twi-ny recommended events

MARTIAL/ART: A TOUCH OF SIN

Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) is one of four protagonists who break out into sudden acts of shocking violence in Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin

A TOUCH OF SIN (TIAN ZHU DING) (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Tuesday, January 30, 12 noon, and Wednesday, January 31, 3:00
Series runs through February 10
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.kinolorber.com

During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his 2013 film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes, A Touch of Zen is screening January 30 and 31 in the Metrograph series “Martial/Art,” which continues through February 10 with such other high-end martial-arts fare as Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, and, appropriately enough, King Hu’s A Touch of Zen.

ALL GOOD ART IS POLITICAL: GALLERY TALK WITH SUE COE

Käthe Kollwitz, “Seed-Corn Must Not Be Ground,” lithograph on smooth ivory wove paper, 1941 (Very rare proof; no edition was published. Knesebeck 274. Private collection.)

Galerie St. Etienne
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, February 1, free (advance RSVP recommended), 6:30
Exhibition continues Tuesday – Saturday through March 10, free
212-245-6734
www.gseart.com

Galerie St. Etienne brings together two of its most popular artists in “All Good Art Is Political: Käthe Kollwitz and Sue Coe,” revealing compelling similarities in their work, from their style and themes to their socialist, feminist, and activist beliefs. On February 1, the British-born Coe, who has claimed the Prussian-born German artist as a major influence (along with Goya, Soutine, and others), will be at the Fifty-Seventh St. gallery for a talk about her career. The exhibition, which has been extended through March 10, creates a dialogue between their works, consisting primarily of black-and-white drawings, etchings, woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs, and collages that focus on powerful scenes of prisoners, riots, torture, war, and violence along with emotional depictions of women trying to protect children from seen and unseen horrors in a brutal society. “My art serves a purpose. I want to exert an influence in my own time, in which human beings are so helpless and destitute,” Kollwitz (Revolt of the Weavers, Peasant War), who was born in 1867 and died in 1945, said. Coe (Dead Meat, Sheep of Fools), who was born in 1951, has taken up Kollwitz’s mantle, following her journalistic approach. “People think they can be indifferent, and the filter of art is a useful veil to present the reality,” Coe says. “It opens up a chance to have a useful dialogue where the viewer asks questions and is more open to the challenge of change.” Coe’s angry “How to Commit Suicide in South Africa” and “Vigilante” share much in common with Kollwitz’s “Never Again War” and “Free Our Prisoners,” bearing witness and demanding societal overhaul. Coe’s rallying cry “Stop Violence” is a kind of combination of Kollwitz’s “The Volunteers” and “Outbreak/Charge.”

Sue Coe Safe at Last (Rescued) 2016. Linocut on thin white wove paper. Signed and dated, lower right; numbered and with red bird stamp, lower left. 7 3/8" x 6" (18.7 x 15.2 cm). From an estimated edition of 100 impressions. Reproduced in The Animals' Vegan Manifesto, p. 113.

Sue Coe, “Safe at Last (Rescued),” linocut on thin white wove paper, 2016 (From an estimated edition of 100 impressions. Reproduced in The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto, p. 113.)

Coe also extends those themes from humans to animals, which also relates to Kollwitz, who compared “survivors” to “women huddled together in a black lump, protecting their children just as animals do with their own brood,” as explained in the gallery’s outstanding expansive essay about the show. In “Safe at Last (Rescued),” from Coe’s The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto, a woman holds a calf like a child, echoing Kollwitz’s “Seed-Corn Must Not Be Ground,” where a woman uses her broad arms to protect three young kids. Coe’s “Veal Skinner,” a graphite drawing of a sad man standing next to a large, skinned animal carcass hanging upside down, evokes Kollwitz’s “Hunger,” in which a skeletal woman puts her hands over her eyes so she cannot see the dead child on her lap. Hands play a major role in both artists’ oeuvre, clutching at prison bars, reaching up in defiance, holding a weapon, cradling an infant, scrubbing ham, pounding drums, emerging from a small sculpture of a group of women, held up to a face in desperation, and tied behind a black man’s back. Both artists also do not shy away from a boldness that eschews subtlety, although Coe takes it to another level with such recent work as “Unpresidented,” a linocut of Donald Trump grabbing the Statue of Liberty from behind, covering her mouth with one hand and grabbing her genitals with the other. So get ready for Coe, the natural successor to Kollwitz, to hold nothing back at her Thursday gallery talk about art’s role in a changing society.

THEN SHE FELL

Immersive theatrical experience Then She Fell has extended again, into April (photo by Darial Sneed)

The Kingsland Ward at St. Johns
195 Maujer St. between Graham Ave. & Humboldt St.
Wednesday – Sunday through August 26, $135 – $165
347-687-0203
www.thenshefell.com

Brooklyn’s Third Rail Projects take audiences down a very dark rabbit hole in Then She Fell, an immersive reimagining of Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There set in a fictional mental hospital. The show, which opened in the fall of 2012 at a different location in Greenpoint, has now been extended in its longtime home in a building on Maujer St. that used to be a parochial school. The thrilling experience leads fifteen people at a time across three floors, and every room and hallway offers another chapter in the story; most of the time you will find yourself alone with a character or with only one or two other audience members (probably not those you came with), interacting directly with the narrative — although in a strictly limited way. As you are told in the introduction, you should not speak unless asked to and should not open any closed doors. However, you are given a key to try to unlock various drawers and boxes. Over the course of two hours, you might find yourself being fed grapes, brushing a young woman’s hair in a small, private room, playing an intimate game of poker, relaxing in bed next to a stranger, drinking a shot of an unidentified liquid, taking dictation using an old-fashioned pen and inkwell, or riffling through hospital records and pages torn out of a diary. (Many of the rooms are dimly lit, so bring reading glasses if you need them.) The multidisciplinary show, which features a lot of contemporary dancing, primarily solos and duets, focuses on the perhaps unhealthy relationship Dodgson might have had with Alice Liddell, whom Dodgson photographed and wrote, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for when she was twelve and he was thirty-two. Dodgson had been entertaining the Liddell children with his fanciful stories for several years, but a rift occurred in June 1863 between him and the family; mysteriously, several pages from his diary are missing, apparently now scattered throughout Kingsland Ward.

Special mirrors and lighting create a haunting doubling effect in Then She Fell (photo by Chad Heird)

Since Then She Fell started, Third Rail has gone on to present two more immersive productions in New York City, Ghost Light, which went behind the scenes at Lincoln Center, and The Grand Paradise, a wild vacation set in a Bushwick warehouse. As much fun as those were, there’s something special about Then She Fell; the characters are more fully drawn, the narrative more driven, creating a unique personal experience for each audience member. The cast impeccably guides you through your particular story arc, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, even though you will see only about two-thirds of what is going on. Alice Liddell and the Alice from the books are played by Kristen Carcone and Jenna Purcell, who merge together in mirrors. Alex Schell is sublimely sexy as the Mad Hatter, while Charly Wenzel is effectively cryptic as the doctor, whose staff includes Gabriela Gowdie, Bree Doobay, Kasey Blanco, and Jeff Sykes as Orderly Robinson, who might have a message for you. Kyle Castillo is the White Rabbit, Taylor Semin is the manipulative Red Queen, and Roxanne Kidd is the alluring White Queen. Meanwhile, Gierre J. Godley appears from time to time as Carroll/Dodgson. The production is intricately written, directed, designed, and choreographed by Third Rail cofounders Zach Morris, Tom Pearson, and Jennine Willett, with original music and sound design by Sean Hagerty, appropriately creepy lighting by Kryssy Wright, and lovely period costumes by Karen Young. Then She Fell delves into the mind not only of Dodgson/Carroll but of each character, giving them depth and emotional feelings that will immerse you even further into their tale. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes and clothes you might not mind spilling ink on; you’ll have to check your coat and any bags at the door, and no cameras or cell phones are allowed. You don’t have to eat or drink what’s offered to you or do anything else you’d rather not, but, as with the best immersive shows — and this is certainly up there with the grand master, Sleep No More — the more you participate, the more you will rejoice in the spirit of it all.

CONVERSATION WITH JANE BIRKIN

Jane Birkin will be at FIAF on January 29 to talk about her life and career (photo © Nico Bustos)

Who: Jane Birkin, Elia Einhorn
What: An evening with Jane Birkin
Where: French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves., 212-355-6160
When: Monday, January 29, $35, 7:00
Why: In 2010, London-born French actress, model, and singer appeared at the French Institute Alliance Française for two concerts and a staged reading with Wajdi Mouawad. On January 29, she returns to FIAF for a conversation, Q&A, and book signing three days before her highly anticipated “Birkin Gainsbourg The Symphonic” show at Carnegie Hall with Wordless Music Orchestra, pianist Nobuyuki Nakajima, and special guest Rufus Wainwright. In 2013, Birkin told the Independent that she found it “very flattering to have the most beautiful songs, probably, in the French language written for one,” referring to Gainsbourg, who passed away in 1991 at the age of sixty-two, while also asking, “How much talent did I really have? Perhaps not that much.” Birkin first caught the public’s attention with roles in such films as Richard Lester’s The Knack . . . and How to Get It, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup and Kaleidoscope, and Joe Massott’s Wonderwall. (She has also been in films by Jacques Rivette, James Ivory, and Hong Sang-soo.) Birkin is most famous for the ten-year relationship she had with Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she made several films and records, including the album and movie Je t’aime . . . moi non plus; they also had a child together, actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist, Melancholia). In addition, Birkin has children from her relationships with British composer John Barry and French director Jacques Doillon, as well as five grandchildren. The seventy-one-year-old philanthropist and two-time César nominee recently announced her retirement from acting after starring in the Oscar-winning short La femme et le TGV. Birkin’s achievements are many, but for the fashion-obsessed crowd, she’s probably most adored as the inspiration for the Hermés Birkin bag — one can barely type it without calling it “the iconic Birkin bag” — an incredibly expensive, instantly recognizable handbag from the high-end French accessories firm. The English-language conversation at FIAF, moderated by Pitchfork’s Elia Einhorn, will be followed by a signing of Birkin’s Attachments, her 2014 photo-essay collaboration with photographer Gabrielle Crawford.

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: THE BROADWAY MUSICAL

The cast of SpongeBob SquarePants jumps for joy as disaster threatens in Broadway extravaganza (photo by Joan Marcus)

Palace Theatre
1564 Broadway at 47th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 2, $49-$145
spongebobbroadway.com

When a volcano threatens to destroy the undersea community of Bikini Bottom, the motley crew of residents must come together in order to survive in the tons-of-fun Broadway extravaganza SpongeBob SquarePants. Conceived and directed by Tina Landau based on Stephen Hillenburg’s long-running tongue-in-cheek cartoon series, which debuted on Nickelodeon in 2003, the musical version is a delight for both kids and adults. Tony-winning scenic designer David Zinn (The Humans, Fun Home) has transformed the Palace Theatre into a fanciful wonderland of undersea detritus hanging from the walls and ceiling and extending off the stage, complete with two huge Rube Goldberg-like machines on either side. Zinn also designed the costumes, keeping them relatively simple, primarily humans with playful elements: SpongeBob portrayer Ethan Slater, in his stirring Broadway debut, is dressed in a yellow shirt, red tie, plaid pants, and knee-length socks, speaking and singing in the cartoon character’s squeaky high-pitched voice; Danny Skinner wears a Hawaiian shirt over a purple tee, bright shorts, and slicked-up hair as SpongeBob’s BFF, the dimwitted but lovable Patrick Star; as crooning octopus Squidward Q. Tentacles, Gavin Lee has an extra pair of legs; Brian Ray Norris as money-loving Krusty Krab owner Eugene Krabs has two giant red claws for hands; Jai’len Christine Li Josey as sperm whale Pearl is dressed like a high school cheerleader; and Lilli Cooper as the squirrel scientist Sandy Cheeks is an astronaut with an Afro. The main cast is rounded out by Wesley Taylor as the evil, eye-patch-wearing villain Sheldon J. Plankton, who wants everyone to eat at his awful Chum Bucket restaurant instead of the Krusty Krab; Stephanie Hsu as his wife, the futuristic-looking Karen the Computer; Gaelen Gilliland as the mayor, who tweets in nonsensical political double talk; Kelvin Moon Loh as television reporter Perch Perkins, who is tracking the volcano’s progress as doomsday beckons; Gary, the mewing snail, who is not played by a person; and Jon Rua as Patchy the Pirate, the president of the SpongeBob SquarePants Fan Club, whose memorabilia is on view in front of the stage on the left side. With the countdown clock ticking down, SpongeBob, Patrick, and the rest of the benthic town desperately try to come up with a plan to save Bikini Bottom before it is laid to waste.

The devious Sheldon J. Plankton (Wesley Taylor) is up to no good in SpongeBob SquarePants (photo by Joan Marcus)

Obie-winning book writer Kyle Jarrow (The Wildness, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant) tosses in a plethora of puns and looming darkness, never passing up the chance for a good laugh, even if it’s aimed at the show itself. “A fry cook is all you’ll ever be. You’re just a simple sponge, boy,” Mr. Krabs says to his employee-of-the-month, SpongeBob, continuing, “And yet somehow you don’t seem to absorb very much.” Later, Squidward tells SpongeBob, “The world is a horrible place filled with fear, suffering, and despair. Also dashed hopes, shattered dreams, broken promises, and abject misery.” But ever the positive trooper, the Aplysina fistularis known as SpongeBob replies, “But it’s our horrible place . . . with the best abject misery.” The narrative breaks down significantly in the second act, but Christopher Gattelli’s (The King and I, War Paint) jubilant choreography keeps everything bouncy, and the music sparkles throughout, with songs written by a diverse superstar lineup that soars far above standard Broadway fare, including David Bowie and Brian Eno, Panic! at the Disco, Yolanda Adams, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, They Might Be Giants, T.I., Lady Antebellum, John Legend, the Plain White T’s, Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman, Sara Bareilles, Jonathan Coulton, and the Flaming Lips. Show up early to get a good look at all the crazy items around the theater — what’s with all the 1980s boomboxes? — and to get in the mood as the small band plays tropical music. Landau (Big Love, Old Hats) keeps everyone on their toes — watch out as some characters go running up and down the aisles — and smiling for more than two hours. And just to reiterate, the show is not aimed only at kids; the night we went, there were not that many children at all, the audience peppered instead with grown-ups of all ages, rolling around laughing in their seats. Like the Nickelodeon show, the Broadway musical is downright silly, but as Patrick says, “There’s nothing more fun than mindless entertainment.” Amen to that.

SUNDAY SESSIONS: ANTI BODIES

Analisa Teachworth and Jonas Wendelin, Dependency Demographics, 2017; Photo: Hamburger Bahnhof Museum

Analisa Teachworth and Jonas Wendelin, seen above performing “Dependency Demographics” last year in Germany, will be at MoMA PS1 for “Anti Bodies” on January 28 (photo courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof Museum)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, January 28, $15, 2:00 – 6:00
718-784-2084
www.moma.org
topicalcream.info

For the January 28 edition of its Sunday Sessions series held in the VW Dome, MoMA PS1 is teaming with Topical Cream, a self-described “New York-based platform [that] has supported a community of artists, writers, designers, and technologists through digital publishing and public programming initiatives.” From 2:00 to 6:00, there will be live performances, readings, film, and installations exploring how artists deal with self-preservation and resistance. The afternoon includes a performance by Analisa Teachworth with Jonas Wendelin, videos presented by Jacksonville-based artist Redeem Pettaway, live music by Zsela and Deli Girls, and a new piece by Julia Scher on surveillance and security. In addition, there will be video and poetry in the main museum building by Michelle Young Lee, Sara Hornbacher, Sarah Zapata, Maya Martinez, Rin Johnson, Sophia Le Fraga, and Natasha Stagg.

BRUCE OFF BROADWAY: A UKULELE TRIBUTE TO THE BOSS WITH JIM BOGGIA

bruce off broadway

Who: Jim Boggia
What: Ukulele tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen
Where: Arlene’s Grocery, 95 Stanton St. at Orchard St.
When: Saturday, January 27, $10, 8:00
Why: Retro-pop nostalgia devotee Jim Boggia released three albums last decade, Fidelity Is the Enemy, Safe in Sound, and Misadventures in Stereo, and has also played with the Fab Faux and Mad Dogs & Dominos in addition to many, many others. On January 27, the vinyl-obsessed musician will be at Arlene’s Grocery, offering an alternative to the hottest show around, Springsteen on Broadway, with his own celebration, “Bruce Off Broadway: A Ukulele Tribute to the Boss.” Yes, Boggia, who was raised just outside Flint, Michigan, and is a longtime Philly dude, will be playing Springsteen songs on his ukulele, and, lo and behold, he’s pretty damn good at it, as evidenced by his videos for “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Thunder Road,” and “Growing Up.” It might not quite be the toughest ticket going, but get one while you still can to check out what should be a very different kind of Springsteen experience.