RIP Ken Stein

Just learned from Jeff Lewonczyk’s heartfelt memoriam that an important member of the indie theatre community, photographer Ken Stein has been taken by cancer. Jeff’s tribute is definitive so I refer you that as well as to Ken’s own Flickr Photostream for a fuller portrait of who we’ve lost.

The title of Jeff’s encomium “Losing a Piece of New York” is apt. Like many photographers, Ken was a lover of the gritty side of the city, a side we were in danger of losing for a time, but seems to be creeping back. I did a headshot session with Ken once, in what I then considered some deep, dark, adventurous part of Brooklyn, and from what I recall his apartment WAS his studio. He lived for what he did.

When Piper McKenzie, the company run by Jeff and his wife Hope Cartelli, produced my Manson musical Willy Nilly in 2009, Ken was the official photographer, as he was for most of their shows. These are the pix he took, from rehearsals, to promotion, to performance:

REHEARSALS

Me and Avery Pearson (Willy) going over the tunes

Hope Cartelli

showing the tunes to the band

PROMO PIX

PERFORMANCE

Becky Byers and Pearson

Daryl Lathon

Pearson, Elizabeth Hope Williams, Cartelli

Moi in

Ken also took some terrific pictures of my 2012 vaudeville production in NYMF:

Me and an all-male chorus

Chris McDaniel

Dandy Darkly

Bob Greenberg

“Bathtub Jen” Harder

Noah Diamond in rare non Groucho performance mode!

“Big Red” Meghan Murphy!

Jenny Lee Mitchell

Alexander MacDonald tapped out the closing number

That was almost a dozen years ago and I’m sure we’ve encountered each other since then, and he may even have snapped some subsequent shows, but I want to share this with all possible dispatch. Again, see Jeff’s tribute and Ken’s Flickr Photostream for more. Thanks for the snaps, Ken! You were a regular right guy.