River L. Ramirez will discuss their latest project, GhostFolk, in a live BAC Zoom talk
Who:River L. Ramirez, Lou Tides, Sarah Galdes, Morgan Bassichis What: Streaming performance and live virtual discussion Where:Baryshnikov Arts Center online When: Live Zoom discussion October 26, free with RSVP, 7:00; performance available on demand through November 1 at 5:00, free Why: “This is a piece about life and living and celebrating the innate ability that we all have here on Earth to love, even if there’s nothing to love sometimes, even if it’s just for you, even if it’s, you know, a feeling that’s kind of cavernous and feels so lonely,” River L. Ramirez says in their introduction to the virtual piece GhostFolk, streaming for free from the Baryshnikov Arts Center through November 1. In the forty-minute work, the Queens-based musician and comedian plays guitar and tells stories in a contemporary song cycle that explores everyday life, joined by Teeny Lieberson/Lou Tides on bass and background vocals and Sarah Galdes on drums, looking like a hip Halloween trio, with costumes by Peter Smith, makeup by Angelo Balassone, and spooky lighting by Devin Cameron. “A new day begins,” Ramirez declares in the first tune.
Hello! A video I made for baryshnikov Art Center is out now. It’s haha, it’s lalalaaa, and other stuff. Go see it! It’s up u til November 1st. :,)
Over the course of forty minutes, they explore quarantine, read personal poems, find the face of Jesus in a plantain, call for babies to help us out of the mess we’re in, search for what’s next, explain that trolls are real, scream and screech, and listen to an animated frog as, occasionally, a figure in a sheet with holes dances in solitude. GhostFolk was filmed and edited by Tatyana Tenenbaum at BAC’s Jerome Robbins Theater; Tenenbaum, a star of the pandemic lockdown, has also shot such BAC works as Landrover and Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm. On October 26 at 7:00, Ramirez, whose social media name is Pile of Tears and who used to do standup as Lorelei Ramirez, will discuss GhostFolk and more with comedian Morgan Bassichis in a live Zoom Q&A.
Alisha Rena Peek and Terri Ayanna Wright perform in Hope Boykin’s Redefine US, from the INside OUT at the 92nd St. Y (photo by Richard Termine / 92nd Street Y)
Who:Hope Boykin, Patrick Coker, Alisha Rena Peek, William Roberson, Deidre Rogan, Martina Viadana, Terri Ayanna Wright, Matthew Rushing What: New York premiere and other works from HopeBoykinDance Where:92Y online When: October 22-24, $15 Why: “We sometimes evaluate ourselves based on one another — the media, our neighbors, what we see from others, what they have and what we do not. Comparison is the enemy, but it can help to understand what else is out there until we, or, until I, discover my right to my own walk, giving value to trials, circumstance, and the weight of my experience as truth,” fearless dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin begins in her introduction to “. . . an evening of HOPE,” her October 21 live, in-person show at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, available on demand through October 24 at midnight. “And until then, until then, I won’t actually go anywhere, just around in circles, but not forward, not upward, only still. So, what do I do? Keep reaching? Yes! Always reaching, constantly searching, climbing, falling some, starting again. Wanting more, doubting, and hoping — but always hoping. . . . Incorporating yesterday’s thoughts with now moments will teach you what you thought you knew and maybe unclose your mind to my truth, my movement language.” The lights then rise on Deidre Rogan performing Again, Ave, a graceful solo set to Leslie Odom Jr.’s version of “Ave Maria.”
During the pandemic lockdown, Boykin remained busy performing the “This Little Light of Mine” excerpt from Matthew Rushing’s 2014 Odetta for the December 2020 Ailey Forward Virtual Season; presenting the world premiere of the dance film . . . a movement. Journey., part of the 92Y program “Charlie Parker: Now’s the Time – Celebrating Bird at 100”; contributing a short film in honor of Zadie Smith at BAM’s 2020 virtual gala; and winning a twi-ny Pandemic Award for Best Short Zoom Dance for the Works & Process at the Guggenheim commission “. . . it’s okay too. Feel,” a collaboration with BalletX.
Hope Boykin takes an intimate and personal look at herself in 92Y program (photo by Steve Vaccariello)
The evening at the Kaufmann Concert Hall continues with Patrick Coker and William Roberson in an emotional duet set to Ledisi’s torch ballad “No, Don’t (Ne Me Quitte Pas).” Self-described educator, creator, mover, and motivator Boykin, who was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and danced with Alvin Ailey from 2000 to 2020, focuses on herself, discussing her truth and movement language in the filmed segment About Her. Me., originally commissioned for Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre during the lockdown, sharing her thoughts about power, strength, tolerance, equality, choice, and being seen as a threat, dancing in a park over tender music by Gavin Luke.
Boykin next offers the New York City premiere of Redefine US, from the INside OUT, an Annenberg Center commission in which Alisha Rena Peek, Martina Viadana, and Terri Ayanna Wright swirl around in a changing series of long gowns for thirty minutes to a building score by Bill Laurance, yearning and demanding as they approach an exhilarating finale, joined by Boykin. The show concludes with Boykin showering praise on how the stage offers her a platform, particularly coming out of the lockdown, as Coker, Peek, Roberson, Rogan, Viadana, and Wright perform . . . with Your name, set to Kirk Franklin’s rousing gospel song “My World Needs You.”
But Boykin is not done yet, sitting down for a Q&A with Ailey associate artistic director Rushing. As she explains in a program note, “When given the opportunity to have ‘. . . an evening of HOPE,’ I wanted to take a look back at my life as a dance maker and rethink, renew, and revise what today’s Hope may have made. . . . I have waited, sometimes patiently, for my turn, permission to be given. Who have I been waiting on and why? I can’t wait anymore.”
Who: Lebert Sandy Bethune, Herb Boyd, Milton Allimadi, Lubangi Muniania, more What: Thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival Where:Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Lenox Ave. / Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th and 128th Sts. When: Saturday, October 23, and Sunday, October 24, $12 (virtual screenings free) Why: The Maysles Documentary Center’s thirteenth annual Congo in Harlem festival, part of Congo Week, concludes its hybrid presentation this weekend with a trio of in-person screenings, two of which are followed by live discussions. On October 23 at 7:30, Maysles will show Bill Stephens’s raw, recently rediscovered, untranslated, and unfinished 1971 film, Congo Oyé, made in collaboration with Chris Marker, Paul and Carole Roussopoulas, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, consisting of forty-five minutes of remarkable footage of Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s visit to Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo. At the same time, the Harlem-based theater will screen Lebert Bethune and John Taylor’s 1966 doc, Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, with Bethune, scholar and activist Herb Boyd, and journalist Milton Allimadi on hand to talk about the film, which was shot in Paris shortly before the controversial leader’s assassination.
Bill Stephens’s recently rediscovered Congo Oyé, is part of Maysles Documentary Center’s Congo in Harlem festival
On October 24 at 4:00, Congolese art educator Lubangi Muniania will moderate a discussion after a screening of Mark Kidel’s 1989 film, New York: Secret African City, in which scholar Robert Farris Thompson, who has been writing and teaching about African art and culture since 1958, shares his iconographic studies of the diaspora in New York, beginning with a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge in which Thompson explains, “We’re undergoing a ritual moment because we’re leaving Wall Street, we’re leaving Madison Avenue, we’re leaving white New York, and we’re entering one of the blackest of the cultural segments of New York.” Tickets to the events are $12 each. In addition, free virtual screenings continue through October 24 of Jihan El-Tahri’s L’Afrique en Morceaux (Africa in Pieces), Douglas Ntimasiemi and Raffi Aghekian’s Kinshasa Mboka Té (Kinshasa Wicked Land), Mathieu Roy’s Les Creuseurs (The Diggers), Kidel’s Pygmies in Paris, Sammy Baloji and David Bernatchez’s Rumba Rules: New Genealogies, Moimi Wezam’s Zero, and the above-mentioned works as well as more than a dozen shorts.
NIGHT SAFARI / THE OLD COUNTRY / THE STRETCH
Steppenwolf NOW
Through October 24, $20 www.steppenwolf.org
During the pandemic lockdown, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company has presented a series of outstanding online presentations, including the Christmas audio play Wally World, the illustrated fairy tale Red Folder, the sizzling two-character drama What Is Left, Burns, and the royal chatfest Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! In preparation for its return to live, in-person theater next month with a revival of longtime company member Tracy Letts’s 2006 play, Bug, in which two people meet in an Oklahoma motel room, Steppenwolf NOW is giving us a tasty apéritif with a trio of three virtual works by Letts, available on demand through October 24. Here in New York City, the three online plays whet our appetite for the Broadway debut of Letts’s The Minutes, which begins previews at Studio 54 in March.
Rainn Wilson plays an unhappy tour guide in online Night Safari (photo by Robert Benavides)
Night Safari stars Rainn Wilson as Gary, a guide leading an evening tour at a zoo. Introducing the first animal, he notes, “In captivity, the Panamanian night monkey is monogamous and lives about twenty years. In the wild, they are not monogamous, and their life span is cut roughly in half. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, but you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself. The Night Safari frowns on editorializing.” But that’s exactly what he does as he takes the visitors to see the aardwolf, the boreal owl, the slow loris, and the paradoxical frog, discussing aspects of their lives that relate to his own failed existence as he slowly grows more ornery, harried, and withdrawn. “What’s so great about sociable animals, anyway?” he asks.
Wilson is a hoot (cue the boreal owl), delivering the monologue, which was first performed by John Gawlik in 2018, in black-and-white, standing in front of a bare wall where his shadow lurks; he is part stand-up comic, part criminal posing for his mug shot. Director Patrick Zakem and DP Robert Benavides photograph him from multiple angles, zooming in on his face or scanning the side of his body, intercutting color photos of the animals along with home movie footage. The thirteen-minute film is a reminder that humans are part of the animal kingdom, subject to the same trials and tribulations as other living creatures, except we tend to be more aware of our triumphs — and failures.
Tracy Letts’s The Old Country is reimagined as a virtual puppet show (photo by Christopher Rejano)
The Old Country, from 2019, begins with atmospheric establishing shots that situate us inside a diner made of papier-mâché and clay, from a spinning dessert tray to ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles to a pile of dirty dishes. Two old men sit at a table, clearly puppets controlled by visible black cords. “That was a damn good sandwich,” Ted (William Petersen) tells a soup-slurping Landy (ninety-seven-year-old Mike Nussbaum), who shortly replies, “I’ll feel safer when we’ve left this deadly place.”
Over the course of ten minutes, they share memories and complain about how things are today. “This isn’t grumpy old man talk,” Ted says. “There’s a principle, right? A scientific principle that explains why everything turns to shit.” Of course, it is grumpy old man talk, but he’s not necessarily wrong, either. Zakem makes you forget you’re watching puppets as they discuss food, sex, the waitress (Karen Rodriguez), and mold spores, their lives now dominated by their aging, death taunting them with every cup of coffee.
Tracy Letts keeps a lookout for life’s twists and turns in The Stretch (photo by Anna D. Shapiro)
Pulitzer and Tony winner Letts takes the acting reins in The Stretch, a fifteen-minute monologue from 2016, directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro and set at the 108th running of the $1 million El Dorado Stakes; Shapiro has helmed several of Letts’s plays, including August: Osage County,Mary Page Marlowe, and Man from Nebraska. The hotly contested race becomes a metaphor for life as Letts, playing the announcer, calls the event, featuring such horses as My Enormous Ego, Bold Defender, a Horse Called Man, Wudjacudja, Hold My Beer, Fata Morgana, and Canadian Navy, leading to such exclamations as “A Horse Called Man appears angry and confused, then retreats in impotent rage,” “Whistlin’ Pete seems completely focused on Sweet Sweet Sue,” and “Here comes My Enormous Ego!”
Something wholly unexpected happens at the finish line, and soon the announcer is delving into humanity’s failings, sharing doom and gloom about the future of all living creatures, prognosticating on interdependence and impermanence while a lullaby plays on the soundtrack. Letts, who has appeared in such television series as Homeland and The Sinner, such Broadway plays as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and All My Sons, and such Oscar-nominated films as Lady Bird and Ford v. Ferrari, goes from hyped up and excited to measured and foreboding as he essentially turns his binoculars on himself and the human race.
“These plays share at least one thread: a world off-kilter,” he explains in a program note. “But since I wrote these pieces, the actual world has undergone some hair-raising transformations, which have cast mysterious new light on these plays. They feel very much like stories for 2021.” The Stretch feels particularly relevant now, a gripping accounting of what our lives have been like since March 2020, with no finish line in sight.
Lynn Cohen uncovers a secret about her late husband in Emma without Edmund
BUSHWICK FILM FESTIVAL
Online, Lot45, Regal Cinema, Circa Brewing Co.
October 20-24, $5-$7 per virtual film, $60-$250 per bundle, $15 in-person screenings www.bushwickfilmfestival.com
One of my favorite shorts in the fourteenth annual Bushwick Film Festival, running online and in person October 20-24, is Nicolas Minas’s thirteen-minute heart-tugger, Emma without Edmund. Part of the “Defining Stages” program, the film stars Lynn Cohen as a widow who discovers that her recently deceased husband had an affair when they were much younger and insists on finding out more about it. Her husband is played by her real-life spouse, Ronald Cohen. I used to see the two of them regularly at the theater, always making sure to say hello. I saw her many times onstage and onscreen as well; she appeared in such television shows as Law & Order,Damages, and Sex and the City, such films as Vanya on 42nd St.,Munich, and The Hunger Games, and such plays as Hamlet with Kevin Kline, Macbeth with Liev Schreiber, and I Remember Mama with an all-star cast of older actresses.
With theaters opening up again, I miss Cohen, who passed away in February 2020 at the age of eighty-six; she and Ronald had been married for fifty-five years, so seeing them together in Emma without Edmund is a special moment. The touching film is being shown October 23 at the Regal Cinema on Court St. with Erica Eng’s Americanized, Naaji Sky Adzimah’s 27 Candles, Ashley Paige Brim’s The Goldfish, and Sarah Kamaras and Harry Spitzer’s The Two Bees, an adorable documentary about longtime roommates Bette and Bonnie, who are ninety-five and recount details from their seventy-year friendship.
The film festival gets under way with an opening-night reception on October 20 at Lot45 and is highlighted by several in-person shorts programs on October 23 at Regal, including “Defining Stages,” “Art as Resistance,” “Family Lies,” and “Campy Comedies” in addition to Kate Beacom and Louis Legge’s full-length Rehab Cabin and a BFF Happy Hour from 2:00 to midnight at Circa Brewing Co. All films are also available online, either individually or in packaged bundles, including all 133 shorts and features from more than two dozen countries for $250. On October 24 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, the free, online Movie Industry Conference consists of such panel discussions as “Dive into Development/Production/Distribution,” “Heard City Presents Uplifting Underrepresented Voices,” “Meet the Producers,” and “NFTs and the Creative Future.”
Who: Tracie Thoms, David Denman, Nyasha Hatendi, Bryan Doerries, more What: Livestreamed play reading followed by community discussion Where:Theater of War Productions Zoom When: Thursday, October 21, free with advance RSVP, 7:00 Why: Theater of War’s live presentations of play readings followed by community discussions continue October 21 with an investigation into consent, power dynamics, and sexual assault. The evening begins with a dramatic reading of scenes from Stephen Belber’s 1999 play, Tape, about two friends who meet with a woman one of them might have date raped back in high school; it was made into a 2001 film by Richard Linklater starring Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Uma Thurman. The reading will be performed by Tracie Thoms, David Denman, and Nyasha Hatendi, helmed by Theater of War artistic director Bryan Doerries. Immediately following the reading, Doerris will facilitate a discussion held in conjunction with Go Purple Day.
“Awareness is the first defense against domestic violence, and every year, with NYC Go Purple, we keep this important issue in front of New Yorkers,” Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence commissioner Cecile Noel said in a statement. “Domestic violence awareness and prevention is not confined to one day of the year. NYC Go Purple reminds us that, every day, every New Yorker can play an important role in ending domestic violence.”
On October 28, Doerries will speak with author Margaret Atwood about social activism and his new translation of the Oedipus Trilogy; on October 27, David Patrick Kelly, Glenn Davis, Amy Ryan, David Strathairn, Marjolaine Goldsmith, and Jumaane Williams will perform Oedipus the King, followed by a discussion on the pandemic and the climate crisis hosted by the University of Notre Dame as part of its “Care for Our Common Home: Just Transition to a Sustainable Future” forum.
Who: Frank Gehry, Eric Garcetti, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Kunlé Adeyemi, Angela Hsu, more What: Livestreamed discussion Where:92nd St. Y online When: Wednesday, October 20, free, noon – 3:00 Why: On October 20, the 92nd St. Y is convening a three-hour summit on the future of American cities in light of health crises, climate change, growing income inequality, transportation complications, and other critical matters. The seven panels and two keynotes will feature prominent architects, designers, urban planners, arts leaders, and others offering ways to face numerous problems, including architect Frank Gehry, LA mayor Eric Garcetti, Citizen University cofounder and CEO Eric Liu, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism founder and creative director Vishaan Chakrabarti, BAM president emerita Karen Brooks Hopkins, architect and professor Kunlé Adeyemi, UNC public policy assistant professor Angela Hsu, and New York City Employment and Training Coalition CEO Jose Ortiz Jr.
“The role of cities in American life has remained essential throughout the pandemic, notwithstanding early predictions to the contrary,” 92Y CEO Seth Pinsky announced in a statement. “That said, it is clear that as a result of the pandemic, the fundamental changes that our cities were undergoing even pre-COVID have only accelerated. Adapting to climate change, investing in infrastructure, including open spaces and parks, distributing prosperity more evenly, while ensuring that business, including the arts and entertainment, thrive — those are just some of the big issues of the day.” Virtual admission is free; below is the full lineup.
Opening Keynote: “Frank Gehry on the Future of Cities,” moderated by Alex Ross
“The Renewal of the American City,” with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Eric Liu, and Ai-Jen Poo
“Arts and the City,” with Karen Brooks Hopkins and Seth Pinsky
“The Future of New York City,” with Vishaan Chakrabarti, Bruce Katz, and Julie Samuels
“Jane Jacobs’s Big Ideas,” with Rana Foroohar
“Cities on the Frontlines of Climate Change,” with Angel Hsu, Rohit Aggarwala, Kunlé Adeyemi, and Emily Tisch Sussman
“The Equitable City: A Design for Fairer Living,” with Ifeoma Ebo, Jose Ortiz Jr., and Jennifer Rittner
Closing Keynote: “How Do Megacities Confront Their Biggest Challenge, Climate Change?” with Eric Garcetti
