twi-ny recommended events

A THOUSAND DREADFUL THINGS: SHAKESPEARE AND THE FEAR OF BLACK VENGEANCE

Ron Cephas Jones (right) will discuss Titus Andronicus in special Shakespeare program from Brooklyn Public Library and the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

Who: Ron Cephas Jones, Eisa Davis, William Jackson Harper, Raúl Esparza, Jill Lepore, Michael Sexton, Ayanna Thompson, Stephen Greenblatt, Philip Lorenz
What: Digital Shakespeare program
Where: Brooklyn Public Library and the Public Theater
When: Sunday, November 22, free with RSVP, 7:00; Thursday, December 3, free with RSVP, 7:00; Thursday, December 17, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Shakespeare readings and discussions have multiplied during the pandemic, with actors and scholars presenting impassioned soliloquies online, followed by fascinating talks about the legacy of the Bard, particularly in this time of Covid-19, isolation, and social and political unrest; Red Bull Theater’s RemarkaBULL Podversations have been especially enlightening, highlighted by scintillating episodes with Chukwudi Iwuji and Patrick Page. Now the Brooklyn Public Library and the Public Theater have teamed up for a free three-part digital voyage into Shakespeare, kicking off November 22 at 7:00 with “A Thousand Dreadful Things: Shakespeare and the Fear of Black Vengeance,” an exploration of Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus, with Ron Cephas Jones, who played Aaron at the Public in 2011, William Jackson Harper, and Public Theater Shakespeare scholar in residence Ayanna Thompson, author of Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America. On December 3 at 7:00, “What Is the City but the People? Shakespeare, Art, and Citizenship” features Pulitzer Prize-winning profession Stephen Greenblatt, author of Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, and actor and playwright Eisa Davis looking at modern democracy; and on December 17 at 7:00, “Two Monsters of Nature: Lope de Vega and William Shakespeare” links the theater of Lope de Vega and Shakespeare, with readings in Spanish and English by Tony winner Raúl Esparza and commentary by Cornell professor of comparative language Philip Lorenz. All three programs will be moderated by Public Theater Shakespeare Initiative director Michael Sexton and are free with RSVP.

TETHERED X

Who: Antonio Brown, Rakeem Hardy, Mario Bermudez Gil and Catherine Coury of Marcat Dance, China Central Song and Dance Ensemble, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Justin Shoulder, Tyler Ashley (the Dauphine of Bushwick), OHMME
What: Tenth edition of digital music and dance series
Where: Public Records TV
When: Wednesday, November 18, streaming free, watch party $10, 6:00 – 10:00
Why: Since May, four/four has been commissioning and presenting Tethered, a collection of works that bring together musicians and dancers from around the world to create virtual collaborations. On November 18 at 6:00, Tethered X will make its debut, featuring movement by Spanish choreographers Mario Bermudez Gil and Catherine Coury of Marcat Dance, Toronto-based dancer Rakeem Hardy, and Cleveland-based dancer-choreographer Antonio Brown, set to an original score by Chicago-based experimental indie-pop duo OHMME. There will also be archival works by Justin Shoulder, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Tyler Ashley (the Dauphine of Bushwick), and China Central Song and Dance Ensemble, curated by Benjamim Akio Kimitch. In addition to streaming for free online, there is an in-person garden watch party at Public Records in Brooklyn; tickets are $10. You can check out previous Tethered programs, with such guests as Jon Batiste, Madison McFerrin, Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Dos Santos, Gus Solomons, and Princess Lockerooo, here.

#IRISHREPONLINE: ON BECKETT / IN SCREEN

Who: Bill Irwin
What: Livestreams of updated show
Where: Irish Rep online
When: November 17-22, suggested donation $25
Why: In my October 2018 review of Bill Irwin’s mostly one-person-show, On Beckett, at the Irish Rep, I wrote, “Irwin adds fascinating insight to [Samuel] Beckett and his oeuvre, discussing the Nobel Prize winner’s punctuation and pronoun usage, his identity and heritage, the possible influence of vaudeville on his work, his detailed stage directions, and other intricacies. . . . Irwin is a delight to watch, his passion for Beckett infectious. He occasionally goes off topic in comic ways, wrestling with a microphone and toying with the podium, but he eventually gets back on track for an enchanting piece of theater about theater.” Irwin (Old Hats, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is now revisiting the play, updating it in this time of pandemic lockdown, in a Covid-19-sensitive version he codirected onstage at the Irish Repertory Theatre with M. Florian Staab; Brian Petchers served as director of photography and editor, with set design by Charlie Corcoran, lighting by Michael Gottlieb, and music and sound by Staab. Irwin’s revised take on Waiting for Godot could probably make a show all its own. The seventy-five-minute On Beckett / In Screen will stream November 17-22; suggested donation is $25.

DAVID GODLIS PRESENTS GODLIS STREETS

Who: David Godlis, Luc Sante, Chris Stein, Dave Brolan
What: Virtual book launch
Where: Rizzoli Zoom
When: Thursday, November 19, free with RSVP, 5:00
Why: “As Garry Winogrand said, ‘I photograph to see what things look like photographed.’ This book is what I photographed,” David Godlis explains in his new book, Godlis Streets (Reel Art Press, $39.95, November 2020). I’m used to seeing the ever-cool Godlis and his impressive curly hair every year at the New York Film Festival, snapping away from his seat at front and center, but this year’s event, of course, was virtual, so I will have to settle for catching up with Godlis on Zoom when Rizzoli hosts his book launch on November 19 at 5:00, when Godlis will speak with Reel Art Press music editor Dave Brolan. Godlis is known for his black-and-white documentation of the punk scene, cinema luminaries, and street photos from the 1970s to 1990s, ever since he purchased his first 35mm camera in 1970; his motto is “Better Living Through Photography.” Look out for his photo of an outdoor stand selling “Black Art,” a drawing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., next to “American Art,” a painting of a clown; a shot of a nun walking past a bus with an ad featuring a naked man and woman on it; and a picture of two women looking askance at him as they pass a peep show. The book includes a foreword by Luc Sante and an afterword by Chris Stein; both Sante and Stein will be part of the launch as well, which is free with RSVP.

PERFORMA TELETHON

Laurie Anderson will revisit Nam June Paik’s 1984 Good Morning, Mr. Orwell for Performa telethon (photo courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York)

Who: Jason Moran, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lang Lang, Yvonne Rainer, Jennifer Rubell, Laurie Anderson, Omer Fast, Maria Hassabi, Jesper Just, William Kentridge, Liz Magic Laser, Rashid Johnson, Shirin Neshat, more
What: Virtual benefit gala for Performa
Where: Pace Gallery
When: Wednesday, November 18, free with RSVP, 2:00 to 10:00 pm
Why: Performa is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with an eight-hour gala fundraiser featuring live performances, specially commissioned artist editions, and testimonials, an online mashup of Nam June Paik’s 1984 Good Morning, Mr. Orwell and Barbara Kruger’s 1989 critique of Jerry Lewis and his annual MDA Labor Day Telethon, aired live from the seventh floor of Pace Gallery in Chelsea. “Nam June Paik’s innovations in broadcast and large-scale architectural installations of television monitors changed the way we think about the screen as an art form,” Performa founder and director RoseLee Goldberg said in a statement. “Half a century after Paik’s legendary interventions in television, we find ourselves in a unique situation: We must now rely on the screen in new ways in the midst of a pandemic that has cost over one million lives. Like Paik, we approach the screen as an exciting platform for artists to communicate their work and ideas.”

Produced in collaboration with E.S.P. TV, the fundraiser honors founding patron Toby Devan Lewis and will include a giant tally board, confetti, giant checks, balloons, a bank of people on telephones, and other telethon staples while acknowledging the Covid-19 crisis, election unrest, the BLM movement, and other critical contemporary social issues. The show will be highlighted by performances from Derrick Adams & Dave Guy, Jérôme Bel, Torkwase Dyson (reading an excerpt from Myself a Distance), David Hallberg, Glenn Kaino, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lang Lang, Marching Cobras, Jason Moran, Oyinda, Yvonne Rainer, Jennifer Rubell, Jacolby Satterwhite, Rufus Wainwright, Hank Willis Thomas & Ebony Brown, Samson Young, and Laurie Anderson, who will pay tribute to Paik; there will also be screenings of Lynda Benglis’s On Screen, The Grunions Are Running, and Document and testimonials from Tamy Ben-Tor, Elmgreen & Dragset, Omer Fast, Maria Hassabi, Jesper Just, William Kentridge, Liz Magic Laser, Kelly Nipper, Rashid Johnson, Shirin Neshat, and others, along with archival footage and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes outtakes. Six artist editions will make their debut and will be available only during the broadcast, by Korakrit Arunanondchai, Barbara Kruger, Kia LaBeija, Michèle Lamy, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons. The twentieth Performa Biennial, curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, is scheduled for 2021, but it might look very different from previous ones depending on the state of the pandemic.

READ SUBTITLES ALOUD

Read Subtitles Aloud invites each audience member to be the protagonist in thirteen short episodes

Who: Onur Karaoglu, Kathryn Hamilton, Meera Kumbhani, Fatih Gençkal, Paul Lazar
What: Interactive short plays
Where: Media Art Xploration YouTube channel
When: Daily through November 23, free with RSVP
Why: MAX (Media Art Xploration) and PlayCo have teamed up to present a unique twist on interactive theater during the pandemic lockdown with Read Subtitles Aloud. Written by Onur Karaoglu and Kathryn Hamilton (aka Sister Sylvester), it consists of thirteen episodes in which you hear only half the dialogue, spoken by an onscreen actor; the other half is your responsibility, as you are the protagonist in the story, reading aloud the lines that appear on your monitor, creating a dialogue between you and characters portrayed by Karaoglu, Hamilton, Meera Kumbhani, Fatih Gençkal, and Paul Lazar that also encompasses a certain physicality, acknowledging how we sit in front of the computer and relate to others virtually.

The first three chapters, “Digital Kissing,” “A Warm Up,” and “A Secret Video,” are available now, with each new chapter dropping daily through November 23, exploring such issues as love and sex, loyalty and betrayal, what’s real and what’s not, and connection and isolation, so key as we keep sheltering in place. The play features art direction by Christine Jones, costume and set curation by Zoë Hurwitz, lighting by Bill Berner, and dramaturgy by Emily Reilly. During the conversations, which are based on Altyazıları Yüksek Sesle Oku’s YouTube series, in which Karaoglu appeared, the actors pace their responses, giving you time to say your lines, and they then react as if they heard what you said. In the first episode, you ask, “Should I give you a kiss?” Karaoglu, who is very close to the screen, smiles, puts his hand over his mouth, and coquettishly says, “No, you don’t have to kiss me right now. But if you want, you can. If you feel something, kiss. Don’t kiss if you don’t feel anything. So the rule about kissing is don’t kiss if you don’t feel anything.” You: “I’m not going to kiss you.” Him: “So, um.” You: “It makes no sense.” Him: “True. It is generally something we fake.” You: “Speak for yourself.” Him: “Okay, I’ll go back to the normal position now, a position that does not invite kissing, a distant position.” You: “When you were close there was this feeling.” Hey, at least you’re not talking to yourself, or bored out of your skull having another Zoom meeting with friends, family, or work colleagues while also shoring up your acting chops.

RED BULL THEATER: THE COURAGE TO RIGHT A WOMAN’S WRONGS (VALOR, AGAVIO, Y MUJER)

Red Bull Theater teams up with UCLA to present new translation of Spanish Golden Age comedy

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of new translation of Ana Caro Mallén’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, November 16, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through November 20 at 7:00)
Why: For its latest livestreamed reading, Red Bull is teaming up with Diversifying the Classics | UCLA to present a brand-new translation of Spanish Golden Age poet and playwright Ana Caro’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs (“Valor, agravio y mujer.”) Part of La Escena 2020, the second edition of Los Angeles’s Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater, the seventeenth-century comedy focuses on a woman’s boundary-crossing encounters with issues of society and gender, justice and honor, specifically related to her former lover, Don Juan. In their introduction to the new translation, Marta Albalá Pelegrín and Rafael Jaime write, “Through this stirring tale of a woman’s courage to right the wrongs she has suffered, the play holds up to scrutiny contemporary notions of masculine honor and offers in their place a vision that opens up space for women and their agency.”

The reading will be performed by Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Helen Cespedes, Natascia Diaz, Carson Elrod, Anthony Michael Martinez, Sam Morales, Alfredo Narciso, Ryan Quinn, Luis Quintero, and Matthew Saldivar and is directed by Melia Bensussen; there will be a live, interactive Bull Session with some of the artists involved and UCLA professor of Spanish and English Barbara Fuchs and California State Polytechnic English and modern languages associate professor Pelegrín on November 19 at 7:30, also free with RSVP. The reading will be available on demand through November 20 at 7:00.