BRIDGEPORT – With out missing a beat, Ina Chadwick’s MouseMuse Productions lives comfortably between two Bridgeport venues – The Bijou Theatre and Two Boots Restaurant, and they happen to be located next to each other. Chadwick continues to supply top-notch entertainment to both venues and the debut of her new series, “Opening Chapters, Closing Notes” will again provide audiences with outstanding programming in the Writer/Singer/Songwriter genre.
Beginning on a Tuesday evening November 13 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM, “Opening Chapters, Closing Notes” will make its debut at Two Boots Restaurant. It is an expansion of MouseMuse’s original Writer’s Café, which gives voice to several solo storytelling singers, and is able to identify those writers whose work lends itself to the Spoken Word format.
The featured artist on November 13 will be Robert Steven Williams, www.robertstevenwilliams.com, a talented Westport-based lyricist and guitarist who is about to publish his first novel, “My Year as a Clown.” He will perform his original musical stories and read from his book. Williams was a record label executive and when the recording industry sputtered he found himself at a crossroads.
“Perhaps if I’d known what was required to acquire the skills to write well, I never would have walked away from the comfortable corporate lifestyle,” says Williams of his venture into being an artist. “I’d always fancied myself an artist, but never had the courage to pursue it. I soon discovered that writing is damn hard.” The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.” “I too will stand before you now, pants down, hoping . . .” concluded Williams.
Williams’ songwriting is complex and mournful. His lyrics are the stuff of the soul.
Joining him will be Westport writer Tom Fifer who will read a few selected short memoirs. Fiffer is a graduate of Yale and holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He posts daily on his blog, Tom Aplomb, on his morning commute from Westport to New York, where he works at Leadership Directories, a database publishing company He is also a featured storyteller with MouseMuse Productions, a contributor for The Good Men Project, and is working on his first novel.
Ina Chadwick, founder of MouseMuse, will read two short memoir pieces from her collection “Hush Money.” Chadwick is an award-winning writer in journalism and literary as well as a commercial wordsmith. “I had to earn a living by my words, and if you have to write copy on the backs of soap boxes, by all means do it!”
Join the fun, the food, and the drinks and have a good time at Two Boots with songsters and writers onstage together for an evening that mixes the words and the songs together. There are surprises in the format of “Opening Chapters, Closing Notes” where the audience gets to learn more about the performer. All proceeds from the $10 cover charge will be donated to the Bridgeport–based Charity for Victims of Superstorm Sandy.
Two Boots Restaurant is located in Bridgeport at 281 Fairfield Avenue. Call 203-331-1377 or visit www.twobootsbridgeport.com.
