Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising) is part of QNYIAF (photo by Silvija Dogan)
QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
February 7 – 17, $25
212-945-2600 nyuskirball.org
After a six-year break, the Queer New York International Arts Festival returns to the city, taking place February 7-17 at NYU Skirball. Started by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović in 2012 at Abrons Arts Center, the fest consists of works that address queerness in today’s society, this year with presentations from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, and Germany, including live performances, installations, and public talks.
The 2024 QNYIAF kicks off February 7 with Croatian artist Arijana Lekić Fridrih’s From5to95, a hybrid video installation and online project in which Croatian women from the ages of five to ninety-five share their personal stories about gender inequality. On February 7 and 8, Croatian artists Bruno Isaković and Nataša Rajković’s Yira, yira (Cruising, cruising), which premiered in Argentina in 2019, is performed by sex workers Juan Ejemplo, Leandra Atenea Levine Hidalgo, Pichón Reyna, and Sofía Tramazaygues, exploring the relationship between client and sex worker.
Bruno Isaković and Mia Zalukar’s Kill B. reimagines the Bride from Quentin Tarantino films (photo by Hrvoje Zalukar)
Isaković collaborates with fellow choreographer and dancer Mia Zalukar on Kill B., inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Playing February 9 and 10, the piece focuses on the character of the Bride as well as artistic hierarchical structures and their own professional partnership. On February 13, Toronto-based performance artist Clayton Lee goes through his sexual history in The Goldberg Variations, which mashes up Johann Sebastian Bach with WCW and WWE wrestler and actor Bill Goldberg, host of the 2018-19 competition series Forged in Fire: Knife or Death and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. Some iterations have included smells and live snakes, so be ready.
On February 15, Argentinian interdisciplinary artist Tiziano Cruz will deliver the autobiographical performance lecture Conference, followed by a discussion. His piece Soliloquy — I woke up and hit my head against the wall was about his mother; in Conference he turns his attention to his ancestors and his late sister. On February 16, Brazilian artist Wagner Schwartz’s performance lecture La Bête is an interactive solo in which he activates a plastic replica of one of Lygia Clark’s rearrangeable hinged metal sculptures known as bichos, or “beasts,” and then the audience does the same, except with Schwartz’s naked body.
QNYIAF concludes February 17 with Raimund Hoghe Company members Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte’s An Evening with Raimund, a tribute to German choreographer, dancer, and journalist Raimund Hoghe, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-two; excerpts from his works will be performed by seven dancers. “To see bodies on stage that do not comply with the norm is important — not only with regard to history but also with regard to present developments, which are leading humans to the status of design objects,” Hoghe said. “On the question of success: It is important to be able to work and to go your own way — with or without success. I simply do what I have to do.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
There is an internet meme that you can get on a T-shirt, mug, poster, or notebook: “Theater is therapy for the soul.” In the past few years, I’ve seen a handful of plays that take the quote extremely seriously: The entire show is set within the confines of a therapy session (or sessions).
In Dave Malloy’s Octet, eight people gather to face their obsessions with technology. In Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, seven Buddhists share their traumas. In Those Guilty Creatures’ The Voices in Your Head, the audience sits in a large oval among actors portraying characters dealing with grief. And in Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job, a therapist has the responsibility of determining whether an employee who suffered a public meltdown is ready to return to work.
In each of those cases, we do not see anything outside the session(s). The same is true of Ruby Thomas’s gripping but mystifying The Animal Kingdom, which continues through February 10 at the Connelly Theater Upstairs; downstairs is an encore run of Job.
An audience of no more than fifty sits on three sides of Wilson Chin’s tiny stage at a recovery center, consisting of five equally spaced plastic chairs in a circle on a green rug along with a small table with water, cups, and tissues. The far wall is a two-way mirror where experts can watch the proceedings — and we can see reflections of ourselves or other audience members, as if we’re part of the group. Above is a large rectangular light box that changes colors during scene changes to try to maintain a calming mood, accompanied by transitional music. (The lighting is by Stacey Derosier, with sound by Christopher Darbassie and contemporary costumes by Ricky Reynoso.) Otherwise, it is threateningly quiet; it never goes dark, so you can see and hear people scratch their leg, shift in their seat, or reach into their bag for a cough drop.
Sofia (Lily McInerny) doesn’t hold back in New York premiere of British play (photo by Emilio Madrid)
The patient is Sam (Uly Schlesinger), a college student who has recently tried to kill himself. His parents are divorced and not on friendly terms; Rita (Tasha Lawrence) is an overbearing yapper, and Tim (David Cromer) is a reticent businessman who would rather be anywhere else but there, nervously shaking one leg, speaking only when practically forced to. Tim’s younger sister, eighteen-year-old Sofia (Lily McInerny), has been essentially ignored by her parents for years while they deal with Tim. Facilitating the sessions is Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith), who is almost impossibly gentle and serene, especially when things heat up among the family members.
The details of the family’s dysfunction emerge from confessions, admissions, and accusations as we learn more about each person, some of which is almost too metaphorical. Tim runs a turnaround fund where he buys failing businesses and makes them profitable but has no idea how to turn around the pain his wife and kids are feeling. Rita is a doula who helps pregnant mothers but doesn’t understand her own children. Sam is obsessed with swifts, aerial birds that are unable to stand properly because of their small legs and whose migratory patterns are in chaos because of climate change, much like Sam’s life path has been disrupted by his mental health issues. And when Rita complains, “It’s a bit lonely in the house. Empty nest,” Sofia scoffs, “I still live there.”
Over the course of six sessions, they argue about abandonment, medication, education, sex drives, and the difference between gay and queer. Daniel offers such obvious guidance as “I know this might not always be easy. We might have to say difficult things, hear difficult things. But in my experience the family system, as we call it, is such an important one.”
During the first scene, I dreaded being stuck in this room for eighty minutes of therapeutic healing, but director Jack Serio, who previously helmed an intimate adaptation of Uncle Vanya in a Flatiron loft and This Beautiful Future at the Cherry Lane, keeps us engaged as characters change chairs for each meeting, giving the audience a different perspective on the family members and the therapist as they go through major, or minor, transformations of some kind.
Therapist Daniel (Calvin Leon Smith) tries to get to the root of Sam’s (Uly Schlesinger) issues in The Animal Kingdom (photo by Emilio Madrid)
The cast is excellent, beginning with Schlesinger, who made his New York stage debut in This Beautiful Future in 2022. The tortured Sam is wound up tight at the start, a ticking time bomb, but it’s McInerny who explodes as Sofia, who has had enough. Cromer, who played the title character in Serio’s Uncle Vanya and directed McInerny in Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried, portrays Tim with a calm control, while Lawrence regales with Rita’s inability to just shut up.
Obie winner Smith could not be more easygoing as Daniel, although I hope they change a line, one of the only jokes in the show: Expressing hopefulness amid his nerves, he says, “And the Knicks are playing later and it hasn’t been the best season. Or the best decade,” as if hope might be unattainable. Right now the Knicks are having their best season in years, so it would be better if they changed it to the Jets or another perennial punching bag sports team, at least while the play is in New York City. The British Thomas (Either,Linck & Mülhahn) might not be up on her hoops, but Daniel should be.
Some have made the case that The Animal Kingdom is not in fact a play but merely an exercise in fictional group therapy, taking advantage of a currently popular theatrical device. However, I would argue that in its character development, narrative flow, and unique staging, it is a poignant drama about a complicated family finally having to look at itself in the mirror and admitting they might not like what they see.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Teens Ana (Gabby Beans) and Jonah (Hagan Oliveras) explore their burgeoning sexuality in Roundabout world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)
JONAH
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 10, $76-$138
212-719-1300 www.roundabouttheatre.org
“Why are you fixated on me?” Ana (Gabby Beans) asks two of three guys who are fixated on her in the world premiere of Rachel Bonds’s Jonah, continuing at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre through March 10. It’s easy to become fixated on Ana, and on Beans, in the meticulously rendered production, which follows a woman through approximately three decades as she faces tragedy and trauma and wrestles with her faith.
The hundred-minute play takes place in Ana’s bedroom at three distinct times in her life. Wilson Chin’s set features a bed to the left, a small table where Ana works to the right, and a door in the middle where the men come and go but Ana never goes through, as if she is trapped. All the characters are damaged, but the men find solace in their relationship with Ana, fiercely dedicated to survival and her own solace.
In the first scene, the sixteen-year-old Ana meets the seventeen-year-old Jonah (Hagan Oliveras), who has a major crush on her. They both go to the same boarding school, and they both are virgins, soon sharing their sexual fantasies with each other.
Like the biblical figure, Jonah is questioning the existence of a higher power. Jonah asks Ana if she still believes in God, but she’s not sure. They might not believe in God, but Ana, who is Catholic, and Jonah, who is not, pepper their speech with references to God and Jesus, in frustration, anger, and joy as they contend with different types of pain.
Step-siblings Ana (Gabby Beans) and Danny (Samuel Henry Levine) try to cope with an abusive father in Rachel Bonds’s Jonah (photo by Joan Marcus)
The next male who shows up in Ana’s room is her protective stepbrother, Danny (Samuel Henry Levine), who is being physically and psychologically abused by his father. Whereas Ana is studying hard and wants to become a writer, Danny is a gruff dude who has no interest in books or school. Ana tells him that her “American dream” is “getting into college and getting the fuck out of here,” but Danny is just trying to survive day to day and doesn’t want Ana to leave. “Don’t you want to stay together?” he says, then asks her to hold him to help calm him down, perhaps a little too close.
Years later, at a writer’s retreat, Ana meets Steven (John Zdrojeski), a former Mormon who brings her food and can’t stop talking about his various physical ailments. Like Jonah, he asks her, “Do you still believe in God?” Steven has a unique perspective on religion, as well as on sex. “Can you still fantasize?” she asks him, and he admits, “There’s definitely still shame lurking around some corners, but —.”
A twist at the end not only furthers the links between Jonah, Danny, and Steven but explains the name of the play.
Bonds (Five Mile Lake,Sundown, Yellow Moon) writes sharp, incisive dialogue that crackles, sparks, and surprises. Director Danya Taymor (Pass Over,“Daddy”) expertly guides the play through its multiple time periods despite the set and Kaye Voyce’s costumes never changing. Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting and Kate Marvin’s sound reverberate to announce narrative shifts.
Steven (John Zdrojeski) is one of three young men obsessed with Ana (Gabby Beans) in Jonah at the Laura Pels Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)
Zdrojeski (Heroes of the Fourth Turning,Before We’re Gone) channels Jimmy Stewart as the goofy Steven, Levine (The Inheritance,Kill Floor) gives just the right heft to Danny, and gamer and actor Oliveras is sweetly innocent as the tender-hearted Jonah.
But it’s Tony nominee Beans’s (I’m Revolting,Anatomy of a Suicide) show all the way. She’s extraordinary as Ana, onstage the entire show; you won’t be able to take your eyes off her as Ana deals with the lousy hand she’s been dealt.
Early on, she tells Jonah, “I don’t have to do anything. I do what I want,” and that’s the mantra she lives by. She’s not looking for sympathy, nor is she blaming anyone else for what has happened in her life. She keeps on fighting, even as she starts to realize that opening up and depending on someone else is not necessarily a bad thing. Beans captures these emotions with a powerful determination while also displaying the softer side that Ana hides.
Whether you believe in a supreme being or not, you’ll come away from Jonah believing in Ana, and in Beans.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Our Class recounts a 1941 Polish pogrom and its aftermath (photo by Pavel Antonov)
UNDER THE RADAR: OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 11, $68-$139 www.bam.org ourclassplay.com
“I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us — more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight. See what I mean?” the stage manager says in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Our Town. “So — people a thousand years from now — this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. — This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”
In Igor Golyak‘s potent new revival of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s 2008 play, Our Class, at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space through February 11 as part of the Under the Radar festival, the first and second acts start with the cast sitting in a semicircle, holding and reading from scripts, as if copies of the play have been recently unearthed from a cornerstone, revealing a terrifying story that is not as widely known as it should be, and all too relevant to what is happening in the world today.
Inspired by actual events that occurred in the small village of Jedwabne, Poland, Our Class follows a group of ten Polish students, five Jewish, five Catholic, all born in 1919–20, from childhood to young adulthood to old age, although several don’t make it through a 1941 pogrom.
The audience is shown immediately when each character dies; their birth and death dates are written in chalk on a large, multipurpose blackboard. I preferred not to look too closely, instead learning their fate over the course of the narrative, but Golyak and Słobodzianek clearly want you to know who is going to live and who is going to die in their early twenties, in awful ways.
Richard Topol plays Abram Piekarz, the only Polish Jew who got out in time (photo by Pavel Antonov)
Richard Topol portrays Abram Piekarz, who serves as a kind of stage manager. Topol has played similar roles in such important plays about antisemitism as Indecent and Prayer for the French Republic; here he introduces each scene, which are called “lessons,” shuffling props, directly addressing the audience, blowing harp, appearing all over the theater (including in the aisles and on top of the blackboard), and remaining in touch with his fellow classmates after he moves to America and studies to become a rabbi.
At the start of the show, the characters share their hopes and dreams: Dora (Gus Birney) wants to be a movie star, Rysiek (José Espinosa) a pilot, Zocha (Tess Goldwyn) a seamstress, Zygmunt (Elan Zafir) a soldier, Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) a doctor, Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner) a teacher. Very few get to achieve their goals.
The first crack in the friendship between the Jews and the Christians occurs in the wake of the death in 1935 of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who had encouraged minority cultures in the nation. While Jakub is honoring the marshal’s accomplishments, Heniek (Will Manning) mockingly declares, “The marshal’s a prick with a circumcised dick. / His power he loved to abuse. / He married three times and committed his crimes / And sold all us Poles to the Jews!”
Later, the Christian students hold a prayer service in school, which upsets Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy), Jakub, and Rachelka, who chastises Władek (Ilia Volok) for throwing rocks at Jakub’s sister.
And then, during a party for the opening of a local cinema — made possible by the Soviet occupation of Poland — Rysiek shouts, “Death to the Commie-Jew Conspiracy. Long live Poland!” He leaves, but when a few of the Christians insist on dancing with Jews, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable.
It’s not long before blood is spilled and people are being brutally murdered.
“Classmates are like family. Better than family,” Zygmunt proclaims.
What happened was no way to treat family.
During the pandemic, Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke out of the pack with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, followed by The Orchard, a hybrid reimagining of The Cherry Orchard with Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Golyak (chekhovOS /an experimental game/,Witness) directs with a frenetic energy that is intoxicating; your eyes are always searching for the unusual, the unexpected. In Our Class, adapted by Norman Allen from a literal translation by Catherine Grovesnor, you won’t find characters just sitting and talking; there is constant motion and action throughout the space. Text is added to the blackboard. Victims are represented by balloons on which the actors draw faces. Two figures watch from overhead. Ladders are dragged across the set, used for multiple purposes. A soccer ball that previously brought the classmates together on their team is turned into a weapon.
Cameras and monitors are pushed onstage, projecting live recordings on the screen and the blackboard, then rolled back to the wings, where actors wait and watch intently when they’re not in the scene. At times there is too much happening all at once, complicated by anachronistic video usage, although it also firmly reminds us that this could happen again, as evidenced by the current rise of antisemitism around the world, particularly following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.
At three hours (with one intermission), the play is long, but any shorter and its lessons might be lost, and in any case, Golyak never lets it slow down. (Prayer for the French Republic is also three hours but doesn’t feel like it.)
Ten classmates learn more than they ever bargained for in New York premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek play (photo by Pavel Antonov)
The cast and crew, who hail from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US, are superb. The set is by Jan Pappelbaum of the Schaubühne, with realistic сostumes by Sasha Ageeva, stark lighting by Adam Silverman, original music by Anna Drubich, immersive sound by Ben Williams, choreography by Or Schraiber, and projections by Eric Dunlap.
Topol (King of the Jews,The Normal Heart) is exceptional as Abram, the only one who got out of Poland before the 1941 pogrom; he imbues Abram — who in many ways is a stand-in for America, which entered WWII only when Pearl Harbor was attacked — with a soft, affectionate tenderness. Both Topol and Abram are genuine mensches.
Birney (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,The Rose Tattoo) will break your heart over and over again as Dora, Espinosa (Take Me Out,Fuente Ovejuna) will infuriate you as the bigoted Rysiek, Silber (Fiddler on the Roof,Hello Again) will shock and annoy you as Rachelka, Goldwyn, in her off-Broadway debut, will charm you as Zocha, and Volok (Gemini Man,The Gaaga) will utterly confound you as Władek. Burkovskiy (Solar Line,The Flight), Zafir (Arcadia,Everybody), Manning (Breitwisch Farm,Just Tell No One), and Ochsner (The Maxims of Panteley Karmanov,Everything’s Fine) round out the excellent ensemble.
Perhaps the best thing about Our Class is that it doesn’t preach at the audience; it has a message and a point of view but is not teaching us about good and evil.
In Our Town, Emily asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”
“No,” the stage manager replies.
And that’s a shame, because no one should have to go through such horrors again.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can find his personal essay on Our Class here.]
Terce: A Practical Breviary is another gem from Heather Christian (photo by Maria Baranova)
TERCE: A PRACTICAL BREVIARY
The Space at Irondale
85 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn
Wednesday – Sunday through February 4, $50-$150 prototypefestival.org here.org
Multidisciplinary artist Heather Christian doesn’t just make memorable shows; she creates unforgettable experiences.
Online and at the Bushwick Starr, Animal Wisdom was an intimate and rapturous confessional of music and storytelling, an ingenious journey into the personal and communal nature of ritual and superstition, of grief and loss, of ghosts and, most intently, the fear of death.
At Ars Nova at Greenwich House, Oratorio for Living Things was a gloriously exhilarating celebration of life, art, and nature, an immersive journey through the complex quantum, human, and cosmic time and space of our daily existence.
Christian is now back with the majestic Terce: A Practical Breviary, a reimagining of a monastic 9:00 morning mass as only she can present it, continuing at the Space at Irondale through February 4. “Terce” is the name of the third of the seven canonical hours of the divine office, while a breviary is an abridged liturgical tome of psalms, readings, and hymns.
Terce: A Practical Breviary takes place in a unique environment in the Space at Irondale (photo by Maria Baranova)
Part of the Prototype Festival and commissioned, developed, and produced by HERE, the show takes place in the former Sunday school home of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church on South Oxford St. in Brooklyn, which Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin have remade into a welcoming area with two rows of chairs surrounding a central carpeted oval on which there are musical instruments, a mound of dirt, and a complex web of laundry lines emanating from a vertical loom, holding up fabric and household objects that will later be lowered down and used by the performers. Two tables contain tea and cookies that the audience can sample, along with the cast and crew.
As the crowd enters, the thirty members of the community chorus of mothers and/or caregivers are on the upper level, putting on robes that have been individually designed for them by Brenda Abbandondolo; some have embroidery or ruffles, while others are distressed or torn. The band soon saunters onto the stage: Mona Seyed-Boloforosh on grand piano, Viva DeConcini on electric guitar, Mel Hsu on bass and cello, Maya Sharpe on acoustic guitar and violin, Rima Fand on violin, Jessica Lurie on wind, Christian on keyboards, vocal soloists Divya Maus and Kait Warner, and Terry Dame on saxophone and a percussion kit made of pots and pans. All of the performers identify as female; nearly all the props are items associated with what some still consider “women’s work.”
What follows is an exhilarating and powerful sixty-minute service that Christian, in a program note, explains “addresses the Holy Spirit through the lens of the Divine Feminine.” The words to each of the fifteen songs are projected onto large screens on either side of the space, accompanied by drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, Koomah, and Lovie Olivia. While singing, the chorus occasionally marches around the oval and through the audience, at one point breaking out into smaller groups, joining together for communal rituals.
(The lovely choir, which interacts with the audience, consists of Raquel Cion, Marisa Clementi, Ciera Cope, Nadine Daniels, Sandra Gamer, Audrey Hayes, Mercedes Hesselroth, Frances Higgins, Davina Honeghan, Beau Kadir, Rachel Karp, Sarah Lefebvre, Aris Louis, Teri Madonna, Grenetta Mason, Mickaila Perry, Eleanor Philips, Avery Richards, Kayleigh Rozwat, Amy Santos, Kayla Sklar, Sharyn Thomas, Shelley Thomas, Vanessa Truell, Grace Tyson, Madrid Vinarski, Jessie Winograd, and Allison Zhao.)
In the opening “Oratorio,” a singer declares, “You and me and both our mothers / opened up the bottle, / when we opened up our stories / carrying blood to somewhere else.” In “Gardener,” we are told that “the Mother is the garden and the gardener.” In “O Shepherdess,” an adaptation of three prayers by St. Hildegard of Bingen, we hear about “a wound of contrition / a wound of compassion / a wound of the earnest longing for someone.”
The “Psaltery” section is prefaced by the quote “To be divinely feminine is a beatified exhibition of multitasking,” followed by references to Gucci and the DMV; songs include “Poppyseed” and “Mercy Is a Work,” a response to Julian of Norwich. The final part, “Reckoning,” explores gravity, panic, and hurt. Christian sings, “Until we die longing for love / we’re here sensing the chaos / and we don’t know what we are. / When this confused / I submit to my mother / In the door crease of the backseat of the car. / I grasp it only for a moment and in bliss / I understand how everything is all at once / in mercy and in love / and then I lose it.”
Terce: A Practical Breviary is fluidly directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant (queen,Will You Come with Me?), who superbly manages the large cast and vast space, with lighting by Masha Tsimring (that battles with the sun pouring through the windows at certain times), enveloping sound by Nick Kourtides, and intricate movement by Heather Christian, Darlene Christian, and Oliphant. Heather Christian wrote the libretto, sings several songs, and composed the score, which ranges from pop and gospel to soul and medieval organum.
Christian, who keeps fascinating little trinkets on her piano, never loses anything in her work, pontificating on the fullness and mystery of human experience, from rolling pins and vacuums to lilting choral voices and the ineffable grace of the feminine divine. “I have no artistic restraint / every think I see, I paint / with the image of myself / I am the vine,” she proclaims late in the show, in a processional that is a response to John 15.5. I pray that nothing ever restrains her unforgettable art.
Mai Khôi returns February 1 to Joe’s Pub with the final iteration of Bad Activist (photo by Nate Guidry)
BAD ACTIVIST
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St.
Thursday, February 1, $15-$25 (plus two-drink or one-food-item minimum), 7:00 publictheater.org mai-khoi.com
Back in September, I attended a friend’s wedding in rural Pennsylvania. Sitting at our table was a woman who was introduced to us as Mai Khôi, the Lady Gaga of Vietnam. We discovered later in the evening why, when, in full makeup and costume, she performed a song written especially for the occasion. The groom, Alex Lough, is an experimental musician and teacher, and the bride, Hanah Davenport, is a singer-songwriter and urban planner; at one point the party broke out into a Greenwich Village–style happening with a series of avant-garde presentations.
Born Đỗ Nguyễn Mai Khôi in 1983 in Cam Ranh, Vietnam, Mai Khôi was an award-winning pop star whose activism infuriated the government as she advocated for freedom of expression, LGBTQ and women’s rights, and the environment and against censorship, domestic violence, and Donald Trump. She also got into trouble by announcing that she did not want to have children.
She’s been playing music since she was six, in her father’s wedding band and later in clubs. She released her first album in 2004, and ten more solo records followed between 2008 and 2018; as her fame and fortune exploded, so did her concern for the welfare of the Vietnamese people. She challenged the police and the government, leading her to have to play secret shows for her fans. Shortly after the release of the 2019 documentary Mai Khôi and the Dissidents, which screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, she fled to America; she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her personal and professional partner, Mark Micchelli.
“Even though Mai Khôi primarily sings in Vietnamese, you can always understand the intention she’s trying to convey,” Lough, who is producing her upcoming album, explained to me. “Her band has a refreshing approach to protest music, like we haven’t heard since Rage Against the Machine. She has an incredible emotional range, from delicate sadness and vulnerability to screaming and extended vocal techniques. She is also able to freely move between her role as the frontwoman to blending in with everyone; it’s rare to see that kind of versatility in a vocalist with such a commanding stage presence.” The record will feature such tracks as “We Never Know,” “Innocent Deer,” and “The Overwhelming Feeling that We’re Already Dead.”
On February 1, she will return to Joe’s Pub with the biographical multimedia Bad Activist, which details her life and career through music, photographs, video, archival footage, and more. Directed by Cynthia Croot, the seventy-five-minute show features such songs as “Reeducation Camp,” “Just Be Patient,” and “Bitches Get Things Done,” with Mai Khôi joined by Alec Zander Redd on saxophones, Eli Namay on bass, PJ Roduta on drums, and music director Micchelli on keyboards, playing a mix of experimental jazz rock, folk, and deliberately cheesy pop; Aaron Henderson is the projection designer. Although the work has been performed and workshopped over the last four years at small venues and universities, this iteration is the debut of the full, finished production.
I recently spoke with Mai Khôi and Micchelli over Zoom, discussing music, repressive governments, cooking, and why she considers herself a bad activist.
twi-ny: The three of us were at the same table at Alex and Hanah’s wedding. How did you first meet Alex?
Mark Micchelli: Alex and I met in September of 2016; we were in the same cohort at the University of California, Irvine, where Alex finished his PhD and where I did my master’s. I moved out east, if you can call Pittsburgh east, first in 2019, and then he moved to South Jersey in 2020. And so we’ve been musical collaborators since 2016 and been around the world. We’ve done gigs throughout California and in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, and South Korea.
Mai Khôi: In 2020, I got a fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and I was invited to work with Mark. We began with my project Bad Activist.
mm: I had actually gotten an email from the University of Pittsburgh that said there’s this Vietnamese singer-songwriter who’s looking for a pianist who knows something about jazz and Southeast Asian traditional music. And I said, Well, no one’s qualified for that job, so I may as well try. When I was told that I’d have to learn the music in three weeks, I knew I didn’t have time to learn it in that amount of time. I drafted an email to basically politely decline and say, find another pianist. And then I thought I should actually look up what this person’s music actually sounds like. And now we own a house together.
twi-ny: When was the last time you were in Vietnam to either see family members or play a secret show?
mk: Oh, when I moved to the US at the end of 2019. I have not been able to come back to Vietnam since.
twi-ny: What will happen if you try to go back? Would they arrest you?
mk: Yes, they could arrest me. They could detain me. That’s what happened with an activist friend of mine. So, yeah, it’s still dangerous for me to go back, so I’ve chosen not to. My friend had the same situation, like me. She left Vietnam for two years, and then when her mother got sick, she wanted to come home, but the police arrested her, and she is now in jail. They sentenced her to three years.
twi-ny: What family do you have in Vietnam?
mk: My mother, my father. And I have one brother who lives with them.
twi-ny: If they left the country, say, to visit you here, would they be allowed back in?
mk: They don’t have any plans to leave Vietnam.
twi-ny: But if they did, would the government let them return?
mk: If the police want to arrest you, they can arrest you any time. But I think my family will be safe because they’re not involved in activism at all. They did try to convince me to not get involved. From the beginning, the police came and investigated them. After many visits to my parents’ house, they realized my parents have nothing to do with activism, so they leave them alone.
twi-ny: Are you in contact with them either over the phone or via social media? I know you’ve accused Facebook of being in bed with the Vietnam government.
mk: My parents still use Facebook; that is the main thing we use to see each other every day. Of course, I know the police always follow my Instagram and my Facebook and try to hack into them. But it’s okay. I still know how to use Facebook to spread my word and deal with the situation. Someone like my parents or other friends that are not activists, they will not comment on any sensitive things I post on Facebook. They don’t like some of the posts about politics anyway.
twi-ny: You’ve said, “No one can stop me.” Has the government come to you and said, If you take back some of the things you’ve said, we’ll leave you alone?
mk: They did try that in 2016 [when I was applying to run for the National Assembly]. They sent a person to talk to me to give me that deal. Like if you withdraw your nomination campaign, the system will make you even more famous. That was the deal, but I didn’t take it.
I refuse to talk with them about those kinds of things. When the government detained me a couple of years after, they asked me some questions and I just gave them information that’s already public.
twi-ny: What are some of the main issues you are rallying against, in Vietnam and America?
mk: You will see this when you come to see Bad Activist. I am focusing on freedom of expression. And recently, I’m doing some advocacy work for climate activists. Because I’m here, it’s easy to lobby Congress and the State Department, to work with the US government. [ed. note: Mai Khôi met with members of Congress last summer, before President Biden traveled to Vietnam.]
Also, I was surprised by the brutality of the police here, so I want to fight against that. It’s very similar with the police in Vietnam. In New York, when the Black Lives Matter movement happened, I went to the protest every week. I really feel the brutality of the police everywhere is just the same.
twi-ny: On February 1, you’ll be at Joe’s Pub, where you performed two earlier versions of Bad Activist in 2021–22. What do you think of the venue?
mm: They treat you super well. They know how to work with performers.
mk: In 2020, they started to work with the SHIM:NYC team for artists like me, to give us a chance to perform in an iconic venue in New York like that. [ed. note: SHIM:NYC is “a creative and professional residency and mentorship program for international musicians who are persecuted or censored for their work; are threatened on the basis of their political or religious affiliations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity; have been forcibly displaced; need a respite from dangerous situations; or are from countries experiencing active, violent conflict.”]
mm: We do have City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, which does something similar.
twi-ny: What makes you a bad activist?
mk: There’s some moments that I realized maybe I’m a bad activist because I am first an artist, but because I was born in my country, a country that’s not safe for artists, I decided to become an activist to protect my right to be an artist. So that’s why I don’t have good training to become a good activist. Sometimes I upset people. And sometimes I organize some things that aren’t . . . I just think sometimes I feel I’m a bad activist.
mm: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Khôi about this, and I feel like everyone who sees the show has the opposite feeling of Khôi about her and her activism, but everything she says is genuine. And I think the broader point is that despite her activism and since she has fled to the States, the situation in Vietnam has only been getting worse. And so I think reflecting on that failure is something that the show tries to come to terms with and talk about and that’s why the name is framed that way.
mk: Yes. So the point is, whether you’re bad or you’re good, you at least try to be an activist, to contribute something.
Mai Khôi has been playing music since she was six years old (photo courtesy Mai Khôi)
twi-ny: Activism these days seems to be more dangerous than ever.
mk: I don’t know. I just do things that I feel are the right thing to do and I do them. I always believe that doing the right thing will lead you to something good, even when you have to pay a price for doing it.
twi-ny: What’s next after Bad Activist?
mk: We have some ideas for a new project. It will be based on the activism and culture that I carry from Vietnam to here.
twi-ny: What do you do when you’re not making music or fighting the power?
mk: I have a hobby: cooking.
mm: Khôi is as good a chef as she is a vocalist, which is really unfair.
twi-ny: What are your favorite dishes to make?
mk: Bún bò huế (spicy beef and pork noodle soup), cá kho (caramelized and braised fish), and mì quảng (Quảng noodles).
twi-ny: One final question: Will we ever hear the song you wrote for Alex and Hanah again? And does it have a name?
mk: “I Hear the River Calling.” I don’t perform that song. It was a gift to them. But it might go on an album in the future.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Eric Berryman shares African American toasts in Wooster Group’s Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me (photo by Marika Kent)
GET YOUR ASS IN THE WATER AND SWIM LIKE ME
The Wooster Group
The Performing Garage
33 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 3, $39-$79 thewoostergroup.org
In 2019, the Wooster Group production of The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” a Record Album Interpretation earned a Drama Desk nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience for Eric Berryman’s multimedia adaptation of a 1965 LP compiled by Bruce Jackson, consisting of performances by inmates of color on segregated agricultural prison farms.
Writer and actor Berryman and director Kate Valk are now back with their follow-up, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me, continuing at the Performing Garage through February 3. This time Berryman dives deep into Jackson’s 1974 book and 1976 disc, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition, a collection of folktales known as toasts, made for heroes and antiheroes in the Black storytelling canon.
The set, by Wooster Group founding member and director Elizabeth LeCompte, evokes a radio DJ studio, where Berryman sits at a long table with a laptop and various electronic instruments; to his right is a microphone, behind him a monitor, and to his left a standing table with a smaller monitor. He is joined onstage by drummer Jharis Yokley, who adds percussion throughout, from pounding solos to gentle brushstrokes. As Berryman recites the toasts — some of which have been recorded by Rudy Ray Moore and George Clinton — he occasionally projects video and photographs on the monitor, from a car chase to archival footage to live shots of himself.
Berryman kicks things off with “Titanic,” which honors Shine, a Black man on the Titanic who kept “warning the captain and the white people that the ship is going down. They don’t believe him. So he says, ‘Fuck y’all, I’m out.’ He jumps overboard and starts swimming to shore. The white people on the deck start yelling, ‘Please come back and help us!’ And in one version of the toast, as he’s swimming away, Shine says, ‘Get your ass in the water and swim like me.’” Berryman’s retelling is fast-paced and rhythmic, with rap and hip-hop inflections that go well beyond mere recitation.
In “Signifying Monkey,” a forest primate battles a lion and an elephant. “Partytime Monkey” takes place at a party on Juneteenth, but the unhappy title mammal is incensed that he was not invited. In “Joe the Grinder and G.I. Joe,” a man returns from WWII to find his wife has been unfaithful. “’Flicted Arm Pete” is about a fornication contest that gets out of hand.
Drummer Jharis Yokley and actor Eric Berryman share a personal moment in Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me (photo by Marika Kent)
The tales are filled with tawdry sex and extreme violence — bullets are flying everywhere — but as funny as they are, there’s also an underlying sense of discomfort, particularly with a primarily white audience, as the stories contain stereotypes reminiscent of minstrelsy. Berryman compares these over-the-top characters to Greek myths, where such figures as Hercules and Jason “would do stupid shit because they knew it would help them uh, uh, more quickly achieve kleos, and get kleos . . . A community creates the heroes that they need.”
Berryman (Primary Trust,Toni Stone) is not just sharing old fables but exploring Black identity then and now. At one point he digresses into a discussion of his own name, how disappointed he is to be anchored with the plain “Eric” when he has relatives called Qasim, Idris, Indira, Akeem, Alenka, and Adia. (He does note that there is a Gary but does not share that it’s his uncle, Grammy-winning jazz saxophonist Gary Bartz.)
In addition to the eight toasts, each evening includes an improvised Q&A between Berryman and Yokley; the night I went, Berryman asked the charming drummer, producer, and songwriter about his favorite grade from K through 12 and what he is afraid of, again incorporating ideas of personal identity into the play and creating a further bond between the performers and the audience, some of whom sit in chairs on the stage.
The show concludes with the all-time favorite “Stackolee,” a tale of murder and mayhem that has been recorded in different versions by Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, Wilbert Harrison, Long Cleve Reed, Lloyd Price, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, among others, its familiarity spotlighting the centrality rather than the marginalization of the Black experience in American popular culture.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
