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THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF A WOMAN IN NEED

Naima Mora portrays different versions of herself in The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need (photos by Harris Davey)

Who: Naima Mora
What: On-demand livestreamed solo show The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need
Where: Vimeo
When: Through November 11, $10
Why: In the prologue to her debut solo show, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need, Naima Mora, wearing jeans and a tight white tank top, holding a pink rose, describes the day in Harlem in 2002 when she realized she needed to turn her unhappy, unsatisfying life around. “I sit alone in my room, on my bed, wondering how I got here, wondering why I’m in this hell of a city, wondering why I’m killing myself to be here, wondering why my hair is falling out, wondering why I partied all night shoveling drugs up my nose, wondering why I’m sabotaging myself,” she says. “And then, I have to cradle myself, be gentle with myself, fall in love with myself, breathe and try to forget the last eight hours, and then forgive myself: forgive myself for being a drunk, for wanting insatiable fun to fill a void and forget the disappointment that I have with myself. And to myself, in my room, on my bed, guilt having settled in, and a little bit of a panic attack, just a little bit, I think to myself, I forgive you. I forgive you for being a fucking mess.”

Mora then admits, “Now, I’ve lived many lives: a supermodel, a crazy woman, and a gold digger, but I still haven’t really lived. So why not tell my story. I need to tell my story. I need to get this shit out of my body and out of my head. I need to rid myself of this self-inflicted destruction.” For the next seventy-five minutes, Mora portrays each of those characters, Penelope the supermodel, who can’t get a runway job anymore; the quirky Joanne, who suffers miscarriages and spends time in a psychiatric hospital; and Marisol Yanette Arnelis Rodriguez Lopes, a ritualistic woman facing too much solitude, offering such life lessons as “Get Your Hands Off My Peach Fuzz” and “Checkmate the Seduction: Train the Eggplant.” The set features a chair, a table, and a couch, a few props, and a screen on which photographs are projected.

An America’s Next Top Model winner, actress, author, and inspirational speaker, Mora who was born in Detroit in 1984, is barely recognizable in the roles, immersing herself fully into them, each with very different costumes, accents, hair, and movement. Directed and cowritten by Brooklyn native Marishka S. Phillips, The Amazing Adventures of a Woman in Need is a deeply intimate tale that also provides a roadmap for personal introspection; watching Mora deal with her issues so openly is likely to encourage audiences to do the same.

The show was recorded live with an audience at the Triad Theater on October 16 and continues on demand through November 11. Mora bravely puts herself out there as she battles her demons in public; she also traced the development of the play on social media. In a Twitter post, she wrote, “My director is pushing me to my limits this week. Asking me to expand and literally stretch my artistic muscle for our show coming up in just 2 days!!! This has truly been a transformative experience.”

MIA HANSEN-LØVE SELECTS

Mia Hansen-Løve is curating an inspirational series at Metrograph (photo by Judicaël Perrin)

MIA HANSEN-LØVE SELECTS
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
November 5-13
212-660-0312
nyc.metrograph.com

“Filmmaking is a perpetual questioning of existence. What is beauty? Why am I living? And I need that, I think, perhaps because of being the daughter of two philosophy teachers,” French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve told the Guardian in 2016. A critics darling and regular award winner for her intimate tales of family drama and romantic love (Goodbye First Love, The Father of My Children, Things to Come), often with semiautobiographical elements involving her DJ brother, her philosophy professor parents, and her long relationship with former husband Olivier Assayas, she is ready to make a big jump with her latest film and first in English, Bergman Island, in which a pair of filmmakers (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth) seek inspiration on Fårö Island, where Ingmar Bergman lived and made some of his finest films.

In conjunction with the film’s release, she is curating a program at Metrograph, “Mia Hansen-Løve Selects,” running November 5-13, consisting of six films that had an impact on her, in addition to her debut. Earlier this year, for a similar series at BAMPFA in California, she chose Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière, Gérard Blain’s The Pelican, Bo Widerberg’s Adalen 31, and Éric Rohmer’s Summer. Her Metrograph lineup is similarly diverse: Bergman actor Victor Sjöström’s 1928 silent classic, The Wind; indie favorite Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, in which Michelle Williams portrays a homeless woman on the move with her dog; Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter, about a single mother searching for companionship; Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur, a unique take on happiness; Edward Yang’s epic four-hour A Brighter Summer Day, about teen angst in Taiwan; and Hou’s dizzying, swirling Millennium Mambo, starring a resplendent performance by Shu Qi. The series is anchored by Hansen-Løve’s 2007 debut feature, All Is Forgiven, being shown November 5-18 (and available on demand), about a family in crisis because of drug addiction. Below are select reviews.

Lillian Gish in The Wind

Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) is being driven crazy by internal and external sources in The Wind

THE WIND (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
Metrograph
Friday, November 5, and Sunday, November 7, noon
nyc.metrograph.com

Victor Sjöström’s 1928 now-classic silent film The Wind stars Lillian Gish as Letty Mason, a young woman moving from Virginia to Texas to live with her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle). Traveling from the cultured, civilized East to what was still the wild West, the uncertain Letty must confront the fierceness of nature head-on — both human nature and the harsh natural environment. On the train, she is wooed by cattleman Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love), but her fears grow as she first sees the vicious wind howling outside the train window the closer she gets to her destination. Once in Sweetwater, she is picked up by her cousin’s neighbors, the handsome Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) and his goofy sidekick, Sourdough (William Orlamond). Both men take a quick liking to Letty, who seems most attracted to Wirt. Soon Beverly’s wife, Cora (Dorothy Cumming, in her next-to-last film before retiring), becomes jealous of Letty’s closeness with her husband and kids and kicks her out, leaving a desperate Letty to make choices she might not be ready for as the wind outside becomes fiercer and ever-more dangerous.

The Wind

Letty Mason (Lillian Gish) and Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson) have some tough decisions to make in Victor Sjöström’s silent classic

The Wind is a tour de force for Gish in her last silent movie, not only because of her emotionally gripping portrayal of Letty, but because she put the entire production together, obtaining the rights to the novel by Dorothy Scarborough, hiring the Swedish director and star Hanson, and arguing over the ending with the producers and Irving Thalberg. (Unfortunately, she lost on that account, just about the only thing that did not go the way she wanted.)

Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage, The Divine Woman), who played Professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and cinematographer John Arnold create some dazzling effects as a twister threatens and Letty battles both inside and outside; she is regularly shot from the side, at the door of the shack where she lives, not knowing if she’d be safer inside or outside as the wind and sand blast over her. The film, an early look at climate change, was shot in the Mojave Desert in difficult circumstances; to get the wind to swirl, the crew used propellers from eight airplanes. Dialogue is sparse, and the story is told primarily in taut visuals.

LE BONHEUR

François (Jean-Claude Drouot) tries to convince Thérèse (Claire Drouot, his real-life wife), that he has plenty of happiness to spread around in Le Bonheur

LE BONHEUR (HAPPINESS) (Agnès Varda, 1965)
Metrograph
Friday, November 5, and Monday, November 8, 6:45
nyc.metrograph.com

In 1965, French Nouvelle Vague auteur Agnès Varda said about her third film, Le Bonheur, which translates as Happiness: “Happiness is mistaken sadness, and the film will be subversive in its great sweetness. It will be a beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside. Happiness adds up; torment does too.” That is all true more than fifty years later, as the film still invites divided reaction from critics. “Miss Varda’s dissection of amour, as French as any of Collette’s works, is strikingly adult and unembarrassed in its depiction of the variety of love, but it is as illogical as a child’s dream,” A. H. Weiler wrote in the New York Times in May 1966. “Her ‘Happiness,’ a seeming idyll sheathed in irony, is obvious and tender, irresponsible and shocking and continuously provocative.” All these decades later, the brief eighty-minute film is all that and more, save for the claim that it is illogical. In a patriarchal society, it actually makes perfect, though infuriating, sense.

François and Émilie (Marie-France Boyer) seek out their own happiness in Nouvelle Vague classic

François and Émilie (Marie-France Boyer) seek out their own happiness in Nouvelle Vague classic

French television star Jean-Claude Drouot (Thierry La Fronde) stars as the handsome François, who is leading an idyllic life with his beautiful wife, Thérèse (Claire Drouot), and their delightful kids, Pierrot (Olivier Drouot) and Gisou (Sandrine Drouot), in the small, tight-knit Parisian suburb of Fontenay. While away on a job, François meets the beautiful Émilie (Marie-France Boyer), a postal clerk who connects him to his wife via long-distance telephone, flirting with him although she knows he is happily married. And despite being happily married, François returns the flirtation, offering to help with her shelves when she moves into an apartment in Fontenay. Both François and Émilie believe that there is more than enough happiness to go around for everyone, without any complications. “Be happy too, don’t worry,” Émilie tells him. “I’m free, happy, and you’re not the first,” to which he soon adds, “Such happiness!” And it turns out that even tragedy won’t put a stop to the happiness, in a plot point that angered, disappointed, confused, and upset many critics as well as the audience but is key to Varda’s modern-day fairy tale.

The beauty of nature plays a key role in LE BONHEUR

The beauty of nature plays a key role in Le Bonheur

Le Bonheur is Varda’s first film in color, and she seems to have been heavily influenced by her husband, Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), bathing the film in stunning hues that mimic Impressionist paintings, particularly the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in a series of picnics and flower-filled vases. In a sly nod, at one point a black-and-white television is playing the 1959 film Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe (“Picnic on the Grass”), which was directed by Jean Renoir, one of Auguste’s sons, and also deals with sex, passion, procreation, and nature. Le Bonheur also features numerous scenes that dissolve out in singular blocks of color that take over the entire screen. Cinematographers Claude Beausoleil and Jean Rabier shoot the film as if it takes place in a candy-colored Garden of Eden, all set to the music of Mozart, performed by Jean-Michel Defaye. Varda doesn’t allow any detail to get away from her; even the protagonists’ jobs are critical to the story: François is a carpenter who helps builds new lives for people; Thérèse is a seamstress who is in the midst of making a wedding gown; and Émilie works in the post office, an intermediary for keeping people together. As a final touch, François, who represents aspects of France as a nation under Charles de Gaulle, and his family are played by the actual Drouot clan: Jean-Claude and Claire are married in real life (and still are husband and wife after more than fifty years), and Olivier and Sandrine are their actual children, so Le Bonheur ends up being a family affair in more ways than one.

MORNING SUN

Edie Falco, Marin Ireland, and Blair Brown are extraordinary as three generations of one family in Morning Sun (photo © Matthew Murphy 2021)

MORNING SUN
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 19, $99-$109
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Tony winner Simon Stephens’s Morning Sun opened tonight at New York City Center’s Stage I, starring three sensational actresses: Tony winner and Emmy nominee Blair Brown, Emmy winner and Tony nominee Edie Falco, and Tony nominee Marin Ireland. They play three generations of women in the McBride clan: Falco is Charley McBride, Brown is her mother, Claudette, and Ireland is Charley’s daughter, Tessa. The script identifies them as 1, 2, and 3, respectively; while Falco is Charley throughout the hundred-minute Manhattan Theatre Club production, Brown and Ireland also portray numerous other characters, including friends, relatives, and lovers, reenacting moments from the past without changing costumes and altering their demeanor only slightly if at all. It sometimes takes a few lines for the audience to figure out one of these transitions, to discern who is speaking, but that’s part of the play’s attraction.

The structure can’t help but call to mind Edward Albee’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Three Tall Women, in which a trio of sensational actresses — most recently Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf, and Alison Pill in the show’s 2018 Broadway debut — portrayed three generations of unnamed women who the script identifies as A, B, and C. From the very start of Morning Sun, however, Stephens references not only Edward Albee but also artist Edward Hopper, and it’s clear that these women live in a different social class than the triad of Three Tall Women and that Stephens’s project is very different from Albee’s.

The show begins with an obtuse conversation that sets the mood and signals what is to come next:

Charley: Am I safe?
Tessa: You ask yourself.
Claudette: And I can’t really understand your question.
Charley: I want to know if I’m safe.
Claudette: Please be quiet.
Charley: I’m very scared. I’m very confused it’s very bright here please just tell me whether or not I am safe.
Claudette: I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.
Tessa: Here. Hold her carefully.
Claudette: The way your face scrunches up and the noise that you make and how I know I’m supposed to feel and the difference between that and how I actually do feel —
Charley: Just tell me.
Claudette: Here. Come here. Come here.
Charley: Am I safe? That’s all I’m asking. It’s not a very difficult question to understand, is it? Is it? It’s not. No. It isn’t.

Charley McBride (Edie Falco) and Brian (Marin Ireland) discuss Edward Hopper in Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere Morning Sun (photo © Matthew Murphy 2021)

In chronological order, Claudette, Charley, and Tessa discuss seminal moments in their lives, reflecting on their successes and failures, as one character often narrates what is happening to the other in the second person. Tessa tells her grandmother, “One morning at the end of summer you take a train to Penn Station walk two blocks up Seventh and get a job in the Macy’s haberdashery department. That night you find a rent controlled fifth floor walk-up on Eleventh Street in the West Village. Two bedrooms. A railroad apartment with a tub in the kitchen and a view of the courtyard to the south side of the building. And if you crane your neck you can see the Hudson.” Claudette says, “I love it completely. . . . And I never live anywhere else. . . . For the rest of my life.”

The women introduce us to Claudette’s brother-in-law, Stanley; her husband, Harold; Charley’s best friend, Casey; an airplane pilot in a bar; a museum guard named Brian; and others, looking back as if they are all ghosts. Indeed, the play takes place in a nonspecific time, a kind of way station, where some of the characters have already passed away. At one point, Uncle Stanley tells Charley that the Cherry Lane Theatre is haunted. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Charley says. “Don’t you think?” he responds. “No I don’t. And there’s no way of making me think otherwise. So don’t try,” she says. “If there’s no such thing as ghosts, then why do they need a ghost light?” he asks. Charley: “What’s a ghost light?” Stanley: “It’s a light they keep on in the theater all night to keep the ghosts away.” A moment later, Stanley adds, “A ghost is an interruption,” which evokes the eighteen months of the pandemic lockdown, when theaters were empty, ghost lights on.

Place is essential to the play, which is set in Claudette’s West Village apartment. To the left is a clothes closet, to the right a piano and a working kitchen with running water and electricity, and in the center is a large, open area with a couch, a chair, and a bench, backed by half a dozen high-set windows. (The set is by dots, with lighting by Lap Chi Chu, sound by Lee Kinney and Daniel Kluger, and costumes by Kaye Voyce.) The characters move about the space almost like ghosts, occasionally appearing like they’re in a Hopper painting. The show is named after Hopper’s 1952 canvas Morning Sun, in which a lonely woman (the model is Hopper’s wife, painter Jo Nivison, the only female who ever posed for him) sits on a bed facing an open window, her hands gripping her legs, feet in front of her, the light forming an ominous rectangle on the wall. She peers outside as if there’s something she’s lost, something she can’t get back. It’s reminiscent of such other Hopper works as Cape Cod Morning, Western Motel, Eleven A.M., Morning in a City, and A Woman in the Sun, which all feature women seemingly trapped in an isolation they can’t escape.

Claudette was born and raised in Nyack, Hopper’s hometown in Rockland County. The titular painting plays a key role in the narrative, such as when Charley meets Brian, the museum guard, while looking at it. Charley tells him, “I like finding Edward Hopper paintings and thinking this is where I came from. Morning Sun. I like the strange expression on the woman’s face and wondering what she’s staring at and if she’s thinking about what she’s staring at or if her face is just kind of frozen because she’s gone to somewhere in her head that she can’t ever talk about.” Referring to the edifice that can be seen through the window, Brian points out, “I like trying to figure out what that building is.” Charley offers, “It could be a prison.”

Impeccably directed by Lila Neugebauer (The Wolves, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo, The Waverly Gallery), the show also made me think of Hopper’s New York Movie, in which a woman, bathed in light, hand on chin, stands just outside the seating area of a theater, perhaps contemplating whether she wants to sit down and join the crowd, be part of something. In the age of Covid, it now evokes the pandemic lockdown and the tentative return of audiences to theaters, but it also relates to the loneliness that Claudette, Charley, and Tessa experience in their daily lives; they might have one another in this surreal conversation happening onstage, but they each harbor fears of being alone.

Marin Ireland is extraordinary playing Tessa McBride and several other characters in latest Simon Stephens play (photo © Matthew Murphy 2021)

They rejoice in New York City — among the locations mentioned are the White Horse Tavern, Peter McManus, Shea Stadium, the old Penn Station, Wollman Rink, Washington Square Park the New School, and the High Line — but they bond to Joni Mitchell’s “Song to a Seagull,” in which Mitchell sings, “I came to the city / And lived like old Crusoe / On an island of noise / In a cobblestone sea / And the beaches were concrete / And the stars paid a light bill / And the blossoms hung false / On their store window trees.” The three women are together, but they are alone.

Brown (Copenhagen, Arcadia, Mary Page Marlowe), Falco (The True, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune), and Ireland (Reasons to Be Pretty, Blue Ridge, On the Exhale) are exquisite, portraying their complex characters with a gentle ease that is intoxicating, as if we’re spending quality time in front of a great painting. The drama leisurely but compellingly proceeds at a calm pace as the characters move about the stage, sometimes gathering at the small table in the kitchen, other times sitting so far apart it is as if they are in separate canvases, hung nearby on a wall.

Stephens is a writer with breathtaking skill, whether penning a charming two-character drama about a pair of loners who meet at a London Tube station (Heisenberg), a major spectacle about the murder of a pooch (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), an intimate one-man show dealing with horrific tragedy (Sea Wall), a postapocalyptic nightmare told with blindfolds and through headphones (Blindness), or a profound exploration into the lives of three generations of New York women. Morning Sun is a masterful artistic rendering of three ordinary, intertwined lives continually trying to find their unique path while battling solitude, like an Edward Hopper painting come to life, the subjects ever peering out the window, considering what is, what was, and what could have been.

Talking with Casey about Tessa, Charley says, “I want her to look back on me when she’s an adult and know that I did my best for her and that I always tried even if sometimes I let her down.” Casey replies, “We all let each other down,” to which Charley responds, “But that I did my very, very best.” What more can we ask of each other, in life and in art?

BERTOLT BRECHT’S THE MOTHER (a learning play)

Pelagea Vlasov (Kate Valk) has some qualms with the butcher (Ari Fliakos) and his wife (Erin Mullin) in The Mother (photo by Nurith Wagner-Strauss / Wiener Festwochen)

THE MOTHER
The Wooster Group
The Performing Garage
33 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 20, $40
Return engagement: February 18 – March 19, $30-$40
thewoostergroup.org

It’s hard to believe that in its nearly half-century existence, the Wooster Group has never before presented a work by Bertolt Brecht, the German modernist whose revolutionary ideas about theater appear to be right in line with the experimental Soho company’s vision. So it’s exciting not only that the Wooster Group is now tackling Brecht’s seldom-performed 1932 play, The Mother, but has done such a fine job with it.

Not to be confused with Brecht’s more well known anti-Fascist Mother Courage, The Mother is one of Brecht’s Lehrstücke, a learning play meant to bring the actors and the audience together while also taking a social stand. “The aim was to teach certain forms of political struggle to the audience,” Brecht wrote in 1933 about the show when it was at the Schriften zum Theater. “It was addressed mainly to women. About fifteen thousand Berlin working-class women saw the play, which was a demonstration of methods of illegal revolutionary struggle.”

Based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel, the play is built around the simple and illiterate Pelagea Vlasov (Kate Valk), who just wants to make tea and soup and protect her son, Pavel (Gareth Hobbs), who recently had his pay cut by a nickel an hour. “Me, I’m no help to him anymore,” she says. “I’m a burden.”

Pavel is involved with a pair of radicals, Semjon (Ari Fliakos) and Masha (Erin Mullin), who are illegally handing out leaflets calling for a strike against the powerful Suklinov factory. They are assisted by a teacher named Fyodor (Jim Fletcher) who doesn’t believe that their actions will lead to any viable change.

“Like the crow in the snowstorm, feeding her baby, she can’t feed her, what does she do? No way out, no way out. And crows are the smartest animal in the world, after humans,” the teacher talk-sings. “Whatever you do / It won’t be sufficient. / The situation’s bad / It gets worse. / It can’t go on like this / But what is the way out?”

The Wooster Group rehearses its unique interpretation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Mother (photo by Erin Mullin)

When she discovers what Pavel is up to, Pelagea turns courageous, demanding to hand out the leaflets herself so her son can be safe. A policeman (Fletcher) starts sniffing around, so Pelagea moves in with the teacher, who is not thrilled that his calm life has suddenly been upended. After the workers’ representative, Karpov (Fliakos), returns with an unsatisfactory deal, the revolutionaries sing, “Good, this is the breadcrumb / Ah, but where is / The whole loaf?” Events get ever-more dangerous as Pelagea takes up the cause, praising Communism, while the police, factory sympathizers, and strikebreakers loom in every corner.

In true Wooster Group style, The Mother is wildly unpredictable, hysterically funny, and emotionally poignant, winding itself in and out of Brecht’s words. Addressing the audience following the song “Praise of Communism,” the teacher explains about Brecht, “You know, for somebody who says he doesn’t want emotions in the theater, there’s a lot of emotion in that song, you know — it’s the end of madness, it’s the end of crime, is that not sentimental?” Props are smashed and then replaced. Projections by Irfan Brkovic on the back wall and a monitor focus on the factory town and a rallying flag, with original music by Amir ElSaffar.

The set, built by Joseph Silovsky, consists of a long table where the characters often sit, interacting with a laptop and the script itself; a small room where Pelagea worries about her son; a clothesline used for multiple purposes; a chalkboard where Fyodor writes important words; two doors that are labeled “Way” and “Out,” a sly reference to the song “The Question of the Way Out”; and a keyboard played by Pavel. There’s also a monitor above the audience that shows old crime movies, dictating the pace and enhancing the themes for the performers. Cofounding artistic director Elizabeth LeCompte ably brings those disparate elements together through eighty tense minutes and eleven scenes, including “What can a mother do?,” “The Mother gets a lesson in economics,” and “The war is here.”

WG founding member Valk and Fletcher (the teacher, the policeman, the prison guard, a strikebreaker) are always a joy to watch, and they lead the way in this stellar production. Fliakos (Semjon, Karpov, the gatekeeper, jobless Gorski, Vasil the butcher) and Mullin (Masha, the butcher’s wife, the Bible lady) stand right with them through minor costume changes and musical breaks. No one portrays the worker Smilgin because, as the narrator explains, they didn’t have enough money in the bank.

Speaking of money, LeCompte points out in a program note that a “spirit of repurposing” guided the show. “Nearly everything in the production has been repurposed from previous Wooster Group works. This includes performers, ideas, set elements, and all but two props: the aqua typewriter and yellow telephone. In addition to Brecht and Gorky, the company used such sources as educational media (PeeWee’s Playhouse, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie), Slavoj Žižek’s YouTube videos, the 1958 German version for the Berliner Ensemble, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, books by and about Brecht, and 1930s gangster movies on TCM.

Continuing at the Performing Garage through November 20 (the show is back for a return engagement February 18 – March 19), The Mother was initially supposed to premiere in 2020, but the group took advantage of the additional pandemic downtime by continuing to work on it. (It debuted in June 2021 at Vienna’s Wiener Festwochen.) During the lockdown, I watched several videos Wooster posted about their progress, and their process, not all of which made the final cut — if a production like this can ever be called final. The script has a warning that “it may contain text that no longer appears or has been changed, and it may lack text that has been added for a given performance.”

Just as Brecht, in writing The Mother, was teaching about political struggle and theatrical form (he called the play “a piece of anti-metaphysical, materialistic, non-Aristotelian drama — that is, dramatically seen, of a very highly developed type”), the Wooster Group is teaching political struggle and Brecht himself to the audience, which is seated on mats on risers, with no backs. It’s been done previously as a melodrama, a call to action, and a politically driven full-on musical, but the Wooster Group has made it into something else entirely.

SHEEP #1

Sachiyo Takahashi’s Sheep #1 is at Japan Society November 4-7 (photo © Skye Morse-Hodgson)

SHEEP #1
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
November 4-7, $23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Shortly after crash landing in the Sahara Desert, the isolated pilot narrator of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince recalls, “You can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at daybreak by a funny little voice saying, ‘Please . . . Draw me a sheep . . .’” After several failures, the pilot draws a picture of a crate, explaining that the sheep is inside. The boy, aka the little prince, is very happy, noting, “Where I live, everything is very small.”

Japan-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist Sachiyo Takahashi uses that section of Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, which also explores differences between grown-ups and children, in Sheep #1, which runs November 4–7 at Japan Society. Sachiyo tells the story using small puppets from Nekaa Lab, which she founded in 2006, projected onto a screen to make them look life-size (or bigger). The cast includes Sheep, who claims not to act but to play, and Rabbit, who says Nekaa Lab is “an eternal playground for the curious mind.” Among the other lab members (stuffed toys and figurines) are Cat and Polar Bear.

Sheep #1 is an example of Sachiyo’s Microscopic Live Cinema-Theatre, which tells stories using objects, live music, and camera projections and is able to, in Cat’s words, “even magnify the hidden emotions.” The wordless show, which made its US debut at the Tank in 2018, will be performed and projected live by Sachiyo, with pianist Emile Blondel playing original music with excerpts from Franz Schubert on Friday and Saturday and bassist Kato Hideki playing an original score on Thursday and Sunday, accompanying Sachiyo’s electroacoustic soundtrack.

The opening-night show will be followed by a reception with the artists. Sachiyo, who has been awarded several grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, has previously staged such works as Everything Starts from a Dot and Not Outside, which also starred Sheep, in addition to performing as Miya Okamoto in such Shinnai-bushi sung-storytelling presentations as Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Night in Winter and the upcoming The Emotions.

TWI-NY TALK: MARTÍN BONDONE / ODD MAN OUT

Martín Bondone and Teatro Ciego are bringing unique presentation to New York City (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

ODD MAN OUT
Flea Theater
20 Thomas St. between Broadway & Church St.
Original run: Tuesday – Sunday, November 3 – December 4, general admission $50 ($35 November 3-8); VIP $90
Encore engagement: Tuesday – Sunday, January 18 – February 19, general admission $50 ($35 seniors and students); VIP $90
oddmanoutnyc.com
theflea.org

One of the most unusual theatrical experiences I had during the pandemic lockdown was Odd Man Out, which arrived at my apartment in a box. An international collaboration between TheaterC in New York and Teatro Ciego in Argentina, the package contained items that interacted with all five senses, including an eye mask that was to be worn while while listening to an audio stream through your own headphones.

The sixty-five-minute show, written by Martín Bondone, directed by Bondone, Carlos Armesto, and Facundo Bogarín, and featuring original music by Mirko Mescia and sound design by Nicolas Alvarez, was originally performed with an in-person cast and audience at Teatro Ciego in Buenos Aires, a company that specializes in productions in complete darkness. Nearly half the troupe is either blind or has low vision. Recorded using 360-degree binaural technology that makes it feel as if the characters are moving around in space, the play follows successful blind Argentine musician Alberto Rinaldi (Gonzalo Trigueros) as he flies on Pitchblack Airlines from New York City back to Buenos Aires. During the trip, his mind is flooded with memories of seminal moments from his life, involving his mother (Alejandra Buljevich) and father (Ignacio Borderes), his teacher (Buljevich), his music partner Jamal Jordan (Modesto Lacen), and his true love, Clara (Carmen Boria).

Delayed by the pandemic, Odd Man Out is making its New York premiere November 3 to December 4 at the Flea, where the blindfolded audience will put on headphones and experience the show together, as if they’re all on the same plane, sitting next to Rinaldi as he shares his tale. Preparing for the official opening on November 9, Bondone discussed theater, the coronavirus crisis, blind artists, and more with twi-ny. [Ed. note: The show is back for an encore engagement January 18 to February 19.]

twi-ny: What prompted the beginning of Teatro Ciego?

martín bondone: In 1991, there was an experimental theater course in my hometown, Cordoba, Argentina. The roots of theater in the dark are in Zen meditation: Darkness is used as a medium to find oneself. After years of development, in 2001, blind artists started getting involved in the company, and in 2008 the first Teatro Ciego space was founded in Buenos Aires. This will be the first space in the world that offers a complete repertoire of shows developed in complete darkness. Teatro Ciego develops experiences in the dark that range from dining experiences to kids shows. We have since then grown the brand to tour in Latin America, Spain, and, most recently, New York.

Odd Man Out offered a theatrical journey in a box to be experienced at home during the pandemic (photo by twi-ny/ees)

twi-ny: Odd Man Out was here just prior to the pandemic, with live actors; how did the idea to package the experience at home in a sensory box come about?

mb: When the quarantine mandates closed everything around the world, we were forced to put a stop to all planned productions in both Argentina and New York and the Latin American tour. We employ over one hundred people, which made the shock huge both financially and emotionally. We produce one hundred percent of our shows, but we also have a marketing division where we create experiences in the dark for companies and institutions.

The first few weeks we spent figuring out how to keep the story going, and the emerging feeling was “If people can’t go to the theater, we will bring the theater to the people.” We created a sensorial box with an eye mask and different elements that would allow the person to smell, taste, touch, and hear the experience from home. The audio was accessed through a QR code and heard from the person’s own headphones.

This alternative was a huge success and allowed us to keep our doors open and our employees working during those tough times.

twi-ny: I loved the at-home presentation. How do you anticipate that my experience in person will be different?

mb: There’s already a shift in energy when you go to a physical space and share an experience with others. That’s what makes the theater such a wonderful place. This experience is called “semi-live” since, despite listening to the experience with an individual device, we have staff members operating the rest of the devices that will allow you to feel the many sensorial moments throughout the story: wind, rain, various smells, etc. It’s a completely different experience when you can just surrender to things happening and enjoy the ride.

Audiences gather together to experience Odd Man Out in person (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

twi-ny: Are there plans to eventually stage the show with live actors again?

mb: Yes, it’s our goal to be able to build an organization that trains and employs people to develop Teatro Ciego’s technique in New York. Once the situation changes and we can safely achieve our goal, we look forward to sharing this dream of ours with the New York theater scene.

twi-ny: Did you find yourself more or less productive during the pandemic?

mb: From a distance now, yes, maybe a bit less productive. It was hard to regroup and rebuild our team. This crisis forced us to think outside our comfort zone and face a tough situation. Luckily we came out stronger than before, and now we are able to offer the variety of shows we were offering before the pandemic. What sets us apart is that we never stopped working, training, and growing, and now we have new options to offer that we wouldn’t have if not faced by adversity.

twi-ny: Another touring show, Simon Stephens’s Blindness, involves headphones, binaural recording, and not-quite-total darkness, with no actors present. Do you see such shows as being a temporary by-product of the pandemic, or do you think it has a future of its own, especially since it can be available to people all over the world?

mb: No one really knows what the future holds, especially now. However, we have a history of successfully building this type of sensorial shows for over fifteen years in Argentina and the rest of the world. In fact, we developed a binaural sound show for a Disney event over ten years ago.

We are proud to say we are pioneers at utilizing this technology for theatrical experiences. We humans crave new experiences constantly; we need to be challenged and entertained from new perspectives. We hope to keep feeding this need for new experiences and challenging our senses for many years to come.

twi-ny: Since Teatro Ciego started, great strides have been made regarding the acceptance of creators and performers with different abilities in hearing, seeing, and body, although we still have a long way to go. Has that been a noticeable change with Teatro Ciego, either with the cast or the audience? What barriers need to be taken down next?

mb: One of the best things about working in darkness is that everyone involved in the experience, actors, technicians, audiences, are equals. By removing the visual stimuli, all the preconceived biases of color, gender, size, physical ability are removed.

We are in a moment in history where all social movements are facing that inclusive direction and we need to keep working together to finally have equal treatment for everyone regardless of their skin tone, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, or physical condition.

Odd Man Out re-creates a flight taking a blind musician back home to Buenos Aires (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

twi-ny: In school you studied social economics; has that had an impact on your approach to writing?

mb: Not so much for writing but definitely for producing. Argentina has a lot of incredibly beautiful, artistic ideas that usually die for the lack of a business mind. By developing Teatro Ciego as a social construct but also economically sustainable, we won the freedom to let our imagination soar. Writing comes more from my personal experiences and my life. From my own universe.

twi-ny: Care to share what you’re working on next?

mb: Right now we are focused on the opening of Odd Man Out at the Flea.

We are also working on developing the American version of our current kids experience, Mi Amiga la Oscuridad (“My Friend the Darkness”). We are also developing partnerships with various New York City restaurants for our dining experience “A Ciegas Gourmet” (“Blind Gourmet”). In the far distance, we dream of a live musical in complete darkness.

twi-ny: That sounds exciting. During the pandemic, New York City became a ghost town; what was Buenos Aires like during Covid?

mb: The pandemic was a big reminder that we are really all connected. Just like New York, Buenos Aires was a desert. Economically, we took a huge hit to an already damaged structure, and the cultural and touristic areas were gravely impacted. We feel super privileged to be able to return to what we love doing and having such a great response from our audience.

twi-ny: Finally, if you’re coming to New York City for the show, what else do you plan to do while you’re here, now that just about everything has reopened?

mb: We plan to travel to New York City again next year when we hope to be able to develop the full show, to hire and train a full company that can work in complete darkness. For this opportunity, we were lucky to have our lead producer and resident director, fellow Argentinian Lola Lopez Guardone, fly to Buenos Aires to train with us and bring the specifics to New York. Lola is a New York City resident and has ample experience in immersive theater. Between her, our partner Carlos Armesto, and the whole PITCHBLACK team in New York, we know our show is in good hands. However, we look forward to visiting the city again in 2022 and hopefully experience Sleep No More, which we couldn’t get to on our last trip.

GOTHAM STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

FRIGID NEW YORK: GOTHAM STORYTELLING FESTIVAL
The Kraine Theater
85 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
November 2-14, $15-$20
www.frigid.nyc

Native New Yorker Michele Carlo titles her new solo show What a Difference a Year Makes, and what a year it has been. What a Difference a Year Makes will be performed live November 3 and 13 at the tenth annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, which takes place November 2-14 at the Kraine Theater in the East Village as well as online. Tickets for each of the eleven programs are sliding scales beginning at $20 in person (full price gets you a drink ticket) and $15 at home. The festival kicks off with a double bill of Jackson Sturkey’s work-in-progress, The Devil, about his private Christian high school and Lucifer, and Gastor Almonte’s The Sugar, in which the stand-up comedian discovers he has diabetes. On November 3 and 8, comedian Alexander Payne (not the film director) presents his autobiographical monologue Home Stories, about growing up in South Central. On November 4, Una Aya Osato and some of her friends share personal tales of contracting the coronavirus in Still Sick: Stories of Long Covid, while on November 4 and 10, Reilly Arena retells George Orwell’s Animal Farm using a pair of sticks.

On November 5, David Lawson hosts ACES: Storytelling Sets from Some of NYC’s Best, consisting of ten-minute monologues by David Perez, Annie Tan, Aditya Surendran, Courtney Antonioli, and others. On November 6, 7, 10, and 28, Kylie Vincent delves into childhood sexual abuse in Bird, while several participants contribute to Awkward Teenage Years on November 6. Keith Alessi’s Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life, which was named Most Inspirational Show at the 2019 Frigid Fringe Festival, is back at the Kraine on November 7. Four-time Moth StorySLAM winner Jamie Brickhouse channels Joan Crawford, Joan Collins, Monica Lewinsky, Peggy Lee, Helen Gurley Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and others on November 7 and 12 in Stories in Heels: Tall Tales of the Glamorous Women Who Changed My Life. And on November 11 and 13, Mayflower descendant Trav SD celebrates the four hundredth anniversary of the first Thanksgiving in The Pilgrim’s Progress. In her piece, author, podcaster, and story coach Carlo searches for the silver lining in life during the pandemic, which is just what the Gotham Storytelling Festival is offering all of us for two weeks.