BIO:
Neal Medlyn is an artist whose work straddles the lines between theater, performance art, comedy, and music. His most well-known work is his seven show Pop Star Series and Champagne Jerry, the subsequent iteration of his work with popular music. He was named one of the top ten performers in New York by Time Out New York and called “New York’s finest underground rapper.”
His work as Champagne Jerry has appeared at Joe’s Pub, BAM, New York Live Arts and on tour in various music venues, art galleries and Walmart parking lots as well as online. His album “For Real, You Guys” debuted in 2014, followed by “The Champagne Room” in 2016 and “I’ve Grown” in 2018. His albums feature collaborations with Max Tannone, Adam Ad-Rock Horovitz, Bridget Everett, Kathleen Hanna and others. Champagne Jerry was a musical guest on “The Chris Gethard Show” on Fusion TV. His touring stage show was named the best show in Chicago in 2016 and has performed around the U.S. in various clubs, Walmart parking lots and internationally in Vienna, Austria and London, U.K.
The Pop Star Series works, which dealt with work and ideas inspired by a diverse range of artists like Insane Clown Posse, Miley Cyrus and Michael Jackson, have been presented at venues such as Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, PS122, the Chocolate Factory and others as well as in various festivals and theaters around the U.S. and abroad such as American Realness, the TBA Festival, the Live Art Festival at Kampnagel in Hamburg, Germany and others. The Pop Star Series was also made into a book published by 53rd State Press. A production of “...Her’s a Queen” the fourth in the Series, was produced and staged by Red Eye Theater in Fall 2018.
Other work, notably his reenactment of a Beyoncé concert, has been presented by the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Andy Warhol Museum and others. He has received support from Creative Capital, NYFA and others. He created “Neal Medlyn’s Land of Make Believe,” one of the first web series for Nerve magazine in 2006 with Carmine Covelli.
He appeared in “Bridget Everett: Gynecological Wonder” on Comedy Central, co-starred in a web series called People Are Detectives with Carmine Covelli and the Grossmalerman sitcom by artist Guy Richards Smit, directed by Joshua White. He was the co-creator and co-host of the popular monthly show “Our Hit Parade” at Joe's Pub for five years. His Kanye West show was seen and praised by Mr. West himself.
He was the recipient of a Bessie award for sound design for his work with Miguel Gutierrez & the Powerful People’s “Last Meadow” and has danced for Adrienne Truscott and David Neumann.
He has lectured at NYU and the University of Michigan, been a guest artist at CalArts, guest taught at Sarah Lawrence and is an adjunct professor teaching devised theater at Playwrights Horizons Theater School / NYU since 2014. He was a board member of the academic journal Women & Performance and has served on the artist advisory council for Movement Research.
PRESS QUOTES:
One of “New York City’s Top Ten Downtown Cabaret Performers,” “he keeps weirdness alive.” -- Time Out New York
“Creatively restless and often unclothed performance artist Neal Medlyn, increasingly known to the world as the lascivious rapper Champagne Jerry…Say what you will about contemporary New York, but in other cities, one does not flourish as a performance artist rapper dressed in Prince's discarded bondage gear… If his raps are any indication, Medlin embraces the ludicrous side of his brimming creativity.” -- Village Voice profile
“It’s like if Eminem took steroids during a women’s studies class!” -- Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, the Julie Ruin)
"Medlyn deals in theatrical miracles. He transforms the stuff of our celebrity- obsessed, media-saturated world into impossibly beautiful, absurdist happenings....He's amazing." – WNYC, All Things Considered
Photographer: Paula Court