this week in literature

LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS: THE MT. OLYMPUS OF LES LOVE! and more

festival of the arts

Who: Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, William Electric Black, more
What: Live concert and summit (and many other events)
Where: Theater for the New City
When: Saturday, May 23, free, 8:00 (festival runs May 22-24)
Why: Since 1996, Theater for the New City’s annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts has been a harbinger of summer, three days of multidisciplinary performances taking place in and around the organization’s East First St. home. But the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular weekend event goes virtual because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it’s slowed down in the least. From May 22 to 24, the festival, whose theme is “Renaissance: Arts Alive 25,” will feature 250 participants providing music, dance, theater, discussion, and more, all for free. The centerpiece occurs on May 23 at 8:00 with “The Mt. Olympus of LES Love!,” a concert with an amazing lineup consisting of Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, and William Electric Black, followed by a summit that attempts to answer the question “Where do we go from here?”

The three-day celebration will feature such speakers as Nii Gaani Aki, Michael Musto, Brad Hoylman, Carlina Rivera, and Candice Burridge; theater excerpts with Barbara Kahn, Anne Lucas, Eve Packer, Greg Mullavey, the Drilling Company, Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, and others; comedy from Reno, Stan Baker, Trav S.D., Wise Guise, Izzy Church, Epstein and Hassan, and Ana-Maria Bandean with Gemma Forbes; dance with Ashley Liang Dance Company, Constellation Moving Co., Dixon Place, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Wendy Osserman Dance Company, Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, and Zullo/RawMovement; music by Donald Arrington, Allesandra Belloni, Michael David Gordon and the Pocket Band, Art Lillard, and Yip Harburg Rainbow Troupe; cabaret with KT Sullivan, Marissa Mulder, Eric Yves Garcia, Aziza, and Peter Zachari; and poetry readings by Coni Koepfinger, Tsaurah Litzky, Lola Rodriguez, Bob Rosenthal, Lissa Moira, and Brianna Bartenieff; along with puppetry, film screenings, children’s events, and visual art, all for free, although donations are gladly accepted.

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA: ANTISEMITISM RUN AMOK

NMAJH panel discussion uses The Plot Against America as a jumping-off point

NMAJH panel discussion uses The Plot Against America as jumping-off point to discuss modern-day anti-Semitism

Who: Michael Berenbaum, Pamela S. Nadell
What: Livestream panel discussion
Where: National Museum of American Jewish History Facebook page
When: Thursday, May 21, free with advance registration, 6:00
Why: We recently finished watching HBO’s six-part series The Plot Against America, based on Phillip Roth’s 2004 novel, and it scared the hell out of us. The story presents an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh beats Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 to become president of the United States, but the famous aviator turns out to be a far-right America-first anti-Semite. Just as the main character’s wife begs him to leave New Jersey and head to Canada, my wife has been urging us to find safer environs, to escape Donald Trump and move to Portugal or another country, since anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in the United States and around the world. On May 21 at 6:00, the Philadelphia-based National Museum of American Jewish History will host the timely panel discussion “The Plot Against America: Antisemitism Run Amok,” with independent consultant and Jewish Studies professor Michael Berenbaum and Women’s & Gender History professor Pamela S. Nadell. Admission is free with recommended RSVP; if you want to ask questions, you have to watch the program on Facebook and not on the NMAJH website.

“Endings. (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals. CACONRAD” at RIBOCA2

caconrad

Who: CAConrad
What: Livestreamed reading and talk
Where: RIBOCA2 website
When: Thursday, May 21, free with advance registration, noon
Why: In July 2017, I sat down with poet CAConrad for a private (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals session in the middle of Madison Square Park. On May 21 at noon, CAConrad will host a virtual reading and discussion that might feel like it’s one on one, since so many of us are still sheltering in place. The Zoom program is part of the 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, which was supposed to open in Latvia last week but has been moved online in wake of the coronavirus pandemic. CAConrad, who was born in Kansas, was raised in Pennsylvania, and is the author of such books as The City Real & Imagined, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, and While Standing in Line for Death, has been posting a poem a day on their Facebook and Instagram pages, a series they call “CORONADAZE.” For RIBOCA2, they are presenting “Endings. (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals. CACONRAD,” which will explore how we can transform this contemporary moment, contemplate the end of a world, and maintain personal creative space through it all. To prepare for the free event, you are strongly encouraged to read (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals: The Basics in 3 Parts, which can be found here.

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

what makes a marriage

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