[NoHo Arts District, CA] – Men Money & Madness, the acclaimed cabaret show written and performed by singer-actor Tessa Bell about money and the craziness of life in post-Covid America, directed by Victoria Lavan, produced by Dina Morrone and with musical direction by Paul Cady, runs at Theatre West July 15, 16 and 17.
In essence, Men Money & Madness is a cabaret show about, wait for it – men, money and the insanity of our world. With her nod to the radical origins of the artform, Bell is a very modern artist who confronts and comments on the world as it is today, with humor and compassion, and just for a moment, making sense of it all.
Singer-actor Tessa Bell returns to the radical roots of cabaret, making sense of the chaos that surrounds us by the strength and beauty of her vivid rendition of classic songs.
Possessing a voice that has been described as “the sound of a thousand angels,” Bell has packed her show with tunes from The Great American Songbook, with the addition of a few songs by our favorite modern European composers, such as Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, for good measure. The songs are interspersed with Bell’s clever patter, masterfully weaving the music into her storytelling.
Bell notes that her inspiration for the show came from the events around her over 20 years ago. She elaborates, “9/11 was this moment in time where the world changed. I needed a show that looked at the world in general, and how we came to be in this crazy place where we have people from around the world who hated us so much. The confluence of gender, power and money and the insanity of 9/11 gave rise to the show.
This was cultural hatred. It got me thinking that one of the reasons these people find us so distasteful is because of our strong women. They want to keep women down. And the more regressive a culture is, the more economically repressive it is. Repressed and repressive. This is not natural, trying to make people fit into a box.
Today, with women’s rights under attack both at home and abroad, this theme is more relevant than ever. Men Money & Madness presents the concept of looking at how gender and power and insanity all are intertwined.”
Reviews
“A brilliant performance. Men Money & Madness is a unique cabaret show…Tessa Bell weaves storytelling both serious and humorous into a masterpiece that is deeply thought provoking and wonderfully uplifting.” – The New Sun Newspaper
About Tessa Bell
Tessa Bell began her career in Washington, D.C., acting in The Bald Soprano and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She then pursued her education at SUNY Purchase, receiving the Presidential Award for a documentary she produced on African American neighborhood dislocation and subsequent devastation. Post-graduation, she worked at CBS’ 60 Minutes and CBS Evening News. In a career pivot, she began producing cabaret shows off-Broadway, creating and performing four of them. The last of these, Men, Money and Madness, ran at Judy’s and Don’t Tell Mama and earned her a nomination for the Manhattan Association of Cabaret and Clubs Awards.
Moving to Los Angeles, she began producing films, among them Life Inside Out, which starred Academy Award® winner Finneas O’Connell and won numerous festival awards across the country. Her production company, Wild Flower films LLC, is currently in development with a feature film, Nice Trick, and a television series about a female pope based on her award-winning screenplay The Legend. In February 2022, Bell appeared in Theatre West’s Valentine cabaret, which played to near-capacity audiences.
In 2022, Bell won the Mary Austin Award Excellence in Producing for The Audition, a film written by Judy Chaikin, which was nominated for nine awards at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema.
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