On Sunday, March 23rd at 7pm, comedian Joe Raiola will perform a new piece created exclusively for Zen Mountain Monastery at the Sangha House Performance Hall. The show concludes a weekend workshop Raiola is leading at the Monastery on creativity and improvisation called Theatre Within: The Heart of Improvisation.
Raiola was inspired to create a new satiric piece for the Monastery by his many Sunday morning radio talks with Ryushin Marchaj, Abbot of the Monastery, who is a frequent guest on WDST’s Woodstock Roundtable, which Raiola has co-hosted for over a decade.
Still Ignorant After All These Years struck Raiola as the perfect title, he says, “because it says comedy and speaks to a central Buddhist concept, which is that all those who aren’t enlightened are ignorant.”
In the show, Raiola says his goal is “to abandon all pretense of knowing and share his spiritual journey to nowheresville.”
Influenced as much by MAD Magazine and George Carlin as by Alan Watts, Carl Jung and what Raiola calls his “consistently floundering meditation practice,” Still Ignorant After All These Years promises to be a funny, sharp and provocative evening of comic theater in an intimate setting.
In addition to his 30-year association with MAD Magazine, Joe Raiola is best known as the driving creative force behind the Annual John Lennon Tribute in NYC, which he has produced and performed in every year since 1981, and for The Joy of Censorship, his nationally acclaimed first amendment program, which he’s performed in 44 states.