this week in (live)streaming

SILENT MOVIE MONDAYS: ONE WEEK / COPS WITH PAUL DOOLEY

Paul Dooley gives a talk about Buter Keaton at Retroformat Los Angeles (photo courtesy Retroformat)

Paul Dooley gives a talk about Buter Keaton at Retroformat Los Angeles (photo courtesy Retroformat)

Who: Paul Dooley, Cliff Retallic
What: Livestreamed classic silent movies with special guests
Where: Retroformat Facebook page
When: Monday nights at 10:30, free with RSVP
Why: Retroformat in Los Angeles has teamed with Flicker Alley LLC, Lobster Films, and Blackhawk Films to present #SilentMovieMondays, livestreamed screenings of silent classics on Facebook, with live musical accompaniment by Retroformat musical director Cliff Retallick, special guest lecturers, and Q&As. On May 4, they showed Max Linder’s 1921 Seven Years Bad Luck and had a talk with self-described “cinevore” Serge Bromberg. On May 11, the great Paul Dooley, the ninety-two-year-old star of stage and screen, including such films as A Wedding, Breaking Away, Popeye, Cars, and Sixteen Candles, will be on hand to talk about Buster Keaton, who will be featured in one of his all-time best, One Week, about a pair of newlyweds and their new home, as well as Cops, in which he gets in trouble with the LAPD. Dooley, who refers to himself as “a household face” and was the cocreator of the long-running children’s show The Electric Company, considers Keaton his hero; he played a Keystone cop in one of Keaton’s 1964-65 Ford Econoline commercials. Retroformat, whose “sole mission is to educate and inspire enthusiasm for the art and history of silent film,” will continue the series during the pandemic shutdown with future titles and guests to be announced.

RED BULL THEATER: RemarkaBULL PODVERSATIONS / CORIOLANUS

coriolanus

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Conversation about William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, live online unrehearsed reading of play
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, May 11 and 18, free (donations accepted), 7:30
Why: No other New York City theater company has taken advantage of livestreaming during the pandemic shutdown like Red Bull has. The troupe, which specializes in Elizabethan and Jacobean comedy and tragedy, has been hosting events on its online sites every Monday night at 7:30, alternating between RemarkaBULL Podversations, in which actors discuss famous speeches, and live, unrehearsed Zoom readings with the original casts of previous Red Bull productions. On April 13, Michael Urie took on the “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo & Juliet, followed April 27 by Elizabeth Marvel tackling Mark Antony’s “Cry Havoc” monologue from Julius Caesar. Meanwhile, the company held live reunion readings of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore on April 20 and Ford, Thomas Dekker, and William Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton on May 4. (While the podversations can still be viewed on the website, the readings are available only through the Friday of that week.)

podversation

Red Bull now turns its attention to the Bard’s Coriolanus, which it staged in the fall of 2016 at the Barrow Street Theatre in a dynamic production set during the Occupy movement that I wrote was transported to “up-to-the-minute contemporary times in a fast and furious immersive adaptation bursting with passion and energy.” On May 11 at 7:30, the podversation “There Is a World Elsewhere” delves into two speeches from the play, with Dion Johnstone, who starred as Cauis Martius, and Lisa Harrow, who played Volumnia, in conversation with Red Bull associate producer Nathan Winkelstein. And nearly the entire original cast will be back on May 18 for a live, unrehearsed reading, with Matthew Amendt as Tullus Aufidius, Zachary Fine as Titus Lartius, Rebecca S’Manga Frank as Virgilia, Harrow as Volumnia, Merritt Janson as Brutus, Johnstone as Cauis Martius, Aaron Krohn as General Cominius, Patrick Page as Menenius Agrippa, Olivia Reis as Young Martius, Lily Santiago as Valeria, Stephen Spinella as Sicinius, and Edward O’Blenis in multiple small roles, along with composer Brandon Wolcott, all performing from wherever they are sheltering in place. Both events are free, but donations are accepted. Up next will be Zoom reunion readings of Red Bull’s 2005-6 version of Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy on June 1 and Jeffrey Hatcher’s fab 2017 adaptation of Gogol’s The Government Inspector on June 15.

BROADWAY DOES MOTHER’S DAY

broadway

Who: More than fifty Broadway performers
What: Mother’s Day benefit for the Broadway Cares COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund
Where: Broadway.com
When: Sunday, May 10, free (donation suggested), 3:00
Why: Broadway tickets are a popular Mother’s Day gift from children. This year, there is currently no Broadway, and most Americans will not be able to visit their mothers because of the coronavirus shutdown. So Broadway.com has teamed with Broadway Cares for a holiday spectacular, presenting Broadway Does Mother’s Day, a one-time-only livestreamed event featuring more than fifty Broadway stars (and their children and mothers) in a Sunday matinee of comedy sketches, musical numbers, and surprises. The celebration will include performances from the casts of such shows as Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, Beetlejuice, Chicago, Come from Away, Company, Dear Evan Hansen, Diana, Girl from the North Country, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jagged Little Pill, Mean Girls, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sing Street, and Moulin Rouge! All proceeds go to the Broadway Cares COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund, which “helps entertainment professionals meet coronavirus-related expenses and other challenges brought about by the evolving pandemic” and are part of a matching program. Below are the announced participants in this holiday extravaganza.

Jill Abramowitz • Annaleigh Ashford • Kate Baldwin • Jenni Barber • Laura & Linda Benanti • Denée Benton • Betty Buckley • Liz Callaway • Carolee Carmello • Miguel Cervantes • Linda Cho • Victoria Clark • Jenn Colella • Chuck, Eddie & Lilli Cooper • Lea DeLaria • Claybourne Elder • Eden Espinosa • Beanie Feldstein • Harvey Fierstein • Victor Garber • Leah C. Gardiner • Molly Griggs • Ann Harada • Jennifer Holliday • Robyn Hurder • James Monroe Iglehart • Sheryl Kaller • Ryan Kasprzak • Judy Kaye • Celia Keenan-Bolger • Kylie Kuioka • LaChanze • Raymond J. Lee • Lesli Margherita • Ellyn Marie Marsh • Michael McElroy • Alexis Michelle • Bonnie Milligan • Brian Stokes Mitchell • Anisha Nagarajan • Manu Narayan • Bernadette Peters • Greg Anthony Rassen • Amanda Spooner • Jason “SweetTooth” Williams • NaTasha Yvette Williams • Vanessa Williams • Betsy Wolfe • Shahadi Wright Joseph

MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL

city winery

Who: Billy Bragg, Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Steve Earle, Shovels & Rope, Rufus Wainwright, Richard Thompson, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen, Todd Snider, KT Tunstall, Loudon Wainwright, Amy Helm, Joseph Arthur, Stella Donnelly, Andrew Bird, Fink, Joan Osborne, the Mountain Goats, Valerie June, Stephin Merritt, Rita Houston
What: Special livestreamed Mother’s Day benefit concert from City Winery
Where: Private YouTube link sent two hours before showtime
When: Sunday, May 10, $10, 5:00
Why: “I love you and that’s why I’m going to stay away,” Billy Bragg sings to his mother in his March 21 video, “Can’t Be There Today.” The English singer-songwriter and activist was quick to follow social distancing guidelines, even if it meant not seeing loved ones. He has now teamed up with City Winery, where he is a regular performer, for a livestreamed Mother’s Day concert on Sunday, May 10, at 5:00, and there is an all-star lineup joining him from wherever they are sheltering in place. The roster so far features Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Steve Earle, Shovels & Rope, Rufus Wainwright, Richard Thompson, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen, Todd Snider, KT Tunstall, Loudon Wainwright, Amy Helm, Joseph Arthur, Stella Donnelly, Andrew Bird, Fink, Joan Osborne, the Mountain Goats, Valerie June, and Stephin Merritt, hosted by Rita Houston.

Tickets to the YouTube show are $10, with all proceeds benefiting the United Nations Foundation, which “addresses sexual and reproductive health and rights in the COVID-19 pandemic.” Showing as always that he is ahead of the curve, Bragg explained in a statement about the song, “The coronavirus pandemic is going to affect our lives in ways we’ve yet to grasp. In the coming months, most of us will be forced to miss family gatherings, including Mother’s Day, which in the UK fell on the first weekend of isolation [March 22]. My new song touches on the emotional cost of this crisis.” Watch the concert with your mother, or in your mother’s memory. And stay safe and healthy out there; it’s not worth risking your life — or your mother’s — just to tell her you love her in person on Sunday.

ESCHATON

eschaton

Who: Chorus Productions
What: Live online escape room challenge
Where: Zoom (link emailed to ticket holders at 9:45)
When: Saturday nights at 10:00, $10 (tickets available here)
Why: While sheltering in place, exiled to our rooms, all of us could use a little escape. The internet has become the go-to diversion for live entertainment, with Zoom, Facebook Watch, and Instagram Live concerts, plays, dance, interviews, art tours, and more. New York City-based theater company Chorus Productions, which specializes in immersive presentations, has come up with a unique approach to escape rooms, where friends and strangers have to come together in order to solve a mystery that takes them through different physical spaces. On Saturday nights at 10:00, you can experience Eschaton, a sixty-minute Zoom journey through a virtual nightclub that, as the game’s name implies, could lead to the end of the world if you don’t figure out the puzzle; you’ll need your cell phone in addition to your desktop computer. Each room features dancers, DJs, and others (including pole dancer Alethea Austin, burlesque performer Lilin, and magician Greg Dubin) who offer clues on how to continue your adventure and eventually save the planet from destruction. The show is still in its early stages, so there might be some technical glitches here and there, but it is evolving every week. Tickets are only $10, but there are very limited spots available. Good luck!

FELT SAD, POSTED A FROG (and other streams of global quarantine)

(screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

A man (Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.) in Berlin shares his thoughts and fears during the pandemic in six-part online play (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

FELT SAD, POSTED A FROG (and other streams of global quarantine)
May 7-8, 7:30, and May 9, 2:30, $15-$35 (depending on what you can afford and how many people are watching with you)
www.thecherry.org

“Why does catastrophe turn me on so much?” asks one of the characters in the Cherry Artists’ Collective’s Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine). The new play, which premiered last weekend and continues May 7–9, was created specifically for these difficult times; it consists of six interwoven tales related to the coronavirus pandemic, written by playwrights from around the world and performed by actors in their homes, where they are sheltering in place.

I wouldn’t say that catastrophe turns me on; the Covid-19 crisis has been a rocky rollercoaster ride and will be for quite some time to come, eliciting an ever-changing onslaught of emotional (and physical) upheaval. For the first several weeks following the March 12 shutdown, I was in a quandary. As someone who has been covering art and culture in New York City since May 2001, I didn’t know what to do with myself, with no plays, art exhibitions, concerts, films, dance programs, food festivals, or book launches to attend and write about. I’ve always focused on events that require people to get off their couches and leave their residence, and now we were all stuck inside. While Netflix bingeing can serve its purpose, it’s not a replacement for live entertainment.

My last post prior to the shutdown was, ironically enough, a March 11 review of a stirring production of Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at Second Stage. For the next month, I wrote only a few pieces about public sculpture; I usually post two or three times a day, but I didn’t have anything to cover while creators were dealing with the shuttering of their outlets. Part of me reveled in the newfound freedom I had, even though I was trapped at home, but I could also feel my motivation fading away. And then came Zoom (and Instagram Live and Facebook Watch Parties) and a whole new approach to livestreaming — which brings us back to the Ithaca, NY–based Cherry.

(screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

A single woman (Erica Steinhagen) gets virtual dating advice from WikiHow (Dean Robinson) in brightness of the screen warming our skin (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

I watched a seven-minute prerecorded short film about a Zoom meeting. I checked out new dance performances, unfiltered celebrity interviews. I saw a live fifteen-minute Zoom opera about a Zoom meeting. Prior to the pandemic, I was obsessed with FOMO, a fear of missing out on a cool event when I was already at a different cool event. Before arts organizations started figuring out what to do during the shutdown, my life actually got a bit more peaceful and calm, if not necessarily exciting. But what was initially a trickle of livestreaming arts turned into a barrage, and the conflicts were unnerving me. Should I watch experimental theater or a conversation and viewer Q&A with a favorite artist, which were happening at the same time? I needed, craved live stimulation, watching something with other people simultaneously. And then I was invited to Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), a live two-hour show about how various men and women were dealing with sheltering in place, written by six playwrights from around the world, performed by actors in their homes. I was giddy with anticipation, ready to experience live theater again, prepared to sit down at my computer and pretend that I was at the venue. Even though I could pause the show and come back to it later, I was determined to make it through the entire play without getting up to get a drink, without checking Facebook, without going to the bathroom, without answering the telephone, as if I were in my seat on the aisle and not alone in my home office. It turned out to be so much harder than I imagined.

Directors Samuel Buggeln and Beth F. Milles shift back and forth among six distinct tales. In German playwright Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Felt Sad, Posted a Frog, a man in Berlin (Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.) is keeping a video diary, making short statements about what he is going through. He keeps going to the open closet behind him, as if it might contain some answers. In Argentine film director Santiago Loza’s Buenos Aires, a recently separated older couple (Nora Susannah Berryman and Rafael Eric Brooks) deal with their sudden isolation after having been together for so long; it’s the only section that contains visual, cinematic elements involving light and color.

Romanian-American writer, poet, and journalist Saviana Stanescu’s Zoom Birthday Party gathers Oana (Helen T. Clark), a college student in New York, her brother, Radu (Joseph D’Amore), who is with their grandparents in Oești, Romania, and their mother, Lia (Elizabeth Mozer), who is taking care of a handsy elderly man in Milan; Oona’s online birthday celebration doesn’t go quite as planned. In Salvadoran playwright Jorgelina Cerritos’s After, a woman in San Salvador (Natasha Lorca Yannacañedo) worries about her family while a narrator (Jeffrey Guyton) watches over her from above. A man from WikiHow (Dean Robinson) in a small frame at the top right gives advice to a single woman (Erica Steinhagen) obsessed with dating in Iva Brdar’s brightness of the screen warming our skin, which is set in the playwright’s native Belgrade. And in National Book Award finalist Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s untitled segment, Jamie (Amoreena Wade), Chelle (Cynthia Henderson), and Coretta (Sylvie Yntema) are in Upstate New York, hopeful for the future.

(screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

Jamie (Amoreena Wade) and Coretta (Sylvie Yntema) have an online confab in Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s segment of Felt Sad, Posted a Frog . . . (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

The six sections explore a potpourri of pandemic problems, from toilet paper, essential services, cats, and misinformation to bats, race, alcohol, and salvation. Some of the vignettes are more successful than others, with the work of Simmons Jr., Yntema, and Steinhagen standing out. Noah Elman effectively handles the live video mixing and design. (Be prepared to see a lot of nostrils.)

Although I did indeed view the show straight through, uninterrupted, it was not easy. At more than two hours, it is too long; it just kept going and going, eventually making me angry, although I enjoyed it overall. But at least part of that reaction might have been more of my FOMO; throughout the play, the temptation to check my email, post something on Facebook, look for news updates about the virus, see what my family was up to, etc., was simply overwhelming. It’s not even about the quality of the production; I’ve been unable to sit through all of the National Theatre Live presentation of Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and it took me three days to finish Albert Serra’s extraordinary film Liberté. I was able to read a short story in the New Yorker by Haruki Murakami but am making ridiculously slow progress on his latest novel.

I feel like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, whose character, photographer L. B. Jefferies, is stuck in his New York City apartment, confined to a wheelchair as he recovers from a broken leg. The antsy Jeff hangs out by the window, using binoculars to peer into the rooms across the courtyard; they used to represent different television channels, each depicting a different genre, but now they mimic a Zoom meeting screen or the endless websites that offer alternative forms of entertainment these days. We’ve trained our brains to jump from window to window, whether browser or app, with no small amount of help from clever advertising tech fiends eager for precious seconds of our attention. Jeff eventually focuses on one specific apartment, where a murder might have taken place. Now I have to figure out a way that I can do the same, concentrate on one play, dance, concert, interview, art tour, etc., at a time and not wilt under the barrage. And yes, I did post a frog.