Regina Hall couldn’t keep a straight face while she presented the Best Actor in a Drama Series award to Kevin Costner, who missed out on the Golden Globes ceremony due to the flooding in California.
“Kevin Costner, he so much wanted to…” she started reading from the teleprompter, before letting out a giggle. “I always like how they write this. It’s like, ‘he so much wanted to be –’ no, I’m sure he did.”
In Memoriam 2022: 100 Great Celebrities Who Died In 2022
Regina Hall finding out why Kevin Costner couldn’t be at the #GoldenGlobes just won next year’s #GoldenGlobes for Best Actress in a TV Comedy pic.twitter.com/5WjI6zosdn
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) January 11, 2023
She showed little restraint as she laughed through the rest of her speech about the actor.
“But because of the – it’s been raining – the unprecedented weather and flooding,” she continued mockingly.
“Kevin Costner, he so much wanted to…” she started reading from the teleprompter, before letting out a giggle. “I always like how they write this. It’s like, ‘he so much wanted to be –’ no, I’m sure he did.”
In Memoriam 2022: 100 Great Celebrities Who Died In 2022
Regina Hall finding out why Kevin Costner couldn’t be at the #GoldenGlobes just won next year’s #GoldenGlobes for Best Actress in a TV Comedy pic.twitter.com/5WjI6zosdn
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) January 11, 2023
She showed little restraint as she laughed through the rest of her speech about the actor.
“But because of the – it’s been raining – the unprecedented weather and flooding,” she continued mockingly.
- 1/11/2023
- by Miranda Dipaolo
- Uinterview
The Snow Queen Written by Matt Opatrny Directed by Jessica Burr Presented by Blessed Unrest at New Ohio Theatre, NYC December 31, 2017-January 14, 2018
It seems fitting that The Snow Queen opened against the backdrop of New York's most frigid New Year's Eve in decades. Luckily, it deserves a very warm reception. Developed with the aid of a residency at the New Victory Theater and the advice of a class of fourth-graders, The Snow Queen entertainingly adapts Hans Christian Andersen's 19th-century tale, to which it adheres fairly closely in its major events while refocusing a few of its key elements, including the symbolic subtext of its central characters' journeys. The final product is a delightful balance of comedy, adventure, and just a tinge of melancholy.
The protagonists are two children, Gerda (Nancy McArthur) and Kay (Todd Grace), the depth of whose friendship is represented by the way that even their clothing and movements echo one another.
It seems fitting that The Snow Queen opened against the backdrop of New York's most frigid New Year's Eve in decades. Luckily, it deserves a very warm reception. Developed with the aid of a residency at the New Victory Theater and the advice of a class of fourth-graders, The Snow Queen entertainingly adapts Hans Christian Andersen's 19th-century tale, to which it adheres fairly closely in its major events while refocusing a few of its key elements, including the symbolic subtext of its central characters' journeys. The final product is a delightful balance of comedy, adventure, and just a tinge of melancholy.
The protagonists are two children, Gerda (Nancy McArthur) and Kay (Todd Grace), the depth of whose friendship is represented by the way that even their clothing and movements echo one another.
- 1/4/2018
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Amp Written and performed by Jody Christopherson Directed by Isaac James Byrne Presented by Goode Productions at Here, NYC December 5-19, 2017
Imagine, if you will, a frog’s legs, ending abruptly not in a frog but merely in its spine, carefully cleaned of the flesh that once held it. Next, multiply this image, and picture a chain of these macabre trinkets strung out in an elevated location. Finally, conjure in your mind’s eye a lightning strike that sets those legs twitching and jerking of their own accord. This is the one of the first images with which Jody Christopherson’s new play, Amp, confronts the audience, plunging us into a nineteenth-century stew of galvanism, resurrection men, and tragedy-tinged literary legends.
Amp sees Christopherson reunited with Isaac James Byrne, under whose direction we saw her last fall in The Players Theatre run of Sylvia Milo’s The Other Mozart, another one-woman show,...
Imagine, if you will, a frog’s legs, ending abruptly not in a frog but merely in its spine, carefully cleaned of the flesh that once held it. Next, multiply this image, and picture a chain of these macabre trinkets strung out in an elevated location. Finally, conjure in your mind’s eye a lightning strike that sets those legs twitching and jerking of their own accord. This is the one of the first images with which Jody Christopherson’s new play, Amp, confronts the audience, plunging us into a nineteenth-century stew of galvanism, resurrection men, and tragedy-tinged literary legends.
Amp sees Christopherson reunited with Isaac James Byrne, under whose direction we saw her last fall in The Players Theatre run of Sylvia Milo’s The Other Mozart, another one-woman show,...
- 12/10/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Pericles: Born in a Tempest Conceived and directed by Jordan Reeves Presented by Hunger and Thirst Theatre with the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project at the West End Theatre, NYC November 2-18, 2017
If you have ever dreamed of watching Batman fight in the midst of a Shakespeare production, now is your chance to make that fantasy a reality. How fantasy in the form of storytelling (Batman included) intertwines with our lived realities partly drives Jordan Reeves' imaginative adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles. Reeves' Pericles: Born in a Tempest both streamlines the sprawling original and weaves in a modern framing narrative in which the Shakespearean text becomes a book, The True Tales of Pericles, given to a woman by her recently deceased father. Of course, Shakespeare, arguably with a collaborator, was himself adapting a well-known medieval romance, the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, primarily the version set down by John Gower in his fourteenth-century...
If you have ever dreamed of watching Batman fight in the midst of a Shakespeare production, now is your chance to make that fantasy a reality. How fantasy in the form of storytelling (Batman included) intertwines with our lived realities partly drives Jordan Reeves' imaginative adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles. Reeves' Pericles: Born in a Tempest both streamlines the sprawling original and weaves in a modern framing narrative in which the Shakespearean text becomes a book, The True Tales of Pericles, given to a woman by her recently deceased father. Of course, Shakespeare, arguably with a collaborator, was himself adapting a well-known medieval romance, the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, primarily the version set down by John Gower in his fourteenth-century...
- 11/12/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Mecca Tales Written by Rohina Malik Directed by Kareem Famhy Presented by Voyage Theater Company and Crossroads Theatre Company at The Sheen Center, NYC October 20-November 4, 2017
The Hajj, the pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca, is the largest yearly gathering of people in the world, attracting two to three million pilgrims. A pillar of Islam, the Hajj provides the setting and structure for Rohina Malik's The Mecca Tales, which premiered in Chicago in 2015 and is now making its debut in New York. Its tales are those of five women whose progress along the road to Mecca also marks their difficult progress towards self-determination.
The women whose physical, emotional, and spiritual journeys we follow compose a travel group led by Grace (Kimberly S. Fairbanks), the group's New York-based organizer and guide. She mentions that the government of Saudi Arabia requires pilgrims to be part of a travel group, and she...
The Hajj, the pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca, is the largest yearly gathering of people in the world, attracting two to three million pilgrims. A pillar of Islam, the Hajj provides the setting and structure for Rohina Malik's The Mecca Tales, which premiered in Chicago in 2015 and is now making its debut in New York. Its tales are those of five women whose progress along the road to Mecca also marks their difficult progress towards self-determination.
The women whose physical, emotional, and spiritual journeys we follow compose a travel group led by Grace (Kimberly S. Fairbanks), the group's New York-based organizer and guide. She mentions that the government of Saudi Arabia requires pilgrims to be part of a travel group, and she...
- 10/26/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Werewolf of Washington Heights Written by Christie Perfetti Williams Directed by Charmaine Broad Presented by Carnival Girls Productions at The Kraine Theater, NYC October 11-22, 2017
Many readers these days probably know the feeling of anxiety about what appallingly reactionary new story will leap out at them every time that they set eyes or ears on a news source. To take just the latest in an interminable series of examples, as this review is being written, the head of the U.S. government is threatening to end aid to Puerto Rico, whose American citizens are denied governmental representation, a mere three weeks after an incredibly devastating natural disaster. As it happens, the production of Christie Perfetti Williams' new play, The Werewolf of Washington Heights, will donate one dollar of every online ticket sale to The Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico. It also focuses on the political effects (keeping...
Many readers these days probably know the feeling of anxiety about what appallingly reactionary new story will leap out at them every time that they set eyes or ears on a news source. To take just the latest in an interminable series of examples, as this review is being written, the head of the U.S. government is threatening to end aid to Puerto Rico, whose American citizens are denied governmental representation, a mere three weeks after an incredibly devastating natural disaster. As it happens, the production of Christie Perfetti Williams' new play, The Werewolf of Washington Heights, will donate one dollar of every online ticket sale to The Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico. It also focuses on the political effects (keeping...
- 10/15/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Petie Written by Lori Fischer Directed by Martha Banta Presented by Theatre East at Urban Stages, NYC September 23 - October 8, 2017
How many places have you gone in the past 10 days? Now what about in the past ten years? The matriarch at the center of Lori Fischer's world-premiere play Petie hasn't ventured beyond her Tennessee yard in the decade since her young son's death, an event that continues to bind the remaining family members' lives as surely as the property line bounds hers. Presented by Theatre East, a company that concentrates on new plays with socially relevant themes, Petie asks whether the family can become more than a prison and a site of fracture for these characters.
The eponymous Petie (Grayson Taylor) -- pronounced Petey but with a visual echo of petit -- takes his affectionate appellation from his father, Pete (co-founder and Artistic Director of Theatre East Judson Jones), a.
How many places have you gone in the past 10 days? Now what about in the past ten years? The matriarch at the center of Lori Fischer's world-premiere play Petie hasn't ventured beyond her Tennessee yard in the decade since her young son's death, an event that continues to bind the remaining family members' lives as surely as the property line bounds hers. Presented by Theatre East, a company that concentrates on new plays with socially relevant themes, Petie asks whether the family can become more than a prison and a site of fracture for these characters.
The eponymous Petie (Grayson Taylor) -- pronounced Petey but with a visual echo of petit -- takes his affectionate appellation from his father, Pete (co-founder and Artistic Director of Theatre East Judson Jones), a.
- 10/1/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Frantic Beauty Conceived and directed by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya Presented at Bam Fisher, NYC September 14-17, 2017
Frantic Beauty, the third installment of multidisciplinary artists Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s five-part Becoming Series, offers up a challenging piece of experimental dance theater. Choreographed with and performed by the Leimay Ensemble (Masanori Sahara, Krystel Copper, Derek Dimartini, Omer Ephron, and Mario Galeano), it takes as its theme what its creators describe as "beauty, frantically calling out from its captivity." In doing so, the production seeks to unsettle the boundaries of the beautiful.
The performance opens with its quintet of dancers criss-crossing in front of a single, audience-facing light in the otherwise completely dark and unadorned black space of Bam’s Fishman Space. The dancer’s bodies are segmented by, rise above, and fall below planes of light, inaugurating a play with light and shadow that carries throughout. At other points,...
Frantic Beauty, the third installment of multidisciplinary artists Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya’s five-part Becoming Series, offers up a challenging piece of experimental dance theater. Choreographed with and performed by the Leimay Ensemble (Masanori Sahara, Krystel Copper, Derek Dimartini, Omer Ephron, and Mario Galeano), it takes as its theme what its creators describe as "beauty, frantically calling out from its captivity." In doing so, the production seeks to unsettle the boundaries of the beautiful.
The performance opens with its quintet of dancers criss-crossing in front of a single, audience-facing light in the otherwise completely dark and unadorned black space of Bam’s Fishman Space. The dancer’s bodies are segmented by, rise above, and fall below planes of light, inaugurating a play with light and shadow that carries throughout. At other points,...
- 9/19/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Constitution Written by Mickaël de Oliveira, translated by Maria Inês Marques Directed by Jill DeArmon Presented by Frigid NY @ Horse Trade and Saudade Theatre at Under St. Marks August 31-September 10, 2017
Making its American premiere after originally opening in Lisbon at the National Theatre D. Maria II in 2016 under the direction of its author, Mickaël de Oliveira, The Constitution marks the first production of Saudade Theatre, an organization dedicated to introducing Portuguese theater to an American audience. While saudade refers to a profound nostalgia or melancholic longing for something or someone absent, the company's challenging debut play represents the product of addition rather than absence: in Saudade's words, a "meeting between an European aesthetic and the American theatre culture." With The Constitution, this cross-cultural conjunction produces complex results from a simple premise.
The elegantly spare conceit of Oliveira's play is that four people have been locked in one building together...
Making its American premiere after originally opening in Lisbon at the National Theatre D. Maria II in 2016 under the direction of its author, Mickaël de Oliveira, The Constitution marks the first production of Saudade Theatre, an organization dedicated to introducing Portuguese theater to an American audience. While saudade refers to a profound nostalgia or melancholic longing for something or someone absent, the company's challenging debut play represents the product of addition rather than absence: in Saudade's words, a "meeting between an European aesthetic and the American theatre culture." With The Constitution, this cross-cultural conjunction produces complex results from a simple premise.
The elegantly spare conceit of Oliveira's play is that four people have been locked in one building together...
- 9/7/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Friends Call Me Albert Written by Zachary Desmond Directed by Ryan Emmons Presented by No. 11 Productions at Access Theater, NYC August 23-September 10, 2017
The same day that we saw Friends Call Me Albert, Zachary Desmond's world premiere "bio-epic" of Albert Einstein, Gizmodo headlined a post about a new paper arguing that quantum entanglement is an inevitable feature of any fundamental physical theory, "Scientists Finally Prove Strange Quantum Physics Idea Einstein Hated." While the Gizmodo piece itself describes entanglement as "what allows particles that have once interacted to share a connection regardless of the separation between them," it also quotes Einstein's derisive description of it as "'spooky action at a distance.'" A century after his general theory of relativity was published and more than half a century after his death, Einstein remains, at least in the popular imagination, the central point of reference for modern physics. Desmond's play too takes this towering figure as its center,...
The same day that we saw Friends Call Me Albert, Zachary Desmond's world premiere "bio-epic" of Albert Einstein, Gizmodo headlined a post about a new paper arguing that quantum entanglement is an inevitable feature of any fundamental physical theory, "Scientists Finally Prove Strange Quantum Physics Idea Einstein Hated." While the Gizmodo piece itself describes entanglement as "what allows particles that have once interacted to share a connection regardless of the separation between them," it also quotes Einstein's derisive description of it as "'spooky action at a distance.'" A century after his general theory of relativity was published and more than half a century after his death, Einstein remains, at least in the popular imagination, the central point of reference for modern physics. Desmond's play too takes this towering figure as its center,...
- 9/2/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Aliens Coming: The Musical Written by Joe Kelly Directed by Griffin Osborne Presented by Ashcat Productions at The People's Improv Theater, NYC August 17-September 18, 2017
To open Aliens Coming: The Musical, the disembodied head of an alien computer (Misha Brooks) provides one interpretive lens for the interspecies comedy to follow: high school students represent a microcosm of human beings' grievous overestimation of their own individual importance in the universe. Even before the titular extraterrestrials in Joe Kelly's play arrive, the particular place in the universe occupied by Clementine Tweedy (Alice Kors) is in a state of transition, placing her relationship with lifelong Bff Brandi Boudoir (Maia Scalia) into conflict with her recent integration into a crew of art kids (Rebecca Lampiasi, Ashley Hutchinson, and Tessa Stokes) led by Brooklyn (Ariana Raygoza), who signal their cool by pairing dresses with sneakers and cigarettes.
Brandi's unabashed love of YouTube make-up tutorials no...
To open Aliens Coming: The Musical, the disembodied head of an alien computer (Misha Brooks) provides one interpretive lens for the interspecies comedy to follow: high school students represent a microcosm of human beings' grievous overestimation of their own individual importance in the universe. Even before the titular extraterrestrials in Joe Kelly's play arrive, the particular place in the universe occupied by Clementine Tweedy (Alice Kors) is in a state of transition, placing her relationship with lifelong Bff Brandi Boudoir (Maia Scalia) into conflict with her recent integration into a crew of art kids (Rebecca Lampiasi, Ashley Hutchinson, and Tessa Stokes) led by Brooklyn (Ariana Raygoza), who signal their cool by pairing dresses with sneakers and cigarettes.
Brandi's unabashed love of YouTube make-up tutorials no...
- 8/22/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Jessica Written by Patrick Vermillion Directed by Emily Jackson Presented by Sanguine Theatre Company at Irt Theater, NYC July 22-August 6, 2017
Recently, promoting his new movie The Big Sick on The Daily Show, Kumail Nanjiani talked about working with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, as a co-writer on a film based on the first year of their own relationship. He related an anecdote about composing a date scene to account for the fact that he remembered having a great time, and she remembered having a terrible time, if you imagine that same disjunction, but instead of a rom-com scenario, it is that of a conscious person being created, you will arrive at one of the central conflicts in Patrick Vermillion's Jessica. Jessica, crisply directed by Emily Jackson, is the 2017 winner of Sanguine Theatre's annual Project Playwright, an open-submission contest in which scenes from finalist plays are performed and the audience selects...
Recently, promoting his new movie The Big Sick on The Daily Show, Kumail Nanjiani talked about working with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, as a co-writer on a film based on the first year of their own relationship. He related an anecdote about composing a date scene to account for the fact that he remembered having a great time, and she remembered having a terrible time, if you imagine that same disjunction, but instead of a rom-com scenario, it is that of a conscious person being created, you will arrive at one of the central conflicts in Patrick Vermillion's Jessica. Jessica, crisply directed by Emily Jackson, is the 2017 winner of Sanguine Theatre's annual Project Playwright, an open-submission contest in which scenes from finalist plays are performed and the audience selects...
- 7/28/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Navigator in Love Written by Lasha Bugadze Directed by Adam Knight Presented by Red Lab Productions and Otar Margania at Teatro Circulo, NYC July 13-August 6, 2017
Playwright Lasha Bugadze makes the idea of needing some direction in life very literal in Navigator in Love, part of the Georgian-American Theatrical Feast taking place now through early August in Manhattan. The world premiere of Navigator, which won the 2012 Bcc World Drama Award for Best International Play, in a translation by Maya Kiasashvili is one of an array of events that make up the festival, the aim of which is to introduce American audiences to nine playwrights from Georgia, a country of four million that is described in the program as lying "at the crossroads of Europe and Asia." This celebration of Georgia and its venerable cultural history and vibrant contemporary theatrical community includes two full productions, free readings, and special events with wine and music.
Playwright Lasha Bugadze makes the idea of needing some direction in life very literal in Navigator in Love, part of the Georgian-American Theatrical Feast taking place now through early August in Manhattan. The world premiere of Navigator, which won the 2012 Bcc World Drama Award for Best International Play, in a translation by Maya Kiasashvili is one of an array of events that make up the festival, the aim of which is to introduce American audiences to nine playwrights from Georgia, a country of four million that is described in the program as lying "at the crossroads of Europe and Asia." This celebration of Georgia and its venerable cultural history and vibrant contemporary theatrical community includes two full productions, free readings, and special events with wine and music.
- 7/20/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Floor is Lava Written by Alex Riad Directed by Jessica O'Hara Baker Presented by The Farm Theater at Flamboyán Theater, NYC June 15-July 8, 2017
The Floor is Lava, the new play from Washington Heights playwright and screenwriter Alex Riad, is part of the 2017 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, a socially- and environmentally-conscious festival whose productions choose non-profit organizations to benefit. The Floor is Lava benefits Girls Who Code, an organization that is dedicated to closing the vast gender gap in the technology industry and that currently serves 40,000 girls nationwide.
The Floor is Lava (debuting, coincidentally, at the same time that the children's game for which it is named has become the most recent social media "challenge") takes place in the basement of Tom (Ian Poake), one of those seemingly ubiquitous young white males with a billion-dollar app startup at an incredibly young age and a Mark Zuckerberg-inspired fashion sense.
Tom...
The Floor is Lava, the new play from Washington Heights playwright and screenwriter Alex Riad, is part of the 2017 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, a socially- and environmentally-conscious festival whose productions choose non-profit organizations to benefit. The Floor is Lava benefits Girls Who Code, an organization that is dedicated to closing the vast gender gap in the technology industry and that currently serves 40,000 girls nationwide.
The Floor is Lava (debuting, coincidentally, at the same time that the children's game for which it is named has become the most recent social media "challenge") takes place in the basement of Tom (Ian Poake), one of those seemingly ubiquitous young white males with a billion-dollar app startup at an incredibly young age and a Mark Zuckerberg-inspired fashion sense.
Tom...
- 6/23/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Lou Written by Haley Rice Directed by Kate Moore Heaney Presented by Theatre 4the People at The Paradise Factory, NYC May 19-June 3, 2017
Quickly: how many of you have heard of Sigmund Freud? Now, how many of you have heard of Lou Salomé? It might surprise many audience members to see Salomé using Freud’s own psychoanalytic techniques on him late in Haley Rice’s new play Lou, but that is part of the point. Directed with an all-female cast by Kate Moore Heaney, Lou operates, to a large degree, in the genre of feminist reclamation, bringing attention to significant women unfairly elided by history. Much like The Other Mozart, which stopped in New York last fall to shine its spotlight on Wolfgang’s talented sister, Maria Anna, Rice’s play focuses on an exceptional woman lost over time in the shadows of the famous men with whom she lived and worked.
Quickly: how many of you have heard of Sigmund Freud? Now, how many of you have heard of Lou Salomé? It might surprise many audience members to see Salomé using Freud’s own psychoanalytic techniques on him late in Haley Rice’s new play Lou, but that is part of the point. Directed with an all-female cast by Kate Moore Heaney, Lou operates, to a large degree, in the genre of feminist reclamation, bringing attention to significant women unfairly elided by history. Much like The Other Mozart, which stopped in New York last fall to shine its spotlight on Wolfgang’s talented sister, Maria Anna, Rice’s play focuses on an exceptional woman lost over time in the shadows of the famous men with whom she lived and worked.
- 5/31/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Conspiracists Written and directed by Max Baker Presented by Stable Cable Lab Co. at Irt Theater, NYC April 22-May 7, 2017
Max Baker's new play, The Conspiracists, happens to be making its debut alongside widespread media coverage of the custody trial of toxic conspiracy monger Alex Jones, during which a lawyer for Jones argued that his on-air persona is merely performance art (a claim later disputed by his on-air persona). Many took this defense as a clear admission that he knowingly spreads lies for profit, but at least one writer has claimed that performing a character does not necessarily mean that the performer does not believe what the character delivers. That observation could apply equally well to the array of avowed believers who assemble as a support group in Baker's latest effort. In fact, one character, Hilda (Lisa Jill Anderson), posits, to the displeasure of the others, that belief in...
Max Baker's new play, The Conspiracists, happens to be making its debut alongside widespread media coverage of the custody trial of toxic conspiracy monger Alex Jones, during which a lawyer for Jones argued that his on-air persona is merely performance art (a claim later disputed by his on-air persona). Many took this defense as a clear admission that he knowingly spreads lies for profit, but at least one writer has claimed that performing a character does not necessarily mean that the performer does not believe what the character delivers. That observation could apply equally well to the array of avowed believers who assemble as a support group in Baker's latest effort. In fact, one character, Hilda (Lisa Jill Anderson), posits, to the displeasure of the others, that belief in...
- 4/26/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
How to Hamlet, or Hamleting Hamlet Written by John Kurzynowski and Jon Riddleberger Conceived and directed by John Kurzynowski Presented by Theater Reconstruction Ensemble at Here, NYC March 30-April 14, 2017
The average person probably has at least a passing familiarity with William Shakespeare's Hamlet. But how is it different to know the Western canon's arguably most famous tragedy from the inside, so to speak? And can that shift in perspective, even if observed rather than experienced directly, allow the audience to see the play afresh, with different eyes? In John Kurzynowski and Jon Riddleberger's metatheatrical comedy How to Hamlet, or Hamleting Hamlet, created and performed by Theater Reconstruction Ensemble (Tre), a quartet of people (Nathaniel Basch-Gould, Sam Corbin, Joshua William Gelb, and Emily Marro) find themselves unexpectedly performing Hamlet (a problem, one would imagine, that most of us are glad not to encounter). Tre is a collective that seeks to...
The average person probably has at least a passing familiarity with William Shakespeare's Hamlet. But how is it different to know the Western canon's arguably most famous tragedy from the inside, so to speak? And can that shift in perspective, even if observed rather than experienced directly, allow the audience to see the play afresh, with different eyes? In John Kurzynowski and Jon Riddleberger's metatheatrical comedy How to Hamlet, or Hamleting Hamlet, created and performed by Theater Reconstruction Ensemble (Tre), a quartet of people (Nathaniel Basch-Gould, Sam Corbin, Joshua William Gelb, and Emily Marro) find themselves unexpectedly performing Hamlet (a problem, one would imagine, that most of us are glad not to encounter). Tre is a collective that seeks to...
- 4/5/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Fred Written by Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose Directed by Dakota Rose Presented by On the Rocks Theatre Company at Dixon Place, NYC March 17-April 1, 2017
Dixon Place is a reliable venue for offbeat theater. If you're looking for, say, an earnest examination of twentysomethings trying to make it in the city, then it's probably best to look elsewhere. If, however, you're in the mood for sci-fi puppets or dance-filled reimaginings of Carroll's Wonderland, then Dixon Place has you covered. The latest of these unconventional offerings is Fred, a buoyant new comedy by Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose, creators of the recent The White Stag Quadrilogy.
Fred (Derek Smith) is a robot who began life as a pool vacuum and now spends his time keeping his inventor's widow, Diana (Shannon Holt), alive in a medically-induced coma since a long-ago stroke. Fred has decided to move with Diana from their home in Phoenix,...
Dixon Place is a reliable venue for offbeat theater. If you're looking for, say, an earnest examination of twentysomethings trying to make it in the city, then it's probably best to look elsewhere. If, however, you're in the mood for sci-fi puppets or dance-filled reimaginings of Carroll's Wonderland, then Dixon Place has you covered. The latest of these unconventional offerings is Fred, a buoyant new comedy by Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose, creators of the recent The White Stag Quadrilogy.
Fred (Derek Smith) is a robot who began life as a pool vacuum and now spends his time keeping his inventor's widow, Diana (Shannon Holt), alive in a medically-induced coma since a long-ago stroke. Fred has decided to move with Diana from their home in Phoenix,...
- 3/22/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Kyle Written by Hollis James, Directed by Emily Owens Presented by Hot Tramp Productions at Under St. Marks, NYC March 11-25, 2017
Kyle is the first play from Hot Tramp Productions, which promises "darkly comic" shows as part of its mission to create "pre-apocalyptic theatre for a post-Bowie world." Written by Queens native Hollis James, Kyle mines comedy from the depths of addiction and marks an impressive debut both for James as a playwright and for his and director Emily Owens' newly-founded production company.
Kyle (Hollis James) may feature in the title, but it is Jack (Nat Cassidy) who pays the rent for the apartment in which they live amidst bottles of whiskey and posters of Robert Smith and Minor Threat. When we first meet Jack, a writer and vinyl-collecting music nerd, he has just returned from a concert with his girlfriend, Crystal (Tricia Alexandro), and the two have decided...
Kyle is the first play from Hot Tramp Productions, which promises "darkly comic" shows as part of its mission to create "pre-apocalyptic theatre for a post-Bowie world." Written by Queens native Hollis James, Kyle mines comedy from the depths of addiction and marks an impressive debut both for James as a playwright and for his and director Emily Owens' newly-founded production company.
Kyle (Hollis James) may feature in the title, but it is Jack (Nat Cassidy) who pays the rent for the apartment in which they live amidst bottles of whiskey and posters of Robert Smith and Minor Threat. When we first meet Jack, a writer and vinyl-collecting music nerd, he has just returned from a concert with his girlfriend, Crystal (Tricia Alexandro), and the two have decided...
- 3/19/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Rachel Maddow’s surprise announcement Tuesday night that she would be broadcasting portions of President Donald Trump‘s tax returns created a frenzy on social media.
But by the time The Rachel Maddow Show aired, reaction was mixed. Many liberals were disappointed that Maddow only had two pages of the billionaire businessman’s taxes from 2005 – and no bombshell.
Conservatives – including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. – crowed that the documents showed Trump paid $38 million on $150 million in revenue, seemingly refuting claims that he dodged taxes.
Kal Penn got bored and changed the channel to Real Housewives of Beverley Hills.
But by the time The Rachel Maddow Show aired, reaction was mixed. Many liberals were disappointed that Maddow only had two pages of the billionaire businessman’s taxes from 2005 – and no bombshell.
Conservatives – including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. – crowed that the documents showed Trump paid $38 million on $150 million in revenue, seemingly refuting claims that he dodged taxes.
Kal Penn got bored and changed the channel to Real Housewives of Beverley Hills.
- 3/15/2017
- by Stephanie Petit
- PEOPLE.com
Les Bonnes/The Maids Written by Jean Genet Directed by Oliver Henzler Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club In association with L'Atelier Théâtre Productions at First Floor Theatre, NYC
Writer and activist Jean Genet's early play Les Bonnes (The Maids) was inspired in part by the real-life 1933 murder by two sisters, employed as maids, of their employer and her daughter. In his play, Genet transforms his sensationalistic inspiration into a stylized psychodrama that comments on forms of servitude and dependency, and the result has remained popular since its debut in 1947. Les Bonnes is the first professional production by L'Atelier Théâtre Productions, which "aims at presenting bold and inspiring European plays to a New York audience in the original language" and at creating a community of theater artists in New York who will blend American and European traditions. This production is performed in the original French, with English subtitles (by Lucy O'Brien,...
Writer and activist Jean Genet's early play Les Bonnes (The Maids) was inspired in part by the real-life 1933 murder by two sisters, employed as maids, of their employer and her daughter. In his play, Genet transforms his sensationalistic inspiration into a stylized psychodrama that comments on forms of servitude and dependency, and the result has remained popular since its debut in 1947. Les Bonnes is the first professional production by L'Atelier Théâtre Productions, which "aims at presenting bold and inspiring European plays to a New York audience in the original language" and at creating a community of theater artists in New York who will blend American and European traditions. This production is performed in the original French, with English subtitles (by Lucy O'Brien,...
- 3/10/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
We're back for the second week of the 19-day Frigid NY Festival, which is in the midst of an artistic occupation of the Kraine Theater and Under St. Marks, to discuss two more of its 30 plays. In total, we are reviewing a mere four, or 13%, of this year's Frigid shows, but information and tickets for all of the offerings can be found at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info. As every year, all proceeds from tickets sales go directly to the artists.
How to Sell Your Gang Rape Baby* *for Parts By Libby Emmons Directed by Michele Travis Presented by puss&puss at the Kraine Theater, NYC February 18-March 4, 2017
How to Sell Your Gang Rape Baby* *for Parts is the type of comedy whose title probably gives prospective audience members a pretty good idea of whether this sounds like it might be their kind of show. If it does--and we acknowledge that that's...
How to Sell Your Gang Rape Baby* *for Parts By Libby Emmons Directed by Michele Travis Presented by puss&puss at the Kraine Theater, NYC February 18-March 4, 2017
How to Sell Your Gang Rape Baby* *for Parts is the type of comedy whose title probably gives prospective audience members a pretty good idea of whether this sounds like it might be their kind of show. If it does--and we acknowledge that that's...
- 2/28/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
It's that time of year again: the Frigid NY Festival is taking over the Kraine Theater and Under St. Marks for 19 days, with 30 plays ranging from personal narratives to parodies to science comedy to the avant-garde. We will be discussing a mere four of the productions in our two dispatches from the festival, but information and tickets for all of this year's shows can be found at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info. As every year, all proceeds from tickets sales go directly to the artists.
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
- 2/22/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Fire This Time 10 Minute Play Festival 2017 Directed by Cezar Williams Presented by Frigid New York @ Horse Trade at the Kraine Theater, NYC January 19-February 5, 2017
The annual The Fire This Time Festival was begun by artists, for artists, and its purpose is to showcase early-career playwrights of the African diaspora. Traditionally, The Fire This Time has been composed of a variety of events, with the 10 Minute Play Festival serving as the flagship, and this year, its eighth, Tftt has expanded those events beyond the strictly theatrical, including web series and readings by playwrights and sisters Kia and Kara Lee Corthron from their respective debut novels. As an anchor to the festivities (and the only event that isn't free to attend), the The 10 Minute Play Festival has consistently put forth collections of strong, exciting work, and this year's group of seven short plays, performed by a group of seven actors, is no exception.
The annual The Fire This Time Festival was begun by artists, for artists, and its purpose is to showcase early-career playwrights of the African diaspora. Traditionally, The Fire This Time has been composed of a variety of events, with the 10 Minute Play Festival serving as the flagship, and this year, its eighth, Tftt has expanded those events beyond the strictly theatrical, including web series and readings by playwrights and sisters Kia and Kara Lee Corthron from their respective debut novels. As an anchor to the festivities (and the only event that isn't free to attend), the The 10 Minute Play Festival has consistently put forth collections of strong, exciting work, and this year's group of seven short plays, performed by a group of seven actors, is no exception.
- 1/26/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Transcend Written and performed by Kilusan Bautista Transmedia direction by Wi-Moto Nyoka Presented by Frigid New York @ Horse Trade at Under St. Mark's, NYC January 9-February 6, 2017
It seems fitting that in order to get to and from Transcend, a meditation by Kilusan Bautista on his experiences with gentrification and what he identifies as America's housing war on the poor, we walked down a St. Mark's Street scrubbed almost entirely of its grimy counter-cultural past and reborn as a corridor of gleaming ramen restaurants and Mac repair shops. Having debuted this past August at the New York Fringe Festival, Transcend has returned to New York after a run in California's Bay Area, another, perhaps even worse, hotbed of skyrocketing housing costs. Bautista's one-man show, his second, is an eclectic mix of narrative, spoken word, dance, and multimedia elements that focuses on his own experience of temporary homelessness as an exemplar of systemic inequalities.
It seems fitting that in order to get to and from Transcend, a meditation by Kilusan Bautista on his experiences with gentrification and what he identifies as America's housing war on the poor, we walked down a St. Mark's Street scrubbed almost entirely of its grimy counter-cultural past and reborn as a corridor of gleaming ramen restaurants and Mac repair shops. Having debuted this past August at the New York Fringe Festival, Transcend has returned to New York after a run in California's Bay Area, another, perhaps even worse, hotbed of skyrocketing housing costs. Bautista's one-man show, his second, is an eclectic mix of narrative, spoken word, dance, and multimedia elements that focuses on his own experience of temporary homelessness as an exemplar of systemic inequalities.
- 1/12/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
For Annie Written by Beth Hyland Directed by Emma Miller Presented by The Hearth at Lucid Body House, NYC December 9, 2016-January 15, 2017
Margaret Atwood famously wrote that men fear that women will laugh at them, while women fear that men will kill them. For Annie, the new play by Beth Hyland, is presented as a campus outreach event put on by members of the Beta Tau Alpha sorority at Suny Onondaga in memory of their murdered sister, Annie Lambert, a victim of male-on-female domestic violence. Directed by Emma Miller, For Annie is the inaugural production of The Hearth, a company whose mission is to "nurture and celebrate female-identifying artists" and "develop plays that represent the complex and vast spectrum of womanhood." Annie's story ultimately concludes at an all-too-common point on that spectrum.
However, as Leah (Julia Greer), the sister who plays Annie, says, Annie is more than what happened to her.
Margaret Atwood famously wrote that men fear that women will laugh at them, while women fear that men will kill them. For Annie, the new play by Beth Hyland, is presented as a campus outreach event put on by members of the Beta Tau Alpha sorority at Suny Onondaga in memory of their murdered sister, Annie Lambert, a victim of male-on-female domestic violence. Directed by Emma Miller, For Annie is the inaugural production of The Hearth, a company whose mission is to "nurture and celebrate female-identifying artists" and "develop plays that represent the complex and vast spectrum of womanhood." Annie's story ultimately concludes at an all-too-common point on that spectrum.
However, as Leah (Julia Greer), the sister who plays Annie, says, Annie is more than what happened to her.
- 12/20/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Wonder/Through the Looking-Glass Houses Choreography by Arrie Fae Bronson-Davidson Presented by Kinetic Architecture Dance Theatre at Dixon Place, NYC December 2-17, 2016
Lewis Carroll's novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There are mainstays of popular culture, having been reinvented in just about every medium imaginable. With Wonder/Through the Looking-Glass Houses, Arrie Fae Bronson-Davidson and KineticArchitecture Dance Theatre add a new, all-female vision of Alice to that lineage. This reimagining is as much the White Rabbit's story as Alice's, and when we meet the Rabbit (Arrie Fae Bronson-Davidson)--who is, of course, running late -- during an opening dance scored by David Bowie's "Time," she is something of a vixen with glittering ruby lipstick and nary a waistcoat nor a pocket watch in sight. In a bit of departure from the original novels, this Rabbit pauses occasionally for selfies with the audience,...
Lewis Carroll's novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There are mainstays of popular culture, having been reinvented in just about every medium imaginable. With Wonder/Through the Looking-Glass Houses, Arrie Fae Bronson-Davidson and KineticArchitecture Dance Theatre add a new, all-female vision of Alice to that lineage. This reimagining is as much the White Rabbit's story as Alice's, and when we meet the Rabbit (Arrie Fae Bronson-Davidson)--who is, of course, running late -- during an opening dance scored by David Bowie's "Time," she is something of a vixen with glittering ruby lipstick and nary a waistcoat nor a pocket watch in sight. In a bit of departure from the original novels, this Rabbit pauses occasionally for selfies with the audience,...
- 12/13/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Alligator Written by Hilary Bettis Directed by Elena Araoz Presented by New Georges and The Sol Project at A.R.T./New York Theatres, NYC November 27-December 18, 2016
In a note in the program for Alligator, the world-premiere play opening New Georges' 25th season, Hilary Bettis describes writing it in "a fever dream of alcohol, death, violence, and poverty." Alligator, the first of a planned series of collaborations by The Sol Project with off-Broadway companies to produce new plays by Latinx playwrights, carries the audience into a similar space, embracing chaos in order to map the "pain and destruction," as Bettis's note puts it, caused by the unplanned, unpredictable intersections of people's lives. Against the backdrop of the Florida Everglades in 1999, Alligator's characters struggle, compellingly if often unsuccessfully, within and against this chaos for self-realization and human connection.
At the heart of Alligator are Ty (Dakota Granados) and his twin sister...
In a note in the program for Alligator, the world-premiere play opening New Georges' 25th season, Hilary Bettis describes writing it in "a fever dream of alcohol, death, violence, and poverty." Alligator, the first of a planned series of collaborations by The Sol Project with off-Broadway companies to produce new plays by Latinx playwrights, carries the audience into a similar space, embracing chaos in order to map the "pain and destruction," as Bettis's note puts it, caused by the unplanned, unpredictable intersections of people's lives. Against the backdrop of the Florida Everglades in 1999, Alligator's characters struggle, compellingly if often unsuccessfully, within and against this chaos for self-realization and human connection.
At the heart of Alligator are Ty (Dakota Granados) and his twin sister...
- 12/11/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
No Man's Land Written and directed by Melissa Moschitto Presented by The Anthropologists at TheaterLab, NYC November 18-December 11, 2016
Given its focus on identity, race, and theatrical narratives, the new play No Man's Land could not be more timely, debuting as it did only a few days after Vice President-elect Mike Pence's, shall we say, controversial visit to Broadway's Hamilton. Created by theater company The Anthropologists and written and directed by Melissa Moschitto, the issues it interrogates have come increasingly to the fore of our national discourse over the past eighteen months and look to remain both pressingly and depressingly relevant for the foreseeable future. In the program, Moschitto discusses The Anthropologists' "unequivocal support" of the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on the company's work and personal realizations, but suddenly, police brutality seems just one means of oppression among many when officials are using segregation-era tactics on protesters...
Given its focus on identity, race, and theatrical narratives, the new play No Man's Land could not be more timely, debuting as it did only a few days after Vice President-elect Mike Pence's, shall we say, controversial visit to Broadway's Hamilton. Created by theater company The Anthropologists and written and directed by Melissa Moschitto, the issues it interrogates have come increasingly to the fore of our national discourse over the past eighteen months and look to remain both pressingly and depressingly relevant for the foreseeable future. In the program, Moschitto discusses The Anthropologists' "unequivocal support" of the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on the company's work and personal realizations, but suddenly, police brutality seems just one means of oppression among many when officials are using segregation-era tactics on protesters...
- 11/30/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Don't You F**king Say a Word Written by Andy Bragen Directed by Lee Sunday Evans Presented by Andy Bragen Theatre Projects at 59E59 Theaters, NYC November 4-December 4, 2016
Tennis, like any individual sport, isolates two people in a contest of focus and will, a push and pull of competition against one another but also against themselves. Andy Bragen's new comedy, Don't You F**king Say a Word, takes tennis as its structural conceit and thematic vehicle to great effect. Playing out on a white-lined, light blue set that evokes a tennis court folded up to create walls, Bragen's hilarious play creates a snapshot of two years in the friendship of a pair of New York City couples. After Kate (Jennifer Lim) and Leslie (Jeanine Serralles), who knew each other in college, have a chance encounter on the streets of New York, it does not take long before their respective boyfriends,...
Tennis, like any individual sport, isolates two people in a contest of focus and will, a push and pull of competition against one another but also against themselves. Andy Bragen's new comedy, Don't You F**king Say a Word, takes tennis as its structural conceit and thematic vehicle to great effect. Playing out on a white-lined, light blue set that evokes a tennis court folded up to create walls, Bragen's hilarious play creates a snapshot of two years in the friendship of a pair of New York City couples. After Kate (Jennifer Lim) and Leslie (Jeanine Serralles), who knew each other in college, have a chance encounter on the streets of New York, it does not take long before their respective boyfriends,...
- 11/22/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Roughly Speaking Written by Shara Ashley Zeiger Directed by Celine Rosenthal Presented by The Platform Group at Tada! Youth Theater, NYC October 29-November 20, 2016
A recent article on Gothamist discussing strident local opposition to converting a hotel into a homeless shelter -- opposition based, according to one quoted resident, on the idea that shelters destroy communities with drugs, violence, and prostitution -- pointed out that New York City reached a record high in September of this year of 60,000 adults and children sleeping in shelters (a number, that article notes, that doesn't count certain kinds of specialized shelters). In the program for the new play Roughly Speaking, the playwright and founder of The Platform Group, Shara Ashley Geiger, admits that she herself regarded the homeless with a mixture of uneasiness and fear after first moving to the City. Volunteering at the Xavier Mission Welcome Table and hearing the stories of the other...
A recent article on Gothamist discussing strident local opposition to converting a hotel into a homeless shelter -- opposition based, according to one quoted resident, on the idea that shelters destroy communities with drugs, violence, and prostitution -- pointed out that New York City reached a record high in September of this year of 60,000 adults and children sleeping in shelters (a number, that article notes, that doesn't count certain kinds of specialized shelters). In the program for the new play Roughly Speaking, the playwright and founder of The Platform Group, Shara Ashley Geiger, admits that she herself regarded the homeless with a mixture of uneasiness and fear after first moving to the City. Volunteering at the Xavier Mission Welcome Table and hearing the stories of the other...
- 11/14/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Other Mozart Written by Sylvia Milo Directed by Isaac Byrne Presented by Little Matchstick Factory at The Players Theatre, NYC September 23-November 13, 2016 and January 6-9, 2017 Mozart is one of those artists who has attained single-name status. We don't feel the need to specify "Wolfgang Amadeus" when speaking of him because, really, what other Mozart could we mean? Sylvia Milo has an answer, and her The Other Mozart aims to shatter the perception that produces the question in the first place. This NY Innovative Theater award-winning play has toured internationally since its 2014 debut in New York City, including in Mozart's birthplace, Salzburg, and has returned to the city of its own birth for another run. Featuring both period music and compositions by newly Grammy-nominated Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen, The Other Mozart shines its light on Wolfgang's older sister, Maria Anna. Nicknamed Nannerl, she was also a musical prodigy and composer,...
- 11/7/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Loon Featuring Robert M. Johanson Directed and co-choreographed by Dan Safer Presented by Witness RelocationAt Abrons Arts Center, NYC October 13-29, 2016
Mixed in with the calm piano music that plays prior to the start of The Loon, a new play that advertises itself as based in part on a 1980 Audubon Society record,* are periodic voice-over Gps directions guiding the listener out of New York City and northwards. This seems like an appropriate prelude, because The Loon packs quite a journey into its running time, from the midnight lakes of Maine, to the outer reaches of the solar system, to the inner workings of the human heart. Directed by Dan Safer, who co-created and co-choreographed the piece with the other members of Witness Relocation (Alexa Andreas, Kelly Bartnik, Sunny Hitt, Annie Hoeg, Eva Jaunzemis, Robert M. Johanson, Vanessa Koppel, and Trevor Salter), the play features Robert M. Johanson as the audience's guide on this journey,...
Mixed in with the calm piano music that plays prior to the start of The Loon, a new play that advertises itself as based in part on a 1980 Audubon Society record,* are periodic voice-over Gps directions guiding the listener out of New York City and northwards. This seems like an appropriate prelude, because The Loon packs quite a journey into its running time, from the midnight lakes of Maine, to the outer reaches of the solar system, to the inner workings of the human heart. Directed by Dan Safer, who co-created and co-choreographed the piece with the other members of Witness Relocation (Alexa Andreas, Kelly Bartnik, Sunny Hitt, Annie Hoeg, Eva Jaunzemis, Robert M. Johanson, Vanessa Koppel, and Trevor Salter), the play features Robert M. Johanson as the audience's guide on this journey,...
- 10/30/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Now Is The Time. Now Is The Best Time. Now Is The Best Time Of Your Life. Written by Michael Levinton, Laura von Holt, and Little Lord Directed by Michael Levinton Presented by Little Lord At Abrons Arts Center, NYC October 19-November 5, 2016
Now Is The Time. Now Is The Best Time. Now Is The Best Time Of Your Life., the world premiere play by Brooklyn's Little Lord theater company, takes its extensive title from "The Best Time of Your Life," written in 1974 as a new theme song for Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress attraction. The Disney portion of this allusion is, on the whole, less important to Now is the Time, which boasts a running time of 300 years, than is the contradiction inherent in the image of a historical progress that is also a circle, endlessly accumulating and endlessly vanishing. The accumulation is made concrete by the set, presided over...
Now Is The Time. Now Is The Best Time. Now Is The Best Time Of Your Life., the world premiere play by Brooklyn's Little Lord theater company, takes its extensive title from "The Best Time of Your Life," written in 1974 as a new theme song for Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress attraction. The Disney portion of this allusion is, on the whole, less important to Now is the Time, which boasts a running time of 300 years, than is the contradiction inherent in the image of a historical progress that is also a circle, endlessly accumulating and endlessly vanishing. The accumulation is made concrete by the set, presided over...
- 10/27/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Hedda (Gabler) Adapted by Matt Minnicino Directed by Joseph Michael Parks Presented by Wandering Bark Theatre Company At Irt Theater, NYC September 23-October 8, 2016
Henrik Ibsen's dramatic critique of bourgeois domesticity, Hedda Gabler, which premiered in 1891, remains probably his most often revived work. Hedda is still going strong 125 years later, now reincarnated in a fleet, fluid refresh written by Matt Minnicino and directed by Joseph Mitchell Parks, who played Lucius in 2015's inventive and memorable Titus Andronicus for the New York Shakespeare Exchange. In a play in which the name that someone is called signals ownership (or independence) and degrees of intimacy, Minnicino has rendered the protagonist's unmarried, titular name a parenthetical: Hedda (Gabler). When the play begins, Hedda (Valerie Redd) is more properly known (propriety being another of the play's thematic touchstones) as Hedda Tesman, having married ernest historian George Tesman (Kyle Schaefer), a "paragon of acceptability." George's rival,...
Henrik Ibsen's dramatic critique of bourgeois domesticity, Hedda Gabler, which premiered in 1891, remains probably his most often revived work. Hedda is still going strong 125 years later, now reincarnated in a fleet, fluid refresh written by Matt Minnicino and directed by Joseph Mitchell Parks, who played Lucius in 2015's inventive and memorable Titus Andronicus for the New York Shakespeare Exchange. In a play in which the name that someone is called signals ownership (or independence) and degrees of intimacy, Minnicino has rendered the protagonist's unmarried, titular name a parenthetical: Hedda (Gabler). When the play begins, Hedda (Valerie Redd) is more properly known (propriety being another of the play's thematic touchstones) as Hedda Tesman, having married ernest historian George Tesman (Kyle Schaefer), a "paragon of acceptability." George's rival,...
- 9/29/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Black Crook Conceived and Directed by Joshua William Gelb Abrons Arts Center, NYC September 17-October 7, 2016
The Black Crook, subtitled An Original, Magical and Spectacular Musical Drama, begins with playwright Charles M. Barras (Steven Rattazzi) stutteringly pitching the play The Black Crook to William Wheatley (Merlin Whitehawk), producing manager of Niblo's Garden, a theater that stood, in several incarnations, on Broadway near Prince Street from 1823-1895. This current production of The Black Crook adapts Barras's 1866 original and weaves throughout the adaptation a frame narrative that tracks the origins and success of what was a hugely influential piece of theater. Wheatley and his business partners combined Barras's melodrama with performances by a Parisian ballet troupe and other spectacular interludes, and the result, because of its single unifying plot, is often credited as the first book musical in American theatrical history (the program notes that the song "I Said to My Love,...
The Black Crook, subtitled An Original, Magical and Spectacular Musical Drama, begins with playwright Charles M. Barras (Steven Rattazzi) stutteringly pitching the play The Black Crook to William Wheatley (Merlin Whitehawk), producing manager of Niblo's Garden, a theater that stood, in several incarnations, on Broadway near Prince Street from 1823-1895. This current production of The Black Crook adapts Barras's 1866 original and weaves throughout the adaptation a frame narrative that tracks the origins and success of what was a hugely influential piece of theater. Wheatley and his business partners combined Barras's melodrama with performances by a Parisian ballet troupe and other spectacular interludes, and the result, because of its single unifying plot, is often credited as the first book musical in American theatrical history (the program notes that the song "I Said to My Love,...
- 9/26/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Blossom Written and directed by Spencer Lott At Dixon Place, NYC September 9-September 24, 2016
No one wants to hear the phrase "end-of-life decisions." Moments after being introduced to us via a daring act of heroism, James Blossom (voiced by Rowan Magee), is being advised by a doctor to make his as soon as possible. James, the eponymous Blossom of puppet artist, director, and filmmaker Spencer Lott's new play, developed with support from the Jim Henson Foundation, has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and we follow James and his daughter Kathryn, a.k.a. Katy, a.k.a. Katy Bee (Jamie Agnello), as they do their best to navigate the practical, psychological, and emotional fallout of James's disease.
The advance of his Alzheimer's precipitates James's move into assisted living facility, against his wishes, of course. There, he meets fellow residents Maisey and Ronald. The symbolism around loss of control generated by...
No one wants to hear the phrase "end-of-life decisions." Moments after being introduced to us via a daring act of heroism, James Blossom (voiced by Rowan Magee), is being advised by a doctor to make his as soon as possible. James, the eponymous Blossom of puppet artist, director, and filmmaker Spencer Lott's new play, developed with support from the Jim Henson Foundation, has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and we follow James and his daughter Kathryn, a.k.a. Katy, a.k.a. Katy Bee (Jamie Agnello), as they do their best to navigate the practical, psychological, and emotional fallout of James's disease.
The advance of his Alzheimer's precipitates James's move into assisted living facility, against his wishes, of course. There, he meets fellow residents Maisey and Ronald. The symbolism around loss of control generated by...
- 9/20/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Cloud Cuckooland Lyrical text by Matthew Freeman Created and directed by Djahari Clark Presented by Desert Sin At House of Yes, NYC September 8 - September 17, 2016
Cloud Cuckooland is subtitled "a story about death," and it begins with its protagonist, the Girl (Cassandra Rosebeetle), at death's threshold, looking like a patient etherized upon a table as we hear her heartbeat and a voiceover that talks about the "blank space" underlying biology. The Jackdaw (Zahra Hashemian) picks up this thematic thread as she sings about dying being worse than being dead and compares ephemeral humanity to the eternal bird world. The Jackdaw and her companions, the Crow (Renata Bergen) and the Raven (Amanda Mottur), offer the Girl entrance to their avian empyrean, a chance for her to replace humanity's ungainly locomotion with feathered soaring. They present her with a contract (its terms an opportunity for some light comedy), something that any reader...
Cloud Cuckooland is subtitled "a story about death," and it begins with its protagonist, the Girl (Cassandra Rosebeetle), at death's threshold, looking like a patient etherized upon a table as we hear her heartbeat and a voiceover that talks about the "blank space" underlying biology. The Jackdaw (Zahra Hashemian) picks up this thematic thread as she sings about dying being worse than being dead and compares ephemeral humanity to the eternal bird world. The Jackdaw and her companions, the Crow (Renata Bergen) and the Raven (Amanda Mottur), offer the Girl entrance to their avian empyrean, a chance for her to replace humanity's ungainly locomotion with feathered soaring. They present her with a contract (its terms an opportunity for some light comedy), something that any reader...
- 9/11/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
In the Event of My Death Written by Lindsay Joy Directed by Padraic Lillis Presented by Stable Cable Lab Co. at Irt Theater, NYC August 6-August 21, 2016
In the opening minutes of Lindsay Joy's In the Event of My Death, directed in its current world premiere by Padraic Lillis, Peter (John Racioppo) and his friend Amber (Lisa Jill Anderson) clean the trash from the living room of his house, which once belonged to his parents, in preparation for a post-funeral gathering to commemorate Freddy, another friend, who has committed suicide. Unfortunately for them, the past, and its hold on the present, will not be so easy to tidy away; in fact, from then on, events will get far messier. In Peter's suburban Pennsylvania residence, as a small group of Freddy's friends and relatives struggle with death in the Facebook age, death at its most unexpected, and death as a deliberate choice,...
In the opening minutes of Lindsay Joy's In the Event of My Death, directed in its current world premiere by Padraic Lillis, Peter (John Racioppo) and his friend Amber (Lisa Jill Anderson) clean the trash from the living room of his house, which once belonged to his parents, in preparation for a post-funeral gathering to commemorate Freddy, another friend, who has committed suicide. Unfortunately for them, the past, and its hold on the present, will not be so easy to tidy away; in fact, from then on, events will get far messier. In Peter's suburban Pennsylvania residence, as a small group of Freddy's friends and relatives struggle with death in the Facebook age, death at its most unexpected, and death as a deliberate choice,...
- 8/10/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Deathwatch By Jean Genet (trans. by Bernard Frechtman) Presented by the Hot BLOODed Theatre Co. St. Mary Magdalen Church, NYC July 26-August 6, 2016
Seminal existentialist writer and activist Jean Genet's 1949 play Deathwatch (his first) is intimate in its scale, consisting almost entirely of three men in one room, so it is appropriate that Hot BLOODed Theatre Co. has located their current production in a very intimate space on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The result of an actor-centered process that forgoes a director, this production, their first in NYC, is a lithe, lean hour of theater that bodes well for future productions and successfully implicates the audience in its own voyeurism.
The single room in Deathwatch is a prison cell, within which are confined George Lefranc (Max Kantor), Georgie to his cellmates, and the young Maurice (Beatriz Cavalieri), both imprisoned for lesser crimes, along with the murderer Green-Eyes (Daniel Csutkai), who is awaiting execution.
Seminal existentialist writer and activist Jean Genet's 1949 play Deathwatch (his first) is intimate in its scale, consisting almost entirely of three men in one room, so it is appropriate that Hot BLOODed Theatre Co. has located their current production in a very intimate space on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The result of an actor-centered process that forgoes a director, this production, their first in NYC, is a lithe, lean hour of theater that bodes well for future productions and successfully implicates the audience in its own voyeurism.
The single room in Deathwatch is a prison cell, within which are confined George Lefranc (Max Kantor), Georgie to his cellmates, and the young Maurice (Beatriz Cavalieri), both imprisoned for lesser crimes, along with the murderer Green-Eyes (Daniel Csutkai), who is awaiting execution.
- 8/2/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Sweat and Tears Created by Jess Goldschmidt and James Rutherford Presented by M-34 At Jack, NYC July 22-July 31, 2016
Sweat and Tears is a new piece of physical theater that draws in part of the past experience of creators Jess Goldschmidt and James Rutherford in karate and dance, respectively. These physical pursuits, which can also be viewed as ways of disciplining bodies, inform the play’s presentation of what Rutherford calls in a Theater in the Now interview "extreme acts of gendered labor." The production grew out of what were originally two separate pieces, one by Rutherford that centered around men fighting and one by Goldschmidt constructed around women crying, both of which, Rutherford says, "pulled from a broad swath of performance styles and cultural practices connected to public displays of physical suffering." In bringing these elements together, the non-narrative Sweat and Tears weaves at intervals into its physical displays both...
Sweat and Tears is a new piece of physical theater that draws in part of the past experience of creators Jess Goldschmidt and James Rutherford in karate and dance, respectively. These physical pursuits, which can also be viewed as ways of disciplining bodies, inform the play’s presentation of what Rutherford calls in a Theater in the Now interview "extreme acts of gendered labor." The production grew out of what were originally two separate pieces, one by Rutherford that centered around men fighting and one by Goldschmidt constructed around women crying, both of which, Rutherford says, "pulled from a broad swath of performance styles and cultural practices connected to public displays of physical suffering." In bringing these elements together, the non-narrative Sweat and Tears weaves at intervals into its physical displays both...
- 7/26/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Helvetica
Written by Will Coleman
Directed by Brock Harris Hill
Presented by Rising Sun Performance Company
Planet Connections, NYC
June 19-July 9, 2016
While avoiding mingling with guests during a crowded party in Will Coleman’s Helvetica, presented in its world premiere by the Rising Sun Performance Company (who were responsible for the excellent recent production of Sprucehaven B), protagonist Helvetica Burke quotes T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock: "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Helvetica herself is a writer, of children’s books, and her invocation of Eliot’s famously self-doubting narrator highlights her own cynical side, the side that sees existence as inherently meaningless and stories as a way to help alleviate this condition. She also, however, has a tenaciously persistent sense of childlike wonder and possibility, even if that side sometimes goes unacknowledged for stretches of time. Helvetica, benefitting...
Written by Will Coleman
Directed by Brock Harris Hill
Presented by Rising Sun Performance Company
Planet Connections, NYC
June 19-July 9, 2016
While avoiding mingling with guests during a crowded party in Will Coleman’s Helvetica, presented in its world premiere by the Rising Sun Performance Company (who were responsible for the excellent recent production of Sprucehaven B), protagonist Helvetica Burke quotes T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock: "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Helvetica herself is a writer, of children’s books, and her invocation of Eliot’s famously self-doubting narrator highlights her own cynical side, the side that sees existence as inherently meaningless and stories as a way to help alleviate this condition. She also, however, has a tenaciously persistent sense of childlike wonder and possibility, even if that side sometimes goes unacknowledged for stretches of time. Helvetica, benefitting...
- 7/9/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
The Golden Smile Written by Yaakov Bressler Directed by Joey Stamp Planet Connections, NYC June 16-July 3, 2016
The Planet Connections Festivity is "New York's premiere socially-conscious arts festival," dedicated to inspiring community outreach and social change and to operating eco-friendly productions. One of the full-length plays in the 2016 Festivity is playwright and researcher at Columbia University Medical Center Yaakov Bressler’s comedy The Golden Smile, which follows seven patients in a mental care facility in the 1950s as they attempt to create their own play.
The seven, identified only by their roles (Writer, Director, Angry Actor, Loathing Actor, Sarcastic Actor, and Critics 1 and 2), begin playing war, sparked by a claim by Angry Actor (Flynn Harne) that he saw action in the Great War. Unsurprisingly, this turns out not to be the best type of game for this particular group, and their noisy conflicts shortly incur the ire of a facility employee,...
The Planet Connections Festivity is "New York's premiere socially-conscious arts festival," dedicated to inspiring community outreach and social change and to operating eco-friendly productions. One of the full-length plays in the 2016 Festivity is playwright and researcher at Columbia University Medical Center Yaakov Bressler’s comedy The Golden Smile, which follows seven patients in a mental care facility in the 1950s as they attempt to create their own play.
The seven, identified only by their roles (Writer, Director, Angry Actor, Loathing Actor, Sarcastic Actor, and Critics 1 and 2), begin playing war, sparked by a claim by Angry Actor (Flynn Harne) that he saw action in the Great War. Unsurprisingly, this turns out not to be the best type of game for this particular group, and their noisy conflicts shortly incur the ire of a facility employee,...
- 6/23/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Universal Robots Written by Mac Rogers Directed by Jordana Williams Presented by Gideon Productions The Sheen Center, NYC June 3-26, 2016 (special performances: parents’ matinee, 6/12; audio described for the visually impaired, 6/15; Asl interpreted, 6/23)
Contemporary theater is not exactly bursting at the seams with works in the science fiction genre. With a new production of Mac Rogers’ 2009 Universal Robots, Rogers and Jordana Williams, the writer and director respectively of last year's acclaimed extraterrestrial invasion play cycle The Honeycomb Trilogy, reunite to continue bucking that trend. Universal Robots uses multigeneric Czech writer Karel Čapek's influential 1920 play R.U.R., commonly translated as Rossum's Universal Robots, "as a point of departure for an original speculative drama," borrowing some situations and concepts while crafting an alternate history that differs from our own in some smaller ways (real-life Čapek's brother and writing partner Josef becomes Josephine) and some much larger ones that we won’t spoil the fun of finding out here. Though Čapek's life and corpus provide the intertextual focus, audiences will also be put in mind of the works of writers including Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov, as well as of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, shades of which permeate not only the often Futurist aesthetic of the set but also the play's consideration of the means of production.
Universal Robots begins in Czechoslovakia a few years after its founding in 1918. Karel (Jorge Cordova), his sister Jo (Hanna Cheek), and his literary friends Vaclavek (Tarantino Smith) and Salda (Greg Oliver Bodine) meet every Friday in a cafe owned by Radosh (Jason Howard) to debate art, politics, and other Big Ideas. Their circle is joined on occasion by Tomas Masaryk (Sara Thigpen), the president of their "infant nation." Vaclavek criticizes Karel as a counter-revolutionary and a propagandist puppet of the President for his refusal to accept socialism as a viable option. The President, meanwhile, believes that government must be a form of Christian charity, and argues that the atheist Karel is really a Christian himself underneath it all. All of this discussion leads to a debate on the relative merits of fantastical and realistic theater, which in turns leads to a play by the Čapeks that imagines the consequences of an artistic class supported by a drudge class created by pills taken by expectant mothers.
Life -- or, artificial life -- imitates art when Helena Rossum (Brittany N.Williams), a fan of Karel’s and the daughter of a pair of scientists, appears at the cafe with a robot. The automata is pushed inside in a wooden wheelchair with a white cloth covering its head, looking like nothing so much as Hamm from Beckett’s Endgame, an appropriate echo given the emphasis in both plays on servitude and the importance of storytelling in/and memorialization. Just as, historically, Josef Čapek was responsible for R.U.R. being the first text to employ the word robot -- derived from the Czech robots, meaning forced labor or, metaphorically, drudgery in its current usage -- Rogers’ Jo lands on the term to replace Drudge, automata, or creature. Karel advocates to the end for depersonalizing language, including a ban on first-person or gendered pronouns, in order to maintain the distinction between the robots and humans, and it is interesting to note that it works for the audience, too, at least until it doesn't.
We learn that Helen's father is dead, and her mother, a driven, pure scientist who goes simply by Rossum (Tandy Cronyn) is working on continuously improving these robots (which are what we would probably call androids) and needs funding, but wants it to be from the “right” people. With the President’s approval, Peroutka (Neimah Djourabchi), a scientist and friend of the Čapeks, joins Rossum’s project, and the Čapeks themselves become its ethics advisors. Unsurprisingly, ethics becomes a central concern once mass production begins. The steadily increasing learning and sensory abilities of the robots engender increasingly thorny issues that range from the interpersonal and emotional to the roles of and in labor (one short question asked about robots for pedophiles could probably support its own two-hour play), and these issues come to a head as the Nazi threat looms and they are visited by Bernard Baruch (Greg Oliver Bodine), ostensibly negotiating on behalf of Fdr and the United States government, but also there on behalf of his fellow Jews. Regarding what follows, we will say only that Rossum’s robots turn out to be too much of a success.
Over the course of Universal Robots, these developments cause Karel and Jo to grow apart, and Jo becomes the true ethical voice as some of the robots move towards their "finished" form. The early cafe arguments over whether violence against an Other is an unavoidable mechanism of historical change (Masaryk's government massacred its opponents, but Masaryk knows that Vaclavek's socialist revolution would begin with the same tactics) find parallels in the play’s late stages. Soldiers and how they are used and discarded form a set of parallels both with our historical present (extending to Ptsd) and with the play’s other laborers. At least some of these connections would suggest that certain aspects of history are cyclical, and the play introduces both the idea that the inventors, the "brilliant freaks," are the ones who truly change history, not politicians or playwrights, and the idea that the most dangerous person is just such a dreamer when he or she is possessed of the power to realize his or her dream.
The gender-blind casting of Masaryk creates in her conflict with Rossum an extra textual effect of two powerful women each fighting for such a dream, and both are excellent at projecting strength and purpose under tremendous burdens. Jo is the heart of the play in more than one sense, and Hanna Cheek turns in a subtle, nuanced, and affecting performance in the role. Jason Howard, in addition to playing the steady, admiring Radosh, forges a similarly impressive, physically detailed, and notably evolving performance as the robot Radius. Jorge Cordova creates a charismatic Karel who loves his art, his family, and his country equally; his fellow intellectuals; Nikki Andrews-Ojo's imposing robot, Sulla; and the rest of the coterie of robots are likewise well-played.
Universal Robots combines allegory, allusion, humor, and propulsive storytelling to fashion a sweeping, almost Shakespearean sci-fi experience. Give your robot avatar the day off and go see this production for yourself. - Leah Richards & John Ziegler
Photo credit by Deborah Alexander
Dr. Richards is an English professor in NYC, and spends her free time raising three cats and smashing the patriarchy.
When not writing reviews, Dr. Ziegler spends a lot of his time being an Assistant Professor of English in NYC and playing guitar in a death metal band.
Contemporary theater is not exactly bursting at the seams with works in the science fiction genre. With a new production of Mac Rogers’ 2009 Universal Robots, Rogers and Jordana Williams, the writer and director respectively of last year's acclaimed extraterrestrial invasion play cycle The Honeycomb Trilogy, reunite to continue bucking that trend. Universal Robots uses multigeneric Czech writer Karel Čapek's influential 1920 play R.U.R., commonly translated as Rossum's Universal Robots, "as a point of departure for an original speculative drama," borrowing some situations and concepts while crafting an alternate history that differs from our own in some smaller ways (real-life Čapek's brother and writing partner Josef becomes Josephine) and some much larger ones that we won’t spoil the fun of finding out here. Though Čapek's life and corpus provide the intertextual focus, audiences will also be put in mind of the works of writers including Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov, as well as of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, shades of which permeate not only the often Futurist aesthetic of the set but also the play's consideration of the means of production.
Universal Robots begins in Czechoslovakia a few years after its founding in 1918. Karel (Jorge Cordova), his sister Jo (Hanna Cheek), and his literary friends Vaclavek (Tarantino Smith) and Salda (Greg Oliver Bodine) meet every Friday in a cafe owned by Radosh (Jason Howard) to debate art, politics, and other Big Ideas. Their circle is joined on occasion by Tomas Masaryk (Sara Thigpen), the president of their "infant nation." Vaclavek criticizes Karel as a counter-revolutionary and a propagandist puppet of the President for his refusal to accept socialism as a viable option. The President, meanwhile, believes that government must be a form of Christian charity, and argues that the atheist Karel is really a Christian himself underneath it all. All of this discussion leads to a debate on the relative merits of fantastical and realistic theater, which in turns leads to a play by the Čapeks that imagines the consequences of an artistic class supported by a drudge class created by pills taken by expectant mothers.
Life -- or, artificial life -- imitates art when Helena Rossum (Brittany N.Williams), a fan of Karel’s and the daughter of a pair of scientists, appears at the cafe with a robot. The automata is pushed inside in a wooden wheelchair with a white cloth covering its head, looking like nothing so much as Hamm from Beckett’s Endgame, an appropriate echo given the emphasis in both plays on servitude and the importance of storytelling in/and memorialization. Just as, historically, Josef Čapek was responsible for R.U.R. being the first text to employ the word robot -- derived from the Czech robots, meaning forced labor or, metaphorically, drudgery in its current usage -- Rogers’ Jo lands on the term to replace Drudge, automata, or creature. Karel advocates to the end for depersonalizing language, including a ban on first-person or gendered pronouns, in order to maintain the distinction between the robots and humans, and it is interesting to note that it works for the audience, too, at least until it doesn't.
We learn that Helen's father is dead, and her mother, a driven, pure scientist who goes simply by Rossum (Tandy Cronyn) is working on continuously improving these robots (which are what we would probably call androids) and needs funding, but wants it to be from the “right” people. With the President’s approval, Peroutka (Neimah Djourabchi), a scientist and friend of the Čapeks, joins Rossum’s project, and the Čapeks themselves become its ethics advisors. Unsurprisingly, ethics becomes a central concern once mass production begins. The steadily increasing learning and sensory abilities of the robots engender increasingly thorny issues that range from the interpersonal and emotional to the roles of and in labor (one short question asked about robots for pedophiles could probably support its own two-hour play), and these issues come to a head as the Nazi threat looms and they are visited by Bernard Baruch (Greg Oliver Bodine), ostensibly negotiating on behalf of Fdr and the United States government, but also there on behalf of his fellow Jews. Regarding what follows, we will say only that Rossum’s robots turn out to be too much of a success.
Over the course of Universal Robots, these developments cause Karel and Jo to grow apart, and Jo becomes the true ethical voice as some of the robots move towards their "finished" form. The early cafe arguments over whether violence against an Other is an unavoidable mechanism of historical change (Masaryk's government massacred its opponents, but Masaryk knows that Vaclavek's socialist revolution would begin with the same tactics) find parallels in the play’s late stages. Soldiers and how they are used and discarded form a set of parallels both with our historical present (extending to Ptsd) and with the play’s other laborers. At least some of these connections would suggest that certain aspects of history are cyclical, and the play introduces both the idea that the inventors, the "brilliant freaks," are the ones who truly change history, not politicians or playwrights, and the idea that the most dangerous person is just such a dreamer when he or she is possessed of the power to realize his or her dream.
The gender-blind casting of Masaryk creates in her conflict with Rossum an extra textual effect of two powerful women each fighting for such a dream, and both are excellent at projecting strength and purpose under tremendous burdens. Jo is the heart of the play in more than one sense, and Hanna Cheek turns in a subtle, nuanced, and affecting performance in the role. Jason Howard, in addition to playing the steady, admiring Radosh, forges a similarly impressive, physically detailed, and notably evolving performance as the robot Radius. Jorge Cordova creates a charismatic Karel who loves his art, his family, and his country equally; his fellow intellectuals; Nikki Andrews-Ojo's imposing robot, Sulla; and the rest of the coterie of robots are likewise well-played.
Universal Robots combines allegory, allusion, humor, and propulsive storytelling to fashion a sweeping, almost Shakespearean sci-fi experience. Give your robot avatar the day off and go see this production for yourself. - Leah Richards & John Ziegler
Photo credit by Deborah Alexander
Dr. Richards is an English professor in NYC, and spends her free time raising three cats and smashing the patriarchy.
When not writing reviews, Dr. Ziegler spends a lot of his time being an Assistant Professor of English in NYC and playing guitar in a death metal band.
- 6/13/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
This Time
Written by Sevan K. Greene
Directed by Kareem Fahmy
Presented by Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Sheen Center, NYC
May 7-21, 2016
This Time is the continent- and decade-spanning yet intimate new play by Sevan K. Greene, presented in its world premiere by Rising Circle Theater Collective, a group that focuses on original work by artists of color. Greene based his play on Not So Long Ago, the memoir of Amal Meguid, director Kareem Fahmy’s grandmother, to whose memory This Time is dedicated. This Time actually follows two threads of time, one in 1990s Toronto, the play’s present, and one that begins in 1960s Cairo and moves towards that present. In the latter thread, a young Amal (Rendah Heywood) meets Nick (Seth Moore), a Canadian on business in Cairo, at a party. Both are trilingual; Amal is blunt, honest, and married; Nick, avowedly romantic, pushy, and sleeping with his secretary.
Written by Sevan K. Greene
Directed by Kareem Fahmy
Presented by Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Sheen Center, NYC
May 7-21, 2016
This Time is the continent- and decade-spanning yet intimate new play by Sevan K. Greene, presented in its world premiere by Rising Circle Theater Collective, a group that focuses on original work by artists of color. Greene based his play on Not So Long Ago, the memoir of Amal Meguid, director Kareem Fahmy’s grandmother, to whose memory This Time is dedicated. This Time actually follows two threads of time, one in 1990s Toronto, the play’s present, and one that begins in 1960s Cairo and moves towards that present. In the latter thread, a young Amal (Rendah Heywood) meets Nick (Seth Moore), a Canadian on business in Cairo, at a party. Both are trilingual; Amal is blunt, honest, and married; Nick, avowedly romantic, pushy, and sleeping with his secretary.
- 5/14/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey Written and directed by Travis Russ Presented by Life Jacket Theatre Company, Here, NYC April 30-May 22, 2016
If you’ve ever watched the opening of the long-running PBS anthology series Mystery!, then you’ve seen the art of Edward Gorey. If you haven’t, well, he is not the most mainstream of artists, though perhaps the mainstream has edged closer to his sensibility in our post-Tim Burton, post-Hot Topic world. Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey, a new play by Travis Russ, does not walk the audience through Gorey’s greatest hits in common biographical narrative fashion (so if you are unfamiliar with his work, do yourself a favor and look into it on your own). In fact, in this play, Gorey refers to his most famous work, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, with clear weariness. Instead, Gorey quickly asserts that time is "fragile,...
If you’ve ever watched the opening of the long-running PBS anthology series Mystery!, then you’ve seen the art of Edward Gorey. If you haven’t, well, he is not the most mainstream of artists, though perhaps the mainstream has edged closer to his sensibility in our post-Tim Burton, post-Hot Topic world. Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey, a new play by Travis Russ, does not walk the audience through Gorey’s greatest hits in common biographical narrative fashion (so if you are unfamiliar with his work, do yourself a favor and look into it on your own). In fact, in this play, Gorey refers to his most famous work, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, with clear weariness. Instead, Gorey quickly asserts that time is "fragile,...
- 5/10/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Spam
Written by Rafael Spregelburd and translated by Jean Graham-Jones
Directed by Samuel Buggeln
Presented by The Cherry Arts
Jack, Brooklyn, NYC
April 14-30, 2016
Making a performance look easy is very difficult, but the fantastic new production of Argentine playwright Rafael Spregelburd’s intricately-constructed Spam makes it look effortless. Spam, making its English-language première in a translation by the City University of New York’s Jean Graham-Jones, probes some of those boundaries and spaces between appearance and reality, especially where language is concerned. Mario Monti (Vin Knight) is a linguistics professor with an ethically questionable relationship to the work of one of his thesis students and a case of amnesia from a head wound. As the play unfolds, both he and we come to understand more about how he ended up living in a hotel room in Malta, trying to hawk Chinese-manufactured talking dolls on the beach for...
Written by Rafael Spregelburd and translated by Jean Graham-Jones
Directed by Samuel Buggeln
Presented by The Cherry Arts
Jack, Brooklyn, NYC
April 14-30, 2016
Making a performance look easy is very difficult, but the fantastic new production of Argentine playwright Rafael Spregelburd’s intricately-constructed Spam makes it look effortless. Spam, making its English-language première in a translation by the City University of New York’s Jean Graham-Jones, probes some of those boundaries and spaces between appearance and reality, especially where language is concerned. Mario Monti (Vin Knight) is a linguistics professor with an ethically questionable relationship to the work of one of his thesis students and a case of amnesia from a head wound. As the play unfolds, both he and we come to understand more about how he ended up living in a hotel room in Malta, trying to hawk Chinese-manufactured talking dolls on the beach for...
- 4/24/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase Written by Mando Alvarado, Jenny Lyn Bader, Barbara Cassidy, Les Hunter, Joy Tomasko, Gary Winter, and Stefanie Zadravec Conceived and Directed by Ari Laura Kreith Theatre 167 West End Theatre, NYC April 9-May 1, 2016
The instantly recognizable blue logo for the A train provides the “a” in the sign reading "Once Upon A Time" that hangs high above the stage upon which You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase is performed. It alerts spectators that what they will see is not your typical take on New York City; and the creative force behind it, Theatre 167, is not your usual theater company. The company takes its name from the 167 languages spoken in its birthplace of Jackson Heights, Queens, and describes its mission as bringing together voices from a multiplicity of backgrounds in an intensely collaborative process of theatrical creation. You Are Now the Owner...
The instantly recognizable blue logo for the A train provides the “a” in the sign reading "Once Upon A Time" that hangs high above the stage upon which You Are Now the Owner of This Suitcase is performed. It alerts spectators that what they will see is not your typical take on New York City; and the creative force behind it, Theatre 167, is not your usual theater company. The company takes its name from the 167 languages spoken in its birthplace of Jackson Heights, Queens, and describes its mission as bringing together voices from a multiplicity of backgrounds in an intensely collaborative process of theatrical creation. You Are Now the Owner...
- 4/12/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
I Am Not An Allegory (these are people i know) Written by Libby Emmons Directed by Ali Ayala Horse Trade Theater Group, Under St. Marks, NYC March 10-26, 2016
I Am Not an Allegory (these are people i know) jumps into the big questions right from the start, with a conversation between café coworkers Ames (Natalya Krimgold) and Severin (Conor Daniel Bartram) in which she puzzles over whether identity is intrinsic or constructed and what would happen if she switched lives with the people she passes when she is running, and he wonders whether there is any meaning that isn’t manufactured. Ames and Severin are two nodes in the network of characters who populate Libby Emmons's play, in which a dance class run by Danesha (Masonya Berry), forced to retreat home after a failed attempt at a professional dance career in New York City, is the hub of their intersection.
I Am Not an Allegory (these are people i know) jumps into the big questions right from the start, with a conversation between café coworkers Ames (Natalya Krimgold) and Severin (Conor Daniel Bartram) in which she puzzles over whether identity is intrinsic or constructed and what would happen if she switched lives with the people she passes when she is running, and he wonders whether there is any meaning that isn’t manufactured. Ames and Severin are two nodes in the network of characters who populate Libby Emmons's play, in which a dance class run by Danesha (Masonya Berry), forced to retreat home after a failed attempt at a professional dance career in New York City, is the hub of their intersection.
- 3/13/2016
- by webmaster
- www.culturecatch.com
The tenth annual Frigid Festival is underway in New York City's East Village, and in our first of two dispatches from it; our first trio of plays under discussion includes a twelve year-old pornographer-for-hire, an irreverent grandfather, and a cabin in the woods. We will touch on only a fraction of the 30 shows in this year's festival, but more information can be found on the Frigid New York website (http://www.frigidnewyork.info/), where there is also a deal available that gets you into three shows for just $30. The show with the highest box office will receive an encore performance at the end of the festival, and audiences are encouraged to vote for their favorite shows.
The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn Written and performed by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Under St. Marks, NYC February 24-March 5, 2016
Brad Lawrence’s The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, much like its director Cyndi Freeman...
The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn Written and performed by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Under St. Marks, NYC February 24-March 5, 2016
Brad Lawrence’s The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, much like its director Cyndi Freeman...
- 2/23/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
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