twi-ny recommended events

CONEY ISLAND HISTORY DAY 2013

Deno’s Wonder Wheel is central attraction on Coney Island History Day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Coney Island History Project & Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park
West 12th St. Dreamland Pedestrian Plaza
Saturday, August 10, free, 1:00 – 6:00
www.coneyislandhistory.org

As the future of Coney Island remains in doubt, with the government and developers battling over how to rezone the famed district and take away the charm of the People’s Playground, the location’s storied past will be celebrated on August 10 at the third annual Coney Island History Day. This year’s old-timey festivities feature live entertainment from the Banjo Rascals, organ grinders from the Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors Association and the Carousel Organ Association of America, Professor Phineas Feelgood’s World of Magic, HumanToon/Street Sorcerer Kevin C Carr, and the Lady Circus. Visitors are encouraged to dress up in 1920s costumes, take a trivia test, and offer their own stories to the Oral History Archive. In addition, the Coney Island History Project will open its latest exhibition, “The History of Deno’s Wonder Wheel: Three Generations,” exploring one of the world’s greatest amusement-park attractions.

DOWNTOWN DANCE FESTIVAL

DOWNTOWN DANCE FESTIVAL
August 11-15, Battery Park, free, 12 noon or 1:00
The Dance WE Made: August 9, 10, 12, multiple locations
La Intrusa Danza, August 12-13, multiple locations
www.batterydance.org

Despite undergoing major renovations, Battery Park will once again host the annual Downtown Dance Festival, now in its the thirty-second year. The festivities begin on Sunday, August 11, at 1:00, with performances by the Battery Dance Company, Greece’s Chapter Two, Dancing Earth, Limón Dance Company, SLK Ballet, and France’s Vendetta Methea & Co. Monday at noon features Chapter Two and Dancing Earth, Tuesday at noon Limón Dance Company and Vendetta Mathea & Co., and Wednesday at noon Battery Dance Company, SLK Ballet, England’s the Dance WE Made, and Spain’s La Intrusa Danza. The Dance WE Made, in which dancer and choreographer Tim Casson creates a perpetual work in progress based on moves demonstrated to him by random people on the street, will also be at the South Street Seaport on August 9 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm, Bowling Green on August 10 from 11:00 to 1:00, and City Hall from 3:00 to 5:00. La Intrusa Danza, which consists of Virginia García and Damián Muñoz, will also be at City Hall Plaza on August 12 at 5:00 and 55 Water St. on August 13 at 5:00. The programming concludes in Battery Park on August 15 at noon with the Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance, with Rama Vaidyanathan, Rani Khanam, Vijaya Lakshmi, Rahul Acharya, and the Gurukul Dance Company.

NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL FRINGE FESTIVAL

Beckett fans and others are waiting to see WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT at the Fringe Festival this month

Multiple downtown locations
FringeCENTRAL: 27 Second Ave. between First & Second Sts.
August 9-25, $15 in advance, $18 at the door (some events free)
www.fringenyc.org

The New York International Fringe Festival features theatrical works that are just that — offbeat, quirky, experimental, and unusual dramas, comedies, musicals, and solo performances that exist on the fringe of conventionality. The seventeenth annual event takes place in eighteen downtown venues from August 9 through 25, with myriad productions that look to the past, present, and future of theater, paying homage to such playwrights as Shakespeare, Beckett, and Williams as they offer strange, serious, and surreal takes on humanity. Below are ten of our favorites, listed alphabetically and based on such reliable reasons as title, pedigree, topic, logo, or just for the hell of it.

Alabama Bound
Earlier this year, we saw Southern Discomfort, an entertaining one-woman show in which Elisabeth Gray played six characters in seven vignettes about life in the south. Alabama Bound, in which writer, director, and producer Charlotte Higgins plays five Alabama women, is a presentation of Southern Discomfort Productions, which apparently has no direct connection whatsoever to Gray’s show. (White Box, August 14-18, 25)

cal and grey
We’re suckers for titles set in lowercase letters, so we’re looking forward to Becca Schlossberg’s tale of two men rebelling against the powerful state. (Teatro Circulo, August 10-11, 14, 22, 24)

En Avant! An Evening with Tennessee Williams
The works of Mississippi-born playwright Tennessee Williams never quite go out of style; in the past year or so, there have been major, and minor, versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, The Two-Character Play, Vieux Carré, and In Masks Outrageous and Austere. In En Avant! William Shuman embodies the enigmatic southerner who lived a rather dramatic life. (CSV Kabayitos, August 9, 16-17, 20, 23-24)

Free Desiree
Amontaine Aurore’s one-woman show about a pair of sistahs in the ’70s celebrating black pride boasts a “Seattle funk soundtrack,” which can never be a bad thing. (Jimmy’s No. 43, August 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 24)

Wei-Yi Lin stars in play about Japanese porn star Ai Iijima

I Am a Moon
The Japanese love their porn, and who doesn’t love Japanese porn? Zhu Yi’s play honors adult video idol Ai Iijima, who tried to put her sexual past behind her and enter more mainstream society. (Lynn Redgrave Theater, August 9, 12, 14-16)

Mercedes Benz Awkwardly
Yes, FringeNYC loves it some sex shows, and this Melbourne Fringe People’s Choice Award winner stars writer Hannah Williams as pole-dancing stripper Mercedes Benz. (Teatro Circulo, August 20-22, 24)

Mash-up of Shakespeare and Stoker should be a bloody good Fringe pick (photo by Neal J. Freeman)

The Nightmare ‘Dream’
We had a blast this past spring at Living Dead in Denmark, a mash-up of Hamlet and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Shakespeare heroines battled evil zombies. The Nightmare ‘Dream’ brings together the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, presented by the appropriately named Bloody Shakespeare company, which calls this “the original douche teen vampire drama.” (Theater at the 14th St. Y, August 11-12, 15-16, 18)

Rubble
This story of a comedy writer, played by Bruce Vilanch, who is trapped in an L.A. earthquake with a series pilot on the line comes from the great Mike Reiss, who wrote, produced, and/or cocreated such animated classics as The Simpsons, The Critic, and Queer Duck. (Players Theatre, August 10, 14, 22, 24-25)

Stranded on Motor Parkway
In 1986, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves at Shea Stadium on October 27, as our beloved Mets battled the hated Red Sox in Game Seven of the World Series. Dan Fingerman’s new drama is about a family that has been torn apart by death but just might be able to get back on track if the Mets can pull things out. (Teatro SEA, August 9-10, 13, 15-16)

Waiting for Waiting for Godot
Don’t tell us you don’t absolutely love this title. Chris Sullivan and Dave Hanson star as a pair of understudies discussing life, art, and more while awaiting their big moment in Hanson’s ingenious riff on the Beckett classic. (Kraine Theater, August 21-25)

CINE-SIMENON — GEORGES SIMENON ON FILM: THE CLOCKMAKER

Philippe Noiret gives one of his most intricate performances in Bertrand Tavernier’s poignant drama based on Georges Simenon novel

THE CLOCKMAKER (L’HORLOGER DE SAINT-PAUL) (Bertrand Tavernier, 1973)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Thursday, August 8, 7:00, Saturday, August 10, 8:45, and Sunday, August 11, 4:45
Series runs August 8-21
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Based on Georges Simenon’s novel L’horloger de Saint-Paul, Bertrand Tavernier’s first feature-length film is a quiet, introspective triumph from start to finish. Philippe Noiret stars as the title character, Michel Descombes, a widowed clockmaker who is told by a police inspector (Jean Rochefort) that his son, Antoine (Jacques Denis), has killed a man and is on the run with a woman named Liliane (Christine Pascal). A despondent Michel struggles to understand what led his son to commit such a crime, examining deep inside himself in the process. The many scenes that center on the clockmaker and the inspector discussing life in general terms are simply wonderful, except when the cop talks about the movies, which takes the audience out of the film, especially when they mention La Grande Bouffe, Noiret’s previous work. Otherwise, The Clockmaker is an absolute gem, with Tavernier’s subtle narrative style guiding Noiret (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Le vieux fusil) to one of the greatest understated performances you’re ever likely to see. Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1974 Berlinale, The Clockmaker is screening August 8, 10, and 11 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “Cine-Simenon: Georges Simenon on Film,” consisting of fourteen cinematic adaptations of books by the Belgian-born French-language creator of Inspector Maigret, including Marcel Carné’s La Marie du Port and Three Rooms in Manhattan, Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire, Henry Hathaway’s The Bottom of the Bottle, Claude Chabrol’s Betty, and Burgess Meredith’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower.

ARTIST SANDCASTLE COMPETITION

Inaugural winners Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw set the bar high at last year’s Creative Time Artist Sandcastle Competition in Rockaway Beach (photo by Derek Schultz)

Beach 86th St. boardwalk, Rockaway Beach
Friday, August 9, free, 12 noon
www.creativetime.org

Innovative arts organization Creative Time, which specializes in unique public art projects, is hosting its second annual Artist Sandcastle Competition, featuring ten artists molding magnificent works out of sand on Rockaway Beach. The festivities begin at 12 noon, with the participants beginning to craft their masterpieces at 2:00; this year’s competitors are David Brooks, Sebastian Errazuriz, Ghost of a Dream (Lauren Was & Adam Eckstrom), Jamie Isenstein, Natalie Jeremijenko, Esperanza Mayobre, Rachel Owens, Duke Riley, Christopher Robbins, and Marc Andre Robinson. After three hours, prizes will be handed out by an esteemed panel of judges, including collector Shelley Fox Aarons, designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia, MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach, curator and collector Dana Farouki, and 2012 inaugural champs Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw. Creative Time chief curator Nato Thompson will handle master of ceremonies duties. At 6:00, the after-party moves to the boardwalk, with such food vendors as Caracas, Citysticks, DiCosmo’s Italian Ice, the Big Banana, and Rockaway Taco and dancing in Rippers to music spun by DJ Lucas Walters.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: FINAL ANALYSIS

Gustav Mahler (Ezra Barnes) and his wife, Alma Maria (Elisabeth Jasicki), face a crisis in 1910 Vienna in Otho Eskin’s FINAL ANALYSIS (photo by Joan Marcus)

FINAL ANALYSIS
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 8 – October 5, $25-$95
212-279-4200
www.finalanalysistheplay.com

Nominated for an unprecedented thirteen Midtown International Theatre Festival awards last year and winning seven — for Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Script (Otho Eskin), Outstanding Direction (Ludovica Villar-Hauser), Outstanding Costume Design (Jenny Green), Outstanding Lead Actor (Michael Goldsmith), Outstanding Supporting Actor (Stephen Bradbury), and the Producers’ Award — Final Analysis is moving off Broadway to the Pershing Square Signature Center after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $50,000, running in repertory with Breakfast with Mugabe in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through early October. The play takes place in a single day in a coffee shop in 1910 Vienna, where a collection of influential intellectuals, artists, and leaders delve into art and science, corruption and morality, anti-Semitism and power, and the nature of evil, addressing the central question “Is hate love’s dark companion?” The play features Ezra Barnes as Gustav Mahler, Elisabeth Jasicki as Alma Maria, Gannon McHale as Sigmund Freud, Tony Naumovski as Joseph Stalin, Michael Satow as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stephen Bradbury as a waiter, and Ryan Garbayo as a mysterious young man, with Villar-Hauser once again directng. There will be postperformance discussions on August 28 about Mahler’s conducting of the first uncut version of Wagner’s The Ring in August 1910; on September 11 on hate and madness; and on September 25 focusing on Freud.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Final Analysis are $25-$95, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free to performances August 8-30. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Viennese intellectual to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, August 8, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “MUEVETE” BY RUBEN BLADES

You might have noticed a series of posters going up around the city of a bearded dude in a black hat, with the caption “Do you know this man? If you do, you’ll be here . . . If you don’t, you should.” The figure in question is the one and only Panama-born renaissance man Rubén Blades, a Grammy-winning salsa singer who has headlined Carnegie Hall, a Harvard-educated lawyer, a human rights activist, an award-winning film and television actor (Crossover Dreams, Crazy from the Heart, The Milagro Beanfield War), the star of Paul Simon’s Broadway musical The Capeman, and a politician who lost a bid to become president of Panama but served five years as his nation’s minister of tourism. Blades, who has released such seminal albums as Escenas, Buscando América, and Tiempos and such memorable songs as “Pedro Navaja,” “El Cantate,” “Ojos del Perro Azul,” “Todos Vuelven,” and the always stirring “Muevete,” will be playing a free show on August 7 at the Damrosch Park Bandshell as part of the annual Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival. If you don’t know Rubén Blades, it’s about time you did, and this free concert should be just the right introduction.