twi-ny recommended events

A CONSTELLATION OF STARS: DIANE ARBUS AT THE ARMORY

“Diane Arbus: Constellation” continues at Park Avenue Armory through August 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DIANE ARBUS: CONSTELLATION
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Daily through August 17, $25
www.armoryonpark.org

Don’t look too hard for a theme to “Constellation,” the exciting and dramatic Diane Arbus installation at Park Ave. Armory. “The connection is that there is no connection,” curator Matthieu Humery explained at a press preview.

The exhibition fills half of the armory’s 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, with a mylar mirror in the middle that makes it look like the entire space is populated by the seemingly endless parade of diverse people the New York City–born Arbus photographed during the course of her career, cut short by her suicide in 1971 at the age of forty-eight. There are 454 photos in all, arranged on gridlike beams that form a kind of maze, where visitors can take multiple paths, like walking through the streets of the metropolis that was her canvas; the setup also evokes an alternate subway map. The black frames match the black beams, giving it an organic feel.

The photos are placed at different heights, identified by small blocks on the floor and in a long list inside the official pamphlet; there are no detailed labels, making each photo, like each person she photographed, equal, whether a stripper, a drag performer, a political supporter, kids playing, a circus strongman, twins and triplets, a well-known artist, a corpse, a dominatrix, or swimmers at the beach. The only specific organization is the section that includes her breakthrough limited edition “box of ten,” which contains iconic, familiar images. Other favorites are scattered about in a colossal, inviting jumble. The lighting creates fascinating shadow patterns that have a ghostly presence on the floor.

“They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain,” Arbus wrote in a 1971 letter to Davis Pratt of Harvard’s Fogg Museum. “And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.” To take that philosophy to another level, numerous photos at the armory are backed by mirrors so visitors can imagine themselves being caught by Arbus’s lens and becoming part of the unique and welcoming community she built more than fifty years ago. “I would like to photograph everybody,” she wrote in the margin of a letter to photographer, graphic designer, and teacher Marvin Israel, seen in #120 in the show. Famous faces range from Tiny Tim, Jorge Luis Borges, Norman Mailer, and Roy Lichtenstein to James Brown, Charles Atlas, Peter Ustinov, and Jayne Mansfield, but Arbus treated all of her subjects as celebrities.

However, whereas we’re all taught to avoid making eye contact on New York City buses, subways, and sidewalks, you should take your time as you wander through the aisles, making friends with these hundreds of strangers, among them a young couple eating hot dogs in a park, an elderly gentleman apparently with three legs, a woman on a couch holding a baby monkey like an infant, a Jewish giant towering over his parents in their Bronx home, four members of the radical feminist group the Red Stockings, a transvestite on her bed with her birthday cake, a girl in a devil mask with a naked doll, a wax museum ax murderer, a boy clutching a toy grenade, a silhouetted couple watching a newsreel of a cross burning, kids playing baseball, two women at the Automat, and Ronald C. Harrison, the Human Pincushion. Most shots are posed, with many of the subjects looking directly into the camera.

“Constellation” offers a multitude of paths to take (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

I highly recommend not reading the titles of the works, at least not during your first trip around, to get the full impact of Arbus’s egalitarian view of humanity; each one of us is unique, yet we are also alike, and we basically all want the same thing out of life: happiness. Arbus’s photos inherently make us happy.

The prints were made by Neil Selkirk, a photographer who studied with Arbus and is the only person authorized by her estate to produce prints from the original negatives, using what he calls an “abstruse technical process.” He has cited A family one evening in a nudist camp as one of the works that stands out for him, holding a special place; it’s a 1965 gelatin print of a husband, wife, and child hanging out naked in a grassy field, the corner of a car’s tailfin visible on one side, all three people peering at us as if they have something better to do.

The display, sponsored by the LUMA Foundation, is supplemented with a short video of close-up eyes from Arbus’s photos, projected onto a freestanding wall in the drill hall, as well as, in the Board of Officers Room, two documentaries, including the ninety-minute What Diane Arbus Wasn’t Doing, and How She Wasn’t Doing It, a filmed conversation between Selkirk and Darius Himes from Christie’s.

“I have learned to get past the door, from the outside to the inside. One milieu leads to another,” Arbus wrote in her 1966 application for her second Guggenheim fellowship (which she received), “a certain group of young nihilists, a variety of menages, a retirement town in the Southwest, a new kind of Messiah, a particular Utopian cult who plan to establish themselves on a nearby island, Beauties of different ethnic groups, certain criminal types, a minority elite.”

Just another day in New York City, this time courtesy of Diane Arbus and Park Ave. Armory.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FREE LAND FOR FREE PEOPLE: THE RETURN OF COMMUNE

Restored documentary looks at life at Northern California commune from 1968 to 1979 and beyond (photo by Jock Sturges)

COMMUNE (Jonathan Berman, 2005 / restored 2025)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
July 11-17
www.dctvny.org

Jonathan Berman’s twentieth anniversary restoration of his documentary Commune could hardly be more timely. The film details the fascinating story of Black Bear Ranch in Siskiyou County in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, where dozens of people left their traditional lives and started their own community to escape what was happening in the country in the wake of the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.

“After going to Washington, DC, for a while and thinking, boy, it’s going to be a long time before all these people retire and get out of here and something changes, I don’t think I can stand to wait around,” Mahaj Seeger says in the film.

Actor Peter Coyote explains, “We thought the government was going to be overthrown in two years and there would be a new culture rising from the ashes, and we wanted to have an alternative, a nonmercantile alternative that offered citizens the options of being something other than a consumer or an employee.”

And Cedar Seeger admits, “I moved there to get away from America; I did not want to be an American as defined by the mainstream, although I guess deep down I’ve always felt proud that I’m an American. But to me those values are represented in open-mindedness and free thinking and tolerance and the ability to do what you want.”

The group purchased eighty acres of woods for twenty-two thousand dollars, with contributions from the Doors, the Monkees, Frank Zappa, and others. The goal was to create a society that played by its own rules, not subject to political parties or any existing set of laws and mores. As Michael Tierra declares in the film, their motto was “Free Land for Free People.”

In addition to all the above, Berman speaks with such commune participants as Creek Hanauer, Martin Linhart, Peter Leaf, and Kenoli Oleari. Elsa and Richard Marley share critical behind-the-scenes information. Tierra relates how he tried to get James Coburn involved. Catherine Guerra preaches free love. Osha Neumann, a member of the anarchist Motherfuckers, says that it “felt like coming home.” Activist Harriet Beinfeld brings up the FBI, which in 1970 reported, “Commune might be a training ground for militants planning insurrection in Northern California.” Geba Greenberg and Allegra Brucker discuss becoming self-trained midwives to help women give birth on the ranch.

We learn what they are doing in 2005 and meet some of the children who grew up in the commune, including Aaron Marley, a scientist who works with experimental lab rats, and Tesilya Hanauer, a writer and massage therapist.

While neighbor Hoss Bennett remembers fondly about how he helped the commune, local resident Mel Kramer declares, “It was shocking,” and public defender Larry Bacon calls it an “invasion of flower children.”

Berman and editors Michael Taylor and Marisa Simpson interweave archival news footage and photos and home movies taken at the ranch, showing the group renovating a ramshackle barn, growing vegetables, preparing food, and prancing about naked, which they did a lot. Ultimately, it was not as idyllic as was hoped, as the concept of free love led to jealousies, and there was debate over how the children were being raised. The beginning of the end might have been the infiltration of the Shivalila cult in 1979, led by Gridley Wright, who had unique and controversial views of child-rearing. A 1987 reunion offers engaging perspective.

In his 2025 director note, Berman (The Shvitz, Calling All Earthlings) points out, “With the very real modern struggles of Trump’s America, people are seeking solutions of every kind to an increasing authoritarianism. As feminist activist Carol Hanisch wrote in 1969, ‘The personal is political,’ and nothing is more personal than how we live and the who, what, and where of the place we call home. . . . In our modern high-tech world, where an Amazon delivery is moments away and there’s less need to leave our dwellings, we face a plague of loneliness. Is coming together the cure? Or perhaps, as Sartre wrote, ‘Hell is other people’!”

Accompanied by a lovely country-bluegrass-groovy-pop soundtrack by Elliott Sharp, Commune makes a compelling case for living off the grid, at least for a little while.

The twentieth anniversary restoration is screening July 11–17 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Q&As with Berman on July 11 at 7:00 with a live performance by Sharp, on July 12 at 7:00 with Taylor, and on July 13 at 4:00; on July 17 at 7:00.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LIVING IN A FISHBOWL: BERLINDIA! AT THE TANK

A family undergoes strange, unexpected changes in the unpredictable world of Berlindia! (photo by Maria Baranova)

BERLINDIA!
The Tank
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Monday through July 27, $28-$53
thetanknyc.org

There was an infectious buzz at the Tank on July 7, opening night of the world premiere of Daniel Holzman’s surreal fantasia, Berlindia! It felt like we were all fortunate to have gotten past the velvet ropes and into a hot club, full of lively chatter and bodies moving about as if a techno dance party was about to break out, while overflow audience members sat on cushions up and down the aisle. And indeed, a kind of dance party did break out, for sixty exhilarating, hilarious, and playfully perplexing minutes.

“Do you think it’s cruel to own fish?” nose-picking eight-year-old Burger (Rosalie Neal) asks her mother (Rita Wolf). It’s more than just an innocent question but sets the stage for a wildly unpredictable show about busting out of expectations and challenging the status quo — and in this case, it’s the older generation leading the revolt.

Twenty years later, Mother has suddenly and unexpectedly taken off from their South San Francisco home for a mysterious new land called Berlindia! to immerse herself in the illegal Surf-Sun-Techno-BitchDrop-CoreCow-GrauStraßeM6-Percolan scene, which upsets Burger and her younger brother, Fuck (Arjun Biju), which he changed from the somewhat bulkier Jacob Morowitz Shpeigelman Needlework Groschheimer. “A name should be a symbol of individuality,” he says.

Meanwhile, their father (Pete Simpson) is in New York City to visit holocaust museums. “I love watching blonde women from the South cry,” he explains.

Burger and Fuck decide to track down their mother in Berlindia to find out what’s going on with her. On one of the flights, Burger is sitting behind her elementary school art teacher, Ms. M (Susannah Millonzi), who is also heavy into Surf-Sun-Techno-BitchDrop-CoreCow-GrauStraßeM6-Percolan. Ms. M tells Burger, “They say night and day don’t exist there. They say they don’t believe in it. They say they don’t believe in anything. They say everything there is cheap except water. They say they imported a piece of ozone from Antarctica to be the ceiling, which you can’t even see from the ground. They say the bouncer is half man half dog, like an Egyptian god. They say it’s two hundred degrees in a heating system no one knows the name of. They say there’s a room where you can see Chloë Sevigny fist an entire government. They say that once there was a void, and then there was a light, and then there were the plants and the oceans, and the insects, and then there was Berlindia, and then there was everything else.” That speech just about sums up the play.

Along the way, Burger and Fuck encounter a series of oddball characters, including Sexy Flight Attendant, Seven Foot Tall Swedish Woman, Asymmetrical Haircut Man, a Bouncer, Andre 3000, and a Blonde Woman from the South Named Dolly, and meet their mother’s twin brother, Uncle Mother (Mike Iveson), who is also living and thriving in Berlindia.

Berlindia! features an excellent ensemble cast at the Tank (photo by Maria Baranova)

On the surface, Berlindia! might seem like a fun but weird expanded episode of the SNL skit “Sprockets,” in which Mike Myers starred as Dieter, host of a West German talk show and dance party. But it’s much more than that; it’s about one’s identity, about what home means, about who our family is. We live in a world that is changing so fast that if you blink, you won’t know what you’ve missed, what has passed you by.

It’s also about different types of connection. Speaking in the third person, which happens often throughout the play, Burger says, “When Burger was ten years old Fuck bit her so hard that a piece of his consciousness was imbedded in her arm. Ever since then, they have been able to communicate telepathically on another plane of existence.” Dad does not resent his wife’s departure; he says to his kids, “I love your mom more than anything in the world. Why wouldn’t I want her to find some strange favorite thing? In some strange city. With some strange name.” Because cities and countries have been inexplicably moving around the globe, it takes six planes for Burger and Fuck to travel from South San Francisco to Berlindia, having to make a series of connections in order to see their mother.

At its heart, the show explores our connection with the past, with how our childhood led to becoming who we are as adults. At one point, Burger is muttering to herself; when Fuck asks what she’s doing, Burger responds, “I’m reassessing the past.” Later, when Burger is worried what will happen if and when they locate their mother, she says to her brother, “I’m scared we’ll find her. And she’ll be different. And it’ll ruin the entire past forever. Forever ever.” Fuck offers, “But what if it’s fun? What if she’s happy? What if it’s right? So don’t be scared. Or do. That’s fine. But don’t only be scared.” Burger also reassesses the past when she is with Ms. M, who is not quite how she remembers her; when they are about to land in Berlindia, Ms. M scoffs at Burger, “Good luck getting in, normie!”

The play is directed with controlled chaos by Noah Latty (Kinderkrankenhaus), where just about anything can happen in its own brand of anarchy, occasionally meandering a bit too much. Colleen Murray’s set morphs from a plain room with a kitchen table, chairs, a black-and-white tiled floor, and a flower curtain to a dark club with flashing, multicolored lights while the sound shifts from morning birds cooing to loud techno. (The lighting is by Marika Kent, with sound design by Chris Darbassie.) Sam DeBell’s costumes match the eccentric narrative. Even the script is a hoot, filled with adorable drawings of planes, soft cheese, chains, and a goldfish.

The ensemble cast looks like it could not be having more fun, featuring an endearing Neal (Holzman’s Adelia, or the Nose Play), a gentle Biju (White Bitches in Delhi), a sweet-natured Wolf (A Delicate Balance, Out of Time), a charming Simpson resembling Chevy Chase (Is This a Room, The Wind and the Rain), and a riotous Millonzi (The Crucible, New York Animals) in multiple roles.

“I started writing Berlindia! in 2019 as a tribute to my family and the way they always figure out how to be fine, no matter how absurd things get,” Holzman (Middle School Play) wrote last year. “Since then, the world has only gotten more and more absurd and we’ve faced more and more things that are so far from fine. But if anything, I think this is a play about the importance of true beautiful ambivalence. Two things can be true at once. The darker things get, the more important it is to hold on to that.”

When deciding whether to find their mother, Fuck tells Burger, “I have absolutely no way of knowing how to feel,” like he’s a fish trapped in a bowl.

As Berlindia! makes clear, it’s all fine in these changing times.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HITS AND MISSES: MIKE FORNATALE’S 1970 BIRTHDAY SHOW AT THE CUTTING ROOM

MURDERERS’ ROW PRESENTS MIKE FORNATALE’S 1970 SHOW
The Cutting Room
44 East 32nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Thursday, July 10, $27.83, 7:00
212-691-1900
thecuttingroomnyc.com

When he turned sixty-four in 2018, singer, guitarist, and producer Mike Fornatale put together a special show consisting of songs from 1964 — not just famous tracks but deep cuts and B-sides he dug. “I decided a few years ago that, starting with 1964 — the year I started loving music again after walking away from it, while still in kindergarten, during the Fabian/Avalon/Rydell era (something I still haven’t forgiven Philadelphia for) — I was going to assemble a group of stalwart musicians and singers every year and do a show consisting of great songs from the corresponding year,” he said in 2024. “We had a blast with 1964, ’65, ’66, ’67, and ’68. I’m going to do this every year for as long as I can still stand up. Hey! I can still stand up!”

On July 10, Fornatale, who has performed with the Left Banke, the Monks, Moby Grape, the Washington Squares, and Losers’ Lounge, will be at the Cutting Room to celebrate his seventy-first birthday by playing songs from 1970 — they are one year off because of Covid. Among the stalwart musicians and singers joining him, a revolving group he calls Murderers’ Row, are Lauren Agnelli, Russ Alderson, Emilie Bienne, Rembert Block, Tom Clark, Tommy DeVito, Lizzie Edwards, Pam Fleming, Dave Foster, Jeff Hudgins, J. J. Jordan, Stephanie Marie, David Milone, Charly Roth, Tom Shad, Carlton J. Smith, Erica Smith, Peter Stuart Kohman, Tommy Von Voigt, Jahn Xavier, Tony “Z” Zajkowsky, and Jim Allen. Fornatale compiles the setlist and decides who will play what; don’t necessarily expect to hear the biggest songs of the year, like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” and “American Woman,” but then again, who knows?

Murderers’ Row veteran Jim Allen of the Lazy Lions and the Ramblin’ Kind told twi-ny, “It’s always a blast and an honor to be among such a powerful assemblage of players and singers, reveling in the great anthems and obscurities of the past.”

Fornatale is packing so much in that he will be hosting the second half later this fall. But as he promises, “Hits! Misses! Things you’ve never heard before! And just some other stuff that I really like! How many songs? TONS OF ’EM!! Don’t worry! You’ll be sitting down!”

He also doesn’t refer to these shows as a series; he prefers crusade.

“We’re going to do it every year. I hope I can make it at least as far as, oh, I don’t know, eighty-six? Eighty-seven?” he recently posted on Instagram. “I want to make DeVito play the tympani on ‘Life in a Northern Town.’”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SOMETHING NEW: CARL HOLDER’S OUT OF ORDER IN EAST VILLAGE BASEMENT

Carl Holder shares his hopes and dreams, his successes and failures in Out of Order (photo by Rebecca J Michelson)

OUT OF ORDER
East Village Basement
321 East Ninth St. between First & Second Aves.
Thursday – Tuesday through July 30, $30-$60
www.outofordertheshow.com
www.carlholder.com

“When was the last time you felt something new?” Carl Holder asks in the New York City premiere of his solo participatory Out of Order, which opened tonight for a three-week run at the appropriately named East Village Basement on Ninth St.

I now have the answer: Holder’s frantic and frenetic show.

Despite penning plays for twenty years and winning several awards and grants, upon turning forty the Gainesville-born, Brooklyn-based Holder found himself with a bad case of writer’s block. Worried he had reached the end of the road, he came up with Out of Order, a one-man production that challenges him to perform prompts from three dozen index cards, tossed into a bowl in random order, many involving audience participation. The only element that is the same for each presentation is the first card, which falls from a box on the ceiling and is read by an audience member, laying out the ground rules, including the following: “Everything you are about to see is real. If Carl doesn’t complete every task tonight, he will quit theater forever.” He’s not kidding.

The evening actually begins with the audience gathering downstairs, filling small bags of free popcorn from a cart in the center of the room and purchasing beer, wine, or seltzer from the bar in the far corner, operated by Simon Henriques, who will soon serve as “referee,” running the sound and lighting, strumming a ukulele, and keeping track of the time.

Audience members are encouraged to take and post their own photos at one point of unique solo show at East Village Basement (photo by Rebecca J Michelson)

Wearing a blue track suit and off-white sneakers, Holder races around the room, selecting a card from a big glass bowl in the middle, reading it out loud, and then acting it out, sometimes using a whiteboard, a lone chair, and/or an audience member. On the floor are such words and phrases as “You,” “Me,” “RIP,” and “Climax.” For “Three questions,” he says “How long do I have to wait?” three very different ways, each with its own meaning. For “Show your bank statement,” he does exactly that, projecting his bank statement on a wall and going over it in detail, talking about how much he has in his account, what he has spent money on, and how he might not be able to make his next rent payment by the due date. For “Teach them how to write a play,” he outlines on the board the five key ingredients of a play: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Climax, and Falling Action or Denouement. There are also separate cards for each element, allowing him to give a mini-theater class. Among the other prompts are “How much do you like being in control?,” “Can this be enough?,” and “Be brave.” While not every prompt works, the vast majority do.

There are several cards that relate the complex story of Ass, Chicken, and Peacock on Farmer Farmer’s Farm, involving ego, corporatization, self-awareness, drinking, and dancing; as with “Teach them how to write a play,” the order in which they’re told impacts the narrative, particularly when it comes to how a carrot is used, not just as food, but as creative incentive. For “Try again,” Holder explains, “This whole thing really started because I couldn’t write a play. And I guess I still can’t. But I found I could write down the things I couldn’t stop thinking to myself, the thoughts that were getting in the way of a play. Card by card. And somehow, more than anything I’ve tried to make for the last twenty years, doing this actually feels like being an animal.”

The night I went, the first prompt was about the bank statement, so that led to a focus that might change if, for example, “Mortality” or “Open this later” was selected instead. Thus, we knew from the start what serious financial shape Holder is currently in and how important this play is to his daily existence. It also makes us think about our own fiscal solvency, although so many of the prompts make us look at our unique personal situations.

I was chosen for one of the final cards, “Review the possibilities,” in which I read sixteen statements about how Holder’s life might go, and he decided which might happen and which should be tossed in the trash as a pipe dream. As I announced what was written on each card, I thought about how it related to my own life, and I imagine that must have been the case with just about everyone in the audience. Who hasn’t considered such possibilities as “I will have the money I need to live comfortably” or “I will mend ties with my family”?

Audience interaction is central to Carl Holder’s Out of Order (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

And therein lies why Out of Order, previously staged in living rooms, a theater lobby, a public park, and a bird sanctuary and designed by Adam Wyron and Obie-winning director Skylar Fox, is such a success, whether Holder realizes or not. At each performance, forty or so strangers are brought together in a small room, partake of food and drink, and interact with Holder and other audience members for ninety nearly breathless minutes as Holder shares his hopes and dreams with us, almost painfully realistically, and we do the same with him (if we so desire).

He is eminently likable; we immediately want him to do well. And he is very funny and quick on his feet, with sharp improvisatory skills. I was sitting at the far end of my row and had put my popcorn, wineglass, and phone on the shelf next to me. When Holder ran over there to act out a card, he first took my bag of popcorn and started casually eating from it. It’s important to note that he does not force anyone to do anything, but as one of the prompts announces, “Content warning: audience participation.”

For “The forgotten intro,” Holder even sings, summing up life in a few stanzas: “We are all born once and then we die / along the way we try some things / some are good some are bad some are great / most are forgettable . . . / but every so often a moment comes along / that’s a little bit different than all of the other moments / . . . you get to have this one special moment / and the other special moments where you’re not dead yet / and sometimes people gather around and they want to wish you well / and tell you something special, something very special / and this is one of those moments and that something very special is . . .”

I’m not about to give away what that something very special is here, since, in the show, just like in life, that’s for you to discover. But we should all be thankful that Holder has shared his special moments with us.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

INDEPENDENCE DAY AT FRAUNCES TAVERN: THE PATH TO LIBERTY

Henry Hintermeister, Retreat to Victory, oil on canvas (gift of Charles Lauriston Livingston, Jr. / courtesy of Fraunces Tavern Museum)

Who: Scott Dwyer, Lisa Goulet, Peter Hein, Seth Kaller, Charles (Chuck) Schwam, Lloyd S. Kramer, Louise M. Joy, George Bruton Delaney, Moses L. Delaney, Richard Sylla, more
What: Independence Day open house and “The 1700s: The Path to Liberty” symposium
Where: Fraunces Tavern Museum, 54 Pearl St.
When: Friday, July 4, $1 in person, free virtually, 1:00 – 5:30
Why: The Lower Manhattan Historical Association’s It Happened Here turns to the founding of America on July 4 with an Independence Day open house and afternoon symposium at Fraunces Tavern Museum, home to a banquet on June 18, 1776, honoring General George Washington’s military victories. “The 1700s: The Path to Liberty,” which can be attended in person or online, features members of the Sons of the Revolution, the American Friends of Lafayette, history professors, collections managers, military veterans, descendants of James Armistead Lafayette, and others. Visitors can explore such exhibitions as “Path to Liberty: The Emergence of a Nation,” “Fraunces Tavern: Over 300 Years of Building History,” and “Lafayette: A Hero’s Return” before attending the symposium prelude “Liss and the Culper Spy Ring in Historic Lower Manhattan” at 1:00, followed at 1:30 by the symposium itself.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE GREAT DEBATE: FEMINISM ON TRIAL AT MCC

Emmanuelle Mattana wrote and stars in Trophy Boys at MCC (photo by Valerie Terranova)

TROPHY BOYS
Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater
Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space
511 West Fifty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through August 3, $64-$114
mcctheater.org

The Breakfast Club meets John Proctor Is the Villain in the US premiere of Emmanuelle Mattana’s Trophy Boys at MCC.

The seventy-minute play takes place in approximate real time as four men from the private boys school Imperium are prepping for a debate against their sister private school, St. Gratia. Owen (Mattana) is a wonk who sees a clear path for himself to become president of the United States. Jared (Louisa Jacobson) is an artist who loves women, and repeatedly reminds everyone of that. Scott (Esco Jouléy) is an athlete who randomly shows off his physical prowess. And David (Terry Hu), the quietest of the team, is determined to become a powerful businessman.

All four roles are portrayed by actors who identify as either female, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary, adding a complicated layer to the argument the high school seniors are given for the debate: “Feminism has failed women — affirmative.”

The humanities classroom is filled with posters depicting famous women, some with one-word descriptions, among them Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Frida Kahlo, Yoko Ono, Gloria Steinem, Michelle Obama (Empathy), Mother Teresa (Compassion), Katherine Johnson (Hard Work), and Harriet Tubman (Fearlessness). “I am at my most inspired when surrounded by inspiring women,” David says, then calls out excitedly, “Malala!!!” upon seeing a framed picture of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.

The cocky boys, who have had an undefeated season thus far, have one hour to assemble their argument, with Owen putting himself in charge, telling the others, “Trust me. When have I let you down? International politics round you relied on me to know all about the complexities of Pyongyang’s internal power struggle. Technology round I knew all about the ethics of AI in sex dolls. Sports round I knew all the football players with charges of assault. And I don’t even like sports. It’s the same here. I’m on an academic scholarship. I’m smart. Trust me.”

As they proceed, Scott worries about their being accused of mansplaining. Jared doesn’t want to get canceled for accidentally saying something that might be offensive and upset his girlfriend. David complains that he is screwed up because his mother spent more time on the board of eight multinational corporations rather than breast-feeding him. And Owen is not about to let anything get in the way of his political career.

They discuss intersectionalism, pole dancing, the male gaze, the correct word for a woman’s nether region, periods, boobs, women CEOs, the divine feminism, and tradwives, taking potshots at each other’s manhood as if they were in a locker room, complete with a dose of homophobia. Taking notes on the whiteboard, Owen doesn’t realize when he has drawn both a penis and a vagina/vulva.

But when the boys discover that one of them has been accused of sexual assault by a St. Gratia debater, their attitudes about power, gender, and feminism itself begin to morph as they turn on one another, unwilling to jeopardize their futures even as they insist that all women should be believed.

Jared (Louisa Jacobson), Owen (Emmanuelle Mattana), Scott (Esco Jouléy), and David (Terry Hu) have their work cut out for them as final debate nears (photo by Valerie Terranova)

Mattana, who wrote the play when she was twenty-one, quit competitive high school debating “to become an artist and hang out with other queer weirdos who helped me imagine a braver, more radical future.” In the program, she points out, “The very nature of the endeavour — turning argument into sport while believing yourself the smartest in any room — required you fervently argue things you didn’t know enough about or even necessarily believe. Logic was a game, something to be won or lost, and words and arguments were things you could twist at your own whim. If you were articulate and commanding enough you could speak over anyone, or for anyone. It was no wonder this ethos seeped so dangerously into other parts of these boys’ lives. . . . Gender is learnt, which means it is also taught. No more so than to those young men I knew from debate. With this brand of masculinity inhabited onstage by non-cis male bodies, my hope is that it can be revealed for what it truly is — a comical, absurd, and ultimately disturbing performance.”

Trophy Boys is all those things and more. The play is skillfully directed by Danya Taymor, who won a Tony for The Outsiders and was nominated for John Proctor Is the Villain, both of which also deal with toxic masculinity and gender; she and movement director Tilly Evans-Krueger employ full use of Matt Saunders’s realistic set, adroitly lit by Cha See. But Mattana, in their playwriting debut — they have previously appeared in such television series as Mustangs FC and Videoland and cowrote and starred in the feature film Fwends — isn’t about to make anything easy for the audience, providing no simple answers while avoiding genre clichés. In one of the most potent scenes, the four actors strip out of Márion Talán de la Rosa’s school uniform costumes down to their skivvies, a revealing moment that posits that body type does not define gender.

There is plenty of mansplaining, which gets complicated since it’s being delivered by non-cis-male performers, building in an inherent humor and ridiculousness. “Our case has to be more feminist than the pro-feminist side. We believe feminism has failed women from the perspective that we are actually more feminist than the feminists,” Owen declares. David offers, “It’s because they hate us. They hate men. That’s why feminism has really failed. It’s not interested in helping women, it’s interested in denigrating men.” Scott says, “Everyone’s confused about whether Emily Ratajkowski showing her ass on Instagram is feminist or not,” to which Jared, who, as a reminder, really loves women, replies, “Fuck, she’s hot.”

Hu (Never Have I Ever), Jacobson (Lunch Bunch), Jouléy (Merry Me, Wolf Play), and Mattana form a tight-knit, believable quartet of students in a classroom, a setting used for such other recent hard-hitting plays as Donja R. Love’s soft, Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize—winning English, and Dave Harris’s Exception to the Rule. They are like a sports team getting ready for the big game, each with their own responsibility, to themselves as well as their team.

Occasionally, the characters, particularly Owen, recognize that the audience is present, making direct gestures at us, but I found those instances perplexing, not sure whether we were supposed to be the crowd watching the eventual debate or the MCC audience, and they seemed to be unnecessary breaks in the fourth wall.

Otherwise, Trophy Boys is a rousing and inventive twenty-first-century battle of the sexes — which is, I imagine, an out-of-date phrase, but please don’t cancel me — that will have you gasping, laughing, and whooping it up, but possibly not always in unison with the rest of the audience.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]