WEBWAYS
Presented by Amy Oestreicher (Westport. Connecticut, USA)
Rating: PG
Genre: Musicals and Operas
Premiere?: Pittsburgh Premiere
WEBWAYS is a tapestry of songs and story exploring the internal and external landscape of an extraordinarily theatrical coming of age story. An original multimedia journey of music, art, story and humor as an unexpected passageway through crisis to home.
Through art, music, humor, and a deep love of nature, a young woman with a wild passion for life and self-discovery forms a bold, new identity in spite of relentless adversity. Through the piece, she discovers that “home” cannot be re-found, but must be re-imagined as we are liberated through the creative telling and sharing of our stories. On a webway, there’s no way in, no way out, only through. So why not laugh, dance and paint our way towards the light?
This webway is based on a "fistula" - an abnormal communication between organs that evolves from a surgery or sudden interference. The musical explores the physical and emotional repairs accompanying the path to recovery from a decade of trauma, including sexual abuse by a trusted mentor, rapidly succeeded by a gastrectomy, coma, organ failure, six years unable to eat or drink, 28 reconstructive surgeries and the long-winded journey of PTSD that follows. What tunnels of discovery will this "abnormal webway" lead Amy through?
CHARACTER
AMY: Age 15 through 25.
Fearless, bold, filled with childlike and a deeper old-soul wisdom.
SETTING
In Nature
In the Hospital
In Stop & Shop
On a Webway…
WEBWAY OF TIME
2005 through 2015
Show Creator(s): Amy Oestreicher
About the Performer(s):
In Memoriam,
With a heavy heart, we at the Pittsburgh Fringe offer this production of WEBWAYS to honor the memory of Amy Oestreicher, who passed away just before our festival. We are ourselves honored that Amy’s family has given us permission to proceed with offering her performance to our audience to help her live on through her art.
~The Pittsburgh Fringe Team
Amy Oestreicher was a PTSD Specialist, Audie Award-nominated playwright, performer, and multidisciplinary creator. Amy overcame a decade of trauma to become a sought-after trauma-informed teaching artist, author, writer for The Huffington Post, international keynote speaker, RAINN representative, and health advocate. She has given three TEDx Talks on transforming trauma through creativity, and holds the record for the only woman to give TEDx Talks for three consecutive years, reaching nearly 15K views. Her story has appeared on NBC’s Today, CBS, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen Magazine, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and MSNBC, among others and she’s contributed to over 80 print and online publications. A singer, librettist, and visual mixed media artist, she dedicated her work to celebrating everyday miracles, untold stories, and the detours in life that can spark connection and transform communities. Amy has toured her autobiographical musical, Gutless & Grateful, to over 200 venues from 54 Below to Barrington Stage Company since its 2012 NYC debut, as well as a mental health program for colleges, conferences and organizations. She was currently developing her full-length play, Flicker and a Firestarter, on the dichotomies that emerge after trauma, and More Than Ever Now, a play based on her grandmother's story of survival. She most recently premiered her one-woman multimedia musical, Passageways, at HERE Arts Center, for which she created music, book, lyrics, and artwork.
As the 2014 Eastern Regional Recipient of Convatec’s Great Comebacks Award and WEGO Health “Health Activist Hero”, and WeGO Health Expert, medical community, speaking for National WOCN conferences and the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, and writing for the official print publication of the UOAA. She has devised programming for the Transformative Language Arts Network National Conference, the Eating Recovery Foundation, the 40th Anniversary New England Educational Opportunity Association Milestones Conference, three Annual National Mental Health America Conference, and others. She has been the featured keynote speaker for national conferences including the Pacific Rim Conference of Diversity and Disability, the International School of Social Work Conference, and Women of Resilience.
As a playwright, Amy has received awards and accolades for engaging her audiences in dynamic conversation on trauma’s effects on society, including Women Around Town’s “Women to Celebrate” 2014, BroadwayWorld “Best Theatre Debut,” Bistro Awards “New York Top Pick, and the “Singular Award” at the Sarasolo Theatre Festival, presented annually for a “performance that is exceptionally uncommon, groundbreaking, original and inventive.” Amy has performed excerpts of her solo oral history Play, Divers, as part of Brooklyn's immigrants and Exile, Beechwood Art's Giving Voice, Dixon Place, Seekonk Storytelling Television Special, and Museum of Jewish Heritage Festival of Untold Women. She was a cabaret and theatre reviewer for BroadwayWorld, Her theatre education essays and monologues have been published in Creative Pedagogy journals, as part of a theatre curriculum for high school students in the Philippines. Her play, "We Re-Member" honoring the immigration stories of her grandparents, has been performed in twelve states, and her full-length Play, Factory Treasure, has been performed at the Philadelphia Arts Center, Identity Theatre, LIU, The Depot, and Actors Theatre of Newburyport. Her short plays have been published by the Eddy Theatre Company and finalists in Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s Short Play Festival, as well as NYC Playwright’s Women in the Age of Trump.
Amy’s collaboration with Beechwood Arts on the immersion salon, “Resilience and the Power of the Human Spirit”, has traveled around the world to health and arts facilities as a public installation, incorporating her monologues, art, writing and recipes to express the life-altering detours and ultimately the invaluable gifts of her resilient journey. Amy was also an active artist and teacher in the Jewish community, being honored by United Way in 2005 for her music programs at Hollander House, completing artist residencies at Art Kibbutz, and delivering “Hope, Resilience & Biblical Women” keynotes for synagogues and religious schools. She was a teaching artist with Brooklyn's Community World Project, and trained ACTSmart, a Playback Theatre troupe in Amherst, MA. She was also a passionate arts education advocate, a successful mixed media visual artist, a continuing education studio arts teacher, and her artwork has been shown in esteemed galleries in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Chicago, San Diego and New York, as well as published in national publications including Conquer, Topology and Cargo Literary. She has recently published her memoir, My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful. See more at www.amyoes.com.
Times (EDT):
Available On-Demand May 6th through May 9th!
Streaming Type: On-Demand
Platform: YouTube
Prices:
HOW TO WATCH THE SHOW: Click "Link to Buy Tickets, or Direct Link to Show" and watch any time during the festival, May 6th - May 9th!
In lieu of ticket purchases, the Oestreicher family requests donations be made to the Fringe.
(Copy and past the link below to donate.)
http://www.pittsburghfringe.org/donate.html?fbclid=IwAR16eu3-8hQQ9fzD52S4pk7XrP2dbyqArFLc4jBrE9BMLsV8qWeWHm4sNDo
Link to Buy Tickets, or Direct Link to Show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rbUxoa6Pxk
Social Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amyoestr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyoes70
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amyoes
Other Links:
https://www.huffpost.com/author/amyoes70-885,
https://medium.com/@amyoes,
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/amyoes,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189963350@N03/albums
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyoes/
https://www.pinterest.com/amyoes70/_created/
https://www.amyoes.com/tedx,
https://www.amyoes.com/shop
https://www.youtube.com/user/AmyOes70
https://www.broadwayworld.com/author/Amy-Oestreicher
https://www.amyoes.com/love-my-detour
https://newplayexchange.org/users/7511/amy-oestreicher
https://amyoes.bandcamp.com/
