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ORLANDO

Taylor Mac stars as the title character in Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando at the Signature (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

ORLANDO
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through May 12, $45-$119
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Will Davis’s Signature revival of Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando starring Taylor Mac was one of the most hotly anticipated off-Broadway shows of the season. Sadly, it turns out to be one of the most disappointing.

In 1927, Virginia Woolf, struck by sudden inspiration, wrote Orlando: A Biography, a story about a person who wakes up one morning a different gender and experiences life over five hundred years; it was based on Woolf’s relationship with her friend and lover, author and garden designer Vita Sackville-West. “I have written this book quicker than any; & it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writer’s holiday,” Woolf noted in a letter.

In 1998, Ruhl, just out of Brown University, was asked to write a theatrical adaptation of the novel, which had been made into a film in 1992 written and directed by Sally Potter and featuring Tilda Swinton in the title role. In a burst of enthusiasm, Ruhl wrote the first draft “aided by the intrepid speed of youth,” she explains in a program note to this new production.

Perhaps everyone needed to slow down when it came to this fussy revival.

The trouble begins with Arnulfo Maldonado’s sparse set, which is far too large, the actors lost in the vast space, eliminating any sense of intimacy with the audience. There are several black umbrella lights onstage, as if the cast is in a photography studio, voguing for unseen cameras. Various props, from a long table to a royal throne to miniature trees and houses, appear and disappear, often confusingly, as when the houses are left in the back. Oana Botez’s clownish costumes are way over the top and the cast, aside from Mac — Janice Amaya, Nathan Lee Graham, Lisa Kron, Jo Lampert, Rad Pereira, and TL Thompson — is inconsistent, some actors bland, others downright annoying as they portray multiple characters. The hundred-minute play also doesn’t benefit from having an intermission to separate the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the eighteenth to twentieth; not all audience members returned after the break to what was already far from a full house.

The unsteady narrative goes back and forth between the characters engaging in dialogue and speaking in the third person directly to the audience. The break comes after the following exchange, which more than hints at the current controversy over gender identity:

Chorus: We have no choice but to confess . . . he was a woman.
Chorus: No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing.
Their form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman’s grace.
Chorus: And here we pause. Orlando had become a woman — there is no denying it.
Chorus: But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as they had been.
Chorus: The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same.
Chorus: Many people have been at pains to prove, first, that Orlando had always been a woman, and secondly, that Orlando is at this moment a man.
Chorus: Let biologists and psychologists argue.
Chorus: It is enough for us to state the simple fact:
Chorus: Orlando was a man till the age of thirty, when she became a woman and has remained so ever since.
Orlando: I want to go home. To England.

A clownish cast of characters is part of disappointing revival (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Over the course of half a millennia, Orlando falls in and out of love, is harassed, meets Shakespeare, and tries their hand at poetry. Orlando also discovers the societal shortcomings of being a woman. “How odd! When I was a young man, I insisted that women be obedient, chaste, and scented. Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires. For women are not — ” Orlando gets cut off, then continues, “obedient, chaste, and scented by nature. They can only attain these graces by tedious discipline. There’s the hairdressing . . . that alone will take at least an hour of my morning . . . there’s looking in the looking glass . . . there’s being chaste year in and year out. . . . Christ Jesus! When I set foot on English soil, I shall never be able to crack a man over the head, or draw my sword and run him through the body, or lead an army . . . All I can do is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it.”

Orlando also discovers that despite now being a woman, they are still in love with Sasha, a Russian princess, while beginning to feel the effects of gender discrimination. Orlando soon learns, “One: That you are dead, and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever. Two: That you are a woman, which amounts to much the same thing.”

Ruhl (Letters from Max, a ritual; The Oldest Boy; Pulitzer finalist In the Next Room, or the vibrator play) and Davis (India Pale Ale, Men on Boats) make those points over and over again as scenes go on too long and some of the play’s unique visuals are repeated until tiresome. Too often it’s like we’re watching an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race mixed with a dose of Forrest Gump instead of a meaningful and funny historical drama dealing with gender inequality, sexual orientation, power, and love. Even the endlessly inventive Mac (A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Bark of Millions) is unable to lift the show.

Woolf’s book might have been ahead of its time, but this production, coming almost one hundred years after the novel, feels dated, stale, and out of place, already past its prime.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

RACE AND GENDER DISCRIMINATION ONSTAGE: JORDANS / SALLY & TOM / SUFFS

Naomi Lorrain and Toby Onwumere both play characters named Jordan in Ife Olujobi’s new play at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

JORDANS
LuEsther Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 19, $65-$170
publictheater.org

“A reckoning is coming and the likes of you will be crushed by the likes of me!” the enslaved James tells his owner, Thomas Jefferson, in Sally & Tom, one of three current shows with ties to the Public Theater that deal with race and gender discrimination — and a coming reckoning.

At the Public’s LuEsther Hall, Ife Olujobi’s Jordans is set at a modern-day photo studio called Atlas, where some heavy lifting has to be done. The small company is run by the white, domineering Hailey (Kate Walsh), whose staff consists of the white Emma (Brontë England-Nelson), Fletcher (Brian Muller), Tyler (Matthew Russell), Ryan (Ryan Spahn), and Maggie (Meg Steedle) as well as a Black woman named Jordan (Naomi Lorrain), who they all treat, well, like an enslaved woman. While the others bandy about ridiculous ideas regarding Atlas’s future, Jordan has coffee purposefully spilled on her, is told to clean up vomit and human waste, gets garbage thrown at her, and is essentially ignored when she’s not being harassed.

When a photographer (Spahn) is snapping pictures during a photo shoot, he calls out to the model (England-Nelson), “Tell me, who is this woman? What does she want?” It’s a question no one asks Jordan.

Concerned that the company is becoming “vibeless” because their personnel lacks diversity, Hailey hires a Black man also named Jordan (Toby Onwumere) as their first director of culture. When 1.Jordan, as he’s referred to in the script, arrives for his first day, he asks Jordan, “What’s a brotha need to know?” And she tells him: “Well . . . the way I see it is, I work in an office owned by an evil succubus, staffed by little L-train demons, and I spend all day trying not to fall into their death traps. Sometimes it feels kinda like a video game: me running around, dodging flying objects, trying to save my lives for future battles. But then I remember this is my actual life, and I only have one. So.”

Hailey enters and runs her hands over 1.Jordan’s body as if she were evaluating a slave she has just purchased. Maggie demands to know where he is from — and she does not mean where he was born and raised, which happens to be in America. Fletcher, Emma, Tyler, and Ryan bombard him with questions about why his father was not around and was such a deadbeat. The stereotypes keep coming, but 1.Jordan stands firm, even as Hailey asserts to him when they are alone, “I am the owner of this studio.” He has been hired to be the (Black)face of the company and to do whatever he is told. Did I mention that 1.Jordan’s last name is Savage?

Outside the office, the two Jordans disagree on how to “play the game.” Jordan advises 1.Jordan to keep his head down, follow the rules, and not to show off his accomplishments. “You have to let them think that they own you,” she says. But 1.Jordan is determined to be a success on his terms, not theirs, arguing, “I want the freedom to do what I want without having to beg.”

Soon the Jordans become interchangeable, their roles and responsibilities merging and veering off in strange ways, each seeing the white world they inhabit from a new viewpoint. “Who are you?” Jordan asks. 1.Jordan replies, “Who am I?!” Meanwhile, the racist clichés ramp up even more.

Ife Olujobi’s Jordans is set at a modern-day branding studio (photo by Joan Marcus)

In her 2021 pandemic book No Play, in which Olujobi interviewed hundreds of theater people about the state of the industry as impacted by current events — I was among the participants — she asks in the chapter “the end of all things as we understand them”: “In the context of the racial and social justice movements reinvigorated by last year’s uprisings in response to the police killings of Black people, and in the simplest and most literal terms possible, what does ‘doing the work’ mean to you?”

Jordans — the title instantly makes one think of Michael Jordan’s heavily marketed and branded sneakers — is about doing the work, no matter your race or gender. Olujobi, in her first off-Broadway play, and director Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, On Sugarland) don’t back away from harsh language and brutal situations to make their points about where we have to go as a nation, when to take action, and when to sit back and listen. At a talkback after Donja R. Love’s Soft in 2022, White, who directed the show, told the audience that white people were not allowed to take part in the discussion. It was a sobering experience that has remained with me.

Lorrain (Daphne, La Race) and Onwumere (Macbeth, The Liar) are superb as the two Jordans, who get under each other’s skin both literally and figuratively. In an intimate and potent sex scene, only Lorrain’s vulva is exposed, not for titillation, but to declare that power and success do not require a penis. Walsh (If I Forget, Dusk Rings a Bell) excels as Hailey, who represents white leaders of all kinds.

The narrative has a series of confusing moments, and it’s too long at 140 minutes (with intermission); the scene with influencer Kyle Price (Russell) feels particularly extraneous, draining the story of its thrust. But the finale makes a powerful statement that won’t be easy to forget.

Sally Hemings (Sheria Irving) and Thomas Jefferson (Gabriel Ebert) pause at a dance in Suzan-Lori Parks’s new play at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

SALLY & TOM
Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 2, $65-$170
publictheater.org

Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks pulls no punches in her sharp and clever Sally & Tom, continuing at the Public’s Martinson Hall through June 2. It’s a meta-tale about different kinds of enslavement, from the start of America to the present day.

An independent, diverse theater troupe called Good Company is rehearsing its latest socially conscious play, The Pursuit of Happiness, the follow-up to Patriarchy on Parade and Listen Up, Whitey, Cause It’s All Your Fault. It’s set in Monticello, Virginia, in 1790, at the plantation home of Thomas Jefferson, who is in the midst of a sexual “relationship” with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves; he first started having sex with her when she was fourteen and he was forty-four. The show-within-the-show is written by Luce (Sheria Irving), a Black woman who plays Sally; her partner, the white Mike (Gabriel Ebert), is the director and portrays Tom. Dramaturg and choreographer Ginger (Kate Nowlin) is Patsy, one of Tom’s daughters; stage manager and dance captain Scout (Sun Mee Chomet) is Polly, Tom’s other daughter; publicist and fight director Maggie (Kristolyn Lloyd) is Mary, Sally’s sister; music, sound, and lighting designer Devon (Leland Fowler) is Nathan, Mary’s husband; Kwame (Alano Miller), who is looking to break out into film, is James, Sally’s older brother; and set and costume designer Geoff (Daniel Petzold) plays multiple small roles.

The opening scene between Sally and Tom sets the stage.

Tom: Miss Hemings?
Sally: Mr. Jefferson?
Tom: What do you see?
Sally: I see the future, Mr. Jefferson.
Tom: And it’s a fine future, is it not?
Sally: God willing, Mr. Jefferson.
Tom: Do you think we will make it?
Sally: Meaning you and I?
Tom: Meaning you and I, of course, and, meaning our entire Nation as well. Do you think we’ll make it?
Sally: God willing, Mr. Jefferson. God and Man willing. And Woman too.

While Tom is keeping his relationship with Sally secret, Mike and Luce do not hide theirs, although Luce is suspicious of Mike’s ex. Art imitates life as what happens in the play is mimicked by what is occurring to the company members. When Luce points out, “This is not a love story,” she might be talking about not only Sally and Tom but her and Mike. When unseen producer Teddy demands that a key speech by Kwame, aka K-Dubb, be cut and threatens to pull his funding, the company has some important decisions to make that evoke choices that Sally and Tom are facing. Jefferson admits to owning six hundred enslaved people, including Sally and her family, while Luce declares, “Teddy don’t own me.” And just as the company was depending on the money promised by Teddy, Sally and James are quick to prod Tom of his vow to eventually free them. “We build our castle on a foundation of your promises,” Sally tells Tom.

“Handing me a book while you keep me on a leash,” James says to Tom. “Do you want me to remind myself of how kind you are? Kinder than other Masters, hoping that I will rejoice every day that you keep me enslaved? Let me proclaim my Liberty: You are not on the Throne! I stand with all Enslaved People who rise up and revolt! I say ‘Yes’ to the Revolutions that explode and that will continue to explode all over this country. I condemn the ‘breeding farms’ not more than a day’s ride from here. I acknowledge all the Horrors and the Revolutions that you dare not think on, and that we dare not speak of in your presence. What would we do if we were to wake up out of our ‘tranquility’? The wrongs done upon us would be avenged. And the world order would be upended!”

As Tom decides whether he should go to New York City at the behest of the president and who he will bring with him, Luce and Mike have to reconsider the future of the play, and their partnership.

Sally & Tom is about a small theater company putting on historical drama (photo by Joan Marcus)

Presented in association with the Guthrie Theater, Sally & Tom might not be top-shelf Parks — that illustrious group includes Topdog/Underdog, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), In the Blood and Fucking A, and Porgy and Bess — but it’s yet another splendidly conceived work from one of America’s finest playwrights. Parks and director Steve H. Broadnax III (Sunset Baby, The Hot Wing King) breathe new life into a familiar topic, which has previously been explored in film and opera as well as television, music, and literature.

Irving (Romeo and Juliet, Parks’s White Noise) and Tony winner Ebert (Matilda, Pass Over) are terrific as the real couple from the past and the fictional contemporary characters, their lives becoming practically interchangeable on Riccardo Hernández’s set, which contains Monticello-style pillars, the actors dressed in Rodrigo Muñoz’s period costumes. The score was written by Parks with Dan Moses Schreier; Parks, an accomplished musician, composed and played the songs for her intimate 2022–23 Plays for the Plague Year, and on April 29 she appeared at Joe’s Pub with her band, Sula & the Joyful Noise.

“You will be ashamed that you were proud to father a country where some are free and others are enslaved! Where some have plenty and others only have the dream of plenty!” Kwame proclaims to Tom. “All them pretty words you write, Mr. Jefferson, they’re all lies! You’ll soon be ashamed by the lies that this country was built on, Mr. Jefferson! Ashamed by the lies on which we were founded, and on which we were fed, and on which we grew fat!”

As Jordans and Sally & Tom reveal, those lies are still with us, more than two hundred and thirty years later.

Shaina Taub wrote the book, music, and lyrics and stars in Suffs on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)

SUFFS
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 5, $69 – $279
suffsmusical.com

The reckoning forges ahead at Suffs, Shaina Taub’s hit musical that began at the Public’s Newman Theater in 2022 and has now transferred to the Music Box on Broadway in a rearranged and improved version.

Most Americans are familiar with such names as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but Taub focuses on the next generation of women who fought for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in the second decade of the twentieth century: Alice Paul (Taub), Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz), Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi), Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino), and Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck).

The musical focuses on generational conflict and disagreements about strategy that have characterized all sorts of progressive movements in the United States; an older, more sedate crowd wants to work within the system, while young radicals want to bust it open with outright aggression.

In Suffs, the youngsters decide to take on the powerful National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella) and Mollie Hay (Jaygee Macapugay), a group that does not want to ruffle any feathers. While Carrie sings, “Let mother vote / We raised you after all / Won’t you thank the lady you have loved since you were small? / We reared you, cheered you, helped you when you fell / With your blessing, we could help America as well,” Alice declares, “I don’t want to have to compromise / I don’t want to have to beg for crumbs / from a country that doesn’t care what I say / I don’t want to follow in old footsteps / I don’t want to be a meek little pawn in the games they play / I want to march in the street / I want to hold up a sign / with millions of women with passion like mine / I want to shout it out loud / in the wide open light.”

While Carrie is content to set up pleasant meetings with President Woodrow Wilson (Grace McLean) that are either nonproductive or canceled, Alice has no patience, demanding that action happen immediately. After seeing Ruza give a rousing speech at a workers rally, Alice asks her to join their movement. “Look, I want no part of your polite little suffragette parlor games,” Ruza says. Alice responds, “Well, that’s perfect, because when we take on a tyrant, we burn him down.”

One of the most troubling aspect of the fight for twentieth-century women’s suffrage is its relationship with Black-led racial justice and civil rights movements. Suffs does not ignore the issue and instead makes it a major plot point. When Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells’s (Nikki M. James) offers to bring her group to join the march, Alice initially rejects her, fearing that southern white donors will pull their funding, but Ida won’t take no for an answer.

“I’m not only here for the march,” Ida tells Alice and the others. “My club has also come to agitate for laws against lynching; my people cannot vote if they are hanging from trees.” She also proclaims in the showstopper “Wait My Turn”: “You want me to wait my turn? / To simply put my sex before my race / Oh! Why don’t I leave my skin at home and powder up my face? / Guess who always waits her turn? / Who always ends up in the back? / Us lucky ones born both female and black.”

Despite the march’s surprising success, the suffragists still have their work cut out for them if they are going to convince the powers that be that women deserve the right to vote.

Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz) leads the charge for women’s right to vote in Suffs (photo by Joan Marcus)

Taub’s (Twelfth Night, As You Like It) lively score, with wonderful orchestrations by Michael Starobin, and sharp lyrics keep the show moving at a fast pace, matching Alice’s determination to break down political malaise by getting things done ASAP. Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Merry Me, Grand Horizons) directs with a stately hand that never lets the energy slow down.

Taub fully embodies Alice, a fierce, driven fighter you would want on your side no matter the issue. Tony nominee Colella (Come from Away, Urban Cowboy) is a terrific foil as Carrie; their battles are reminiscent of those between Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly over the ERA in the 1970s — which Alice also was a part of. Tony winner James (The Book of Mormon, A Bright Room Called Day) brings down the house with “Wait My Turn,” and, in their Broadway debuts, Bonino is lovable as Lucy, Blanck (Octet, Alice by Heart) is a force as Ruza, Cruz rides high as Inez, Dandashi is sweet as the nerdy Doris, and Tsilala Brock adds a sly touch as Dudley Malone, President Wilson’s chief of staff.

As in Jordans and Sally & Tom, Taub’s Suffs explores various aspects of race- and gender-based discrimination, and each offers a very different conclusion.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MOTION PICTURES — THE JERRY SCHATZBERG ARCHIVE

Jerry Schatzberg, Anne St. Marie, Fish Market, New York, 1958 (photo courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)

MOTION PICTURES — THE JERRY SCHATZBERG ARCHIVE
Morrison Hotel Gallery
116 Prince St., second floor
Through May 5, free
morrisonhotelgallery.com
www.jerryschatzberg.com

Bronx-born director Jerry Schatzberg is most well known for such films as The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Honeysuckle Rose, and Street Smart, gritty dramas with memorable images, featuring such stars as Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Alan Alda, Willie Nelson, Dyan Cannon, and Christopher Reeve. Now ninety-six, Schatzberg also has another side to his talent, his stunning photography.

Two years ago, Fotogafiska hosted the exhibition “25th & Park,” consisting of dozens of shots by Schatzberg in and around his Park Ave. South studio beginning in 1957, photos of the neighborhood as well as major and minor celebs.

Jerry Schatzberg, Andy Warhol at Factory, New York, 1966 (photo courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)

Morrison Hotel Gallery is currently presenting the bicoastal show “Motion Pictures — The Jerry Schatzberg Archive,” continuing through May 5 at 116 Prince St. (The partner exhibit in LA closed May 3.) Schatzberg himself was at the NYC opening, surrounded by fans, friends, and photos of Faye Dunaway, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Francis Ford Coppola, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Arlo Guthrie, Roman Polanski, Fidel Castro, Sharon Tate, Catherine Deneuve, Frank Zappa, Carmen De Lavallade, and many others. In the limited edition 2006 book Thin Wild Mercury: Touching Dylan’s Edge, Schatzberg explained, “Usually when I photograph somebody I spend as much time as I can with the subject before taking a picture. I’ll use any excuse to delay a shooting just to spend more time. It helps them relax and gives me more of an insight into the real self. If I didn’t take the time I’d be photographing myself.”

Jerry Schatzberg, Bob Dylan, Thumb in Eye, 1965 (photo courtesy Morrison Hotel Gallery)

Schatzberg photographed Bob Dylan often, including taking the famous shot used for the cover of Blonde on Blonde. “As a photographic subject, Dylan was the best,” Schatzberg wrote in the book. “You just point the camera at him and things happen. We had a good rapport and he was willing to try anything. . . . Dylan and I were quite close for a while, as close as Dylan will allow. Dylan has always been somewhat impenetrable. He cherishes his privacy, and wants his personal life undisturbed. I respected that and still do. Any time somebody wants a photograph of Dylan I have to know how it will be used. I’d hate to find one of my photographs of him selling toothpaste.”

In this collection, it would be hard to think of any of Schatzberg’s gorgeous photos being used to sell toothpaste.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JODY OBERFELDER PROJECTS: AND THEN, NOW

And Then, Now leads guests through historic Green-Wood Cemetery (photo courtesy Jody Oberfelder Projects)

And Then, Now
Green-Wood Cemetery
Fifth Ave. and 25th St., Brooklyn
May 4-6, $30
www.jodyoberfelder.com
www.green-wood.com

“Are Americans always in a hurry?” dancer and choreographer Jody Oberfelder asked in a May 2022 diary entry published in The Dance Enthusiast.

She was writing about her site-specific piece Splash Dance, which took place in the pool in the John Madejski Garden at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but she could have been referring to so much of her work.

Founded in New York City in 1988, Jody Oberfelder Projects has staged immersive, participatory, and/or site-specific performances in an officers house on Governors Island, at the since-demolished amphitheater in East River Park, on pedestrian bridges in Germany, and in the 6½ Ave. corridor in midtown Manhattan, among other locations around the United States and the globe. This weekend, Oberfelder will be in historic Green-Wood Cemetery for the world premiere of And Then, Now, a unique guided hike through the cemetery, which boasts spectacular vistas, lush green hills and giant trees, monk parakeets, and remarkable headstones, mausoleums, gates, and catacombs. Among the famous and infamous buried there are Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Lola Montez, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Horace Greeley. Comfortable footwear is strongly suggested; seating will not be available as everyone winds through the environs.

And Then, Now gives attendees the opportunity to slow down and contemplate as part of an intimate community. “Invite someone you’ve lost to walk with us,” one of the dancers offers.

“In this season of rebirth, amidst a challenging time for our collective humanity, we extend a heartfelt invitation to our neighbors to witness moments of exquisite artistry and profound reflection among the historic backdrop of Green-Wood Cemetery,” Oberfelder said in a statement. “Through dance, music, and dialogue, let us honor the enduring power of connection by bridging the gap between the echoes of the past and their tangible influence on our present lives.”

There will be four performances, including a special twilight show on May 6, for which flashlights are encouraged. The 105-minute immersive, performative walk will feature three dancers at a time (Maria Anton-Arters, Andi Farley Shimota, Michael Greenberg, Justin Lynch, and Oberfelder), with live music by the Glass Clouds Ensemble, consisting of violinist Raina Arnett, violist Noémie Chemali, and vocalist Marisa Karchin playing pieces by Henry Purcell, Missy Mazzoli, and others. The costumes are by Reid & Harriet, with sound by Sean Hagerty and dramaturgy by Rebekah Morin. Having seen many of Oberfelder’s works over the last twenty years, I can’t recommend And Then, Now highly enough, as she always delivers a special experience.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND TRANSATLANTIC MODERNISM: A CREATIVE CONVENING

Who: Jordan Casteel, Joy Bivins, Rhea L. Combs, Thelma Golden, Tayari Jones, Christopher McBride, Tayari Jones, NSangou Njikam, Denise Murrell, more
What: All-day symposium with lectures, conversations, and performances
Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Ave., 1000 Fifth Ave. at Eighty-Second St.
When: Saturday, April 27, free with RSVP, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Why: The exhibit of the year thus far is the Met’s “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” an eye-opening collection of more than 160 paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, and ephemera from the “New Negro” movement in Harlem between the 1920s and 1940s. Featuring works by Horace Pippin, Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, Hale Woodruff, James Van Der Zee, and others — alongside pieces by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, and more to provide context — the show is divided into such sections as “The Thinkers,” “Everyday Life in the New Black Cities,” “Portraiture and the Modern Black Subject,” “Debate and Synthesis: African and Western Aesthetics,” “A Language of Artistic Freedom,” “Cultural Philosophy and History Painting,” “European Modernism and the International African Diaspora,” “Luminaries,” “Nightlife,” “Family and Society,” and “Artist and Activist.”

On April 27, the Met will host “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism: A Creative Convening,” a free, all-day symposium consisting of live performances, lectures, and conversations with an outstanding lineup of artists, authors, educators, curators, museum directors, and other experts. The full schedule is below.

“Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have obscured and overlaid,” Alain Locke, who is featured prominently in the exhibition, explained in The New Negro in 1925. “All vital art discovers beauty and opens our eyes to beauty that previously we could not see.”

The revelation of the show is the little-known Archibald J. Motley Jr., a painter of extraordinary quality who immerses visitors in his dramatic scenes bursting with life; among his striking canvases on view are Jockey Club, Dans la rue, Blues, Cocktails, and Black Belt. He even gets his own section, “The New Negro Artist Abroad: Motley in Paris.”

Archibald J. Motley Jr., Black Belt, oil on canvas, 1934 (Hampton University Museum / courtesy the Chicago History Museum. © Valerie Gerrard Browne)

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too,” Langston Hughes wrote in 1926. “If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

Be sure not to miss the final room, which contains Romare Bearden’s monumental 1971 six-panel Harlem tribute The Block, its own temple for tomorrow.

Saturday, April 27
Opening Performance: The National Jazz Museum in Harlem House Band led by Christopher McBride, 10:00

Welcome and Introduction, with Max Hollein, Heidi Holder, and Denise Murrell, 10:35

Keynote, by Isabel Wilkerson, 10:45

Session I
Presentations: Harlem as Nexus, with Emilie Boone, Rhea L. Combs, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, and Richard J. Powell, 11:30

Session II
Conversation: Legacies of Harlem on My Mind, with Bridget R. Cooks and Lowery Stokes Sims (virtually), moderated by Denise Murrell, 2:00

Conversation: Visioning the Future — The Collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with Kathryn E. Coney, Jamaal Sheats, Danille Taylor, and Vanessa Thaxton-Ward, moderated by Joy Bivins, 3:00

Session III
Conversation: New Renaissance — Harlem Today, with Jordan Casteel, Anna Glass, and Sade Lythcott, moderated by Thelma Golden, 4:30

Reading, by NSangou Njikam, 5:30

Closing Remarks, by Denise Murrell, 5:45

UNCROPPED

Photojournalist James Hamilton is the subject of fascinating documentary (photo by Jody Caravaglia)

UNCROPPED (D. W. Young, 2023)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Thursday, April 25
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.uncroppedfilm.com

The centerpiece of this year’s fourteenth annual DOC NYC festival was the world premiere of D. W. Young’s warm and lovely Uncropped, now opening theatrically April 25 at IFC Center. The film is as gentle and unassuming as its subject, photographer James Hamilton, who should be a household name. But fame and fortune are clearly not the point for Hamilton, who grew up in Westport, Connecticut, and didn’t own his own camera until he was twenty. He’s lived in the same cramped Greenwich Village apartment since 1966 and has little online presence, especially when compared to several other photographers named James Hamilton.

However, he will take part in several IFC Q&As this week, with Young, journalist Kathy Dobie, and moderator Joe Conason on Thursday at 6:45, with Young and moderator Amy Taubin on April 26 at 6:50, and with Young, Sylvia Plachy, and moderator Jeffrey Henson-Scales at the 6:50 screening on April 27.

“James’s work is refreshingly devoid of ego,” Sonic Youth cofounder Thurston Moore says in the film, letting out a laugh. “Let’s put it that way.”

The soft-spoken, easygoing Hamilton notes, “My whole career was all about having fun.”

And what fun it’s been.

Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine are among the many famous and not-so-famous people photographed by James Hamilton (photo by James Hamilton)

Hamilton got his start by forging a press pass to gain entry to the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969 and used the shots to get a staff job at Crawdaddy magazine. He later took pictures for the Herald, Harper’s Bazaar, the Village Voice, New York magazine, the London Times, and the New York Observer. He photographed rock stars and fashion icons; joined with print journalists to cover local, national, and international news events, including wars; shot unique behind-the-scene footage on such film sets as Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, Bill Paxton’s Frailty, and George A. Romero’s Knightriders; and captured life on the streets of New York City and elsewhere.

Among the people Young talks to are journalists Conason, Dobie, Alexandra Jacobs, Michael Daly, Thulani Davis, Richard Goldstein, and Mark Jacobson, editors Eva Prinz and Susan Vermazen, and photographers Plachy and David Lee. Young, who also edited the film and produced it with Judith Mizrachy, cuts in hundreds of Hamilton’s photos, which run the gamut from celebrities, politicians, and musicians to business leaders, kids playing, and brutal war scenes, accompanied by a jazzy score by David Ullmann, performed by Ullmann, Vincent Sperrazza, and others.

Hamilton, who has never been a fan of being interviewed, sits down and chats with Plachy, who shares fabulous stories of their time at the Voice; journalist and close friend Jacobson, who Hamilton took pictures for on numerous adventures; Conason, who discusses their transition from the Voice to the Observer; Dobie, who gets personal; and Prinz and Moore together. “We never crop James Hamilton’s photographs,” Prinz points out, raving about his remarkable eye for composition.

Uncropped also serves as an insightful document of more than fifty years of New York City journalism, tracing the beginnings of underground coverage to today’s online culture where professional, highly qualified, experienced writers and photographers are having trouble getting published and paid. But through it all, Hamilton has persevered.

in his previous film, The Booksellers, Young focused on bibliophiles who treasure physical books as works of art even as the internet changes people’s relationships with books and how they read and purchase them. One of the experts Young meets with is Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand, an independent bookstore founded in 1927 and still hanging on against Amazon, B&N, and other chains and conglomerates.

Near the end of Uncropped, Young shows Hamilton and Dobie perusing the outdoor stacks of cheap books at the Strand, dinosaurs still relishing the perhaps-soon-to-be-gone days of print but always in search of more fun.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

PUBLIC ART FUND TALKS: SARAH SZE AND TEJU COLE

Sarah Sze will discuss her LaGuardia installation, Shorter Than the Day, at special talk on April 25 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Sarah Sze, Teju Cole
What: Public Art Fund Talk
Where: The Great Hall at the Cooper Union, 7 East Seventh St. at Third Ave.
When: Thursday, April 25, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
Why: In the poem “Because I could not stop for Death —,” Emily Dickinson writes, “We paused before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground – / The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – / Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity –.” Those words about the cycle of life inspired the title of Sarah Sze’s largest monumental installation to date, the site-specific Shorter Than the Day. A joint venture from the Public Art Fund and LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the piece was installed in 2020 as part of a major renovation of LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B, along with Jeppe Hein’s All Your Wishes, Sabine Hornig’s La Guardia Vistas, and Laura Owens’s I 🍕 NY.

Shorter Than the Day is a tenuous-looking sphere of aluminum and steel wiring holding hundreds of small photos of the New York City sky taken over the course of a single day, featuring shots of clouds, the sun, and the sky in white, blue, purple, yellow, orange, and red, evoking a constellation as well as the passage of time in a place where people tend to always be in a hurry, either to get home or to travel to another destination for work or pleasure. It dangles from the ceiling over an empty space above shops below. The Boston-born, New York City–based artist, whose “Timelapse” exhibit at the Guggenheim dazzled visitors last year with its fragile exploration of impermanence, will be at the Great Hall at the Cooper Union on April 25 at 6:30 to discuss Shorter Than the Day and more with Nigerian American writer and photographer Teju Cole, the award-winning Guggenheim Fellow and author of such books as Open City and Tremor. Admission is free with advance registration; the Public Art Fund talk will not be filmed, but an audio version will be available later.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]