Mark Ruffalo will be joined by Jessica Hecht for reading and discussion about upcoming stage production of Ironweed and the unhoused crisis (photo by Victoria Will)
Who: Mark Ruffalo, Jessica Hecht, Vinson Cunningham What:Play reading and discussion Where:BAM Strong, Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. When: Tickets on sale Thursday, April 18, $35+, 1:00; show is Friday, May 17, 7:30 Why: “Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods.” So begins Ironweed, the third of eight books in William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle. The 1983 novel earned the Albany native the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a movie four years later by Hector Babenco starring Oscar nominees Jack Nicholson as Francis and Meryl Streep as Helen Archer, a homeless couple just trying to make it to the next day.
The story is now being told in a new play, along with an all-star audio recording of the drama, directed by Jodie Markell. On April 18 at 1:00, tickets go on sale for “Ironweed: An Evening of Art & Humanity,” which consists of a staged reading of several scenes from the play, with Mark Ruffalo and Jessica Hecht as the couple, followed by a discussion with the actors and experts on the unhoused crisis, moderated by Vinson Cunningham. The audio recording features Ruffalo, Hecht, Norbert Leo Butz, Kristine Nielsen, John Magaro, Michael Potts, David Rysdahl, Frank Wood, Katie Erbe, and others, the ninety-six-year-old Kennedy as narrator, songs by Tom Waits, and an original score by Tamar-kali.
Ruffalo is on the board of the Solutions Project, which “funds and amplifies climate justice solutions created by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, women, and communities of color building an equitable world.” Hecht is the cofounder of the Campfire Project, which “promotes arts-based wellness in refugee spaces and empowers refugees to step into the spotlight, explore their creativity, and refocus on their humanity,” and she is on the board of Projects with Care, an organization that “works closely with housing and social service agencies in New York City to coordinate need-based initiatives for families who need a helping hand.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:MC Baba Israel,Hetep BarBoy,Squala Orphan,JSWISS,KUMBAYA,DJ Reborn What: Word. Sound. Power. 2024: SOUND — Rhythm Is Rhythm Where:BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl. When: Friday, April 19, and Saturday, April 20, $25, 7:30 Why: In past years, BAM’s annual “Word. Sound. Power.” showcase of hip-hop and spoken-word artists has featured such performers as Helixx C. Armageddon, Pri the Honey Dark, Silent Knight, Peggy Robles-Alvarado, Jade Charon, Nejma Nefertiti, Okai, Dizzy SenZe, and others. The 2024 iteration, “SOUND — Rhythm Is Rhythm,” is taking place at the Fishman Space April 19 and 20, with an impressive lineup that includes host, cocurator, and director MC Baba Israel, Hetep BarBoy with Squala Orphan, Kumbaya, JSWISS, and DJ Reborn, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary.
“Hip-hop embodies an ongoing dialogue between the beat and the community. Sometimes, it’s the rhyme that answers back, while other times, it’s the body that continues the discussion,” event cocurator and BAM education manager Mikal Amin Lee said in a statement. “This year, we aim to spotlight the dynamic conversation between beats and rhymes, in the spirit of the Last Poets, the block, and the Cipher. Whether expressed through the ones or the mic, the essence remains the same: rhythm is rhythm.” The seventy-minute live performance will be followed by a twenty-minute Q&A with the artists.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:Charles Busch,Melissa Errico What: Book talk Where:The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South When: Monday, April 15, free with advance RSVP, 6:30 Why: In the first chapter of his memoir, Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy (Smart Pop, September 2023, $27.95), Charles Busch is writing about meeting up with Joan Rivers. “Dining with a group of friends at Joe Allen, Joan expressed wistfully, ‘I wish I had a gay son I could phone at midnight and discuss whatever movie was on TCM.’ Everyone laughed. I fell silent, but inside I was pleading, Take me. I’ll be your gay son. Joan was the most prominent in a long line of smart, bigger-than-life mother figures I’ve attached myself to. All my life, I’ve been in a search for a maternal woman whose lap I could rest my head on.”
New York native Busch has been part of the entertainment scene in the city since the late 1970s, writing and appearing in numerous plays and films, often in drag. The Tony nominee and Drama Desk Award winner has dazzled audiences with such plays as The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,The Tribute Artist, and The Confession of Lily Dare as well as Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommie, Die!, both of which transferred from stage to the big screen. He currently can be seen in Ibsen’s Ghost at 59E59 through April 14.
On April 16, Busch will be at the National Arts Club to talk about his life and career, in conversation with Manhattan-born, Tony-nominated actress and singer Melissa Errico, who has starred in such shows as My Fair Lady,High Society,Dracula the Musical,Amour,Sunday in the Park with George, and Aunt Dan and Lemon. Expect lots of great stories featuring many all-time theater greats.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who: Michael Ondaatje, Jordan Pavlin What: Poetry reading and discussion Where:Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway at West Twenty-Sixth St. When: Thursday, April 4, free with advance RSVP, 6:00 Why: “When you are surrounded with ornaments / of the old world, you need to hear one living vein,” Michael Ondaatje writes in “A Night Radio Station in Koprivshtitsa,” from his new poetry book, A Year of Last Things (Knopf, March 19, $28). He later adds, “Most stories remain unresolved, / undiscovered, like the breaking of a rule.” On April 4 at 6:00, the eighty-year-old Sri Lankan-born Canadian author, who has penned such novels as The English Patient,Anil’s Ghost, and Warlight, will be at Rizzoli to launch A Year of Last Things; he will read from the work, which contains such poems as “Lock,” “Definition,” “Lost,” “A Disappearance,” and “Stillness,” and sit down for a conversation with Knopf editor-in-chief Jordan Pavlin. Admission to the event, which is presented by the Authors Guild Foundation with support from the Academy of American Poets, is free, but reservations are strongly encouraged. Presigned books will be available at the end.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:Clara Joy,K. Porcelain,Ed Pankov What: Music and poetry in conjunction with the exhibit “Bey, Nkem & Elechi: A Triangulation” Where:ChaShaMa Gallery, 340 East Sixty-Fourth St. between First & Second Aves. When: Wednesday, January 10, suggested donation $10-$20, 6:00 Why: In conjunction with the Gallery Particulier show “Bey, Nkem & Elechi: A Triangulation” at ChaShaMa on the Upper East Side, which closes on January 13, a special celebratory event is being held on January 10 at 6:00, “Poetic Trigonometry,” featuring musician and artist Clara Joy, musician K. Porcelain, and poet, mystic, musician, and ordained minister Ed Pankov. The exhibition, curated by Grace Nkem and Arabella von Arx, puts works by Nkem, Amir Bey, and Obinna Elechi in conversation, exploring cultural identity and colonialism via the African diaspora through paintings, drawings, and sculpture, including Figure in a Corridor by Nkem, Purple Mask by Bey, and The Everything by Elechi.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Get tickets to such shows as Volcano at the Under the Radar festival before time runs out (photo by Emijlia Jefrehmova)
UNDER THE RADAR 2024
Multiple venues
January 5-21 utrfest.org
There was quite an uproar in June when Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announced the cancellation of the widely popular Under the Radar festival, which the Public had hosted since 2006. Held every January, the series featured a diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, discussions, and live music and dance, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Eustis followed that outcry with another message:
“Last week, difficult news was shared that the Under the Radar festival would not return for the Public’s 23–24 season. We made the painful decision to place the festival on hiatus. I understand and share the hurt that those who participated in and loved the festival have expressed over the past few days. . . . Unfortunately, these are exceptionally challenging times in our field. The Public, like almost every other nonprofit theater in the country, is facing serious financial pressure. . . . In the certainty that better times will come, we continue to work to preserve the health and mission of the Public. We look forward to a time when we can fully expand back into the robust and expansive theater we need to be.”
Festival founder and director Mark Russell was determined that the show must go on, and he brought it back to life. “Festivals are celebrations. They mark harvests and other moments of abundance or recognition,” he said in a statement. “Under the Radar is a festival that each year celebrates the vibrancy of new theater, in New York and internationally. At this moment, even in very challenging times, there is still innovative work rising from communities around New York and in far-reaching parts of the globe. Under the Radar aims to spotlight this work for audiences — not only those ‘in the know’ but from a wider stretch of communities, diverse in all respects, that could benefit by engaging with these creative leaders.”
The 2024 program includes two dozen presentations at seventeen venues, taking place from January 5 to 21. Below are my top five choices, which do not include two highly praised and strongly recommended works that are making encore appearances in New York, Dmitry Krimov/Krymov Lab NYC’s Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: In Our Own Words at BRIC and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s bilingual Public Obscenities at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In addition, the UFO sidebar of works in progress consist of Matt Romein’s Bag of Worms at Onassis ONX Studio, Zora Howard’s The Master’s Tools at Chelsea Factory (with Okwui Okpokwasili as Tituba from The Crucible), Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon’s How does it feel to look at nothing at National Sawdust, Theater in Quarantine and Sinking Ship Productions’ live debut of the previously streamed The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at the Connelly Theater, Jenn Kidwell and *the Blackening’s We Come to Collect [A Flirtation, with Capitalism] at the Flea, and Penny Arcade’s The Art of Becoming — Episode 3: Superstar Interrupted [1967-1973] at Joe’s Pub. In addition, a free symposium at NYU Skirball Center on January 12 at 9:30 am features Inge Ceustermans, Hana Sharif, Sunny Jain, Taylor Mac, Jeremy O. Harris, Ravi Jain, and Kaneza Schaal, hosted by Edgar Miramontes, looking at the future of independent theater.
A book club offers unique insight into Miranda July’s The First Bad Man (photo by Ros Kavanagh)
THE FIRST BAD MAN
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Samuel Rehearsal Studio, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza
January 5-13, choose-what-you-pay (suggested admission $35) www.lincolncenter.org www.panpantheatre.com
Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre has staged unique versions of Beckett’s Embers and Cascando as well as Gina Moxley’s The Patient Gloria. The company now turns its attention on a unique aspect of literature; for The First Bad Man at Lincoln Center’s Samuel Rehearsal Studio, audience members watch a book club dissect Miranda July’s wildly original 2015 novel, as characters and story lines intersect with reality.
A bouncy castle becomes more than just a fun children’s place in Nile Harris’s this house is not a home (photo by Alex Munro)
this house is not a home
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 6-14, $30.05 www.abronsartscenter.org
A bouncy castle helps Nile Harris explore how the world has changed over the last two years, with the assistance of Crackhead Barney, Malcolm-x Betts, slowdanger, and GENG PTP along with a gingerbread minstrel, vape addicts, a movie cowboy, and others, in this house is not a home. Afropessimism is on the menu in this collaboration between Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company.
Hamlet | Toilet makes its NYC debut at Japan Society (photo courtesy Kaimaku Pennant Race)
HAMLET | TOILET
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 10-13, $35 japansociety.org
In 2019, Yu Murai and Kaimaku Pennant Race blew our minds with the outrageous Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, a bizarrely entertaining mashup of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. They’re now back with another mad mix at Japan Society; I’m not sure there’s much more to say that what’s in the press release: “Notoriously iconoclastic and scatological director Yu Murai’s Hamlet | Toilet runs the Bard’s highbrow tale of existential woe through the poop chute.” Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to the exhibition “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus.”
VOLCANO
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
January 10-21, $54 stannswarehouse.org
Melding theater, dance, and sci-fi, Irish writer, director, and choreographer Luke Murphy (Slow Tide,Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte) introduces audiences to the mysterious Amber Project in this four-part miniseries of forty-five-minute multimedia segments starring Murphy and Will Thompson, exploring their past as they face an uncertain future.
OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 4, $68-$139 www.bam.org ourclassplay.com
During the pandemic, Igor Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke through with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, attracting such stalwarts as Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov to join the troupe. Following shows at BAC and Lincoln Center, the company brings a timely new adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class to BAM, about a 1941 pogrom in Poland that severely impacts the relationships of a group of students. Broadway veterans Richard Topol, Alexandra Silber, and Gus Birney star, alongside Jewish and non-Jewish cast and crew members from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Tariq Trotter (photo by Joshua Kissi) will discuss his new new memoir at BAM with Jon Stewart this week
Who:Tariq Trotter (Black Thought), Jon Stewart What: Book launch and conversation Where:Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theater at the BAM Strong, 651 Fulton St., 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St. When: Tuesday, November 14, $44-$68, 8:00 Why: “The story of my life starts with the fire. A lot of people know I burned down my family’s home when I was six years old, but are not aware of the magnitude of that moment — and all that began to unravel after it. That, I have never spoken of publicly, and rarely even to those closest to me,” Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, writes at the beginning of his new memoir, The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are (One World, November 2023, $26.99). “You sometimes hear stories about people who have ‘lost it all’ and rebuilt their lives, but what I learned at a young age is that sometimes shit is just lost forever, or the cracks are so bad the building blocks never quite Lego-fit the way they once did. We lost everything we had in that fire. Yes, material goods are just ‘things,’ but the things we collect and value — especially when we’re young, or broke, or struggling — are extensions of who we are. Our visible, tangible losses, then, represent something deeper. In the fire, we lost ourselves.”
Written with Jasmine Martin, the book features such chapters as “A Creative Reckoning,” “Family,” “An Epidemic,” “New City, New Self,” and “The (Square) Roots” as Trotter traces the arc of his life and career. Born in Philadelphia in 1973, Trotter was a graffiti artist and drug dealer before hooking up with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson in high school and Malik B. in college and finding success as a rapper and MC in the Roots while also establishing a solo career as a musician, actor, film producer, and stage composer and lyricist. He also leads the Roots as the house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
On November 14 at 8:00, Trotter will be at BAM’s Harvey Theater, discussing the book with talk show legend and activist Jon Stewart, the former host of The Daily Show and The Problem with Jon Stewart, which is ending after just two seasons over creative differences with Apple about coverage of China and AI. The $68 tickets come with a copy of Trotter’s book, in which he also writes, “Our lives are a response to the call of our childhoods. Somewhere in the echoes of the past, we find our truest selves. Who am I? Who are you?”
