live performance

TICKET ALERT: BAM FALL 2021 SEASON

The sandy Sun & Sea brings the beach to Fort Greene (photo by Andrej Vasilenko)

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
September 15 – November 6, $25-$35
www.bam.org

One of the places I’ve missed the most since the pandemic lockdown began in March 2020 is BAM, my performance-venue home-away-from-home. Over the decades, the Fort Greene institution’s exciting cutting-edge programming of innovative works from around the world has been a kind of lifeline for me. I remember in October 2012, after Hurricane Sandy paralyzed the state, I took an extremely slow bus through a dark, bleak city, on my way to BAM to see a show as if that would signal we would all get past this disaster. I made it just in time, breathing heavily, soon immersed in the wonders of how dance, music, art, and theater can lift you up. And so I relished the news when BAM announced its reopening for the fall 2021 season, featuring four works at the intimate BAM Fisher. “The hunger for artistic adventures has never been greater as our world continues to change around us,” BAM artistic director David Binder said in a statement. “Our 2021-22 season kicks off with works from a cohort of remarkable international artists, all of whom are making their BAM debuts. New forms and new ideas will abound in the Fisher, as they create singular experiences that can only happen at BAM.”

ASUNA’s 100 Keyboards will be performed in the round at the BAM Fisher (photo by Ritsuko Sakata)

The season kicks off September 15-26 with Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė’s Sun & Sea, which turns the Fisher into a beach. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, the work, commissioned for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the fifty-eighth International Art Exhibition, takes place on twenty-five tons of sand on which thirteen vocalists sing a wide array of stories, with a libretto by Vaiva Grainytė and music and musical direction by Lina Lapelytė. Sun & Sea is followed September 30 to October 2 by 100 Keyboards, in which Japanese sound artist ASUNA performs a unique concert in the round on one hundred battery-operated mini keyboards of multiple colors, creating a mysterious sound moire as the audience walks around him, picking up different reverberations.

Cia Suave makes its US debut at BAM with Cria (photo © Renato Mangolin)

In By Heart, running October 5-17, ten audience members join Portuguese artist and Avignon Festival director Tiago Rodrigues onstage, memorizing lines from such writers as William Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, George Steiner, and Joseph Brodsky to create a new narrative consisting of forbidden texts while the rest of the audience watches (and sometimes participates as well); the set and costume design is by Magda Bizarro, with English translations by Rodrigues, revised by Joana Frazão. And in Cria (November 2-6), Brazilian troupe Cia Suave celebrates the passion of adolescence in a piece choreographed by Alice Ripoll and performed by ten members of the all-Black company of cis and trans dancers who proclaim, “We are CRIA, not created. Little breeds. Loneliness. To smear yourself. The act, the creation and its moment. Sprout. The heart saying, ‘hit me’ with every punch of suffering. In scene birth and death. Each time. Even in childbirth there is a force that wants to give up. A life that begins touches the sublime.” Tickets go on sale today at noon; the way New Yorkers have been snatching up tickets for live, in-person events, you better hurry if you want to catch any of these promising shows in the small, intimate BAM Fisher.

ENDURE: RUN WOMAN SHOW

Casey Howes performs in immersive Endure in Central Park (photo by Richard Termine)

ENDURE
Southern end of Central Park
Through August 8, $59.99
runwomanshow.com

In his 2008 memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, award-winning Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami writes, “This is a book in which I’ve gathered my thoughts about what running has meant to me as a person. Just a book in which I ponder various things and think out loud. . . . One thing I noticed was that writing honestly about running and writing honestly about myself are nearly the same thing.”

Canadian marathoner, Ironman finisher, and mother Melanie Jones takes a similar approach in Endure: Run Woman Show, an outdoor, on-the-move immersive event continuing in Central Park through August 8. A limited audience of no more than fifteen follows Mary Cavett or Casey Howes through the park while listening on earbuds to Jones talk about running her first marathon, sharing thoughts about the race and life. “You keep going, keep living, keep searching, keep risking, keep pressing out at the edges of yourself because, sure, you could stop or walk or stand on the sidelines, but there’s something beautiful in passing the end of who you think you are. See, there’s so much more beyond,” she narrates. She discusses what it feels like at the starting line, dealing with skeptics at a cocktail party, how math and endorphins can be overwhelming, and striving for her top-secret goal time.

Created and written by Jones (Joyride, In You. [And You?]) and directed by Suchan Vodoor, Endure: Run Woman Show is based on real-life stories from Jones and other runners, delving into what they think about and what they personally experience as they make their way through parks, streets, and tracks, running for both their mental and physical health. Covering approximately three miles in about seventy-five minutes — the audience is not expected to run alongside the performer, who will always remain in view, making stops on bridges and lawns, trees and lampposts — the piece, featuring a musical soundtrack by Swedish composer Christine Owman, is particularly relevant during the “2020” Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where participants are facing Covid-19 in addition to the regular tests of their abilities against the finest athletes in the world, and doing so without crowds cheering them on this time.

“When I discovered running, I realized that the stronger I got on the outside, the stronger I felt on the inside,” Jones said in a statement. “Long-distance running, at its best, is a spiritual experience: uplifting, clarifying, transformative. A runner feels connected to their environment, their best self, even humanity. My hope is that Endure gives audiences a sense of that tranquillity and peace.” And that’s something we all could use a whole lot of right about now.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK BERGEN COUNTY

Who: Black Box PAC
What: Free Shakespeare in Bergen County
Where: Overpeck Park Amphitheater
When: Weekends July 23 – August 29, free, 8:00
Why: New York City has Shakespeare in the Parking Lot’s Two Noble Kinsmen, NY Classical’s King Lear with a happy ending, the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Seize the King, and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park presentation of Merry Wives of Windsor. But you can also catch free Bard in New Jersey, where the Black Box Performing Arts Center’s summer season begins this weekend with modern productions of Hamlet and As You Like It, continuing Thursday to Sunday through August 29 at the Overpeck Park Amphitheater in Bergen County. In addition, Black Box PAC will be hosting free “Play On!” concerts Sundays in August at the amphitheater at 4:00, including performances by Divinity & the FAM Band, Melissa Cherie, Esti Mellul, Ginny Lackey & the Hi-Fi Band, Dan Sheehan’s Rising Seas, and Andy Krikun & Jeff Doctorow. There will also be script-in-hand readings of Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew at the Englewood Public Library on Wednesdays at 8:00 from July 28 to September 1. Admission to all events is free, with no advance RSVP necessary. As Duke Orsino declares in Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on!”

THE WAKE OF DORCAS KELLY

Myra Caellaigh (Florence Scagliarini), Kate O’Sullivan (Phoebe Mar Halkowich), and Siobhan Murchadha (Irina Kaplan) tend to the deceased in The Wake of Dorcas Kelly (photo by Nick Thomas)

THE WAKE OF DORCAS KELLY
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal St.
Thursday-Sunday through July 25, $42
www.spitnvigor.com

New York–based nonprofit theater company spit&vigor continues its exploration of the past in The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, which opened July 16 at the Players Theatre and continues through July 25.

Inspired by a true story that has expanded its legend with apocryphal elements over time, the ninety-minute show takes place in the Maiden Tower brothel in Dublin in January 1761, where the hanged and charred body of former madam Dorcas Kelly lies covered on a table. Ladies of the evening Siobhan Murchadha (Irina Kaplan), Kate O’Sullivan (Phoebe Mar Halkowich), and Myra Caellaigh (set and sound designer Florence Scagliarini) are watching over their dear departed friend and former boss, who was brutally executed for the murder of a shoemaker in the street. “She didn’t shoot just any man,” pub owner and regular Maiden customer Tom Doherty (Nicholas Thomas) explains. “It was the scoundrel John Dowling, who left our poor Kate with child and no support. Which is a thing I’d never do, for all my vices.”

As they share memories of Dorcas, a riot is under way right outside, the noise spilling into the room. Former sailor William O’Brien (Eamon Murphy) has been hired by Kate to protect the brothel during the public melee, but he keeps coming in for more drink while insisting he will remain true to his wife, Grace (Duoer Jia). “I suppose he’s burning through some of his debts with hard labor,” Siobhan says. “That boy wouldn’t know hard labor if it spanked him in the arse,” Myra replies. “Well, this hard labor has spanked him in the arse once or twice,” Siobhan jokes.

Soon Tom and William are dragging doped-up Father Jack Dancy (troupe executive producer Adam Belvo) in through the back window. The visiting Belfast priest is completely out of it; the men tie him up so he won’t be able escape before praying for Dorcas. Meanwhile, former prostitute Fannie Prufrock (Kyra Jackson) has gone legit but can’t seem to stay away from the brothel. “Went and run off with some shipmate and now she thinks she’s the queen of England,” Myra says. “Have some tenderness, Myra. She only comes back round here because she’s tired of married life. Imagine getting stuck with the same prick night after night,” Siobhan adds. “You want to be married, then, Myra? I’ll make an honest woman of you,” Tom offers, but Myra is having none of that. When a surprise guest (Peter Oliver) is discovered, the plot takes a dark turn without losing its macabre, ribald sense of humor.

Founded in 2015, spit&vigor excels at mining the history of drama, literature, and art for raw material: Among its previous productions, NEC SPE / NEC METU tells the story of Baroque painters Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary’s Little Monster imagines how Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein came to be, The Brutes goes behind the scenes of an 1864 benefit performance of Julius Caesar by the Booth brothers (staged by spit&vigor at the Players club, which was started by Edwin Booth), and the livestreamed Luna Eclipse traveled back to the fourteenth century as the cast proceeded throughout the West Park Presbyterian Church on Eighty-Sixth St.

The Wake of Dorcas Kelly offers plenty of booze, blasphemy, and butchery (photo by Nick Thomas)

Written and directed by company artistic director Sara Fellini (In Vestments, Hazard a Little Death) with plenty of spit and vigor, The Wake of Dorcas Kelly opens with all nine actors onstage, singing a rousing version of “The Tempest” by the Real MacKenzies: “We are all born free but forever live in chains / And we battle through existence on and on / We’ll take whatever comes to be while keeping hopeful melody / And we’ll cruise through the darkness until the warmth of dawn.” The drinking song gets the audience ready for a rollicking evening on Scagliarini’s cramped, dusty, but homey set with unmatched chairs, Baroque wallpaper, a back staircase, and candles, cups, glasses, and bottles everywhere. (The often eerie lighting is by Chelsie McPhilimy, with period costumes and props by Claire Daly.)

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along with booze, blasphemy, and butchery — what’s not to love? Deserving of a longer engagement, The Wake of Dorcas Kelly is a spirited night out at the theater — live and in person — performed by a strong cast that will only get better as the show continues. It’s so much fun spending time with these well-drawn, engaging characters and talented actors that it’s sad when the play is over and the lights go down; it’s easy to see why everyone likes stopping by and staying for a drink or two, and maybe a little more, even with dead bodies lying around.

ICE FACTORY 2021

ICE FACTORY
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
Through August 14, $18-$29
newohiotheatre.org

New Ohio Theatre’s twenty-eighth-annual Ice Factory Festival got under way June 30 – July 3 with The Extremely Grey Line from 23.5°, which could be experienced on bikes, as a walking tour, or in the theater, followed July 7-10 by Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel’s Kim Loo Gets a Redo, inspired by the real-life jazz quartet the Kim Loo Sisters. You might have missed those two, but there is plenty more to see; the Obie-winning festival runs through August 14. Al Límite Collective’s Liminal Archive (July 14-17) is a forty-five-minute multimedia immersive journey that takes you back to the beginnings of the pandemic, featuring works by such artists as Cypress Atlas, Arthur Ban, Toney Brown, Katya Chizhayeva, Caio D’aguilar, Jessica Daugherty, and Sissy Doutsiou, from across the United States as well as Greece, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and other countries.

Dow-Dance explores radical Black love and Sundown Towns in As the Sun Sets (July 21-24), performed by Imani Gaudin-County, Andy Guzmán, Jai Perez, and company founder and choreographer Caleb Dowden. Teatro Dallas’s A Grave Is Given Supper (July 28-31) is a one-person Narco-Acid Western set in a US-Mexico border town, written by Mike Soto, directed by Claudia Acosta, and performed by Elena Hurst. An inheritance brings together a pair of strangers (Laura Butler-Levitt and Heather Hollingsworth) in In Tandem Lab’s Herstory (August 4-7). Daniel Irizarry directs and stars in My Onliness (August 11-14) from One-Eighth Theatre, with text by Robert Lyons and music by Kamala Sankaram. Over the course of the festival, the solo interactive sound installation Endless Loop of Gratitude, created by Broken Chord, Steph Ferreira, Jackson Gay, Steven Padla, Riw Rakkulchon, and Ashley M. Thomas, invites visitors up to a microphone to answer the question: “What are you really grateful for?” We’re really grateful for the return of indoor theater and affordable summer festivals such as Ice Factory. (To enter the New Ohio, you have to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test from the past seventy-two hours, and the audience must wear masks.)

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKING LOT: TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

The Drilling Company will be back in the Clemente parking lot and Bryant Park with free presentation of Two Noble Kinsmen (photo by Hamilton Clancy)

Who: The Drilling Company
What: Free summer Shakespeare
Where: Parking lot of the Clemente, 107 Suffolk St., and Bryant Park
When: July 15-30, free, 7:00 or 7:30
Why: Indoor theater is back after the pandemic lockdown, and so is outdoor theater, including free summer Shakespeare, a birthright of New Yorkers. Among the many entries this season is the beloved Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, which has been presented by the Drilling Company since 1995. This year the troupe is staging the rarely performed Two Noble Kinsmen, what might be William Shakespeare’s final work, a collaboration with John Fletcher based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales. Founding artistic director Hamilton Clancy has reimagined the play, which is set in the aftermath of a war between Athens and Thebes, as a contemporary drama involving Russian spies, Interpol, and corporate espionage. The two-hour show, which stars Brad Frost as Palemon, Jane Bradley as the Jailer’s Daughter, John Caliendo as Arsite, and Liz Livingston as Emilia, with Lucas Rafael, Mary Linehan, Jaqwan Turner, and Remy Souchon, will take place July 15-17 and 28-30 in the Clemente parking lot and July 19-21 in Bryant Park, with admission first come, first served.

OPEN AIR: LONI LANDON AND MARY LATTIMORE AT GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY

Mary Lattimore and Loni Landon team up for site-specific performance in Green-Wood Cemetery

OPEN AIR
Green-Wood Cemetery
Fifth Ave. and 25th St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, July 14, and Thursday, July 15, $25, 7:00
www.green-wood.com
www.fourfourpresents.com

Developed during the pandemic, the curatorial platform four/four presents continues its monthly site-specific “Open Air” performance series with a new piece about mourning, healing, rebirth, and renewal, taking place July 14-15 in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Founded by dancer and choreographer Loni Landon and producer Rachael Pazdan, four/four has brought us “Tethered,” a ten-part multidisciplinary video project featuring collaborations with Kassa Overall, slowdanger, Gus Solomons, Zoey Anderson, Rafiq Bhatia, Ian Chang, Jacqueline Green, Jon Batiste, Lloyd Knight, and many others, which can be watched here.

For Green-Wood, Landon has choreographed a work for seven dancers, with live music by experimental harpist Mary Lattimore, performed in Cedar Dell, the one-acre bowl-shaped natural amphitheater with graves dating back to the eighteenth century. The evening will conclude with a participatory meditative sound bath. “Open Air” began June 9 with Madison McFerrin, Samantha Figgins, and Jessica Pinkett teaming up at the Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell; up next are Melanie Charles and Kayla Farrish at the Bushwick Playground Basketball Court on August 8, followed by Moor Mother and Rena Butler at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 on September 21.