twi-ny recommended events

TIME AND “TIME AGAIN”: TRISHA BROWN AT THE JOYCE

Opal Loop / Cloud Installation #722503 is part of Trisha Brown season at the Joyce (photo by Maria Baranova)

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at Nineteenth St.
April 29 – May 4, $52-$72
www.joyce.org

For its 2025 season at the Joyce, Trisha Brown Dance Company looks back at its seminal Unstable Molecular Structure Cycle while also forging ahead into the future.

Running April 29 through May 4, the program features three dances, beginning with the world premiere of Time again, which explores the concept of change, repetition, chance, and familiarity. Choreographed by Lee Serle, who was mentored by Brown in 2010 through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiative, the work features set and visual design by Mateo López, who was mentored by William Kentridge in 2012–13 in the Rolex program, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and music by Australian sound artist Alisdair Macindoe. It will be performed by TBDC members Savannah Gaillard, Rochelle Jamila, Burr Johnson, Ashley Merker, Patrick Needham, Jennifer Payán, and Spencer James Weidie.

Following intermission, the company returns with two pieces from the Unstable Molecular Structure Cycle, which executive director Kirstin Kapustik calls “a series of works that embrace fluidity, unpredictability, and the beauty of constant change.” First up is 1980’s Opal Loop / Cloud Installation #722503, a collaboration with Japanese fog artist Fujiko Nakaya that invites the audience “to bring together images within themselves.” Merker, Needham, Payán, and Weidie perform to the sounds of water passing through high-pressure nozzles, with costumes by Judith Shea and lighting by Beverly Emmons.

The evening concludes with 1981’s Son of Gone Fishin’, which Brown called “a doozey. In it I reached the apogee of complexity in my work.” The full ensemble randomly selects sections of Robert Ashley’s score from his three-opera opus Atalanta, with costumes by Shea and lighting by Emmons evoking the original set design by Donald Judd.

To dive deeper, there will be a Curtain Chat following the April 30 performance.

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

NOT JUST PASSING THE TIME: GRAHAM PARKER AND JAMES MASTRO SOLO AT CITY WINERY

Graham Parker and James Mastro will be playing solo gigs at City Winery on April 28 (photo courtesy James Mastro)

GRAHAM PARKER ‘SOLO’ WITH JAMES MASTRO
City Winery New York
25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St.
Monday, April 28, $38-$58 (plus $25 per person minimum), 8:00
citywinery.com
www.grahamparker.net
www.jamesmastro.net

On December 2, 2012, the Paramount in Huntington hosted a memorable show by a pair of British ex-pats. First up was the reunited Graham Parker and the Rumour, followed by Ian Hunter and the Rant Band, the latter featuring James Mastro on guitar, sax, and mandolin.

On April 28, Parker and Mastro will be at City Winery, with Parker playing songs from throughout his illustrious fifty-year-career, during which he has been backed by the Rumour, the Shot, the Figgs, the Small Clubs, and the Goldtops. His most recent album, 2023’s Last Chance to Learn the Twist, is classic GP, a phenomenal package of incisive tunes, from the bluesy rocker “The Music of the Devil” to the throwbacks “Grand Scheme of Things” and “Wicked Wit” to a love song to weed, “Cannabis.”

An expert raconteur, Parker came out of the gate with a remarkable string of records between 1976 and 1979 — Howlin’ Wind, Heat Treatment, Stick to Me, and Squeezing Out Sparks — and he has never stopped releasing terrific new music while also writing the short story collection Carp Fishing on Valium and the backstage novel The Thylacine’s Lair and acting in Judd Apatow’s This Is 40. I’ve seen him numerous times over the decades and he has never failed to work wonders; one of my favorite evenings was a house concert in New Jersey in which Parker performed one deep cut from each of his albums, in chronological order, introducing each song by talking about what was going on in the world when he wrote it.

In an interview on his website, he explains, “I can’t say I ever think I’m doing anything more with each song or each album other than throwing another pebble into the stream where it swirls around for a bit until it eventually gets picked up by the current and flows off downstream. Bye bye, thanks for helping pass the time.”

Graham Parker joins James Mastro, Ian Hunter, and the Rant Band at the Paramount in 2012 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

I’ve also had the good fortune to see Mastro play in numerous configurations over the years, with the legendary Hoboken band the Bongos, the underappreciated Health & Happiness Show, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Syd Straw, Megan Reilly, Amy Speace, and others. But last year the consummate sideman released his highly praised debut solo album, Dawn of a New Error, with Mastro taking on faith and religion in “My God,” death and loss in “Never Die,” true love in “Gangster Baby” and “Three Words,” and fake news in “Right Words, Wrong Song.”

In a February 2024 twi-ny talk, Mastro, who also runs the the Hoboken art gallery and live event space 503 Social Club, explained, “I’ve really enjoyed being a side guy all these years, and especially when you’re working with someone like Ian Hunter, or Patti or John [Cale], anyone I’ve worked with, Megan. So it’s been nice to go in and try to contribute and watch how other people work. It takes a lot of pressure off. Running a band is a pain in the ass; you gotta make sure the drummer doesn’t get arrested.”

Parker and Mastro will be more than passing the time at City Winery, and there will be no drummers needing protection from the law.

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

THE VOICE OF A TEARDROP: ACTIVATING OTOBONG NKANGA’S CADENCE AT MoMA

Artist Otobong Nkanga will be joined by six performers to activate Cadence installation on April 27 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Otobong Nkanga and others
What: Installation activation
Where: Marron Family Atrium, MoMA, 11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Sunday, April 27, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 5:30 pm
Why: Describing her MoMA atrium commission Cadence, Nigeria-born, Belgium-based artist Otobong Nkanga notes, “Once I’d visited MoMA, I was interested in creating a tapestry work for the highest wall in the atrium, which would allow for a way of looking into the world from a different perspective. I wanted to create the notion of falling: a fall of things, a certain shift, a certain rhythm. The tapestry opens up to a more three-dimensional space, with sculptural pieces made of clay, smoked raku, and glass hanging from ropes and sitting on anthracite rocks, and a sound piece integrated in the sculpture that relates to the notion of teardrops, which is another kind of fall. . . . I wanted to make something that explores different rhythms of life. You might also feel that it’s a world that is beyond this one, like the universe somehow. It’s a mix of different worlds — from the underworld and the mining of minerals, to the surface and the soil, to the atmosphere and the heat of the sun, into outer space — all collapsing together in one place. That’s what creates the cadence of life. That’s what creates, actually, a world, because you cannot separate what is happening in the universe from what is happening underneath the soil in the core of the earth.”

On April 27 from 10:30 to 5:30, Nkanga and six other performers — Holland Andrews, Keishera, Muyassar Kurdi, Anaïs Maviel, Miss Olithea, and Samita Sinha, in costumes by Christian Joy — will activate the installation, incorporating sound and movement to interact with the piece. “What if a teardrop actually had a voice? What would it say? How would it say it? The work is really looking at that teardrop, and the emotions that go with it,” Nkanga says of the live performance, which is free with museum admission. Cadence is on view through July 27.

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

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: EMERGENT CITY, INNOVATION, AND THE BROOKLYN WATERFONT

Documentary traces community battle against rezoning of Industry City in Brooklyn

EMERGENT CITY (Jay Arthur Sterrenberg & Kelly Anderson, 2024)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
Opens Friday, April 25
www.dctvny.org
www.emergentcitydoc.com

“Everybody wants to live, work, shop, spend money in Brooklyn,” real estate journalist Michael Stoler said in a July 2012 episode of The Stoler Report. “Why’s everybody want Brooklyn?”

Carlos Scissura of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce responded, “Look, there’s no other place in America that anyone should be, period.”

That exchange kicks off Emergent City, Jay Arthur Sterrenberg and Kelly Anderson’s documentary tracking the rezoning battle of Industry City, comprising sixteen buildings on the Brooklyn waterfront, from the time that developers started buying up property there after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in the fall of 2012 through the end of 2022, when a decision was ultimately reached.

Sterrenberg and Anderson are flies on the wall during a seemingly endless series of meetings, town halls, protests, hearings, and other gatherings over the course of ten years, during which Industry City CEO Andrew Kimball and attorney Jesse Masyr, backed by such billion-dollar companies as Jamestown and Belvedere Capital and real estate investor Angela Gordon, defend their plan to rezone the Sunset Park industrial waterfront for commercial and retail use and luxury hotels.

The fight against the project, as it goes through the six-stage approval process — Scoping, Certification, Community Board, Borough President, Planning Commission, and City Council — is led by tenant organizer Marcela Mitaynes, later the Community Board 7 house chair; Antoinette Martinez of the Protect Our Working Waterfront Alliance; Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation executive director Ben Margolis; UPROSE Climate Justice Center executive director Elizabeth Yeampierre; Community Board 7 land use chair John Fontillas and chair César Zuñiga; city council director of land use and planning Renae Widdison; and others.

Caught in the middle is city councilmember Carlos Menchaca, who is trying to negotiate a community benefits agreement that will make both sides happy, which appears to be an impossible task.

“How do you retain the working-class character of the community, how do you keep it a walk-to-work community and keep it industrial, but not at the expense of our lives?” Yeampierre asks, noting that “catastrophic events are heading our way.”

Trying to find perspective, Margolis says, “It’s not that this is the ideal scenario. The ideal scenario is that the waterfront is owned by the city, and everybody can choose how to make it work. That’s just not the reality.”

Kimball refers to the area as an “innovation district,” talking to several local small business owners who have decided to lease space in Industry City, seeing it as a boon for the community, while others argue that it will invariably lead to higher rents, gentrification, and displacement.

Finally, after a decade of contentious and volatile discussion, a surprising resolution settles the matter.

A vivid portrait of democracy in action, with all its flaws and inherent prominence of power, money, and politics, Emergent City opens April 25 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with eight postscreening Q&As through May 1 featuring Sterrenberg and Anderson and such guests as Menchaca, Widdison, Mitaynes, Martinez, cinematographer Alex Mallis, executive producer Stephen Maing, field producer Betty Yu, city councilmember Alexa Avilés, and moderators Max Rivlin-Nadler, Oscar Perry Abello, Siddhant Adlakha, Alyssa Katz, and Firehouse Cinema director of programming Dara Messinger

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

HERE I AM: A TRANS RABBI SHARES HER STORY IN BECOMING EVE

Tommy Dorfman stars as a trans rabbi trying to come out to her father in Becoming Eve (photo by Matthew Murphy)

BECOMING EVE
Abrons Arts Center Playhouse Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Through April 27, $29.88-$130
212-598-0400
www.nytw.org
www.abronsartscenter.org

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, synagogues around the world read and discuss Genesis 22:1–24, the story of Abraham’s binding of his son Isaac on Mount Sinai, preparing him as a human sacrifice until an angel of G-d intervenes, replacing Isaac with a ram at the last moment. Known as the Akedah, the passage has been hotly debated for millennia by religious leaders, scholars, and laypeople, exploring issues of faith, obedience, familial responsibility, and the value of human life.

One line of thought considers whether Abraham, and perhaps Isaac as well, is aware that it is a test and that Abraham believed that G-d never planned on having him go ahead with the slaughter of the son who was born to him and his wife Sarah in their old age.

In Emil Weinstein’s debut play, the searing Becoming Eve, another interpretation comes to the fore: whether what happened on Mount Sinai was actually a transformation of Isaac’s soul from female to male, as argued by Rabbi Yechiel Michel of Zloczow in the seventeenth century.

Based on Abby Chava Stein’s 2019 memoir, Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman, the lightly fictionalized play, continuing at Abrons Arts Center through April 27, focuses on Chava (Tommy Dorfman), a trans rabbi who has not come out yet to her deeply religious family, whose ancestors include the Baal Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of Hasidism.

Chava has been spotted wearing a dress in midtown Manhattan by a member of her parents’ tight-knit Williamsburg community, and, fearing that the observer will reveal her secret, she decides to tell her father, Tati (Richard Schiff), and mother, Mami (Judy Kuhn), enlisting the support of Jonah (Brandon Uranowitz), a rabbi who has recently started a progressive shul on the Upper West Side.

Chava is afraid her parents won’t understand, explaining to Jonah, “They live in a hermetically sealed nineteenth-century village that happens to be in Brooklyn. They don’t know the Internet. They don’t know Superman.”

Jonah is excited to learn of Reb. Michela’s interpretation, proclaiming, “That story has always confounded me. This essential paradox, at the very start of our religion, G-d telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son, when G-d has just promised Abraham that Isaac will father generations! How can both be true? But the whole story is about both-ness, right? This essential both-ness that Abraham has to contend with. But it makes so much sense with the Michela commentary. It cracks the whole thing open. The sacrifice is actually a transformation, which is so essentially Jewish. We’re the people of transition. Of exodus, of leaving and starting over, of walking through doorways. And doorways are fundamentally about liminality, right? The in-between space between two extremes! Between borders and genders and sexualities and — This may have cracked open my Rosh Hashanah speech.”

Tati (Richard Schiff) reads Scripture next to a puppet of his son in powerful new play (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Chava is disappointed when only Tati shows up, and she hesitates in sharing her truth. As she delays, the narrative shifts back and forth between the present and the past, depicted in poignant memory scenes from Chava’s childhood in which she is portrayed by a series of Bunraku-style puppets that get bigger and older as Chava does; they’re operated by Justin Perkins and Emma Wiseman, dressed in all black, with Dorfman standing with them, speaking the dialogue in darkness.

The vignettes begin with Chava at the age of two and a half, when Tati, thrilled to finally have a son after five daughters, wants to bring his boy to shul for the first time and Mami disagrees. At six, Chava is asking Tati whether doctors will someday be able to perform full-body transplants. At thirteen, Chava is taught by Tati how to put on tefillin; he explains, “The tefillin binds us, father and son, together to the end of time,” recalling the Akedah. At sixteen, Chava grows close with a curious schoolmate, Chesky (Rad Pereira). And at nineteen, Chava is introduced to Fraidy (Tedra Millan), who has been chosen to be his bride.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Chava, Jonah, and Tati have intriguing conversations about family and the Torah. Tati is confused when Jonah offers, “I left Judaism completely for a few years, actually, and then I found my way back, through transdenominational Renewal Judaism, which takes a lot of inspiration from the Hasidic masters.” Tati doesn’t understand why Chava is refusing to attend her brother’s upcoming wedding. When Jonah mentions that Steven Spielberg helped fund the local Yiddish Book Center, Tati claims to have never heard of him. Chava reminds her father that, as a teenager, he had snuck out of his house to see Jaws, an event that he is ashamed of. “You looked America in the teeth and it scared you back to Williamsburg,” Chava says. Tati replies, “I wasn’t scared. It was clearly a machine.” Jonah adds, “Machines can be scary,” to which Tati concludes, “Only if you let them run your life,” a clever reference to biblical fundamentalists like Tati.

Presented by New York Theatre Workshop, Becoming Eve was initially scheduled for the Connelly Theater but had to be moved after the New York Archdiocese, which runs the venue, canceled the show because of its content. Archdiocese director of communications Joseph Zwilling wrote in a statement, “It is the standard practice of the archdiocese that nothing should take place on Church-owned property that is contrary to the teaching of the Church. That applies to plays, television shows, or movies being shot, music videos being recorded, or other performances.” The Connelly is part of the Cornelia Connelly Center, a nonprofit whose mission is “to champion girls, empowering them to realize their full potential from middle school through college and beyond.”

Tony winner Brandon Uranowitz plays an Upper West Side rabbi in Becoming Eve (photo by Matthew Murphy)

The play, which is in English but the characters are actually speaking in Yiddish and Hebrew, feels much more at home at Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side, where immigrant Jewish communities have thrived for more than a century. Abrons is part of the Henry Street Settlement, which was established in the late-nineteenth century and whose mission is “to open doors of opportunity for Lower East Side residents and other New Yorkers through social service, arts, and health care programs.”

To signal time shifts, Ben Stanton’s lighting goes dark and UptownWorks’ (Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols, Bailey Trieweiler) sound explodes before Daniel Kluger’s music calms things down. The convincing puppets are by Amanda Villalobos, who has previously worked on such shows as Is This a Room, Wolf Play, and The Old Country.

Becoming Eve unfolds on Arnulfo Maldonado’s exquisitely detailed set, an upstairs office with overstuffed bookcases, a small kitchen, a flyer for a production of The Hamantaschen Monologues, exposed air ducts, Jonah’s cluttered desk, a cabinet with two Torah scrolls, a bemah, and three arched windows. Enver Chakartash’s costumes range from Chava’s sexy dress to Jonah’s casual clothing to Tati’s traditional Hasidic garb.

Weinstein, a trans man who, as a teenager, attended the synagogue that Stein had left, writes incisive dialogue that avoids becoming, well, preachy and didactic, with unexpected twists and turns that are guided with expert precision by director Tyne Rafaeli (Epiphany, The Coast Starlight). Dorfman (Romeo + Juliet, “Daddy”) is heartbreaking as Chava, who is desperate to be accepted by her family; it is wrenching when she changes from her revealing dress to a zipped-up hoodie, terrified at how her father might react. Unrecognizable Emmy winner Schiff (Glengarry Glen Ross, The West Wing) is sensational as the long-bearded Tati, a respectable man stuck in the past, unwilling to face the realities of the modern era.

Tony winner Uranowitz (Falsettos, An American in Paris) is eminently likable as Jonah, a rabbi who understands just how to bridge the gap between Chava and Tati. Three-time Tony nominee Kuhn (Fun Home, Les Misérables) and Millan (On the Shore of the Wide World, The Wolves) excel as the key women in Chava’s life, while Pereira (Take Care, Madonna col Bambino) is touching as Chesky.

One of the best plays of the year, Becoming Eve begins with Chava singing Ariana Grande’s “Break Free,” which includes the lyrics “If you want it, take it / I should have said it before / Tried to hide it, fake it / I can’t pretend anymore,” and ends with SOPHIE’s “Immaterial” (“Im-ma-ma-material, immaterial / Immaterial boys, immaterial girls / Im-ma-ma-material, immaterial / We’re just, im-ma-ma-material [I could be anything I want] / Immaterial, immaterial boys [anyhow, anywhere] / Immaterial girls [any place, anyone that I want] / Im-ma-ma-material, immaterial”).

In Genesis 22:1, G-d calls out to Abraham, who answers, “Hineni” — “Here I am” — which is also the name of one of the most beautiful Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers, sung in the shul by the cantor, who is representing the congregation despite their own personal faults and transgressions. The final word of Weinstein’s play is also “hineni,” a defiant conclusion to a complex, thought-provoking work about who we are, how we are seen by others, and everything in between.

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

FIRST LOVE AND TMI: RYAN J. HADDAD’S HOLD ME IN THE WATER

Ryan J. Haddad thinks it might be love in Hold Me in the Water at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Valerie Terranova)

HOLD ME IN THE WATER
Playwrights Horizons, the Judy Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through May 4, $62.50 – $102.50
www.playwrightshorizons.org

Even with a heavy dose of TMI, Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water is a poignant, touching, and very funny solo show about first love.

In such previous plays as Hi, Are You Single? and Dark Disabled Stories and the immersive installation Wings and Rings in the pandemic presentation The Watering Hole at the Signature, Haddad has shared important moments from his life as a queer actor and writer with cerebral palsy.

Rising from below the stage on a lift like a rock star, he opens his new show, running at Playwrights Horizons through May 4, by saying, “I’m Ryan J. Haddad. For those of you who don’t know me, I don’t know how you ended up here! But for those of you who don’t know me . . .” He then describes himself and the set to the audience, detailing what he looks like and what he is wearing, providing access to those who are blind or have low vision; in addition, everything he says is projected as surtitles for the hard of hearing.

For seventy minutes, Haddad, baring his soul while using his metallic posterior or reverse posture-control walker, moves around dots’ blue set, which features a nine-inch-high platform, a long, narrow bench, and a pair of modular cubes. The story begins in June 2018, when Haddad immediately fell for a beautiful boy at a summer artist residency in upstate New York. During a pair of inaccessible activities, one at a bookstore, the other at the beach — “Ryan doesn’t do the beach,” he notes — he receives help from “the boy,” as he calls him.

In the first case, Haddad explains, “His grip was firm. He went ahead of me and I leaned on his strong frame as I pulled my legs up one at a time. We walked through the door together. He waited for someone else to bring my walker up behind me before he let go. No questions had to be asked. No mishaps. The trust between our bodies — my hand, his hand — was magnetic and instinctual. And I told him that. And then we started texting.”

They get even closer at the beach, where the boy never lets go, making Haddad feel safe in the water and part of the group. “It was . . . um . . . it was the most intimate I had ever been with another man,” Haddad confesses.

Haddad wants it to be more, and when they start seeing each other, albeit with stops and starts, he thinks he might have found his first true love, shocked “that someone that attractive, that kind, that talented and dreamy and sexy would want to show me any sort of romantic affection.” But Haddad also learn some hard truths about relationships.

Several times, Haddad dives headfirst into graphic depictions of sex that go too far, regardless of race, gender, or whether it involves people with a physical, sensory, or intellectual disability or not. That much intimate, very specific information is a lot to take.

Otherwise, Haddad is an engaging storyteller, discussing emotions that everyone can relate to, from fear, loneliness, and lack of self-esteem to love, trust, and self-confidence. He connects with the audience from that initial ascent; director Danny Sharron gives Haddad plenty of room to reveal his deepest desires.

It’s a relaxed performance: The house lights are on dim, audience members can make sounds and move about to make sure they’re comfortable, and they can leave and come back if they need to use the facilities or require a break in a safe space on the second floor. There will also be select shows requiring masks, with ASL interpreters or audio description, and other enhancements.

As with Dark Disabled Stories, it’s a new way to experience theater, and its inclusivity and accessibility both echo and frame the themes of Haddad’s compelling narrative.

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

FINDING LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS: FOR THE LIVING AT THE JCC

Holocaust survivor Marcel Zielinski revisits Auschwitz with his granddaughter, Chen, in For the Living

FOR THE LIVING (Marc Bennett & Tim Roper, 2024)
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West Seventy-Sixth St.
Thursday, April 24, $19.95, 7:00
www.jccmanhattan.org
www.forthelivingmovie.com

“When considering the question, What makes us human?, we must also ask, What might render us less than human? And more importantly, What makes us inhumane?” narrator Tim Roper says at the beginning of For the Living, a powerful and important documentary he codirected with Marc Bennett.

Near the end of the film, Yale professor and On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder points out, “Recognizing that someone else is a human being is a really demandingly high threshold. If you can get to that, then a lot of other problems will solve themselves.”

In the documentary, which is having a special screening April 24 at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on the Upper West Side, Roper and Bennett use the 2019 Ride for the Living as the centerpiece of their exploration of dehumanization and genocide and the need for empathy and compassion.

In 2014, software developer and long-range cyclist Robert Desmond traced the liberation path, a twenty-five-day, 1,350-mile bike ride from London to Auschwitz, stopping off at historic locations related to WWII and, more specifically, the Holocaust. The next year, Desmond, a British Jew, established the Ride for the Living, in which groups of bikers travel from Auschwitz to Krakow, following the rode that ten-year-old Marcel Zielinski and many others walked after being freed from the concentration camp in 1945. Zielinski became a regular rider at the annual event, establishing a close relationship with Desmond; despite their age gap of more than fifty years, they consider themselves brothers.

The film cuts between the preparation for the 2019 Ride for the Living, archival Holocaust footage, and brief explorations of twentieth-century genocides in Turkey, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda as well as the treatment of Indigenous peoples in what would become America and African slavery.

Zielinski returns to his childhood home and visits Auschwitz with his granddaughter, Chen, sharing terrifying details of what he experienced. Bernard Offen, who survived five camps as a child and lost fifty-nine members of his family in the Holocaust, emphasizes how important it is to tell the story, a critical theme through the film.

Rabbi Michael Paley notes, “We shouldn’t come as tourists just to see [Auschwitz]; we should come as witnesses, we should bear witness.” Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz demands, “Crimes against humanity should not be tolerated.”

Krakow Jewish Community Center CEO and ride participant Jonathan Ornstein explains, “The most important message is not being a bystander, they say. There will always be good people, and there will always be bad people, and I think the way the world goes is largely dependent on the ones in the middle.”

Roper and Bennett also speak with Zimbabwe genocide survivor and international human rights lawyer Gugulethu Moyo, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum founding project director Rabbi Michael Berenbaum, USC Shoah Foundation executive director emeritus Stephen Smith, Emory psychology professor emeritus Frans de Waal, University of Illinois at Chicago social emotional learning chair Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

In the latter part of the 117-minute film, the focus turns to dehumanization and antisemitism, as practiced by the Nazis and even world leaders today, referencing how Hitler was influenced by America’s belief in manifest destiny, a concept that is now being practiced by Vladimir Putin in Russia and the current US administration.

“I grew up thinking that we learned the lessons of the Holocaust, and I’ll say living here, in the heart of Europe for eighteen years, that I don’t think those lessons were learned,” Ornstein says. “With antisemitism on the rise, with Holocaust denial on the rise, I’m shocked by things that happen all around Europe; I’m shocked by things that happen in the United States.”

University of New England philosophy professor David Livingstone Smith explains, “There are great advantages to be reaped by doing bad things to others, by exterminating them,” adding that in certain “circumstances, with the psychology we have, very many of us would yield to that way of thinking.”

And astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson posits, “It’s pretty clear when you look at the history of atrocities, it’s not just simply hatred; it’s like a psychological delusion that has to be put into place so that you can carry this out on a large scale.”

The film — which opens with Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere” and concludes with Joan Osborne’s version of Bruce Springsteen’s more hopeful “Further On Up the Road” — was made prior to the current administration, but it’s hard not to think about what is happening right now in the United States involving illegal immigrants, deportation, and antisemitism. Words such as dehumanization and empathy are again being discussed every day.

“It’s bigger than a Jewish thing; this is a human tragedy,” Desmond says.

And it’s far from over.

Roper, Bennett, and producer Lisa Effress will participate in a Q&A following the 7:00 screening at the JCC. The film is also being shown April 23 at 6:30 at Iona University in New Rochelle before traveling to festivals in Dubuque, Boulder, Flint, Detroit, and the Berkshires. The next Ride for the Living is scheduled for June 25–29; registration is now open.

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