Rochester Spoken Word and a bunch of friends celebrated the one-year birthday of Speak Easy at Cheshire this past Sunday with party hats, birthday cake, free drawings, delicious cocktails, and, of course, some excellent writing. Because this was a special occasion, we brought back to the stage a slate of excellent readers who helped make our first year such a success. We’d have loved to bring everyone back from last year, but that would have been 60 people, and, well, we just didn’t have enough time or space.
For those of you who asked and for those of you looking for a delicious, super chocolaty Vegan cake, here’s the recipe we used for our birthday cake: Ultimate Vegan Chocolate Cake. And if you want to make the tasty, rather lo-cal frosting that was on our cake, use the frosting recipe included here.
Next Up: Come join a group of writers who recently completed a fiction-writing class at Writers & Books as they take the Speak Easy stage for the first time. They’ll be rounding out the line-up for our next Speak Easy on February 11 at 1:00 pm. It will be an open topic event, and should be a good time. Come on out and support these brave souls! As always, we’ll be serving delicious hand-crafted cocktails, to go with the always-free popcorn. Tickets are available here.
Thanks again to all our readers from our first year and for everyone who came out to support them. We hope to see you again between now and birthday number two.
Lineup for Speak Easy No. 13, Sunday 1/14/2018 at Cheshire: And I Descend From Grace — David Holloway Following Your Lead — Kevin Watt My Best Birthday Ever — Scott Seifritz The Tide Going Out — Nadia Ghent Ex’s and “Oh”s — Asher Phillips The Things We Think We’ve Lost — Kate Mapother
Untitled — Robert Shelton If the World Should Perish Twice Evvy Fanning
An excerpt from Life in Progress — Stacey Freed Refrigerator Heaven — Cara and Jane McGowan
Special thanks to David Holloway for photography and Jessica Disalvo for taking the art of raffle ticket selection to a whole new level.
Speak Easy No. 13!
What’s a birthday party without hats?
A woman of many talents, RocSpoke Co-Founder Evvy Fanning juggles it all.
Rebecca Haskins: the woman behind the popcorn. And cake!
Jessica Disalvo is on hand to pick the winning tickets for our birthday raffles.
Speak Easy is for writers, so there are always pens available.
And drinks.
Dare we say it? The best cocktails in the city. Yeah, we said it.
Kate Mapother with some of her entourage.
Pre-show is time to review your work…
…or start something new.
The McGowan sisters and their guests.
Year Two kicks off with yet another full house.
RocSPoke Co-Founder Scott Seifritz welcomes the crowd.
Happy Birthday, Speak Easy!
First up: David Holloway.
David reading And I Descend From Grace.
Kevin Watt is back after an 8-month absence.
Kevin reading Following Your Lead.
Two of our VIP pass-holders enjoying the show.
Scott Seifritz takes his turn at the mic to read My Best Birthday Ever.
The crowd listening to Scott.
Where would we be without these two lovely ladies?
Jeremy sighting!
Nadia Ghent was our 4th reader of the day.
And she had a nice birthday gift for her Speak Easy hosts. Thanks, Nadia!
Nadia reading The Tide Going Out.
Asher Phillips is back for his second time.
Asher reading Ex’s and “Oh”s.
Asher has the crowd laughing.
Intermission is a good time to order another round.
And Jessica and Jeremy have you covered.
It’s also a good time to chat with the writers.
Or to make some last minute edits.
Act II kicks off with Kate Mapother.
All eyes — and some phones — are on Kate.
Kate reading The Things We think We’ve Lost.
Rob Shelton is up next.
Rob reading an untitled piece.
Taking notes is helpful for the Q&A at the end.
The woman who does it all, Evvy Fanning at the mic!
Evvy reading If the World Should Perish Twice.
We have a lucky winner of a free pass to a future Speak Easy!
Stacey Freed is in the house!
Stacey reading an excerpt from Life in Progress.
We wrap up the readings with a command performance by Cara and Jane McGowan.
