live performance

GRAHAM100: PSYCHODRAMAS AND MYTHOLOGY AT THE JOYCE

Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Baye & Asa’s Cortege and more in Joyce season (photo by Steven Pisano)

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY: DANCES OF THE MIND
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
April 1-13, $62-$82
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
marthagraham.org

What’s old is new again.

The Martha Graham Dance Company brings its ninety-ninth season to the Joyce for two weeks of classics, world premieres, and reimaginings of familiar pieces, in one case using — gasp! — AI.

From April 1 to 13, MGDC will present “Dances of the Mind,” three programs as part of its continuing GRAHAM100 celebration, preparing for its official centennial next year. Program A consists of Graham’s 1958 Clytemnestra Act II, with an original score by Halim El-Dabh and set by Isamu Noguchi; Baye & Asa’s Cortege, a world premiere about Charon the ferryman, inspired by Graham’s 1967 Cortege of Eagles, with music by Jack Grabow and costumes by Caleb Krieg; Xin Ying’s Letter to Nobody, based on Graham’s 1940 Letter to the World, this time honoring Graham and her legacy, incorporating generative media and AI technology, along with an Emily Dickinson poem (“I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – too? / Then there’s a pair of us!”), to craft a duet with Graham, Erick Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham; and Hofesh Shechter’s kinetic 2022 CAVE, with music by Âme and Shechter and costumes by Krieg.

Program B comprises Graham’s 1935 solo Frontier: American Perspective of the Plains, honoring the spirit of the pioneer woman, with a score by Louis Horst and set by Isamu Noguchi; two lost 1920s solos, Revolt and Immigrant, reimagined by Graham 2 director Virginie Mécène through extensive research; a new production of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, with Gabe Witcher’s bluegrass arrangement of Aaron Copland’s famous score, costumes by Oana Botez, and set by two-time Tony winner Beowulf Boritt; and Jamar Roberts’s 2024 We the People, which Roberts explains “is equal parts protest and lament, speculating on the ways in which America does not always live up to its promise,” with music by Rhiannon Giddens (arranged by Witcher) and costumes by Karen Young.

The third program brings together Graham’s 1943 Deaths and Entrances, made while Graham was contemplating faith and despair and inspired by the lives of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë, with music by Hunter Johnson, set by Arch Lauterer, and costumes by Oscar de la Renta; Graham’s 1947 Errand into the Maze, a duet based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, with a score by Gian Carlo Menotti and set by Noguchi; and CAVE.

In addition, the April 1 gala features Clytemnestra Act II and Cortege, the April 5 University Partners Showcase highlights university and high school dancers performing works by Graham, Hawkins, José Limón, and others, the April 12 family matinee presents Graham’s 1935 call-to-action Panorama, Rodeo, and We the People, and there will be a Curtain Chat following the April 9 show.

Founded in 1926 in a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan, MGDC has an illustrious history involving a wide range of remarkable collaborators; the current troupe includes So Young An, Ane Arieta, Laurel Dalley Smith, Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Meagan King, Lloyd Knight, Rayan Lecurieux-Durival, Antonio Leone, Devin Loh, Amanda Moreira, Ethan Palma, Jai Perez, Anne Souder, Matthew Spangler, Richard Villaverde, Leslie Andrea Williams, and Xin Ying.

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

NOT JUST MAUS-ING AROUND: ART SPIEGELMAN AT THE 2025 COMIC ARTS FEST

Art Spiegelman discusses hie life and career in Disaster Is My Muse

COMIC ARTS FEST 2025: ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE (Molly Bernstein & Philip Dolin, 2024)
L’Alliance New York, Florence Gould Theater, Tinker Auditorium
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Friday, March 28, $30.55 – $54.20, 7:30
Festival runs March 28–30, pass $86.10
212-355-6100
lallianceny.org

In the documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and editor Art Spiegelman explains, “I did take comics very, very seriously, and I thought they were time turned into space, a perfect container for memory, and an incredibly maligned art form. And without being pretentious about it, I thought that this was as valid as anything that happened in literature or in painting, or in cinema.”

Winner of the 2024 DOC NYC Grand Jury Prize in the Metropolis Competition, the hundred-minute PBS American Masters film is part of the opening-night celebration of the 2025 Comic Arts Fest, taking place March 28–30 at L’Alliance New York; it will be shown on Friday evening at 7:30, followed by a Q&A with special guests and a party with food and drink, music, and a live Exquisite Corpse session with guest illustrators.

In the documentary, Bernstein and Dolin incorporate archival footage, family photos, detailed investigations of key panels from many of Spiegelman’s comics and graphic novels, and new interviews with such comic artists as Griffith, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Peter Kuper, and Jerry Craft in addition to author Hillary Chute, film critic J. Hoberman, filmmaker Ken Jacobs, Spiegelman, Mouly, and their children, Dash and Nadja. “By showing in your comics stuff you’re not supposed to show, stuff you’re not supposed to deal with, the culture outside is telling you don’t go there, by doing it, you’re robbing it of its power,” Griffith says of his Arcade cofounder’s aesthetic.

Mouly offers, “Art has never separated work and life,” especially when it comes to his genre-redefining 1986 graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (My Father Bleeds History) and the 1991 sequel, Maus: And Here My Troubles Began. The books explore his complicated relationship with his Polish father, Vladek, who finally told his son about his experiences at Auschwitz, a subject that he and Art’s mother, Anna, had previously avoided delving into with him.

Art Spiegelman holds up the 1973 “Centerfold Manifesto” in poignant documentary

In the books — which the New York Times originally listed as fiction until Spiegelman wrote them a letter explaining that Maus was a carefully and thoroughly researched true story and should be categorized as nonfiction — Spiegelman depicted the Jews as mice and the Nazi soldiers as evil cats. “He tackled a subject that was enormous and he established the medium as a serious literary form,” Sacco says.

As deeply personal as Maus is — the documentary includes scenes of Spiegelman visiting Auschwitz in 1987 — it is primarily a human tale of innocent people trapped amid the scourge of Fascism, something Spiegelman has been warning people about given what is happening around the world this century.

“Art Spiegelman is the guy that reinvented comics as a medium that people took seriously,” artist and author Molly Crabapple says. “He showed that comics could express the darkest, most tragic, most complicated, most true things about history, about our relationships, about family.” Disaster Is My Muse was made prior to Donald Trump reclaiming the presidency in November, but Spiegelman makes his feelings about him very clear in lectures and conversations.

Speaking about his early, radical work with EC and Mad writer and editor Harvey Kurtzman, Spiegelman notes, “It was asking you to deeply question things, and I believe it was an important aspect of what led to the generation that protested the Vietnam War.” Among the other topics that are examined are several of Spiegelman’s autobiographical panels from Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!; 1968’s Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History, about his mother’s suicide, the comic that first attracted Mouly to him; his longtime association with Topps designing Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids cards; making potent New Yorker covers; his 9/11 book, In the Shadow of No Towers; Maus being banned in many school libraries across the country; such influences as Mad magazine #11 and Bernard Krigstein’s Master Race; his adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 lost classic, The Wild Party; and his time spent in a state mental facility and the tragic death of his brother. Although his smoking habit is never mentioned, he is nearly always seen with a pipe, cigarette, or vape.

In 1973, Spiegelman and Griffith created the “Centerfold Manifesto” in Short Order Comix #1, which proclaimed, “Comics must be personal! . . . Efficient and Callous Capitalist Exploitation must be condemned and deplored at every turn . . . And replaced by Inefficient and humane Capitalist Exploitation!” More than fifty years later, he is still living by his word.

The Comic Arts Fest overflows with opportunities to appreciate the art form Spiegelman champions: Highlights include screenings of four episodes from season two of Florian Ferrier’s series The Fox-Badger Family and four episodes of Daniel Klein’s Living with Dad, the masterclass “Aleksi Briclot: My Journey with Marvel Studios,” the conversation “The Return of the Iconic Gaston Lagaffe” with Delaf, the lecture “The Rise of Afromanga” with Gigi Murakami, a screening of Anora Oscar winner Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District followed by a discussion with artist Adrian Tomine, a screening of Silenn Thomas’s Frank Miller: American Genius followed by a Q&A with Thomas and artist Emma Kubert, and the closing event, “Françoise Mouly, from Indie Comics to the New Yorker,” in which Spiegelman’s wife and business partner sits down with Anita Kunz, Peter de Sève, Barry Blitt, and others to talk about her career. Spiegelman will also be at the Artist Alley & Bookstore section of the fest on March 30 from 3:30 to 5:30; among the other participants are Paul & Gaëtan Brizzi, Patrick McDonnell, Pauline Lévêque, Griffith, and Tomine.

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

CARMEN WINANT: MY MOTHER AND EYE PUBLIC ART FUND TALK AND TOUR

Carmen Winant, Arrival, “Carmen Winant: My Mother and Eye,” 2024, (photo by Nicholas Knight / courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY)

Who: Carmen Winant, Melanie Kress
What: Public Art Fund Talk and artist-led tour
Where: Talk: The Cooper Union, Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Sq.; tour: West End Ave. between West Sixty-Third & Sixty-Fourth Sts.
When: Talk: Wednesday, March 26, free with advance RSVP, 6:30; tour: Thursday, March 27, free with advance RSVP, 11:00 am
Why: In its continuing mission to bring unique, intriguing, and involving public art to New Yorkers all around the city, which it has been doing since its founding in 1977, the Public Art Fund has been teaming with JCDecaux for several years, placing art in bus shelters in all five boroughs. The latest installation is “Carmen Winant: My Mother and Eye,” consisting of eleven compositions arranged from more than fifteen hundred screen captures taken from films Carmen and her mother took when they were teenagers traveling across the country; Winant’s mother documented her trip from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls on Super 8 in the summer of 1969 with her friend Judy Carter, while Carmen traveled from Philadelphia to Los Angeles with a 35mm camera in 2001.

The montages are on view in three hundred bus shelters in New York, Boston, and Chicago through April 6. You can find Horizon on Prospect Ave. and on Roosevelt Ave., Beach on the Southwest Grand Concourse, Rainbow on Frederick Douglass Blvd. and on Pearl St., Niagara Falls on 180th St. and on Clarkson Ave., Cornfield on Victory Blvd., and Bless Our Happy Home on Myrtle Ave., among other works at other locations.

“I think of myself as a feminist artist who uses art as an expression of my politics,” Winant says in a PAF Instagram post. “That has meant thinking about existing photographs as documents or as tools of the movement, how those pictures resonate now, or what they can tell us about contemporary feminism or the space between feminist movements.”

On March 26, Winant, who was born in San Francisco, grew up in Philly, and is now based in Columbus, Ohio, will participate in a Public Art Fund Talk and experimental lecture about the project, sitting down with PAF senior curator Melanie Kress at the Cooper Union. The next day, Winant and Kress will lead a tour of some of the bus shelters, beginning on the Upper West Side. Both events are free with advance RSVP.

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

DHARMA FRIENDS: NUALA CLARKE AT TIBET HOUSE

Who: Nuala Clarke, Crystal Gandrud, Rob Ward, Megan Mook, Kevin Townley
What: “Alchemy and Art on the Spiritual Path”
Where: Tibet House NYC and online, 22 West Fifteenth St.
When: Monday, March 24, free – $20 – $225, 6:30
Why: “I swim in the sea, and my experience of cold has changed. I can no longer be trusted with the question ‘Is it cold out?’ I experience it without the tightening of torso muscles and raising of shoulders. It has become separate from the whole, less readily identifiable. In my hands it feels like leanness, the appendages pared away to the essential; in my back and around my ribs it tingles; it is fresh on my lips; in my toes it is clear and my chest, above my heart, accepts it as youngness, in need of care. I am an effervescent being.” So writes Irish artist Nuala Clarke in her new book, Irish Moss of a Dead Man’s Skull (the Owl Circus, March 18, $33).

Influenced by the work of Irish alchemist and natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627–91), author of Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark, as well as by installation artist Robert Irwin, serigrapher and ceramicist Robert Brown, and spiritual coach and meditation teacher Robert Chender, Clarke has spent nearly five years “thinking about whether a painting could be prescribed for an ailment.” The result is a work that Clarke calls “an ode to light, color, loss, and the elements.” The 224-page book features 86 full-color images and details the impact each of the four Roberts has had on her art and her meditation practice.

On Monday, March 24, Clarke will launch the book at Tibet House as part of the Dharma Friends series, joined by experimental writer and acquiring editor Crystal Gandrud, Food Will Win the War violist, songwriter, and lead vocalist Rob Ward, and monthly Dharma Friends hosts Megan Mook and Kevin Townley, who will lead guided meditations. Having participated back in 2010 with composer Roarke Menzies, Gandrud, my wife, and others in a performance Clarke curated for her show “You Delight Me” on Shelter Island, I can vouch for how terrific her events are, and this one should offer its own numerous pleasures.

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

THE NEXT GENERATION OF DANCE: AILEY II RETURNS HOME

Ailey II brings Houston Thomas’s Down the Rabbit Hole back home in two-week NYC season (photo by Nir Arieli)

AILEY II AT CITIGROUP THEATER
Ailey Citigroup Theater
405 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 26 – April 6, $62.25
ailey.org

Ailey II has been on the road, visiting more than two dozen cities, but the company called “the next generation of dance” is coming back to New York for its annual season at the Ailey Citigroup Theater on West Fifty-Fifth St. Running March 26 to April 6, the season is dedicated to longtime Ailey dancer, choreographer, and artistic director Judith Jamison, who passed away in November at the age of eighty-one.

“Ailey II is thrilled to come back to our home stage after an incredible tour across the country as we leap into our sixth decade,” artistic director Francesca Harper said in a statement. “We are eager to welcome both our loyal supporters and new audiences to experience the exciting artistry of Ailey II through two programs that bridge the past and present, celebrating how each generation shapes the future. Whether audiences find joy, connection, or a sense of empowerment, I want them to carry that discovery into their lives long after they leave the theater.”

The company of twelve dancers — Carley Brooks, Meredith Brown, Jennifer M. Gerken, Alfred L. Jordan II, Xavier Logan, Kiri Moore, Corinth Moulterie, Xhosa Scott, Kayla Mei-Wan Thomas, Darion Turner, Eric Vidaña, and Jordyn White — will present “Echoes,” comprising Harper’s Luminous, the world premiere of Houston Thomas’s Down the Rabbit Hole, and a new production of Alvin Ailey’s Streams, and “New Vintage,” consisting of an excerpt from Jamison’s Divining, excerpts from Ailey’s Blues Suite, The Lark Ascending, and Streams, Down the Rabbit Hole, and Baye & Asa’s John 4:20. Each program is approximately 105 minutes with two intermissions; tickets are $62.65.

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

BOXED IN: JOSHUA WILLIAM GELB’s [untitled miniature] AT HERE

Joshua William Gelb spends three hours a night in a tiny box at Here through March 25 (photo by Maria Baranova)

[untitled miniature]
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
March 18-25, $27-$102 (livestream only $10), 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
here.org
theaterinquarantine.com

In January, Joshua William Gelb, who had transformed his eight-square-foot closet in the East Village into a pristine white digital stage during the pandemic, escaped the safety of his home in order to present The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux], a staggeringly inventive hourlong multimedia play performed in a replica of his closet, accompanied by live and prerecorded video segments interacting with each other.

Gelb, whose collaborative virtual productions, dubbed Theater in Quarantine, include I Am Sending You the Sacred Face: One Brief Musical Act with Mother Teresa, Footnote for the End of Time, and Nosferatu: A 3D Symphony of Horror, now steps further into the technological avant-garde with the hybrid [untitled miniature], running through March 25 at Here. Each evening from 7:00 to 10:00, Gelb, nude and covered in white talcum powder, will perform in a white box measuring only 35″ wide by 19.5″ tall. His actions, which begin with him seemingly asleep, can be seen on an iPhone facing the box, a screen on the back of the box, three video monitors in the hallway, and a wall around the corner with nine screens that alternate between live and prerecorded scenes of Gelb in the box, sometimes bathed in yellow, pink, or other colors, along with television test patterns, the SMPTE color-bar grids that, sixty years ago, appeared on television sets after broadcasters shut down for the night — and which, if they came on today, would signal the end is near.

Audience members can relax on the vivid blue floor in the central space, sit in a chair, or walk around the room, following the show on an app that shares different views of Gelb and encourages everyone to participate in a chat that is read out loud by a female AI voice, audible to both the audience and Gelb. The only other items in the room are a red fire extinguisher and an old metal first-aid kit on the wall; after I accidentally knocked my head against it, one of the black-clad stage managers silently came over, opened it up, took out a small package that said “bandages,” and offered me a brown Tic Tac.

[untitled miniature] features a live video feed broadcast to numerous screens and online (photo by Maria Baranova)

In an Instagram post, Gelb delves into the nature of the work, explaining, “Why am I naked? . . . The naked body is the foundation of art. . . . I’m trying to see if it’s possible to find a real impression of tactility in the digital medium. I wanted to make a piece that really felt distilled down to its most essential elements, the smallest performance space possible and a human body. That shouldn’t be controversial, but try putting a naked body on the internet outside of OnlyFans and you hit a wall — algorithmic sensors, AI moderators, the corporate infrastructure that decides what is and is not acceptable. . . . Art isn’t about comfort or what’s acceptable. And artists need a digital space where they can push boundaries, even ones that make us uncomfortable.”

Gelb certainly looks uncomfortable as he wiggles, turns, squirms, and reconfigures his limbs; often, when he bumps into or purposely strikes the box, harsh, loud sounds reverberate blast out, a cacophonous symphony. At times the audience is enveloped in the much more rewarding sounds of chirping birds and a gently rushing river. Gelb occasionally lets out a grunt but is mostly quiet as he struggles inside the claustrophobic box.

Durational performance offers numerous ways to experience it (photo by Maria Baranova)

Gelb is clearly not enjoying himself, grimacing, staring out blankly, seemingly unable to get out of his predicament. Although one side of the box is open, he is trapped, in a cage he has built for himself. It’s as if he’s been sent to solitary confinement for an unnamed crime. Maybe he wakes up, wrestles with another difficult day, and goes back to bed — or perhaps has decided, once awake, to eventually stay under the covers, avoiding facing the world. He could be stuck on a social media platform on which he no longer wants to reveal himself. Or maybe he has experienced an entire lifetime in forty-five minutes, being birthed from the womb and later laid to rest in a grave.

The piece can also be taken more literally, applied to how we were all penned in at home during lockdown, terrified of leaving, spending too much time with our little electronic boxes that kept warning us of impending doom — and with which Gelb has carved out a unique and fascinating career.

At the show’s conclusion, there are no bows, no applause. Some members of the audience gingerly leave, and others stay, no one sure whether anything else is going to happen, sort of like life itself, before, during, and after a pandemic.

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

THE GREAT PRIVATION: BLACK BODIES IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA AND TODAY

Charity (Clarissa Vickerie) seeks comfort in Nia Akilah Robinson’s The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE GREAT PRIVATION (HOW TO FLIP TEN CENTS INTO A DOLLAR)
Soho Rep at Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 West Forty-Second St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $45
sohorep.org

Making striking off-Broadway debuts, writer Nia Akilah Robinson and director Evren Odcikin excavate the mistreatment of Black bodies through American history in the haunting yet exhilarating The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar), the inaugural production of Soho Rep’s residency at Playwrights Horizons after the company had to leave its longtime Walker St. home.

The hundred-minute play takes on even greater meaning given the recent elimination of government internet links to the gravesites of Black, brown, and women veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Great Privation switches between 1832 and the present. In the past, thirty-four-year-old Missy Freeman (Crystal Lucas-Perry) and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Charity (Clarissa Vickerie), have just buried Moses, their respective husband and father, in the African Baptist Church graveyard in Philadelphia. He died of cholera, which is sweeping through poor communities. A white man named John (Holiday) shows up with tools and a large sack; Missy surmises that he is a student at the college who has come to dig up Moses and use his body for medical experimentation. But Missy knows that after seventy-two hours, the body will have decayed enough to be worthless to the institution, so she plans to watch over the grave for three days while praying for Moses’s safe spiritual journey back to Sierra Leone. Throughout the play, a countdown clock keeps track of the time, beginning at 72:00:00 and moving swiftly between scenes.

“You told me white people take bodies to torture us further. Like what they did to Nat Turner last year. But students are the ones who take our bodies? . . . Why didn’t you tell me this before?!” Charity asks her mother, who replies, “I didn’t want it to be true. Not for US. It couldn’t be.” But it is.

Missy Freeman (Crystal Lucas-Perry) makes a deal with John (Holiday) as Charity (Clarissa Vickerie) looks on (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Later, a Black janitor named Cuffee (Miles G. Jackson) arrives, also carrying tools and a sack, ready to do what John didn’t. “How can you, a Black man, how can you live with yourself?” Missy asks him.

In the modern day, Missy and Charity, who live in Harlem, are working at a sleepaway camp on the grounds of the Philly graveyard. They’re on a break, discussing with John, a gay white counselor, how they are being unfairly disciplined by their boss, Cuffee. The women also discover that they are being paid less than John even though they have the same job and Missy has more experience than John. Meanwhile, Charity has gotten in trouble for vandalizing her school with her friends and posting it on social media. She tells her mother that she can’t delete it because “it’s already viral,” like it was a disease that can’t be cured (not unlike cholera once upon a time). “TikTok is the bane of my existence,” Missy says.

John then offers to show them the graveyard at night, and time and memory collapse into each other.

In researching the play, Robinson, who was born and raised in Harlem, read works by such authors, professors, and historians as Daina Ramey Berry, Lesley M. Rankin-Hill, and Gary B. Nash and scoured through the library at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with the help of associate chief librarian Maira Liriano. Harriet A. Washington’s 2008 book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, served as a major source. “Enslavement could not have existed and certainly could not have persisted without medical science,” Washington writes. “However, physicians were also dependent upon slavery, both for economic security and for the enslaved ‘clinical material’ that fed the American medical research and medical training that bolstered physicians’ professional advancement.”

A digital clock counts down from seventy-two hours to zero in Soho Rep production at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The word “privation” in the title is short for “deprivation,” something the Black people in the show experience over and over in both time periods as they deal with generational trauma, grief, and stolen land and labor. It’s no coincidence that Missy’s husband’s name was Moses, the same as the leader of the Israelites who escaped slavery in Egypt but who was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, much like Moses Freeman’s spirit may not return to Sierra Leone. The second part of the title, the parenthetical How to flip ten cents into a dollar, is a phrase Robinson learned from her parents, referring to making something great with very little.

Mariana Sanchez’s set features a soft-sculpture tree near the middle of the stage, next to where Moses is buried. It is a place where Charity finds comfort, resting on the extensive roots that reach into the past and stretch out toward the future, enveloping her (and at several points seemingly coming to life with flashing LED colors). The two women wear the same long skirts throughout most of the play, adding coats to differentiate between 1832 and now; at camp they also wear more summery casual clothing. The costumes are by Kara Harmon; Marika Kent’s lighting and Tosin Olufolabi’s sound build a mysterious atmosphere, while Maxwell Bowman’s video and programming contribute an eerie surprise.

Missy Freeman (Crystal Lucas-Perry) and Charity (Clarissa Vickerie) enjoy a fun moment with John (Holiday) during a break at camp (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The four-person cast is exemplary, led by Tony nominee Lucas-Perry (A Sign of the Times, A Bright Room Called Day), who imbues Missy with an earth-mother devotion and dedication, and Juilliard MFA student Vickerie, who already has the chops of a pro. Holiday, in his off-Broadway debut, and Jackson (Pay the Writer, Endlings) offer fine support as the women’s allies and enemies.

Despite its potent subject matter, The Great Privation is extremely funny, complete with a rousing fourth-wall-breaking finale that will have you moving and grooving. But it won’t make you forget the hard-hitting story you just experienced, especially as Black bodies both alive and dead continue to be disrespected in America, long past the time the clock hits zero.

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