AMAGANSETT

(516) 293-2638 / DH@davidhouston.net
700 Fulton Street, M-1, Farmingdale, NY 11735

Performance runs about 75 minutes
$225 fee includes actor, reading stand, music CD and CD player; facility is
asked to supply only an 8 x 12 acting space, basic lighting, and
amplification if the auditorium is large

David Houston

David has appeared in leading roles in scores of plays and musicals, including Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, Sir in The Dresser, Senex in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Ben in Death of a Salesman, Mayor Shinn in The Music Man, Herr Shultz in Cabaret and Horace Giddens in The Little Foxes. He is a published and produced writer of fiction and non-fiction. His original plays, Let's Do It!, Jazz Baby Joan, Lillie Alone, Great Scott and Zelda, Murder and Madness and Poe, Mark Twain Telling Tales, and The Dickens! have been seen at a number of New York theatres, libraries and schools. His Joan Crawford biography Jazz Baby (St. Martin's Press) has been optioned for movie production, as has his mystery novel Shadows on the Moon. He wrote and narrated the documentary films They Went to the Stars and Voyage to Darkness.

Literary Entertainments

David Houston's series of Literary Entertainments provides small-scale theatrical productions on themes of history and great literature, for theatres, organizations, libraries and schools. His company got its start in January 2001 when he portrayed Charles Dickens, circa 1867, at a New York theatre and gathered impressive reviews. Later that year, he toured THE DICKENS! to several Long Island libraries—where interest in additional plays was expressed. Houston—an accomplished writer (14 books and several plays, teleplays and documentaries) and an actor well-known to Long Island regional theatre-goers—jumped at the opportunity. He wrote, produced and directed GREAT SCOTT AND ZELDA, a one-act play, with Melanie Lipton and Steve Corbellini, which toured libraries during the 2002 celebration of THE GREAT GATSBY. Since then he has added to the repertoire: LILLIE ALONE, a one-woman tour-de-force starring Mary Ellin Kurtz as Lillie Langtry, backstage in 1900 as she prepares lies to tell an interviewer and presents monologues from her classic stage successes; MARK TWAIN TELLING TALES, in which Houston, as Twain, gives a lecture on humor and wit, derived from Twain essays and stories; and MURDER AND MADNESS AND POE, starring Rick Heuthe as Edgar Allan Poe attempting to secure a lucrative lecture tour in 1848. At the request of the Port Washington Library, Houston developed a one-act musical, LET'S DO IT!, in which Noel Coward (Houston) and Cole Porter (Heuthe) select and test material for Coward’s cabaret debut in Las Vegas, culminating in Coward's outrageous lyrics for Porter's song "Let's Do It." Also in 2005: JAZZ BABY JOAN, a one-woman play set in 1934, with Melanie Lipton as Joan Crawford, based on Houston's Crawford biography Jazz Baby (St. Martin's Press). In addition to original plays, Houston's group presents Melanie Lipton in William Luce's THE BELLE OF AMHERST, Houston in a reading of the first Sherlock Holmes novel STUDY IN SCARLET and in readings of hree short stories of ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER, celebrating that author’s centennial year. For Long Island Reads in April, Houston provided "dramatic readings in the form of radio drama" from the 2003 HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, with Houston and Lipton, for the 2004 SNOW IN AUGUST with Houston and Matt Stashin interpreting the men and boys from the Pete Hamill novel, and from the 2005 selection Houston dramatized TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. New in 2005, his group presents showings of the Italian film of Ayn Rand's WE THE LIVING for the author's centennial; a new version of THE DICKENS! featuring "The Chimes"; a three-actor "radio style" dramatization of Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451; and Houston as Whitman and his critics in WALT WHITMAN, TO BEGIN WITH.