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ENCORE PRESENTATION: WORLDS FAIR INN

Worlds Fair Inn explores nuclear annihilation and serial killing with a vaudeville sensibility (photo by Regina Betancourt)

ENCORE PRESENTATION: WORLDS FAIR INN
Axis Theatre
One Sheridan Sq. between West Fourth & Washington Sts.
Thursday – Saturday through October 23, $10-$30, 8:00
866-811-4111
www.axiscompany.org

On March 11, 2020, I was in Axis Theatre Company’s small, intimate downstairs space at One Sheridan Square, getting ready to watch artistic director Randy Sharp’s adaptation of Henry James’s Washington Square. Shortly before the show started, a few of us chuckled as a woman roamed the aisles, unable to choose a seat. (The venue is general admission.) When she was right behind me, I heard her mutter, “I’m not going to get sick. This virus is not going to get me.” A few of us looked at one another, thinking she had gone a bit overboard. Little did I know that Washington Square would be the last live theater with actors and an in-person audience I would experience for nearly fifteen months because of a virus that has killed more than six hundred thousand Americans and shuttered live entertainment venues around the globe.

On June 4, 2021, there I was, back at the Axis Theatre, to see my first indoor play with actors and an audience since the pandemic lockdown was lifted. It was the premiere of Sharp’s Worlds Fair Inn, performed by a cast of five to an audience of fifteen people in masks. Not only was it thrilling to be in the theater, but the hourlong work is a fab absurdist journey through madness and tragedy, a strange and enticing mix of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the Three Stooges.

Axis producing director Brian Barnhart stars as Frank, a creepy character right out of a low-budget Roger Corman horror-comedy, a composite of Victor Frankenstein, the fictional mad scientist who built a creature out of dead bodies; theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”; and H. H. Holmes, a con artist and serial killer who owned the World’s Fair Hotel, aka the Murder Castle, near the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Two loony bowler-hatted fellows, Eric (George Demas) and Bill (Jon McCormick), arrive at the inn, seeking shelter and company. All three men wear dark clothing and giant Frankenstein-style shoes on a set littered with dozens of bottles of whiskey, a hotel front desk that doubles as a killing casket, and a neon sign advertising the name of the place. The set is designed by Sharp, with period costumes by Karl Ruckdeschel, fun props by Lynn Mancinelli, eerie lighting by David Zeffren, and playfully sinister sound and music by former Blondie member Paul Carbonara.

“What do you think it would take to make a living man out of a bunch of cut-up dead people? I mean if you cut them up and glued them together?” Frank, who boasts that he’s a scientist, a doctor, an American, and an architect, asks.

“Why wouldn’t you use whole dead people and bring them back to life?” Eric answers, pauses, then adds, “Oh! Maybe you need separate parts so you can see how to make them work? Then stick them back?”

“Right,” Frank responds. “Or maybe I would just use the whole person. I’m an architect. It’s scientific. I just want to see what happens.”

Eric and Bill jump at the chance to help Frank in his unnatural mission, displaying no hesitancy at the prospect of killing people, chopping them up, then assembling the pieces into a new whole. “We’re builders,” Bill offers. “Not scientists. Just to be sure. We can fix things! Hard workers! . . . We’re contractors!”

Frank’s first two victims are Machine (Edgar Oliver), an erudite oddball, and Lady (Britt Genelin), a coquettish factory worker; both fall for the men’s ruse, undone by their own pride in their willingness to embrace new ways.

Lady (Britt Genelin) brings light to the dark proceedings of Worlds Fair Inn (photo by Regina Betancourt)

Worlds Fair Inn feels like a uniquely charming, deranged vaudeville act with Moe/Shemp (Frank), Larry (Bill), and Curly (Eric) filtered through Corman’s Tales of Terror. The cast is wonderfully over the top, highlighted by the risible interplay between Demas (Maverick, Last Man Club) and McCormick (Dead End, Donkey Punch). Pay particular attention to McCormick even when he’s not talking; he moves in herky-jerky fits and starts, overcome by nerves and fear, often leaving his thoughts unfinished as his eyes dart about the stage.

Barnhart (High Noon, Dead End) channels Angus Scrimm from Phantasm and John Carradine in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) as he delivers his lines with great bombast. It’s fab to see Oliver, a solo specialist who has presented In the Park, East 10th St.: Self Portrait with Empty House, and Attorney Street at Axis, as part of an ensemble; he and Genelin (Washington Square, High Noon) are adorable as vaudeville versions of the Creature and the Bride of Frankenstein, trapped in a skit they don’t fully comprehend.

Writer-director Sharp (Strangers in the World, Seven in One Blow) adeptly maneuvers between high and low comedy as she takes on nuclear annihilation, a different kind of rather effective serial killing — Frank, Eric, and Bill bow every time Japan is mentioned — and melds Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos, and Holmes’s murder hotel into a supremely funny and memorable show. As we finally emerge from this dark year, we may not have much hope for the future of humanity, but Axis gives us hope for the future of theater. (And I hope the woman I foolishly chuckled at in March 2020, before Washington Square at the Axis, is alive and well and gets to catch this terrific satire, as you should too. And now you have an added opportunity, as the play is back for a well-deserved encore run September 30 through October 23.)

NYFF59: SONGS FOR ’DRELLA / THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

John Cale and Lou Reed reunite to honor Andy Warhol in Songs for ’Drella

SONGS FOR ’DRELLA (Ed Lachman, 1990)
New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center
Francesca Beale Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, October 5, 4:30
www.filmlinc.org

In December 1989, Velvet Underground cofounders John Cale and Lou Reed took the stage at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House and performed a song cycle in honor of Andy Warhol, who had played a pivotal role in the group’s success. The Pittsburgh-born Pop artist had died in February 1987 at the age of fifty-eight; although Cale and Reed had had a long falling-out, they reunited at Warhol’s funeral at the suggestion of artist Julian Schnabel. Commissioned by BAM and St. Ann’s, Songs for ’Drella — named after one of Warhol’s nicknames, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella — was released as a concert film and recorded for an album. The work is filled with factual details and anecdotes of Warhol’s life and career, from his relationship with his mother to his years at the Factory, from his 1967 shooting at the hands of Valerie Solanis to his dedication to his craft.

Directed, photographed, and produced by Ed Lachman, the two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer of such films as Desperately Seeking Susan, Mississippi Masala, Far from Heaven, and Carol — Lachman also supervised the 4K restoration being shown at the New York Film Festival this week — Songs for ’Drella is an intimate portrait not only of Warhol but of Cale and Reed, who sit across from each other onstage, Cale on the left, playing keyboards and violin, Reed on the right on guitars. There is no between-song patter or introductions; they just play the music as Robert Wierzel’s lighting shifts from black-and-white to splashes of blue and red. Photos of Warhol and some of his works (Electric Chair, Mona Lisa, Gun) are occasionally projected onto a screen on the back wall.

“When you’re growing up in a small town / Bad skin, bad eyes — gay and fatty / People look at you funny / When you’re in a small town / My father worked in construction / It’s not something for which I’m suited / Oh — what is something for which you are suited? / Getting out of here,” Reed sings on the opener, “Smalltown.” Cale and Reed share an infectious smile before “Style It Takes,” in which Cale sings, “I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art / It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket / ’Cause I’ve got the style it takes / And you’ve got the people it takes / This is a rock group called the Velvet Underground / I show movies of them / Do you like their sound / ’Cause they have a style that grates and I have art to make.”

Songs for ’Drella is screening at NYFF59 in new 4K restoration

Cale and Reed reflect more on their association with Warhol in “A Dream.” Cale sings as Warhol, “And seeing John made me think of the Velvets / And I had been thinking about them / when I was on St. Marks Place / going to that new gallery those sweet new kids have opened / But they thought I was old / And then I saw the old DOM / the old club where we did our first shows / It was so great / And I don’t understand about that Velvets first album / I mean, I did the cover / and I was the producer / and I always see it repackaged / and I’ve never gotten a penny from it / How could that be / I should call Henry / But it was good seeing John / I did a cover for him / but I did it in black and white and he changed it to color / It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way / But you can never tell anybody anything / I’ve learned that.”

The song later turns the focus on Reed, recalling, “And then I saw Lou / I’m so mad at him / Lou Reed got married and didn’t invite me / I mean, is it because he thought I’d bring too many people? / I don’t get it / He could have at least called / I mean, he’s doing so great / Why doesn’t he call me? / I saw him at the MTV show / and he was one row away and he didn’t even say hello / I don’t get it / You know I hate Lou / I really do / He won’t even hire us for his videos / And I was so proud of him.”

Reed does say hello — and goodbye — on the closer, “Hello It’s Me.” With Cale on violin, Reed stands up with his guitar and fondly sings, “Oh well, now, Andy — I guess we’ve got to go / I wish some way somehow you like this little show / I know it’s late in coming / But it’s the only way I know / Hello, it’s me / Goodnight, Andy / Goodbye, Andy.”

It’s a tender way to end a beautiful performance, but Lachman has added a special treat after the credits, with one final anecdote and the original trailer he made for Reed’s 1974 song cycle, Berlin. Songs for ’Drella is screening October 5 at 4:30 at the Francesca Beale Theater; it is also being shown October 2 prior to the free outdoor presentation of Todd Haynes’s new documentary, The Velvet Underground, in Damrosch Park, which will be followed by a Q&A with Lachman and Haynes. Lachman and Haynes will also be part of a Q&A with producers Christine Vachon and Julie Goldman and editors Affonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz at the September 30 screening of The Velvet Underground at Alice Tully Hall; Cale was supposed to attend but has had to cancel.

Todd Haynes documents the history of the Velvet Underground in new film

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes, 2021)
Thursday, September 30, Alice Tully Hall, 6:00
Saturday, October 2, Damrosch Park, 7:00
Film Comment Live: The Velvet Underground & the New York Avant-Garde, Sunday, October 3, Damrosch Park, free, 4:00
www.filmlinc.org

Much of Haynes’s documentary, which will have its theatrical premiere October 14–21 at the Walter Reade (and streaming on Apple+ beginning October 15), focuses on Warhol’s position in helping develop and promote the Velvets. “Andy was extraordinary, and I honestly don’t think these things could have occurred without Andy,” Reed, who died in 2013, says. “I don’t know if we would have gotten the contract if he hadn’t said he’d do the cover or if Nico wasn’t so beautiful.”

Haynes details the history of the group by delving into Cale and Reed’s initial meeting, the formation of the Primitives with conceptual artists Tony Conrad and Walter DeMaria, and the transformation into the seminal VU lineup at the Factory under Warhol’s guidance — singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed, Welsh experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and German vocalist Nico.

Haynes and editors Gonçalves and Kurnitz pace the film like VU’s songs and overall career, as they cut between new and old interviews and dazzling archival photographs and video, frantic and chaotic at first, then slowing down as things change drastically for the band They employ split screens, usually two but up to twelve boxes at a time, to deluge the viewer with a barrage of sound and image. Among the talking heads in the film are composer and Dream Syndicate founder La Monte Young, actress and film critic Amy Taubin, actress and author Mary Woronov, Reed’s sister Merrill Reed-Weiner, early Reed bandmates and school friends Allan Hyman and Richard Mishkin, filmmaker and author John Waters, manager and publicist Danny Fields, composer and philosopher Henry Flynt, and avant-garde filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas. “We are not part really of the subculture or counterculture. We are the culture!” Mekas, who passed away in 2019 at the age of ninety-six, declares.

Haynes, who has made such previous music-related films as Velvet Goldmine, set in the 1970s glam-rock era, and I’m Not There, a fictionalized musical inspired by the life and career of Bob Dylan, also speaks extensively with Cale and Tucker, who hold nothing back, in addition to Sterling Morrison’s widow, Martha Morrison; singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, who opened up for the Velvets; and big-time fan Jonathan Richman (of Modern Lovers fame). While everyone shares their thoughts about Warhol, the Factory, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows, and the eventual dissolution of the band, Haynes bombards us with clips from Warhol’s Sleep, Kiss, Empire, and Screen Tests (many opposite the people who appear in the film) as well as works by such artists as Maya Deren, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Barbara Rubin, Tony Oursler, Stan Brakhage, and Mekas and paintings by Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko. It’s a dizzying array that aligns with such VU classics as “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Heroin,” “White Light / White Heat,” “Sister Ray,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” and “Sweet Jane.”

Several speakers disparage the Flower Power era, Bill Graham, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, with Tucker admitting, “This love-peace crap, we hated that. Get real.” They’re also honest about the group’s own success, or lack thereof. Tucker remembers at their first shows, “We used to joke around and say, ‘Well, how many people left?’ ‘About half.’ ‘Oh, we must have been good tonight.’” And there is no love lost for Reed, who was not the warmest and most considerate of colleagues.

The Velvets continue to have a remarkable influence on music and art today despite having recorded only two albums with Cale (The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light / White Heat) and two with Doug Yule replacing Cale (The Velvet Underground and Loaded) in a span of only three years. Haynes (Far from Heaven, Safe) sucks us right into their extraordinary world and keeps us swirling in it for two glorious hours of music, gossip, art, celebrity, and backstabbing. If you end up watching the film at home, turn it up loud. No, louder than that. Even louder. . . .

THE GREAT ARIA THROWDOWN #2 – LES EDITION

LUNGS HARVEST ARTS FESTIVAL
Multiple locations
Daily through October 3, free
“The Great Aria Throwdown #2 — LES Edition”
Campos Community Garden, 640-644 East Twelfth St. at Ave. C
Friday, October 1, 6:30
www.lungsnyc.org

In 2011, community gardens in Loisaida, the Lower East Side, and the East Village came together and formed LUNGS, the Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens; its mission is “to promote, protect, and preserve gardening and greening through cooperation, coordination, and communication.” The group is now hosting its tenth annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival, which runs through October 3 with free music and dance, knitting, activism, art exhibits, yoga, a dominos tournament, interactive workshops, classes, a treasure hunt, and more, in such locations as Green Oasis, Carmen’s Garden, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, Orchard Alley Community Garden, Creative Little Garden, La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez, 6BC Botanical Garden, and other lovely oases.

One of the highlights is “The Great Aria Throwdown #2 — LES Edition,” taking place October 1 at 6:30 in Campos Community Garden on Twelfth St. & Ave. C. Presented by dell’Arte Opera Ensemble (dAOE), the evening features sopranos Bahati Barton and Diana Charlop, mezzo-soprano Perri di Christina, countertenor Jeffrey Mandelbaum, and pianist Pablo Zinger performing works by Bellini, Donizetti, Mozart, Purcell, and others.

“Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble is a bridge for emerging opera singers to work with accomplished professionals in the field,” dAOE executive director Marianna Mott Newirth explains. “‘The Great Aria Throwdown’ is a fun and free event that gives ‘stage’ to three sopranos and an outstanding countertenor singing with widely acclaimed pianist Pablo Zinger, producing a growing garden of sound on East Twelfth St. From Bellini to Monteverdi, we’re bringing opera to the LES! Campos Garden even has a chandelier they plan to raise just as the show begins — a nod to the new season starting at the Met after a year of darkness.” Below is the full program.

Diana Charlop: “Quel guardo il cavaliere” from Don Pasquale (Bellini)
Perri di Christina: “Deh, non voler costringere” from Anna Bolena (Donizetti)
Bahati Barton: “Ruhe Sanft” from Zaide (Mozart)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “If Music Be the Food of Love” (Purcell, Third Version)

Diana Charlop: “Padre germani addio” from Idomeneo (Mozart)
Perri di Christina: “Voi che sapete” from Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “Sprezzami quanto sai” from L’incoronazione di Poppea (Monteverdi)

Perri di Christina: “Faites-lui mes aveux” from Faust (Gounod)
Bahati Barton: “Think of Me” from The Phantom of the Opera (Lloyd Webber)
Diana Charlop: “Obéissons quand leur voix appelle” from Manon (Massenet)
Jeffrey Mandelbaum: “Fra tempeste” from Rodelinda (Handel)

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR / THE GREAT TANTALIZER

“Wong Ping: Your Silent Neighbor” continues at the New Museum through October 3 (photo by Dario Lasagni)

WONG PING: YOUR SILENT NEIGHBOR
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 3, $12-$18
www.newmuseum.org

WONG PING: THE GREAT TANTALIZER
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
521 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through October 23, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.tanyabonakdargallery.com

Multimedia artist Wong Ping’s current shows at the New Museum in SoHo and Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea are filled with lovable animated pandas, colorful cartoons, a retelling of Pinocchio, and playful sculpture and installation. But you might want to think twice before bringing the kids, as Wong’s work tackles income inequality, sexual repression and expression, police corruption, dating and desire, climate change, and sociopolitical aspects of contemporary life, particularly in his native Hong Kong as its battles with Mainland China since the 1997 handover from the British grow ever-more dangerous, all told in a DIY style inspired by video games and narrated by Wong himself.

At the New Museum, An Emo Nose (2015) reimagines Pinocchio’s proboscis, resembling both a heart and a penis, as its own sentient being, reacting to the protagonist’s negative thoughts by stretching out and going off on its own, depicting humanity’s vulnerability of both mind and body. In the two-channel The Other Side (2015), projected onto a screen and a small television monitor in front of it, the narrator journeys across treacherous terrain, has soup with Granny Meng (forgetfulness goddess Meng Po), and ponders his future, a parable of emigration from Hong Kong filtered through the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. A 3-D printed text panel relates self-affirmations in tiny letters, including “I am the last drop of period blood before menopause” and “I am the last rebellious punk.”

The retrospective is centered by four videos projected onto four screens on all sides of one large room; visitors sit on comfy beanbag chairs or a round couch as they rotate to watch the short films, which total forty-three minutes. In Jungle of Desire (2015), an impotent man is powerless when his wife becomes a prostitute to satisfy her sexual desire and is exploited by a cop. In Who’s the Daddy? (2017), a man considers himself an outcast because his penis is straight, not bending to the left or right, and confuses politics and sex as things go wrong with a woman he hooked up with on a dating app. “People even deny its existence,” he opines about his member.

Wong Ping’s Fables 2 (2019) follows the trials and tribulations of a special cow and three conjoined rabbit siblings attempting to make their own way in life. And in Sorry for the Late Reply (2021), commissioned for this show, a fisherman becomes obsessed with an elderly saleswoman’s varicose veins. “If you’ve ever stepped into the supernatural world during a hike, or have gotten lost in the parking lot and couldn’t find the exit, or have stared into the eyes of a black chicken standing outside your door through the peephole late at night, then you would know how I feel,” he says.

Wong Ping is a curator researching the Great Tantalizer in show at Tanya Bonakdar

Over at Tanya Bonakdar, Wong’s “The Great Tantalizer” is a multimedia installation structured around a mockumentary about a scientist who had been determined to increase sexual desire in pandas and bring that information on their mating techniques to humans, particularly in China, given its former one-child policy and overall preference for boys. The relentless drive to tantalize may be commenting as well on the current tangping movement, or “lying flat,” in which many younger Chinese have opted out of the pressures of modern life by declining to engage in the endless competition for personal and professional success, a high-quality education, a good job, a happy marriage, a beautiful home, and lovely children.

The gallery has been reimagined as the Great Tantalizer’s abandoned laboratory, with a stack of white plastic chairs and a labcoat, an exhibition poster and bamboo pole that declare, “EAT.SLEEP.POOOOOP.DIE,” and The Tender Rider, a cute old kiddie vehicle with a panda head that now serves as a projector, beaming highly sexualized images onto the walls in a back room. It’s all organized around a screen showing a Zoom-like panel discussion featuring Wong in a panda outfit, hosting the virtual talk with the GT’s former laboratory staff, one-night stand, and main competitor, whose identities are disguised. Visitors can sit on rolls of bound bamboo sticks as Wong explores who the GT was and what his legacy is.

The thirty-seven-year-old Wong is quickly building up an impressive legacy of his own with these presentations at the New Museum and Tanya Bonakdar, expanding his breadth with his distinctive approach to exposing society’s ills.

TWI-NY TALK: AYA OGAWA AND THE NOSEBLEED

Aya Ogawa portrays their son and father in new play at Japan Society (photo by Maria Baranova)

THE NOSEBLEED
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
October 1-3 & 7-10, $30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
ayaogawa.com

“The Nosebleed chronicles my journey of confronting what I think is one of the biggest failures of my life, which is that when my father died almost fifteen years ago, I failed to do anything to honor him or his life because of the nature of our relationship,” Japanese American playwright-director Aya Ogawa says in a promotional video for their latest work, the final version of The Nosebleed, running October 1-3 and 7-10 at Japan Society. The absurdist, comic show, previously known as Failure Sandwich and in which four actors play Ogawa while Ogawa portrays their own son and father, serves as a healing ritual for Ogawa and the audience, especially as the coronavirus crisis continues and nearly everyone has experienced some kind of loss.

Over the summer, the Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based Ogawa, a 2021 Barbara Whitman Award finalist, mounted an online version of Ludic Proxy, an interactive virtual play that takes place in the past (Pripyat, post-Chernobyl), the present (Fukushima, post-disaster), and the future (New York, underground), inspired by the death of their mother. Ogawa previously adapted the text for Alec Duffy’s Our Planet, an immersive production that led a small audience through the historic Japan Society building; they have also directed Haruna Lee’s Obie-winning Suicide Forest at the Bushwick Starr and A.R.T./New York Theatres (where its run was cut short by the March 2020 lockdown) and have written and directed Oph3lia at HERE, Journey to the Ocean at the Rubin Museum, Artifact at the Performance MIX Festival, and A Girl of 16 at Clemente Soto Velez’s Latea Theater.

Copresented with the Chocolate Factory, The Nosebleed is performed by Ogawa, Lee, Drae Campbell, Peter Lettre, Aya Saori Tsukada, and Kaili Turner. I have seen Ogawa at numerous events at Japan Society, where they used to work in the Performing Arts department, but now they are returning as the center of attention. “To be able to come back there, as an artist, and to be so welcomed by former colleagues, is a huge blessing,” they explained. Opening night will be followed by a reception with the artists.

Taking a break from rehearsals, Ogawa discussed motherhood, family relationships, the immigrant experience, theater during the pandemic, and more with twi-ny.

twi-ny: The Nosebleed deals with your complex relationship with your father; Ludic Proxy was partly inspired by the loss of your mother. In researching and writing each work, did your thoughts about your parents, and your relationship with them, change?

aya ogawa: Ludic Proxy was an exploration of my own grieving process — an exercise in imagining how to find the strength to continue living after the death of my mother — had I not had children of my own. It was less about my actual relationship with her, so I would say in that case, my relationship with her did not change.

The Nosebleed, however, is explicitly about my father and my relationship with him — my perceptions and memories of him (which are subjective and flawed). The process of writing the play forced me to recall and examine a lot of things I had not thought of for many years, and this revisiting and especially the embodying of his character has definitely changed my feelings toward him.

twi-ny: How has The Nosebleed developed from earlier iterations at BAX and the Public?

ao: The script is not that different from when it was presented at the Public. (I wrote in a new character after my showing at BAX). However, the staging for each presentation has been unique and tailored to each space. I’ve been blessed to retain most of the original cast. I’ve had to replace one actor (who is now in grad school abroad), and I feel blessed again to have found someone who is not only a stellar performer but a collaborator who is able to bring her whole self and lived experience into the rehearsal room.

twi-ny: What was the rehearsal room like?

ao: We have very strict COVID safety protocols in place, which I discussed with the company before we began this process. I’d heard nightmares about other shows shutting down or having to replace actors, etc. I can’t afford to replace actors, or stop a rehearsal process and pick it up again at another time, so I had to plan for the most conservative measures to keep us all safe. Everyone on my team is fully vaccinated, rehearse masked, take PCR tests every week, and have rapid home tests available if anyone is feeling under the weather.

Despite all of these measures, or perhaps because of the assurance and safety they provided, the process has been joyful and very productive. The piece was originally conceived as an immersive performance, but we have decided to prioritize safety and put the audience in the house.

twi-ny: In the show, you play your son and your father, linking three generations. What is that experience like every night onstage?

ao: This is the first time I have ever appeared in my own play. It was never something I craved doing; in fact, the thought is kind of embarrassing. I decided to appear in the play as my father because the piece demanded it. The crux of this piece, and for it to work as it was intended — as something transformative and healing — I had no choice but to take responsibility for it and play the part. The experience of playing my son and my father is cathartic and exhausting.

One thing that really came to the forefront when creating an autobiographical play was just how violent the act of embodying a character can be. It takes a great deal of responsibility and trust to hand over the portrayal of my life to other people, and trust is needed in both directions.

Aya Ogawa wrote, directed, and stars in The Nosebleed (known as Failure Sandwich in an earlier iteration above) (photo © Ryutaro Mishima)

twi-ny: For your work in progress Meat Suit, you describe motherhood as a “shit show.” You have two children; what was the pandemic lockdown like for you and your family?

ao: At first, it was kind of wonderful. Suddenly we had so much time together, so much unstructured time. There was no panic to make lunches or rush to get them to school on time, etc. We spent time gardening, cleaning the house, cooking. But then, of course, we figured out how to function in the lockdown. School happened on Zoom, as did a lot of my work. I was grateful to have work, and it was a fruitful time, in many ways, to be forced to develop work with great limitations, but it was also exhausting. Pandemic parenting continues right now — and remains pretty trying.

twi-ny: Do you still have family in Tokyo? If so, how often do you generally go back, and have you been able to do so recently?

ao: I am the only person in my immediate blood family living in the U.S. All of my relatives and family are in Japan. Since having kids, I have made it a point to visit every summer. We have not been able to visit since 2019 and it’s really painful.

twi-ny: This past March, you reimagined Ludic Proxy as an interactive online production. What are your thoughts about streaming theater? Do you see it as just a stopgap, or do you anticipate creating more online work in the future?

ao: The second act of Ludic Proxy was conceived with video game mechanics embedded into the script, so it was clear to me that it could very naturally translate to the screen as long as we could retain the audience interactivity. I actually don’t think the pandemic is going to ever “go away,” so it is important for theater-makers to think about how our medium is being transformed. As soon as The Nosebleed closes, I’m going into a video shoot for a puppet play that was originally conceived as a live, in-person puppet show but is now a performance film made for camera.

twi-ny: One of your themes throughout your career has been immigration and cultural identity. How has that changed for Japanese Americans since your first works, going back twenty years?

ao: The experience of the immigrant is not a static, monolithic story. It is varied and complex and ever-changing — so I can only speak for myself, not the larger Japanese-American population. I happen to be positioned in a particular place where I feel like I have access to multiple lenses — I am an immigrant myself but pass as a child of an immigrant. I have Japanese-Taiwanese-American children who I’ve made sure have access to their Japanese culture, but I’m also torn between wanting them to have their own experiences and interactions with the culture and sharing my experience of leaving Japan, a deeply sexist culture. Japan can be rich and beautiful. It can also be toxic and suffocating. So can America.

STEVIE VAN ZANDT: UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS

Who: Stevie Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, Jay Cocks, Joel Selvin, Chris Columbus, Budd Mishkin
What: Interviews with Stevie Van Zandt in conjunction with the launch of his new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations (Hachette, $31)
Where: Multiple sites online and in person
When: September 28 – October 3, $5-$100
Why: “Silence. He was under a blanket in the back of the car on the floor in the crazy spooky silence. Nobody spoke. No radio. Just the lazy hum of the motor, and him alone with his thoughts. And ooh daddio, that was not his favorite thing. His two coconspirators were sneaking him past the military blockade into the black township of Soweto. The ‘native unrest,’ as the government liked to call it, erupted every few years, but lately it had become more frequent, and now, constant.” So begins Stevie Van Zandt’s new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations: Odyssey of a Rock and Roll Consigliere (A Cautionary Tale), as he writes in the third person about his secret trip into South Africa in 1984. “How the fuck did a half-a-hippie guitar player get here? For seven glorious years, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were Rock and Roll’s Rat Pack, and he happily and naturally played the Dean Martin role. If you were even thinking of throwing a party, you called him. That was the extent of his politics. He was the fun guy. The court jester. Always good for a laugh. Sex, booze, drugs, Rock and Roll, and . . . more sex. Yo bartender, another round for the house! A whole lot had to go sideways to find him under that blanket. . . . He chose to take the adventure instead of the money. What a putz.” Among the chapters in the book are “Epiphany,” “The Boss of All Bosses,” “The Punk Meets the Godfather,” “Freedom — No Compromise,” “Seven Years in the Desert,” and “Summer of Sorcery.”

Alternately known as Miami Steve, Little Steven, and Stevie for the last fifty years, Van Zandt is now detailing his unique life and career in the book, which launches this week with a series of in-person and online events. The memoir takes readers from the Jersey Shore to Sun City, from South Africa and Hollywood to Norway and the Super Bowl. A longtime member of the E Street Band and a ferocious political activist, Van Zandt also starred as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos — a role he helped create after HBO said no to him as Tony — wrote and produced songs for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, has been hosting the nationally syndicated radio show Little Steven’s Underground Garage since 2002, started Wicked Cool Records, played the lead in the Norwegian crime drama Lilyhammer, founded the nonprofit TeachRock to promote music education in schools, records and tours with his own band, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, and is the founder of Renegade Nation, the umbrella company for many of his wide-ranging pursuits. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him several times over the years, interviewing him, and seeing him play live with the E Street Band and with the Disciples going back to the 1970s and ’80s, and he has never failed to impress as a performer and a straight-shooting human being.

There are five programs being held in conjunction with the publication of Unrequited Infatuations, pairing him with film critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks, music critic and author Joel Selvin, director and screenwriter Chris Columbus, broadcast journalist Budd Mishkin — oh, and Stevie’s boss and best friend, Bruce Springsteen. Below is the full schedule; take note of which events come with a copy of the book, in some cases pre-signed as well.

Tuesday, September 28
Stevie in conversation with Bruce Springsteen, $35 with unsigned book, $45 with signed book, 8:00

Wednesday, September 29
Stevie in conversation with Jay Cocks, online and at the 92nd St. Y, $20 online, $35 in person with book, 7:30

Thursday, September 30
Stevie in conversation with Joel Selvin, Commonwealth Club online, $5 general admission, $35 with book, 8:00

Friday, October 1
Stevie in conversation with Chris Columbus, Book Soup at the Colburn Music School, $40 with book, 7:00

Sunday, October 3
Stevie in conversation with Budd Mishkin, Montclair Literary Festival, $40 with signed book, $100 with signed book and VIP seating, 5:00

THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE: a song cycle

Bill Morrison explores Russian and Soviet cinematic history from a unique angle in The Village Detective

THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE: a song cycle (Bill Morrison, 2021)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
September 22-30
212-924-777
www.ifccenter.com

In the 1970 documentary Zharov Tells, longtime Russian film favorite Mikhail Zharov says, “Remembering my life, I am trying to follow, to find for myself, and for others too, especially the young, the answer to the question of how life gets woven into art and how art reflects life.” When it comes to cinema, Chicago-born, New York City–based filmmaker Bill Morrison has been excavating this connection for more than thirty years, in such masterworks as Dawson City: Frozen Time and Decasia.

Morrison uses found footage, often in terrible shape, the celluloid practically disintegrating in his hands and before our eyes onscreen, to examine sociocultural issues and film history itself. So when his friend Jóhann Jóhannsson, the Icelandic musician and composer who passed away in 2018 at the age of forty-eight, emailed him in July 2016 about a lobster trawl that had scraped up a film canister, Morrison jumped at the opportunity to explore its contents. Fishing in Faxaflói, about twenty nautical miles southwest of the Snæfellsjökull glacier, near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates meet — what Morrison calls in the film “the deep divide between East and West” — the lobster boat Fróði had scooped up four reels containing an incomplete copy of Ivan Lukinsky’s 1969 Soviet crime comedy Derevenskiy Detektiv (Village Detective), starring Zharov as local rural policeman Fyodor Ivanovich Aniskin, who is investigating the theft of an accordion.

While there is nothing special about the movie, which is not some long-lost treasure but just a mediocre-at-best tale that led to two sequels, Morrison decided to become a kind of detective himself, doing a deep dive into Zharov’s oeuvre, producing a unique look at twentieth-century Soviet and Russian history as seen through its cinema. And he centers his film on the found reels of Derevenskiy Detektiv, with all their glips, blotches, dirt, and grime instead of using a cleaner print (which is available), adding an extra layer of commentary on the changes occurring from multiple revolutions, two world wars, and the transition from tsars to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

Serving as producer, director, and editor, Morrison includes numerous clips of Zharov, who was born in 1899 and died in 1981, having appeared in more than five dozen films and a hundred theatrical productions, beginning with his debut as a soldier in 1915’s Tsar Ivan the Terrible and including 1931’s Road to Life, in which Zharov, as a thief named Zhigan, became the first actor to sing in Russian on camera. Morrison concentrates on the clips themselves; there are only a few moments of commentary, from Erlendur Sveinsson, the former director of the National Film Archive of Iceland who supervised the preservation of the discovered reels, and George Eastman Museum curator Peter Bagrov, who compares Zharov’s popularity to that of Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable in Hollywood.

“Once you were a prince. Now you are a nobody,” Zharov says as Menshikov to the title character in 1937’s Peter the First. “I am not Soviet,” he declares as Dymba in 1939’s New Horizons. He displays his loyalty to Comrade Stalin as Perchikhin in 1942’s Fortress on the Volga. He plays a former soldier for the tsar who is now a Bolshevik in 1942’s He Will Come Back. The next year, in In the Name of the Fatherland, he proclaims as Globa, “I hate these Bolsheviks. I hate them more than I hate you!” And in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1958 Ivan the Terrible Pt. 2., Zharov states as guard Malyuta Skuratov, “I would give my soul for the tsar.”

The soundtrack, composed by Pulitzer and Grammy winner and Oscar nominee David Lang, also takes us back to old Russia with a sly nod to the plot of Derevenskiy Detektiv; the compelling score was written for one accordion and is played by Norwegian musician Frode Andersen, with vocals by Shara Nova. Not only is the accordion a traditional Eastern European folk instrument but it was used by Tchaikovsky, Sterligov, and others in their orchestrations. The final seconds of the film bring it all together beautifully.

“You know, when I heard about the reels being found, I was expecting a lost silent masterpiece and not a film which we have in our collection on camera negative from which it’s been shown on television from month to month,” Bagrov recounts. Lukinsky’s Derevenskiy Detektiv might not be a masterpiece of any kind, but Morrison’s (The Miners’ Hymns, The Great Flood) The Village Detective is another masterful triumph from one of America’s most ingenious filmmakers.