this week in (live)streaming

RED BULL THEATER CELEBRATES MARGARET CAVENDISH

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed Zoom conversation, benefit reading, and Bull Session surrounding Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure
Where: Red Bull Theater website, Facebook Live, and YouTube
When: Conversation Monday, March 7, suggested donation $25, 7:30; benefit reading Monday, March 14, suggested donation $25, 7:30; Bull Session Thursday, March 17, free on YouTube with live chat, 7:30
Why: “Nature is material, or corporeal, and so are all her Creatures, and whatsoever is not material is no part of Nature, neither doth it belong any ways to Nature,” wrote duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and polymath Lady Margaret Lucas Cavendish. Red Bull Theater is turning to the seventeenth-century poet, philosopher, aristocrat, scientist, fiction author, and playwright for Women’s History Month, presenting an online reading and discussions about her 1668 comedy, The Convent of Pleasure. The play, a closet drama not intended to be performed onstage and dealing with women who believe they can live a fulfilling life without men, features wealthy noblewoman Lady Happy, her friend the widow Madam Mediator, the anti-convent Monsieur Take-Pleasure, the married Lady Amorous and Lady Vertue, Mimick the fool, and a cross-dressing prince/princess suitor.

Lady Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure will be explored extensively by Red Bull

“Let me tell you, that Riches ought to be bestowed on such as are poor, and want means to maintain themselves; and Youth, on those that are old; Beauty, on those that are ill-favoured; and Virtue, on those that are vicious: So that if I should place my gifts rightly, I must Marry one that’s poor, old, ill-favoured, and debauch’d,” Lady Happy says early in the play. “Put the case I should Marry the best of Men, if any best there be; yet would a Marry’d life have more crosses and sorrows then pleasure, freedom, or hapiness: nay Marriage to those that are virtuous is a greater restraint then a Monastery. Or, should I take delight in Admirers? they might gaze on my Beauty, and praise my Wit, and I receive nothing from their eyes, nor lips; for Words vanish as soon as spoken, and Sights are not substantial. Besides, I should lose more of my Reputation by their Visits, then gain by their Praises. Or, should I quit Reputation and turn Courtizan, there would be more lost in my Health, then gained by my Lovers, I should find more pain then Pleasure; besides, the troubles and frights I should be put to, with the Quarrels and Brouilleries that Jealous Rivals make, would be a torment to me; and ’tis only for the sake of Men, when Women retire not: And since there is so much folly, vanity and falshood in Men, why should Women trouble and vex themselves for their sake; for retiredness bars the life from nothing else but Men.”

On March 7, Red Bull will host the Zoom discussion “The Closet or the Stage? A Conversation about Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure,” with University of Tennessee professor and author Misty G. Anderson; University of Toronto associate professor Liza Blake, editor of Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies: A Digital Critical Edition; Columbia University professor Julie Crawford, author of the upcoming Margaret Cavendish’s Political Career; and Carnegie Mellon professor emeritus, curator, and author Kristina Straub.

The reading, directed by Kim Weild (American Moor, Paradise Now), will be held the following Monday at 7:30, in association with the R/18 Collective, which “believes the theatrical repertoire from the 1660s to the 1830s provides insights into the deep histories of race, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, and capital that continue to shape anglophone culture and the world.” The cast includes Heidi Armbruster, Becca Ayers, Talley Gale, Cloteal Horne, Rami Margron, Anthony Michael Martinez, Maria-Christina Oliveras, and Josh Tyson. And then, on March 17, a free Bull Session with Weild, cast members, and scholars will take place on YouTube, with a live chat.

THE 35th ANNUAL TIBET HOUSE US BENEFIT CONCERT

Who: Philip Glass, Keanu Reeves, Trey Anastasio, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, Gogol Bordello, Nathaniel Rateliff, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Angélique Kidjo, Margo Price, Punch Brothers, the Fiery Furnaces, Jesse Paris Smith, Tenzin Choegyal, Rubin Kodheli, Camerata — Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, the Scorchio Quartet, Paul Simon, Stephen Colbert, Iggy Pop, Bernard Sumner
What: Annual benefit concert for Tibet House US
Where: Mandolin streaming platform
When: Thursday, March 3, $25-$250, 8:00
Why: The annual Tibet House US benefit fundraiser always features a wide-ranging group of special guests, gathering under the leadership of artistic director Philip Glass. The thirty-fifth annual event is no exception, with the added celebration of Glass’s eighty-fifth birthday. This year’s performers will once again be streaming in live and prerecorded from around the world instead of joining together at Carnegie Hall. The roster includes Glass, Trey Anastasio, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, Gogol Bordello, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Angélique Kidjo, Punch Brothers, the Fiery Furnaces, and others as well as greetings from the Scorchio Quartet, Paul Simon, Stephen Colbert, Iggy Pop, and Bernard Sumner.

All proceeds benefit Tibet House US, “a nonprofit educational institution and cultural embassy that was founded at the request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who at the inauguration in 1987 stated his wish for a long-term cultural institution to ensure the survival of Tibetan civilization and culture, whatever the political destiny of the six million people of Tibet itself.” Tickets start at $25, with additions of a Katak blessing scarf, limited edition benefit poster, event T-shirt, mala beads, and more at higher levels.

THE FRIGID FESTIVAL

Eleanor Conway’s Vaxxed & Waxxed is part of 2022 FRIGID Festival

FRIGID Festival
The Kraine Theater
85 East Fourth Street between Second Ave. & Bowery
UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Place between First Ave. & Ave. A
February 16 – March 6, $10-$20
www.frigid.nyc

Baby, it was cold outside, but it looks like winter will be warming up just as the sixteenth annual FRIGID Festival comes to town, taking place February 16 through March 6 at the Kraine Theater and UNDER St. Marks in the East Village as well as online. This year’s hybrid presentation from FRIGID New York features nearly two dozen shows, running the gamut from comedy, improv, performance art, and stand-up to storytelling, music, drama, and clowning. Among the mostly solo shows are Mark Levy’s Blockbuster Guy, about when Levy was a nerd working for Blockbuster in Florida; Jude Treder-Wolff’s Human Flailings, about psychotherapist and storyteller Treder-Wolff’s reaction to unexpected betrayal; Brian Schiller’s autobiographical Three Funerals and a Chimp, dealing with family loss; Matt Storrs’s Portly Lutheran Know-It-All, which goes back to Storrs’s days at a religious middle school; Grant Bowen’s A Public Private Prayer, in which Bowen discusses his relationship with God; and Amanda Erin Miller’s Smile All the Time, which includes puppets in prison.

In addition, As You Will provides improvised Shakespeare, two brothers travel back to the American Southwest in 1680 in Dillon Chitto’s Pueblo Revolt (which asks the critical question “Can we keep the pigs?”), Melody Bates’s immersive A Play for Voices is set in the dark, Megan Quick portrays a dog actress performing cabaret in And Toto Too, and Howie Jones challenges the audience in That sh$t don’t work! Does it? Also on the bill are Jean Ann Le Bec’s The Last to Know, Mike Lemme’s Bathroom of a Bar on Bleecker, Ellie Brelis’s Driver’s Seat, Daniel Kinch’s The Story of Falling Don, Molly Brenner’s The Pleasure’s Mine, Will Clegg’s The Lonely Road, George Steeves’s Love & Sex on the Spectrum, Julia VanderVeen’s My Grandmother’s Eye Patch, Mikaela Duffy’s StarSweeper, Keith Alessi’s Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life, and Theatre Group GUMBO’s Are You Lovin’ It? Eleanor Conway’s Vaxxed & Waxxed should be interesting since everyone has to show proof of vaccination to get in, meaning she might have to amend her usual question, “Do we have any anti-vaxxers in?”

GALERIE LELONG — DIALOGUES: ETEL ADNAN’S DISCOVERY OF IMMEDIACY

Etel Adnan, Découverte de l’immédiat 16, oil on canvas, 2021 (photo courtesy Galerie Lelong)

Who: Carla Chammas, Dawn Chan, Jina Khayyer, Mary Sabbatino
What: Live, virtual discussion about artist Etel Adnan
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co. online
When: Saturday, February 12, free with advance RSVP, noon
Why: In the summer of 2021, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed artists and longtime partners Etel Adnan and Simone Fattal at their summer home in Erquy, France, prior to their upcoming shows at Art Basel. At one point Adnan, who was born in 1925 in Beirut, said, “My last book [Shifting the Silence] is about realizing that I am going to die. It’s different to know and to feel it, and it’s as if life happens in silence. There is behind the noise of daily life a silence that we hear, another noise, a shifting silence. This silence has changed the focus of consciousness. That’s my last book.” Adnan, who had continued working through the pandemic and was a celebrated poet as well as a visual artist, passed away that November at the age of ninety-six. Her extraordinary career will be the focus of the latest free “Galerie Lelong: Dialogues” virtual discussion, taking place February 12 at 12:30; the talk features gallerist and curator Carla Chammas, art critic and writer Dawn Chan, and writer, poet, and journalist Jina Khayyer; Galerie Lelong vice president/partner Mary Sabbatino will moderate the conversation.

Etel Adnan, Erquy the Edge, India ink on booklet, 2021 (photo courtesy Galerie Lelong)

The gallery’s New York City and Paris locations are currently showing “Discovery of Immediacy,” on view in Chelsea through February 19. The exhibition consists of new black-and-white oil paintings and leporello, folded paper works. “The leporello is a journey,” Adnan told Obrist. “When you start a leporello, it’s like getting on a boat — you have a journey in front of you and that’s what’s beautiful. In the middle of a leporello you are afraid of making a mistake because you would have to throw everything away. You have to invest in the work and you have to keep a tension. It’s like composing music, [maintaining] a rhythm — that’s the work of the leporello, not to fall into a hole, to continue like when you are surfing, to hold the wave.” The colorful Guggenheim retrospective “Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure,” which included color paintings and a bonus of several films, recently closed, but it is sure to come up as well as we all try to hold the wave.

LaGUARDIA HIGH SCHOOL: ALL SHOOK UP

Who: Students of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts
What: First-ever livestream of all-school production
Where: LaGuardia High School online
When: February 13, noon & 5:00, February 16-17, 7:00, free with RSVP
Why: Instead of watching Fame next week, Alan Parker’s 1980 fiction film about teens auditioning for coveted spaces at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, you can watch the read deal when the institution, now known as the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, performs its all-school musical, streaming it live for the first time ever. Because of the pandemic, the show was canceled in 2020 and 2021; the 2022 production will take place at the school, which is located on Amsterdam Ave. at Sixty-Fifth St., in front of a limited audience of students, faculty, cast, crew, and family members. Four of the six performances will also be available as a free livestream.

The students will be presenting All Shook Up, the rousing musical that premiered at the Palace Theatre on Broadway in 2005; it features the music of Elvis Presley, with book by Tony winner Joe DiPietro, who has also written the book and lyrics for such shows as Memphis, The Toxic Avenger, Diana, and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change and the book for Nice Work If You Can Get It and They All Laughed. The show will be performed by fifty-one students from across all five boroughs, with eleven students in the pit orchestra and another ninety-one working tech in addition to choreography by three 2016 graduates, Dharon Jones, Adriel Flete, and Victoria Fiore. Everyone onstage and off- will be wearing masks. “It’s so exciting to see these kids have this opportunity to revisit their passion for onstage performance and to watch them recapture the love and talent that’s so much a part of them,” LaGuardia drama teacher and show director Lee Lobenhofer said in a statement.

All Shook Up is set in the summer of 1955 in, according to the script, “a small you-never-heard-of-it town somewhere in the Midwest.” In the Shakespearean plot, parents and children, the sheriff and the mayor, and the rest of the townspeople confront segregation and racism and battle over the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act while mechanic Natalie swoons for leather-jacketed parolee Chad, Dean has the hots for Lorraine, and Sylvia runs the local honky-tonk, but everyone faces obstacles that threaten their freedom in different ways. The first act is heavy with Presley hits, from “Jailhouse Rock,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Heartbreak Hotel” to “Follow That Dream,” “It’s Now or Never,” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” while the second act does a deeper dive into the Elvis songbook.

There will be two casts; “Rock” features Aaron Syi as Chad, Elena Salzberg as Natalie, Isaac Braunfeld as Dennis, Mairéad O’Neill as Sandra, Nolan Shaffer as Dean, Camille Henri as Lorraine, Eason Rytter as Jim, Cipa Frost as Matilda, Nigel Swinson as Earl, and Avery Palmer as Sylvia, while “Roll” has Michael Sanchez as Chad, Kahlea Hsu as Natalie, Jaxon Ackerman as Dennis, Charlotte Compo as Sandra, Carter Van Vliet as Dean, Bailey Emhoff as Lorraine, Otto Grimwood as Jim, Ani Kabillio as Matilda, Conor Picard as Earl, and Savannah Alvira as Sylvia. The livestreams are scheduled for February 13 at noon and 5:00 and February 16-17 at 7:00, free with advance RSVP here. You can also donate to support the musical by participating in a raffle starting at twenty dollars; among the prizes you can win are tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, Aladdin, or Come from Away, gift certificates to Charlie Palmer Steak or Ellen’s Stardust Diner, a ten-minute call with Mets world champion Dwight Gooden, and other items.

THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES — EDMUND de WAAL AND E. RANDOL SCHOENBERG IN CONVERSATION

Edmund de Waal will talk about his book and accompanying exhibition in free, virtual Jewish Museum program (photo by Iwan Baan)

Who: Edmund de Waal, E. Randol Schoenberg
What: Live virtual discussion about book and exhibit
Where: JewishGen Talks online
When: Wednesday, February 9, free with advance RSVP (donations accepted), 2:00
Why: “It is not just things that carry stories with them. Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina,” Edmund de Waal writes in his 2010 memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. When ceramicist de Waal inherited his family’s netsuke collection, consisting of hundreds of miniature objects, he did a deep dive into the history of the Ephrussi clan, turning it into a bestselling book. Now the story behind his family and the netsuke is on view at the Jewish Museum through May 15. The fabulous show features paintings, letters, photographs, personal documents, keepsakes, and several vitrines containing hundreds of tiny items made of wood, ivory, or bronze, ranging from mice, monkeys, fish, rats, and nuts to spirits, demon catchers, gods, masks, and bottles. A woman takes a bath. A boy exposes himself. A snake wraps around a lotus leaf. A sea woman suckles an octopus. An eji stretches.

“The Hare with Amber Eyes” is on view at the Jewish Museum through May 15 (photo by Iwan Baan)

On the audio guide, de Waal quotes from the prologue, “I want to know what the relationship has been between this wooden object that I am rolling between my fingers — hard and tricky and Japanese — and where it has been. I want to be able to reach to the handle of the door and turn it and feel it open. I want to walk into each room where this object has lived, to feel the volume of the space, to know what pictures were on the walls, how the light fell from the windows. And I want to know whose hands it has been in, and what they felt about it and thought about it — if they thought about it at all. I want to know what it has witnessed.”

On February 9 at 2:00, de Waal will discuss the book, his family history, and the exhibit with attorney, philanthropist, and genealogist E. Randol Schoenberg; the free, virtual event is sponsored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, the Jewish Museum, and the Leo Baeck Institute. You can check out an earlier Jewish Museum conversation between de Waal and Adam Gopnik, about de Waal’s 2021 book, Letters to Camondo, here.

COMPANY: KATRINA LENK, PATTI LuPONE & CHRIS HARPER

Who: Katrina Lenk, Patti LuPone, Chris Harper, Jessica Shaw
What: Virtual discussion about current Broadway revival of Company
Where: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center online
When: Thursday, February 10, free with advance RSVP, 12:30
Why: In my review of the current, controversial revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s beloved Company, I wrote, “Two-time Tony winner Marianne Elliott has reconceptualized Company in ways that go beyond mere gender switching and diverse casting; this Company emphasizes individuality, confinement, isolation, and fear through magnificent staging.” You can hear what some of the key participants have to say about the show when the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center hosts a live, virtual discussion with Tony and Grammy winner Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit, Indecent), who plays Bobby, previously always portrayed as a man; two-time Tony and two-time Grammy winner Patti LuPone (Evita, Gypsy), who delivers the classic “Ladies Who Lunch”; and Olivier-winning producer Chris Harper (Elliott’s War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). SiriusXM’s Jessica Shaw will moderate the free talk.