February 15th through March 4th, 2018

Brunish Theatre, Portland'5 Centers for the Arts

World premiere!

It’s 1960. Greenwich Village is bustling with Bohemian poets, Beatnik folk singers, struggling artists, students and curious youth from around the country.

Folk City: The Musical follows the story of six young people who are drawn to Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and find a home at a little restaurant-turned cabaret, Gerdes Folk City, which eventually becomes the historic and iconic epicenter of popular music. Through time, the group closely bonds and as the years pass, they interact with the now-famous personalities of that special time and place, through 30 years of open mic, or “Hoot Nights.” These nights have shaped a generation, and the roller-coaster ride from its start as an Italian restaurant/bar through the ‘60s when Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas and Papas, and just about anyone with a guitar was signed to a record deal, through the ‘70s when the singer-songwriters took over the Village, and on to the ‘80s when new-wave and punk was blossoming in the club and folk music went through a hip revival. And then…1986. The club loses its lease. It’s the end of an era. The Last Hoot is the final scene of the show. Where did the six characters end up? Who made it; who didn’t?

Folk City’s audience will be transported to New York’s Greenwich Village, and the cool, hipster world of Beatniks, artists, jazzbos, poets, folk singers, bluesmen, and rockers, all creating a vibrant breeding ground for friendship, romance, civil rights, feminism, free love, fashion, Viet Nam, jealousy, drugs and fame, through three turbulent and exhilarating decades, all set to a killer soundtrack—the classic hit songs of the ‘60s, ‘70s and 80s.