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*Last Night in New York was recorded on the streets of Manhattan
in the six weeks following the Sept 11th attacks.
*The work was commissioned in March 2001 by ABC Radio National
(The Night Air) as a radio feature. Which was broadcast on the Night Air and Radio Eye in Sept 2001.
*The vision was
then edited to the soundtrack to create a multi media performance which premiered in New York at The Trilogy Theatre in Sept
2001.
*Last Night In New York was then invited (by Heather Hermant )to Budapest, to headline at the International
Performance Poetry Picnic in May 2003.
*Last Night in New York was staged @ The Cherry Lane Theatre/ New
York in Sept 2003.
The radio feature has since been broadcast on WNYC New York and on NPR
and Transom.org. This
radio feature can be listened to on this website -
http://www.transom.org/shows/2002/200212.voxpop.html
Last Night
in New York premiered in Sydney on 4th/10th/11th Sept 2004@
Kabarett Voltaire@The Seymour Centre.
 Wednesday Kennedy has been writing, performing and recording everything
for a very long time.
She went to America in 1999 to escape Howards Hell and to tour her spoken word album 'Post Romantic' to Salem, Boston
and New York.
She had so much fun that she returned in 2000 with her one woman show "Cultural Refugee" - which premiered
at the midtown International Theatre Festival in August 2000 and received rave reviews that read like love letters. Inspiring
her to pack up her life and move in with the Big Apple.
She spent the summer of 2001 wandering around Manhattan with a microphone and a mini disc player humming the ballad of
Lucy Jorden
but changing the lyrics to (in New York, on foot, with the stink of garbage in her haiir) and although she had dreamy
ambitions to waltz the great white way and to have her own column in the New Yorker, she spent more time communing with the
ghosts of New York past and wandering the city recording conversations with strangers, for no apparent reason.
The bubble burst on Sept 11th, when everybodies American dream was shot like shrapnel all over Manhattan and so she set
about, with the rest of the city, trying to pick up the pieces. Last Night in New York was an attempt to take those fractured
parts of the collective and personal psyche after Sept 11th and to piece them together in a quilt of sound and image.
It is a guerilla project, shot on instinct and created with the generosity of many people including Australian video
editor Alice Taylor and sound editor Anthony Kaub. It could not have been digested as quickly in the months after Sept 11th
without the professional support of the ABC, particularly associate producers Brent Clough and Natalie Kestecher.
She is also grateful to the grande dames of New York, particularly Bjorg Lilllian Jeanpierre, whose generosity made all
things possible
and to Mike Weiss for feeding the herd.
History.....
Born in Sydney, Kennedy has been a reporter for Simon Townsends WonderWorld and a singer in various bands and outfits
and a spoken word artist. She studied and performed Kyogen (traditional Japanese comedy) with the Kennedy/Ogawa Players in
1991 in Tokyo, where she also staged a one-woman show in a Buddhist temple. She has appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
and the Oz Festival in Amsterdam and at literary and music festivals across Australia. While in New York she performed at
The Bowery Poetry Club, The New School, The Nuyorican cafe, The Trilogy Theatre,
The Cherry Lane Theatre. Her cabaret shows include 'Live and Pushy' at the Basement. Nom De Plume, written for David
Hawkins (2003) and 'Intimate and Deadly, written for Christine Anu (2004)
Kennedy's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in HQ, Australian Style, SMH,
Australian womens forum and the Meanjin Literary Journal. She is also featured in"Short Fuse: The Global Anthology
of New Fusion Poetry," (see www.rattapallax.com). and 100 poets against the war. (salt publishing) Her radio pieces
include 'Pandoras Inferno', "Telling Stories at the Algonquin Hotel" "Virginia Wolff Goes to Centrelink' and
Last Night in New York.
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