PRESS RELEASE: THE PLANET EARTH FAREWELL CONCERT

(Hollywood, CA) – Sacred Fools Theater Company is excited to announce Jonas
Oppenheim’s new play The Planet Earth Farewell Concert, a world premiere musical satire about the climate crisis. Planet Earth performs her final concert, revisiting her greatest hits, reuniting with old friends, and retelling old jokes. Combining cabaret, sketch, and agitprop, it’s a funny, absurd, provocative look at where we are, where we’re going, and what we can do about it. The Planet Earth Farewell Concert will run for seven performances in June at the Broadwater Main Stage.

About the Show
Tune in for a night of song, humor, and glamour with a dying legend on her way out! Planet Earth may be on the verge of collapse, but she’s collapsing in style. She’s sassy, sickly, and throwing the party of her life. In this exclusive live televised event, Planet Earth is singing old songs, reuniting with old friends, and telling old jokes. It’s a glitzy, silly affair with guest appearances by Taylor Swift, Jeff Bezos, cavemen, dinosaurs, and polar ice. Each guest challenges us to explore the climate crisis, our planet-sized feelings on the subject, and what we can do to help. Low on statistics, heavy on fun, this amazing network special is a proper send-off for our beloved home planet. Why cry when we can laugh? Why scream when we can sing? Why cower in terror when we can cower in a theater?

NOTE: Planet Earth invites each guest to bring a story, photo, song, or other memento of your time with Planet Earth. It will make her so happy!

Who
Writer/Director Jonas Oppenheim (he/him) is an award-winning writer whose plays have received over 50 productions and won multiple awards. His guerrilla-theater satire “I’m Gonna Kill the President!” A Federal Offense toured to living rooms, parking lots, and back alleys across the country during the W. Bush and Trump presidencies, attracting the attention of the Secret Service. His street-theater musical, Mr. Satan Goes to Wall Street, performed outside both 2012 presidential conventions. He recently received grants from the California Arts Council and the Puffin Foundation. He is thrilled and grateful to be working once again with Sacred Fools—this is the fourth time they have produced an Oppenheim world premiere! Jonas has developed an original sitcom with CBS and Warner Brothers, and he was a story producer on the final season of the unscripted true-crime series American Gangster: Trap Queens on BET+. Season 1 of his podcast sitcom, The Love Ark (it’s The Love Boat on Noah’s Ark!), is available everywhere. He has improvised comedy, made leftist radio, taught guerrilla
theater, and performed in a wild rock’n’roll band. He was raised in Los Angeles, where he currently lives with his excellent wife, child, cat, and garden.

Ovation Award-winning composer and music director Ryan Thomas Johnson has been
working with Sacred Fools ever since 2010’s Forbidden Zone: Live in the 6th Dimension. Since then, he has written music for their productions Stoneface, Watson, Neverwhere, and others. His original musical Deadly, created with book writer Vanessa Claire Stewart, premiered at the Broadwater in 2019. He provided music for a couple shows at the Pasadena Playhouse, the feature film Match by director Sean McGinly, and has a few cues in the show SpyOps on Netflix. He’s jammed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sia Furler at the Orpheum. His choral work has been performed by the Munich Orpheus Choir. He plays in the artsy metal band Circle of Sighs, noise group Nyte Vypr, and EDM duo Hell Money.

The cast includes Cj Merriman, Amanda Blake Davis, Shannon O’Connor-Sharpe, Morgan O’Sullivan, Matthew Siegan and Nick Turner.

Morgan O’Sullivan (They/He) is an award winning Los Angeles based Actor, Director & Co- Founder of indie film company Red Seed Films. They spent the majority of their career working in New York City theatre where they also graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NY. After working with such companies as The Pearl Theater, The Amoralists and Project Theater, Morgan Co-Founded The SoHo Shakespeare Company where they worked as a Co-Artistic Director before setting their sights on a career in film. He moved to Los Angeles where he spent his first two years working producing with LGBTQ+ Acting Class “Act Now” with Emmy-Nominated Actress Rain Valdez. Now, they’re very happy to return to the stage with Sacred Fools & The Hollywood Fringe Festival. Their favorite acting credits include Frankie (as Frankie), I’d Rather Die (Jon), The Worth of Water (Nix) and Aunt Jack (Andy.)

Matthew Siegan (he/him) has performed in plays, classical and contemporary as well as performing improv and stand-up comedy all over North America, and once in Paris. Matt has appeared most recently as Charlie Goldstein on Season Two of HBO’s reboot of Perry Mason. He also played Danny Dongelberg on Stumptown with Cobie Smulders on ABC, and was on the Second Season of Netflix’s Flaked with Will Arnett. He has performed in productions at the California Shakespeare Festival, the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, the Colony Theatre in Burbank, the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center, and more, He has performed stand-up at the World Famous Comedy Store, the Mix in Vancouver, ComedySportz Chicago, Comedy Underground in Tacoma, and more. Matt graduated from the University of Southern California’s Acting Conservatory. Matt once performed at Carnegie Hall and played various characters and read stage directions for the first reading of the Million Dollar Quartet musical. And (this is a good one) was a long-haired extra standing next to Heath Ledger in Lords of Dogtown.

Shannon Sharpe is from Long Island, New York and has been acting on stage since she was three years old. While receiving her undergraduate degree in Communication and Rhetorical studies from Syracuse University, she performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to five star reviews. She also studied Comedia dell arte in Florence Italy and has performed Moliere in italian! While studying Television Radio and Film for her masters degree at Syracuse’s Newhouse school, Shannon wrote, starred, and produced in countless film shorts and new media series. In Los Angeles Shannon has starred in A Raisin in the Sun and found a new love in stand up comedy. Through her continued work on stage and screen Shannon has become a full member of the Sag-Aftra union and the Equity stage union. Shannon’s lates short Anxiety is premiering this summer in an LA Film Festival!

Nick Turner spent most of my career as a stand-up comedian and was a New Face in
Montreal in 2011. Since then he has collected dozens of televised stand-up shows and other TV appearances. Nick has done standup on Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, The Comedy Central Half Hour, John Oliver’s NY Stand-up Show, and a bunch of other forgotten shows on weird channels. He was a main cast member on VH1’s Best Week Ever and created and starred in a filmed pilot for Comedy Central starring opposite Parker Posey and shot two seasons of my Comedy Central digital series Ya Killin’ Me! Nick shot an hour-long standup special for Epix recently and is currently recording his second comedy album at the end of the year. Nick is also a freelance writer and podcast producer for iHeartMedia, Crooked Media, and The Last Podcast Network.

Amanda Blake Davis (she/her) past Hollywood Fringe productions include Lamprey, Three Guys One Groupon, and Oh, Lorraine!. In honor of this show she is recycling her bio -She is an alum of The Second City Chicago, where she won a Jeff Award for Best Actress in a Revue (Studs Terkel’s Not Working) and has written for Cartoon Network’s Wabbit and Showtime’s Work In Progress. Catch her around town performing with her improv group Heyday.

Cj Merriman studied Theatre at Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts and
received her BFA in Acting. Favorite live interactions: Watson, The Behavior of Broadus, The Poe Show, Skullduggery. Hollywood Fringe credits include Nightwitches (2016), Three Guys, One Groupon (2022) and Raise Your Hand… FROM THE DEAD! (2023). You can currently catch her cohosting the ONLY Theatre podcast (Theatre Theater) with J. Bailey Burcham and fellow Watson cast mate, Scott Leggett.

Where
The Broadwater (Main Stage), 1076 Lillian Way, Los Angeles, CA 90038

When
The Planet Earth Farewell Concert runs for seven performances June 7th – June 30th, 2024.
Friday June 7 2024, 8:30 PM
Saturday June 15 2024, 6:30 PM
Thursday June 20 2024, 6:30 PM
Sunday June 23 2024, 1:00 PM
Wednesday June 26 2024, 8:00 PM
Friday June 28 2024, 8:00 PM
Sunday June 30 2024, 2:00 PM

Tickets
Single tickets are priced at $15 and available online at
https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/10769

Sacred Fools Theater Company
Founded in 1997, Sacred Fools has been described as “…uniquely representative of what our Los Angeles theatre scene can achieve, on its own terms… singular, distinctive and elevated standards…” Sacred Fools is committed to work that is unique, inclusive and relevant to this evolving moment in Los Angeles theater. We seek to create and present our own work that is intrinsically “theatrical”. We mean to utilize our experience and resources to create connection and space (figuratively and literally) for both our established peers and in support of emerging stage artists, especially from historically under-represented backgrounds. In doing so, we strive to cultivate a vibrant theatrical hub within the L.A. Intimate theater environment and a community of communities.