twi-ny recommended events

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

Stephen (Keir Dullea) tries to comfort his sister, Ann (Carol Lynley), in BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (Otto Preminger, 1965)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, September 20, $7, 5:30
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

“I had heard all the rumors about Preminger, but I felt he wouldn’t do that to me. I was wrong, oh so wrong,” Keir Dullea told Foster Hirsch in the 2007 biography Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King, referring to the making of the 1965 psychological noir thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing and Otto Preminger’s notorious treatment of actors. “I was playing a crazy character and the director was driving me crazy. . . . About halfway through the shoot, I began to wonder, Who do you have to f&ck to get off this picture?” On September 20, Dullea and Hirsch will be at Film Forum for a one-time-only screening of the fiftieth anniversary 4K digital restoration of Bunny Lake, which will be introduced by Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey, David and Lisa) and followed by a Q&A with the actor, moderated by Hirsch. In the intensely creepy film, loosely based on the novel by Merriam Modell (under the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Carol Lynley stars as Ann Lake, a young woman who has just moved to London from New York. She drops off her daughter, Bunny, for her first day of school, but when she returns later to pick her up, there is no evidence that the girl was ever there. When Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) and his right-hand man, Sergeant Andrews (Clive Revill), begin investigating the case, they are soon wondering whether Bunny really exists, more than hinting that she might be a figment of Ann’s imagination.

Television veteran Lynley, who seemed on the verge of stardom after appearing in such films as Return to Peyton Place, Bunny Lake Is Missing, Shock Treatment, and The Poseidon Adventure but never quite reached that next level, gives one of her best performances as Ann, a tortured woman who is determined to stop her world from unraveling around her. Dullea is a model of efficiency as the cold, direct Stephen, a character invented by Preminger and screenwriters John and Penelope Mortimer. Shot in black-and-white by Denys N. Coop on location in London, the film also features cameos by longtime English actors Martita Hunt, Anna Massey, and Finlay Currie as well as the rock group the Zombies and Noël Coward, who plays Ann’s very kooky landlord, Horatio Wilson. Saul Bass’s titles, in which a hand tears paper as if the story is being ripped from the headlines, set the tense mood right from the start. The ending offers some neat twists but is far too abrupt. “No actor ever peaked with him. How could you?” Dullea added to Hirsch about Preminger (Laura, Stalag 17). “The subtlety that I felt I was able to give to my work in 2001, because Stanley Kubrick created a safe atmosphere where actors were not afraid to be foolish or wrong, was missing on Otto’s set. I don’t hate him; it’s too long ago. But the experience was the most unpleasant I ever had.” It should be quite fascinating to hear more from Dullea and Hirsch at Film Forum on September 20.

AUTUMN MOON FESTIVAL AND MORE

A CELEBRATION OF ASIAN CULTURE
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island
Saturday, September 19, $8-$10, 12 noon – 4:00 pm
718-425-3504
snug-harbor.org

On September 19, Staten Island’s beautiful Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden will be hosting its sixteenth annual Autumn Moon Festival, an afternoon of special programs celebrating the Asian harvest. Taking place in the Chinese Scholar’s Garden, the festival will include an arts and crafts family workshop, a performance of Rabbit Days and Dumplings by Elena Moon Park and Friends, traditional music and dance, Asian-inspired food, martial arts and Tai Chi demonstrations, calligraphy lessons, and more. In addition, on Saturday and Sunday, Snug Harbor is holding a party for the grand opening of the Staten Island Museum, with games, live music, crafts, science, food, and more; admission for that is free. And finally, on Saturday at 2:00 and 8:00 and Sunday at 2:00, the Harbor Lights Theater Company will be presenting Rent in the Music Hall ($35-$45); the production continues through October 4.

EMPIRE TRAVEL AGENCY

It all starts out innocent enough in EMPIRE TRAVEL AGENCY — or does it? (photo by Mitch Dean)

Financial District, Lower Manhattan
Through September 26, free
www.empiretravelagency.com

To say too much about Woodshed Collective’s marvelously inventive Empire Travel Agency would ruin the endless surprises that make this wholly immersive production the most engaging trip of the season. Yet it is difficult not to want to share at least some of the chills and thrills that occur over the course of two and a half intense and involving hours. Six nights a week at thirty-minute intervals, four lucky individuals in four separate groups go on a wild journey through the dark passageways of Lower Manhattan, caught up in the middle of a dangerous battle over a mysterious substance. It all begins with a call at a pay phone — yes, a few of them still work — and then you are led from narrow streets through public plazas, private galleries, cars, the subway, and more. Be prepared to do plenty of walking, and climbing up and down a lot of stairs, as you get serenaded by the Avant Guardsmen, play a few games of Ordo, and meet a series of shady characters, beginning with Dr. Hans Bidity, who welcomes you to the Hidden City Excursion and proudly announces, “The only alliance I feel is to the truth. And secret societies.” From there — well, again, we’ve already said too much. (But just who is Rhonda Cadwallader?)

A downtown art space is one of the many unusual locations audience members will visit in immersive, participatory show (photo by Mitch Dean)

Empire Travel Agency is no mere gimmicky shtick. It works because, first and foremost, Jason Gray Platt’s (There Was No Time Before the War, Agnosiophobia) script is well laid out and compelling, tackling with intelligence and wry humor such topics as Manhattan real estate, the New York City art market, government conspiracies, and constant surveillance. “Yeah, the animals are cooped up in this little cage, but can you be free in a confined space?” Frank asks. “I say, sure, we’re all livin’ inside some kinda boundary — city, country, planet, whatever, and you can decorate your little dollhouse however you like. Can you be free when you are under observation? No you cannot.” Woodshed artistic director Teddy Bergman (Twelve Ophelias, The Tenant) keeps it all moving at an exciting pace while still allowing for a few breathers as the uniformly excellent large cast (featuring particularly fine performances by Rosalie Lowe, Roger Lirtsman, Nicole Golden, and Phillip Taratula) guides you through some very cool small spaces designed by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn. You really have to let go if you want to enjoy the proceedings to the fullest; you will be touched and jostled, you’ll have to be extremely trusting of strangers, and you’ll be expected to improvise with the actors so you can dig deeper into the intriguing, if wacky, story. Oh, and did we say it’s all free? You will be asked for a five-dollar donation for an early imbibement that also serves as a souvenir, although you won’t need a physical object to help you remember this delirious production that takes adventurous, immersive, participatory theater to a whole new level.

SPINE OUT: NOVELISTS READ PERSONAL ESSAYS

Who: Kass Morgan, Danielle Paige, Seth Rudetsky, Joy Peskin, Susan Shapiro, and Emmy Laybourne
What: “Spine Out: Novelists Read Personal Essays”
Where: Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., 212 219-0736
When: Thursday, September 17, $12-$18, 7:30
Why: Dixon Place’s quarterly literary series, “Spine Out,” returns on September 17 with an impressive lineup of authors reading intimate personal essays: Kass Morgan (the 100 series), Danielle Paige (Dorothy Must Die), Seth Rudetsky (The Rise and Fall of a Theater Geek), editor Joy Peskin, Susan Shapiro (Five Men Who Broke My Heart, What’s Never Said), and Emmy Laybourne (Sweet, Monument 14). “There are a lot of storytelling shows in NYC — this isn’t one of them,” host Laybourne explains in a statement. “This is bestselling novelists reading finely crafted essays. We give the authors a stage and they let their inner David Sedaris shine.”

POETRY UNDER “FATA MORGANA”

Spoken-word performances will take place under Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana” installation in Madison Square Park on September 17 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Madison Square Park
23rd to 26th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Thursday, September 17, free, 6:00
Installation continues through winter 2015-16
www.madisonsquarepark.org

We still haven’t made up our mind about American artist Teresita Fernández’s “Fata Morgana,” a five-hundred-foot-long sculpture winding through the walkways of Madison Square Park. Consisting of canopies of mirror-polished discs with small sections cut out of them resembling clouds or leaves, the work blocks the otherwise 6.2-acre open area’s access to the sky, creating a claustrophobic feeling despite very cool reflections above and intriguing shadowy forms below. “By hovering over the park in a horizontal band, ‘Fata Morgana’ becomes a ghostlike, sculptural, luminous mirage that both distorts the landscape and radiates golden light,” Fernández explains on the Mad. Sq. Art website. In conjunction with the site-specific installation, the park is hosting a number of special events, so maybe that will shed more light on the project. On Thursday, September 17, “Poetry under ‘Fata Morgana’” will feature spoken-word performances by Sandra María Esteves, Bonafide Rojas, Machete Movement, True, and Emanuel Xavier, who curated the program with Fernández as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Among the other free September events in Madison Square Park are Mad. Sq. Reads with Sophie McManus (September 17, 12:30), the Studio Series: Time & Luck Quartet and Kristin Diable (September 19, 3:00), Singapore: Inside Out (September 23-27), and Mad. Sq. Reads with Amanda Lee Koe and Jenny Zang (September 24, 12:30).

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Social Health Performance Club will explore the framing of work as queer at the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival (photo by Laura Bleür)

Abrons Arts Center (unless otherwise noted)
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
September 16-26, $15-$25
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org

Curated and produced by Queer Zagreb founder Zvonimir Dobrović, the fourth annual Queer New York International Arts Festival consists of more than a dozen performances in multiple venues over eleven days. The program, which expands the idea of just what queer art is and can be, begins on September 16 with the legendary Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens leading an EcoSex Walking Tour of Central Park ($25, 3:00), focusing on SexEcology and including a water toast, Ecosexercises, a search for the E-spot, and other sex and environmental issues. Sprinkle and Stephens will then head over to festival hub Abrons Arts Center to present the New York City premiere of their 2014 film, Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story ($25, 8:00). Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev returns to QNYIAF with two shows, the interactive Facebook Theater (9/17, suggested donation $25, 8:00), in which the audience creates the text, and the concert 15 songs from my shows (9/18, suggested donation $25, 8:00). On September 19, John Moletress pays tribute to Derek Jarman with the multimedia one-man piece Jarman (all this maddening beauty) ($15, 8:00), while on September 20, Max Steele explores power and gender in the solo cabaret show The Good Daughter ($20, 8:00). One of the festival highlights should be the world premiere of Bruno Isaković’s Disclosures (9/22-26, suggested donation $20), in which people are invited to expose themselves both through words and the removal of clothing. Also on the bill are the Social Health Performance Club, Joshua Monten’s Doggy Style, Mmakgosi Kgabi’s Shades of a Queen, Kaia Gilje and Lorene Bouboushian’s Know What Smokes, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Stupidité contrôleé or jump jump baby jump jump at the Merton D. Simpson Gallery, and Michael Breslin’s Kiss me just once more at Dixon Place.

BARBARA FELDON: ALWAYS IN CONTROL! 50 YEARS OF GET SMART

Barbara Feldon will be at Theatre St. Marks on September 16 to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of GET SMART

Theatre 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Pl. between First & Second Aves.
Wednesday, September 16, $25-$50, 7:00
212-388-0388
theatre80.wordpress.com
www.wouldyoubelieve.com

Would you believe that Get Smart is turning fifty years old? On September 18, 1965, NBC premiered a new television series starring comedian Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, an ingenious combination of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, and Barbara Feldon as his partner, the lovely and patient Agent 99. Together they formed a kind of alternate version of John Steed and Emma Peel from the hit British show The Avengers. On September 16, 2015, Feldon, who earned two Emmy nominations for her role, will be at Theatre 80 St. Marks to celebrate the golden anniversary of Get Smart, sharing inside stories in a benefit for the HoFoPro (Howard Otway and Florence Otway Opportunity) Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “the promotion and development of theater by making grants to artists and artistic companies needing funds to complete their projects and providing a venue for the performance of their works.” Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the Cold War spy spoof, which pitted the good guys of CONTROL against the nasty villains of KAOS, also featured Edward Platt as the put-upon Chief, Bernie Kopell as evil mastermind Siegfried, Robert Karvelas as the hapless Larabee, Victor French as Agent 44, Dick Gautier as Hymie the Robot, and an endless stream of guest stars and up-and-comers, from Jack Gilford, James Caan, Ernest Borgnine, Don Rickles, Alice Ghostley, Billy Barty, Ted Knight, and Leonard Nimoy to Carol Burnett, Farley Granger, Larry Storch, Tom Bosley, Cesar Romero, Maury Wills, Julie Newmar, Broderick Crawford, Wally Cox, Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller, and Hugh Hefner. The show, which inspired the cartoon series Inspector Gadget, spawned such catchphrases as “Would you believe,” “Sorry about that, Chief,” and “Missed it by that much,” and introduced the world to the shoe phone and the Cone of Silence, ran for five seasons (four on NBC, the last on CBS) and won seven Emmy Awards, including twice for Outstanding Comedy Series. Feldon, whose character never revealed her real name (in one episode it is given as Susan Hilton, but it’s a ruse), will be joined by Joseph Sirola, who appeared in the episodes “Bronzefinger” and “Satan Place,” Get Smart experts Carl Birkmeyer and Nathan Sears, film journalist Lee Pfeiffer, and cinema historian Paul Scrabo. “A lot of women have said 99 was a role model for them. Because she was smart and always got the right answer,” Feldon says in The Get Smart Handbook. “And that was one of the first roles on television that showed women that way.” It should be quite a special treat to see Feldon talk about this all-time classic; unfortunately, Adams is no longer with us, having passed away in 2005 at the age of eighty-two.