AI_About_Featuring

Kinsey Sicks Co-founder and Lyricist Ben Schatz was born in Boston but slept around as a child, living in New York, Nigeria, New York, Philadelphia, Nigeria and Philadelphia, in that order. He continues to sleep around, but mostly in Puerto Vallarta Mexico, where he lives, and on the road (often quite literally) with desperate and tasteless fans.

But he digresses, since for some reason he is writing in third person. Ben cruelly ignored the entreaties of his parents to become a singing drag queen after graduating from high school and, to their shame went on to "study" (at least that's what he told them) at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. In both cases he graduated with honors. Ben was active in theater in college, doing eight shows, including his first performance

BEN SCHATZ

“Rachel”

in drag (if you don't count childhood Purim appearances as Queen Esther) at Harvard's Hasty Pudding show. Ben was also President of the gay student groups at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and founded Harvard's first Gay and Lesbian Awareneness Day.

Upon graduating from law school in 1985 (with honors! did he mention that?), Ben raised the money to found the AIDS Civil RIghts Project at National Gay Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based public interest law firm, and became the first attorney in the U.S. to work full time on national AIDS discrimination issues. In 1990 he went on to found a national program for HIV-positive health care workers for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Assocation (GLMA), and served as the organization's executive director from 1992-99. In 1992, Ben also authored candidate Bill Clinton's AIDS and gay rights position papers, and went on to serve as Chair of the Discrimination Committee of the Presidential Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. Because of Rachel's remarkable physical resemblance to Monica Lewinsky, Ben also performed other important White House functions.

In 1999, Ben left his position with GLMA to become the manager of the Kinsey Sicks with the goal of enabling the group to support themselves full-time at their "craft." In 2002 Ben was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for lyrics in the Kinsey Sicks' criticially-acclaimed Off-Broadway show "Dragapella, Starring the Kinsey Sicks."

Anybody who wants to know where the character Rachel came from should ask Ben's parents and sister, who are still recovering.

Kinsey Co-Founder Irwin Keller grew up in suburban Chicago, attending a high school that had already produced entertainers Harrison Ford, Hillary Clinton and fellow drag queen Karen Black. Irwin's family was a musical one. His father was a popular Chicago bandleader, and his sister went on to be a bass player and music director performing with Diana Ross, Rita Coolidge, Nell Carter and others.

From a nerdy teenager, Irwin blossomed into a geeky adult. He studied linguistics and Near Eastern languages at University of Illinois/Urbana, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and then at the graduate level at the University of Chicago. He continues to dabble in a variety of dead languages, and speaks numerous living ones.

In the mid-1980s, after considering the possibility

IRWIN KELLER

“Winnie”

of rabbinical school, but not knowing quite how to be queer in that world, Irwin began law school at the University of Chicago, where he helmed the school's Gay & Lesbian Law Student Association. During his law school tenure, Irwin authored Chicago's landmark gay rights ordinance, which was passed into law in 1989.

Irwin moved to San Francisco to take a scary corporate law job, but soon found his way back to activism, through Queer Nation, ACT UP, and lawyering at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the San Francisco Bay Area (ALRP). He went on to become ALRP's Executive Director, a position he held until 2000, when he left in anticipation of the Kinsey Sicks's 2001 Off-Broadway run.

Irwin lives on Sonoma Mountain in Northern California, with his family, which includes his partner of 14 long years, another queer couple, and the two children they all [attempt to] raise together.

Chris Dilley has been disgracing the stage with The Kinsey Sicks since 1999. A suburban Philadelphia native, he happily ditched low-contact sports (fortunately) and piano (unfortunately) for theater. His love for performing and skill with Latin led to the unusual honor of placing first in Latin Oration in the state of Pennsylvania two years in a row. The Latin didn't stick, but the love of performing remains.

He studied at The American University in Washington, DC, where he received a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism with minors in Theatre & Psychology. In addition to a slew of theater performing, he formed an a cappella group, “The Stairwells,” (his first of five), while teaching acting and improvisation classes to students of all ages.

CHRIS DILLEY

“Trampolina”

A move to San Francisco in 1995 prompted a performing break, followed by a vow to pursue only projects with special meaning. Strengthening this vow was an audition for a Bay Area cabaret producer with “Someone To Watch Over Me”, prompting the feedback, “You can't sing that. It's a woman's song.” (He insisted on singing it. He didn't get the gig. He sings that song to this day.)

He served on the board and facilitated meetings for Gay Young Spirit, a spiritual group for young gay men in San Francisco. He sang with gay a cappella group “From Top To Bottom”, founded and directed by former Flirtation Aurelio Font. He also began his career as balloon animal twister - a skill Trampolina occasionally takes advantage of.

In 1998, he performed in “The Ballad of Little Mikey” at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, where he met The Kinsey Sicks, performing next door. Five months later, they asked him to join as an understudy, shortly thereafter a full-time member. While he was a seasoned a cappella singer, his first performance with The Kinsey Sicks was only his third time ever in drag, culminating in an unintentional and embarrassing revelation onstage. (Let's just say Trampolina's debut was a real crack-up.)

Favorite theatre roles include Adam in “Adam and the Experts”, Rooster in “Annie”, and Claude in “Hair”. He has performed in many benefit concerts, and debuted his one-man show, “Trampolina's Night Off”, at San Francisco's Plush Room (performing on Patti Lupone's off-nights. She was thrilled.)

He lives in New York City.

Jeff Manabat was born and raised in the working class neighborhoods of San Francisco, where his father (a fabulous chef) and his mother (just plain fabulous!), though not schooled in music, knew its importance, and thus supplemented their son's education with weekly piano lessons. Instilled with a love for music, he continued to seek out ways of experiencing it: singing in choirs and theater productions; listening and studying great classical composers like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven; and appreciating the emerging work of Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu. As an admittedly geeky kid, nothing seemed quite as satisfying as singing harmonies with his identical twin brother or plunking out a Kondo tune by ear on the piano.

Luckily, he got his first taste of the a cappella scene while studying literature and music at the

JEFF MANABAT

“Trixie”

University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears!) where he soon earned membership in the school’s oldest a cappella group, the UC Men’s Octet. Years later and under his musical direction, the group placed first at the National Competition for Collegiate A Cappella at Carnegie Hall in 1998. Since then he has remained active in performance projects throughout the Bay Area including numerous stage productions and readings, as well as theater outreach programs that have brought tolerance and diversity education to high schools throughout Northern California and drug abuse and HIV/AIDS prevention and education to elementary school students in San Francisco.

Favorite credits include performances with New Conservatory Theater (When Pigs Fly), Theater Rhinoceros (Cleopatra: The Musical!), San Francisco Opera (Earthrise libretto reading) Alameda Civic Light Opera (The King and I) and Seaside Music Theater in Florida (Miss Saigon).

Jeff joined the Kinsey Sicks in 2004.