this week in literature

THE OEDIPUS PROJECT

oedipus project

Who: Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Oscar Isaac, Jeffrey Wright, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Glenn Davis, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Jumaane Williams
What: Live Zoom theatrical production by Theater of War
Where: Eventbrite link sent with RSVP
When: Thursday, May 7, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Theater of War Productions (TOWP) presents dramatic readings of plays and speeches by Sophocles, Tennessee Williams, Euripides, Conor McPherson, Aeschylus, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene O’Neill, Frederick Douglass, and others, examining them through a contemporary sociocultural lens, focusing on such themes as addiction and substance abuse, gun violence, the prison system, natural disasters, consent, genocide, and caregiving. On May 7 at 7:00, the company, which was cofounded in 2009 by Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, will turn its attention to the current pandemic with the Oedipus Project, a free online initiative that will feature an all-star roster of actors giving a live, dramatic reading of scenes from Sophocles’s fifth-century BCE classic, Oedipus the King. The play deals with such elements as arrogance, pride, power, guilt, and truth and was first performed during the Plague of Athens, an epidemic that killed about a third of the population. The impressive cast, who will be performing from wherever they are sheltering in place, consists of Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Oscar Isaac, Jeffrey Wright, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Glenn Davis, and Marjolaine Goldsmith. “There are people suffering out there, dying from the hateful plague, and this is what you choose to do with your time?” Jocasta asks in Doerries’s translation; Doerries also directs the show and will facilitate a live, interactive discussion about the impact of Covid-19 on families and communities, joined by New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams. TOWP is planning other productions to help those facing loneliness, trauma, loss, and mental and physical illness during this time of isolation.

MARLO THOMAS AND PHIL DONAHUE IN CONVERSATION WITH ROB REINER

Who: Marlo Thomas, Phil Donahue, Rob Reiner
What: Live online book launch and conversation celebrating fortieth wedding anniversary
Where: 92nd St. Y online
When: Thursday, May 7, $20, 7:30
Why: To celebrate their fortieth anniversary, actress and social activist Marlo Thomas and longtime talk show host Phil Donahue wrote What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secret to a Happy Life (HarperCollins, May 2020, $29.99), in which they interview dozens of other happily married celebrity couples, including Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, James Carville and Mary Matalin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, John McEnroe and Patty Smyth, Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams, Sting and Trudie Styler, Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, and Rob and Michele Reiner. On May 7 at 7:30, Rob Reiner will interview Thomas and Donahue, who got married on May 21, 1980, via the 92nd St. Y’s online portal. Virtual tickets are $20 and go to help the losses suffered by the 92nd St. Y because of the pandemic.

PARAMODERNITIES LIVE (with Q&As)

Who: Netta Yerushalmy
What: Dance series with performance and live discussion
Where: Netta Yerushalmy website
When: May 4-9, free, 3:00 (videos with Q&As will remain online through May 24)
Why: Last year, New York City-based choreographer and dancer Netta Yerushalmy presented her full six-part, four-hour series, Paramodernities, at New York Live Arts. Each work, which had been previously individually staged at such locations as Judson Church, the National Museum of the American Indian, Live Artery at New York Live Arts, the 92nd St. Y, and Madison Square Park, deconstructs and re-creates a classic dance piece through performance, text, and discussion, with dancers and scholars participating. I was fortunate to catch several iterations (#s 2&3, rehearsals for #5), which all proved to be captivating and involving; the choreographers who get the Yerushalmy treatment are Vaslav Nijinsky, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse, and George Balanchine. Every day from May 4 to 9 at 3:00, Yerushalmy will stream one work, followed by a live discussion and Q&A with special guests.

The wide-ranging, diverse cast consists of dancers Michael Blake, Gerald Casel, Marc Crousillat, Brittany Engel-Adams, Joyce Edwards, Stanley Gambucci, Taryn Griggs, Magdalena Jarkowiec, Nicholas Leichter, Jeremy Jae Neal, Hsiao-Jou Tang, Megan Williams, and Yerushalmy, with scholars and writers Thomas F. DeFrantz, Julia Foulkes, Georgina Kleege, David Kishik, Carol Ockman, Mara Mills, and Claudia La Rocco. “This project requires people to really care about different kinds of knowledge and to want to implicate their bodies in this very different kind of space and to be vulnerable,” Yerushalmy says about Paramodernities, which will be a new experience when viewed from our homes, where we are sheltering in place, unable to be physically together. I can’t recommend Paramodernities Live highly enough; it is an innovative platform that explores the past, present, and future of dance through a sophisticated and experimental historical context that will leave you in awe.

Monday, May 4
Paramodernities #1: The Work of Dance in the Age of Sacred Lives
A response to Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1913)
with special guest Jack Halberstam

Tuesday, May 5
Paramodernities #2: Trauma, Interdiction, and Agency in “The House of Pelvic Truth”
A response to Martha Graham’s Night Journey (1947)
with special guest Pam Tanowitz

Wednesday, May 6
Paramodernities #3: Revelations: The Afterlives of Slavery
A response to Alvin Ailey’s Revelations (1960)
with special guest Tracy K. Smith

Thursday, May 7
Paramodernities #4: An Inter-Body Event
with material from Merce Cunningham’s Rainforest, Sounddance, Points in Space, Beach Birds, and Ocean (1968-90)
with special guest Fred Moten

Friday, May 8
Paramodernities #5: All That Spectacle: Dance on Stage and Screens
A response to Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity (1969 film)
with special guest Jeremy O. Harris

Saturday, May 9
Paramodernities #6: The Choreography of Rehabilitation: Disability and Race in Balanchine’s Agon
A response to George Balanchine’s Agon (1957)
with special guest Peter N. Miller

RAY BY RAY ONLINE BOOK LAUNCH

ray by ray

Who: Nicca Ray, Chris Desjardins, Peter Carlaftes
What: Virtual book launch with reading and conversation
Where: Three Rooms Press Facebook and YouTube
When: Wednesday, April 29, free, 8:00
Why: Born in Wisconsin in 1911, Raymond Nicholas Kienzle Jr. would go on to change Hollywood as Nicholas Ray, a genre-redefining auteur who directed such films as They Live by Night, In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, Rebel without a Cause, Bigger Than Life, and King of Kings. A controversial figure who had drug and alcohol problems and was married four times, including a short-lived, tempestuous union with Gloria Grahame, Ray had four children, including Nicca Ray, who was born in 1964; her mother was dancer Betty Utley, who divorced Ray that same year. Ray would not play a part in Nicca’s life for another decade before passing away in 1979. Nicca takes a unique look at who her father was, especially during those missing ten years, in her thoroughly researched memoir/biography, Ray by Ray: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray (Three Rooms Press, April 2020, $20). On April 29 at 8:00, Three Rooms Press cofounder Peter Carlaftes will host a live virtual book launch on Three Rooms Press’s Facebook and YouTube pages, featuring a reading by Nicca, followed by a conversation between Nicca and punk rocker, poet, actor, director, Upsetter Records cofounder, and Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsemen band member Chris (Chris D.) Desjardins, discussing Nicholas Ray’s films, punk rock, creativity without drugs, and more.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK: FIGHT CLUB 3 ONLINE LAUNCH

fight club 3

Who: Chuck Palahniuk
What: Online book launch of Fight Club 3 (Premiere Collections, April 2020, $40 with autographed bookplate)
Where: Facebook
When: Wednesday, April 29, free, 5:00
Why: Washington native Chuck Palahniuk’s book launches are legendary, filled with cult fanatics who come dressed as characters from his novels, ready to answer trivia questions to win such items as signed body parts. The author of such highly original and strange books as Invisible Monsters, Choke, Lullaby, Diary, Rant, Snuff, Adjustment Day, and the forthcoming The Invention of Sound in addition to the memoir Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different, Palahniuk is most well known for his 1996 novel, Fight Club, which was turned into a successful 1999 film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf, and Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer. Palahniuk has been expanding the story over the last five years as a comic-book series and graphic novel with artists Cameron Stewart, David Mckaig, Nate Piekos, and David Mack. Fight Club 2 came out in hardcover in 2016, and Fight Club 3 was just released April 14; Palahniuk, who participated in a brief twi-ny talk ten years ago, will be launching the book, which focuses on Marla, on his Facebook page on April 29 at 5:00. You can expect the unusual from Palahniuk, who always delivers. And be sure to follow the rules of Fight Club, because you know what happens if you don’t.

MADE IN HARLEM — REMEMBERING THE RENAISSANCE: LOOKING FOR LANGSTON (with live Q&A)

Free livestream screening of Looking for Langston will be followed by panel discussion

Who: Zohra Saed, LaTasha Diggs, Paolo Javier
What: Live online film screening and panel discussion
Where: Poets House Twitter feed
When: Friday, April 24, free with RSVP, 4:00
Why: As part of its series “Made in Harlem: Remembering the Renaissance,” Maysles Documentary Center is teaming up with Poets House to present a live online screening of Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien’s forty-five-minute 1989 docudrama about Hughes, the twentieth-century poet, playwright, and novelist who chronicled black and gay life and culture in America in such books as The Weary Blues and Not without Laughter. The London-born Julien is a multimedia installation artist who has made such other films as Western Union: Small Boats and Ten Thousand Waves. The 4:00 screening, free with RSVP, will be followed by a panel discussion on Hughes’s literary legacy, Julien’s cinematic style, and the hundredth anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance with Brooklyn-based Afghan American poet Zohra Saed and Harlem-based writer, vocalist, and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, moderated by Poets House program director and former Queens poet laureate Paolo Javier.

LA CONVIVIALITÉ: LA FAUTE DE L’ORTHOGRAPHE (with live Q&A)

Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piro will take a unique look at French spelling at FIAF online performance

Who: Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piro
What: Live performance and Q&A from Belgium (in French)
Where: French Institute Alliance Française
When: Wednesday, April 22, free with advance RSVP, 5:00
Why: In 1771, Voltaire wrote, “The spelling in French books is ridiculous for the most part. Convention alone allows this incongruity to persist.” Two former Belgian teachers, Arnaud Hoedt — a self-described “linguist dilettante, philographer, pedagogue, true-false comedian, and academician eater” — and Jérôme Piro have taken that quote as inspiration for their two-person presentation La Convivialité: La Faute de l’Orthographe (roughly, Friendliness: The Spelling Error), an abridged version of which they will perform on April 22 at 5:00 via FIAF’s Facebook page and Zoom, followed by a Q&A. You need to register in advance here to receive the Zoom password and be able to ask questions. You can get a preview of their dissection of the French language by watching their May 2019 TEDx Talk and this preview, both of which are in French without English translation, as will be the FIAF program. And you thought American English spelling had problems.