Friday, April 26, 2024
The November 26, 2019 publication of The UN environment programme Emissions Gap Report 2019 confirms yet again that Earth is in serious trouble. Findings directed specifically at the U.S. and China conclude that action must be taken ASAP. Thru Sunday, December 8 at Theatre Row, The Chase Brock Experience provides a strong response to climate change with The Four Seasons, which Brock visualizes as a dance of destruction. Brock's 2008 ballet (female dancers wear ballet slippers instead of pointe shoes) is a loose, yet potent, narrative. The dancers - Jane Abbott, Michael Bishop, Chloë Campbell, Kendrick D. Carter, Kassandra Cruz, Kory Geller, David Hochberg, Yukiko Kashiki, Honza Pelichovský,
Month: November 2019
HOOKED ON HAPPINESS at Theater for the New City
HOOKED ON HAPPINESS is an original climate change musical tackling the crisis through the perspective of a high school drama class. Two students Kim and Eric are inspired to create their own production after a heated debate on the beach where they commiserate on the inability of their parents to snap out of misery and embrace positive action. They infect their class with their enthusiasm and soon they are co-opting their teacher to allow them to write their own response to the climate crisis instead of doing the old standards of OUR TOWN or HELLO DOLLY! for the yearly school
Virgo Star at La Mama’s Downstairs Lounge
VIRGO STAR heroically encapsulates the convergence of queer and cowboy in a homoerotic, fictionalized "Wild West". The Pioneers Go East Collective interrogates the notion of "masculinity" as personified by American Cowboy iconography, visuality and sound. But this is a new riff on the spaghetti western - as the characters come face to face with their fragility, sense of belonging and rigors of their own nature in this steamy wild, wild west conjured by director Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte. This is no unrequited Brokeback Mountain love story but rather a fragmented "son of a gun stew" filled with every ingredient imaginable. They
BAM Next Wave 2019: ‘The End of Eddy’
"From my childhood I have no happy memories. I don’t mean to say that I never, in all those years, felt any happiness or joy. But suffering is all-consuming: it somehow gets rid of anything that doesn’t fit into its system." Édouard Louis Young Adults are not the usual Next Wave Festival crowd, so BAM's new Artistic Director David Binder included them in his inaugural season of debuts.artists. He and Next Wave couldn't have made a wiser choice than selecting Pamela Carter's adaptation of Édouard Louis's autobiographical novel The End of Eddy. The joint production of Scotland's Untitled Projects and the U.K.'s Unicorn Theatre chronicling the author's
DruidShakespeare: Richard III at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival
DruidShaekespeare's Richard III is a bruising experience, which is as it should be. The Irish troupe's contribution to the tenth anniversary season of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival (playing thru November 23rd at John Jay College's Gerald W. Lynch Theatre), absolutely fulfills the festival's mission of looking and listening without distraction for greater understanding. Shakespeare never hides Richard's ambition and watching it played out in the ugliness The War of the Roses created makes it inevitable. Director Garry Hynes has the perfect Richard in Aaron Monaghan. No one would ever mistake him for a weakling, but when things don't go his way his voice becomes high pitched like a
Kendall Cornell – Clowns Ex Machina (women in dangerously, dangerously bad moods)
Kendall Cornell is the creator and director of THE BAD’UNS: CLOWN ACTS OF CONTAGION currently running at La Mama downstairs Theater. She leads the all female clown troupe - Clowns Ex Machina in a piece that " takes a darkly comic look at transgression, the corruption of dreams, and women in dangerously, dangerously bad moods." I found it utterly transformative. You can read my review here I asked Kendall a few questions about her journey to becoming a clown, her inspiration for her work and other nonsense... Can you remember the moment when you knew you were destined to be a clown/performer/dancer? Vividly! I went to be
The Bad’uns: Clown Acts of Contagion at La MaMa’s Downstairs Theatre
On Saturday I found the wellspring of funny -Kendall Cornell's all-women clown troupe: Clowns Ex Machina. I am still suffering from acute bouts of sudden, uncontrollable laughing at the flashbacks from their show -The Bad’uns: Clown Acts of Contagion. It's 90-minutes of intense bliss. There is a palpable, vast intelligence that forms the canvas for every scene. The humor bounces off this backdrop imbuing each moment with the massive force of thinking, focused, funny women. The clever comedy comes at you faster than Venus Wiliams' 56.95 m/s tennis ball serve -you have to gird up your loins for the shock and the skill of
Ars Nova presents ‘Dr. Ride’s American Beach House’ by Liza Birkenmeier
Historic events impact lives. There are the famous examples of Walt Whitman's Civil War poetry, Abraham Zapruder's home movie of the events in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 and the January 21, 2017 Women's March posters currently displayed at Poster House. But then there are the private ones. BFFs Harriet (Kristen Sieh) and Matilda (Erin Markey) confront a turning point in their relationship during a landmark event in U.S. space history in Liza Birkenmeier's Dr. Ride's American Beach House, now playing through November 3, 2019 at Ars Nova at Greenwich House. Birekenmeier is Ars Nova's current Tow Playwright-in-Residence. Harriet and Matilda
THE HOPE HYPOTHESIS at The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture
THE HOPE HYPOTHESIS is a super slick production - a place for everything and everything in it's place. It is a neat freaks nirvana. The whole show feels perfectly conceived and executed. We are looking straight into the face of the absurdity of the American immigration situation in this tight, fast-paced dark comedy. The audience were laughing on cue offering a constant laugh track to this sitcom styled theater piece. Yet, through the fog of witty repartee the cruel, cold, ruthless face of the fascist interrogator peeps out at you, making you squirm in your seat. Cat Miller is both the