FRANZ KAFKA: PROGRAMS
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 13, $13-$25 www.themorgan.org
There are not a lot of authors whose name has been acknowledged as a legitimate adjective in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, and even fewer of those adjectives have been used as the name of a musical. In fact, the only one might be Kafkaesque, which is used for anything that relates to Czech-born German-language writer Franz Kafka and has “a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.”
Last fall, James Harvey’s musical comedy Kafkaesque! opened off-off-Broadway at Theatre 154 in the West Village, about one American family experiencing predicaments inspired by Kafka’s writings. The first song gets right to the point when Kafka sings, “By age forty I was dead / never had kids and I never wed / the words I wrote were hardly read / but now I’m an adjective.”
Kafka and his work have grown in stature since his passing in June 1924 at the age of forty from tuberculosis, leaving behind a literary legacy that includes the novels The Castle,The Trial, and Amerika and such influential stories as “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “The Metamorphosis.”
The Morgan Library is celebrating that legacy with the simply titled exhibition “Franz Kafka,” continuing through April 13. The show features original notebooks and manuscripts, letters about vegetarianism and his first hemorrhage, postcards, illustrated pages, family photos, handwritten aphorisms, first editions, architectural models, a diary, and other ephemera, primarily from the Bodleian Library, organized into such sections as “Life and Times: Health and Illness,” “Life and Times: Jewishness,” “Journeys: Around Europe,” and “Journeys: Of the Imagination.”
In his catalogue essay “Kafka’s Life and World,” British editor Ritchie Robertson writes, “Even during his final illness he kept writing. In March 1924 he wrote his last story, ‘Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse-People,’ and on his death-bed he corrected the proofs of the volume, A Hunger Artist: Four Stories, in which the story was included. ‘Josefine’ is a masterpiece of Kafka’s gentle, self-deprecating humour, and ends with the unexplained disappearance of the heroine and the narrator’s reflection that she will not be much missed. She ‘will lose herself happily in the numberless host of our people’s heroes, and, since we don’t go in for history, she will soon, redeemed and transfigured, be forgotten, like all her brethren.’”
Kafka often wrote about the unexplained, but he never disappeared from the public consciousness and will not soon be forgotten. The Morgan exhibition, held in conjunction with the centennial of Kafka’s death, is supplemented by a series of programs that delve further into Kafka’s life and world, ranging from panel discussions to special tours, workshops, lectures, and live music; below is the complete schedule.
Thursday, January 9 Kafkaesque: Creative Responses to Kafka, with Joshua Cohen, Maira Kalman, and Josh Luxenberg, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $25, 7:00
Friday, January 10
Virtual Spotlight Tour | Franz Kafka: The Making of an Icon, Zoom, sold out, 12:30
Wednesday, February 5
Virtual Lecture | Benjamin Balint: Kafka’s Last Trial, with author Benjamin Balint, Zoom, free with advance RSVP, noon
Gallery Tour | Franz Kafka with Benjamin Balint, Engelhard Gallery, free with museum admission, 2:00
Wednesday February 19
Winter Break Family Program | Franz Kafka Storytime and Artmaking, with readings of author Larissa Theule and illustrator Rebecca Green’s Kafka and the Doll, free with museum admission, 2:00
Thursday, March 6
Concert | Philip Glass’s “Metamorphosis,” with pianist Jenny Lin, actor Saroi Tsukada, and bassist Lindsay Rosenberg, followed by a discussion with music publisher Richard Guerin, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $40, 7:00
Friday, March 14
Lecture | “Daylight at the Exit”: Women Translating Kafka, with Michelle Woods, Gilder Lehrman Hall, free (advance RSVP recommended), 6:00
Wednesday, April 9
Lecture | Nahma Sandrow: Kafka and the Vagabonds, with playwright and Yiddish theater scholar Dr. Nahma Sandrow, J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, $20, 6:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The Vivid Unknown uses generative AI and immersive sound to reimagine Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
TECHNE: THE VIVID UNKNOWN
Under the Radar Festival / BAM Next Wave
BAM Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 4-7, $10
Series continues through January 19 utrfest.org www.bam.org
“I like people to break things. I’m always interested in how kids interact with things because they’re going to do things that someone else might not do,” artist John Fitzgerald told me at the inaugural presentation of TECHNE: The Vivid Unknown at BAM’s Fishman Space, a multimedia reimagining of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi, which means “life out of balance,” “life disintegrating,” and “a state of life that calls for another way of living” in the Hopi language.
Fitzgerald was not referring to the hardware but “the rules of engagement” that he’s designed with an expert team. “Anyone can bring their own story to it. That’s something I learned from Godfrey, who calls it the autodidactic experience of watching Koyaanisqatsi,” he said. “He’s not telling you, ‘technology bad, humans good — the natural world is safe.’ He’s giving you the opportunity to have thoughts about things, to experience things. Everyone will always watch it differently. I’ve seen that movie dozens and dozens of times; there are a lot of different ways that you can interpret it. So I’m excited to see how this evolves and unfolds. People might want to come in here and sit down on the floor, they might want to go out and get some fresh air and come back in; it’s an open experience.”
There are numerous ways to experience The Vivid Unknown, and it’s left up to each individual to decide, mimicking how we approach life. AI-generated images speed across three large screens as immersive AI sound envelops the room. You can sit on the floor right in front, move around, or take a regular seat in the back. If you decide to participate — and I highly recommend you do — you will discover that when you are in an oval of light, the shape of your body will be picked up by sensors behind you and your onscreen silhouette will eventually be filled by an image different from what is already being projected.
For example, amid slow-motion and time-lapse shots of beachgoers, mountains, metropolitan cities, airplanes, waterfalls, clouds, traffic, the demolition of a housing project, and other scenes, a rocket taking off fit into my outline and followed me onscreen as I walked across the room. Meanwhile, a woman stood near the middle, moving like a dancer. Couples posed together. A few kids jumped up and down. Humanity fused together with technology and the environment as some of us participated and others merely watched from the back.
Almost all the young boys and girls chose to become involved with the art, which brought out the child in the adults who got up from their seats and interacted with it as well. Noticing that, Fitzgerald, who has a five-year-old and a four-month-old, said that the older one is “the best product tester out there. He’s the first to be, like, ‘That’s too long,’ or ‘I want to see more of that.’ He speaks without a filter.”
Curated by Onassis ONX, TECHNE consists of four digital installations that are part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival and Under the Radar; it begins January 4-7 with The Vivid Unknown and continues January 8-11 with Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser’s The Golden Key, January 12-15 with Margarita Athanasiou’s Voices, and January 16-19 with Stephanie Dinkins’s Secret Garden. (Tickets for each is $10; a series pass is $35.) BAM Rose Cinemas will be showing Koyaanisqatsi on January 7 at 7:30, with Fitzgerald and Vivid Unknown codirector Reggio on hand for the conversation “Terra techno firma” afterward.
Onassis ONX NY program director Jazia Hammoudi shared information with me about how it all works, but I opted to discover much of The Vivid Unknown on my own, which was extremely satisfying. In the program, she writes, “The refined interactivity of the work’s music and visuals subverts the source material’s linear minimalism and subtly engages the body in epic vistas from mountainscapes to oil fields. Within The Vivid Unknown’s zone of immersion, the connection between individual and collective action reflects the complex relationships between human agency and planetary outcomes.” In addition to TECHNE, Onassis ONX is presenting Christiana Kosiar’s RUNWAY and Viola He’s A {room} of one’s own January 10-14 at the Olympic Tower on Fifth Ave. as part of Under the Radar’s Under Construction series.
Fitzgerald met Reggio about two years ago, when he went out to Santa Fe to visit the now-eighty-four-year-old filmmaker, who also made the sequels Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2002; all three films in the series feature original soundtracks by Philip Glass.
Audience participation enhances experience of multimedia The Vivid Unknown by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Since this was the first public presentation of the work at BAM, I asked Fitzgerald what he thought about the audience’s response.
“It’s exceeding expectations on all levels,” he said. “We’ve never had this many people in it. One of the things about making creative technology art is that it’s always half broken until it’s not, until you have to press play and make sure everything comes together. The idea was that Koyaanisqatsi is a depiction of the state of the world in the latter half of the twentieth century as chaos unfolded. So I was just playing around with this idea of how you don’t really control anything but you do have an impact on this.”
That concept is also represented by a video sculpture off to one side, a refurbished slot machine that was transformed into an interactive artwork by the fabrication studio Chateau Brooklyn. When you pull down the S2000 lever, images speed by a trio of small monitors; it offers an additional moment of connection, but it has no effect on the film. It exists on its own, but it offers a sense of power and involvement even though the results are random. One boy was having a blast with it, pulling the lever a few dozen times, too young to consider the metaphor of how we gamble in life, taking or avoiding risk.
At several points, the barrage of images dropped out and the screens went dark; only the shapes of the audience members standing in the oval of light could be seen. “I want people to feel like they’re making an impact on the images,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s why the last state is left this way; the film disappears, and it’s fuel to give a reflection of your presence.”
He was also quick to share credit. “This is a project made by a dozen artists; it’s truly a collaborative effort,” Fitzgerald explained. “Everyone is unified behind Godfrey and his vision to show humans where we are right now. It’s like a mirror into ourselves.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Japan Society Under the Radar presentation of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is one of dozens of experimental works in January performance festivals (photo by Yoji Ishizawa)
Every January, many of us begin the new year with resolutions to make positive changes in our lives; I find the best way to start that is by checking out the latest in cutting-edge and experimental theater, music, dance, opera, film, and other forms of entertainment. Performance festivals abound this month, at tiny venues you’ve never heard of, places you’ve always wanted to go to but haven’t yet, and well-known spaces you haven’t been to in years.
You now have the chance to fill those voids at such festival as Under the Radar, Prototype, Exponential, Out-Front!, Live Artery, Winter Jazzfest, and more, none of them costing nearly as much as a Broadway show. Below are only some of the highlights of this exhilarating time to try something that might be outside your comfort zone — or right up your alley.
New Ear Festival runs January 3-5 at Fridman Gallery on Lower East Side
NEW EAR FESTIVAL
Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery
January 3-5, $20-$30, Festival Pass $50-$70 new-ear.org
“Focused on fostering experimentation in time-based media and interdisciplinary collaboration in New York City and beyond,” Fridman Gallery’s New Ear Festival, which began in 2013, is back with a stellar lineup of musicians and installations, including Henry Threadgill, Ash Fure, and Kyp Malone.
Friday, January 3
Main Room: Henry Threadgill, Justin Cabrillos, relatively special theories of spAcial relativities, medium (Yaz Lancaster & GG200BPM); 8-Channel Audio: New Ear Spatial: Echoes; 4-Channel Video: “Landscape of the Medium” by Marleigh Belsley, 7:30
Saturday, January 4
Main Room: Members of Irreversible Entanglements, Shara Lunon, Kamari Carter & Gladstone Deluxe; 8-Channel Audio: New Ear Spatial: Echoes; 4-Channel Video: \[ the hurricanes in your mouth \] by Johann Diedrick, 7:30
Sunday, January 5
Main Room: Ash Fure, Brian Chase, Kyp Malone, Brian House & Sue Huang (feat. Robert Black); 8-Channel Audio: New Ear Spatial: Echoes; 4-Channel Video: Ash Fure, Studies for the Coming Heat, 7:30
The Brooklyn Exponential Festival is a treat for curious theatergoers
Brooklyn’s month-long Exponential Festival consists of nineteen shows in such venues as the Loading Dock, the Brick, and JACK, highlighting pieces by “participants [who] are committed to ecstatic creativity in the face of commercialism. Exponential is driven by inclusiveness and a diversity of artists, forms, and ideas coupled with utopian resource-sharing, mentoring, and the championing of risky, rigorous work in eclectic fields.”
Friday, January 3
through
Sunday January 5 haircut play :€, by Eulàlia Comas, Loading Dock, 170 Tillary St., $28.52
Thursday, January 9
through
Sunday, January 12 Neck Down, f.k.a. Rainbow’s End, by Nic Adams, We Are Here Brooklyn Studios, 563 Johnson Ave., $12.51-$49.87
Friday, January 10
through
Friday, January 17 MEOW!, by Matthew Antoci & Meaghan Robichaud, Loading Dock, 170 Tillary St., $28.52
Wednesday, January 15
through
Saturday, January 18 Sapphire, by Ella Lee Davidson, the Brick, 579 Metropolitan Ave., $25-$55
Friday, January 17, 7:30
and
Saturday, January 18, 3:00 & 7:30 Braiding Water, by Xiaoyue Zhang, JACK, 20 Putnam Ave., $25-$50
Thursday, January 23
through
Saturday, January 25 Happy Birthday, Curiosity Rover!, by Laura Galindo, Brick Aux, 628 Metropolitan Ave.,
Friday, January 24, 7:30
and
Saturday, January 25, 3:00 & 7:30 Tongues by Yibin Wang and Yejia Sun JACK, 20 Putnam Ave., $25-$50
UNDER THE RADAR
Multiple venues
January 4-19, free – $120 utrfest.org
Under the Radar is the glittering gem of performance festivals, two weeks of unique, unpredictable, and fascinating works, many hard to define but need to be seen. Founding director Mark Russell brought it to New York City in 2005, teamed up with the Public Theater’s Oskar Eustis in 2006, and has been presenting intriguing and exciting pieces from around the world ever since. The 2025 UTR, celebrating its twentieth anniversary, takes adventurous theatergoers on a thrilling ride, introducing audiences to high-tech generative AI (the four-part interactive and immersive TECHNE at BAM), a time loop in a small white closet (The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Street Theatre), a political prisoner in Tehran being visited by her husband (Blind Runner at St. Ann’s Warehouse), actual Russian refugee children who live in US shelters and their American peers (SpaceBridge at La Mama), a pair of skeletons digging for bones in the underworld (Dead as a Dodo at the Baruch Performing Arts Center), a reimagining of a popular musical (Show/Boat: A River at NYU Skirball), a Harajuku makeover of a classic French fairy tale (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at Japan Society), a pair of rice cookers delving into the last twenty years of Korean history (Cuckoo at PAC NYC), and a marathon funeral for a company’s longtime home (Soho Rep Is Not a Building. Soho Rep Had a Building… at walkerspace). Below are only some of the highlights.
Saturday, January 4
through
Tuesday, January 7 TECHNE: The Vivid Unknown, by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio, BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, $10
Saturday, January 4
through
Thursday, January 24 Blind Runner, by Amir Reza Koohestani and Mehr Theatre Group, St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., $44-$54
Saturday, January 4
through
Sunday, January 26 The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux], by Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine, New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Street Theatre, 83 East Fourth St., $30-$50
Tuesday, January 7
through
Friday, January 11 TECHNE: The Golden Key, by Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser, BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, $10
Tuesday, January 7
through
Saturday, January 11 SpaceBridge, by Irina Kruzhilina, La MaMa, Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth St., $10-$30
Wednesday, January 8
through
Sunday, February 9 Dead as a Dodo, by Wakka Wakka, Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Ave., $40-$55
A space traveler is trapped in a time loop in The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux] (photo by Josh Luxenberg / Sinking Ship / Theater in Quarantine)
Wednesday, January 9
through
Sunday, January 26 Show/Boat: A River, by Target Margin Theater, NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Pl., $60-$120
Sunday, January 12
through
Wednesday, January 15 TECHNE: Voices, by Margarita Athanasiou, BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, $10
Wednesday, January 15
through
Saturday, January 18 Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, by Shuji Terayama, Japan Society, 333 East Forty-Seventh St., $36-$48, 7:30
Thursday, January 16
through
Saturday, January 18 Cuckoo, by Jaha Koo, Perelman Performing Arts Center, 251 Fulton St., $58-$68
Thursday, January 16
through
Sunday, January 19 TECHNE: Secret Garden,by Stephanie Dinkins, BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, $10
Angie Pittman will present Black Life Chord Changes at Out-FRONT! Festival (photo by Brian Rogers)
OUT-FRONT! FESTIVAL
Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South
BAM Fisher Hillman Studio, 321 Ashland Pl.
January 7-13, free with advance RSVP (suggested donation $25) pioneersgoeast.org
The third edition of Pioneers Go East Collective’s Out-FRONT! Festival features presentations from such choreographers and dance companies as jill sigman/thinkdance, Angie Pittman, and Kyle Marshall Choreography at Judson Church and the BAM Fisher Hillman Studio in addition to an evening of films. “As a grassroots artist-driven collective, we create a high-visibility platform for dance and interdisciplinary artists whose rigorous, playful, and fabulously outrageous creative practices speak to our community in unexpected and beautiful ways,” artistic director Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte said in a statement. “We engage known and lesser-known artists to shape a joyful space to celebrate queer art and stories of vulnerability and inclusion.”
Tuesday, January 7
and
Friday, January 10
Miranda Brown + Noa Rui-Piin Weiss: !!simon says~~!:));)$$, and Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett: Vessels, Judson Church, 7:00
Wednesday, January 8
and
Thursday, January 9
jill sigman/thinkdance: Re-Seeding (Encounter #4), Judson Church, 7:00
Friday, January 10, 8:30
and
Monday, January 13, 7:00
Blaze Ferrer: Dick Biter and Stuart B Meyers: thegarden, Judson Church
Saturday, January 11
Out-FRONT! Film Series: dance and experimental short films by Dominique Castelano, Jueun Kang, Kathleen Kelly, Haley Morgan Miller, Pioneers Go East Collective, and Maamoun Tobbo, Judson Church, 3:00
Angie Pittman: Black Life Chord Changes and Kyle Marshall Choreography: Joan, BAM Fisher Hillman Studio, 7:00
zoe | juniper will present latest work as part of new York Live Arts festival (photo by Anton Karaa)
LIVE ARTERY
New York Live Arts (unless otherwise noted)
219 West 19th St.
January 8-18, $28-$40 newyorklivearts.org
New York Live Arts’ annual Live Artery showcases works by emerging and established choreographers; this year’s impressive lineup includes Ogemdi Ude, zoe | juniper, Joseph Keckler, Leslie Cuyjet, Miguel Gutierrez, and, if you are lucky enough to get an invite, Shamel Pitts, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.
Wednesday, January 8
through
Saturday, January 11 My Body, My Archive, by Faustin Linyekula
Friday, January 10
through
Monday, January 13 The Marthaodyssey, by Jesse Factor
Saturday, January 11 Major, by Ogemdi Ude, 3:00
time/life/beauty, by Michael Sakamoto and Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky, $15, 6:00
Saturday, January 11
and
Sunday, January 12 For All Your Life, by Leslie Cuyjet, CPR — Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave., $25
Sunday, January 12
Artist Salon, with Janani Balasubramanian, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Kayla Farrish, Heather Kravas, and Tere O’Connor, free with advance RSVP, 11:00 am
The Missing Fruit (Part I), by Roderick George — kNonAme Artist, $15, 1:00
UNTITLED, by zoe | juniper, with Xiu Xiu, $15, 6:00
Sunday, January 12
through
Saturday, January 18 Super Nothing, by Miguel Gutierrez
Monday, January 13 Turn. Turning.TURNT, by Cynthia Oliver/COCo Dance Theatre, 6:00
A Good Night in the Trauma Garden, by Joseph Keckler, 8:00
SFX FESTIVAL
the wild project
95 East Third St.
January 9-11, $23.33 thewildproject.org
The seventh iteration of the Special Effects Festival (SFX), founded by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson, takes place January 9-11 at the wild project with three evenings of new works “to rekindle the spirit of the avant-garde and create a shared space to gather for contemporary performance.”
Thursday, January 9
Illuminated Skies: A Night of Puppetry, with Cumulo by Emily Batsford, an excerpt from Shiny One by Jon Riddleberger, Cast from Heaven by Jacob Graham, and Where Did You Go, Connie? by Amanda Card, curated by Amanda Card, 7:00
Friday, January 10
Works by Wonderful Cringe (Nicholas Sanchez), Harlequin (Adonis Huff & Jelani Best), and Lele Dai, curated by Kyla Gordon, 7:00
Saturday, January 11
Gray Spaces, with Idiot Void (working title) by David Commander, double column by Marissa Joyce Stamps, and 5G Maitreya by Glenn Potter-Takata, curated by Lisa Clair, 7:00
Founded in 2005, “Winter Jazzfest celebrates the music as a living entity, wherein history collides with the future in every note. Creative improvisation in the digital age continues to stimulate thought and emotion of its listeners, embracing innovation, defying instrumental boundaries and the old cliches of ‘What is Jazz?’” Among this year’s highlights are poet, writer, lyricist, and activist aja monet, pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, Sun Ra Arkestra, and two days of marathons at such venues as Le Poisson Rouge, Nublu, Mercury Lounge, Baby’s All Right, and the Bitter End.
Thursday, January 9
aja monet, Faye Victor, Sophye Soliveau, LPR, 158 Bleecker St., $45.42, 6:30
Friday, January 10
Manhattan Marathon, multiple venues, including Endea Owens at LPR, Jenny Scheinman’s All Species Parade at City Winery, Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith at Performance Space NY, the Christian McBride Band at Mercury Lounge, and Sophye Soliveau at the Bitter End, $85
Saturday, January 11
Brooklyn Marathon, multiple venues, including Sun Ra Arkestra at Brooklyn Bowl, Vijay Iyer Trio +1 Featuring Adam O’Farrill at National Sawdust, Peter Apfelbaum’s New York Hieroglyphics at Loove Labs Annex, Matthew Shipp Trio at Loove Labs, Lion Babe at Baby’s All Right, and Ken Butler’s Curious Cave of Anxious Objects at Hybrid Visions, $85
Sunday, January 12
Impressions: Improvisatory interpretations on A Love Supreme, featuring the Ravi Coltrane Quartet with David Virelles, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Dezron Douglas, with guests Allison Miller, Angelica Sanchez, Ben Williams, James Brandon Lewis, Joel Ross, Kalia Vandever, Kassa Overall, Kenny Warren, Linda May Han Oh, Mali Obomsawin, Melissa Aldana, Nasheet Waits, Orrin Evans, Rafiq Bhatia, Sam Newsome, Theon Cross, Tomoki Sanders, and more, Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., $63, panel 6:30, show 8:00
Monday, January 13
Strata-East Rising, A Landmark Concert with Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, Billy Hart, Billy Harper, Christian McBride, aja monet, Endea Owens, Steve Jordan, Keyon Harrold, Camille Thurman, and more, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $57.47-$105.06, 7:00 & 9:30
Cofounding directors Kristin Marting and Beth Morrison have put together another outstanding group of shows for Prototype, which “is committed to surprising our audiences and confounding their expectations through content, form, and relevance.” This year they will be accomplishing that with eight presentations, including an art bath, concerts, a streaming hip-hopera, and five works at HERE, La MaMa, and the Village East. Watch out for Eat the Document, based on the novel by Dana Spiotta, exploring activists from the 1970s underground to 1990s suburbia, and Black Lodge, inspired by the lives and careers of William S. Burroughs, David Lynch, and Antonin Artaud.
Thursday, January 9
through
Friday, January 17 Eat the Document, alternative opera by composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke, directed by Kristin Marting, HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave., $35-$150
Thursday, January 9
through
Sunday, January 19 TELEKINETIK, a Catapult Opera production by Khary Laurent, directed by George Cederquist, available on demand, free
Saturday, January 11
through
Tuesday, January 14 Positive Vibration Nation, rock guaguanco opera by Sol Ruiz, with Rey Rogriguez, Alejandro Sierra, Fernando Sanchez Abad, Margarita Arranz, Adonnas Jones, and Shira Abergel, HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave., $35-$150
Saturday, January 11
through
Wednesday, January 15 Black Lodge, goth industrial rock opera by composer David T. Little, librettist Anne Waldman, starring Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet, film by Michael Joseph McQuilken, BRIC Arts Media, 647 Fulton St., Brooklyn, $40.25-$155.25
Thursday, January 16
through
Sunday, January 19 In a Grove, chamber opera by composer Christopher Cerrone and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, directed by Mary Birnbaum, and starring Metropolis Ensemble, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East Fourth St., $35-$75
PhysFestNYC
Stella Adler Center for the Arts
65 Broadway
January 9-19, $20 www.physfestnyc.org
PhysFestNYC was started last year as “a community-focused festival that celebrates, enriches, and envisions our field of physical theater . . . [which] tends to be experimental, innovative, and genre-breaking.” The second annual event, taking place January 9–19 at the Stella Adler Center for the Arts, consists of workshops, panel discussions, masterclasses, and live performances. Below are some of the highlights.
Tuesday, January 14 The Fluxus Brothers Present: Good Art Bad Art, performance art lecture demonstration with Ben Rosenthal, Morgan Rosenthal, and Morgan Fitzpatrick Andrews, $20, 7:00 & 8:30
Thursday, January 16 Pat Frisk/Duck, with Joanne Edelmann, and Stop, Replay, with Abhirami Rao, $20, 1:00
Friday, January 17
and
Saturday, January 18 Broken Box Mime Theater, $20, 7:00 & 8:30
The Triple Empathy Problem, with Noah Ortega and Asa Page, Here Is Siya, with Joey Antonio, and Do You Still Believe?, with Noel Olson, $20, 7:00 & 8:30
Saturday, January 18 It Goes Without Saying, created and performed by Bill Bowers, 20, 4:00
Saturday, January 18
and
Sunday, January 19 Please Ship This Wet Gift, with Marta Mozelle MacRostie, followed by a panel discussion, $20, 1:00
THE FIRE THIS TIME FESTIVAL
FRIGID New York at the wild project
195 East Third St.
January 23 – February 2, $25 www.firethistimefestival.com
Founded in 2009 by Kelley Nicole Girod, the Fire This Time Festival, now in its sixteenth year, “provides a platform for early career playwrights of African and African American descent.” The 2024 iteration comprises six ten-minute shows at the wild project, presented by FRIGID New York, that take on such topics as Billie Holiday, queer identity, the search for a missing sibling, and an unusual night for Hagar and Abraham.
Thursday, January 23
Friday, January 24, 31
Saturday, January 25
Saturday, February 1
Sunday, February 2 Pound Cake, by Brittany Fisher; OUT, by FELISPEAKS; Just One Good Day, by Jeanette W. Hill; But Not Forgotten, by D. L. Patrick; Security Watch, by TyLie Shider; and Immanentize the Eschaton, by Garrett Turner
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The executive committee at Eureka Day School has its work cut out for it (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
EUREKA DAY
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $48-$321 www.manhattantheatreclub.com
Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day is the funniest play of the year.
Five years ago, I called Colt Coeur’s East Coast premiere of Eureka Day at walkerspace an “uproarious satire.” It’s even better in the Broadway debut of the Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman, succeeding where a similarly themed show, Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, about a woke quartet of grown-ups trying to put on an acceptable, PC holiday show for young schoolchildren, failed. The fall 2018 iteration of The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizons was fresh and original and utterly hilarious; its 2023 Broadway version was stale and outdated, like dried-out leftovers.
That doesn’t happen with Eureka Day, which strikes gold for the second time.
The story takes place in the fall of 2018 in the library of the Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California. The executive committee is meeting, and the opening dialogue sets the stage for what’s to come.
Meiko: Personally no / I don’t find it offensive / the term itself is not offensive. Eli: It’s descriptive. Suzanne: I think she’s saying / I’m not putting words in your mouth / she’s saying it’s not offensive / but when you contextualize it in that way. . . . Meiko: I find / the best way not to put words in someone’s mouth? / is not to put words in their mouth. Don: Okay okay. Suzanne: Sorry sorry. Meiko: It’s fine / what I meant was / that we’d want to make it absolutely clear that it’s optional / that it’s not / Either / Or. Suzanne: Right / and also / that the inclusion of the term on this list at all is / I think / inappropriate? / and that some people may / With Good Reason / find its inclusion offensive. Eli: No no yeah / I just wonder though / by leaving it off / is it possible some people would find its absence offensive? Don: You’re concerned / that it could be a sort of / erasure / of people’s experience? Eli: Right / if our Core Operating Principle here is that everyone should / Feel Seen / by this community. Suzanne: There’s no benefit in Feeling Seen if you’re simultaneously Being Othered / right? Meiko: Well / no yeah. Don: Carina, did you want to / do you want to / offer anything? Carina: Oh, I / I’m happy to defer / I don’t know that I’ve really formed a strong [opinion.] Don: That’s perfectly all right / even just your gut instinct is [welcomed] / this is an Open Room / we welcome your unique perspective.
The discussion is about what to include in the school’s online dropdown menu where parents are supposed to click off their kid’s race/ethnicity/heritage, but it could deal with so many other subjects that are part of the committee’s efforts to be as inclusive as possible in any and all situations.
“Sounds like there’s a lot to unpack here,” Don says, but there’s a lot to unpack everywhere in this outrageously hilarious satire.
The white, childless Don (Bill Irwin) is the head of the committee and prefers not to take sides, ending each meeting with a quote from the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi. The well-off, white Suzanne (Jessica Hecht) is a longtime board member who has put each of her six children through Eureka Day and regularly supplies the library with books. The white, Jewish Eli (Thomas Middleditch) is a wealthy tech bro with an open marriage and one son in the school. He is secretly dating the half-Japanese Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz), who has a daughter in the school and spends much of her time knitting rather than actively participating in the committee’s proceedings. And the biracial Carina (Amber Gray) is filling the spot saved for the new member, hesitant to share her views until she can’t stop herself as it all becomes ridiculously absurd.
When a student contracts the mumps and the health department sends an official notice explaining that nonvaccinated children will be barred from attending school until they get their shot, the committee calls for a hybrid Community Activated Conversation, with parents commenting from home on the chat, which delves into vaccination efficacy, conspiracy theories, personal and public responsibility, and plenty of vicious name-calling.
Christian Burns: Wait. HALF the school is antivaxxers? Seriously???? Sandra Blaise: “Anti-vaxxer” is not really a term I’m comfortable with. It’s actually something said out of IGNORANCE. Karen Sapp: Exactly! Protect your children by EDUCATING YOURSELVES. Tyler Coppins: OR, Protect your children by VACCINATING THEM. Courtney Riley: Wait what???? Why should we be forced to keep our kids home because you CHOOSE to endanger yours? Doug Wong: Okay here’s another idea: what if we made the quarantine days OPTIONAL. Orson Mankel: Doug, that’s idiotic. If the “problem” is that we won’t have enough kids in class, why make the problem worse??? Christian Burns: TRUE FACTS: Moonlanding wasn’t faked. 9/11 wasn’t an inside job. Global Warming is real. Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism. Karen Stacin: Mock all you want, but I saw so many bad things as a nurse. That’s why I decided I would NEVER subject my children to Western Medicine of any kind. Christian Burns: Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no, wait. I didn’t. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED.
Things only devolve from there in side-splitting ways that are even funnier — and more frightening — now that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the controversial Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Community Activated Conversation at Eureka Day goes terribly wrong in hilarious Broadway play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)
Ancient Greek polymath Archimedes is often credited with coining the exclamation Eureka! upon discovering what became known as the Archimedes Principle, a scientific theory about buoyancy. So it makes sense that Spector has named the woke school in question Eureka Day. Todd Rosenthal’s set features blue chairs, red, orange, and yellow trapezoid tables that are rearranged into geometric shapes, posters of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Albert Einstein, Maya Angelou, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Michelle Obama, and a sign that reads “Social Justice” under a placard that proclaims, “Berkeley Stands United Against Hate.” Clint Ramos’s naturalistic suburban costumes are highlighted by the long, fussy frocks worn by Suzanne.
Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County,This Is Our Youth) directs with a sweet glee, while sound designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen know just when the laughs are coming, particularly during the Community Activated Conversation, when David Bengali’s projections take over and the characters’ discussion fades into the background.
The ensemble is outstanding: Tony nominee Gray (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,Hadestown) is cool and collected as the determined Carina, who can’t believe what the board is doing; two-time Tony nominee Hecht (Summer, 1976,Fiddler on the Roof) is delightful as the nervous, jittery Suzanne, punctuating her dialogue with wonderful sighs and grunts; Tony winner Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,On Beckett) is tender as the mild-mannered, oblivious Don; Emmy nominee Middleditch (Silicon Valley) adds humanity to the selfish Eli; and Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz (How the Light Gets In,Unrivaled) beautifully captures Meiko’s evolving value system as she reconsiders being part of the team.
As funny as Eureka Day is, it tackles some hard-hitting subjects, from race and income inequality to religion and health care; the executive committee is so wrapped up in DEI that they miss what is right in front of them, stirring up more trouble with their inability to follow old-fashioned rules and face the truth of what is really happening in their school, to the students.
At one point, the other members of the committee explain to Carina how there was controversy over a recent eighth-grade production of Peter Pan. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” Suzanne recalls. “We came to what I thought was a very [good agreement] / we set the production in Outer Space / and that really solved the [problem],” Don says. “So then all the kids got to fly,” Eli adds, as if that were the only solution, while Carina can barely accept what she has gotten herself into.
Fortunately, Eureka Day does not have to worry about any such controversies, as it gets it all right, flying high from start to finish.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) and Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) spend a difficult night together in A Guide for the Homesick (photo by Russ Rowland)
A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK
DR2 Theatre
103 East Fifteenth St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Tuesday – Sunday through February 2, $49 – $129 www.aguideforthehomesick.com
Flight delays and cancellations are unpleasant ways to start or end a trip, putting a sour taste in your mouth. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why a recent Saturday-night performance of Ken Urban’s A Guide for the Homesick, following a half-hour technical delay, felt so distant.
As audience members arrived at the DR2 Theatre, an usher advised them of a hold-up that should only be a few minutes. It was standing-room-only in the lobby as people checked their phones, got a drink in the lounge, and looked uncomfortable, much like waiting for crucial information in an airport that is coming in only bits and pieces. Everyone was relieved when at last the doors opened and the actors took the stage, but the drama about two men having trouble returning home never really took off.
It’s January 2011, and Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) has invited Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) up to his hotel room near the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on a rainy night. They had just met in the bar; Teddy, a bold and beautiful thirtysomething Black man, and Jeremy, a squirrelly twentysomething white guy, are drinking beers. Slowly — very, very slowly — we learn that Teddy, who was born and raised in Roxbury and now lives in New York City, has been traveling with his best friend and finance colleague, Eddie, who is about to get married to Margo, but Eddie has disappeared. Jeremy, a Harvard grad, explains that he has missed his flight back to Boston and does not have his luggage or a room.
Teddy is clearly concerned about Eddie, but he refuses to answer any of Margo’s constant calls, assuming it might be bad news. Jeremy had been volunteering at a health clinic outside Kampala in Uganda but had to cut his time short because of an event that haunts him, which he is unwilling to discuss out of shame and embarrassment. Jeremy keeps heading for the door, but Teddy insists he stay; when Teddy moves close to him, Jeremy freaks out, terrified that Teddy is making a move on him.
Soon the narrative alternates between the immediate past and the present, as Belcher portrays Teddy and Nicholas, an HIV+ patient in Uganda who Jeremy is trying to help, and Schlesinger shifts between Jeremy and Eddie as each man’s story eventually comes out.
Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) and Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) go at it in New York premiere of Ken Urban play (photo by Russ Rowland)
Urban (Nibbler,Sense of an Ending) was initially inspired by a commission to write a play about human rights workers, and he decided to focus in part on the violent homophobia in Uganda, which has attempted to pass a number of Anti-Homosexuality laws since 2009. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, have stopped aid as a result, and Urban doesn’t shy away from the involvement of the United States.
“These so-called men of G-d from your country, they keep visiting, and they turn my congregation into this,” Nicholas tells Jeremy, referring to a pair of American pastors who spoke out against “the plague of homosexuals” at his church.
Jeremy replies, “This is a former English colony; there’s always been rules about homosexuality,” to which Nicholas answers, “Long ago, we were invaded by the British. But these days, there is a new invasion. This time from America. I do not recognize my friends, my own family, when they say things like I heard yesterday.” Jeremy assures him, “Look. People say stupid things. But I promise you it’s just a tipping point before change comes. It’s the way it always happens. Things look bad, churches get up in arms, then they lose, and good wins out.”
This past April, Uganda’s Constitutional Court upheld the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which Human Rights Watch declared “further entrenches discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and makes them prone to more violence.” Good doesn’t always win out, and Jeremy’s touching and very American belief that tolerance will prevail feels like naivete these days.
Lawrence Moten III’s hotel-room set is appropriately claustrophobic, while Daniel Kluger’s sound features harsh rains that keep Teddy and Jeremy indoors, as well as the din of airplanes taking off and landing, emphasizing the two protagonists’ fears of getting on board and flying home.
Unfortunately, the play, directed by Shira Milikowsky (The Lily’s Revenge,BrideWidowHag), drags out revealing the various secrets and plot twists, making eighty minutes feel much longer. It was hard not to scream out to Teddy and Jeremy to just say what they needed to say already and answer the damn phone. Belcher III (A Soldier’s Play,The Light), who originated the roles of Teddy/Nicholas in 2017 at the Huntington Theatre Company’s Calderwood Pavilion, in a production helmed by Colman Domingo, has a firm grasp on his parts and imbues them with a tender vulnerability. Schlesinger (This Beautiful Future,The Animal Kingdom) is so whiny as Jeremy and manic as Eddie that you just want to grab him and make him cut it out.
There are some intense, riveting moments in A Guide for the Homesick, but too much of the story is artificially manufactured in getting to the point, one that ultimately feels out of date, whether the show is delayed or not.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
A family gathers to continue work on their quilts in Katori Hall play at Lincoln Center (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
THE BLOOD QUILT
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through December 29 www.lct.org
Pulitzer Prize winner Katori Hall explores the multiple meanings of “blood,” both literal and metaphorical, in the overstuffed, overlong yet poignant and moving The Blood Quilt at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.
The 160-minute play (including intermission) takes place in a seafront cabin on the fictional Georgia island of Kwemera, inspired by Sapelo Island, home to such Gullah-Geechee communities as Hog Hammock, where descendants of enslaved West Africans made their homes and still reside. According to one character, the name Kwemera, in “that old old Geechee tongue, means ‘to last. To endure. To withstand.’ Like the Jernigan women. Like these quilts. Ever since we was brought here, we done made a
quilt every year. Some been lost to fire, hurricanes, war. Sometimes stolen by need, oftentimes stolen by want. It’s over one hundred quilts in this house that tell that Jernigan story.”
In addition, in the Kurundi language of the East African nation of Burundi, Kwemera is defined as “to agree to, to admit, to confess, to believe in.” Both the Geechee and Kurundi meanings come to the fore in the play.
It’s 2015, and the Jernigan matriarch, Mama Redell, has just passed away, buried in the traditional way in the sea. Her four daughters, each from a different father, gather at the cabin to continue the family quilting ritual, which goes back generations, to “great, great, great, great, great, great grandmama Yahaya, the first one, ‘the unruly one.’”
The house is run by Clementine (Crystal Dickinson, though I saw understudy Lynnette R. Freeman), the oldest daughter, who has sacrificed her personal life to take care of their mother. In the script she is referred to as the “piece keeper,” attempting to maintain peace among the sisters like a patchwork quilt that comes together in the end.
The bold and abrasive Gio (Adrienne C. Moore) is a police officer who is having difficulties with her husband, Red. Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson) is an army nurse whose husband, Chad, is out on yet another tour; she arrives with their fifteen-year-old daughter, Zambia (Mirirai), who is trying to find her own identity, referring to herself as an activist, wearing a hijab, and ready to affirm her sexuality, as her mother and aunts prepare to welcome her into their quilting circle. The youngest daughter, Amber (Lauren E. Banks), is a stylish, single entertainment lawyer who apparently was too busy to attend their mother’s funeral.
Each name is important. For example, clementine can be a seedless citrus fruit, a symbol of generosity, and, in Latin, “the gentle one”; Chad and Zambia are countries in Africa; cassan means “path” or “thoroughfare”; Gio can mean “origin,” “history,” or “G-d is gracious”; amber is a fossilized substance that traps the past and also is a symbol of protection and purification; and Red and Redell evoke the color of blood.
“The blood remember, don’t it,” Gio says. “It remember yo’ history for you even when they erase it from they books.” Meanwhile, Amber asks her sisters, “Do you really think a color will keep out evil? Or that ‘red is warning’?”
When Amber pulls Mama Redell’s unexpected will out of a cookie jar and she reads what was left to whom, the fighting between the siblings only intensifies as they debate the legacy of the quilts.
Sisters share a rare moment of delight in Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
In such previous works as The Hot Wing King,Our Lady of Kibeho, and Hurt Village, Hall has shown her skill at developing strong characters in tense situations. However, in The Blood Quilt, she can’t quite stop stitching, adding too many subplots that unnecessarily complicate the already complex relationships among the sisters. She throws in just about everything — including the kitchen sink.
There’s also an odd moment when Zambia offers to perform some monologues for Amber, including one from Hurt Village. Not everyone might know that it is one of Hall’s earlier plays, but it took me out of the fictional world of the Jernigan clan, and that’s rarely a good thing in a hard-hitting drama.
At one point, Clementine explains to Amber, “Mama used to say, to get a bloodstain out you just rub it with your spit. It’ll take the stain right out. Take your saliva and rub the stain.”
If only it were that easy with a play.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Hannah Stern (Ella Dershowitz) is watched by Gestapo officer Karl Frick (Brett Temple) in gripping play at WP Theater (photo by Valerie Terranova)
MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY
WP Theater
2162 Broadway at Seventy-Sixth St.
Through January 19, $39 – $129 www.mrssternwanders.com wptheater.org
Last Saturday, I saw two shows involving Jewish writers, one a German woman who revolutionized political philosophy, the other a Polish man who kept a dying language alive through fictional narratives rich with folklore and history. Both were born in the first decade of the twentieth century, wrote about the Holocaust, had unique relationships with Zionism, and died in America.
The first play is a taut, gripping tale inspired by the little-known 1933 arrest of Hannah Arendt by the Gestapo, while the second is a slight but entertaining retelling of three Yiddish short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is one of the best dramas of the year. The ninety-minute Luna Stage production opened in October at 59E59, where I saw an early preview, and has now moved to the WP Theater, where it continues through January 19 in an even better version. Bader is intimately familiar with Arendt’s life and career; her husband, Roger Berkowitz, founded the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, where she has served on the board of advisers.
As the audience enters the space, they are instantly immersed in Arendt’s world in 1933 Berlin, through period music and Lauren Helpern’s stark set, a prison cell with two empty chairs, the white walls reaching out toward us. It feels like a warning that any of us could end up being interrogated under the dangling light fixture, then or now, especially given the rise of antisemitism across the globe. Barred, opaque windows do not promise hope.
A twenty-six-year-old burgeoning historian, philosopher, and author, Arendt (Ella Dershowitz) — whose married name at the time was Stern; she and her first husband, Günther Anders Stern, would divorce in 1937 — has been brought in by the Gestapo, along with her mother, who is in a separate cell. What Hannah thought would be just a brief questioning turns into several days of interrogation by Karl Frick (Brett Temple), an inquisitive Aryan guard who appears to be just as interested in her philosophy as in the identities of her dissident, Zionist friends.
After Hannah grimaces upon taking a sip of the coffee Karl has given her, he asks, “Do you not like the coffee?” She responds, “If I may speak freely? It’s terrible.” Karl: “Sorry to hear it. But at least I know you answer questions truthfully.” Hannah: “It wouldn’t occur to me to answer them any other way.” Karl: “That will make our time together easier.” It’s an intimate, critical moment that establishes the two characters and how they will relate to each other, Karl displaying genuine concern — it’s his first day on this new job, having been promoted from the criminal police to the political police — while Hannah plays a clever game of cat and mouse.
Karl grows suspicious when Hannah is visited by Erich Landau (usually played by Drew Hirshfield, although I saw his understudy this time, Jay DeYonker), a lawyer purportedly sent by the Zionists. “They are changing laws they made yesterday, then changing them again, by arbitrary police decree,” Hannah explains. Erich replies, “‘Arbitrary’? How can you say that? Laws create order!” Hannah answers, “In a classic dictatorship, yes. But the Nazis want chaos.”
Over the course of several days, Karl and Hannah discuss forced immigration, false idols, the arts, assimilation, love, the Bible, vegetarianism, German writer Rahel Varnhagen, and the Jewish Question as he tries to get information out of her while she cagily parries, brilliantly careful about everything she offers him.
Ella Dershowitz excels as a young Hannah Arendt in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (photo by Valerie Terranova)
In Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library Bader (The Whole Megillah: A Purim Spiel for Grown-Ups,None of the Above,Manhattan Casanova) captures the fear that many Jews live with, whether in 1933 Germany or 2024 America as the rule of law grows ever more arbitrary — and purposefully vindictive. The show is expertly directed by Ari Laura Kreith (Heartland,167 Tongues); even though we know what’s ultimately going to happen, in general if not in the specific details, we are kept on the edge of our seats like a tense thriller, each scene offering new surprises and philosophical insight about what happened then — and can happen again.
A dead ringer for Natalie Portman, Dershowitz (Connected,Can You Forgive Her?) — whose father, controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz, once debated Arendt and has written extensively about her (unfavorably) and whose husband’s last name is Stern — portrays Arendt with an astute elegance, from the way she smokes a cigarette and holds a cup of coffee to how she climbs on a table to look out the window, freedom just out of her grasp. Temple (The Valley of the Shadow,Henry IV, Part One) imbues Karl with a gentle vulnerability and curiosity not usually associated with Gestapo officers, while DeYonker, a five-year member of the Prague Shakespeare Company, is effective in his small but key role as the lawyer.
“Personally I think that’s the first big mistake in the history of thought — that truth comes at the end. I think truth comes at the beginning of a thought,” Hannah tells Karl at one point. In her February 1967 New Yorker article “Truth and Politics,” Arendt wrote, “We must now turn our attention to the relatively recent phenomenon of mass manipulation of fact and opinion as it has become evident in the rewriting of history, in image-making, and in actual government policy. The traditional political lie, so prominent in the history of diplomacy and statecraft, used to concern either true secrets — data that had never been made public — or intentions, which anyhow do not possess the same degree of reliability as accomplished facts; like everything that goes on merely inside ourselves, intentions are only potentialities, and what was intended to be a lie can always turn out to be true in the end. In contrast, the modern political lies deal efficiently with things that are not secrets at all but are known to practically everybody. This is obvious in the case of rewriting contemporary history under the eyes of those who witnessed it, but it is equally true in image-making of all sorts, in which, again, every known and established fact can be denied or neglected if it is likely to hurt the image; for an image, unlike an old-fashioned portrait, is supposed not to flatter reality but to offer a full-fledged substitute for it. And this substitute, because of modern techniques and the mass media, is, of course, much more in the public eye than the original ever was.”
Watching Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library in the context of current international politics is a chilling warning of what might lie ahead, especially if we cannot hear the voices from history, like Hannah Arendt’s.
Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel bring a trio of Yiddish shorts to life in Bashevis’s Demons (photo by Maria Clara Vieira Fernandes/Viver com Yiddish)
BASHEVIS’S DEMONS
Theatre 154
154 Christopher St. between Greenwich & Washington Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 5, $50 www.congressforjewishculture.org
Previously presented in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, Bashevis’s Demons is making its North American premiere at Theatre 154 in the West Village through January 5. The seventy-five-minute show consists of three Yiddish tales by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote such books as Shosha,Satan in Goray, and Enemies, a Love Story in addition to the short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” which was made into a popular film by Barbra Streisand.
Directed and designed by Moshe Yassur with Beate Hein Bennett, the segments take place on a modest set centered by a comfy red velvet armchair on a Persian carpet, with a table off to one side with a few props, and a horizontal framed dark screen up above the stage, where operator Rokhl Kafrissen projects the English-language surtitles. Shane Baker portrays the demons, wearing a kimono and waving a fan, while Miryem-Khaye Seigel plays a married woman in white, a rabbi, and a hilariously costumed rooster.
The evening begins with 1955’s “The Mirror,” which Singer also turned into a full-length play. It’s set in 1856 in the Polish shtetl of Krashnik and is narrated by a demon who announces, “There’s a net as old as Methuselah . . . Soft as cobwebs, full of holes, it traps people even today. When a demon tires of chasing the past or spinning in a windmill’s arms, he can always settle in a mirror, like a spider in its web — and the fly must succumb.” In this case the fly is Tsirl (Seigel), a “young, beautiful, wealthy, childless woman, with lots of time and little comradeship.” Her husband is a traveling salesman who works for her father, a woodcutter, and her mother is deceased, so she often finds herself alone, missing the more active life she had in Cracow.
Distressed by her situation, she regularly goes up to the attic and sits in a velvet chair, looking into a gold-framed mirror with a crack in the middle and admiring her body. She embroiders Bible scenes, reads German poetry, and imagines heroic men coming to save her.
She is instead met by a demon in the mirror, who describes himself as an imp, a wedding jester, a clown who has “donkey ears; the horns of a ram; a frog’s mouth; and a goat’s beard. My eyes have no whites. I have no fingernails or teeth. My arms stretch like licorice, my horns bend like wax.” Through it all, Baker remains a bald man in a kimono, not changing makeup, more of a psychological demon than a physically grotesque trickster, as if any person could have a demon inside them.
Despite his ugliness, she is intrigued by him; they discuss wisdom, beauty, and desire, angels, G-d, and sin. When she leaves the attic and doesn’t come back the next day, he considers other actions, like clogging a chimney of the besmedresh or ruining the blowing of the shofar. “There’s no lack of business during the Days of Awe!” he proclaims.
When she at last returns, he offers to fly her to the garden of golden birds in Rehab the Harlot’s palace, an unimaginable journey that is a one-of-a-kind experience.
Shane Baker incorporates Yiddish and Japanese traditional storytelling in Bashevis’s Demons (photo by Maria Clara Vieira Fernandes/Viver com Yiddish)
“The Mirror” is followed by the first of two brief farcical interludes, “Thus Spake the Rooster,” adapted from Singer’s “Kukeriku,” Yiddish for cock-a-doodle-doo. Seigel, in full fowl regalia, talks about the meaning behind her kukeriku and, later, expresses her fear of Kapparot, the ancient Yom Kippur ritual where religious men swing live chickens over their heads before slaughtering them. (Singer became a vegetarian for the last thirty-five years of his life.)
Between the two-part “Thus Spake the Rooster” is “The Last Demon,” which switches between 1906 and 1956 and opens with a demon from Lublin declaring, “I, a demon, testify there are no more demons. No need, when people have themselves become demons.” He lives in frozen time in an attic in the small village of Tishevits, where he pores over a storybook filled with powerful Yiddish letters. Here, there are no flies in the spiderweb above him, not even a husk. He chatters on about Satan, a false messiah, “the good Inclination,” and Jewish writers.
He encounters a rabbi (Seigel) and decides to tempt him, one way or another, but the learned man proves to be a tough adversary. The demon decides he must appeal to the rabbi’s pride, telling him, “You alone can bring redemption or leave the world to fester for another 689,000 years.” That piques the rabbi’s interest, but when he asks the demon to give him two signs that he is telling the truth, the demon finds himself in trouble that he might not be able to get out of.
Baker, who was born in Kansas City and is not Jewish, is one of the leading figures in Yiddish theater, having performed in such shows as God of Vengeance (Got Fun Nekome) and his own translation of Waiting for Godot with the New Yiddish Rep and Tevye Served Raw, and he is the director of the Congress for Jewish Culture. He has studied with Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Professor Avrom Nowersztern at a Yiddish summer course organized by YIVO, and kyogen and Noh master Juro Zenchiku, and he brings all those sensibilities to Bashevis’s Demons.
Everything comes to an awkward stop when, after “The Mirror,” Baker describes the background of creating the show; it would have been better to have included that information in the small program or online, as it takes the audience out of the mystical world that Singer so often immerses readers in. “Singer casts a spell,” Joyce Carol Oates wrote. “Open one of his books anywhere, the words leap out with a power that would seem to us demonic if it were not, at the very same time, so utterly plausible.”
Hannah Arendt died in New York City in 1975 at the age of sixty-nine, while Singer passed away in 1991 in Florida at the age of eighty-seven. Both left behind lasting literary legacies rooted in Jewish culture, history, and tradition; while Singer wrote in Yiddish, keeping the disappearing language alive, Arendt wrote in German and English — as well as one lone article in Yiddish, a November 1942 op-ed in the New York Yiddish paper Morgen Zshurnal about German and Hebrew speakers in Palestine.
Seeing Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library and Bashevis’s Demons back-to-back less than a week before Christmas and Hanukkah arrived, on the same day for the first time in nineteen years, was a vivid reminder of the demons that hover over us and inside us, yesterday and today.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
