“I FEEL THE NEED” A UNIQUE PLAY ABOUT A WOMAN NAVAL AVIATOR WILL TAKE FLIGHT AT THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL
Media Contact: Loree Draude, LD Max Enterprises, ifeeltheneedshow@gmail.com or 650 308 4387
NEW YORK, NY; May 1, 2023
After an award-winning, sellout performance at the 2021 United Solo Festival and 23 performances at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, “I Feel the Need,” a 60-minute, one-person show, written and performed by Loree Draude, one of the first women to fly combat jets in the Navy, and directed by Emmy Award-winner, Beth Bornstein Dunnington, takes flight at its west coast premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Hollywood, CA at The Broadwater Second Stage Theater.
Ms. Draude brings her audience along on a unique journey as an accidental aviation pioneer through the first west coast deployment with women in combat aviation squadrons. “I share stories from our historic deployment so audiences have a better understanding and appreciation for the human element of our armed forces.” said Ms. Draude.
After ten years of military service, during which she deployed twice to the Persian Gulf and was selected to be an instructor pilot, she transitioned to the civilian sector by earning her MBA at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Draude spent the last twenty years leading teams at Silicon Valley startups and tech companies, including Google and Facebook.
Ms. Draude shared, "I created my show by assembling monologues I composed over a five-year period in The Big Island Writers’ Workshops with Beth Bornstein Dunnington. I perform my show to pay tribute to my fellow aviators who died while in service to our country, a sacrifice I view as one that enables our freedom in this country to pursue our dreams, including my dream to perform on stage."
Join Loree in the cockpit as she lands on an aircraft carrier and relives the adventure, humor, and challenges in her life.
Ticket information: Tuesday, June 6 at 9:30 pm, Friday June 9 at 6:30 pm, Sunday, June 11 at 8 pm, Thursday June 15 (this performance will be livestreamed) at 6:30 pm and Saturday, June 17 at 1 pm at the The Broadwater Second Stage Theater, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tickets $12.00 + 2.50 service fee.
For reservations, please visit at https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/9710?tab=tickets
Show Website: https://www.ifeeltheneedshow.com/
About Loree Draude (Playwright/Actor)
Loree Draude earned her commission through the NROTC program at the University of San Diego, where she majored in mathematics. She began her naval aviation career as a support pilot at VAQ-34, flying F/A-18 Hornets at NAS Lemoore, CA. When the Combat Exclusion ban for women was lifted, Loree transitioned to a combat jet aviation squadron where she flew the S-3B Viking and completed two six-month deployments to the Persian Gulf on the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Kitty Hawk. Besides piloting jet aircraft, Loree was a Division Officer, responsible for leading teams of enlisted sailors, and the squadron's Aviation Safety Officer, responsible for ensuring her squadron followed safe operating procedures. During her second deployment, she became the first woman Air Wing-qualified Landing Signals Officer (LSO), a role awarded to a small percentage of naval aviators for the responsibility of helping fixed-wing pilots land safely on the carrier.
Loree spent over a year of her life deployed at sea and accumulated over 300 carrier landings, including 100 at night. She completed her naval aviation career as a Fleet Replacement Squadron Instructor pilot, where she taught newly winged naval aviators how to fly the S-3B Viking and land it on an aircraft carrier. She also led the largest division in the squadron - a team of over 100 aircraft maintenance technicians.
After her naval service, Loree earned an MBA at the Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. She spent the past twenty years in Silicon Valley leading teams at startups and tech companies, including Google and Facebook. In 2019, she started her own executive coaching and leadership development business to support leaders and teams in the tech industry (www.supersoniccoach.com).
About Beth Bornstein Dunnington (Director/Script Editor)
Beth Bornstein Dunnington is a performer/director/writer. A longtime member of AEA and SAG/AFTRA, she has lived on the Big Island of Hawaii since 2007, after spending two-plus decades in NYC. Beth wrote and starred in Que Sueñes Con Las Angelitas, a dance-theatre piece, which debuted at the Kahilu Theatre on the Big Island, toured the Hawaiian Islands, and then went on to Jazz at Lincoln Center. A great passion of hers has been creating, developing, performing, and directing new works. Some of the roles she created in new plays (in New York) were Doreen in Dick Beebe’s play The Hurdy Gurdy Man (New York Stage and Film), Maria in Joe Pintauro’s A Kiss To Build A Dream On (Westbeth Theatre), Gertrude in Quincy Long’s Shaker Heights (Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art), the role of Georgia O’Keeffe in the musical Nearby Faraway (York Theatre), Penelope in Jean-Claude van Itallie’s musical version of “The Odyssey'' (Westbeth Theatre), and roles in numerous new plays and musicals in NYC’s West Bank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theater. Beth has also performed in a number of operas. A few highlights include Papagena in director Tom O’Horgan’s production of The Magic Flute at Connecticut Grande Opera, Susan B Anthony in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother Of Us All in Boston, and Azuri in the Papermill Playhouse’s The Desert Song. For six-plus years, Beth was co-artistic director of “Two Island Productions,” a theatre company she co-founded with Iva Peele and Sheryl Kaller, dually based on the islands of NYC and Bermuda. Beth directed the Kahilu Theatre productions of Spelling Bee, Godspell, Grease, 13-The Musical, Spring Awakening, and West Side Story; and The Last Five Years, Big Island Broadway, and Company for the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival. Since Covid (March 2020) she has directed a number of zoom “Performing The Story” monologue performances, with full casts of actor /writers, all written in her Big Island Writers’ Workshops. Beth wrote scripts for a dozen animated TV series, including Batman, GI Joe, Transformers, Jem and the Holograms, Tiny Toons (part of the Emmy-Award winning team of writers on that series), Doug, He-Man, Thundercats, and My Little Pony. She appeared regularly in national commercials and voiceovers. She studied acting with Uta Hagen. www.bethbornsteindunnington.com.
About Big Island Writers’ Workshop
Beth Bornstein Dunnington is a writer/editor/book coach and writers’ workshop leader originally from the east coast. She created “The Big Island Writers’ Workshop” in Hawai’i in 2012; it’s now a circle of 600 or so beautiful writers. Beth has workshop locations across the Big Island of Hawaii, and on the mainland in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Carmel, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, New York City, and Boston. The mission of the workshop is to empower women to find their deepest stories and to get those stories out in the world. Stories written through the Big Island Writers’ Workshop have been published in literary journals and as memoirs, featured on NPR, and developed into one-woman shows. In addition to the in-person workshops, Beth has launched the WRITE NOW Online Writers’ Workshop Series, where writers can experience her workshop from their home. Beth’s own work has been published in a number of anthologies and literary journals, as well as Huff Post, Good Morning America, ABC News, Parents, Woman’s World, iHeart Network, Mom.com, London Insider, MSN, Manifest Station, Scary Mommy, Working Mother, and others. More information can be found on her website: www.bethbornsteindunnington.com.