Vegas show at Caesar’s Palace, The Showgirl Must Go On.
Bob Smith, who has written for The MTV Video Awards, Dennis Miller, Roseanne Barr and was a staff writer for Fox's “MAD-TV,” has the distinction of being the first openly gay comedian to appear on “The Tonight Show” and also have his own HBO Comedy Half-hour. His collection of essays, Openly Bob (published by Rob Weisbach Books/William Morrow), won the Lambda Literary Award and his most recent book, Way To Go, Smith!, (published by HarperCollins) was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award.
Conductor, composer and Grammy Award-winning record producer John McDaniel created the music for Mommy Queerest. Former band leader on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” he won two Emmy Awards for Music Producer and has five Emmy nominations for Music Direction/Composition.
Director Amanda Charlton brings her own comedic perspective to the piece having been mentored by the comedian Martin Lawrence, director and playwright Gip Hoppe and Woody Allen. Charlton, a Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Associate, has a history of working closely with playwrights on new plays, having staged the world premiere of Melinda Lopez’s Sonia Flew at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company and numerous new plays at Williamstown.
Mommy Queerest previewed at New York's Le Poisson Rouge in November 2008 and premiered at the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston Center for the Arts in December 2008. Subsequently the show has been presented in Joe’s Pub and at the Montreal Comedy Festival. This new, expanded, musicalized version of the play will be the first extended run of the show.
Theater J
Theater J has emerged as one of the most distinctive, progressive and respected Jewish theaters in North America by virtue of its ambitious range of programming and the bold, imaginative artistry of its playwrights, directors, designers and actors. A program of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, Theater J works in frequent collaboration with the four other components of the Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts, which include the Washington Jewish Film Festival and Screening Room, the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, the Program in Literature, Music, and Dance, and Nextbook.
