Occupation comedian Name Jonny Woo | Role Comedian | |
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Full Name Jonathan Wooster | ||
Jonny Woo's East London Lecture
Jonny Woo is a British comedian, actor and drag queen. He co-owns The Glory, a East London pub in which he regularly performs.
Contents
Woo spent time in New York City between 2000 and 2003 where he performed and created work on the downtown club and burlesque scene and returned to London where he created events and parties. He has worked on solo and group shows with residencies at The Soho Theatre, ICA, and Bistrotheque and has created events for The Royal Opera House as well as media and corporate companies including MTV and Selfridges. He has been hosting his party Gay Bingo since 2003. Since then he has devised numerous shows as well as opening his own venue The Glory in East London.
Hunger tv jonny woo interview
Training
Woo, born Jonathan Wooster, trained at the University of Birmingham in Drama and Theatre Arts and at London Contemporary Dance School. He went on to continue training in dance in New York where he performed with Julia Ritter Performance Group.
Career
Woo began performing as a cabaret artist at The Slipper Room on the new burlesque scene with performance artist Brandon Olson where they developed material, which later became the show ‘Go-Go Real’ at Dixon Place. They went on to perform for a season in Provincetown and created a second show for Dixon Place inspired by the events of 9/11. As a solo artist, Woo developed ‘The Mummy Project’, a series of installations in the windows of performance space Chashama on 42nd Street, also a response to 9/11.
Woo created and hosted Radio Egypt with the landlord of The George and Dragon, Richard Battye in 2003, which ran at the pub then 291 Gallery until December of that year.
In 2004 Woo began his 8-year residency at Bistrotheque, a restaurant, bar and cabaret venue. He hosted the "Tranny Talent" and "Tranny Lip-Synching" competitions and went on to develop performance art, cabaret and multi-media shows for the space.
Woo was instrumental in taking drag to Glastonbury as part of the first gay tent at the festival "The NYC Downlow". From 2008 to 2011, he led and directed around 30 drag artists as part of this New York inspired installation/club.
Woo was invited to host a night called Gay Bingo as a PR initiative by Andy Butcher in 2004 for a small bar in Brixton.
Following the closing down of Bistrotheque's cabaret room Woo began working with Hoi Polloi at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch on projects such as The Miss Hoi Polloi pageant.
Various Gay Bingo revivals occurred, including 2012 and 2014 Gay Bingo Boat Parties on the Thames. Woo accepted a two-year Friday night residency at the Hippodrome, London where he hosted the cabaret room.
Having quit drugs a few years before following a near death experience, Woo wrote a show about the "unconscious explosion of Shoreditch in the 90s" called The East London Lecture which he later performed in the autumn at the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston.
Across the summer of 2014, Woo devised a Lou Reed tribute show originally called (TRANS)former which he performed with a live band at Latitude Festival. The show appeared in 2015 at Glastonbury Festival as well as a ten night run at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show then had a residency at Soho Theatre in September 2015.
Woo devised a side project show with his friend the operatic drag queen Le Gateau Chocolat called A Night At The Musicals which has appeared at festivals and events. Woo began working with East London Session Players in 2015 and has appeared as the lead in two theatre productions, adaptations of Suddenly Last Summer and The Tell-Tale Heart.
The Glory
In 2010, Woo began hunting for a site in East London to open his own bar. Together with the TV director Colin Rothbart, bar manager Zoe Argiros and Gay Bingo drag partner John Sizzle, the four took over the former site of the Paradise Inn on Kingsland Road in Haggerston. Described as a "Queer haunt, nightlife spot and performance mecca", the pub re-opened as The Glory in December 2014.
Woo launched a comedy night at The Glory with comedian Jayde Adams. This was later replaced by a gay sketch comedy troupe The Sex Shells, who Woo gave a residency to.
Victoria Coren Mitchell visited The Glory and interviewed Woo as part of the BBC Four documentary series 'How To Be Bohemian', in the programme Coren Mitchell states "This is the kind of bohemian I could get behind"