this week in film and television

FILM SCREENING & CONVERSATION WITH DIRECTOR: 76 DAYS

Two essential healthcare workers take a much-deserved brief break in a Wuhan hospital in 76 Days

76 DAYS (Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and Anonymous, 2020)
China Institute in America
100 Washington St. (use 40 Rector St. entrance)
Wednesday, June 20, $12, 6:00
chinainstitute.org/events
www.76daysfilm.com

The prospect of sitting through a ninety-minute documentary about essential healthcare workers in four hospitals in Wuhan fighting in the early days of Covid-19, during the city’s seventy-six-day lockdown, might seem daunting. But what could have been a difficult, emotional, and political roller coaster about fear and anger, government lies and finger pointing turns out to be a deeply affecting film that celebrates our most basic hopes and humanity.

Chinese director Hao Wu was researching a film about pandemics when, in mid-February, he came upon footage being shot by a pair of reporters in Wuhan, Weixi Chen and a man who has decided to remain anonymous. They had been given full access to four hospitals, where they followed doctors, nurses, patients, and family members for several months. There are no talking heads, and no one speaks directly to the camera; instead, 76 Days offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective that manages to be as uplifting as it is frightening.

The film opens like a sci-fi thriller, as an unidentified group of people in head-to-toe protective gear that includes light-blue masks, long face shields, white Hazmat suits, and blue footies comforts a distraught colleague who is prevented from saying goodbye to her father, who has just died from the novel coronavirus. Near the end of the scene, one of her coworkers tries to calm her down, saying, “We don’t want to see you in distress or pain. What will we do if you fall sick? We all have to work in the afternoon.” Moments later, sick people are banging on a door of the hospital to be let in, like a crowd trying to escape a coming zombie apocalypse, while two workers decide who to admit first. Those exchanges set the stage for the rest of the film, in which doctors and nurses go about their business with a relatively relaxed demeanor, displaying endless empathy and compassion as they care for scared patients with uncertain futures.

Wu focuses on a few specific cases that serve to represent the crisis as a whole, following an elderly couple who both have the virus and are not permitted to see each other even though they are on the same floor, and a young couple who are forced to quarantine in their apartment after the woman gives birth to a baby girl, unable to see their newborn for two weeks. While the nurses fall in love with the infant, who must stay in an incubator and whom they name Little Penguin, the workers have their hands full with the old man, who constantly tries to leave the hospital and doesn’t seem capable of wearing his mask correctly, if at all.

Doctors and nurses in Wuhan care for Covid patients, displaying empathy and compassion during seventy-six-day lockdown

The genuine kindness and concern displayed by the hospital employees is, well, infectious. They are risking their lives at every moment; each encounter is fraught with the possibility that they could contract the virus even with all the PPE. It’s hard not to cringe when they feed the old man, wipe the face of the infant, or use a patient’s phone to call a relative with news, because the reality is that people die from this disease, and Wu is not afraid to show that. It’s a riveting film that immerses you in this global emergency that started right there, at that time; if this doesn’t make you wear a mask, wash your hands, observe social distance protocols, and avoid gathering with others indoors, I don’t know what will.

We also see the empty streets and highways of Wuhan, a city of eleven million people, deserted, with signs advising, “Staying home makes a happy family.” All the action is happening in the hospitals, where the doctors and nurses bond with themselves and the patients, decorate their white Hazmat suits with drawings and sayings (“Clay Pot Chicken: I miss you”), and caution everyone to “be extra vigilant.” The crisis may be over, but those are still words to live by. Winner of the Best Cinematography award at DOC NYC 2020 and nominated for a Best Documentary Gotham Award, 76 Days is screening June 20 at 6:00 at China Institute and will be followed by a Q&A with Wu and film scholar Karen Ma.

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

THE EPHEMERAL CINEMA OF SAM GREEN

Sam Green and Yo La Tengo will team up for live documentary at Alice Tully Hall

LINCOLN CENTER’S SUMMER FOR THE CITY: THE EPHEMERAL CINEMA OF SAM GREEN
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at Sixty-Fifth St.
June 13-16, choose-what-you-pay ($5 minimum)
www.lincolncenter.org
32sounds.com

Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City heads indoors for the three-part series “The Ephemeral Cinema of Sam Green,” consisting of a trio of documentaries by the American filmmaker featuring on-site narration by Green and live music.

On June 13 at 7:30, JD Samson and Micheal O’Neill will be performing Samson’s score to 2022’s 32 Sounds, with the audience listening on headphones that will be distributed at the theater. On June 14 at 4:00 and 8:00, Kronos Quartet (David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt, Paul Wiancko) will be on hand to accompany 2018’s A Thousand Thoughts, which Green wrote and directed with Joe Bini about the history of the group. And on June 16 at 7:30, local faves Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew) will play along with 2012’s The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, which explores the career of the twentieth-century futurist.

Sam Green delves into how we listen and connect with humanity and nature in 32 Sounds

32 SOUNDS (Sam Green, 2022)
Alice Tully Hall
Thursday, June 13, choose-what-you-pay ($5 minimum), 7:30
www.lincolncenter.org
32sounds.com

Sam Green’s 32 Sounds might be about how we hear the world, but it’s also filled with a barrage of stunning visuals that, combined with the binaural audio, creates a unique and exciting cinematic journey.

Green was inspired by his relatively new friendship with experimental composer and musician Annea Lockwood, which blossomed over Skype during the pandemic, and by François Girard’s 1993 biographical anthology Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, in which Colm Feore portrays the Canadian classical pianist most famous for his interpretations of such Bach works as the Goldberg Variations. In 32 Sounds, Green teams with composer, DJ, and musician JD Samson, from such bands as Le Tigre and MEN, to present ninety-five minutes of remarkable delicacy and insight.

The film is best experienced on headphones, which is how it is being shown at Alice Tully Hall, with specially customized headphones with the audio mixed live inside the theater. The sound was recorded binaurally, so the audience can hear speech and movement as if it’s to your left or right, behind you, far away, or close up.

In 32 Sounds, Princeton professor and scientist Edgar Choueiri introduces us to Johann Christoff, a recording device shaped like a human head that “captures sound exactly how you hear it.” Similar technology has been used for such theatrical presentations as The Encounter and Blindness. Hollywood veteran and two-time Oscar winner Mark Mangini (Dune, Mad Max: Fury Road) designed the sound for the film, immersing the viewer into what feels like a three-dimensional universe.

The film kicks off with Green and Samson in a playful scene that sets the stage for what is to follow. “This is a little bit of an odd movie in that we’re going to ask you to do some things,” Green explains. “Simple things, like close your eyes. If you don’t want to do them, don’t worry about it. But the truth is, the more you give yourself to the experience” — Samson then cuts in, finishing, “the more you get out of it.”

The first sound Green explores, appropriately enough, is of the womb, recorded by former midwife Aggie Murch, whose husband is Oscar-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Conversation). Over a purplish white screen with no figuration, Green discusses Walter Murch’s 2005 essay “Womb Tone,” in which Murch writes, “Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on. . . . Although our mature consciousness may be betrothed to sight, it was suckled by sound, and if we are looking for the source of sound’s ability — in all its forms — to move us more deeply than the other senses and occasionally give us a mysterious feeling of connectedness to the universe, this primal intimacy is a good place to begin.”

Green then jumps from birth to death, taking out old cassette tapes of voice messages he has saved from decades past, telling us how “they hold the voices of so many people I’ve loved who are gone. I was wondering, How does that work? How does a little piece of eighth-of-an-inch magnetic tape hold a person? Make it seem like they are alive and in front of you more than any photo or piece of film ever could. I was wondering if sound is somehow a way to understand time, and time passing, and loss, and the ephemeral beauty of the present moment, all the things that I keep coming back to in my movies.”

He meets with Cheryl Tipp, curator of Wildlife and Environmental Sounds at the British Library Sound Archive, who shares the poignant and heartbreaking story of the mating call of the Hawaiian bird the moho braccatus. Lockwood, the subject of a short companion film Green directed, demonstrates how she has recorded the sound of rivers for fifty years, after gaining notoriety for her burning-piano installations.

Foley artist Joanna Fang reveals how she creates sound effects for films using unusual items in her studio, from a bowling ball to a wet cloth. “Art can elevate a truth beyond what is feasibly there,” she says. “And if we pull it off right, hopefully the emotional experience of hearing it and being part of it is enough to make you fully accept the poetry of what you’re hearing. Because isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, trying to take what we’re feeling on the inside and show it to somebody else, or let them listen to it, and have them feel the same way we do?”

Black revolutionary and fugitive Nehanda Abiodun listens to a tape of McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” transporting her to another place and time. Poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten marvels about “ghost sounds” of his relatives. Bay Area military veteran and environmental journalist Harold Gilliam postulates about sleep and foghorns in the context of “being part of this total community of life and nonlife on Earth.” Lebanese artist and musician Mazen Kerbaj recalls being able to make sound art during bombings when others were trapped in their homes or dying.

Green gives examples of recording “room tones,” a documentary process in which the subject is silent for thirty seconds as the sound recordist grabs the natural sound in order to help with later editing. It’s fascinating watching Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Rebecca Solnit, and others sit or stand uncomfortably as they wait, and we wait; we are not used to seeing such stagnation in a motion picture.

Annea Lockwood has been recording rivers for more than fifty years

Deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim uses ASL to describe vibration and how she was taught when she was a child that sound was not part of her life, a concept that infuses her art. “I realized that sound is like money, power, control; it’s social currency,” she explains.

Along the way Green also looks at inventor Thomas Edison, polymath Charles Babbage, electronics engineer Alan Blumlein, and a classic Memorex commercial starring Ella Fitzgerald. We see and hear Glass playing piano, church bells ringing in Venice, Don Garcia driving through the city in his red Mazda blasting Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight,” and John Cage performing 4’33” outdoors. A Zamboni cleans the ice at a hockey rink. A cat purrs. Evel Knievel jumps over obstacles on his motorcycle. Samson blasts away on a whoopee cushion. Danny drives his Big Wheel through the empty halls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Different groups dance to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

Oscar nominee Green (The Weather Underground, A Thousand Thoughts) edited the documentary with Nels Bangerter; the new, sharp cinematography is by Yoni Brook. The visuals range from a deluge of quick cuts of archival footage to nearly blank screens when Green asks the audience to close their eyes and just listen.

While the film is a technical marvel, it also becomes deeply emotional, as Green and several subjects listen to recordings of friends and family no longer with us, something you can’t get out of a photo album. It made me think of the messages I had saved on my answering machine of my mother, who passed away in 2017; while I try to avoid hearing them — they used to pop up after I went through new messages, sending me screaming into another room — it is comforting to know that they exist, that I can hear her whenever I need to. Such is the power of sound.

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

LYNNE SACHS: FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

Lynne Sachs retrospective at DCTV features screenings, Q&As, and an interactive workshop (photo by Oscar Fernandez)

LYNNE SACHS: FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
June 7-11, $16-$20, series pass with monograph $80
212-966-4510
www.dctvny.org

Experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs took her first video class at DCTV in 1984; she and DCTV Firehouse Cinema are celebrating this fortieth anniversary with “Lynne Sachs: From the Outside In,” a five-day retrospective with seven programs comprising two dozen of her works, from 1983’s Ladies Wear to 2024’s Contractions and the world premiere of We Continue to Speak, from the three-minute The Small Ones (2007) and The Jitters (2024) to the eighty-three-minute Tip of My Tongue (2017). Sachs will be at every program, participating in Q&As and an interactive workshop; among her special guests are Tom Day, Sam Green, Tabitha Jackson, Naeem Mohaiemen, Lizzie Olesker, Accra Shepp, and her brother Ira Sachs.

“I walked into Downtown Community TV (DCTV) in 1984 thinking I needed to take some classes on how to make a documentary film. I was twenty-two years old and open to any possibility, any guidance, and totally impressionable,” Sachs said in a statement. “From that moment on, I learned to challenge every conventional expectation about working with reality. As I continue to explore the connections between the body, the camera, and the materiality of film itself, I reflect on those early experiences that taught me to reflect upon my own relationship to the people, places, and events I continue to witness as a filmmaker.”

The Memphis-born, Brooklyn-based auteur is an open book in her films, melding the personal and the political. In the grainy Ladies Wear, she photographs Ira on the New York City subway as he applies polish to his nails and sneakers. In 2013’s Your Day Is My Night, she documents a group of Chinese immigrants crammed into a closetlike apartment in Chinatown, where they ponder the differences between their lives in America and their native country and wonder if they made the right choice in coming here; there’s a fascinating kind of intervention when a young Puerto Rican woman moves in with them. In The Small Ones, Sachs shares the story of her Hungarian cousin Sandor Lenard, who during WWII in Italy was tasked with “washing, measuring, and cementing the bones of American dead.” His straightforward narration is accompanied by abstract images of war and slow-motion home movies of children at a birthday party. In 2021’s Maya at 24, Sachs depicts her daughter, Maya, at ages six, sixteen, and twenty-four.

Lynne Sachs takes a revealing look at her dad in Film About a Father Who

Sachs offers a unique perspective of 9/11 in Tornado (2002), her fingers ruffling through ripped paper that floated across to Brooklyn. In the seven-minute Swerve, artist and curator Emmy Catedral, blaqlatinx multidisciplinary artist ray ferreira, director and cinematographer Jeff Preiss, film curator and programmer Inney Prakash, and actor Juliana Sass recite excerpts from Pilipinx poet Paolo Javier’s O.B.B. in a Queens park; words occasionally appear on the screen, including “free emptiness,” “unknown thoroughfare,” and “hum your savage cabbage leaf.” Investigation of a Flame (2001) explores the true story of the Catonsville Nine through archival footage and new interviews, with one member decrying “the obscenity and the insanity” of the US government’s actions, “which are growing more and more obscene and insane.”

“I’ve been in awe of Lynne’s fearlessness and desire to create, make meaning, rip apart, and piece together,” DCTV Firehouse Cinema director of programming Dara Messinger said. “I see her as the epitome of an indelible artist who is driven by curiosity and empathy — not fame, industry demands, or commercial algorithms. And I appreciate her sincere gratitude to her collaborators and to DCTV, honorably looking back but always steps ahead. Good documentary filmmaking cannot happen in a vacuum.”

“I don’t believe that childhood is swathed in innocence,” Sachs writes in e•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (2021), which contains footage from January 6 and Peter Brook’s 1963 Lord of the Flies. In The Jitters (2024), she cavorts with her partner, Mark Street, and three pet frogs and a cat. She takes a revealing look at the patriarch of her seemingly ever-expanding family in Film About a Father Who (2020). In And Then We Marched (2017), Sachs speaks with Sophie D., her seven-year-old neighbor, over archival footage of suffragists and shots of the 2017 Women’s March for equality.

Sachs shares her real to-do lists in A Year in Notes and Numbers (2017) while tracking her cholesterol, bone density, weight, glucose level, platelet count, and total protein. In Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (2018), she visits cutting-edge artists Carolee Schneemann in New Paltz, Barbara Hammer in New York City, and Gunvor Nelson in Sweden. In an essay Sachs wrote about the four-minute 1987 silent short Drawn and Quartered, depicting a naked man and woman divided into four frames, exploring the tacit nature of the human body, Sachs explained how she felt at the film’s San Francisco premiere: “Within those few painful minutes, the crowd went from absolute silence, to raucous laughter, and back to an exquisite quiet. I was shaking.” You can expect all that and more over these five days at DCTV; below is the full schedule.

Lynne Sachs’s poetic short Swerve moves to the rhythm of Queens

Friday, June 7, 7:00
Performing the Real, followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker, moderated by Sam Green and with special guest poet Paolo Javier: Fossil (1986), The Washing Society (codirected with Lizzie Olesker, 2018), Swerve (2022)

Saturday, June 8, noon
Frames and Stanzas: An Artist Talk and Workshop, including A Biography of Lilith (1997), Starfish Aorta Colossus (2015), and Visit to Bernadette Mayer’s Childhood Home (2020)

Saturday, June 8, 4:00
It’s a Hell of a Place, followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs, moderated by Margaret Rhee: Ladies Wear (1983), Tornado (2002), and Your Day Is My Night (2013)

Saturday, June 8, 7:00
Fightless, followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs, moderated by Naeem Mohaiemen: The Small Ones (2007), The Task of the Translator (2010), e•pis•to•lar•y: Letter to Jean Vigo (2021), and Investigation of a Flame (2001)

Lynne Sachs hosts an unusual fiftieth birthday party in Tip of My Tongue

Sunday, June 9, 2:00
Bodies and Bonds, followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs, moderated by Dara Messinger: Drawn and Quartered (1987), The House of Science (1991), And Then We Marched (2017), A Year in Notes and Numbers (2017), Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (2018), Maya at 24 (2021), Contractions (2024), and We Continue to Speak (2024)

Monday, June 10, 7:00
Tip of My Tongue (2017) + A Month of Single Frames (2019), followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs and Accra Shepp, moderated by Tabitha Jackson

Tuesday, June 11, 7:00
Film About a Father Who (2020) + The Jitters (2024), followed by a Q&A with Lynne Sachs, Ira Sachs, and Dana Sachs

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

ROWDY GIRL

Renee King-Sonnen fights for animal rights and veganism in Rowdy Girl

ROWDY GIRL (Jason Goldman, 2023)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
May 31 – June 6
212-966-4510
firehouse.dctvny.org
rowdygirlsanctuary.org

“Because we used to be cattle ranchers, we are the bridge, and we have to be able to have our feet in both worlds to be able to be a funnel and channel for the light to save not just cows, which I adore and love, but the planet, all species,” Renee King-Sonnen says in Rowdy Girl. “If we are not here to do that, then what are we doing?”

Jason Goldman’s debut feature-length documentary introduces audiences to King-Sonnen and her husband, Tommy Sonnen, who run Rowdy Girl Veganic Farm and Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, a nonprofit charity that rescues farm animals that had been raised for meat and incorporates them into their vegan lifestyle. Through their Rancher Advocacy Program, they help others convert their farms to grow crops veganically.

Goldman and cinematographers Bridget McQuillan, Dmitri Borysevicz, and Caleb Kuntz follow King-Sonnen as she speaks to and nurtures Sealy the turkey, Lulu and Penny the pigs, Tom Tom the goat, Trixie and Dixie the donkeys, Lemuria the horse, and Rowdy Girl the cow. A Texas rancher nearly breaks down in tears when he watches King-Sonnen welcome newborn calf Buster, who he helped deliver and then witnessed the animal’s mother reject and leave him to die.

King-Sonnen is a fierce activist for humane treatment of all animals; every shirt and hat she wears boasts anti-factory-farming and pro-vegan slogans, much like the farm’s social media presence. “There’s a door inside our consciousness that we dare not go through, because if we do, we will see that all these animals are just like us,” she tells the Texas rancher.

She meets with Valerie Peña and Jose Bustos about their pig, sixth-generation cattle ranchers Cindy and Richard Traylor about converting their farm, and Jennifer and Rodney Barrett about transforming their chicken ranch into “the first exotic automated mushroom farm in America.” In addition, King-Sonnen hosts a small gathering where she talks about how she is a product of rape, that her father horribly abused her mother, and that she is in recovery; her sobriety happened around the same time she went vegan, fighting against violence and the mistreatment of animals.

Just as King-Sonnen does, the film itself has a clear message. “I was originally drawn to Renee’s story when I learned that she was not only rescuing animals but rescuing ranchers,” Goldman notes in his director’s statement. “That idea crystalized in my mind, that her method of activism was disarming, displayed vulnerability, and was authentically holistic. I could see how she embodies the core philosophy of animal liberation: that animals are sentient beings who have their own interests, desires, and complex emotional lives. My intent with this film was to showcase the deep compassion, understanding, and unusual methods that are required of activists to help people open their hearts and minds to the cruel nature of animal agriculture.”

Rowdy Girl, which was executive produced by New York City native and longtime vegan Moby, opens May 31 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema; Goldman and King-Sonnen will be on hand for Q&As following the 7:00 show on Friday, the 7:30 screening ons Saturday, and the 4:30 show on Sunday.

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

GO PUBLIC! THE COMEDY OF ERRORS AND MORE

PUBLIC THEATER MOBILE UNIT: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
Multiple locations in all five boroughs
May 28 – June 30, free (no RSVP necessary)
publictheater.org

Last year the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit presented Rebecca Martínez and Julián Mesri’s terrific bilingual adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The production is back for the 2024 summer season, on the road May 28 through June 30, making stops in all five boroughs: the New York Public Library/Bryant Park, Wolfe’s Pond, J. Hood Wright Park, Hudson Yards, Roy Wilkins Park, A.R.R.O.W. Field House, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Sunset Park, Travers Park, Maria Hernandez Park, Astor Place, St. Mary’s Park, and the Peninsula at Prospect Park.

No advance reservations are necessary, but you should get there early if you want to get up close and personal with the show; last year I caught it in the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, where some audience members sat on the stage, surrounding the action. If you’re not familiar with the Mobile Unit, you need to be; the program is now in its thirteenth year of bringing free Shakespeare to all five boroughs, presenting works in prisons, shelters, and underserved community centers as well as city parks.

With the Delacorte undergoing renovation, the Mobile Unit is part of “Go Public!,” a festival of free Shakespeare events that includes The Comedy of Errors, outdoor screenings of Kenny Leon’s 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado about Nothing starring Danielle Brooks, Chuck Cooper, Margaret Odette, and Billy Eugene Jones, online streaming of that show as well as 2021’s Merry Wives, 2022’s Richard III, and 2023’s Hamlet, and a block party on July 28.

Below is my review of The Comedy of Errors from last year; I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A fab cast sings and dances its way through exuberant production of The Comedy of Errors (photo by Peter Cooper)

PUBLIC THEATER MOBILE UNIT: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
Multiple locations in all five boroughs
Through May 21, free (no RSVP necessary)
Shiva Theater, May 25 – June 11, free with RSVP
publictheater.org

The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit touring production of The Comedy of Errors is the most fun I’ve ever had at a Shakespeare play.

The Mobile Unit is now in its twelfth year of bringing free Shakespeare to all five boroughs, presenting works in prisons, shelters, and underserved community centers as well as city parks. On May 13, it pulled into the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park, where part of the audience sat on the stage, on all four sides of a small, intimate square area where the action takes place; attendees could also sit in the regular seats, long concrete benches under the open sky.

Emmie Finckel’s spare set features a wooden platform and a bright yellow stepladder that serves several purposes. Lux Haac’s attractive, colorful costumes hang on racks at the back, where the actors perform quick changes. Music director and musician Jacinta Clusellas and guitarist Sara Ornelas sit on folding chairs, performing Julián Mesri’s Latin American–inspired score; Ornelas is fabulous as a troubadour and musical narrator, often wandering around the space and leading the cast in song. The lyrics, by Mesri and director and choreographer Rebecca Martínez, who collaborated on the adaptation, are in English and Spanish and are not necessarily translated word for word, but you will understand what is going on regardless of your primary tongue. As the troubadour explains, “I should mention that most of / this show will be performed in English / though it’s supposed to / take place in two states in Ancient Greece. / But don’t be surprised / if these actors switch their language.”

Trimmed down to a smooth-flowing ninety minutes, the show tells the story of a pair of twins, Dromio (Gían Pérez) and Antipholus (Joel Perez), who were separated at birth. In Ephesus, Dromio serves Antipholus, a wealthy man married to the devoted Adriana (Danaya Esperanza) but cheating on her with a lusty, demanding courtesan (Desireé Rodriguez). The other Dromio and Antipholus arrive in Ephesus and soon have everyone running around in circles as the mistaken identity slapstick ramps up.

Adriana (Danaya Esperanza) and Dromio (Gían Pérez) are all mixed up in The Comedy of Errors (photo by Peter Cooper)

Meanwhile, the merchant Egeon (Varín Ayala) is facing execution because he is from Syracuse, whose citizens are barred from Ephesus, per a decree from the Duchess Solina (Rodriguez); the goldsmith Angelo (Ayala, to be played in 2024 by Glendaliris Torres-Greaux) has made a fancy gold rope necklace for Antipholus but gives it to the wrong one; the Syracuse Dromio is confounded when Adriana’s kitchen maid claims to be his wife; the Syracuse Antipholus falls madly in love with Luciana (Keren Lugo), Adriana’s sister; and an abbess (Rodriguez) is determined to protect anyone who seeks sanctuary.

In case any or all of that is confusing, the troubadour clears things up in a series of songs that explain some, but not all, of the details, and the Public also provides everyone with a cheat sheet. Again, the troubadour: “In case you missed it / or took a little nap / Here’s what’s been happening / since we last had a chat / We’ll do our best / but we confess / this plot is really putting our skills to the test.”

It all comes together sensationally at the conclusion, as true identities are revealed, conflicts are resolved, and love wins out.

Martínez (Sancocho, Living and Breathing) fills the amphitheater with an infectious and supremely delightful exuberance. The terrific cast interacts with the audience, as if we are the townspeople of Ephesus. Gían Pérez (Sing Street) and Joel Perez (Sweet Charity, Fun Home) are hilarious as the two sets of twins, who switch hat colors to identify which brother they are at any given time. Esperanza (Mary Jane, for colored girls . . .) shines as the ever-confused, ultradramatic Adriana, Lugo (Privacy, At the Wedding) is lovely as Luciana and the duchess, Rodriguez is engaging as Emilia and the courtesan, and Ayala (The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew) excels as Angelo, Egeon, and Dr. Pinch.

But Ornelas (A Ribbon About a Bomb, American Mariachi) all but steals the show, switching between leather and denim jackets as she portrays minor characters and plays her guitar with a huge smile on her face, words and music lifting into the air. Charles Coes’s sound design melds with the wind blowing through the trees and other people enjoying themselves in the park on a Saturday afternoon. There are no errors in this comedy.

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

DanceAfrica 2024: CAMEROON

Who: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, DJ YB, more
What: DanceAfrica Festival 2024
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave.
When: May 24-27, many events free, Gilman dances $22-$95, film screenings $16
Why: The coming of summer means the arrival of one of the best festivals of every year, BAM’s DanceAfrica. The forty-seventh annual iteration focuses on Cameroon, with four companies performing “The Origin of Communities / A Calabash of Cultures” in BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House: DanceAfrica Spirit Walkers, Women of the Calabash, the Billie’s Youth Arts Academy Dance Ensemble, and Siren — Protectors of the Rainforest, highlighting movement and music from the Central African nation. Curated by artistic director Abdel R. Salaam, the festival also includes the DanceAfrica Bazaar with more than 150 vendors, dance workshops and master classes in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Mark Morris Dance Center, Salifou Lindou’s art installation La course 2, the Council of Elders Roundtable: Legacy & Preservation, and a late night dance party with DJ YB.

This year’s FilmAfrica screenings and cinema conversations range from Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa’s 1975 Muna Moto and Mohamed Challouf’s The Many Moods of Muna Moto to Jean-Marie Téno’s Colonial Misunderstanding, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s 2005 Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes), and Gordon Main’s 2023 London Recruits, all followed by Q&As with the directors.

“This year’s DanceAfrica is a journey into the heart of Cameroon, driven by a quest to explore the ancient roots of African culture and answer profound questions about humanity’s earliest origins,” Salaam said in his mission statement. “How timeless is Africa, and was it the land of the most ancient beings? What were the origins of humanity, thought, consciousness, art, culture, creativity, and civilization?”

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

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Twentieth anniversary of Napoleon Dynamite will be celebrated May 24 at New Design High School

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
New Design High School
350 Grand St.
Friday, May 24, free with RSVP, doors at 7:00
rooftopfilms.com

Gosh, you better not forget your ChapStick when you head to New Design High School on Friday night to help celebrate the twentieth anniversary of one of the funniest films you’ll ever see, Jared Hess’s 2004 cult classic, Napoleon Dynamite. Written by Hess and his wife, Jerusha, who later teamed up on Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos, the teen comedy features Jon Heder as the title character, a strange Idaho high school student who really knows how to dance. Napoleon and his brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), join forces to raise enough money so Kip can finally meet his online girlfriend, LaFawnduh (Shondrella Avery). Meanwhile, transfer student Pedro (Efren Ramirez) decides to run for class president against the ever-popular Summer (Haylie Duff), and Napoleon and Kip’s uncle, Rico (Jon Gries), tries to put his life back together. Anyway, it’s all great fun, and it should be awesome to see it with a devoted crowd on May 24 as Rooftop Films presents a free twentieth-anniversary screening; doors open at 7:00 with lots of Ore-Ida tater tots (hopefully not from Napoleon’s pocket), followed by the film at 8:30 and an afterparty at Boulton & Watt on Ave. A.