New York Theatre Review

Catherine Mueller on Kitchen (You’ve Never Had it So Good) as presented by Gob Squad, produced by the Public Theater

2012-01-25T16:48:00.000-05:00

Gob Squad could change the world if we let it. We could bravely step into this celebration of beauty, simplicity, humanity and surprise, thereby allowing their vision of the banal as remarkable to overtake us. We have lost our wonder, world, and Gob Squad is quietly determined to give it back to us.

Kitchen (You’ve Never Had it So Good), currently running at The Public, is a must-see for anyone interested in creating theater that experiments with narrative, video, ensemble-devised process, transparency, or humor. This unexpected evening explores the films of Andy Warhol, but doesn’t, really. It uses the premises of his films Kitchen, Screen Test, and others as springboards from which to play with really big, really small, and really stupid (in the best possible sense of the word) ideas. Without giving too much away, these performers are somewhat inept, and find themselves challenged in their self-prescribed roles recreating Warhol’s world. They are clearly from the present, they are European (as opposed to the very American subjects Warhol explored), and their unscripted, improvisational style allows them to banter with one another about a perceived lack of authenticity regarding any number of their poorly chosen proposals: from making coffee to looking casual to inciting a revolution.

Each performer introduces him/herself by saying, “Hello, I’m Nina. Playing Nina”. From the start, we are made aware of the many layers of artifice in front of us: a scrim at the proscenium edge of the stage shows live video footage of the action taking place in real time onstage behind said scrim and projected onto it; the performers are playing themselves; the light and sound is edited and adjusted in plain sight. Even the Trader Joe’s Organic Corn Flakes are “playing Kellogg’s Corn Flakes”. Somehow, the less they do as performers, the more we see, and we are shown all the mechanisms of theater. There are no secrets here. Gradually, these layers of artifice are both compounded and pulled away.

The first time I saw this show in the 2011 UTR Festival, there were many moments when my audience of jaded New Yorkers held its collective breath in anticipation of something miraculous and beautiful unfolding before us. We stepped willingly into Gob Squad’s trust circle, believing that they could somehow show us the beauty of ourselves and consequently the beauty of Andy Warhol’s intention behind Kitchen: just real people, standing around, unaffected, a true slice of our human pie, with shared foibles, fears, and fantastic-ness presented without commentary or irony. If we permit ourselves to see our world and the people in it as the Gob Squad does, it is almost too gorgeous to bear.

Gob Squad’s Kitchen is funny, surprising, and one of the best things I have seen in the last year by far. Run to get your ticket, for sooner than you think this company will board a plane bound for another continent. If we are not careful, they will inadvertently take their magic with them. I think they would much rather give it away (knowing that much more can be found in the linty pockets of other people), and I, for one, am a happy recipient of their gifts.

Gob Squad’s
Kitchen (You’ve Never Had it So Good)
presented by The Public Theater

Devised and Performed by: Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost, Simon Will

With: Erik Polod, Nina Tecklenburg, Laura Tonke

And members of the audience

Through 2/5

More info and tickets at http://www.publictheater.org/

Catherine Mueller   Catherine has been the Co-Artistic Director of The Glass Contraption since 2005, producing, developing and performing in all the company’s works, including CLOWNS (Public Theater/NY Clown Theater Festival), Ted (National Arts Festival, South Africa/NY Clown Theater Festival/Ars Nova), Curiosities (Gowanus Arts), Animals' Heads (The Kitchen), Triumph and Disaster (Jalopy Theater), and Facedancing, a short film. As both performer and writer, her solo works have been featured in the NY Solo Play Lab, the Estrogenius Festival at MTS, and in Chicago's Annual Single File Solo Performance Festival, among others. Additional performance credits include Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Moonwork), Emilia in Othello (dir. Alex Correia), and Platypus in 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (dir. Dan Rigazzi). Her work is also featured in numerous national network commercials, voiceovers and on the Chris Rock Show. She has studied physical comedy and clown, bouffon, mask and movement, with Master teachers Christopher Bayes, Philippe Gaulier, Gregor Paslawsky, Felix Ivanov, Per Brahe, and many others, and the Viewpoints technique with the SITI Company. She completed a teaching apprenticeship under Master Clown and Director Christopher Bayes, currently Head of Physical Acting at Yale School of Drama. She has led residencies in clown and physical theater in schools, community arts organizations, universities, professional training programs and with theatre companies throughout the country. Since 1999, she has worked extensively with the 52nd Street Project. She is also a published poet. Education: Hofstra University (BA in Theater and Creative Writing).

Jody Christopherson on GALA's postponement of Matthew Paul Olmos' I put the fear of Mexico in em

2012-01-13T16:00:00.005-05:00

playwright Matthew Paul Olmos

Intersections are on my mind today.

Washington DC's GALA Theatre “Grupo de Artistas Latino Americanos,” originally founded by expatriate refugees in 1976 that has now grown to be housed in the Trivoli Theatre, (following a 4.3 million dollar renovation) "one of the premier homes of any Latino theater in the nation" was scheudled to premier New York playwright (and NYTR writer) Matthew Paul Olmos' full length drama I put the fear of Mexico in 'em April 1st-April 29th. This is a shot for an indie theater playwright to get his work seen on a regional scale that, now in April, is being replaced by a music festival and a one woman show.

GALA claims they are postponing due to loss of funding. I can only assume that they are talking about lack of marketing funding. You can read the Washington Post announcement here where it's stated the play "takes on immigration, a topic GALA worried wouldn’t resonate with audiences enough for ticket sales to make up for the lack of funding." Which audiences are they talking about?

Gala's history states the theater was built on partnering with Teatro de la Luna, founded by Mario Macel, a poilitical director and activist who was tortured by Argentnian authroities for presenting free thinking theater pieces. The two companies built a community together. That was in the 1970's. What the hell has changed so much that marketing can't be achieved in creative community building ways?

I wrote a comment on the Washington Post Blog but it hasn't been posted. Here are my thoughts;

I am a performer/producer in New York who produced / is producing Matthew Paul Olmos' work. I am also the editor of http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com a theater media outlet for which Mr. Olmos is on staff. One of my first and favorite interactions with Matt was interviewing him about his work at Mabou Mines. I asked him why he makes theater ( as we ask all our interviewee's). Matt's response is one that not only has stuck with me but that I hope to also live by, he said,

"for me this is what theatre should be: relevant, dangerous, exciting, AND it has to be for people today. People who don’t know shit about theatre should be able to walk into a venue and have an engaging experience. This sounds simple enough, but instead people continually hash out old plays, produce plays that are more ‘personal art’ instead of relevant, or wink’wink theatre that is only interesting to people in the theatre community.

What I sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to do is theatre that is important to the world we currently live in. That uses the stage, as opposed to so many talkin’head plays. And that anyone can watch, people who can’t afford tickets to theatre, people who have never been to theatre, and especially people who don’t give a fuck about theatre."

If that isn't a mission to reach a broader audience, I don't know what is. Whenever I have produced Matt's work, with limited advertising due to my indie theater budget, people come. They come in droves, and I'm not just talking about the Latino/ Latina theater community, though there is always support for Matt's work from INTAR and the close knit group of artists there- I am talking about everyone.

Whenever I am casting Matt's work or hiring a director the three words that ususally seal the deal are "Matthew Paul Olmos". People want this work. They want to be a part of it. Audiences need it. They need to see it and more importantly they need to experience it.

I saw an earlier reading of "Mexico" at the School of New York Stage and Film, dir. by Jerry Ruiz with Maria Helan, Annie Henk, David Anzuelo (of INTAR and Labyrinth Theater CO fame) and again, it drew a crowd. If I had to guess I would say that the room had 80 seats and 60 were taken. People had even come from other cities to attend (mind you that was Matt's mom and theater folks from nearby NJ but still, the word was getting out across state lines) and this was only a reading.

I find it troubling that in a city of great diversity, creativity and politcal immediacy GALA has chosen to postpone a production that contains the same qualitites. In times of funding loss my hope is that theatre's continue to cultivate new audiences and inspire their current memebership. I have found producing theatre and music on the same bill broadens the conversation, a step towards creating community, pooling resources.

I hope GALA is committed to "Mexico" soon. I encourage all our readers to post comments on the Washington Post article in order to show support for Matt and his play.

Olivia Jane Smith on The Bee presented by the Japan Society as part of the 2012 Under the Radar Festival

2012-01-12T08:09:00.000-05:00

If you have recently found yourself amazed at the displays of emotion over the death of the inscrutable North Korean despot Kim Jong-il; if you still have trouble fathoming the Cold War’s nuclear arms build-up, or our current showdowns with Iran over its alleged nuclear program; in short, if you have trouble comprehending power’s tendency to slide toward violence, the addictive nature of stand-offs and p---ing matches, and the loyalty—even love—that totalitarian regimes sometimes inspire, you might want to see The Bee.

This elegy on the roots and nature of human violence is a co-production of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, the SoHo Theatre, London, and Noda-Map, and is being performed at the Japan Society as part of The Public’s Under the Radar Festival. Co-written (with Colin Teevan) and directed by Hideki Noda, who also performs, The Bee features a stellar four-person cast. The standout is Kathryn Hunter, a 1990 Olivier award-winner, in an often mesmerizing performance in the lead role, as a Japanese businessman with a latent propensity for inflicting terror. The Bee represents one of the most penetrating and visceral depictions of violence I’ve ever seen on stage (another that comes to mind is director Robert Woodruff’s 2001 production of Saved, by Edward Bond, a play that was revived again in London this past fall). The Bee is no less horrifying for favoring the expressionistic over the naturalistically graphic. Not a drop of fake blood is spilled. You will also remark how wholly unnecessary it is to making the real blood of the audience run cold.

Ido (Hunter) is a Japanese salaryman in 1974 who arrives home on the day of his son’s 6th birthday to find that an escaped convict, Ogoro (Glyn Pritchard), is holed up inside with a gun and has taken Ido’s wife and child hostage. Ogoro is demanding to see his own wife and son, who happens to have been born on the same day and year as Ido’s little boy (the two men have even bought their children the same techie gift, a calculator). When the police seem to be more concerned with slurping their noodles than bringing the case to a quick resolution, Ido insists on meeting Ogoro’s wife (Noda) for himself. One might easily assume, as I did, that Ido intends to plead with the wife on behalf of his own family, and convince her to meet with her husband and resolve the hostage crisis, and indeed that’s how he begins. But quickly, in a move that may surprise even himself, Ido evens the playing field, taking Ogoro’s wife and son captive in their home.

Ido’s utter loss of control—of the welfare of his wife and son, his home, his life—spurs him to take control instead of Ogoro’s family. The increasingly horrifying stand-off between the two men that results seems intended as an allegory about the self-perpetuating nature of dominance. The only way to maintain power, the play says, is to keep dominating, even when the resulting violence turns back on the perpetrator, as it inevitably does. The first time Ido harms Ogoro’s little boy, we are shocked, and I was still shocked the second, the third, the fourth times. Even when Ido knows each wound he inflicts is being repeated by Ogoro on Ido’s own child—that hurting Ogoro’s child amounts to hurting his own boy, by his own hand—he does not relent.

The violent acts are not only repeated but ritualized, which is what turns this from a story about one man into a story about humans. Each instance of brutality is followed by a pantomime of daily life— shaving, eating dinner, having sex—which by this time Ogoro’s wife initiates (to what point, resistance?). This is terror as routine. And in keeping with this, Ogoro’s wife and child come to expect their punishments, offering themselves up for Ido’s blade. It’s a horrifying testament to what people can become used to, as well as victims’ own attempts to find some level of control; at least they can anticipate—and choose to accept—their fates. There is even a kind of affection—a sense of familiarity and hence, the familial—in the interactions between these three—that is, until Ido has no one left to hurt but himself.

Hunter’s Ido convincingly transforms from upstanding citizen to indurate torturer, thanks in part to a bravura physical performance. In her movements, including what I’ll call ballet sections that are transfixing, she channels the rage and adrenaline of a killer’s high. “This is the real me,” Ido says, matter-of-factly.
The play’s formalism is also reflected in the rhyming couplets that find their way into much of the dialogue. “Because now you have a gun, please, please, release my son,” Ogoro begs Ido when then confront each other via phone. The staging hums with energy throughout most of the play. In the opening scene, Ido, reporters, and police bounce around almost as if in a boxing ring, constrained by giant strings of rubber bands that criss-cross the stage and evoke crime scene tape and the macabre circus-like atmosphere that pervades the aftermath of a crisis. Miriam Buether’s costumes and liquid-red set and Paul Arditti’s sound design help pull us into the nightmarish world of the story.

One of the production’s few flaws is that so arresting is the central drama between Ido, Ogoro, and Ogoro’s wife and son (also played by Pritchard in an impressive bit of staging and hat-switching), everything else—police and reporters, mostly—feels a bit superfluous, and these sections can drag. Clive Mendus, who rounds out the four-person cast, is increasingly beaten-down as the detective Dodoyama. Noda as Ogoro’s wife and Pritchard as Ogoro and son give seamless, affecting performances. Their fear and pain become ours as well.

I also gradually began to ask, how much more of this are they going to make us watch? But that was of course the point; my continued discomfort was testament to the piece’s success. In front of me was a family with two children—including a boy not much older than the one we see maimed on stage. I wondered what their post-performance conversation would be like. “The Bee”—which gets its title from a stinging nuisance beyond our control, a reminder that complete domination over one’s world is always an illusion—is not a pleasant evening at the theater, for children or anyone else. But works like this remind us of theater’s power to help us understand in our guts what all the news coverage in the world can’t adequately convey. Be brave. See The Bee. Bring your kids.

THE BEE
Co-written & Directed by Hideki Noda (Japan)
Presented by Japan Society as part of The Public's Under The Radar Festival

Through 1/15

$25 Tickets: japansociety.org or 212-715-1258
Japan Society 333 East 47th Street

for more info: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=461

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

terraNOVA's JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING: On Groundbreaking and Fizz

2012-01-12T07:01:00.000-05:00

JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING, Artistic Director, terraNOVA Collective

JODY:Why does terraNOVA make theater?

JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING: terraNOVA makes theater because it is the only art form that forces an audience to interact on a personal, emotional level with live action on stage. Theater is in your face and you can't get away. I love taking our audiences on wild journeys that move them, make them laugh, challenge them. This is the most exciting aspect - watching the audience reaction.

terraNOVA is passionate about new work. Without new work, our industry would continue to produce the same plays that have been produced 20 times over and theater might become passive and watered down. It's the companies and artists out there who push themselves to tell a story in a new way or come up with a completely new perspective that ignites our need to continue. I absolutely love giving stage to these artists. I love watching the work come to life for the first time.

JODYWhat is a "Fizz" play and how did the idea come about to put them up?

JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING:Over the last three years, we have challenged our Groundbreakers Playwrights Group with a 10-minute play exercise. Each year, we ask the playwrights to step away from the full-length play they are developing with us and create something brand new. We provide them with one word that will inspire this play. terraNOVA's Groundbreakers Program Director, Jessi D. Hill, gathered over 100 words to choose from. With the help of our artistic staff, we boiled it down to one: FIZZ. Fizz can be translated in so many ways. It has a lightness and levity to it - something we strive for in the presentations. This event is a fundraiser for the Groundbreakers program so we want our artists and audiences to have fun.

JODYYou have an amazing line up of writers (Groundbreakers) can you speak a little to what attracts you to their individual work?

JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING: Choosing this year's group was the most challenging to date. We had an amazing group of applicants. When making our decisions we looked at each playwright - their style of writing, their personality, and the themes of their work. We select our playwrights specifically so that no one play or playwright is like the other. And we also look for people who will work well as a team and give constructive feedback to their peers.

Krista Knight's piece UNHINGED: A SILENT OPERA attracted us due to its simplicity and quietude. This piece is very different for Krista who usually writes fantastical plays.

Jennifer Lane's piece ASYLUM is wonderful in that she is taking two different time periods and paralleling lives lived in an asylum. Jenny has done so much research on the late 1800s and found a way to weave current day with the 1800s.

Andrea Lepcio's ME YOU US THEM is a movement based piece about four characters searching for The Center of Things. The script's humor is smart & witty and the characters perspective on world events is extremely engaging.

Matthew Paul Olmos' has created a completely new world in DEATH OF A SLOW DYIN' SCUBA DIVER. The play takes place underwater and in a bathroom. His characters range from scuba divers to gods to fish. It is such a creative, visually stunning world.

Crystal Skillman's 4EDGES is a powerful story of an outsider stumbling into a foreign land and the havoc she wreaks upon it. She has created a beautiful foreign world - with a haunting fable woven into it.

Ken Urban's THE ABSENCE OF WEATHER is a fantastic political drama. Ken has created a world where the audience can empathize with characters that have seemingly done awful things throughout their lives. He has taken real political figures and placed them inside a Greek tragedy.

I'm thrilled to be working with each and everyone of these writers and I cannot wait to share their work with our audiences.

JODY:What's next for the Groundbreakers?

JENNIFER CONLEY DARLING: The week of April 9 will be our New Play Development Series which will showcase all six playwrights' work plus a couple of other new plays. Our audience will get the chance to be directly involved in the next evolution of each play through their feedback and overall reactions to the work. Each play will receive a week long workshop with a director and actors leading into this series. An important part of our development process is to get writer's work on its feet, so they can truly see what works & what doesn't. We'll be announcing our venue & line up in the coming weeks.

THE FIZZ PLAYS
An evening of 10-minute plays by
The Groundbreakers Playwrights Group

Be warned. Drink FIZZ responsibly. Failure to do so can have serious consequences: Frosty the Snowman reliving, ghost dogs appearing, lesbians taking out Castro, psychotic mothers spinning out of control, reflections on love and creating a new sexual fetish.

Featuring:
FROSTY by Krista Knight
TUMMY BUBBLES by Jennifer Lane
SUNDAYS by Andrea Lepcio
COKE by Matthew Paul Olmos
FIZZY by Crystal Skillman
FIZZ PLAY by Ken Urban

Join terraNOVA for an evening of hilarity and libations!
Buy tickets HERE!
Only $10

The Theater at the 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street

For more info: http://www.terranovacollective.org/

Matthew Paul Olmos on MISSION DRIFT by The TEAM (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment), as part of P.S. 122’s 2012 COIL Festival

2012-01-11T07:45:00.000-05:00

Heather Christian as Miss Atomic. Photo by Rachel Chavkin.

I was first introduced to The TEAM a few years ago when I caught ARCHITECTING at P.S. 122, and what I remember distinctly was that about twenty minutes in, I had the serious urge to leave at intermission. I knew it was a long show and I didn’t think I was going to make it.

Then something happened. I can’t even recall what it was. I recall seeing the beautiful choreography of an arm in synch with achingly effective music just beneath it, I recall having the title ARCHITECTING slowly begin to place itself inside my imagination, and before long I was watching with the abandon exhilaration one has when they discover an artistic voice they simply cannot believe they are just now coming round to.

And so I have followed The TEAM’s work since then and have seen several developmental showings of MISSION DRIFT; from Brooklyn to Governor’s Island to the old Ohio and finally here to the COIL Festival. And while I wouldn’t want to color anybody else’s experience with my own impressions of the work they do, I can just only say how touched I am to watch artists pushing their craft with such fervor through exploration upon exploration in search of something heartbreaking, infuriating, beautiful, honest, and not stop until they get there.

When they started this project it was simply called “American Capitalism Project,” and I remember being curiously excited to see how they would delve into such a topic. I imagined something taking place today, perhaps in the high-tensioned board rooms, skyscraper buildings, or even among the unemployment offices. So when I realized that the Las Vegas project they were developing was the same piece, I could only wag my tail that they had taken their investigation to perhaps the most ridiculous centers of American capitalism (granted, I LOVE Vegas, I’m ridiculously happy when I’m there. And I go often).

For me, what MISSION DRIFT has become is a time and an example of a theatre company at their most muscular, tackling what theatre should be tackling: not only the faults of the world we live in, but how we came upon those faults to begin with. While so many artists are content to tell us stories and then cleanly wrap them up as either injustice or heartwarming, The TEAM isn’t satisfied until the audience can watch how they landed at the truths in their work and the steps it took to get there.

MISSION DRIFT takes us from contemporary Las Vegas, back through its origins; further back through American history until we land in 1624 Amsterdam, and then back again. Following two interconnected stories of two couples, we navigate through time and the characters’ discovery of ownership; watching how the simple want of family and purpose is so intricately tied to the gargantuan need of more than we should have.

And though we travel from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam, through the frontier, and out west, then back again, we do so to the hauntingly remarkable musical atmosphere of Heather Christian, whose captivating voice and magnetic performance as Miss Atomic paints a smoky, lush tone to the entire journey.

Interspersed with her songs, we bob and weave along with the performers as we watch them struggle with their own place and fault in the monetary construct that is Las Vegas and profit. Director Rachel Chavkin illuminates this unstable journey by moving us between story lines sometimes seemingly haphazardly, until not only the characters, but the performers begin to bleed into one another.

At certain points the performers will pull away from the world, even if just for a single line, to address their fellow performer. And acting as a guide of sorts, Miss Atomic treats the world as though it is a cabaret-style lounge in one of the downtown Vegas casinos, often talking at the characters, almost as if she is controlling them. A device that is later broken, as the luster of Las Vegas begins to be revealed as a place that is continually imploding on its own appetite. This is executed with poignancy as a Native American (Ian Lassiter) delivers a speech not quite understanding the human right to “boundless growth.”

At a full two hours with no intermission, MISSION DRIFT is a piece that is not afraid to challenge its audiences to be actively engaged in the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of what is onstage. There isn’t always an orderly narrative or even clearly defined reason for what we are experiencing. Often with the draw of the music underneath these characters placed in this strangely familiar world, I could only grin to myself. Exactly what I want the theatre to do to me: take me someplace I don’t know how to get to on my own.

MISSION DRIFT
written by The TEAM (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment) in collaboration with Heather Christian and Sarah Gancher
music by Heather Christian with musicians Gabe Gordon and Matt Bogdanow
performed by Heather Christian, Amber Gray, Brian Hastert, Libby King, Ian Lassiter, Lucy Kendrick Smith
as part of Performance Space 122’s 2012 COIL Festival

Thru January 29.
For more information: http://www.ps122.org/performances/mission_drift.html.

Matthew Paul Olmos was recently selected by Sam Shepard as the inaugural awardee of La MaMa ETC’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award; he is a Sundance Institute Fellow, two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, lifetime member at Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Groundbreaker Playwright and current Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange where he is developing his absurdist comedy MONKEY, to be presented in April 2012. He is currently writing a 3-play cycle on the U.S/México drug wars entitled SO GO THE GHOSTS OF MÉXICO. And will present a new work at La MaMa ETC in spring 2013. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

Cameron Page on Word Becomes Flesh, presented by 651 Arts, produced by the 2012 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater

2012-01-11T07:25:00.001-05:00

Some plays seem, at first glance, too specific to be successful. “A series of letters to an unborn son,” for example, falls into this category.

That phrase --- taken from promotional materials for Word Becomes Flesh --- broadcasts a narrowness of theme that seems bound to alienate certain people. People uninterested in parenthood, for example (of which there are many in New York City), might think twice before buying tickets.

But that would be unfortunate. Word Becomes Flesh, an ensemble work of dance, theater, and hip-hop now playing at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar festival, manages to transcend its stated theme without ever leaving it.

In addition to exploring the father-unborn son relationship, the play touches on abortion, domestic violence, slavery, infidelity, and even the father-daughter relationship. In less capable hands the 80-minute production might meander or scatter. But Joseph artfully manages to connect each spoke to the hub of his theme: the challenge of fathering a black child in America.

The piece was written in 2003, when Mr. Joseph’s girlfriend became pregnant. His impending fatherhood, crashing down on him over weeks and months like a slow-motion tsunami, was the source of inspiration--- or perhaps source of stress is a better term for it --- that led to Word Becomes Flesh.

The play dwells on the tug-of-war between what one should do and what one wants to do; between the duties of fatherhood and the impulse to flee them. Joseph draws a parallel between this tension and the general condition of African-Americans today. In a moving, wordless montage, he contrasts the anxiety a black man feels inside with the tie-straightening smile he is forced to wear in public.
He seems to be telling the men in the audience: If you ever got your girlfriend pregnant, you understand what it’s like to be black in America.

There’s no shortage of anger in this play: at the crimes of history, at Joseph’s own absent father, at the myriad injustices that stack the deck against a black male before he is even born. Joseph manages the trick of expressing this anger on stage, giving full-throated voice to it, bringing it (to use one of his phrases) into “the spoken world,” without alienating the audience in the process. Rather than merely shout his anger at us, Joseph rouses in us the anger that enrages him.

But there’s no hint of self-righteousness here, because Joseph is willing to shine the harsh beam of criticism on himself too. He stares his own flaws in the face, sharing his darkest thoughts with a wincingly brutal honesty. In one of the play’s more uncomfortable moments, he confesses a dark fantasy about the mother losing the
child.

The credit for the production’s success does not all belong with Mr. Joseph. The ensemble is uniformly strong, with an impressive range of dancing and acting abilities throughout. Although Word Becomes Flesh was originally developed as a monologue, the two- and five-man dance pieces, with their muscular yet smooth choreography, now seem integral to the work.

There are echoes here of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (which premiered Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 1976). Not just the content, but the form: the ensemble is perpetually merging and splitting, joining together as a group and then addressing the audience
individually. Each nameless actor seems to have his own story, but each of these stories represents a facet of the author’s self: the faithless lover, the greedy trickster, the gentle partner.

In one of the most stomach-churning sections of this “evening-length choreopoem” (another homage to Shange?), the ensemble transforms itself into a motley clump of deformed, demented half-wits. Bathed in red as though writhing their way up from hell, they tell the history of the world as a cynical marriage between racism and capitalism. It’s gripping, insightful, and somehow funny at the same time.

Any writer will tell you that greatness is in the details. Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “letters to his unborn son” are full of specific details, and you don’t have to be a parent, or even plan to havechildren, to be enriched by them.

Word Becomes Flesh

presented Presented in Association with 651 ARTS

Conceived and Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph / The Living Word Project (Oakland)

through January 15th

for more info: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=472

Cameron Page is a playwright and non-fiction writer. He lives in Crown Heights.

Gretchen Van Lente, Artistic Director of Drama of Works and Director of Leakey's Ladies at Dixon Place Jan12- Feb 4th

2012-01-10T22:18:00.003-05:00

Gretchen Van Lente

JODY: Why do you make theater?

GRETCHEN VAN LENTE: I want to tell a good story. I want to inspire, make people think, connect artists and people together with a common theme or awareness. I want to entertain. I like working with my friends. It's fun.

a puppet for an early Leakey's Ladies workshop

JODY:Talk to me about your passion for puppets?!! Using them as a storytelling medium? when the building of them first started?

GRETCHEN VAN LENTE:I really had no idea about puppets until college. I mean I grew up on "Sesame Street" and "the Muppet Show" but did not see Kermit as a puppet. He was my friend Kermit. I really got into puppetry in college when I took a few classes at my hippie liberal arts school Eugene Lang College. And what really excites me about puppetry is when it is used really smartly. Meaning, I would never just randomly use puppets in a show. There must be a reason for them. Usually I am drawn to the metaphor or symbolism that can be achieved. For instance we did Marlowe's Doctor Faustus with puppets and made a point of having the character's manipulator seen and highlighted above him. Or Shakespeare's Titus where you can really see the character die right in front of you. For this piece, though, we are more literal - we obviously can not get real apes, so we need awesome ape puppets, nor can we better show how similar and related apes are to humans than by literally presenting that onstage with actors playing apes with amazing ape masks on. My passion for puppets is in the use of them as a storytelling medium. I do not have a passion for the objects themselves really, but for how I can use them.

JODY:What is the process like for building a puppet?

GRETCHEN VAN LENTE:It really depends on the puppets. For instance, in this show, I did not make any of the main puppets because I knew I would not be good at it. (Well actually I tried, but soon realized I was not, in fact, good at it.) But, as director, I worked closely with puppet designer David Valentine, on how the puppets should look and move. But really - he designed and built them all (as well as some amazing large-scale masks) and did a beautiful job. I did design and build all of the toy theater and shadow puppets for the show, but they are simple flat puppets that really anyone could make. The ape puppets and masks went through many different incarnations for scene showings and workshops before David really took over. At one point they were made from coconuts and foam and yarn all thrown together, but this was all part of the developmental process. Now, though, David has given the piece a great, cohesive look. It's awesome.

JODY:How did your upcoming show Leakey's Ladies come about?

GRETCHEN VAN LENTE:I found myself obsessed a few years ago, with orangutans, completely randomly. It lead me to volunteer at the zoo, entertain a pilgrimage to Borneo and begin to research Dr. Birute Galdikas, the grand dame of the red apes. As I researched I realized that Birute was connected to Louis Leakey, that he had sent her out to study the orangutans. And that he had also sent out Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey (who I had heard of long ago, of course). I thought to myself, how come nobody knows about this? The more I researched the more fascinated I became. Most field researchers at the time were men and the scientific community thought it was crazy of Leakey to choose women to go out into the field. All assumed they would be too emotional, too irrational. The three women proved them wrong and continue to prove them wrong.

Leakey showed great foresight knowing that women would be less threatening around male apes (previous male researchers could get no where near the apes before being bullied away) and they put an empathetic human face to their plight. One of Jane's subjects, Flo, had her own obituary in the London Times. At any rate, I was loving this subject matter and knew it would make an amazing piece of theater, combining text, acting and puppetry. So then I sought out three female playwrights: Crystal Skillman (whom has written for us in the past and whom happens to be my sister-in-law), Erin Courtney (whom our last playwright B. Walker Sampson suggested because he said she had mentioned wanting to work with puppets) and Rachel Hoeffel (whom I had made a weird fish head mask for some time ago and knew she'd be up for anything). They agreed and each got to work on individual plays about their woman. As we continued to do research and they wrote, though, it seemed apparent that the woman's lives were so parallel that the pieces should be woven together into one full-length play. Each married or was involved with their photographer, each had their special relationship with Leakey, each battled illness, depression, loneliness, governmental and scientific opposition... Interweaving the plays was quite tricky, but I believe the final piece we've got now is truly amazing. And really tells the story that we want to share with the world!

JODY:Leakey's Ladies opens 1/12 at Dixon Place. What's it been like working there?

GRETCHEN VAN LENTE:Dixon Place is an amazing, giving environment. We have been connected with Dixon Place since their first spot on the Bowery. Ellie has always been a wonderful supporter of Drama of Works and our work. I remember once more than 5 years ago or so, she was just like, do you need a space ever? And I said well, we've been reworking this piece about Alice in Wonderland and we'd love to put it up for one night. She said okay and like two people showed up to watch it. Okay, like five people. The show was really good, but I was thinking, well that's it for us and Dixon Place. But no - she didn't give up on us. Then Leslie Strongwater began working there and she is such a champion of groundbreaking puppet theater and we began really workshopping Leakey's Ladies heavily at her curated Puppet Blok. This is what really got us moving toward putting up a full production of the piece at Dixon Place. And everyone has just been so wonderful, from marketing, to tech to office support. If something isn't working they help you figure out how to make it work with no attitude - and really there's nothing more you can ask for! I mean we know things are going to go wrong, it's how you handle that that really says a lot about you and your organization. They trust you are there to bring great theater to their audience and they want to help you do that. It seems so simple, but for some reason many other theaters have a hard time with that...

Dixon Place and Drama of Works presents;

Leakey's Ladies
written by: ERIN COURTNEY (JANE), RACHEL HOEFFEL (BIRUTE),CRYSTAL SKILLMAN (DIAN)
Directed and designed by: GRETCHEN VAN LENTE
Assistant direction by MOLLY KOHL
Ape puppets and masks by DAVID VALENTINE
Original music by STEPHANIE RICHARDS
Featuring MEGHAN WILLIAMS as Jane Goodall, TATIANA PAVELA as Dian Fossey, AMY CARRIGAN as Birute Galdikas, SCOTT WEBER as Louis Leakey

Jan 12- Feb 4th, (special $10 preview tix on 1/12)
@ Dixon Place

For tickets and more info : http://dixonplace.org/html/Leaky_Jan12.html

Jody Christopherson is an actress/ musician and the creator and editor of this blogspot. She loves you for reading it. Thanks! (Brooklyn represent!)

Cameron Page on Sontag: Reborn as presented by The Builders Association, produced by the 2012 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater

2012-01-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

Sontag:Reborn, now playing at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival, opens with a twenty-foot-high video of a woman holding a notebook and smoking. We hear the sibilance of the inhale, the crackle of the burning tobacco. The woman stares silently at the audience, blows a puff of smoke, and starts to read.

This initial image of Susan Sontag --- larger than life, aloof, defiant--- fits with preexisting notions of the famous writer and intellectual. The remainder of the 80-minute production, however, does everything possible to reverse that impression.

The show is adapted from Sontag’s diary, which was edited and published by her son, David Rieff, and it reveals Sontag to be a passionate and surprisingly whimsical woman. Her relationsips with women were characterized by a fierce intensity, bordering on obsession. If you’ve ever been madly in love but at the same time wanted to wring that person’s neck, you will be gratified to find your romantic mishaps reflected in this respected literary personage.

Performed by Moe Angelos and directed by Marianne Weems, the play restricts its source to Sontag’s diary, and its scope to her life before age 30. As a result, we see only Sontag’s side of the story, and are left to wonder how these events might appear from another perspective.

But this isn’t as much of a problem as it might seem, because Sontag was so penetratingly introspective. Her unsparing self-criticism seems to predict and disarm against any criticism from others. It’s hard to imagine her ex-husband or ex-lovers leveling attacks against Sontag that she hasn’t already preanswered in her diary.

This is a one-woman show, and the bulk of the action takes place --- appropriately enough for a play about a writer --- at a desk stacked with books. The limited staging and cast puts an emphasis on the diary itself, and even Sontag herself might admit this is a heavy theaterical load for a small notebook to carry.

The focus on text is further underscored by a video projection of written words, snippets from Sontag’s diary, as well as live video of Sontag writing her journal. Meanwhile, the larger-than-life video Sontag from the opening sequence continues to look down, literally, on her youthful counterpart on stage.

The result is a kind of theatrical cubism. Seeing the same image from multiple angles, and seeing the younger Sontag through the eyes of the elder, serve as contrast to the singular perspective of Sontag’s diary. Regardless of one’s opinion about these choices, it cannot be denied that the jumble of images and impressions keeps the eye continually moving, and makes for a lively experience.

Moe Angelos is a strong, confident actor, and she finds just the right combination of strength and vulnerability in her subject. Angelos and Williams successfully mine the acerbic comedy in Sontag’s romantic ups and downs. Simple phrases like “I have an enemy” become, in their capable hands, both funny and revealing of Sontag’s complex character.

In the end, one measure of the success of a play about a famous person is whether you leave more interested in that person than you were before. And on this score the play certainly succeeds: I went home and immediately pulled down my dog-eared copy of Sontag’s first essay collection, “Against Interpretation.” As Sontag herself was known to say, an artist should be judged on her work, not the work of others about her.

Sontag: Reborn
directed by: Marianne Weems
presented by The Builders Association

through January 15th

for more info: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=469

Cameron Page is a playwright and non-fiction writer. He lives in Crown Heights.

Olivia Jane Smith on The Green Surround part of the 2012 COIL festival, presented by P.S. 122

2012-01-10T07:18:00.001-05:00

What is it about a group of women? Together, the 10 performers in Heather Kravas’s The Green Surround, at P.S. 122 as part of its COIL festival, are not Furies or Bacchae, beauty contestants or competitors on “The Bachelor.” They’re also not nuns, or school girls in straight lines, or a corps de ballet, or a chorus line, though much of the piece involves their striving for synchronicity.

They are clearly feminized, though not aggressively so. When we enter the compact theater on the ground floor, around the side from the building’s main entrance, they are leaning against the wall wearing Jackie O. sunglasses, red lips, neat head scarves, and prim white wraparound dresses with full skirts—like aspiring starlets all waiting for their moment as extras in the big swooning hospital scene. They do not smile.

Other than their costumes—aside from one solo turn, identical—and possibly some sensual swiveling of their hips (though my male hip-hop instructor is very good at that), there is nothing gendered about the movements these women perform in The Green Surround, or the words they utter for that matter. And yet it’s hard to imagine this piece being performed instead by a group of 10 men. It’s as if all that testosterone would somehow dissolve the dance’s structure, which relies on these women being themselves—part of the visual enjoyment of the piece is taking in their physical differences, all the more obvious when they are dressed alike—and being one entity at the same time.

A central part of their experience of the piece, and ours, is that they are together even when they’re not. When the piece begins, after taking off scarves and shades, revealing faces and hair—curly, straight, long, short, red, brown, blonde (though mainly brown)—they line up in a cluster slightly off center stage, facing at an angle so as not to be looking straight at the audience. They all begin repeating the words “boot licker” in quick succession, ticking off each utterance on their fingers, tilting their heads to look from one hand to another as they keep count. When they get to 10, they all change, and begin saying “Lick boots” (at least that’s what it sounded like to me). Then it’s back to “Boot licker,” and then “Lick boots,” over and over, faster and faster, until it breaks down and becomes a pleasant babbling murmur, like those schoolgirls just getting out of class.

The performers give this exercise their all; they strive, but not aggressively; they concentrate, but not ferociously, to the point where their brows become knit. Everything they do throughout the dance has a focused calm, a serious, workmanlike quality. This is true when, perhaps in a reference to men, for whom this sort of thing is routine (okay, maybe not on stage), some of them relieve themselves in public, against the back wall of the theater. (They all press their backs into the wall and bend their legs, assuming a seated position but with no chair, as opposed to peeing toward the wall like men generally do.) Not all of the women urinate. Performance anxiety? Later we are treated to some drooling, which everyone seems to manage just fine.

Before this, the dance does overtly conjure a ballet class, with all the women against the back wall, moving in unison and incrementally, so slowly at times we almost can’t see their progress. They rotate to face one way and then another; their feet at one point assume fifth position (or maybe third); their arms curve gracefully in an excruciating port de bras. By this time they are all wearing identical black leotards and white socks. It’s a pretty scene. The relaxed formalism of all the shapes and groupings Kravas employs allow us to take in the simple beauty of bodies on stage.

Often the movements, like the spoken phrases of the opening, break down, evolve, and devolve over time. As the women stand on stage, torsos and arms plunging toward thighs and then back up again, the tone of the movements meanders subtly from sawing to flailing to soaring. The emphasis slowly shifts from the downward movement to the upward. The women’s movements shift along with those closest to them, and the group—while nominally executing the same movement—diverges slightly. It’s like watching the dips and eddies of birds flying in formation.

After a more elaborate sequence with a tiny dictator known as a metronome and bells of the kind that used to be found on hotel reception desks, in which the performers, on hands and knees, fling hair and arch spines in an approximation of the yoga exercise known as “Cat and Cow,” we get the evening’s only solo. All but one of the performers file out en masse, counting aloud (we can hear their voices throughout). The one who stays behind is wearing different shoes than the others—black combat-ish boots as opposed to brown clogs (the trendy and obscenely expensive shoemaker Hasbeens is a sponsor). In her moment of liberation, she proceeds to attempt to put her boots, and her feet along with them, through the floor of the stage while moving back and forth across the space in a kind of walk-stomp-kick. She does not come off as angry, just intensely purposeful. We hope she has a good orthopedist.

The piece ends with the performers up close to the audience, facing us. Here they simply speak in unison, sticking to a form, turning words on their heads or sometimes their sides, offering up options in the process. Some phrases are clear cut: “Instead of ‘beauty queen,’ say ‘black sheep.’” Others are less so: “Instead of ‘almost there,’ say ‘scantily clad.’” “Instead of ‘lost,’ say ‘ready-made.’” And the last: “Instead of ‘over,’ say ‘over and over,’” a great aphorism as well as a helpful summary of the dance we’ve just seen, with its multiplying repetitions.
The title is a mystery. Could it have anything to do with “The Green Table,” German choreographer Kurt Jooss’s 1932 meditation on war, with a death figure who also does some stomping (I admit this was my parents’ suggestion). Tables are flat, all the better to stare across when negotiating with an enemy, or to lay out your losses. The word “surround” has no particular shape; it all depends on the company it keeps.

The Green Surround
Cocept by Heather Kravas
ran January 7 - 9 as a part of the 2012 COIL Festival

for more info: http://www.ps122.org/performances/the_green_surround_coil.html

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Olivia Jane Smith on Too Shy to Stare, in the COIL Festival 2012, presented by P.S. 122

2012-01-09T08:12:00.002-05:00

Laura Hicks in Too Shy to Stare Presented at The Old School as part of PS122's COIL Festival
Photo by Ryan Jensen

Too Shy to Stare, the creation of Belgium-based director Davis Freeman, is all about me. Or all about you, if you are lucky enough to see it, since it accommodates only 10 audience members per performance. It’s playing a handful of times in its U.S. premiere at The Old School, as part of P.S. 122’s COIL festival. As of the Thursday preview I attended, the run was already sold out. But keep an eye out. After heading back to Europe, it may return.

That Davis Freeman has never met me, or probably you, either, is just one of the astonishing coups of this production. It could be argued that the experience of any piece of art is as much about the viewer as the artist. In this case, that is doubly so, as is the adage that each viewer’s experience of the work is completely his or her own.

The reason these notions hold so true in Too Shy to Stare is Freeman’s central conceit, which is to create the illusion that the audience members are performing for ourselves, so that we are both performer and spectator. He said in a post-performance discussion that his initial idea was to have the actual performers wear mirrors, so that in gazing at the stage, the viewer would always see him or herself reflected back.

L-R: Megan Harrold and Matthew Morris in Too Shy to Stare Presented at The Old School as part of PS122's COIL Festival. Photo by Ryan Jensen

That idea proved unworkable, hence the current solution: Each audience member must report to the theater a day or two (or in my case, several hours) before the performance to have a portrait taken. The photos, which are not unlike a driver’s license picture, and about as flattering—straight-on, flash, no smiling allowed—are printed out and become masks that the performers wear. To whatever degree one is able to invest in the illusion that you’re looking at yourself onstage, the experience is bound to bring up deeply personal observations. Freeman brings us face to face with ourselves.

Based on the short blurb that enticed me to see the performance, my initial impression was that I’d be watching with my fellow audience members, and we’d all be seeing images of each other (which would bring up a whole other host of issues: “Why is the dancer who looks like you threatening the dancer who looks like me?” you might ask the person sitting next to you). Freeman keeps things more intimate; each audience member is always alone in a room with the performer(s). The exposure we face is of ourselves, to ourselves.

Anyone who has seen the feverish dance installation Sleep No More has quite possibly experienced the unnerving thrill of suddenly being an unexpected scene partner, alone in a room with an actor, a little like that anxiety dream of being on stage and not knowing your lines. The experience in “Too Shy to Stare” is completely different. Davis himself instructs us before we go in that it will be clear where we are to sit and when we are to leave. Each audience member is given seven cards, for each of seven different rooms. When you hand a card through a curtain to the performers, they know that you (number 5 in my case—yes, you are given a number) is outside, and they don your mask. A light outside the room tells you when to go in.

Davis Freeman ( choreographer) in "Too shy to stare" Presented at The Old School as part of PS122's COIL Festival Photo by Ryan Jensen

Once you enter, you are more stand-off spectator than direct participant in the scenes you encounter—until of course you take into account that the people performing are you (sort of). And it’s good, in my opinion, that we don’t interact much with the performers, physically at least (though sometimes I did want to give myself a hug). It’s disconcerting enough to have a dancer wearing a mask of your face, crawling toward you on her hands and knees like a dog—would you really want to pet the dog/dancer version of you, too?

That said, while all the rooms held my interest, for me the most compelling were the ones in which the performers were the most confrontational. In one, I watched a male version of me put the moves on a female version of me (albeit a noticeably taller, bustier version). They held hands, and I was acutely aware that I—the third me—had no hand to hold but my own. I was a bit hurt when she eventually left the room and he showed no interest in the real me whatsoever. He actually went as far as to quietly tell me to get out, but that was just because I’d failed to realize this portion of the performance was over (perhaps I was also testing the limits a bit). In any case, I tried not to take it personally when I threw myself out. This was the only time any of the performers spoke, another element that keeps you at a respectful, observational distance from yourself.

In another room, I was alone with a man-me. When he ran his hands over his jeans, I could feel the texture of the denim. But when his body language signaled weariness, I thought, “Lay down your/my head.” (He didn’t.) When he looked ready to dance, I wanted him/me to bust a move. (He didn’t). It’s an odd sensation to feel at once so connected to and disconnected from yourself, inside and outside at the same time. After the troubling realization that I had no control over what I/he was doing, at one point he/me walked up and let me place my hand on his chest, beneath which I felt his rapidly beating heart. I wanted to just enjoy the moment of connection, but I was distracted by my own photo looking back at me. In this case, so close up, I found my image displeasing. Not for the first time in my life, I was letting my feelings about how I looked interfere with my ability to live fully. After he retreated from me again, we found our way into mirroring each other’s movements. At last, briefly, I felt in synch.

Freeman’s performers, all local, are all wonderfully alive in their movements, able to convey shades of menace, warmth, aggression, sexuality and sadness without us ever seeing their own faces. The music, performed the night I attended by Ed RosenBerg, colors our whole experience with a kind of hypnotic glow. The mode of its creation came as a complete surprise to me, which I won’t reveal in case anyone reading is able to see the show. But I will say that it added yet another highly personal, and beautiful, element.

The piece’s name, for me, was the opposite of how I felt watching these scenes. Alone with the performers, the fact that I couldn’t see their faces, that I was looking at “myself,” gave me permission to stare. What I saw was for my eyes only.

Laura Hicks in Too Shy to Stare Presented at The Old School as part of PS122's COIL Festival
Photo by Ryan Jensen

Too Shy to Stare

Musicians:
Brian McCorkle, Ed RosenBerg, Hahn Rowe

Performers:
Maya Orchin, Nora Petroliunas, Lauren Garson, Andrew Broaddus, Matthew Morris, Hope Davis, Megan Harrold, Winnie Ho, Laura Hicks and Paul Singh

Co-produced by Random Scream. Made possible with support from Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Koen Kwanten, Kaai theatre, Damaged goods, and the VGC. Created in part at the Arts Collaboration Lab, a partnership between Columbia University School of the Arts and Performance Space 122 in July 2011.

Please note: Audience is limited to 10 people per performance and ticket buyers must make an appointment to have their photograph taken at least 48 hours in advance of attending the performance. Why? It's a secret.

playing through January 14th.

For more information: http://ps122.org/performances/too_shy_to_stare.html

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Olivia Jane Smith on Chimera produced by HERE in the 2012 Under the Radar Festival

2012-01-09T07:50:00.004-05:00

Pictured: Suli Holum, photo by: Trevor J. Martin

What is a person? It’s a question we’re asked directly at least twice in Chimera, a one-woman show created by Suli Holum (performer) and Deborah Stein (writer) that is being performed at HERE as part of The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. Are we defined by the swirling double helix's that comprise our DNA? Their outward manifestations as delimited by our bodies? Or are there worlds inside all of us that resist a strict accounting by scientific or corporeal fact?

We’re swept into the performance by a woman (Holum) who never introduces herself (for good reason, we find out later), offering us coffee with a folksy Midwestern accent and the sunny abruptness of a Hallmark Channel TV hostess. After assuming a perch in the audience from which she describes in detail a kitchen only hinted at by Jeremy Wilhelm’s spare white set, she launches into the story of the kitchen’s proprietress, Catherine Samuels.

As bits of information about Samuels are gradually revealed, we find out she is a microbiologist with an 8-year-old son, Brian. His tendency to scuff the walls with his sneakers is not the only manifestation of his human imperfections that his mother has trouble tolerating. When she finds out that Brian has a heart murmur, she is driven to root out the source of the offending gene. Her search leads her to plumb the depths of her own biology; what she discovers there tests the limits of her identity and her human capacity for love.

No one is credited as director, so we’ll presume that together, Stein and Holum have created some nice surprises in the way of staging. At one point, Samuels plunges headfirst into her kitchen sink, only to pop up in an unexpected place, and embodying a new person. Costume designer Tara Webb’s white and green color palette feels both perky and crisply scientific, and the flourishes with which new elements are produced—a frilly green apron, rubber gloves, a corset—are a nice touch. Visually, the production’s video projections—a key element—fall short. Kate Freer and David Tennent may have done an excellent job conceiving them, but it’s hard to tell, because even when lighting designer James Clotfelter darkens the space, the videos don’t render well on the white set, which serves as a screen. The results are fuzzy at best, and the sections of the show that relied heavily on video tended to lose my attention, including a movement sequence that should have been a focal point in the story. The only projection that really arrested was a panoply of stars. It’s a shame, because one senses that the video was reaching for a kind of sublimity that would visually match the ideas raised by the play.

Pictured: Suli Holum, photo by: Trevor J. Martin

And the show does pull in a lot of big questions in its broad intellectual sweep. There is a long passage about the Chimera, the mythic monster of the title, and another about a little girl in India born with eight limbs who was believed by many to be an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, until she underwent surgery to render her “normal.” If she really was a goddess, did medical science, by changing her body, wrest from her the divine?

It’s all fascinating stuff, but it can feel a little like reading an article in The Smithsonian. It’s a feat of storytelling that Stein has boldly and seamlessly merged character-driven narrative with idea-driven narration; Holum transitions from first person to third and back again, and from character to character, and mostly it works. But despite Stein’s efforts to ground the ideas in a concrete narrative, and a fluid and engaging (if slightly overstated) performance by Holum, the characters come out on the losing side. I came away wanting to know more about Catherine Samuels, the woman I’ll call her alter-ego, her husband, and her child, and how they were all affected by the events here. I wanted to see them interact with each other in a drama for several characters instead of hinted at in a one-woman show. It felt a bit as if Stein and Holum shied away from fully exploring these people and the journey they embark on, letting them hide behind the play’s intellectual ideas, where it’s theatrically safer but ultimately less interesting, and certainly less dramatic. It’s a credit to Stein and Holum that they created this compelling story; for me, the telling fell short.

Pictured: Suli Holum, photo by: Richard Fleischman

Chimera
Created by:Suli Holum and Deborah Stein
Featuring: Suli Holum
produced by the Under the Radar Festival

playing at HERE through Jan 28.

For more information: www.here.org

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Matthew Paul Olmos on GOODBAR, created by BambÏ & Waterwell, produced by the 2012 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater

2012-01-09T07:28:00.000-05:00

Walking up to the third floor Luesther Hall, you are immediately greeted by a wall of emptied bottles of booze, welcoming you, to a “scene” that is set to resemble a local music venue where you’ll sit or stand while drinking and listening to up-and-coming bands, while also eyeing the crowd for the attractive.

After the line of people at the bar dwindles, the white Christmas lights which hang over the space quickly brighten before the smoky lights of the stage begin to build, and the electronic riff of an electric guitar-being-readied sound. The feeling in the room that the creators of GOODBAR have created is something so familiar to most of us, that feeling (perhaps exciting/perhaps nervous/perhaps typical), that feeling of being out. In the city. Hoping whatever will happen. That the night before you can unleash just about anything.

And while for most of us this might bring to mind some sort of hilarious or wild story that we eagerly retell at parties or reminisce about with friends, what GOODBAR illuminates is those other kind of evenings that go from electric to total eclipse. Exhilarating nights that take a godawful wrong turn and you wish you had never left the house.

Partially based on the novel (and later film)Looking for Mr. Goodbar, we follow a young woman named Theresa (an infectious Hanna Cheek) whose pick’up at a bar turns fatal back at her apartment. Through basically a set by the band BambÏ, led by Cheek, and Kevin Townley, we follow a loose glimpse into Theresa and her struggles being single, sexual, and out in the city.

What creators BambÏ & Waterwell have created so effervescently is this world that so many of us experience from the time we are first drawn to go out in search of sex, intoxication, and experience. Through a visually arresting interplay between live performers and background video, GOODBAR presents a wash of stimulation that saturates the audience in that search for encounter, which speaks timely to some, memory to others, and possibly even a past life to older patrons.

And so the question of the evening becomes the importance of revisiting this period in one’s life. While the performance is bookended by reminders of Theresa’s fate, even showing newspaper clippings referring to her tragic murder, most of the performance belongs to the charisma of the performers and hooks of the band.

Most of the lyrics are difficult to capture, which would not matter if we were just hearing a band play, but in searching for some sort of meaning from this production you find yourself wanting to know what is being explored and why. By the close of the performance, I found myself feeling that we had just been told how these tragic events occur to people like Theresa, but with no exploration of why.

With the talent at work onstage, it is easy to simply enjoy the live concert and admire the unifying tie between the songs; however given how successful this team is at dipping their audience into the colors, fears, smells, tastes, adrenaline of looking for excitement, for connection, one wishes there could be larger questions being explored and discussed that the audience could ask themselves about that part of their lives.

GOODBAR
Created by BambÏ & Waterwell
Based on “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” by Judith Rossner
Directed by Arian Moayed and Tom Ridgely
Featuring BambÏ: Hanna Cheek, Cara Jeiven, Jimmie Marlow, Tobi Parks, and Kevin Townley
produced by Under the Radar

Thru January 15.
For more information: http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=465.

Matthew Paul Olmos was recently selected by Sam Shepard as the inaugural awardee of La MaMa ETC’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award; he is a Sundance Institute Fellow, two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, lifetime member at Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Groundbreaker Playwright and current Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange where he is developing his absurdist comedy MONKEY, to be presented in April 2012. He is currently writing a 3-play cycle on the U.S/México drug wars entitled “SO GO THE GHOSTS OF MÉXICO. And will present a new work at La MaMa ETC in spring 2013. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

Matthew Paul Olmos on Super Night Shot as presented by Gob Squad, produced by the 2012 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater

2012-01-09T07:16:00.001-05:00

pictured: Sarah Thom

I sat in Astor Place with a friend before attending Super Night Shot, as part of this year’s Under the Radar festival, and every once and awhile we would look up curiously, wondering if we would see these folks from Gob Squad wandering the streets filming for the night’s performance. We didn’t, and walked timely into the Public Theater’s crowded lobby. Nothing very different, nothing very expected, just another show. This one featuring video filmed an hour before, by the four members of Gob Squad, then presented to a live audience.

Then the performance, or video rather. Four screens, each one giving us a view from each of the four actors as they left the Public Theater at around 8pm, gearing to be back by 9pm to present what they’d be shot. And so we sit with anticipation, wondering, grinning, somewhat dubious about what they will be able to capture in an hour.

And while it was intriguing to watch in a voyeuristic sense, I kept wondering what it was they were leading to. And slowly, this theme, if you will, began to emerge. I don’t know if it was just our night in particular, or if it is something they pursue with each adventure. But it was there.

CUT TO:
I bid farewell my friend, and head off to the West Village by foot to meet another friend at Johnny’s Bar. However, now something was different. The streets, forgive the sentimentality, were a bit more lonely. Disappointing. And while that subsided as my walk turned into regular, I remember it distinctly upon leaving Astor Place.

As during the performance, I had sat watching the four members of Gob Squad do the simplest thing in this our city of New York. They attempted, and succeeded, in connecting people. Themselves to the people they encountered with their video cameras on the street, then those people and themselves to us in the theater watching.

Several times during the performance, the four “performers” would synchronize in a musical number, often with people walking by in the background, looking at them strangely, as they danced awkwardly. However, what was most engaging was that the people they approached, the strangers they engaged with all smiled upon being spoken to or filmed. There was an open’ness that Gob Squad created in the city that I couldn’t help but feel romantic over. And as Super Night Shot continued, a warm’ness came over me. That feeling you get when somebody impossibly positive does something to pull you from your cynicism and makes you think their worldview is less naive and more wise.

At one point one of the four, Sarah Thom, pointed her camera to a nearby apartment building and wondered what stories were being told in each of the lighted or unlit rooms. Were people crying, or were they happy. She panned her camera around the Village and spoke about how none of us are anonymous, but rather crucial, in our own life story.

CUT TO:
Walking from east to west in the Village. I felt as though the streets the Gob Squad had been adventuring on were more what I wanted to be walking through. I felt like I had just left the romance or magic of a Woody Allen film (hint, hint) and was now going back to my regular life. The everyday of the city. And I wanted that connection to exist in real life as I walked past and through strangers. And it does. But maybe without an actual effort (likely with a video camera and seemingly interesting project) it remains buried by our own walls and neuroses.

The performers referred to Super Night Shot as a ‘War on Anonymity’, and towards the close one of the members summed up what I wanted to walk away with and keep: “If there was no banal, there would be no remarkable.”

Super Night Shot
concept by Gob Squad
performed by Johanna Freiburg, Mat Hand, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost.
produced by Under the Radar

Thru February 5.
For more information: http://publictheater.org/component/option,com_shows/task,view/Itemid,141/id,1046.

Matthew Paul Olmos was recently selected by Sam Shepard as the inaugural awardee of La MaMa ETC’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award; he is a Sundance Institute Fellow, two-time Resident Artist at Mabou Mines/Suite, lifetime member at Ensemble Studio Theatre, terraNOVA Groundbreaker Playwright and current Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange where he is developing his absurdist comedy MONKEY, to be presented in April 2012. He is currently writing a 3-play cycle on the U.S/México drug wars entitled “SO GO THE GHOSTS OF MÉXICO. And will present a new work at La MaMa ETC in spring 2013. www.matthewpaulolmos.com.

Libby Emmons on Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot Wars

2012-01-06T06:44:00.001-05:00

It was cold. There was no heat. Promises of heat were made, but it was still cold. In the opening darkness I reached for my scarf and wrapped it around my neck. In the opening darkness I could not tell if I wanted my scarf only for warmth or also for protection against an as yet unnamed danger.

Whatever else is happening in the city, in the country, in the world, I was in a basement on Thursday night. A rather large basement, a rather analog basement, with an old-timeyish feeling that harkened back to the London raids rather than poodle skirts and great big day-long suckers, even though more literal reference was made to the latter style of nostalgia that the former.

Samuel & Alasdair and their Personal History of the Robot Wars is about the danger of darkness, the power of a silent rotary phone, light that barely illuminates, and the devastation of everything, even the ever resilient human spirit. The play shows us the broadcasting of a radio drama that relates the fall of the US to some unknown robot devastation that may in fact be coming our way. It was chilling, I actually shivered.

The New Ohio is different from the old Ohio. It’s in a basement and when I first walked in to the lobby I didn’t like it, it felt institutional, like I was just in the basement of some big building, which I was. When I took my seat I thought how I didn’t like the space at all. And then the show started. More than being a play staged on the stage of the New Ohio, it is a play that takes place on the stage at the New Ohio, it’s like this is exactly where the play is set. So much so that, by evening’s end, I felt very strongly that I was in a basement with the weight of the entire city on top of us, and was suddenly afraid of what could be happening out there.

Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot Wars

A production by the Mad Ones at The New Ohio
154 Christopher St

January 5 - 21, 2012

TICKETS

Libby Emmons is a guest blogger and NYTR published playwright, for more info on Libby Emmons

Carissa Cordes on Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps in Concert

2011-12-20T07:04:00.002-05:00

photo by: http://anoblesavage.tumblr.com/ The Lisps: Lorenzo Wolff, Cesar Alvarez, Sammy Tunis, Eric Farber.

This is a musical that has been in development for about 3 years and follows the story of Civil War soldier Julian Munro (sung by Cesar Alvarez) who would like to develop a steam-powered brain but lacks the skill. He meets metaphysician Ada Lovelace (sung by Sammy Tunis) who provides the technical know-how to make Julian’s dream a reality. With utopian dreams of solving all of humanity’s problems they move forward with their creation as the war wages on. As is true today, the technology invented in the musical is only limited by man’s frailties.

The performance I caught was at Joe’s Pub. Upon entering the small stage appeared packed with drums, banjo's, mics, music stands, keyboard with an impressive percussion set-up made of a typical drum kit and found objects reminiscent of an engine. The performance begins with the four person band who gracefully introduces the audience to the performance and the story line and they perform a prologue of sorts. Then the stage is filled with 5 more singers and Michael Cerveris, of Broadway fame, who primarily sits a corner strumming a banjo and jumps in to perform some vocals. The music is enthralling, multi-layered melodically and rhythmically the music combining hints and flavors of rock, blue grass, and in some cases, old folk songs to further the plot and emphasize particular moments. The lyrics in the original songs are hauntingly poetic and timely.

Just as a concert the show is spectacular and is a must-hear/see. All of the performers are invested in the work and engaging to watch. The music is magnetic and hard to break away from for the requisite food or drink at Joe’s Pub, and if the book is half as good as the music, then this is the steam-punk musical to see, not to be missed at all.

Futurity: A Musical by the Lisps in Concert.
Next Performing at Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, New York, NY January 10, 2012.

World Premiere at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA March 16-April 15, 2012 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN April 26-28, 2012. Concert run time: approx 90minutes.

The Lisps: Cesar Alvarez, Sammy Tunis, Eric Farber, Lorenzo Wolff.

Special Guests: Michael Cerveris, Ben Simon, Chelsey Donn, Grant O’Brien, Aaron Schroeder, Caroline Tamas, Jillian Tully.

Carissa Cordes grew up in the backstage of a regional theatre moving scenery, dressing people, and assisting stage managers. This means she is a ninja. She is a classically trained actress and has working experience in all aspects of production. She can even install a zipper. She has had a great eleven years in NYC and looks forward to where the next eleven will take her. She is on the reviewing squad for nytheatre.com, was the designer for Group, by Daniel McCoy in FringeNYC 2010 and also played Green Eyes in Deathwatch FringeNYC 2009.

Olivia Jane Smith on Farm Boy

2011-12-16T14:02:00.000-05:00

Farm Boy, currently visiting from London as part of Brits Off Broadway, is being billed as a sequel to War Horse, which pranced its way to a Tony for best new play in 2011 and is still a hot ticket at Lincoln Center. Both are based on novels by British writer Michael Morpurgo, whose program notes for Farm Boy point out that this isn’t a conventional sequel, picking up right where War Horse leaves off. Instead, we meet the great-grandson of Albert, the young hero of War Horse whose story is a vivid reminder of how love for an animal can bring out the best in humans—fierce love, bravery, optimism, tenderness—even amid that most inhuman of pursuits, a world war.

Theatergoers familiar with 59E59, where Farm Boy is playing, will know not to expect anything on the epic scale of War Horse, with its magnificent life-size horse puppets and cast of dozens. Adapted for the stage and also directed by Daniel Buckroyd (War Horse was adapted by Nick Stafford and the Handspring Puppet Company), “Farm Boy” is intimate and folksy in both subject matter and approach. Much of it is spoken directly to the audience in a “let me tell you a story” narrative style. The two characters are billed simply as “Grandson” (Richard Pryal) and “Grandfather” (John Walters)—the son of War Horse’s Albert. While “War Horse” is inevitably about the power of two huge forces—history-making world events and love—to affect the course of people’s lives on a grand scale, Farm Boy is about the much quieter but no less powerful force of family history. These stories don’t just affect us, in many ways they are us.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Joey, the Bay hunter horse who along with his boy owner is a star of “War Horse,” thanks to the puppeteers who give him such remarkable life, is long retired and has been replaced in “Farm Boy” by a tractor. It’s all but inevitable that the tractor has ascended the ranks on the farm, thanks to its ability to till the land in the Devon countryside that is Morpurgo’s real-life and fictional stomping ground. What is more surprising is that it has captured the heart of the grandson, a city boy by birth if not heritage or inclination. For him, his grandfather’s old tractor represents a romance with country life that he’s been nurturing since boyhood. “Up there on my tractor, I was a farmer, like my Grandpa,” he says near the top of the play. He remembers how as a boy he’d be in the driver’s seat for hours, plowing, tilling, going wherever he wanted if only in his imagination, since the old tractor didn’t actually work anymore.

It should be said that we can see how this tractor would be easy to love. The third way in which it has replaced Joey the horse is as the defining visual element of this production, taking up most of the stage. While it never gets to do anything like its equivalent of galloping, it is about as lovely as a tractor could be, thanks to Tim Brierley, who constructed it, and Susan Winters, who is credited with its rustic paint job, including wheel spokes in a cheerful red. It may be the first and only tractor with its own scenic design team.

As with the earlier story, a bet figures prominently (apparently it’s a popular pastime in Devon). In this case it’s on whether Joey and Zoey, the mare who becomes Joey’s equine companion back on the farm after the war, can out-plow the Fordson tractor owned by a more well-to-do farming family in the town. It’s a credit to both the actors and the adaptation that the storytelling flows naturally, as if a particularly lively grandfather and grandson were really sitting around happily reminiscing. The story about the bet is one of the most vivid, and we can see the valiant but fading horses and the determined little tractor, conjured out of the performers’ imaginations.

Under the direction of Buckroyd, the actors do a nice job of transporting us through voice and body to the scenes of the stories they recount. When they speak of Albert raising Joey, they slowly turn as if watching horse and rider streaming across the countryside together. When Joey and Albert return home safely from their tour in France during the First World War, welcomed by banners and bunting and flags waving, the grandfather and grandson in this play dance a little jig. This is especially important in this production, because there aren’t a lot of changes in tone to break up things up otherwise. Matt Marks’ music is pleasing, if prone to tug overtly on our heartstrings, and along with Mark Dymock’s lighting design, it darkens appropriately—though very momentarily—when we first talk about World War I.

Otherwise, it’s up to the actors to sustain our interest, and while an early speech from the grandfather about swallows’ eggs lost me for a moment, mostly they do. Richard Pryal’s grandson is a bright-eyed romantic enthusiast. Anyone who has seen War Horse will recognize in this young man the protagonist of the earlier story, whose capacity for love all but gives him wings. John Walters as the grandfather seems to twinkle even in his crustier moments. The vulnerability he shows in asking for his grandson’s help, and later, the grandson’s reaction in receiving the fruits of that favor—are the play’s most affecting moments.

This exchange is the present-tense part of Farm Boy, which makes a nice parable about how the young—rather than just receptacles to be filled with the accumulated stories and wisdom of their elders—have gifts to give as well. It’s also the play’s only hint of an obstacle that needs to be overcome. If all families got on as well as this pair, what a happy world it would be. Both “Farm Boy” and its predecessor are heavy on sentiment, but the first story involves a war and its uncountable horrors. The sequel lacks anything like that level of dramatic tension, but that’s not really the intent here. If you fins yourself missing Joey and Albert and long for a more intimate look at their life on the farm, this tale of their spiritual as well as literal offspring is a pleasing journey to that world. Sometimes a warmhearted story with a happy ending—or several, in this case—are all you need from a trip to the theater.

FARM BOY begins performances on Wednesday, December 7 for a limited engagement through Sunday, January 1. The performance schedule is Tuesday – Thursday at 7:15 PM; Friday at 8:15 PM; Saturday at 2:15 PM & 8:15 PM; Sunday at 3:15 PM & 7:15 PM. Tickets are $35 ($24.50 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or go to www.59e59.org.

Please note the following Holiday schedule from December 20 – January 1: Tue, Wed & Thu 7:15, Fri 8:15, Sat 2:15 & 7:15, Sun 3:15. There is an additional performance on Thursday, December 29 at 2:15.

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Olivia Jane Smith on Post Office

2011-12-13T07:00:00.002-05:00

David Gelles as James
photo credit: Adam Kopland

Post Office, a quietly affecting new play by David Jenkins being produced by Human Animals at the Ohio Theater is, as one might guess from the title, about the changing face of an American institution. It’s also about the changing face of America itself: Our collective aspirations, expectations, values, and identities are all fodder for thought in this story of two postal workers, young and old. The veteran Denny (Eric Hoffmann), not short on personality, likes to refer to the newbie, James (David Gelles), as a “cupcake” or a “dumpling.” If that sounds like sexual harassment, in this case it’s definitely not.

Sex does enter the proceedings, however, in the form of Victoria (Anney Giobbe), a contained but nonetheless desperate housewife with enough pent-up romantic longings and regrets to fill an entire small town of exactly the sort where the story takes place. She tells James her existence on her quiet street is like “living on the moon: no one is ever walking by.” By that time, of course, he has walked not only by her house but into her life, and he’s about to wander as far as her bedroom.

Jenkins has crafted an entirely character driven story. Not that much happens, but that’s just fine, because these three people whose lives intersect—thanks to the U.S. mail—are all likeable and interesting. They’re all struggling with something, and we want to see how they will or won’t fulfill each other’s needs.

James, 19, has been a postal service employee for such a short amount of time that in the play’s opening scene, he still hesitates before placing each piece of mail in its designated slot. His faltering movements are the bane of Denny, who trained him, and who despite his gruff exterior is a sort of mail-carrier-as-Zen-master. He takes his job—his life’s work—so much to heart that the other mail carriers in Littleneck, Illinois, think he’s nuts; some days James is inclined to agree.

According to Denny, there is a technique to sliding the mail into the slots, a proper rhythm. You have to stay loose, and remember to breathe. Then there is the way of seeing the slots, or the case, as it’s called in postal service parlance. When Denny looks, he does not see a bunch of slender openings to be filled with catalogs and credit card offers. He sees a map of his longtime route: the hills, the dogs, the types of houses; a practical topography of the whole west side of town.

Eric Hoffman as Denny. Photo Credit: Adam Koplan

But Denny is not on his usual route these days. He recounts to James a painfully embarrassing lapse, in which Denny was arguing—passionately, as is his wont—with a customer upset about the price of stamps going up (again!). Denny’s commitment to the mail goes deeper than technique, and he explained to her that 44 cents is a small price to pay for democracy, which is—no less—what the mail amounts to in his esteem. But he got so carried away that he fell off her steps, and so, as the play commences, James has had to take over for Denny—his customers, his “public,” as Denny puts it.

Denny sees great potential in his young protege. But the slightly sheepish, more taciturn James doesn’t share Denny’s lofty vision of the beauty and meaning in a life of delivering mail. He humors Denny, but he tells himself and everyone else he is just passing through. If anything, the prospect of a life spent like Denny’s terrifies him.

Victoria and Denny never meet—unless you count James repeating to each of them in turn bits of wisdom imparted by the other. His young, impressionable mind eats up and regurgitates what he learns from these two elders, so that Denny’s revelation that nothing is the same twice—in response to the claim that mail routes are monotonous—makes its way through James to Victoria. Likewise James repeats her observation that mail is “tactile”—without it, she says, we’d lose touch, literally—back to Denny. Denny and Victoria live vicariously through James, the glow of his potential, but he just as badly wants what they have: experiences and ideas that give color and meaning to their lives, and which James is utterly lacking, the proverbial blank slate. When he finally confesses to Denny that he’s “adrift,” after all but fooling us with his air of calm, we’re both surprised and not. These two may see James more clearly than he sees himself, and this would help explain his frustrated love for Victoria. She is old enough to know that when you’re adrift any anchor looks tempting, but sometimes it’s better to tough it out and let yourself float. Sooner or later, you’ll be ready to swim.

All three actors give strong performances. Giobbe as Victoria is odd and wistful, at once yearning and yet somehow removed, a woman who has let herself go slack. Gelles has a lackadaisical, hangdog charm as a young man in the first tentative steps of figuring out who he is. Still, his performance conveys a steadiness that makes us see his appeal, both to Denny as his would-be mentor, and to his older lover. Hoffmann’s Denny makes his character’s blustery proclamations seem like things the smarter, more articulate version of your cantankerous coworker—the one who never shuts up and is always philosophizing—might really say. As he limps around the stage gesticulating in his latest fit of indignation, he is proud and a know-it-all and ultimately hard not to love.

David Gelles as James and Anney Giobbe as Victoria. Photo Credit: Adam Kopland

In hindsight, one wishes the scenes between Giobbe and Gelles had percolated with a stronger sense of heat—their connection seems more purely a meeting between two like souls than the passionate physical attraction both allude to, but perhaps that was the intention. Either way, their trysts sometimes drag a little. Our last glimpse of Victoria, as she is reading a letter—a hand-delivered one—is hard to register, staged at the back of the playing space. It’s an important moment, and we want to see it. Otherwise, director Josie Whittlesey shows a sure hand in slowly building toward the play’s emotional peaks, which feel natural and earned and are quite touching as played by Gelles and Hoffmann.

Whittlesey also does a good job managing the show’s transitions, which often aren’t really transitions at all, as James steps from Victoria’s house right into the post office, sometimes in mid-sentence. There is only one real change of scenery, and this is covered nicely by the sound of Denny’s TV. Otherwise Whittlesey’s use of the space, combined with Seth Reiser’s lighting, makes it clear when we’re at Victoria’s. Once the lights are up, we can take in set designer Alexis Distler’s nicely detailed back room at the post office, right down to the plastic mail bins and the grey linoleum floor.

Jenkins might use a touch more subtlety in making some of his points: The Post Office is dying, or at least imperiled, and along with it working class heroes like Denny who find a kind of nobility in honest service. But in the end, Jenkins doesn’t tell us what to think about the ideas he’s laid out for us, or about what lies ahead for James. We can see how early on James might be tempted to think of a lifer like Denny as small, but Denny is also big: his ability to find the beauty in what many see as a boring job elevates him beyond the ordinary, much like Victoria’s appreciation of the sensual—the sound of cicadas, for instance—makes her transcend what we think of as average. Will James become the keeper of the flame Denny so wants him to be? It could go either way, but thanks to people like Denny and Victoria, whatever he does, we know he won’t let it bore him.

POST OFFICE
December 1 - 17
Written by David Jenkins

Directed by Josie Whittlesey

Produced by Human Animals

Featuring Anney Giobbe, Eric Hoffmann, and David Gelles

Set Design: Alexis Distler
Lighting Design: Seth Reiser

TICKRTS

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Olivia Jane Smith on Company XIV’s Snow White

2011-12-12T07:20:00.000-05:00

Gracie White as Snow White. Photo credit Steven Schreiber.

Mirror, mirror, on the floor, what holiday dance spectacle is the fairest of them all? Company XIV, under the direction of Austin McCormick, has created a lavish fairy-tale feast for the eyes in a remounting of its dance-circus-theater hybrid Snow White at 303 Bond Street Theatre, a sleekly refurbished warehouse space in Carroll Gardens near the Gowanus Canal.

In terms of production values and sheer visual splendor, Snow White could give a Madonna concert a run for its money, and that may be McCormick’s intention: at one point a video projection apes an image from her “Vogue” video: We see the Queen from behind, slowly writhing in a lace-up-the-back corset—an image Madonna borrowed from the iconic fashion photo by Horst. There are an abundance of corsets in this “Snow White”—black for the male dancers, glitter-encrusted for the evil Queen, and red satin for the corset-turned-weapon with which the Queen attempts to squeeze the breath out of her young rival. For anyone who grew up watching actual music videos on MTV, the visual references to the aging Queen of pop music would be hard to miss.

(L-R): Gracie White as Snow White and Laura Careless as the evil Queen. Photo credit Steven Schreiber.

It’s a little ironic that McCormick’s take on a story about the dangers of vanity is itself all about looks. The drawback of this crowd-pleaser is that there is not much going on underneath its stunning surfaces, however original or well-executed they may be. For all its beauty—and the talent and vivid imagination that clearly went into creating it—the show feels a little hollow, as if the hunter had actually plucked out this Snow White’s heart instead of sparing her life.
That isn’t to say the show doesn’t have its enchantments, just that its thrills come from seeing Snow White (Gracie White) dangle from a hoop suspended from the ceiling, or execute an impossible looking lift in which her prince (Joseph McEachern) balances her on one arm while she is upside-down, legs dramatically splayed. Audiences should see “Snow White” for the impressive aerial feats, sumptuous costumes, solid dancing, and rich visual world it creates. Just don’t expect to be drawn in or emotionally stirred by the story.

Zane Pihlstrom’s set, combined with the impressive space, makes us feel we’re entering a magical world. A giant silver tree, some of its branches detached and suspended in mid-air, overhangs the large square of black Marley that serves the stage. Near the tree hang translucent orbs of grayish glass; a large hoop, that becomes Snow White’s main perch; and long silks waiting for an aerialist to mount them. Opposite the tree, towering antique chandeliers dangle low enough that the performers unintentionally jostle them.

We all know the story—the princess Snow White’s mother dies, leaving her with a vain and jealous step-mother Queen (Laura Careless), who won’t rest until Snow White is dead and the Queen can be assured by her magic mirror that she is the “fairest in the land.” Snow White lives in the forest among the animals—no dwarves here—after the Queen’s henchman fails to kill her off. This Queen hatches three plots to take out Snow White—the corset (because every girl needs one of those when she is hiding in the forest), a poisoned comb, and the poisoned apple.

(L-R): Gracie White as Snow White (center) Photo credit Steven Schreiber.

The Queen’s machinations are great fodder for the spectacular costume designs of Olivera Gajic. First the Queen and her entourage pose as Parisian couturiers, then as Spanish flamenco dancers with long ruffled skirts—there is a nice bit of choreography here in which the dancers array themselves in a line across the stage and hand the cruel comb over their heads, from one to another, until it makes its way to Snow White. The Queen’s last guise, as the best-dressed Russian peasant fruit-seller ever, makes for some of the show’s most spirited and heartfelt dancing. The Queen and Snow White engage in a pas de deux—apparently, despite a famine, the Queen needs to make sure her victim works up an appetite before she feeds her the apple. Here we see a flash of a mother-daughter-rival dynamic that cuts deeper than the rest of the production’s flights (many of them literal, thanks to the aerial work) of fantasy. Leading up to this, the peasant dancers push baby carriages containing tiny, glowing apple trees around the stage.

(L-R): Laura Careless as the evil Queen and Davon Rainey. Photo credit Steven Schreiber.

As the Queen, Laura Careless’s movements look whiplash inducing; she conveys ferocity in her tiny frame and giant orange mane of hair. As Snow White, Gracie White couldn’t be prettier, and she has a wide-eyed blankness about her that can read as innocence. Her real talents lie in her acrobatic feats, as she twists herself into fetching contortions on her hoop, polka-dotted legs scissoring in the air. If only she could be more emotionally expressive with her face and body, we might feel more engaged by her story. Ensemble member Lauren-Michelle’s glorious soprano, the show’s only live music, is a standout. Every time she opens her mouth, we feel struck by the clarion beauty of her voice. Amid a costuming tour de force, she also gets to wear one of the highlights, a chapeau that looks like a sailing ship.

As the Prince, McEachern does a dazzling hoop dance of his own, this one on the stage floor. Forming a letter “X” with his arms and legs, he stands inside a giant hoop and cartwheels around inside it, at one point turning and hovering very close to the floor. It’s mesmerizing. The ensemble of dancers—Davon Rainey, Marisol Cabrera, Sean Gannon, Ashley Handel, Cailan Orn, and aerialist Sam Hilbelink—are all strong, though they look more surefooted when not wearing heels (which even the men don for a few numbers). As a choreographer, McCormick’s contemporary movement style isn’t strikingly original; what’s different here is how he blends dance with visuals, as in the Queen’s final turn, when she steps from one high-heeled shoe to another, and another, until she meets the pair that is her undoing.

There’s wit and some lovely turns of phrase in Jeff Takacs script, almost all of which is spoken by him in the role of the narrator. He welcomes the audience by thanking the children for bringing their legal guardians, and later has this wish for them: “May you never be cursed with good looks.” Takacs has a commanding voice, but like so much here, his storytelling feels a bit removed.

There are times when McCormick needs to better hone the smorgasbord he’s created for us. As the narrator introduces the queen, for instance, his speech distracts from her movement, with both competing for our attention. Later, as Snow White finds herself in a snow storm, our focus is split between Hilbelink on the silk ropes and the dancers below him. It’s fine to have more than one thing going on, but unless the desired effect is of a literal three-ring circus, McCormick needs to better direct and shift our attention. Otherwise, we don’t know where to look, and have the sense we’re always missing something.

The show makes great use of Corey Tatarczuk’s projections—on the floor, for the Queen’s magic mirror, and on a white sheet that gets unfurled, where we see animal figures saving Snow White from the Queen’s attempts on her life. Gina Scherr’s lights help define the wide open space but don’t always quite let us see what’s going on, especially in an early mourning sequence that features black-clad dancers against the black floor.

Austin McCormick deserves high praise for such an ambitious, physically well-executed, and imaginative undertaking. If he could capture audiences’ hearts as well as our eyes with all that dazzle, that would really be something to see.

(L-R): Gracie White as Snow White, Ashley Handel and Laura Careless as the evil Queen. Photo credit Steven Schreiber.

Snow White
conceived, choreographed and directed by Austin McCormick
with new text by Jeff Takacs

December 2 to January 15 (opens Dec 4) in a limited 7-week engagement
at the 303 Bond Street Theatre (303 Bond St.) in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

TICKETS

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Chole Carter Brown on LAVA's Atlas

2011-12-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

Photo by: Angela Jimenez

"Our social communities and strong relationships also orient us and send us in specific directions," says LAVA founder Sarah East Johnson, who also directed the all-female dance group's latest offering, Atlas. The piece is about the different ways of orienting oneself, but it is really the human connections in the piece that make the strongest impact.

Photo by: Angela Jimenez

Atlas is comprised of twelve interconnected dance and acrobatic numbers that utilize live and recorded music, visual art, trapezes, and a stationary bike. My personal favorite was "Solar System," in which the company pieces together a rendition of Elton John's "Rocket Man," as two members revolve on a trapeze, orbited by the stars below--tiny lights carried on the backs of bikes, scooters, and skateboards. The trampoline-heavy "4 Directions" launched the performers onto each others backs, shoulders, and knees with seeming weightlessness.

Photo by: Angela Jimenez

There were some moments that felt a little unironed out or unfinished. It took a while for the first piece, "Durras," to really gel in it's synchronized movements or its intent. Similarly, the last piece, "Bottles," in which the performers ran around artist Tony Feher's glowing bottles hung like caterpillars, looked like a lot of fun to do, but read as a bit chaotic to the audience.

Photo by: Angela Jimenez

However, these little hints of mess and the wink-and-nod towards them totally work for LAVA. Especially in their acrobatics and trapeze work, they undeniably have chops. But the real joy of watching this company is, well, their real joy. From the way they interact with each other to their obvious love of the game, there's a lot of genuine pleasure present on the stage so contagious the audience can't help but catch it.

Photo by: Angela Jimenez

Running at Dixon Place through 12/11, Atlas is one to catch. You might find yourself asking, where is this going? But then you realize you don't really care about the answer, because you know where you are.

TICKETS

http://www.lavalove.org/

Chloe Carter Brown is a writer, playwright, and blogger living in New York. Her newest play, Beautiful Somewhere, was featured in the Culture Project's Women Center Stage festival this spring at the Living Theater. Her short play, "Blast Radius, or, Rachel and the Salt Pillars" was also produced as part of the Studio Series at Williams College this year. Her other writing has been featured on Huffington Post and USA Today. http://bootsandkittens.tumblr.com

David Marcus on THE MYTHS WE NEED-OR-HOW TO BEGIN

2011-12-05T15:20:00.001-05:00

CAST OF THE MYTHS WE NEED -OR- HOW TO BEGIN (l to r) Annie Henk, Hugh Sinclair, Luke Forbes, Anna Lamadrid. photo by Kacey Stamats.

Several years ago over dinner, my in laws and I had a discussion about whether the Bible should be taught in school, taking the affirmative position, I found most of my arguments ineffective, until I said, "how are the kids gonna read Melville?". Purple Theater Rep's fantastic and sexy production of The Myths We Need or How To Begin, by Larry Kunofsky reinforces this argument. The show riffs on the story of the first four characters of the Scriptures as well as the creation myths surrounding the dawn of modern America.

Set in the rural South of the 1920s, the dialogue pops with the slang and jargon of hard boiled flapperspeak. The writer and companies' ability to use this highly stylized language to create a unique world for the story is, on it's own, a marvel, but beneath the period piece pageantry Kunofsky sets to his real work. The play put me in mind of philosopher Michel Gauchet's 1994 essay "Primitive Religion and the Origin of the State". Gauchet writes "By going back in time to the religious tie between supernatural founders-givers and human heirs-debtors, we can elucidate the system of primitive links that produces the social space". This is exactly what The Myths We Need… attempts to do.

Kunofsky's G-d, played with fierceness and anger by Hugh Sinclair, is not a G-d of love, but a G-d of duty, and in this case, duty means work. The deal is simple, “the Boss” will provide “the Kid”, our young Adam, with the basics of life, including the room in which the play is well set, but only so long as the Kid agrees to work hard, and not question the Boss's authority. Eden in this context is not a leisurely paradise, but a guarantee that working hard and doing the right thing will result in basic needs being met. The Kid, though he resents the Boss's intrusiveness and tendency to demean him, seems to find this a reasonable deal. That is until Annie Henk's sexy and slithery serpentine "Old Broad" gets the Kid thinking there could be more to life. Acknowledging this, the Boss provides him his Eve, "the Tomater". With the quartet complete, the time for transgression arrives, and it is the nature of this transgression that represents Kunofsky's most important contribution to the ancient art of deconstructing our first story.

In fairness, Kunofsky takes a few bites at this apple, only one of which truly resonates with the modern theater audience. The revelatory moment when the Old Broad and the Tomater consume the Boss's prize apples does not result in an intellectual epiphany, but rather a bout of drunken revelry. There is a casting off of responsibility and a hedonistic celebration of the freedom which human beings have to focus on their pleasure, rather than their duty. The Kid's struggle, whether to embrace or not these new possibilities, provide the play’s clearest insight into the basic construction of society. Luke Forbes' performance in this role is key to the impact of his character's choice, he has an awe-shucks masculinity that sparkles through the show, and lends credence to the Kid's concern that dereliction of duty is unmanly. It's not that he likes the Boss, it's that he rightfully fears a world in which all the Boss' responsibility falls on the shoulders of him and his lover. Anna Lamadrid's turn as the literal first lady, offsets Forbes' work ethic, with a fun and vivacious personality reminiscent of Twain's chatty and curious Eve. Lamadrid's understated sexual power allows the play to maintain a titillating feel, perhaps saving the piece from drowning in sex. This central choice, whether to maintain the steady, if capricious benefits of the social contract, or to cast them off is exceedingly well elucidated in the plays final third. One wonders, where would the Kid and the Tomater go? To college? To rob banks? To Occupy Wall Street?

The least successful metaphors or undercurrents of the play center on the racial identity of the characters. The Boss is white and the Kid is black, in the first scene this dichotomy plays a fairly major role, with the pernicious phrase "that's mighty white of you" making several appearances. As the play moves along though, the threads of race don't seem to be woven into any solid idea. There are a few moments of sexual jealousy between the Boss and the Kid, and several instances of onstage miscegenation, but unlike O'Neill's “All God's Chillun” from the 1920s or Fugard's “Statement”, from the 1970s, this interracial pairing is not being presented in a society in which it is viewed as particularly transgressive. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that sophisticated New York playwrights imagine that out there in America, amongst the cows and TVs flickering Fox News, there is a part of our populace for whom interracial relationships, or homosexuality, which also makes a brief appearance, are still violently reacted to. This may be true, but such people are unlikely to attend Purple Reps production, so the result, is a kind of self congratulations between the company and the audience, for being so forward thinking. Thankfully, the racial metaphor is not a central component to the play, in fact, aside from a few lines in scene one, this play could be done with casts of any ethnicity and lose little if any of it's power.

Director Jose Zayas' use of the limited space, keeps everything moving and everything fun, his service appears to be focused on the play, and not on flashy directorial choices, which would only hiccup the straight-ahead jazz of Kunofsky's language and ideas.

For over two Millennia now Western Culture has struggled with the story of the eviction from Eden, constantly asking itself how to handle a world for which it now, is alone responsible. The Myths We Need or How To Begin does not provide any answers to that question, but it does provide a new way of looking at it. This is a First World fall from grace, an angry and triumphant exit from socio-economic norms, a denunciation of the society in which the bosses sit up on the hill, while the rest struggle for their benefit. But with such choices come responsibility and one can't help wonder if the Kid and the Tomater are up to the task.

Pictured: Anna Lamadrid and Luke Forbes in THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN photo by Kacey Stamats.

Purple Rep presents;
THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN
by Larry Kunofsky
Directed by Jose Zayas
Dec 2nd- Dec 18th
at The Monkey

Buy tickets for The Myths We Need - or - How To Begin

Dave Marcus is the Artistic Director of Blue Box Productions, and host of its ongoing Sticky series. Dave is an NYTR published writer and can be followed on twitter at blueboxdave.

Olivia Jane Smith on The Little Lord's Babes in Toyland

2011-12-05T11:24:00.002-05:00

Holiday season is upon us. Who couldn’t use an excursion to a candy-cane forest of a flavor not available in any tricked-out department store or bedazzled city street? Babes in Toyland, at The Brick in Williamsburg, may be a rendition of the 1903 holiday-kitsch classic by Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough. But as reimangined by the Little Lord theater company in a production previously seen at the Ice Factory Festival in 2009 (no holiday tie-in here, since the festival takes place in summer), the show keeps the kitsch but gives it a refreshingly off-kilter spin. It’s as if Santa’s most mischievous elves spiked the punch, raided a Goodwill, and staged a holiday pageant at the local elementary school. The result is an exuberantly campy rag-tag confection.

The fact that this version of “Babes” never becomes cloying is a credit to the direction of Michael Levinton, who also did the adaptation and performs a major role. He knows that the way to pull off this kind of parody is to play it with all the wide-eyed earnestness one would expect in a straight production. (Thanks to the era in which the original was written and the sensibilities of its creators, at this point the show parodies itself with very little intervention necessary. Levinton often relies on the original script, which uses the word “scallywag” and has a sheep character named “Fleecy.”)

The show is very well cast, and he manages to coax just the right tone from his apple-cheeked performers. The whole thing works in large measure because the style is so consistent. Even when it veers off in a different direction, as with a speech on the vicissitudes of aging, it all feels of a piece. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have dead spots, like the second half of the aforementioned speech (which to be fair was read on-book by an understudy the night I saw the show), and a bit of deconstruction toward the end in which Levinton ticks off facts about previous productions of “Babes.” But it’s hard not to be charmed by the production and its ensemble; its lapses are pretty easy to forgive.

The show opens with something all but guaranteed to please pretty much any audience—free food. The cast of four, beaming away, is arrayed on stage with economy-size blue tins of the butter cookies that seem to pop up in every office kitchen this time of year, as well as plastic pitchers of lemonade, the kind made from a powder mix. “Can we get the wafer cookies over here?” someone sitting behind me calls out, as a performer happily obliges. How’s that for audience engagement? The cookies and lemonade are indicative of what’s to come: a deliciously cheap, satisfying sugar rush with a little tartness thrown in for good measure.

Then the performers put down the snacks and assemble themselves in a tableau. The one we later find out is TomTom (Corinne Donly) looks a little like a boy scout, if boy scouts wore leopard-print suspenders and pink and red striped bloomers. Her bowl haircut perfects the look (though she did not get it just for the show, I heard her tell a friend afterwards). The other costumes, by Karen Boyer and Bevan Dunbar, couldn’t be much more perfect, right down to the rick-rack trim on the pale yellow sailor shirts with matching shorts worn by Levinton as Alan, the young hero of our story, and the accompanist, Nicholas Williams. Mary Mary Quite Contrary (Laura von Holt) has her garden on her head, with a flower sticking straight up.

The cast poses as if for a family portrait as a tinny version of the show’s signature song, Toyland, plays from a bright yellow “Sport” boom box of a type familiar to anyone who went to a beach in the 1980s. They stand there, and stand there, until their smiles gradually become frozen and their poses start to sag, until Mother Goose (Tina Shepard) basically says “Cut!” and introduces herself and the rest of the cast, in a sort of self-conscious “putting on a show” nod that typifies the production.

Here’s the story: The Widow Piper (Shepard) has custody of just three of her children in this rendition (the original calls for a cast of at least 50): TomTom (the Piper’s son); Little Bo Peep (Das Elkin, who does some lovely operetta-style singing); and Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Nursery rhymes sales have been hit hard by the move to digital publishing, or so we might presume, since the Widow is having trouble paying the rent. When the Piper family’s rich scoundrel of a neighbor, Barnaby (Levinton)—described in the program as “a mean, old miser”—wants to marry Mary, the Widow is all for it, despite Mary’s having pledged her love to Barnaby’s nephew, Alan. Barnaby tried to have Alan drowned, but apparently he is a strong swimmer. He comes back and he and Mary run away together to Toyland, which according to a map is nestled between Mother Goose Village, Candyland, and Maryland (one does wonder why Mary doesn’t head there).

On their way, they have to navigate the Spider Forest, but with some help from a giant pink moth named Linda (Shepard) they manage to arrive safely in the land of maple syrup lakes and lollipop trees. There they meet a French ballerina doll (Elkin), a toy soldier named Inspector Marmaduke (Donly), a disaffected Master Toymaker (played on book by the understudy, Shepard, in the performance I saw) who offers guests mimosas chased with Percocet, and Santa (played by the man himself, according to the program). Barnaby manages to follow Alan and Mary to Toyland, and there is an evil plot to create killer zombie toys by instilling them with the souls of demons. But I’m probably not spoiling anything by telling you there is a happy ending with fake snow.

The show is an object-lesson in doing a lot with a little. Four cardboard towers, each painted with a different setting on every side, can be rotated to suggest Mother Goose village with a house made from a shoe in one scene, and a spooky Spider Forrest in another. Most of the other elements look like they were culled from a successful raid on a dollar store, and the colorful paper flags that festoon the walls, cheering up the entire space, were made by the cast and crew on a “craft day,” a production member mentioned to me after the show. Levinton, again, and Jason Simms deserve plaudits for the sets and props, as do Christina Watanabe and her assistant, James E. Lawlor, III, for the lighting.

At the top of the show, Mother Goose says to the audience, “You’re unhappy, aren’t you?” a line that seems to come from the original script. Victor Herbert and Glen MacDonough’s musical is bittersweet, its conceit being that none of us ever recover from childhood’s loss. We’ll never be kids again, it says more than once, and then continues on its purposeful nostalgia trip, granting us a temporary escape from dreary adulthood. By playing on the original script, and having so much fun with it, if Little Lord’s production has a message it’s quite the opposite. We may not be children anymore, but we can—and should—continue to play, and play joyfully.

the Brick Theater Presents,
Little Lord’s Babes in Toyland
November 30 – December 10, 2011

Adapted and directed by Michael Levinton
Musical direction by Kate Marvin
Produced by Jane Jung
Dramaturg/Associate Producer – Sarah Bishop-Stone

Starring Corinne Donly, Das Elkin, Michael Levinton, Tina Shepard & Laura von Holt

Designed by Karen Boyer, Bevan Dunbar, Jason Simms & Christina Watanabe

Stage Managed by Dina Paola Rodriguez

Musical Accompaniment by Nicholas Williams

Press by Ron Lasko, Spin Cycle

This holiday season, join Mother Goose and friends on a romp through a land of manufactured make-believe! With exuberant song and shoddy spectacle, Little Lord’s BABES IN TOYLAND will recall the happy days of childhood to those who are facing the stern realities of life.

(Not recommended for actual children.)

Little Lord's adaptation of BABES IN TOYLAND received a developmental workshop production as part of the OHIO Theatre's Ice Factory Festival in 2009. That production was in part a re-imagining of the original (deeply flawed) operetta. In this revamped and reworked incarnation, BABES is stripped-down to make the most of the original script's absurd, nonsensical plot and features a cast of five playing over two-dozen roles. Pillaging the foggy recollections of its adapter/director Michael Levinton – who appeared for seven years in a Baltimore community theater production of BABES IN TOYLAND in his youth – Little Lord's BABES conjures a nostalgia for made-up memories in a land of manufactured make-believe.

www.littlelord.org

Wednesdays – Fridays @ 8pm, Saturdays @ 8pm & 10:30pm

TICKETS
$18

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Olivia Jane Smith on Poisoned by Jim Boyett

2011-11-30T22:27:00.000-05:00

Often the things we really don’t want to know are the hardest to forget. In Poisoned, a new play by J. Boyett at the Mint Space, they are impossible to forget, or forgive, so much so that the play’s subtitle could be “Ignorance is Bliss.” As one character remarks, “The main thing all happy people have in common is that they’re fooling themselves.”

In this case the central character’s inability to get past his girlfriend’s past amounts to a personal tragedy. One minute he’s on cloud nine, the next he is in the depths of rage and despair. Perhaps the play’s most interesting question is whose moral failing is to blame; hers, for committing the offense, or his, because he can’t find it in himself to overlook it. (There is also the possibility that his sister is really at fault, for bringing it to light in the first place.) No one is totally innocent here, no wrongly accused Desdemona to be the undeserving object of brutal jealousy.

It’s a credit to Boyett’s writing that we can sympathize with all three characters, even as we are well aware of their failings. The play is about values—how bad was what the girlfriend did, really?—and it’s easy to imagine different audience members leaving the theater with different opinions. The questions the play raises—about whether it’s better to remain in the dark about the past of someone you love, about how something we don’t find offensive in general becomes intolerable when someone we love is involved—feel fresh and well worth pondering.

But in the end, the play becomes about the tyranny of feelings, and how difficult it is to change them even when we have every reason to try to see things in a different way. That is as it should be—a drama like this needs an emotional center around which its moral questions swirl. The problem is that even as the emotional maelstrom takes over, we feel like we’re observing it from the outside. The play manages to create interesting, believable characters but doesn’t give us a reason to root for any of them. It’s almost as if Boyett wanted us to engage with the play’s moral conundrums without taking sides.

Tom (Dennis Brito) has just retrieved his younger sister, Samantha (Kelly Kay Griffith), from the airport and the play opens with them arriving at his home in Colorado. We quickly establish that not only are the siblings not close, there is barely repressed hostility between them that threatens every few sentences to overtake their attempts to connect. We never learn why they get under each other’s skin quite so much, other than typical sibling stuff that, as they themselves remark, most adults manage to get over. Sam is uptight and bitter, thanks in part to their repressive parents, but at least she is self-aware, and Tom’s accusation that she is out to derail his happiness doesn’t hold up, at least in this instance.

Tom is in love and living with a much younger woman, Dee-Dee (Kate Eastman), an aspiring writer who spent the last several years indulging her wanderlust while scraping by with odd jobs. Now, at 22, she is ready to settle down with Tom and return to college, on his dime, and the happy couple are to be wed, Tom reveals to Samantha. This news adds to the urgency behind Sam’s visit, which isn’t simply an effort to mend her relationship with her only sibling and meet his bride-to-be. Samantha, who has never met Dee-Dee, has grave reservations about her brother’s choice that go beyond a gut instinct; she has learned something about Dee-Dee that, despite her distant relationship with her brother, she feels she must tell him.

Dee-Dee arrives before Sam manages to work up to her big revelation, and they engage in some getting-to-know-you chit-chat which mostly involves Sam grilling her future sister-in-law like a prosecutor examining a witness for the defense. Dee-Dee, remarkably assured and self-possessed for 22, holds up perhaps a little too well. Her confidence comes off as real, not a defensive front, and we find ourselves asking if anyone is really this comfortable with themselves and their choices at this age.

Dee-Dee leaves her increasingly angry fiancé and his even angrier sister to enjoy some quality time, and Sam lets Tom in on her big secret about the love of his life. It’s a credit to the lead-up that we really don’t know how he’ll react: very badly, as it turns out. Upon Dee-Dee’s return, her justification of her actions only makes things worse, from his standpoint. The whole story unfolds in a matter of hours, and at least two lives, Tom’s and Dee-Dee’s, are completely overturned.

Even given the characters’ strained relationship, the first scene feels more awkward than it should as Tom and Sam pace around his apartment. Perhaps there is something more director Kathryn McConnell—whose staging works throughout the rest of the show—could have done to help the opening feel more natural. Sam keeps asking Tom how much he really knows about the young woman he’s sharing his life with, and the audience might reasonably have a few questions of our own. Perhaps Boyett intentionally left out key details of Tom and Dee-Dee’s relationship: how they met, their shared interests, how long they’ve been together, what she sees in him besides the fact that he’s a nice guy and takes care of her, financially at least (as for her charms, they are more obvious). Thanks to the actors, once Dee-Dee arrives we can see that she and Tom seem happy and in love. But since the play is about the quick dissolution of that happiness, knowing more about the foundation on which their love is based might make us more invested in it. Are we rooting for Tom and Dee-Dee to stay together, or should he kick her to the curb? In this case not knowing also means not caring. Yes, we’re curious to know what happens, but not because we’re emotionally invested in the outcome.

The play is not big on subtext. The way the story is set up, we learn about the characters through talk, not action, and everything is right on the surface, or very close. Whatever issues there were in Tom and Sam’s family, talking about them seems unlikely to have made the list. “We always hurt each other,” Tom says, reminding her why their reunions are few and far between. When these two discuss their rocky relationship, they discuss their rocky relationship. While Boyett makes this literal approach work, it might have been more interesting—and perhaps more realistic—if at least some of what we learn about the characters was revealed more obliquely. Just because two people are talking about one thing—the weather, or what they ate for lunch—doesn’t mean their conversation isn’t telling us something else entirely.

Still, the characters are interesting and plausible, and the actors mostly make them work, even in the “here’s what you should know about me” mode of the play. Kelly Kay Griffith is tightly wound as the disappointed Sam, and we see glimpses of sadness, and even love for her brother, through her hard encasement. She is particularly good in a scene with Tom where she recalls being humiliated by their father for reading a romance novel. Kate Eastman is knowing and wise beyond her years as Dee-Dee, a young woman who confidently embodies her statement that “It’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about your attitude toward it.” As Tom, Dennis Brito channels both the ease of a man who finally has everything he wants and the desperate anger of seeing it smashed to pieces just when it was within his grasp.

It’s odd that we learn less about Tom than about Sam and Dee-Dee. We’re not even sure what he does for a living, and we don’t get much of a picture of him, other than that of a guy happily shacked up. Since the play is ultimately about the unraveling of his life, more so than for the women, it would help if we got to know him better. Sam mentions his poor choices in love, and having to worry about him, but he mostly remains an enigma. Duane Pagano’s set design might have helped us out a little in this regard—Tom’s home could have told us something about the guy—but what we get looks more like the nook of a Brooklyn granny than the castle of a man in his prime. The walls resemble melting Velveeta and the doors are a nuclear shade of reddish orange that were hard not to look at despite their headache-inducing effect. I know resources are very limited for independent theater productions, but surely could have found something better.

Boyett’s play is smart and certainly thought provoking. At least two people came up to me after the show and told me pointedly how much they loved it—someone may have tipped them off that I’d be writing a review, but they were clearly sincere. As he continues to write I hope we’ll see even better work from him in the future. Until then, while Poisoned has some character flaws, unlike Dee-Dee’s, they can be forgiven.

Squeaky Bicycle Productions presents;
Poisoned by Jim Boyett
at Theater Three (the Mint space), 311 W. 43rd Street, third floor,
NYC. Join us!

TICKETS

Performance dates/times:

Friday December 2nd 5pm
Saturday December 3rd 2pm
Monday December 5th 7pm
Tuesday December 6th 8pm
Friday December 9th 5pm
Saturday December 10th 2pm

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Libby Emmons on Kutsukake Tokijiro

2011-11-27T19:11:00.000-05:00

Photos by Kenji Mori. pictured: Asuka Morinaga, Hiroko Yonekura & Yasu Suzuki

Kutsukake Tokijiro tells the story of two repentant gangsters in early 20th-Century Japan. Using language, dance, and live music, the story was thoroughly compelling, and I was enraptured by the performances. The play is a recent translation/retelling of a popular play by Shin Hasegawa, that was staged in Japan in the 1930’s-1950’s.

A bunch of this show was in Japanese with English subtitles, but you didn’t even need to read them to know what was going on. All the really important things came through just in the action and the emotional quality of the gestures.

The story has the feel of a legend. A family man leads a double life as a gangster, and finally the crimes catch up to him in the form of a hit man, Kutsukake Tokijiro, who is obligated by his own gangster code to kill this man. But this hit man has no personal beef with the man he must kill, both of them bound by codes of honor and not a personal desire for vengeance. With his dying words, the gangster implores the hit man to take care of his wife and child. The hit man, by all accounts a man who lives by his word, takes on this responsibility.

Kutsukake comes to care deeply for the dead man’s wife and child, and they in turn care for him. A love that blooms between a woman and the man who killed her husband, between a child and the man who killed his father, is a theme that crops up again and again in legendary and mythological tales. Kutsukake Tokijiro told the story in a new way, and it was as though I’d never seen this story before.

Photos by Kenji Mori, Pictuured: Angela Tweed, Jiro Ueno & Jan Mizushima

The Flea Theater presented;
Kurotama Kikaku's contemporary adaptation of KUTSUKAKE TOKIJIRO, conceived, adapted, and directed by Jun Kim (The Flea's Obie Award-winning Benten Kozo) based on the popular 1928 Japanese play by Shin Hasegawa. Performances run November 10 - 27 at The Flea (41 White Street between Church and Broadway in Tribeca).

Libby Emmons is a guest blogger and NYTR published playwright, for more info on Libby Emmons

Olivia Jane Smith on Asuncion by Jesse Eisenberg

2011-11-27T16:35:00.002-05:00

Jesse Eisenberg, left, Justin Bartha and Camille Mana in Asuncion.

We all know what happens to you and me when we assume. It’s no different in Asuncion, Jesse Eisenberg’s comedy about post-adolescent male anomie at the Cherry Lane Theatre, though it should be said that the two lead characters had shown themselves deserving of that particular designation well before the offense takes place.

In this case, it’s an assumption about the play’s title character, Asuncion (the startlingly good Camille Mana), whose name in Spanish refers to a different type of assumption altogether, that of the Virgin Mary into heaven. On the surface, it’s ironic; her name is a reference to the Virgin Mary and the assumption made in the play is that she is a whore. But her name might lead us to another assumption: that her sudden arrival in the lives of two young men wallowing in a disturbing semblance of a friendship might somehow redeem them, shake them out of their bad dynamic, send them to a higher place—not in the sweet hereafter but in their small, crummy lives. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.

But it wouldn’t be fair to say the characters end up just where they started, and while it would be hard to truly like either of them, thanks to Eisenberg (who also stars) and fellow actor Justin Bartha we like them enough to be genuinely curious spectators to their weirdly one-sided bromance. There is some smart, funny writing here as well as fresh observations on racial stereotyping, male bonding, being young and clueless, and what motivates us—at our worst—in choosing the people with whom we while away our lives. It’s a good play, if not a great one, from a writer who is still young and has been busy with a few other things in recent years. The fact that the house was packed, if not quite sold-out, on a rainy Tuesday makes me wish there were more movie stars with Eisenberg’s talent and inclination for the stage.

The whole play takes place in the colorful, squalid post-collegiate apartment shared by Edgar (Eisenberg) and Vincent (Bartha). (John McDermott’s set design is spot-on, from the map of the world poster that asks “Where are we?” to the cluttered bookshelves that jut out toward the audience, crammed with cheap African sculptures and other arty accumulations, along with paperbacks like one about the harmonica, or was it the banjo?). As acted, and as directed, skillfully, by Kip Fagan, the production does have a few hit-you-over-the-head moments, and the opening scene, with its overdrawing of the dynamic between the main characters, is one of those. Edgar enters with a bleeding head wound after having been mugged, but Vincent, stoned, wearing a printed robe and a necklace of wooden beads, is too busy with his Afrobeat-lounge musical stylings on a synthesizer to notice for quite some time. When Edgar finally has Vincent’s attention, he practically purrs with happiness.

Edgar’s brother Stuart (Remy Auberjonois) shows up unexpectedly— and even more unexpectedly, he’s got a new wife in tow. We learn very little about the siblings or their upbringing, save for a fleeting mention of a mother in a coma and some other information tossed out in the play’s most clunky writing. But the brothers are clearly opposites, as evidenced by the mention of Stuart’s job in the financial industry, his duplex in New York City, his Porsche, and, in a nice touch from costume designer Jessica Pabst, the BlackBerry strapped into his belt: the modern equivalent of a pocket protector. Perhaps the only thing the brothers share is that despite their differences, they’re both dorks.

Stuart says cryptically that his bride, Asuncion, needs to stay at Vincent and Edgar’s for a few days while some things get sorted out, because it might be “dangerous” otherwise. This deflection, combined with the quick marriage, Asuncion’s physical charms as compared with Stuart’s, and her ethnic heritage (she is Filipina) are enough to fan the naively racist imaginings of Edgar, who with a little prodding from Vincent quickly presumes his new sister-in-law was ordered up off a website specializing in mail-order brides, or perhaps worse.

Stuart takes off, and the ensuing week-long house party, which includes some enthusiastic dancing and later an LSD-induced denouement, reveals how people who fancy themselves great appreciators of other cultures without much direct experience are often the most prone to making gross generalizations about them. It also pushes to the forefront the ugliest aspects of Edgar and Vincent’s friendship. Once again this makes me glad I’m not a guy.

Camille Mana’s performance as Asuncion is one of those rare turns in which the actress so fully and convincingly embodies the character that at some point you are a little stunned to have to remind yourself that the woman onstage is actually acting. This is perhaps all the more impressive when you step back and realize that the character as written feels like a stereotype of a newly arrived immigrant of the East Asian female persuasion. She flits, Tinkerbell-like, around the apartment, a ball of smiling pink girlish energy, telling us that Mariah Carey is her hero and that the U.S. is like a “pop song nation”—pared down to only the best, catchiest parts. Thinking back, we’re hit with the sense that while she is inescapably familiar, we’ve actually never met a real person like her, which makes Mana’s exuberantly natural performance all the more impressive.

Eisenberg has so much restless fidgetiness as Edgar—one moment he’s perching, birdlike, with his feet on the edge of the couch, and the next he’s on the floor next to it, laid out in a plank as he leans on its arm. His body language is solicitous, conveying a barely suppressed yearning to be in on the joke—yearning for closeness, really—while its effect is to push people away. At moments his manic energy can come off as affected, but we gradually settle into its rhythm. Edgar is annoying, but he’s not really a bad person; he’s just young, naive, unsure of what to do with himself and his life, desperate to be liked, possibly sexually confused, looking for anything to make him feel good about himself—in other words, not so hard to relate to.

Vincent, on the other hand, while more charismatic and self-assured, is in many ways quite despicable, and it’s a credit to Bartha’s goofy, preening portrayal that we’re not outright revolted by him. Remy Auberjonois as Stuart has to contend with a character who feels sketched-in, a bit of an afterthought—a challenge which his performance doesn’t always overcome.

We’re not especially invested in any of the characters here. It would be a stretch to say we’re rooting passionately for Edgar and Vincent to break free of their dysfunctional arrangement, though we’re interested enough to want to understand them and why each of them allows things to go on as they do. Though Asuncion is by far the play’s most sympathetic character and in many ways the center around which the action swirls, it’s hard to get past seeing her as Vinny and Edgar do, which isn’t as a real person (this in spite of what seems like a genuine friendship that develops between her and Vinny, albeit tinged with lust on his side). Even when wronged, Asuncion still doesn’t provoke our sympathies as deeply as she should, and that goes for the whole show as well as the character. Eisenberg’s play is not without interest, and it’s quite funny. But the characters’ relationships and foibles need to more fully engage our emotions, too.

As for Edgar and Vincent, the mystery of why they remain friends perhaps isn’t such a mystery after all. Who else would have either of them? These two seem to deserve each other.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater presents;

ASUNCION

By Jesse Eisenberg
directed by Kip Fagan,
At the Cherry Lane Theater, 38 Commerce Street, West Village;
TICKETS
Through Dec 18
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com

Jody Christopherson interviews Larry Kunofsky and Jose Zayas on :THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN

2011-11-25T20:37:00.005-05:00

CAST OF THE MYTHS WE NEED -OR- HOW TO BEGIN (l to r) Annie Henk, Hugh Sinclair, Luke Forbes, Anna Lamadrid. photo by Kacey Stamats.

JODY: Larry and Jose, why do you make theater?

LARRY KUNOFSKY: The theatre that I make stems from language, first and foremost. As a kid, I rarely got to finish a sentence at home; at school, I was the Head Writer for the Class Clown, since I was too timid to be Class Clown myself. I'm not really a musical guy, but I kind of love when people burst into song - onstage or off - and my plays always begin when I'm just bursting with feelings and thoughts that seem too big to contain. It should also be said that I was pretty religious through adolescence, and even though I'm purely secular and hedonistic as an adult, I do recognize the sanctity of what happens in a room filled with people hushed while a ritual is enacted. I'm interested in writing in many forms, but it's writing for live theatre that will always be my great love, for that completely distinct, almost spiritual quality that can only be found in the theatre.

JOSE ZAYAS:I make theater because I love telling stories as part of a communal and live experience. I love ritual and the way it can bring a group of people together. I tell stories that push the boundaries of audience empathy and understanding. I want people to be moved and surprised.

JODY: Larry, great title! Tell us about what inspired THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN and a little about what the play is about?

LARRY KUNOFSKY: Thanks! People seem to like my titles! I hope they like the plays, too.

The play is a retelling of the Adam & Eve myths.

There's a guy, The Kid, and a young woman, The Tomater, and they live in a kind of paradise, but they have to live in a shack on the grounds of paradise and work to maintain the paradise; it's someone else's paradise. That someone else is an old guy called The Boss and he has all these rules that he makes The Kid and The Tomater follow. And then The Old Broad shows up to tempt the young couple and to generally stir up some trouble. This Old Broad is kind of a composite of Lilith from folklore and The Serpent from the Bible. It's a very sexed-up version of these old tales. “Adam” and "God" have a homoerotic thing. “Lilith” is poly- amorous Actually, everyone in the play has a thing with the other three people in the play.

Pictured: Anna Lamadrid and Luke Forbes in THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN photo by Kacey Stamats.

The source of inspiration for the play is in the title itself. In terms of "How To Begin," the Adam & Eve myths are clearly about a capital-B Beginning, and I am deeply fascinated by all creation myths, but I'm also interested in the American worldview, how we believe that we can always reinvent ourselves and start over. There's a line in the play that's repeated constantly: "You tells yerself whatever ya needs ta get by." And that's exactly what people do. Because they have to. In terms of "The Myths We Need" - all myths are created out of some need. And obviously, creation myths are created out of a need to understand the universe. But the stories of Adam & Eve and their weird and sometimes kinky relationships with God, Lilith, and the Serpent stem, I firmly believe, from the need of men and women - a deep-seated need that comes from the collective unconscious - to understand each other. The roots of our understanding of gender, sexuality, desire, submission, and oppression are in Genesis, and the folklore surrounding Genesis. So these are myths we need. But I also maintain that myths are made to be broken.

JODY: Larry, I understand there is a lot of stylized language can you talk about the research of the time period and language? Why this time?

LARRY KUNOFSKY: The time period of the play is deliberately not specific, but has resonances to the Depression-era Dust Bowl. Since this is a story about people starting over to such an extreme that their histories don’t matter (or so they’d like to think), many time periods are evoked. It can be the Wild West. It can be the actually beginning of the world. Basically, the play should remind you of any time period (and this includes the present, at least in certain parts of the world) where people are struggling to build a life for themselves with only the bare necessities at hand and with simple joys.

Pictured: Annie Henk and Hugh Sinclair in THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN photo by Kacey Stamats.

The language definitely comes from Thirties-era Americana, both rural and urban. I tried to throw into the play any phrase I knew to be outdated but also very American and poetic. Phrases such as “Now that’s a fine How-Do-Ya-Do,” and She was a Dumb Dora, so I Gave her The Gate,” are phrases I heard my grandmother and her friends say when I was a kid. But the way the characters speak in the novel The Grapes of Wrath and in the old gangster movies, particularly James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were big inspirations, and in a huge way, the way the kids speak in The Little Rascals all got thrown into the play. I call the language “Olde-Timey Talk.” This language can be tough, it can be sentimental, and it might seem really old to you, almost like Shakespeare’s language, but I hope that the language in this play evokes history and allows us to hear universal feeling expressed in a novel way.

JODY: Jose, what do you look for in a project and what drew you to MYTHS?

JOSE ZAYAS: I am always interested in strong stories, in unique language, in working with writers who have a distinct point of view and who enjoy collaboration. So I'd say that when working on new plays I'm first and foremost interested in the writer and in what they have to say and how they are saying it. I also want something that is going to challenge me and push me to places that I've never ben as a storyteller. Not understanding a play the first time around can be very exciting, if I don't get what I'm reading my interest is immediately piqued. When I first read MYTHS, I didn't quite understand what Larry was doing- but the language, oh the language was so exciting and playful and weird, an amalgam of tough guy speak and 30's screwball comedy, all used to tell the story of Adam and Eve. What is thrilling about MYTHS is the way that Larry investigates the importance of the myths we tell each other collectively in order to shape and make sense of the world around us while reflecting our interior understanding of it. It is a play that insists on the importance of storytelling. It talks of new love and of old loves, it deals with new gods and old gods and it creates a wonderfully puckish dialogue with the original myths of creation without losing its sense of humor or drive.

pictured: Hugh Sinclair in THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN photo by Kacey Stamats.

JODY: Larry, your company Purple Rep is producing THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN. Can you talk about the PR mission and how Myths fits in?

LARRY KUNOFSKY: Purple Rep began in order to create a model for production for playwrights. The original concept was that we’d be a playwright-driven collective. We were definitely inspired by 13P, a theatre company run by 13 superstar playwrights, and a miracle for our times. My understanding of 13P’s model, though, is that once each of the 13 playwrights (or Ps?) get a play produced under the auspices of their company, they fold up shop and call it a night. With Purple Rep, we’re trying to constantly add to a rotating roster of playwrights and switch up how our plays are presented, season after season, with the overriding principal that the playwright is involved in the production and calls the shots. Purple Rep debuted with our first “mini-season,” which was two plays by two playwrights produced in rep (same space, same design team, alternating dates). Ideally my dream season for Purple Rep would be an eight week run at one space with four plays by four playwrights, but that probably won’t happen for a few years.

This season, Myths is the only mainstage production, but on Monday nights in December at the same space (and we’ll resume after the new year after Myths closes) Purple Rep is presenting something called The Dark Night Serials Series, which will be a kind of variety show with burlesque and music, but will mainly focus on the presentation of 8 new plays by 8 playwrights, presented in serialized form. So each Monday night, you’ll see a different roster based on these eight plays, in fifteen-minute installments. And we’ll do this until all the plays are presented in their entirety, so that we’ll have basically produced eight plays, week by week. So presenting the Series at the same time as the production of Myths is putting the Rep back into Purple Rep.

As far as Myths being a Purple Rep show, I love the idea of defining what Purple means, or what Purple means to you, each time we present a play. We’ve already suggested through our work that purple is the color of sex, and Myths is a pretty sexed-up play, as I said, both straight and queer. In terms of the casting of this production (as with all our shows to date) we have a multi-ethnic cast which definitely amps up the stakes in the play. And that’s what Purple means, too. So we’re also putting the Purple back into Purple Rep this time.

JODY: Jose and Larry, what's it like working together? Can we talk process?

LARRY KUNOFSKY: I find myself saying a good deal less in rehearsal than usual while working with Jose. And this is a good thing, since I talk too much anyway. Usually, I feel that my job in rehearsal is to make sure that the actual words on the page get said, but Jose is on top of this already, since it seems to me to be part of his larger process. Jose is a line-by-line guy. He makes sure that every line means something, and that this meaning is as specific as possible. He doesn’t impose his own meaning, he lets the actors find the meaning for themselves, but Jose makes sure that every beat of the play means something. It might seem obvious that we need to make sense of our work, and yeah, everybody does that on some level, but I’ve never worked with anyone before who’s this devoted to the work, line by line. He’s like a sculptor in that way. That’s as far as I can go in terms of talking about process. I should also add that Jose is one of the most soft-spoken people I’ve ever met, and it’s kind of a trip to watch someone maintain such authority in the room without ever raising his voice. It’s a lesson for me, since I come for a family of shouters.

JOSE ZAYAS: Larry is a remarkable collaborator. This is a unique experience because he is both playwright and producer and we have worked very closely not only on shaping the script but on the ideas behind the production. There is great trust between us in the room. Since we have begun working the script has changed quite dramatically, we've cut about 40 pages of material and we've continued making textual changes to strengthen character arcs or to make the meaning of certain moments less elusive. Larry is a playwright who trusts the intelligence of audiences but he also takes great pride in taking care of them and in crafting work that balances the intellectual with the visceral. He is also confident enough to listen to a director, he can say no when something isn't working or when something isn't going the way he envisioned it but he is also open to ideas from all of his collaborators. The room we've created is an environment where we laugh alot, where we take risks and where we share our experience to make the production that is unique to all of us. It has been a thrilling process and I look forward to sharing it with audiences.

Anna Lamadrid and Annie Henk in THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN photo by Kacey Stamats.

Purple Rep presents;
THE MYTHS WE NEED - or - HOW TO BEGIN
by Larry Kunofsky
Directed by Jose Zayas
Dec 2nd- Dec 18th
at The Monkey

Buy tickets for The Myths We Need - or - How To Begin