Wednesday, December 18, 2024
You get two riveting solo shows performed by two exceptional performers for the price of one! Monsoon Season is a great gift to give yourself in November - a pre-thanksgiving/festive season present.It's almost like watching a theatrical episode of The Affair or The Slap where we get two versions of the same moment told from the perspectives of each character - it is deeply satisfying to watch. There are many elements that make this production rewarding - an engrossing text, expert direction, masterfully crafted performances, magical stage design transformations, daring lighting and a gloriously jarring sound scape. And it all plays out
Author: Jacquelyn Claire
Emma Van Heyn at The Bitter End
Emma Van Heyn is a quirky millennial memoirist using music as flypaper for her unique perspective. She is one of those actor/pianist/storyteller/composer artists that create instant fans on a first viewing. We are seeing the epic rise of this breed of multi-skilled performer that are equally strong as musicians and actors, able to craft original monologues, lyrics and compositions to craft a powerful theatrical experience. Van Heyn has a mighty vocal instrument that booms out of her slight frame with the force of a cannonball. She has a strong, sensual sound that ricochets around the room filling it with warmth
NOTHING HERE IS REAL – Interview with Gary Ferrar
For a single night each month, you can join Gary Ferrar, one of New York’s most sought-after entertainers, for a mind-bending evening of magic and mentalism. You gather around an antique pool table in an underground parlor to become part of an intimate experience that will leave you questioning what, if anything, is actually real. Mentalist and magician Gary Ferrar’s world premiere of NOTHING HERE IS REAL, directed by Harrison Kramer, has begun its residency and open-ended run at The Cocktail Lounge Below Tom Valenti’s Oxbow Tavern (240 Columbus Ave. at West 71 St.). Performances take place every last Tuesday
Madame Lynch at New Ohio Theatre
Madame Lynch is a buffet of bloodthirsty; maniacal madness, flavored heavily with every theatrical device imaginable. It's quite simply delicious from start to end. The Drunkards Wife theater company espouse a maximalist design sense -a core tenet of their mission, with a glorious over-the-top exuberance. It's superior theatrical eye candy. Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin exhume the legacy of Eliza Lynch - the "Empress of Paraguay" to interrogate her influence on cultural imperialism. Her history is really worth a Google search - born Irish, fled to France to escape the potato famine, french courtesan turned mistress-wife to Paraguayan dictator -Francisco Solano Lopez,
The Day I Became Black at The SoHo Playhouse
The Day I Became Black is a heart opener, a mind shifter, a bridge builder. Bill Posley's life-storytelling is the antidote to desensitizing discourse overload. Today we are inundated with concepts, theories, verbiage writ large and Bill cuts through the noise with an honest memoir that makes you want to hold hands with complete strangers. My plus one, Elizabeth, said it was healing theater and I agree - Posley has a potent curative gift. It's like he is laying theatrical hands on you and raising you from the complacency couch. He achieves this feat through the power of laughter, joy and
Spring Weekend Soundbites
With over 7.5 million daffodils planted by 100 000 volunteers in NYC and 194,000 tulips in Central Park - spring is definitely in the air. To celebrate the arrival of this burst of color from these European blooms the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and BBLA festoon the Upper East side with a weekend of FREE stage readings, a full production, after parties and talk backs at The Bohemian National Hall. Playwrights from The Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania are profiled from 9-12 May 2019 at this theatrically intensive long weekend. Here are a few soundbites from some of the
Numbness: Chapter 2 at New Ohio Theatre
Laura Butler Rivera & Michael Leonard. Photo Credit: Mathew Dunivan NUMBNESS: CHAPTER 2, breach birthed into being by One-Eighth Theater is a quick firing collage of absurdist clues to find your way through the maze of each moment. Reality, rules, linear, logic are to be left at the door. You're invited into the circle to witness the circusy atmosphere of new ways of thinking, from behind the comfort of the plastic splash sheets provided. It's eccentric neccessary nonsense. Can you joyfully jump into the contagious insanity or will you stay comfortably numb? Black Water by Sylvia Bofill and Yovo by Robert Lyons are the text trampolines
Entangled at Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre, A.R.T./New York Theatres
ENTANGLED is the most relevant work you can witness in the 21st century. It deposits you into the epicenter of the hurricane, the whirlwind, the tsunami and keeps you churning as all around you the fabric of the world tears apart. It is an ode to humanity and it's porcelain fragility. Charly Evon Simpson and Gabriel Jason Dean break your heart with their seismic words as they interrogate the fallout of mass shootings. It's a chilling piece that navigates the wide canyons existing between people and how desperate we are to connect, but fail to find each other. It's a
FRUITING BODIES at Theatre Row
FRUITING BODIES, a new play by Sam Chanse, is a call to the wild parts of ourselves that have been starved of oxygen. It's a hunt to find the elusive, the dangerous, the long buried...The familiar family drama finds a different setting away from the dinner table to the forest floor with it's mercurial mycology. It's a thought provoking transformation play where the troubled characters enter the shifting forest, the unknown, and emerge somewhat altered. There are secrets to be revealed, hero's to be tested and dream fragments to confront. The Ma-Yi Theater Company takes us mushroom hunting into the
Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival: Spring Weekend
A selection of European stage readings in NYC, Bohemian National Hall, May 10-12, 2019 In spring 2019, the REHEARSAL FOR TRUTH theater festival, honoring Vaclav Havel, will add a weekend of contemporary European stage readings to their yearly program. The Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) partners with the Bohemian Benevolent & Literary Association to create a showcase of young European playwrights. The selection process includes choosing Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Slovak plays that have been translated into English and reflect on current social and political issues of the region. The RFT Spring Weekend presents dramas in translation, showcases the work of