twi-ny recommended events

45th ANNUAL NEW YEAR’S DAY MARATHON BENEFIT READING

Annual Poetry Project marathon is highlight of New Year’s Day (photo by Ted Roeder)

Who: The Poetry Project
What: Forty-fifth annual New Year’s Day Marathon Reading
Where: The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, 131 East Tenth St., 212-674-0910
When: Monday, January 1, $20-$25, 2:00 pm
Why: More than 150 writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and other artists will take the podium in this annual benefit for the Poetry Project, which “promotes, fosters, and inspires the reading and writing of contemporary poetry by (a) presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences, (b) increasing public recognition, awareness, and appreciation of poetry and other arts, (c) providing a community setting in which poets and artists can exchange ideas and information, and (d) encouraging the participation and development of new poets from a broad range of styles.” This year’s forty-fifth annual marathon boasts another fab lineup to welcome in the new year, including Andrea Abi-Karam, Ammiel Alcalay, Justin Allen, Julie Alsop, Ed Askew, J. Mae Barizo, Jim Behrle, Anselm Berrigan, Lee Ann Brown & Janice Lowe, Yoshiko Chuma, Lauren Clark, Todd Colby, John Coletti, Lydia Cortes, Brenda Coultas, Alex Cuff, r. erica doyle, Marcella Durand, Mel Elberg, Betsy Fagin, Avram Fefer, Jennifer Firestone, Kay Gabriel, Marwa Helal, Barbara Henning, Bob Holman, Sophia Hussain, Paolo Javier, Pierre Joris, Millie Kapp & Matt Shalzi, Vincent Katz, erica kaufman, Amy King, Sue Landers, Denizé Lauture, Rachel Levitsky, Matt Longabucco, Filip Marinovich, Douglas A. Martin, Andriniki Mattis, Caits Meissner, Carley Moore, Dave Morse, Sahar Muradi, Uche Nduka, Precious Okoyomon, Laura Ortman, Trace Peterson, Nicole Peyrafitte, Lorelei Ramirez, El Roy Red, Bob Rosenthal, Judah Rubin, John Rufo, Tom Savage, Purvi Shah, Jayson Smith, Sean D. Henry Smith, Pamela Sneed, Patricia Spears Jones, Max Steele, Sara Jane Stoner, Bridget Talone, Susie Timmons, Edwin Torres, Tony Towle, Cat Tyc, Aldrin Valdez, Anna Vitale, Morgan Vo, Asiya Wadud, Anne Waldman with Fast Speaking Music, Lewis Warsh, Jacqueline Waters, Candace Williams, Rachael Wilson, Matvei Yankelevich, the Double Yews, Don Yorty, Sparrow / Foamola, and many others.

WINTER PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS: AMERICAN REALNESS

Jack Ferver’s Everything Is Imaginable was one of the best shows of 2018 (photo by Maria Baranova)

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 4-13
americanrealness.com

Since 2010, Abrons Arts Center has presented American Realness, a multidisciplinary festival of dance, music, theater, discourse, literature, and more. The 2019 lineup features a stellar lineup of creators, including Marjani Forté-Saunders, Jack Ferver, nora chipaumire, Reggie Wilson, Julian F. May, Miguel Gutierrez, Gillian Walsh, and the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble staging works across four boroughs, at such venues as Performance Space New York, the Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, La MaMa, and Gibney. Below are only some of the highlights.

Moon Fate Sin, by Gillian Walsh, location and ticketing TBD, January 4-6

100% Pop / Shebeen Remix, by nora chipaumire, Jack, January 4-6 and 10-12, $25

Everything Is Imaginable, by Jack Ferver, New York Live Arts, January 7-12, $15-$25

The Bridge Called My Ass, by Miguel Gutierrez, Chocolate Factory Theater, January 8-19, $20

Folk Incest, by Juliana F. May, Abrons Arts Center, January 9-12, $21

WINTER PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS: UNDER THE RADAR

Eva von Schweinitz’s The Space between the Letters is part of Incoming! section of Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival (photo by Alejandro Fajardo)

UNDER THE RADAR
Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 3-13
publictheater.org

The Public Theater’s annual Under the Radar Festival invites adventurous theatergoers to experience cutting-edge, experimental theater and music from around the world. The 2019 iteration features works from twenty-one artists from nine countries, with most tickets costing a mere thirty bucks. Below are some of the highlights.

Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True, by Ifeoma Fafunwa, January 3, 5, 6, 7, Public Theater, Martinson Theater, $30

Frankenstein, by Manual Cinema, concept by Drew Dir, January 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, Public Theater, LuEsther Theater, $30

Minor Character, New Saloon adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, January 4-13, Public Theater, Martinson Theater, $30

BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE! The Penny Arcade Sex and Censorship Show, by Penny Arcade, January 3, 6, 10, 12, 13, Joe’s Pub, $35

Incoming! Macbeth in Stride, by Whitney White, Public Theater, Shiva Theater, $25

WINTER PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS: WINTER JAZZFEST NYC

Meshell Ndegeocello is artist-in-residence for 2019 Winter Jazzfest (photo by Charlie Gross)

WINTER JAZZFEST NYC
Multiple venues
January 4-12
www.winterjazzfest.com

Winter Jazzfest is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with special tributes, talks, listening sessions, and events supporting social justice. As always, it’s highlighted by amazing marathons, taking place January 5, 11, and 12 at such venues as LPR, the Bitter End, Subculture, Zinc, the Sheen Center, the Bowery Ballroom, and the Mercury Lounge. This year’s artist-in-residence is Meshell Ndegeocello. Below are only some of the highlights.

We Resist!, with Fandango at the Wall with Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, with special guests Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance, Samora Pinderhughes Transformations Suite, Word*Rock*Sword: A Musical Celebration of Women’s Lives featuring Toshi Reagon, Allison Miller, Ganessa James, and others, Le Poisson Rouge, January 6, $25, 7:00

The Bad Plus, Terence Blanchard featuring the E-Collective, Terri Lyne Carrington & Social Science, Le Poisson Rouge, January 7, $30-$35, 7:00

Medeski Martin & Wood, Alarm Will Sound, Brooklyn Steel, January 9, $55, 8:00

Meshell Ndegeocello Catalog — An Intimate Set, with Chris Bruce, Jebin Bruni, and Abraham Rounds, Nublu, January 10, $35-$45, 7:00

Winter Jazzfest Marathon, multiple artists at numerous venues, January 11-12, $50-$60 one day, $90-$105 both days, 6:00

SLAVE PLAY

Kaneisha (Teyonah Parris) and Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan) have an unusual relationship in Slave Play (photo by Joan Marcus)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 13, $79
www.nytw.org

Jeremy O. Harris’s intense Slave Play delves deep into a trio of dangerous sexual interactions defined by race, gender, and power in the Antebellum South as well as today. The story takes place in Virginia on the MacGregor Plantation, which is represented by a large image of the main house behind the audience that is reflected on the mirrored wall across the back of the stage on Clint Ramos’s narrow set, onto which various pieces of furniture are brought on through a doorway at the center and around the sides. The play opens with black slave Kaneisha (Teyonah Parris) sweeping the floor, twerking to Rihanna’s “Work,” when she is caught by her white overseer, Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan). “I ain’t never seen no / ‘negress’ / move like that there before!” Jim says. “Where’d you learn dat? / Thought they beat all the Africa outcha’ll fore we broughtcha up here to MacGregor’s.” Kaneisha responds, “Ya’ll did / try to tear it way from us. / The truth of our bodies? / The way they moved / Our bodies. / Told us it / was / devilish / Our bodies / told us that it won’t / fit / for civ’lized eyes.” Kaneisha expects to be whipped for her actions, but Jim, who tells Kaneisha to address him as “Mista Jim,” not “Massa,” becomes turned on by her instead.

Alana MacGregor (Annie McNamara) wants more than just music from Phillip (Sullivan Jones) in Jeremy O. Harris play (photo by Joan Marcus)

After they depart the stage, a four-poster bed is wheeled on with Alana MacGregor (Annie McNamara), the plantation owner’s wife, who calls for her “mulatto” house servant, Phillip (Sullivan Jones), to play his violin for her. While he wants to play Beethoven, she condescendingly insists on hearing “some of your music. A negro spiritual!” Soon she is appealing for more than just music. The third couple arrives next, Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer), a white indentured servant, and Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood), his black boss. “I’s in charge. / But / that’s what makes you a funny white man. / Ha!” Gary tells him. “Ain’t used to seein’ them allow / no n—a to run they show. / You’s a funny white man.” They end up fighting to Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s “Multi-Love,” until clothes start coming off. With the later addition of facilitators Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio) and Teá (Chalia La Tour), the second act offers a surprising twist that puts the actions of the first act into a compelling contemporary context, but to say anything further would be doing the play a disservice.

Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood) and Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer) turn the power dynamic inside out in Slave Play at NYTW (photo by Joan Marcus)

Inspired by such films as Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage and Richard Fleischer’s Mandingo, such writings as Hortense J. Spillers’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book and José Esteban Muñoz’s Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position, and songs by Rihanna, Slave Play is a hard-hitting look at America’s shameful past, an investigation into slavery, racism, white privilege, and political correctness that will have you laughing nervously as you shift uncomfortably in your seat, the plantation mind-set still all-too-real. Divided into three sections, “Work,” “Process,” and “Exorcise,” the two-hour intermissionless production explores the things we say and don’t say, the demands we make on our partners as well as ourselves. Harris — who also examines what he refers to as “decolonizing desire” in 2016’s water sports; or insignificant white boys and the upcoming Daddy and is actually still a graduate student at Yale — and Obie-winning director Robert O’Hara (Eclipsed, The Continuum) keep the audience rapt but uneasy throughout; when the lights are up, audience members can see themselves reflected in the stage mirror, making them complicit in the shenanigans they are watching, evoking the sexist and racist problems still so prevalent in contemporary society and our psyches, born of America’s original sin, slavery.

PETER HALLEY: NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Peter Halley’s “New York, New York” offers a soothing break from Midtown madness (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through December 31, free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
www.peterhalley.com

New York City native Peter Halley casts Lever House in a soft, soothing yellow glow in his site-specific installation, “New York, New York,” on view through the end of the year. “I grew up in Midtown, just a few blocks from Lever House,” he said in a statement. “It was constructed the year before I was born, so it was always part of the landscape of my childhood. The lobby is a classic Mies van der Rohe glass box. It provided an irresistible opportunity to create a postmodern intervention within this paradigmatic modernist space.”

A central architectural structure holds colorful surprises at Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A Neo‐Conceptualist who was a key part of the downtown arts scene in the 1980s and later founded INDEX magazine, Halley surrounds a central architectural structure with Day-Glo paintings that incorporate his love of geometric patterns he calls “prisons,” “cells,” and “conduits,” relating to technological and social connections.

“Prisons,” “cells,” and “conduits” are a common theme of Peter Halley’s art (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Inside the structure is a series of rooms that change color with shifting lighting effects, revealing walls of cartoon explosions and dreamlike, diagrammed latticework, as if the spectator has entered deep into Halley’s paintings — and his mind. One experiences both confinement and escape in the work, shielded from the outside world until you have to again face the madness that is Midtown Manhattan.

FABULATION, OR THE RE-EDUCATION OF UNDINE

Undine (Cherise Boothe) faces some new challenges when an FBI agent (Marcus Callender) shows up at her office in Signature revival (photo by Monique Carboni)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 30, $35; through January 13, $35-$60
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

To kick off her residency at the Signature Theatre, Lynn Nottage has pulled out her 2004 comedy, Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine, which has been extended at the Linney through January 13. Best known for the two plays that earned her Pulitzer Prizes — 2009’s Ruined, about sexually abused women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 2016’s Sweat, which explores economic strife in a dying Pennsylvania factory town — Nottage takes a different route in Fabulation, a consistently very, very funny play, but, like her later works, it also faces such issues as race, gender, and class head-on. Cherise Boothe stars as Undine, a highly motivated, high-powered businesswoman who thinks she has made it, with her own posh boutique public relations firm in Manhattan that, she tells the audience directly, “caters to the vanity and confusion of the African American nouveau riche,” and a hot husband, Hervé (Ian Lassiter), to escort her to just the right parties. But when Hervé cleans out her bank account and disappears, Undine is forced to go back to the family she abandoned fourteen years earlier, when she was Sharona Watkins living in the Walt Whitman Houses in Brooklyn. Her mother (Nikiya Mathis), father (J. Bernard Calloway), brother (Marcus Callender), and grandmother (Heather Alicia Simms) are not exactly thrilled to see her, but blood is blood, so they take her in, and she is soon overwhelmed by all she had fought to leave behind as she battles various addictions and anxieties.

Undine (Cherise Boothe) can’t believe what is happening to her in Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (photo by Monique Carboni)

Fabulation is reminiscent of John Landis’s Trading Places, the 1983 comedy in which an upper-class white snob (Dan Aykroyd) gets an unexpected comeuppance when two old white brokers (Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) take everything away from him and give it all to a black man who has nothing (Eddie Murphy). Sharona tried extremely hard to get away from her past in the projects, creating a supposedly tony life as Undine — her chosen name evokes ambitious social climber Undine Spragg from Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country — but she learns some valuable lessons once back home; it’s no coincidence that both her parents work in security, something she desperately needs on several levels. But Nottage (Mlima’s Tale, Intimate Apparel) and director Lileana Blain-Cruz (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Actually) keep the belly laughs coming as Undine reevaluates who she is and where she came from.

In a role originated by Charlayne Woodard at Playwrights Horizons, Boothe (Ruined, When We Were Young and Unafraid) is, well, fabulous as Undine, beautifully handling her character’s fast fall from grace and her frantic desire to get back up again, if she possibly can ever face reality. The rest of the cast — MaYaa Boateng, Dashiell Eaves, Lassiter, Mathis, and Simms — excels in multiple small roles that represent and challenge the notion of black stereotypes with humor that is not meant to make the audience uncomfortable; Mathis and Boateng are a hoot, quickly changing characters and some pretty choice outfits, while Eaves switches among several white dudes with jocularity. (The costumes are by Montana Levi Blanco, with set design by Adam Rigg.) Nottage will follow up her Signature residency with a revival of her 2011 comedy, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, and a brand-new comedy as well; Fabulation is a fab start.