this week in literature

CHARLES BUSCH IN CONVERSATION WITH MELISSA ERRICO

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.]

MICHAEL ONDAATJE AT RIZZOLI WITH JORDAN PAVLIN

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.]

POETIC TRIGONOMETRY

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.]

UNDER THE RADAR 2024: TOP FIVE

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 “BLACK THOUGHT” TROTTER IN CONVERSATION WITH JON STEWART

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?”

If you can’t make it to BAM, Trotter will be at Columbia’s Miller Theatre on November 28, speaking with journalism dean Jelani Cobb.

JewCE!: THE JEWISH COMIC EXPERIENCE

THE FIRST ANNUAL JEWISH COMIC BOOK CONVENTION
Center for Jewish History
15 West Sixteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 12, $40 (children eight and under free)
jewce.org
www.cjh.org

Jews played key roles in the development of the comic book industry in the United States, as artists, illustrators, editors, and publishers. In 2006-7, the Jewish Museum presented with the Newark Museum the outstanding exhibit “Masters of American Comics,” which explored the work of fourteen artists, several of whom were Jewish.

This weekend the Center for Jewish History is hosting “JewCE!: The Jewish Comic Experience,” being held in conjunction with the exhibit “The Museum and Laboratory of the Jewish Comics Experience,” consisting of original art, historical memorabilia, and interactive installations focusing on Jewish history, culture, and identity as depicted in comic books, on view through December 29.

Awards will be handed out Saturday night, in such categories as Career Contributions to Jewish Comics, Diverse Jewish Representation, Historical Narratives, Autobiographical Content, Contemporary Topics, and Combating Prejudice. The big day is Sunday, with a full slate of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, artist booths, and more. The guest of honor is Trina Robbins, the Brooklyn-born cartoonist and activist who is in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame and is one of the three characters in the Joni Mitchell song “Ladies of the Canyon” (“Trina takes her paints and her threads / And she weaves a pattern all her own”).

Among the events are “Jewish Roots of the Comic Industry,” “Queering Jewish Comics,” “Kids Comics for Mini Mensches,” “Jewish Female Narratives in the Graphic Arts,” and “Holy Graphic Novels!”; the lineup of participants includes Frank Miller, Stephanie Phillips, Neil Kleid, Koren Shadmi, Fabrice Sapolsky, Yehudi Mercado, Dean Haspiel, Chari Pere, Ken Krimstein, Danny Fingeroth, Barry Deutsch, Roy Schwartz, Amy Kurzweil, E. Lockhart, Ben Kahn, Emily Bowen Cohen, Jenny Caplan, Karen Green, Leela Corman, Paul Levitz, Tahneer Oksman, Terri Libenson, Simcha Weinstein, JT Waldman, Jessica Tamar Deutsch, and Stan Mack, as well as Source Point Press, Big Apple Comics, Jews in Doodles, Israeli Defense Comics, Jewish Arts Salon, Stand Up! Comics/Stand Up! Records, and Torah Comics. Below is the full schedule.

Exhibition continues at the Center for Jewish History through December 29

Jewish Roots of the Comic Industry, with Arie Kaplan, Roy Schwartz, and Simcha Weinstein, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, auditorium, 10:00

Jewish Folklore in Comics, with Dani Colman, Trian Robbins, Chanan Beizer, and Yehudi Mercado, moderated by Eddy Portnoy, Kovno Room, 10:00

Jump into Drawing Comics!, with Joshu Edelglass, for kids ages 8-12, Discovery Room, 10:00

From Strength to Strength: Jewish Superheroes through the Ages!, with Brian Michael Bendis, E. Lockhart, Dean Haspiel, and Frank Miller, moderated by Roy Schwartz, auditorium, 11:30

Queering Jewish Comics, with Ben Kahn, Shira Spector, Barry Deutsch, and Miriam Libicki, moderated by Tahneer Oksman, Kovno Room, 11:30

Jewish Comics Trivia Game: JewCE Edition, with Sholly Fisch and Jeremy Arcus-Goldberg, Discovery Room, 11:30

Breaking the Mainstream: Getting Past Ashkenormativity and Secularism in Comics, with Daniel Lobell, Emily Bowen Cohen, Joshua Sky, and Carol Isaacs, moderated by Arnon Shorr, auditorium, 1:00

Kids Comics for Mini Mensches, with Yehudi Mercado, Terri Libenson, Chari Pere, and Barry Deutsch, moderated by Jeremy Dauber, Kovno Room, 1:00

Torah Comic Workshop, with Andrew Galitzer, for kids ages 6-12, Discovery Room, 1:00

Canons Are Made to Blow Up! Retconning, Rebooting, Jossing, and Other Paradigm Shifts, with Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Azzarello, Joshua Sky, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Jenny Caplan, auditorium, 2:30

Jewish Comics and Remembrance Culture, with Rafael Medoff, Ken Krimstein, Stan Mack, and Trina Robbins, moderated by Samantha Baskind, Kovno Room, 2:30

From Perek to Panel: Using Pictures to Explore Interpretation, with Ben Schachter, for teens and adults, Discovery Room, 2:30

Will Eisner: The First Poet Laureate of the Jewish Graphic Novel, with Paul Levitz and Jules Feiffer (via Zoom), auditorium, 4:00

Telling Other People’s Stories, with Tracy White, Stephanie Phillips, Koren Shadmi, and Neil Kleid, moderated by Julian Voloj, Kovno Room, 4:00

Jewish Comics Trivia Game: JewCE Edition, with Sholly Fisch and Jeremy Arcus-Goldberg, Discovery Room, 4:00

Jewish Female Narratives in the Graphic Arts, with Leela Corman, Amy Kurzweil, Alisa Whitney, and Miriam Libicki, moderated by Karen Green, auditorium, 5:30

Holy Graphic Novels!, with JT Waldman, moderated by Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Kovno Room, 5:30

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

DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE: THE MAKING OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S NEBRASKA

Who: Warren Zanes
What: Literary and music discussion
Where: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South
When: Wednesday, November 8, free with RSVP, 8:00
Why: Following the international success of his international 1980–81 River tour through North America and Western Europe totaling 140 dates, New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen went into his bedroom on January 3, 1982, with a Teac four-track cassette machine and recorded fifteen songs by himself, then mixed them with an Echoplex. He carried the cassette, sans case, around with him for a few weeks, intending to teach the E Street Band the tunes that could be their next album. It was eventually decided that the songs worked best as they were, and on September 30, 1982, Nebraska was released. In ten songs over forty-one minutes — including “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99,” “Open All Night,” and “Reason to Believe” — Springsteen took a stark look at Reagan’s America. Two years later, Bruce and the band would explode with Born in the USA — the title song was originally part of the bedroom recordings — but Nebraska has stood the test of time, filled with characters who are still searching for the American dream.

In the spring of 2021, Springsteen invited music journalist and Del Fuegos cofounder Warren Zanes to his Colts Neck home to discuss the evolution and legacy of Nebraska, in time for its fortieth anniversary; the result is Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (Crown, May 2023, $28). In the first chapter, Zanes writes, “I wanted to know where Nebraska came from, what it led to. It sat between two of Springsteen’s most celebrated recordings, in its own quiet and turmoil. He described it to me as ‘an accident start to finish’ but also as the album that ‘still might be [his] best.’ The recording came from a place and a time in which Springsteen was facing troubles in his life, troubles that had no name as of yet. Wordsworth defines poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings . . . recollected in tranquillity.’ Quite differently, Nebraska came from the middle of that ‘overflow,’ was not a thing ‘recollected in tranquillity.’ It came from the heart of trouble and led to still more, its stark character the lasting reward. Nebraska was unfinished, imperfect, delivered into a world hovering at the threshold of the digital, when technology would allow recorded music to hang itself on perfect time, carry perfect pitch, but also risk losing its connection to the unfixed and unfixable. Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, recalled for me, over several afternoons at his Westchester home, the way in which Nebraska arrived. Chuck Plotkin, among Springsteen’s producers and a key player in the last stages of Nebraska’s creation, would talk about the anxious labor of trying to make the album conform to industry standards. But Springsteen knew the most by far, because it came from his bedroom.”

Bruce Springsteen and Warren Zanes discuss the making of Nebraska (photo courtesy Warren Zanes)

On November 8, Zanes will be at the National Arts Club to talk about the book, which features such chapters as “The Rhinoceros Club,” “The King of Pop and the Beer Can,” and “Darkness on the Edge of Bed.” The first question Zanes asks Bruce is “Are there any photographs of the room where you recorded Nebraska?” Bruce says no. Zanes writes, “I wanted to see that room because something important was made there, and I wanted to know if by looking at a photograph of the space, I could see traces of what happened, the outlines of Nebraska. And maybe those photographic traces could bring it back to life for me, a resurrection. Photographs of his previous place, the Holmdel farmhouse, are easy to find online. Whether you see Springsteen in them or not, whether the amps and guitars are in the room or not, you look at them knowing who was there once and what got done at the time, Darkness on the Edge of Town and much of The River. The rooms begin to breathe.”

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