this week in (live)streaming

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.

DAVID BYRNE AND JOHN WILSON — HOW WE LEARNED ABOUT NON-RATIONAL LOGIC: A CONVERSATION ON HUMOR AND BOOKMAKING

John Wilson talks with David Byrne about his latest Pace show and new book on February 7

Who: David Byrne, John Wilson
What: Live virtual discussion
Where: Pace Gallery, 540 West Twenty-Fifth St., Pace Gallery YouTube
When: Monday, February 7, free (online), 7:00
Why: In his endlessly creative and fun HBO docuseries How To with John Wilson, Astoria native John Wilson uses footage shot all around New York City to delve into such issues as small talk, scaffolding, memory improvement, finding a parking spot, and making the perfect risotto. In his endlessly creative and fun career, British-born musician, singer, playwright, and visual artist David Byrne has made albums (solo and with Talking Heads), given concerts, directed films, and had gallery shows; currently, his brilliant American Utopia continues on Broadway at the St. James Theatre through April 3, and his latest exhibition, “How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic,” is running at Pace’s Twenty-Fifth St. space through March 19. The show consists of several series of drawings Byrne has done over the last twenty years, including his unusual depictions of dingbats sketched during the pandemic. (He describes his fascination with dingbats here.)

Byrne and Wilson have previously collaborated on the 2015 true crime concert documentary Temporary Color; they now will sit down together for a discussion at Pace in conjunction with the publication of Byrne’s new book, A History of the World (in Dingbats) (Phaidon, March 9, $39.95). “How We Learned About Non-Rational Logic: A Conversation on Humor and Bookmaking” takes place in person at Pace, where attendees will receive a signed copy of the book; the event will also be streamed for free over YouTube. “This idea of non-rational logic was not something I made up, but I realized that it kind of resonated with both the fact that I make music and the fact that these drawings follow a kind of logic that isn’t kind of based on logical or rational thinking,” Byrne notes in the above behind-the-scenes video. There should be plenty of such non-rational logic in what promises to be a very funny and illuminating talk.

NOW IN PROCESS

NOW IN PROCESS
New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher St.
January 26 – February 6, $15, 7:00
newohiotheatre.org

Previously known as the Producers Club, New Ohio Theatre’s annual Now in Process festival is back with a hybrid edition, consisting of four works in progress taking place at the troupe’s Christopher St. home in the West Village and online. “Now in Process is where artists try out their next great idea — in its earliest stages,” artistic director Robert Lyons said in a statement. “We like to be there at the beginning and watch projects grow. This year we have four very different groups with one thing in common — they are fearless.”

The series kicks off January 26-27 with Claire and Pierce Siebers’s The Forest at Night, a concert version of the tale of Hansel and Gretel, with the creators playing the siblings who go on a dangerous journey. In Who Gets to Be Egyptian? (January 29-30), poet, actor, class mixologist, dancer, salesman, activist, artist, pianist, and teacher Michael Gene Jacobs, aka MikeDriven and M1, directs Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Anna Wulfekuhle, Dylan Gervais, and Lomar Collins, using ancient stories to celebrate Blackness and Black power. On February 2-3, NYC-based performance collective Exiled Tongues presents Kept in the Dark, written by Dena Igusti and directed by Ray Jordan Achan, which follows a journalist exposing rape culture and Title IX abuses in high schools. Now in Process concludes February 5-6 with Sherry Lutken’s The Porch on Windy Hill, written by Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, David Lutken, and Morgan Morse, in which a couple escapes quarantine in Brooklyn and heads to western North Carolina seeking out the history of Appalachian music, encountering such songs as “Down in the Valley,” “Green Corn,” “Blackberry Blossom,” and “Sail Away Ladies.” The second performance of each show will be livestreamed.