twi-ny recommended events

soloNOVA ARTS FESTIVAL

Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
May 5-22, $20 per performance, $55 passport for any five shows
Festival Pass: $100
After-parties: $10
212-352-3101
www.ps122.org
www.terranovacollective.org

The seventh annual soloNOVA Arts Festival begins this week, featuring eight one-person shows and three late-night after-parties. This year’s lineup ranges from bilingual theatrical cabaret (Karina Casiano’s ROOTLESS: LA NO-NOSTALGIA) and musical comedy (Erin Markey’s PUPPY LOVE: A STRIPPER’S TAIL) to storytelling and song (Shontina Vernon’s WANTED) and dance theater (Jesse Zaritt’s BINDING). Daniel Berkley gets personal delving into his schizophrenia and addictions in REMISSION, Avery Pearson takes on sixteen characters in the thriller MONSTER, Brian McManamon is an odd collector in the Frigid NY favorite IT OR HER, and comedian W. Kamau Bell attacks racism in THE W. KAMAU BELL CURVE: ENDING RACISM IN ABOUT AN HOUR. In addition, there will be three Ones at Eleven after-parties at P.S. 122, highlighting music on May 8, comedy on May 15, and storytelling and spoken word on May 22. And on May 21, terraNOVA Collective will honor Nilaja Sun as soloNOVA Artist of the Year at a benefit with clips, food, drink, and more ($30, 8:00).

TWI-NY TICKET GIVEAWAY: AMERICAN IDIOT

Everyone is looking to win the latest twi-ny contest: tickets to see AMERICAN IDIOT on Broadway

St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tickets: $49-$252
www.americanidiotonbroadway.com

In 2004, Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, and Mike Dirnt, better known as Green Day, released AMERICAN IDIOT, considered by many to be one of the best records of the first decade of the twenty-first century. An unblinking examination of life during the post-9/11 Bush era, AMERICAN IDIOT unleashed a breathtaking suite of songs that held nothing back; among its breakout tunes were “Jesus of Suburbia,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Green Day has now collaborated with Tony Award–winning director Michael Mayer — as well as Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and orchestrator Tom Kitt (NEXT TO NORMAL), Olivier Award–winning choreographer Steven Hoggett (BLACK WATCH), and Tony-winning actor John Gallagher Jr. (SPRING AWAKENING) — to bring AMERICAN IDIOT to the stage, where it is currently dazzling audiences at the St. James Theater on Broadway.

Tickets are selling fast, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free. Just send your name and daytime phone number to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, May 6, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

TWI-NY TALK: CHUCK PALAHNIUK

: Chuck Palahniuk will be celebrating the release of TELL-ALL at the Great Hall at the Cooper Union on May 6 (photo by Shawn Grant)

CHUCK PALAHNIUK: TELL-ALL (Doubleday, May 4, 2010, $24.95)
The Great Hall at the Cooper Union
7 East Seventh St. at Third Ave.
Thursday, May 6, $30, 6:00
www.chuckpalahniuk.net
www.strandbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com

There’s a critical moment in every Chuck Palahniuk book when readers have to decide whether to forge ahead or return it disgustedly to the shelf, perhaps never to be opened again. In such bestselling novels as FIGHT CLUB, CHOKE, HAUNTED, RANT, and PYGMY, Palahniuk describes, in great detail, gut-twisting (literally) scenes of intense, brutal sex and/or violence, often told in a complex narrative style that takes some getting used to. Stick with it and you’re rewarded with some of the most intelligent, darkest satirical writing of the last fifteen years that’s as fun as it is challenging.

His latest work, TELL-ALL, is told from the point of view of Hazie Coogan, the longtime caretaker and protector of former Hollywood starlet Katherine Kenton. It’s a wry mash-up of SUNSET BOULEVARD and THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, with Palahniuk bold-facing a vast array of celebrity characters centered around Lillian Hellman, from George Cukor and Adolph Zukor to Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, from Rita Hayworth and Lucille Ball to Peter Lorre and Clifton Webb, and, perhaps most appropriately, famous gossip columnists Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, and Louella Parsons.

Palahniuk, a journalism major and former movie projectionist who splits his time between his home state of Washington and Oregon, will be making his sole New York City appearance in support of TELL-ALL on May 6 at the Great Hall at the Cooper Union, a much-anticipated event that will include Julie Halson performing selections from the book as Katherine Kenton and Hazie Coogan; tickets are $30, and all attendees get a poster and a signed hardcover. Palahniuk took a break from his schedule, which will also take him to Portsmouth, Boston, Asheville, Chicago, and other cities, to answer a few questions we had for him over e-mail.

twi-ny: Your rabid fan base, known as the Cult, has a habit of coming to your readings and signings dressed up as characters from your books, tying Christmas trees to the tops of their cars, and mimicking other elements from you stories. What do you think it is about you and your books that attract this kind of worship? When we attend readings by the likes of Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, and Tom Robbins, things tend to be a bit more subdued, which in no way are we implying is preferable, of course.

Chuck Palahniuk: After twenty years as part of the Cacophony Society, I see that people love events which allow them to act out and participate in consensual ways. No one wants to be the lone fool, but if everyone is dressed as Santa Claus it’s safe and communal and still fun. As the person onstage I’m especially aware of being a lonely idiot so I stage book events to include games and costumes and prizes and activities, each linked to either the book I’m pimping or to the piece I’ve written specifically to read at that event. Yes, this extra effort takes me all winter to orchestrate — even at this moment, my props and prizes are already shipped to each venue, including the Cooper Union — but this structure and preparation also allows me to relax and have a good time. Once I’m traveling and bone-tired and starving I still have the assurance of my structured insanity to keep me sane.

twi-ny: Your new book, TELL-ALL, deals with Hollywood celebrity. Who are some of your favorite old-timers? Bette Davis or Joan Crawford? Clara Bow or Theda Bara? Marilyn, Mamie, or Mansfield?

CP: No one will ever be as bitter and lovely as Geraldine Fitzgerald — I’ll sit through all of WUTHERING HEIGHTS just to hear her say, “Ïf Cathy dies . . . perhaps then I might live.” That’s a guesstimate of the quote. However, I burn a perpetual candle beside a shrine to Gloria Grahame; nobody played more or better floozies and bitches. You know she was polishing Jim Stewart’s apple in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or why else would he give her all that money?

twi-ny: Your only New York City appearance will be on May 6 at the Great Hall of the Cooper Union, where presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln gave one of his most memorable speeches, 150 years ago this past February. How do you think Lincoln would do if he were to run in 2012? How do you think he might respond to TELL-ALL and Julie Halston?

CP: Now you’ve lost me — you’re SUCH a name-dropper! I have no idea who Julie Halston is. Or Abraham Lincoln, I can’t even find him on IMDB. Are you referring to the character on the old MOD SQUAD? Wasn’t Peggy Lipton cool . . . sigh.

twi-ny: In your introduction to David Mack’s KABUKI: THE ALCHEMY, you write, “Art is the lie that tells the truth better than the truth. . . . [David Mack builds] a metaphor that allows people to see and explore their own experience.” The same can be said for your writing, which is also very visual and cinematic. Do you have any interest in perhaps collaborating with an artist such as David Mack, or writing a graphic novel or comic book? Your website features Kissgzs’s adaptations of INVISIBLE MONSTERS and LULLABY; might there be more of those in the future?

CP: Frankly, I won’t rule out anything except suicide.

EVENING LECTURES AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM

David Goldblatt, detail, “The farmer’s son with his nursemaid, on the farm in Heimweeberg, near Nietverdiend in the Marico Bushveld. Transvaal (North-West Province),” silver gelatin print, 1964

IN CONVERSATION: DAVID GOLDBLATT AND JOSEPH LELYVELD
GIDEON SHIMONI: THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
May 4 & 13, $15 each, 6:30
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org

For decades, South African native David Goldblatt has been documenting the people of his home county; more than 150 of his black-and-white images are currently on view at the Jewish Museum in the exhibition “South African Photographs: David Goldblatt,” which runs through September 19. In conjunction with the show, Goldblatt will be participating in a special program on May 4, in conversation with New York Times executive editor and South Africa correspondent Joseph Lelyveld. The South African theme continues on May 13 when author Gideon Shimoni presents the lecture “The Jewish Experience in Apartheid South Africa.” And on May 17, Richard Turnbull’s Daytime Lecture Series will look at “David Goldblatt and the South African Condition,” part of the series “Conscience and the Camera: The Rise of Social Documentary Photography.” (Also through September 19, the museum is screening four films by William Kentridge in “South Africa Projections.”)

BATTLEFIELDS: THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE

Jean-Pierre Léaud is a busy boy in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (Jean Eustache, 1973)
Neue Galerie, Café Fledermaus
1045 Fifth Ave. at 86th St.
Monday, May 3, free, 4:00
212-628-6200
www.neuegalerie.org/programs/film-series

Jean-Pierre Léaud gives a bravura performance in Jean Eustache’s New Wave classic about love and sex in Paris following the May 1968 cultural revolution. Léaud stars as Alexandre, a jobless, dour flaneur who rambles on endlessly about politics, cinema, music, literature, sex, women’s lib, and lemonade while living with current lover Marie (Bernadette Lafont), obsessing over former lover Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), and starting an affair with new lover Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a quiet nurse with a rather open sexual nature. The film’s three-and-a-half-hour length will actually fly by as you become immersed in the complex characters, the fascinating dialogue, and the excellent acting. Much of the movie consists of long takes in which Alexandre shares his warped view of life and art in small, enclosed spaces, the static camera focusing either on him or his companion. The film is screening on May 3 as part of the Neue Galerie’s Battlefields film series, featuring works involving soldiers in WWI, in conjunction with the current exhibit focusing on World War I veteran Otto Dix. The series concludes May 10 with Albert and Allen Hughes’s FROM HELL, starring Johnny Depp.

WORLD NOMADS LEBANON

Bernard Khoury will give a free talk on Lebanese architecture and public space at FIAF on May 6

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St.
Le Skyroom, 22 East 60th St.
Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th St.
May 1-29, free – $40
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

This year FIAF’s annual spring journey heads to Lebanon for a month of live performance, film screenings, art, talks, and more. The festival, which covered Africa in 2008 and Haiti in 2009, begins May 1 with the Bassam Saba Ensemble playing in Florence Gould Hall, followed on May 2 by three consecutive free talks at Le Skyroom, with writers Elias Khoury, Rawi Hage, and Alexander Najjar in conjunction with the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. On Tuesdays from May 4 through May 25, CinémaTuesdays will present such films as Maroun Bagdadi’s HORS LA VIE, Jocelyne Saab’s ONCE UPON A TIME: BEIRUT, and Simon El-Habre’s THE ONE MAN VILLAGE in Florence Gould Hall. Meanwhile, the Film Society of Lincoln center will be hosting “The Calm After the Storm: Making Sense of Lebanon’s Civil War,” more than thirty films that give a fascinating overview into the history of the embattled nation. On May 21, Wajdi Mouawad and Jane Birkin will team up for staged readings of his “Je t’embrasse pour finir” (in French) and “La sentinelle” (in English); admission is free but advance reservations are required; author, actor, and director Wajdi will also be giving a free talk May 19 in Le Skyroom. World Nomads will also feature a trio of architecture talks on successive Thursdays, with Bernard Khoury on May 6, “Public Space: Memory, Boundary, Catastrophe” on May 13, and “Modern Architecture in Beirut: Reconstruction & Cultural Identity” on May 20. During the festival, the FIAF Gallery will be displaying “Cedrus Libani: Roots & Memory,” an exhibition of new and old work by Lebanese-American artist Nabil Nahas, while “My Umi Said . . . New Work from Lebanon” features multimedia pieces by five progressive Lebanese artists, held off-site at Kleio Projects (May 7-28, 153½ Stanton St.).

REID FARRINGTON: GIN & “IT”

Reid Farrington reimagines Alfred Hitchcock’s ROPE in entertaining multimedia whirlwind at P.S. 122

Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
Through May 9, $20
www.ps122.org
www.reidfarrington.com

In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock released his first Technicolor film, a psychological thriller loosely based on the Leopold & Loeb murders, starring Farley Granger and John Dall as a pair of Nietzschean “superior intellects” who throw a dinner party in their New York City apartment immediately after killing a former classmate and stuffing him into a chest they leave in the middle of the living room as guests start arriving. Reid Farrington, who previously reimagined Carl Th. Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC in THE PASSION PROJECT, deconstructs and reconstructs Hitchcock’s film in GIN & “IT,” a multimedia whirlwind in which Farrington digitally removes ROPE’s characters and projects them individually onto screens that four actors move around the set, creating a three-dimensional effect that mixes live theater with film. (“It” was Hitchcock and screenwriter Arthur Laurents’s code word for the underlying homosexuality between Granger and Dall’s characters, which they subtly hid from the censors.)

Hitchcock famously shot ROPE in ten continuous, uncut takes, ranging from four and a half to ten minutes each, using a carefully choreographed dolly with a small spotlight on it to weave throughout the characters and specially built set that the crew had to constantly move around to keep the action flowing seamlessly; Farrington reverses that, with Karl Allen, Keith Foster, Christopher Loar, and Tim McDonough, one of whom is always wearing a tiny light on his head (serving as director while also mimicking the dolly), carrying around Granger (referred to as Brown Suit), Dall (Blue Suit), Jimmy Stewart, Joan Chandler, and the other actors on translucent screens, essentially following the path the dolly took in the making of the film, representing the viewer’s gaze. Farrington reveals all the behind-the-scenes goings-on as the four performers stop to discuss a technical glitch with the offstage crew, switch responsibilitles, and punish one of their own for making a mistake; meanwhile, in between “takes,” Farrington includes audio snippets from an interview Hitchcock gave to a French journalist talking about how and why he made ROPE the way he did, with several of his pronouncements being echoed by what’s occurring onstage. In ROPE, Hitchcock sought to make the perfect film about the perfect murder; in GIN & “IT,” a self-described “technical ballet,” Farrington reveals that there is no such thing as perfection, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had by all.