Big Bird rides on a crescent moon on Met roof (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:Alex Da Corte, Shanay Jhaveri What: In-person discussion of Alex Da Corte’s Roof Garden Commission Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Avenue When: Friday, October 29, free with museum admission and advance RSVP, 5:30 (installation on view through October 31) Why: In previous works, Camden-born, Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte has embodied such famous real and fictional figures as Eminem, Mr. Rogers, and the Wicked Witch of the West. For his commission on the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, As Long as the Sun Lasts, Da Corte took on the persona of Jim Henson in creating a work that melds childhood memories with visions of the endless sky, inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles and sculpture, Little Tikes plastic outdoor activity gyms, Donna Summer’s Four Seasons of Love album cover, the blue Garibaldo character from the Brazilian version of Sesame Street that he watched as a kid in Venezuela, the song from the 1985 movie Follow That Bird in which Big Bird gets painted blue, and the Italo Calvino titular short story.
Alex Da Corte’s As Long as the Sun Lasts continues through Halloween (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The result is a playful and colorful kinetic sculpture that moves with the wind as Big Bird, covered in more than seven thousand handmade feathers, rides around on a crescent moon, holding on to a ladder of hope. Referring to his transformation into Henson, Da Corte says in a Met interview with curator Shanay Jhaveri, “It stems from thinking about characters I loved or didn’t understand and wanted to understand more. And I see Jim as quite a thoughtful maker.” For those who want to understand more about the installation, which is on view through October 31, Da Corte — likely in costume as Henson — and Jhaveri will sit down for another talk, in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Met on October 29 at 5:30.
River L. Ramirez will discuss their latest project, GhostFolk, in a live BAC Zoom talk
Who:River L. Ramirez, Lou Tides, Sarah Galdes, Morgan Bassichis What: Streaming performance and live virtual discussion Where:Baryshnikov Arts Center online When: Live Zoom discussion October 26, free with RSVP, 7:00; performance available on demand through November 1 at 5:00, free Why: “This is a piece about life and living and celebrating the innate ability that we all have here on Earth to love, even if there’s nothing to love sometimes, even if it’s just for you, even if it’s, you know, a feeling that’s kind of cavernous and feels so lonely,” River L. Ramirez says in their introduction to the virtual piece GhostFolk, streaming for free from the Baryshnikov Arts Center through November 1. In the forty-minute work, the Queens-based musician and comedian plays guitar and tells stories in a contemporary song cycle that explores everyday life, joined by Teeny Lieberson/Lou Tides on bass and background vocals and Sarah Galdes on drums, looking like a hip Halloween trio, with costumes by Peter Smith, makeup by Angelo Balassone, and spooky lighting by Devin Cameron. “A new day begins,” Ramirez declares in the first tune.
Hello! A video I made for baryshnikov Art Center is out now. It’s haha, it’s lalalaaa, and other stuff. Go see it! It’s up u til November 1st. :,)
Over the course of forty minutes, they explore quarantine, read personal poems, find the face of Jesus in a plantain, call for babies to help us out of the mess we’re in, search for what’s next, explain that trolls are real, scream and screech, and listen to an animated frog as, occasionally, a figure in a sheet with holes dances in solitude. GhostFolk was filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater; Tenenbaum, a star of the pandemic lockdown, has also shot such BAC works as Landrover and Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm. On October 26 at 7:00, Ramirez, whose social media name is Pile of Tears and who used to do standup as Lorelei Ramirez, will discuss GhostFolk and more with comedian Morgan Bassichis in a live Zoom Q&A.
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room — Illusion Inside the Heart sits like a UFO in a grassy field at NYBG (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
April 10 – October 31, $15 children two to twelve, $35 adults, $10 for Infinity Room, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700 www.nybg.org online slideshow
“How vast and boundless the provisions of nature!” Yayoi Kusama has declared. The ninety-two-year-old Japanese artist has been attracted to the natural world since she was a little girl, when her grandmother ran a plant nursery in Nagano, and she later studied the nihonga style of painting, dating back to the Meiji Period, which depicts scenes from nature through a contemporary artistic lens. Kusama’s fascination with living things is on display in the endlessly fun exhibition “Kusama: Cosmic Nature,” which continues at the New York Botanical Garden through October 31.
Hymn of Life — Tulips emerge out of the Conservatory Courtyard Hardy Pool (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The show, comprising drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and installation, opened in April, but it has taken a distinct turn this fall, adapting its focus to pumpkins and chrysanthemums. “My pumpkins, beloved of all the plants in the world,” Kusama said. “When I see pumpkins, I cannot efface the joy of them being my everything, nor the awe I hold them in.” For the final month, the garden has brought in hundreds of real gourds, lining the flights of steps leading to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library Building and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory; in addition, three enormous real pumpkins are on plinths outside the conservatory, each weighing more than a ton.
Starry Pumpkin occupies the place of honor in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Several of Kusama’s small and large-scale pumpkins are scattered throughout the 250-acre Bronx oasis. Starry Pumpkin (2015) has the place of honor in the center of the conservatory, a glittering object surrounded by red, white, and yellow chrysanthemums in arrangements based on Kusama’s 2014 painting Alone, Buried in a Flower Garden (which is on view in the library), along with sections inspired by the Kengai (Cascade) style that resembles flowers hanging over a cliff, and the kiku method of Shino-tsukuri (Driving Rain) that gives the plants a windblown appearance. Inside the library are also the acrylic and felt pen on canvas Pumpkin TWOTOEL (2004) and soft sculptures of pumpkins from 2016 entitled The Sun Has Gone Down, I Am Scared as Much as Being Alone and Suppressing the Burning Desire for Death, which give an indication of Kusama’s longtime exploration of life and death and the often unusual names she gives her works.
Visitors are allowed to walk under Kusama’s Dancing Pumpkin (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Near the conservatory is the monumental Dancing Pumpkin (2020), a black and yellow creature you can walk under that resembles one of Louise Bourgeois’s spiders, while Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017) lights up and creates mirrored views that seem to go on forever in the Visitor Center Gallery. “What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness,” Kusama has explained. “That and its solid spiritual balance . . . its fat belly and unadorned features . . . its burly, psychological power.”
My Soul Blooms Forever welcome people inside the conservatory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
But “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” is a lot more than just pumpkins. The longest line is for Infinity Mirrored Room — Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), which sits in the middle of a field of tall grass and in between two small gardens, like a UFO landing in the country; holes in the exterior change the inside lighting and allow you to peer inside, where you will see your own face on the other side. I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020) is a smiling red, white, and blue star residing in the reflecting pool outside the Visitor Center. For Narcissus Garden (1966/2021), Kusama has placed 1,400 stainless-steel shiny balls bobbing atop a pond in the Native Plant Garden. Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) consists of trees wrapped in red polyester covered in white polka dots. Hymn of Life — Tulips (2007) features three large, colorful, childlike flowers in the Conservatory Courtyard Hardy Pool. The five waterbound urethane-painted stainless-steel flowers of My Soul Blooms Forever welcome people inside the conservatory. The exhibit also includes the obliteration greenhouse Flower Obsession (2017/2021), complete with household items and plastic stickers. Inside the Ross Gallery is a timeline and the multiscreen Walking Piece (1966/2021) composed of stills from one of Kusama’s most well known performances, wandering through New York City in a kimono and under an umbrella.
Chrysanthemum arrangements are inspired by the Kengai (Cascade) style that resembles flowers hanging over a cliff (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“I am happy that I have painted flowers. . . . There are no objects more interesting,” Kusama, who has voluntarily lived in a Tokyo psychological institute since 1977 and still works every day in her nearby studio, has stated. As “Kusama: Cosmic Nature” reveals, Kusama has created a lot of other parts of the living world, all pieces of an endless universe that exists beyond death, in her deeply personal futuristic environment that is filled with abounding wonder.
Alisha Rena Peek and Terri Ayanna Wright perform in Hope Boykin’s Redefine US, from the INside OUT at the 92nd St. Y (photo by Richard Termine / 92nd Street Y)
Who:Hope Boykin, Patrick Coker, Alisha Rena Peek, William Roberson, Deidre Rogan, Martina Viadana, Terri Ayanna Wright, Matthew Rushing What: New York premiere and other works from HopeBoykinDance Where:92Y online When: October 22-24, $15 Why: “We sometimes evaluate ourselves based on one another — the media, our neighbors, what we see from others, what they have and what we do not. Comparison is the enemy, but it can help to understand what else is out there until we, or, until I, discover my right to my own walk, giving value to trials, circumstance, and the weight of my experience as truth,” fearless dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin begins in her introduction to “. . . an evening of HOPE,” her October 21 live, in-person show at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, available on demand through October 24 at midnight. “And until then, until then, I won’t actually go anywhere, just around in circles, but not forward, not upward, only still. So, what do I do? Keep reaching? Yes! Always reaching, constantly searching, climbing, falling some, starting again. Wanting more, doubting, and hoping — but always hoping. . . . Incorporating yesterday’s thoughts with now moments will teach you what you thought you knew and maybe unclose your mind to my truth, my movement language.” The lights then rise on Deidre Rogan performing Again, Ave, a graceful solo set to Leslie Odom Jr.’s version of “Ave Maria.”
During the pandemic lockdown, Boykin remained busy performing the “This Little Light of Mine” excerpt from Matthew Rushing’s 2014 Odetta for the December 2020 Ailey Forward Virtual Season; presenting the world premiere of the dance film . . . a movement. Journey., part of the 92Y program “Charlie Parker: Now’s the Time – Celebrating Bird at 100”; contributing a short film in honor of Zadie Smith at BAM’s 2020 virtual gala; and winning a twi-ny Pandemic Award for Best Short Zoom Dance for the Works & Process at the Guggenheim commission “. . . it’s okay too. Feel,” a collaboration with BalletX.
Hope Boykin takes an intimate and personal look at herself in 92Y program (photo by Steve Vaccariello)
The evening at the Kaufmann Concert Hall continues with Patrick Coker and William Roberson in an emotional duet set to Ledisi’s torch ballad “No, Don’t (Ne Me Quitte Pas).” Self-described educator, creator, mover, and motivator Boykin, who was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and danced with Alvin Ailey from 2000 to 2020, focuses on herself, discussing her truth and movement language in the filmed segment About Her. Me., originally commissioned for Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre during the lockdown, sharing her thoughts about power, strength, tolerance, equality, choice, and being seen as a threat, dancing in a park over tender music by Gavin Luke.
Boykin next offers the New York City premiere of Redefine US, from the INside OUT, an Annenberg Center commission in which Alisha Rena Peek, Martina Viadana, and Terri Ayanna Wright swirl around in a changing series of long gowns for thirty minutes to a building score by Bill Laurance, yearning and demanding as they approach an exhilarating finale, joined by Boykin. The show concludes with Boykin showering praise on how the stage offers her a platform, particularly coming out of the lockdown, as Coker, Peek, Roberson, Rogan, Viadana, and Wright perform . . . with Your name, set to Kirk Franklin’s rousing gospel song “My World Needs You.”
But Boykin is not done yet, sitting down for a Q&A with Ailey associate artistic director Rushing. As she explains in a program note, “When given the opportunity to have ‘. . . an evening of HOPE,’ I wanted to take a look back at my life as a dance maker and rethink, renew, and revise what today’s Hope may have made. . . . I have waited, sometimes patiently, for my turn, permission to be given. Who have I been waiting on and why? I can’t wait anymore.”
Who: Lebert Sandy Bethune, Herb Boyd, Milton Allimadi, Lubangi Muniania, more What: Thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival Where:Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave. / Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th and 128th Sts. When: Saturday, October 23, and Sunday, October 24, $12 (virtual screenings free) Why: The Maysles Documentary Center’s thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival, part of Congo Week, concludes its hybrid presentation this weekend with a trio of in-person screenings, two of which are followed by live discussions. On October 23 at 7:30, Maysles will show Bill Stephens’s raw, recently rediscovered, untranslated, and unfinished 1971 film, Congo Oyé, made in collaboration with Chris Marker, Paul and Carole Roussopoulas, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, consisting of forty-five minutes of remarkable footage of Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s visit to Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo. At the same time, the Harlem-based theater will screen Lebert Bethune and John Taylor’s 1966 doc, Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, with Bethune, scholar and activist Herb Boyd, and journalist Milton Allimadi on hand to talk about the film, which was shot in Paris shortly before the controversial leader’s assassination.
Bill Stephens’s recently rediscovered Congo Oyé, is part of Maysles Documentary Center’s Congo in Harlem festival
On October 24 at 4:00, Congolese art educator Lubangi Muniania will moderate a discussion after a screening of Mark Kidel’s 1989 film, New York: Secret African City, in which scholar Robert Farris Thompson, who has been writing and teaching about African art and culture since 1958, shares his iconographic studies of the diaspora in New York, beginning with a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge in which Thompson explains, “We’re undergoing a ritual moment because we’re leaving Wall Street, we’re leaving Madison Avenue, we’re leaving white New York, and we’re entering one of the blackest of the cultural segments of New York.” Tickets to the events are $12 each. In addition, free virtual screenings continue through October 24 of Jihan El-Tahri’s L’Afrique en Morceaux (Africa in Pieces), Douglas Ntimasiemi and Raffi Aghekian’s Kinshasa Mboka Té (Kinshasa Wicked Land), Mathieu Roy’s Les Creuseurs (The Diggers), Kidel’s Pygmies in Paris, Sammy Baloji and David Bernatchez’s Rumba Rules: New Genealogies, Moimi Wezam’s Zero, and the above-mentioned works as well as more than a dozen shorts.
Six queens battle it out to see who has it worst in Six (photo by Joan Marcus)
SIX
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
256 West Forty-Seventh St. Between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Thursday – Tuesday through September 4, $99-$279 sixonbroadway.com
The premise of the new Broadway musical Six is as simple as its title: The six wives of Henry VIII battle it out in an American Idol–like competition to determine which of them had it worst, a riotous twist on the old game show Queen for a Day, in which women shared their personal problems on television, with the most heart-wrenching tale earning its forlorn teller a crown and various sponsored prizes.
Fighting it out in Six, which premiered at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and made its way across the UK and to Australia, Canada, Chicago, and Massachusetts before landing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, are the divorced Catherine of Aragon (Adrianna Hicks); the beheaded Anne Boleyn (Andrea Macasaet); Jane Seymour (Abby Mueller), who died shortly after giving birth; the divorced Anna of Cleves (Brittney Mack); the beheaded Katherine Howard (Samantha Pauly); and Catherine Parr (Anna Uzele), who survived Henry. Each woman makes her case in a spotlighted solo, set to music that ranges from pop to hip-hop to R&B and techno, performed onstage by the Ladies in Waiting: conductor and keyboardist Julia Schade, bassist Michelle Osbourne, guitarist Kimi Hayes, and drummer Elena Bonomo. The playful orchestrations are by Tom Curran, with flashy choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille, the music and movement referencing Adele, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, the Spice Girls, and other pop faves.
Each former wife of Henry VIII takes center stage in Six (photo by Joan Marcus)
Wearing dark, glittering spikey costumes bordering on futuristic S&M, designed by Gabriella Slade, the women take center stage one by one as Tim Deiling’s frenetic lighting evokes a medieval discotheque. Each woman details her unique relationship with Henry in such songs as “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” “Heart of Stone,” and “I Don’t Need Your Love”; don’t be surprised if people near you are singing along, because the 2018 cast album has been streamed more than a hundred million times prior to the show’s Broadway opening. A woman sitting in front of me even knew specific gestures made by the performers, moving and grooving to every tune and nearly jumping out of her chair for the grand finale.
In between songs, each of the queens explains why she should be ruled the ultimate champion. Catherine of Aragon declares, “Who lasted longest was the strongest.” Boleyn claims, “The biggest sinner is obvs the winner.” Seymour opines, “Who had the son takes number one.” Cleves states, “Who was most chaste shall be first-placed.” Howard demands, “The most inglorious is victorious.” And Parr concludes, “The winning contestant was the most ProTESTant . . . Protestant.”
The divas also throw plenty of shade at one another in their quest to prove that they had it worst. When Seymour admits, “You know, people say Henry was stone-hearted. Uncaring. And I’m not sure he was?” Boleyn replies, “Yeah, actually, come to think of it, there was this one really cute time where I had a daughter and he chopped my head off.” When Catherine of Aragon says, “How about this: When my one and only child had a raging fever, Henry wouldn’t even let me, her mother, see her,” Seymour responds, “Oh, boo hoo, baby Mary had the chicken pox and you weren’t there to hold her hand; you know, it’s funny, because when I wanted to hold my newborn son, I died!!!!!!”
Cleverly cowritten with sheer glee by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who previously collaborated on Hot Tub Time Machine, and codirected by Moss (Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical,Fisk) and Jamie Armitage (And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens,Love Me Now), Six knows exactly what it is, not trying to be anything else; it’s an immensely crowd-pleasing show that doesn’t overwhelm you with history but does make mention of Hans Holbein, the C of E (Church of England), the Tudors, the Bubonic Plague, Thomas Cromwell, Henry Mannox, and the Holy Roman Empire. “Let’s get in Reformation,” Cleves orders in one song. (If you’re afraid you’ve missed something, you can most likely find it at this Wiki fan page.) Marlow and Moss also inject a powerful dose of female empowerment, although it leads to a too-easy, politically correct finish. As Parr says, “Every Tudor rose has its thorns.”
The cast is passionate and exuberant, making tons of eye contact with audience members in order to gain their vote. I saw understudy Courtney Mack as Boleyn, replacing Macasaet, and she more than held her own with Hicks, Mueller, Brittney Mack, Pauly, and Uzele, who form a strong team that often repeats the familiar refrain, “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” but want to be known for something more in this exhilarating “histo-remix.”
NIGHT SAFARI / THE OLD COUNTRY / THE STRETCH
Steppenwolf NOW
Through October 24, $20 www.steppenwolf.org
During the pandemic lockdown, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company has presented a series of outstanding online presentations, including the Christmas audio play Wally World, the illustrated fairy tale Red Folder, the sizzling two-character drama What Is Left, Burns, and the royal chatfest Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! In preparation for its return to live, in-person theater next month with a revival of longtime company member Tracy Letts’s 2006 play, Bug, in which two people meet in an Oklahoma motel room, Steppenwolf NOW is giving us a tasty apéritif with a trio of three virtual works by Letts, available on demand through October 24. Here in New York City, the three online plays whet our appetite for the Broadway debut of Letts’s The Minutes, which begins previews at Studio 54 in March.
Rainn Wilson plays an unhappy tour guide in online Night Safari (photo by Robert Benavides)
Night Safari stars Rainn Wilson as Gary, a guide leading an evening tour at a zoo. Introducing the first animal, he notes, “In captivity, the Panamanian night monkey is monogamous and lives about twenty years. In the wild, they are not monogamous, and their life span is cut roughly in half. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, but you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself. The Night Safari frowns on editorializing.” But that’s exactly what he does as he takes the visitors to see the aardwolf, the boreal owl, the slow loris, and the paradoxical frog, discussing aspects of their lives that relate to his own failed existence as he slowly grows more ornery, harried, and withdrawn. “What’s so great about sociable animals, anyway?” he asks.
Wilson is a hoot (cue the boreal owl), delivering the monologue, which was first performed by John Gawlik in 2018, in black-and-white, standing in front of a bare wall where his shadow lurks; he is part stand-up comic, part criminal posing for his mug shot. Director Patrick Zakem and DP Robert Benavides photograph him from multiple angles, zooming in on his face or scanning the side of his body, intercutting color photos of the animals along with home movie footage. The thirteen-minute film is a reminder that humans are part of the animal kingdom, subject to the same trials and tribulations as other living creatures, except we tend to be more aware of our triumphs — and failures.
Tracy Letts’s The Old Country is reimagined as a virtual puppet show (photo by Christopher Rejano)
The Old Country, from 2019, begins with atmospheric establishing shots that situate us inside a diner made of papier-mâché and clay, from a spinning dessert tray to ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles to a pile of dirty dishes. Two old men sit at a table, clearly puppets controlled by visible black cords. “That was a damn good sandwich,” Ted (William Petersen) tells a soup-slurping Landy (ninety-seven-year-old Mike Nussbaum), who shortly replies, “I’ll feel safer when we’ve left this deadly place.”
Over the course of ten minutes, they share memories and complain about how things are today. “This isn’t grumpy old man talk,” Ted says. “There’s a principle, right? A scientific principle that explains why everything turns to shit.” Of course, it is grumpy old man talk, but he’s not necessarily wrong, either. Zakem makes you forget you’re watching puppets as they discuss food, sex, the waitress (Karen Rodriguez), and mold spores, their lives now dominated by their aging, death taunting them with every cup of coffee.
Tracy Letts keeps a lookout for life’s twists and turns in The Stretch (photo by Anna D. Shapiro)
Pulitzer and Tony winner Letts takes the acting reins in The Stretch, a fifteen-minute monologue from 2016, directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro and set at the 108th running of the $1 million El Dorado Stakes; Shapiro has helmed several of Letts’s plays, including August: Osage County,Mary Page Marlowe, and Man from Nebraska. The hotly contested race becomes a metaphor for life as Letts, playing the announcer, calls the event, featuring such horses as My Enormous Ego, Bold Defender, a Horse Called Man, Wudjacudja, Hold My Beer, Fata Morgana, and Canadian Navy, leading to such exclamations as “A Horse Called Man appears angry and confused, then retreats in impotent rage,” “Whistlin’ Pete seems completely focused on Sweet Sweet Sue,” and “Here comes My Enormous Ego!”
Something wholly unexpected happens at the finish line, and soon the announcer is delving into humanity’s failings, sharing doom and gloom about the future of all living creatures, prognosticating on interdependence and impermanence while a lullaby plays on the soundtrack. Letts, who has appeared in such television series as Homeland and The Sinner, such Broadway plays as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and All My Sons, and such Oscar-nominated films as Lady Bird and Ford v. Ferrari, goes from hyped up and excited to measured and foreboding as he essentially turns his binoculars on himself and the human race.
“These plays share at least one thread: a world off-kilter,” he explains in a program note. “But since I wrote these pieces, the actual world has undergone some hair-raising transformations, which have cast mysterious new light on these plays. They feel very much like stories for 2021.” The Stretch feels particularly relevant now, a gripping accounting of what our lives have been like since March 2020, with no finish line in sight.
