twi-ny recommended events

BILL CHATS

Oskar Eustis and Bill T. Jones will talk about their roles as artistic directors on February 11 at NYLA

Who: Bill T. Jones and Oskar Eustis
What: Bill Chats
Where: New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves., 212-924-0077
When: Monday, February 11, $8-$10, 7:00
Why: New York Live Arts artistic director Bill T. Jones sits down with Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis for the next edition of his “Bill Chats” series, taking place February 11 at 7:00. Jones, an award-winning choreographer — among his many prizes are the Tony, the Obie, the 2013 National Medal of Arts, the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors, and the 1994 MacArthur Genius Award — and Eustis, who directed the controversial 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar that turned the Roman leader into Donald Trump, will discuss the current sociopolitical climate and how it impacts their decisions as artistic directors.

PLS. REPLY BOOK LAUNCH

Rochelle Feinstein will celebrate the publication of her new book with a celebration at the Block Gallery (courtesy Ugly Duckling Presse)

Who: Rochelle Feinstein and Didier William
What: Book launch and discussion
Where: AIM: Artist in the Marketplace, the Block Gallery, 80 White St., second floor
When: Monday, February 11, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Why: Bronx native Rochelle Feinstein will celebrate the launch of her new book, Pls. Reply (Ugly Duckling Presse / Bronx Museum of the Arts / Stellar Projects, March 1, $22), with a special event at AIM’s new space in the Block Gallery on February 11. The trade paperback is a collection of her writings along with sixteen full-color book plates, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa, and comes out in conjunction with her current exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, “Rochelle Feinstein: Image of an Image,” which continues through March 3 and was curated by Bessa. At the Block Gallery, the seventy-one-year-old Feinstein, a tenured Yale professor, will talk with Haitian visual artist and AIM alumnus Didier William; beer and wine will be served, and Pls. Reply will be available at a discount.

CHOIR BOY

Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope) pursues his singing dreams in Choir Boy (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2018)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 24, $79-$169
choirboybroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Oscar-winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Broadway debut, Choir Boy, offers a new twist on a classic dramatic trope: life at an all-male boarding school. But Charles R. Drew Prep School is not quite like the schools depicted in such well-regarded films as Rushmore, Dead Poets Society, Tom Brown’s School Days, Heaven Help Us, or If… The students and the teachers at Drew are all men of color. “My daddy say they used to let you get away with a lil bit because they know how hard it is to be a black man out there,” student Bobby Marrow (J. Quinton Johnson) tells fellow student David Heard (Caleb Eberhardt). “Now, everything got to be watched, gotta be careful, gotta be cordial. Don’t say nothing, don’t say that word, don’t look like that, this shit Pandemic.” Bobby, whose uncle is Headmaster Marrow (Chuck Cooper), is one of several young men in the school’s prestigious choir, along with Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope), Junior Davis (Nicholas L. Ashe), Anthony Justin “AJ” James (John Clay III), and David. The show opens with Pharus singing the school song, a much-coveted opportunity, but he takes an unfortunate pause when he is secretly harassed by Bobby, who questions Pharus’s sexual orientation. Afterward, in explaining why he stopped but without snitching on Bobby, Pharus asks the headmaster, “Would you rather be feared or respected?” which becomes an underlying theme of the play as the boys deal with issues of race, gender, homophobia, family, class, and education.

Bobby Marrow (J. Quinton Johnson) and Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope) are at odds in boarding-school drama (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2018)

The play suffers dramatically upon the arrival of Mr. Pendleton, a former teacher at the school who has been brought back by the headmaster for inexplicable reasons, unless it is merely to force racial conflict, as Pendleton is white and, oddly, played by the ubiquitous Austin Pendleton, blurring the line between theater and real life in an obtrusive way. The scenes with Mr. Pendleton, who uses racist cracks to supposedly educate the kids, bring the show to a screeching halt and are best forgotten as the story proceeds. Fortunately, there is much to enjoy in the rest of the Manhattan Theater Club production, which has been extended at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 24.

Pope (Ain’t Too Proud, Invisible Thread) makes a dazzling Broadway debut as Pharus, a proud, flawed, young gay man who refuses to muzzle himself while often disregarding the feelings of others; it’s an electrifying performance of a role given complex subtleties by McCraney, who cowrote the Oscar-winning Moonlight with Barry Jenkins. The supporting cast portraying the other teens are terrific as well, including Clay III (Encores’ Grand Hotel) as AJ, Pharus’s roommate, who is sensitive to his friend’s situation; Johnson (Hamilton) as the troubled Bobby, who is dealing with his mother’s death; Eberhardt (Is God Is) as David, who is hiding his own secrets; and Ashe (Kill Floor) as Junior, a follower who makes questionable decisions. They might have their share of disagreements, but when they sing such spirituals as “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” and “Rockin in Jerusalem” they show just what they can accomplish together. (Alas, “There’s a Rainbow ’round My Shoulder” feels a bit too obvious and heavy-handed.) Tony winner Cooper (The Life) is splendidly august as the headmaster, who only gets involved when truly necessary, understanding that the students grow when they figure things out for themselves, even if that’s sometimes painful. Thoughtfully directed by Trip Cullman (Lobby Hero, Six Degrees of Separation), Choir Boy is ultimately about tolerance, about the basic human dignity everyone deserves, while for the most part steering clear of grand statements and politically correct sentimentality.

MoMA PRESENTS YERVANT AND ANGELA RICCI LUCCHI’S ANGELA’S DIARIES

Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s final collaboration is making its US premiere at MoMA

I DIARI DI ANGELA (ANGELA’S DIARIES) (Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, 2018)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
February 7–13
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

In February 2009, MoMA hosted a retrospective of the work of Italian visual artists Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi. Ten years later, MoMA is presenting the US premiere of their final film, I Diari di Angela (“Angela’s Diaries”), which Gianikian completed following the death of his longtime partner; Lucchi died in February 2018 at the age of seventy-six. The film, running through February 13, is an homage to both their private and professional life together, incorporating archival footage with scenes they shot during their travels to Moscow, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other locales, often tied to recent war and political and climate turmoil, in addition to home movies of Lucchi cooking and gardening. Throughout the film, Gianikian reads random pages from Lucchi’s extensive diaries, his aged fingers turning the pages filled with her attractive handwriting and drawings. “This is my memory of Angela, of our life. I reread these notebooks and discover others I didn’t know about,” Gianikian explains in his director’s statement. “Reexamining all the notebooks of Angela’s infinite Diary and the backward look of our private films, which accompanied our research. My desperate attempt to bring her back to my side, to bring her back to life, the continuation of our work as goal, as mission, through her notebooks and drawings, a sort of map for action in the present, containing its guiding principles and envisaging its continuation. Angela and I have prepared new and important projects to carry out. The promise, the oath, to continue the work.”

Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian show off their Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale

It is often difficult to tell which footage is old and which is new, as the pair hand-tinted much of the archival material and eschewed the latest high-def technology for the newer shots, layering together the look of the past and the present. Early on, Lucchi describes one of their canvases, which includes watercolor images and handwritten text: “I want to use my work to express my indignation, our indignation. This is like our manifesto. It took shape during a period of great despair for today’s world, with so much upheaval. So, I wrote that our world is not political, is not aesthetic, is not pedagogical, is not progressive, is not cooperative, is not ethical, is not consistent. Above all, it’s the contemporary world, it’s contemporaneity. And I think many artists, nowadays, focus more on getting into the market and making money. We began, and go on, working out of passion. And I say that if other artists focused a bit more on these things, then maybe the world would be less wretched.” Despite such dire pronouncements, the film is a soft, touching, poetic work, told in their trademark avant-garde narrative style. Men dangerously saw wood. Gianikian and Lucchi (Dal Polo all’Equatore; Oh! uomo; Pays barbare) visit a friend’s studio. They go through canisters of old, decaying film. They tell a serious story about a terrible accident Gianikian suffered. But through it all, even with the slow pace, they display a passion for life, for justice, for love. It’s a one-of-a-kind documentary, a work that eventually sweeps you up into its welcoming atmosphere, a fitting finale for a one-of-a-kind team.

RACE, SEX & CINEMA — THE WORLD OF MARLON RIGGS: MOONLIGHT / AFFIRMATIONS

Chiron (Alex Hibbert) looks out at a hard future in Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winning Moonlight

MOONLIGHT (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, February 9, 7:00
Series runs February 6-14
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
moonlight-movie.com

BAM is paying tribute to controversial and innovative Texas-born filmmaker Marlon Riggs in conjunction with the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death with “Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs.” Riggs, who was gay and black, died in April 1994 at the age of thirty-seven from AIDS complications, leaving behind an important legacy of films, poetry, and essays. Many of his works had major impacts on the next generation of African American writers and directors, as evidenced by this program. On February 9, the series pairs Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, which was nominated for eight Oscars and won three (Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney), with Riggs’s ten-minute 1990 short, Affirmations, about the dreams and desires of gay black men. In Moonlight, Jenkins tells the powerful and moving story of Chiron, a shy, troubled boy growing up in Liberty City, Florida, in three chapters as Chiron goes from a young boy (Little, played by Alex Hibbert) to a teenager (Chiron, played by Ashton Sanders) to a twenty-seven-year-old man (Black, played by Trevante Rhodes). The semiautobiographical film is based on playwright and actor McCraney’s In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue and Jenkins’s own experiences; both men are from Liberty City but did not know each other there. In the first section, Little is chased by bullies and runs into an abandoned building, where he is found by Juan (Ali), a drug dealer who brings him home to his girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe). They become a kind of surrogate family, as Little’s mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), is a crack addict who will do just about anything for her next score. Little also finds solace in his friendship with Kevin (Jaden Piner, later played by Jharrel Jerome and André Holland). In the second chapter, Chiron is taunted and bullied by Terrel (Patrick Decile) while trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation. In the third section, the passage of time reveals how much has changed, although the film turns overly melodramatic at the end.

Karen Everett’s I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs is part of Riggs tribute at BAM

Taking its inspiration from the source material, Moonlight is beautifully photographed by James Laxton, who has previously shot Medicine for Melancholy and Jenkins’s 2003 shorts, My Josephine and Little Brown Boy, and 2011 “Remigration” episode of Futurestates, bathing the film in lush blues. Jenkins’s subtly paced style is accompanied by a gorgeous classical-inspired score by Nicholas Britell (The Big Short). Moonlight is anchored by superb performances by Emmy nominee Ali (House of Cards, Hidden Figures) as the cool and caring Juan; Harris (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, 28 Days Later) as the drug-addicted Paula, who has lost control of her life; Monáe (Hidden Figures, The Electric Lady) as the sweet and understanding Teresa; and Sanders (The Retrieval) as the in-between Chiron, who feels overwhelmed by all the maelstrom swirling around him. Moonlight and Affirmations are screening at BAM February 9 at 7:00; “Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs” runs February 6-14 and includes such other evenings as Riggs’s Tongues Untied and Anthem with Isaac Julien’s The Attendant; a fifteenth-anniversary screening of Rodney Evans’s Brother to Brother, followed by a Q&A with Evans; Su Friedrich’s Hide and Seek and Cheryl Dunye’s Janine; and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s The Complete Electronic Diaries, Peter Rose’s The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough, and Jeanne C. Finley’s I Saw Jesus in a Tortilla.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4717: THE YEAR OF THE PIG

year of the pig

Sara D. Roosevelt Park and other locations
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
February 5-28
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Pig, or, more specifically, the Earth Pig, this month with special events all over town. People born in the Year of the Pig are realistic, hardworking, social, and enthusiastic. Below are some of the highlights happening here in the five boroughs during the next several weeks of Chinese New Year.

Tuesday, February 5
New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Grand Street at Chrystie St., free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Thursday, February 7
MOCATalks: History of the Lion Dance, with Stephen Gong, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $15, 6:30

Saturday, February 9
Lunar New Year Celebration, with family-friendly arts and crafts, lion dance, paper-cutting workshop, zodiac face painting (for an additional fee), plant sale, and live performances, Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St., free, 12 noon – 4:00

Lunar New Year, with music and dance, martial arts, theater, more, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St., free, 2:00 – 3:15

Sunday, February 10
Chinese New Year Family Festival, with lion dances, dumpling and paper-lantern workshops, percussion play, more, China Institute, 40 Rector St., adults $20, children $5, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Thursday, February 14 & 28
MOCAKIDS: Lunar New Year Storytime!, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $5, 3:30

Saturday, February 16
Lunar New Year Family Festival, with “Sounds of the New Year” featuring the pipa and the gong, “Whirling, Twirling Ribbons,” dance performances, food, storytelling, face painting, zodiac arts and crafts, more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $12, 10:00 – 1:00 and 2:00 – 5:00

Sunday, February 17
Twentieth annual New York City Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations, Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park, free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

ANGIE THOMAS: ON THE COME UP

Angie Thomas will be at Symphony Space on February 6 for the launch of her second novel, On the Come Up (photo by Anissa Hidouk)

Who: Angie Thomas, radio host Angela Yee, actress Dominique Fishback
What: Book talk, Q&A, signing, live performance
Where: Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway at 95th St., 212-864-5400
When: Wednesday, February 6, $10-$45, 6:30
Why: In a different side of my life, I have the privilege of working on many wonderful book projects for kids of all ages. Two years ago, it was absolutely thrilling to be part of the publisher’s team on The Hate U Give, the debut novel by Angie Thomas that has spent one hundred weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was turned into a movie by 20th Century Fox. More recently it’s been thoroughly exciting to work on Thomas’s second book, On the Come Up (HarperCollins Children’s Books, $18.99), which goes on sale on Tuesday, February 5. The Jackson, Mississippi, native will celebrate the publication with a special event at Symphony Space’s Peter Jay Sharp Theatre the next night, February 6, featuring Thomas in conversation with radio host Angela Yee, an audience Q&A, and a book signing; in addition, actress Dominique Fishback (The Deuce), who portrayed Kenya in The Hate U Give, will perform an excerpt from the novel, which is about an aspiring teenage rapper. Tickets are $30 to $40 and include a copy of On the Come Up; a limited number of companion tickets are available for $10 (without the novel).