Joy 2022 Schedule

1:00 PM

Doors Open and Interactive Lobby

2:00 pm

David Cieri and The Empire Marching Elite Overture

Stacey Meekins – Trombone

Jahlil Allah – Trumpet

Nehemiah McFarlane – Baritone Sax

Legend Parker – Snare

Jeremy Morris – Bass Drum

Samantha Umpthery – Cymbals

One of seven programs offered by Big Apple Leadership Academy for the Arts, or BALAA (pronounced BALL-UH). TEME is a community marching band that teaches traditional HBCU style marching arts to youth and young adults in New York City. It was created to not only restore showstyle marching arts in the Big Apple, but also to create a platform through which youth may prepare for and pursue marching band scholarships to HBCUs. As an organization that serves historically underrepresented communities, all of BALAA’s programming, including TEME, is offered free of charge to the general public. TEME is open to anyone who desires to learn. Members may join as young as age 5, and there is no age limit for participation.

Click here to support The Empire Marching Elite

2:10 pm

OGs

Returning TEDxAsbury speaker, documentarian/journalist Michele Mitchell, is bringing to life the “original gangsters” or the outlaw originators of the Cannabis movement in the West before it was legal. Michele is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist best known for her work exposing crimes against humanity. As both an on-camera reporter for PBS and CNN Headline News and as a documentarian, Mitchell has worked with survivors of mass violence in Bosnia, Cambodia, Kenya, Myanmar, Rwanda and South Sudan. She studied trauma in journalism as an Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University. 

2:20 pm

Leaving It All to Have It All

Atoosa Rubenstein, former Creator and Editor-in-Chief of CosmoGIRL! and former Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen, became the youngest Editor in Hearst history at age 26. Then she left it all, in order to come to grips with her deeper, inner story, that now powers her joy. Today, she is the author of Atoosa Unedited on Substack.

Atoosa on Substack

2:30 pm

Food is Joy

Blurring the lines between chef, artist, entrepreneur and inventor, world-renowned David Burke is a leading pioneer in American cooking today. Raised in Monmouth County, NJ, he has launched dozens of innovative restaurant concepts across the country. He has authored two cookbooks and become a recognized chef on television, including appearances on NBC’s TODAY Show and two seasons on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters. Burke believes that food can be described in one word: JOY. Food is a joy to prepare, to share, to gather and create and, of course, to eat. Food is what connects us around the dinner table and around the world.

2:50 pm

Don’t Be Looking in the Mirror

Siobhan Fallon Hogan is the writer, producer, and star of the soon to be released Shelter in Solitude. She also wrote, produced, and starred in her first feature RUSHED released in August 2021. Fallon Hogan and Peter Hogan established Emerald Caz Productions in 2019. The actress has been in three Lars Von Trier films since 2000 including the Palme D’ Or winner Dancer in the Dark, Dogville and The House that Jack Built. Von Trier’s Zentropa Films coproduced Rushed with Fallon Hogan. The actress has been in several blockbusters over the years including Men in Black, Forrest Gump, Holes, New in Town, Going in Style, Charlotte’s Web and Funny Games. Her television credits include SNL, Seinfeld, Billions, Wayward Pines, 30 Rock, Law & Order and many more. Shelter In Solitude stars Robert Patrick, Peter Macon, Peter Hogan, Dan Castellaneta and Fallon Hogan. The actress was seen this fall in Paramount Pictures Film, Clifford the Big Red Dog.  The actress just finished playing a supporting role in a film Eileen directed by William Aldroyd starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie Fallon Hogan and Peter Hogan have been married for 29 years and have three children – Bernadette, 27, a reporter and Albany Bureau Chief for the New York Post; Peter, 23, an actor and music producer; and Sinead, an actress, and junior at Virginia Tech.

3:00 pm

Play Your Way to Joy

As a Stanford University Graduate School of Business Instructor, Roger Manix created a methodology to teach emotional and social intelligence using play-based learning. He was invited to Parsons School of Design at The New School to develop a play-based program in Design Strategies for Cities, Services and Ecosystems. Currently, he teaches “Compassionate Leadership through Play” in the Global Executive Master Program. Roger has been nominated for The Distinguished Teacher Award along with Outstanding Contributions to Social Justice Teaching Award for his work on experiential learning. Roger is also co-founder of Immersiva, an interactive technology company built by storytellers and educators to make the world a kinder, more connected and joyful place. Roger believes that the basis for JOY is connection and that we don’t experience joy in a vacuum. Joy is born of relation to something else — people, animals, nature, meditation, food…. Collaborative play trains us to explore the unknown and maintain a joyful state of mind.

3:20 pm

The Volitive Effect of Oral Literary Inundation on the LSTM Recurrent Neural Network

A Resident Playwright Alumnus at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, RiA Resident Playwright Alumnus at Chicago Dramatists and proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Richard was recently honored to be selected for this year’s Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive.

3:30 Pm

Intermission

Coffee, tea and light snacks in the lobby.

3:50 pm

FlexSchool

A unique learning community designed for twice-exceptional (2e)/neurodiverse and gifted by embracing them for who and where they are, then supporting them as they learn to thrive.

4:00 pm

1000 Watts

Jim Watt is an American artist and architect based in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Watt’s paintings and drawings are an obsessive exploration of space, form and material, a context that marries his work as a practicing architect. At Princeton University, where Watt earned his Masters in Architecture, teachers Michael Graves and Enrique Miralles espoused the Renaissance notion that architects must paint, draw, and sculpt to fully realize their ideas. Form, space, material, texture, color, and light are shared languages that transcend medium. Watt’s work as an artist is the opportunity to work without a structured, planned intention, instead playing in the tension between thought and instinct: discovery through the process of making.

Watt has a body of built buildings spanning North America, and his art is in private collections across North America and Europe. Watt has a body of built buildings spanning North America, and his art is in private collections across North America and Europe. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Dwell Magazine, and The New York Times.

 Antoine Drye is a renowned trumpet player and session musician, Drye works across musical genres with a wide range of artists including his mentors Ellis Marsalis and Harold Battiste, as well as Delfeayo Marsalis, Jason Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, The Mingus Big Band, The Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestras, Lafayette Harris, and Paul Simon, among others. He lives and works in New York City, where he has often performed at premier jazz clubs including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Smalls, Fat Cat, Smoke Jazz Bistro, The Jazz Standard, and Mezzrow. Drye has two self-released albums, “Oblation” (2002) and “Oblation vol. II: Dualism” (2019).

Mike Noordzy plays both upright and electric bass and holds both a Bachelors and Masters of Music degree in Jazz Performance from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.  From 2007-2009 he toured the U.S., Canada, and Australia with 1960’s teen pop icon, Lesley Gore (“It’s My Party,” “You Don’t Own Me,” “Sunshine and Lollipops,” etc.). Mike has performed and recorded with other notable artists including Herb Robertson, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Antoine Drye, Blaise Siwula, Jason Loughlin, Steven Bernstein, Roy Campbell, William Hooker, Conrad Herwig, the Coasters, Glen Burtnik, Vic Ruggiero, Weasel Walter, Renee Maskin and many others. His bass playing is heard on dozens of recordings and most nights of the week in various clubs, restaurants, bars, and stages in New Jersey and New York City. In 2019 he scored the silent horror film, The Puppet in the Pie produced by Eye No Cinema. He also leads the Afro-Cuban jazz group El Noordzo and the experimental band Mothguts.

4:20 pm

Hostage Situation

Mike has been a storyteller all his life—as a journalist, speechwriter, community activist, actor, and playwright. He has written over 25 plays, with production credits throughout the country and the UK. His play, “Pets (and Their Humans),” was named best original production by the New Jersey Association of Community Theaters.  A native New Englander, he lives in Holmdel, New Jersey and belongs to the Dramatists Guild.

4:35 pm

Home is Joy

Edafe Okporo is an author of the forthcoming book Asylum, A Memoir & Manifesto by Simon and Schuster, and founder of The Pont LLC. He is passionate about extending a hand to communities in need and teaching leaders in communities and organizations on how to motivate their members to act. His work includes trying to build an inclusive society, both in and out of the workplace, that will spark JOY. The inclusion of LGBTQ people, refugees, and marginalized people is a path to building a joyful society.

Purchase Edafe’s book 

4:45 pm

Finding Joy in Death

Rebecca Barry is the bestselling author of Recipes for a Beautiful Life: A Memoir in Stories and Later, at the Bar: A Novel in Stories, a New York Times Notable Book, and cofounder of the magazine Fresh Dirt. Notable MOTH storyteller, she shares about Finding Joy in Death.

Purchase Rebecca’s books

5:00 pm

B-Side /Ourselves

David Cieri is a composer and musician who has written film scores for many of today’s most distinguished documentarians, including Ken Burns. Cieri’s film scoring work with Burns has been extensive, including The Vietnam War with Yo-Yo Ma and Trent Reznor. He has recorded nine acclaimed albums under his own name and made two records with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center among other prestigious venues. Cieri believes that JOY has many tributaries and will explore our capacity and willingness to become “unstuck” from singular outlooks as one.

5:10 PM

Joy Drought

Erin Maguire is a stand-up comic, writer, actor and podcast host based in NYC. Her comedy advice podcast, Dear Pod, charted in Apple’s top 100 comedy pods in America within two months of its debut. She recently headlined Caroline’s Comedy Club, appeared on Gotham Comedy NextVR live for Oculus, and wrote for Comedy Central’s Roast of Alec Baldwin. She has appeared at the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival, among some of comedy’s greats. She has also been featured at Women in Comedy Festival, Laugh Your Asheville Off, Boston Comedy Festival, and Woodstock Comedy Festival. Erin has frequently worked for ESPN and the Game Show Network. Erin appears regularly at clubs in NYC and she invites you to come laugh at/with/for/near her.

5:20 PM