twi-ny recommended events

KAWS: CHUM / BFF

KAWS’s CHUM stands lonely and dejected in Midtown (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LARGER THAN LIFE
Seagram Building, 375 Park Ave. between 52nd & 53rd Sts.
280 Park Ave. at 49th St.
kawstoo.com
chum/bff slideshow

Jersey City–born, Brooklyn-based artist KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, says goodbye to 2020 with the installation of CHUM, a large-scale sculpture on the plaza in front of the Seagram Building on Park Ave. in Midtown. Kicking off the “What Party” iteration of his “Larger than Life: Companion” series, featuring emotional, empathetic giant figures inspired by Mickey Mouse, Bib the Michelin Man, and astronauts, with KAWS’s trademark double x’s on their eyes or face and other parts of their bodies, the all-black CHUM looks down dejectedly, slouching, arms at his side, with x’s on his hands and boots as well as his face.

KAWS’s BFF is on permanent display on Park Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

KAWS, who was previously an animator, a graffiti artist, and an interventionist, has occasionally brought together two characters at a time to comfort each other. CHUM could use a hug and a smile from a pal, but unfortunately his nearest companion is a few blocks southwest, where the lonely bubblegum pink giant known as BFF stands by himself, trapped permanently inside a glassed-in space, his white eyes staring straight ahead with emptiness. It’s a shame these two sad, lonely creatures can’t meet up as we all look forward to a 2021 in which real, physical contact might return again.

WALLY WORLD

Wally World features a large cast playing employees in a superstore on Christmas Eve (photo courtesy Steppenwolf Theatre Company)

WALLY WORLD
Steppenwolf NOW
December 16 – August 31, $75 for six-play subscription
www.steppenwolf.org

One of my best friends has a habit of shopping for all his holiday presents on Christmas Eve. This year, because of the pandemic lockdown, he chose to stay out of stores and, like so much of America, bought everything online. But for him and everyone else who missed the joy of wandering through aisles of chains and indies, fighting off other customers for that last coveted item on that quickly emptying shelf, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company has gifted us with Wally World, a two-part audio-play soap opera that takes place in a big-box store on a long December 24. “Everybody’s happy on Christmas Eve,” not-so-nice manager Andy (Sandra Marquez) insists. Well, maybe not.

Wally World offers that last-minute-shopping experience as we eavesdrop on Andy, co-managers Amy (Audrey Francis) and Mark (Cliff Chamberlain), assistant managers Estelle (Jacqueline Williams), Ariadna (Sydney Charles), Jax (Kevin Curtis), Janie (Karen Rodriguez), Miguel (Marvin Quijada), and Dan (Danny Bernardo), and sales associate Karla (Leslie Sophia Perez), who get involved in all sorts of intrigue, from secret liaisons to juicy gossip, from karaoke Christmas songs to sexual harassment and a seizure. Writer-director Isaac Gómez and codirector Lili-Anne Brown take us around every nook and cranny in the store as the employees discuss personal and professional disappointment, their ancestry, a shooting at another location, vibrators, and how to correctly stack palettes. They also make some funny and unfortunate announcements over the PA system. “I fucking hate Barbies,” Andy admits accidentally. “If you need to defecate, please do so in one of our two bathrooms,” Mark points out. An accompanying guide helps identify each character, including their name, age, position, ethnicity, and zodiac sign; several are from US-Mexican border towns, as is Gómez (La Ruta, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter).

Originally commissioned and developed through the Sideshow Theatre Company Freshness Initiative and presented in a developmental workshop at a Texas festival in 2018, Wally World may not be about the pandemic, but it’s right for this moment, capturing that feeling we are all missing: Being around other people, whether random strangers or essential workers, during the holiday season. Shopping online and seeing family over Zoom is not quite the same thing. To maintain the holiday spirit, Christmas music can be heard throughout the show; you can listen to the Spotify playlist here, with songs by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, Michael Bublé, Ariana Grande, Sara Bareilles, Eartha Kitt, Kelly Clarkson, Sia, Kacey Musgraves, John Legend, and Mariah Carey. To get the audio just right, sound designer Aaron Stephenson visited a superstore with a recorder and, wearing a mask, taped different places and sound sources, from the bathroom and the checkout counter to walkie-talkies and the overhead speakers, making it feel like you’re moving through distinct spaces, which he describes in “Hearing the Snow Falling: A Glimpse into the Sound Design in Wally World.”

“It’s a play about my mom,” Gómez, who calls the show his “Walmart Chekhov,” says in the above conversation with Rodriguez and Steppenwolf artistic director Anna D. Shapiro. “My mom’s worked at Walmart for twenty-five years and has worked her way up from cashier to assistant department manager of lingerie to department manager of ladies wear to assistant manager to co-manager and to now store manager at one of the largest retail-focused Walmarts in the country, which is a huge deal. And her Walmart is situated right off of one of the border-crossing bridges, so the majority of her customers are not just from El Paso; they’re also from Juárez. I think there’s something prolific and beautiful and meaningful about these everyday people who had, and have, lives that are deeper beyond our understanding. . . . What brings them all together is a profound loneliness that I think so many of us share, and what connects them is that they feel less lonely when they’re together.”

An ensemble piece that feels like an inclusive group effort, that doesn’t feel like it was recorded with everyone facing separate cameras and showing up in separate Zoom boxes from wherever they’re sheltering in place, Wally World — named after the closed theme park that the Griswolds are driving to in National Lampoon’s Vacation — also takes us away from the screens we are all addicted to, especially during this health crisis, and encourages our imaginations to transport us into a public place where we are less lonely, making connections that bring us together. And that’s a present we all can use as 2020 finally comes to an end.

DON’T STAY SAFE

Nygel D. Robinson, Iris Beaumier, and Latoya Edwards star in Prospect Theater Company’s Don’t Stay Safe (photos by Lesley Steele)

Who: Prospect Theater Company
What: Final film in Vision series
Where: Prospect Theater Company YouTube channel
When: Wednesday, December 30, free, 7:00
Why: Prospect Theater Company concludes its Vision series, consisting of new musical theater pieces on film, with Don’t Stay Safe, a short work with book and lyrics by Cheryl L. Davis and music by Douglas J. Cohen, featuring Iris Beaumier, Latoya Edwards, and Nygel D. Robinson. A companion to Davis and Cohen’s full-length 2016 musical Bridges, about a multiracial family fighting for racial equality and LGBTQ rights from 1965 to 2008, Don’t Stay Safe follows three people as they deal with similar issues in 2020, when the world changed. The December 30 premiere of the fifteen-minute film, which was directed by Christina Franklin at the West End Theatre, with music direction by John Bronston and cinematography by Lesley Steele, will be followed by a live Q&A with members of the cast and crew.

UNDER THE RADAR 2021

Piehole’s Disclaimer will be livestreamed over Zoom July 7-11 and 14-17

UNDER THE RADAR
The Public Theater online
January 6-17, free with advance RSVP
publictheater.org

For sixteen years, the Public Theater’s multidisciplinary winter festival “Under the Radar” has been presenting cutting-edge, experimental works from around the world, in its four theaters and Joe’s Pub in addition to such satellite locations as Japan Society, La MaMa, BRIC, and other city venues. But the 2021 iteration will be virtual — and it’s also all free. This year’s festival has been trimmed down to eight shows, one panel, one symposium, and live Q&As, requiring advance RSVPs; donations beginning at $5 are requested for each production.

“The challenges facing cultural exchange is not limited to the pandemic; it includes the tightening reactionary world trying to suffocate alternative voices, combined with a climate crisis growing more threatening every day,” festival director Mark Russell said in a statement. “Under the Radar began as an answer to an isolationist government in 2005, trying to connect voices, not always heard on American stages, from communities not always invited. We continue to follow this path with both international and American artists.”

The 2021 UTR fest is actually already under way with 600 Highwaymen’s A Thousand Ways (Part One): A Phone Call, continuing through January 17. Written and created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, the piece is an hourlong phone call between you and another person, randomly put together and facilitated by an electronic voice that asks both general and intimate questions, from where you are sitting to what smells you are missing, structured around a dangerous and lonely fictional situation that is a metaphor for sheltering in place, even though the work began several years ago. It’s a great way to get connected to a stranger while looking inwardly at yourself — and there’s more to come, as the next two parts involve one-on-one in-person encounters and a group gathering once the pandemic lockdown is lifted.

Below is the rest of the schedule; note that some shows can be viewed on demand at any time, with specific dates for live Q&As, while others are available only during livestreams.

Inua Ellams shares his personal stories of immigration in livestreamed Borders & Crossings

CAPSULE (January 6-17, artist Q&As 1/6 and 1/11 at 8:00)
Written by Whitney White and Peter Mark Kendall and directed and produced by Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky, Capsule explores isolation and connection, race and film using original text and music. White and Kendall will also be the guests on the “Live at the Lortel” podcast on January 4 at 7:00.

ESPÍRITU (January 6-17, artist Q&As 1/8 and 1/14 at 8:00)
Teatro Anónimo’s Espíritu takes place over the course of one night in an unidentified city, dealing with such issues as consumerism and manipulation of desire. The thirty-five-minute piece is written and directed by Trinidad González and will be performed in Spanish with English subtitles.

INCOMING! (January 6-17, talkback following 1/10 and 1/17 shows at 8:00)
The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group has collaborated on a specially commissioned program of short pieces about where we are here and now, with cohort members Savon Bartley, Nile Harris, Miranda Haymon, Eric Lockley, Raelle Myrick-Hodges, Mia Rovegno, Justin Elizabeth Sayre, and Mariana Valencia presenting a thirty-minute video including such brief works as “Edna’s Best Friend Jeans” and “What We Forgot.”

UNDER THE RADAR SYMPOSIUM: A CREATIVE SUMMIT (January 7, 10:00 am)
Livestreamed interactive half-day symposium with Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts vice president and artistic director Marc Bamuthi Joseph, showcase of future works by Tania El Khoury, Héctor Flores Komatsu, Anna Maria Nabirye / Annie Saunders, and Roger Guenveur Smith, breakout sessions, and the concluding “Artists and International Presenting” discussion.

BORDERS & CROSSINGS (January 7-10, talkback after each show)
Poet, performer, playwright, graphic artist, and designer Inua Ellams, who was born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother, shares his personal story of migration, from Nigeria to England to Ireland and back to London, in this hourlong livestreamed one-man show produced by Fuel Theatre, which hosted his in-person An Evening with an Immigrant in the fall.

The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group’s Incoming! consists of short pieces by eight cohort members

RICH KIDS: A HISTORY OF SHOPPING MALLS IN TEHRAN (January 7-10, 14-17, talkback after each show)
The Javaad Alipoor Company’s Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran is an experimental hybrid of live performance and social media that explores the growing separation between the wealthy and the poor, looking at income inequality through a kaleidoscopic mirror. Written by Alipoor and co-created by Alipoor and Kirsty Housley, the sixty-minute show, the second part of a trilogy following the multimedia The Believers Are But Brothers, won the 2019 Scotsman Fringe First Award.

DISCLAIMER (January 7-11, 14-17, talkback following 1/17 show at 6:00)
Piehole’s Disclaimer is a live Zoom event in which a cooking class led by Chef Nargis incorporates Persian food, cultural misrepresentation, minimal audience participation, and murder. Disclaimer is written by Tara Ahmadinejad, who directed Japan Society’s livestreamed presentation of Satoko Ichihara’s Underground Fairy last month.

THE MOTOWN PROJECT (January 8-17)
Alicia Hall Moran reimagines the Motown songbook with opera in this recorded performance from Joe’s Pub, featuring Thomas Flippin on guitar, Reggie Washington on bass, and Steven Herring and Barrington Lee on vocals, with choreography by Amy Hall Garner.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (January 9, 12 noon)
Livestreamed panel discussion and Q&A with MC93 director Hortense Archambault, MC93 director of productions Frank Piquard, performance artist, choreographer, and director of dance festivals Aguibou Bougobali Sanou, and Perelman Performing Arts Center producing director Meiyin Wang, moderated by LMCC artistic director Lili Chopra.

TITAN

Minerva Cuevas’s “Apocalypse” and “Climate Change” are two of her three contributions to Titan phone booth project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

TITAN
Sixth Ave. between 50th & 56th Sts.
Through January 3, free
titan.kurimanzutto.com
titan online slideshow

I’ve never owned a cell phone. For twenty-plus years, I’ve traveled around the city with quarters in my pockets in case I needed to suddenly call someone, ready to slide the change into the slot of one of the thousands of telephone booths on street corners everywhere, booths once more numerous than drugstores and coffee chains are now. However, slowly but surely, phone booths have been going the way of the dinosaur, their population shrinking not only because of the preponderance of the smart phone but also with the installation of free digital phone kiosks that also connect users to the internet. And now total extinction awaits, as the city announced in February that the more than three thousand booths that are still on the streets are being taken down, including the last four in working operation.

As a memorial to the end of another era that even Superman will lament, curators Damián Ortega and Bree Zucker, in collaboration with the Kurimanzutto gallery located on East Sixty-Fifth St. and Mexico City, have put together “Titan,” a public project spanning West Fifty-First to West Fifty-Sixth St. on Sixth Ave. in which a dozen artists have added text and/or images to the outsides of the Titan-run phone booths, where advertisements usually appear. In fact, several of the works could easily be mistaken for ads.

You have until January 3 to see the outdoor exhibition, which has a lot to say about the state of the country. Anne Collier’s 2011 “Questions” consists of photos of three open file folders that she found on the street that ask questions related to “Evidence,” “Supposition,” and “Viewpoint,” including “How do we know what we know?” Glenn Ligon’s “Aftermath” and “Synecdoche (For Byron Kim)” involve neon that are lit at specific times revolving around the November 3 election. “At the beginning of the Trump regime I began to think about whether our democracy would survive and what it means to be a citizen,” he explains in his artist statement. Meanwhile, his “Red Hands #2” is a photo of hands being raised at the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC. Yvonne Rainer presents “Excerpts from Apollo’s Diary, Written During His Last Visit to Earth From Mount Olympus,” in which she excoriates the current president, referring to him as “Shameless Schmuck Number One.”

Jimmie Durham’s “You Are Here” tells us where we are literally and figuratively (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Minerva Cuevas’s “Capitalism,” “Climate Change,” and “Apocalypse” pair photos of animals with mottos in front of angled, colorful shapes, like social media memes; for example, a picture of a grumpy cat is joined by the declaration “Another end of the world is possible.” Renee Green’s “TITAN Billboards,” from her 2015 “Space Poem #5 (Years & Afters),” is a trio of statements that, put together, read, “After You Finish Your Work,” “After the Crisis,” “Begin Again, Begin Again.” Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Ohhh… untitled 2020 (remember in november)” comprises three text-only messages in bold fonts, advising us to “Remember in November” and to “Febreze for Fascism” as well as pointing out there are “Impostors of Patriotism.” Patti Smith tells us to “Let your peace flag fly” and that “It’s in our hands,” while Hans Haacke reminds us that “We (all) are the people” in a dozen languages, a phrase that was adopted by East Germans against the oppressive GDR but was later coopted by “right-wing, xenophobic groups in Germany with a very different meaning.”

Cildo Meireles’s “Sermon on the Mount: Fiat Lux (1974–1979)” is part of a bigger performance piece created during Brazil’s military dictatorship; here, a mirrored space features beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”). Hal Fischer’s “Handkerchiefs,” “Signifiers for a Male Response,” and “Street Fashion: Jock,” from his 1977 Gay Semiotics series, look like clothing ads but actually describe specific gay signifiers that helped identify who was gay and what kind of sex act they were interested in. “As the gay community is polarized on some issues and cohesive around others, the semiotic process which helps locate it in the larger culture will flourish with the interesting and undoubtedly provocative results,” Fischer notes. No text or artist statement accompanies Zoe Leonard’s “Crossing the Gateway International Bridge from Matamoros to Brownsville,” three photos of the border crossing between Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

Anne Collier’s supplies “Evidence” as part of her “Questions” series (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Perhaps no other work gets right to the point as does Jimmie Durham’s “You Are Here,” a spare drawing, inspired by Saul Steinberg’s classic 1976 New Yorker cover map, “How New Yorkers See the World: View of the World from 9th Avenue.” In Durham’s version, a large red circle tells visitors where they are, at the crossroads of “wilderness” and “incognito,” with an asterisk proclaiming, “Lucky you! . . . Most people had to be some place else today.” Amid a surging health crisis, during which so many of us are sheltering at home, not seeing friends, family, colleagues, or even strangers, it’s important to know where we are, both literally and figuratively, as well as who we are, as individuals and part of a whole that can make change happen, even when there are no phone booths left for Superman to save the day in our grand city.

THIS IS WHO I AM

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani play a father and son who are separated by more than just distance in This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

WOOLLY ON DEMAND: THIS IS WHO I AM
Through January 3, $15.99 single, $30.99 household
www.woollymammoth.net
playco.org

Woolly Mammoth and PlayCo’s This Is Who I Am is the best play created during the pandemic that is not specifically about the pandemic. Presented in association with American Repertory Theater, Guthrie Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Amir Nizar Zuabi’s poignant, exquisitely told seventy-minute Zoom work is a treat for all five senses while exploring such issues as love, loss, loneliness, grief, memory, and distance, so much a part of our life amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Zuabi, who was raised in Palestine, was the associate director of Young Vic London for eight years, and is now artistic director of the ShiberHur theater in Haifa, set his 2013 site-specific show, Oh My Sweet Land, in kitchens in real apartments, where small audiences would cram in and watch a woman cook while telling stories about Syrian refugees; everyone was handed a delicacy she made on the way out. This Is Who I Am also takes place in real kitchens, but in this case belonging to two actors portraying an estranged father and son reconnecting over Zoom; you might not get a bite of the spinach-and-onion-stuffed dumpling-like peasant dish known as fteer that they make together, but you will feel as if you can touch, smell, and taste it, in addition to watching and listening to their intimate, heart-tugging conversation. (However, you will get the recipe so you can prepare it yourself in your own kitchen.)

The father (Ramsey Faragallah) is Zooming in from his home in Ramallah, while the son (Yousof Sultani) is in New York, having left the West Bank city years ago to become an art curator, a job his manly, hardworking father fails to understand. As they go step-by-step through the recipe of their late wife/mother’s favorite dish, they talk about the past and delve deep into their relationship, which changed drastically during her prolonged illness. “She used to make such incredible food. Why this, why fteer?” the son asks. “It was the first thing she prepared for me,” the father replies. “She said to me, ‘This is who I am. I am a pocketful of surprises.’”

As they add the ingredients, the differences between them are revealed not only through the dialogue but by how they are making the dish. While the son uses modern utensils and measures everything precisely, the father uses his fingers and judgment with the salt and the sumac, the onions and the yeast. “You were always a horrible cook,” the son says, as if referring to his role as a father as well. The father declares that his lentil soup is to die for, which leads the son to quip, “Death is definitely one of the consequences that can occur as a result of your lentil soup.”

Making fteer together leads them to “fill the gaps” of their lives. When they brush on the olive oil, they remember the olive trees of Ramallah; where the father waxes poetic about the beauty, culture, tradition, and sustenance they represent, the son recalls that the “trees are drenched in blood. They live in a land that had so many people claim it, so many people die for it. You walk around those trees and you feel the reverence of history; I walk around those trees and I hear the shouts of slaughtered men that had to sacrifice themselves to keep it.” When the son insists that water has to be lukewarm, considering it a “safe” temperature, the father interprets that as his son yet again taking the easy way out, not going for the extremes of hot and cold. As they reach the end of the preparation and get ready to place the food in the oven, their topics grow ever-more-serious, with accusations and condemnations being squeezed out like the juice of a lemon, tart and bitter.

Turkish immigrant Evren Odcikin (When My Mama Was a Hittite, Nine Parts of Desire), the associate artistic director at OSF, directs the show with a natural, realistic grace, keeping the actors onscreen the entire time, next to each other in static boxes without camera movement, close-ups, or cuts; we’ve all been part of so many Zoom calls with friends and family and watched a multitude of live, online cooking programs that it’s easy to forget that this is a play and that the two men are fictional constructions. Instead, you’re likely to feel that you’re eavesdropping on an intensely private moment between two complex individuals as they intimately discuss trust, fear, memory, choice, disappointment, and what makes a person a hero.

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani rehearse Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

LA-born actor, writer, and teacher Faragallah (The Profane, Homeland) and Northern Virginia native Sultani (Heartland, Photograph 51) are marvelous as father and son, fully embodying their characters just as the dish they are making brings their wife/mother to life. Faragallah portrays the strong and stalwart father with a tender vulnerability that is deeply affecting, while the handsome, hirsute Sultani is sensitive and authentic as the seemingly intractable, unyielding son who is harboring a critical secret. Just follow the movement of their eyes; they might not be in the same room, but their innate attachment is palpable.

In October, Woolly Mammoth’s Woolly on Demand season kicked off with Telephonic Literary Union’s fun Human Resources, which took place completely over the phone as a “choose your own adventure” series of prerecorded messages. This Is Who I Am comes to us live, in real time, via cameras in the actors’ homes in an honest, intrinsically human story that captures who we are and what we are facing without ever mentioning the pandemic we are suffering through; it’s a timeless story whose time is now, for people everywhere.

(This Is Who I Am continues through January 3; tickets are $15.99 for one and $30.99 for a household. On January 2, you can take part in a postshow community meetup hosted by A.R.T. with the Boston Palestine Film Festival by registering here. It’s also worth checking out the archived December 20 virtual panel discussion “Story as Resistance: The Joys, the Heartbreak, and the Food.”)

SANCTUARY: AN AUDIO IMMERSIVE SOUNDWALK

Working Theater’s Sanctuary takes visitors on an audio journey through the welcoming community of St. John the Divine (photo by P. Kevin O’Leary)

SANCTUARY
Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
Through December 31, free
theworkingtheater.org
www.stjohndivine.org

“What is sanctuary? Is it a place? Is it a feeling? A state of being?” a narrator asks near the start of Sanctuary, an immersive audio soundwalk about the historic Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Working Theater’s Five Boroughs/One City Initiative began with Adam Kraar’s Alternating Currents in Queens and includes Liba Vaynberg and Dina Vovsi’s The Only Ones and Ed Cardona Jr.’s Bamboo in Bushwick in Brooklyn, Dan Hoyle’s The Block in the Bronx, and Chisa Hutchinson’s Breaking Bread in Staten Island. It returns to Manhattan with Sanctuary, a forty-eight-minute piece that has been in progress since 2015 and is now available for free download through December 31. It is not a guided tour of the cathedral but instead is a spiritual (and secular) journey that you can experience at home. (In 2013, Working Theater staged La Ruta, an immersive play about illegal immigration, set in a truck outside the cathedral.)

Sanctuary was created by Michael Premo and Rachel Falcone of Storyline and developed with and directed by Working Theater associate artistic director Rebecca Martinez, with original devotional music by Broken Chord, recorded in the cathedral’s nave on the Duke Ellington grand piano. The soundwalk welcomes listeners into the diverse cathedral community, consisting of people who work there, visit regularly, have celebrated special occasions there, or turned to the cathedral at times of hardship or joy. Participants discuss immigration, a blue heron, 9/11, gay marriage, gardening, depression, letting go, healing, and rebuilding, accompanied by the sounds of footsteps, nature, a helicopter, sirens, and a door opening.

St. John the Divine has offered sanctuary to all since 1899 (photo courtesy St. John the Divine)

“We are unfinished,” one person says. A man adds, “The amount of grief that we have seems to be insurmountable. We mourn partly because so much of what we called normal is gone, and yet, we persevere.” The narrator asks, “Do we ever get where we’re going? If we arrive, are we here?”

The cathedral has been providing sanctuary since the late nineteenth century; construction by architects George Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge began in 1892, and the first services were held there in a chapel of the crypt in 1899. The cathedral is an Episcopal church that doesn’t discriminate on any basis; in fact, it falls right in line with New York’s decision to become a sanctuary city in 2020, as delineated by Manhattan Community Board 10 here.

Sanctuary expounds on the cathedral being a revered safe space, both physically and psychologically, not only during the pandemic, but at all times. It is currently open for free to visitors; timed tickets are strongly encouraged. “What is the path you’re on?” the narrator asks. Any path leading to the historic Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is one that is worth taking.