Who:Carrie Mae Weems,Jarrett Earnest What: Live virtual discussion and Q&A Where:National Academy of Design Zoom When: Tuesday, August 17, free with RSVP, 7:00 Why: The National Academy of Design continues its “RE:” video series August 17 with Oregon-born artist Carrie Mae Weems, who will be speaking with show creator and host Jarrett Earnest. A National Academician and MacArthur Genius, Weems has been busy during the pandemic, making the hypnotic short film The Baptism with Carl Hancock Rux and hosting a podcast for the Whitney, “Artists Among Us,” in which she speaks with a wide range of artists, curators, and writers, including Glenn Ligon, Bill T. Jones, Luc Sante, Jessamyn Fiore, An-My Lê, and Adam Weinberg, focusing on David Hammons’s Day’s End, an homage to Gordon Matta-Clark.
Weems is best known for such highly influential photographic projects as “The Kitchen Table Series,”“Family Pictures and Stories,”“The Louisiana Project,”“Constructing History,” and “Museums,” several of which are currently on view in the Gagosian exhibition “Social Works.” Author, editor, curator, and educator Earnest has previously talked with Harmony Hammond, William T. Williams, Kay WalkingStick, Dorothea Rockburne, and Alison Saar, with David Diao scheduled for September 14; all episodes can be seen here after their initial broadcast.
Who:The National Black Theatre (NBT) What: American radio play premiere Where:NBT Vimeo When: August 16-23, $10 for forty-eight-hour on-demand viewing Why: In 2015, the New Black Fest premiered the specially commissioned presentation Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments, a collection of seven monologues, between ten and fifteen minutes each, in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as other such murders. From August 16 to 23, the National Black Theatre (NBT) will be streaming the US radio play debut of Hands Up, featuring Kamal Bolden, Nuri Hazzard, Isaiah Johnson, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Eden Marryshow, Warner J. Miller, and J. D. Mollison, helmed by NBT executive artistic director Jonathan McCrory, with sound and music by Kathy Ruvuna and illustrations by Jaimee Todd.
The seven autobiographical monologues, which explore the Black experience in America, consist of Superiority Fantasy by Nathan James, Holes in My Identity by Nathan Yungerberg, They Shootin! Or I Ain’t Neva Scared by Idris Goodwin, Dead of Night . . . The Execution of . . . by Nambi E. Kelley, Abortion by NSangou Njikam, Walking Next to Michael Brown by Eric Micha Holmes, and How I Feel by Dennis A. Allen II. “There is a need for a reform!” McCrory declared in a statement. “There is a new government-sanctioned genocide happening to Black folxs by the police. And unless we change how they serve and protect, we will continue to have these testimonies housed in Hands Up resonate as present pulse narratives that articulate the terror that is running rampant within our communities.” Access to a forty-eight-hour on-demand stream is $10.
BATTERY DANCE FESTIVAL
Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, Battery Park City
20 Battery Pl.
August 12-14 online, August 15-20 in person, free, 7:00 batterydance.org
The Battery Dance Festival has a lot to celebrate this month. Not only is the free summer festival celebrating its fortieth anniversary, but it will be doing so with a series of live, in-person presentations in addition to virtual performances from around the world. “Dancing in the open air, with the river and sky in the background, is always a blissful Battery Dance Festival experience,” Battery Dance president and artistic director Jonathan Hollander said in a statement. “This year, it will be even more exhilarating as people come out of isolation to witness the entrancing performances at Wagner Park. Before the action starts onstage, three nights of truly riveting dance films from many corners of the globe will be screened. Creativity was running high during the pandemic, and we have harvested a heady mix from voguing on a mountaintop in Lebanon to swing dancing in South Korea, from commedia dell’arte in Mexico to birdlike flocking in the Netherlands.”
The festival will screen sixteen dance films online August 12-14 at 7:00, followed by forty live and livestreamed performances taking place August 15-20 at Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park in Battery Park City, including thirty-two premieres from fifty-three companies. Below is the full schedule.
International Dance Film Festival: Online Only at 7:00
Thursday, August 12 We Arnhem, Chapter II, Introdans, Jurriën Schobben & Alberto Villanueva Rodríguez (the Netherlands)
Uninhabited Island, Dance Troupe Braveman (South Korea)
MI blanco, MI Negro, Chilaquiles Rojos Colectivo, Vladimir Campoy (Mexico)
A Moment — Wakati, Nantea Dance Company (Tanzania)
Los Perros del Barrio Colosal, Boca Tuya, Omar Román De Jesús (Puerto Rico/NYC)
Friday, August 13 As Part of Lindy Hop Evolution, Team AJC, Andy Seo (South Korea)
WalkINN, Jiva Velázquez (Paraguay)
Downriver, Bollwerkfilm (Switzerland)
Our Stories, Arabesque Dance Vietnam (Vietnam)
The Circadian Cycle, Australian Dance Theatre (Australia)
Saturday, August 14 The Bait, Chenglong Tang (China)
Gregg Daniel is electric as a man caught between heaven and hell, defending the choices he made in his life, in the world premiere of Roger Q. Mason’s one-man show, The Duat, streaming from Center Theatre Group through August 12. Daniel plays Cornelius “Neil” Johnson, a Black man who, when we first see him, is blindfolded and barefoot. “If I’m in hell, I want to know. I want to see the fire before it takes me down,” he calls out, dancing as if the floor is burning hot. He’s actually in the Duat, the Egyptian underworld where the god Anubis weighs the hearts of the dead to determine where they will spend the afterlife.
Over the course of forty-five minutes, Johnson shares his story, starting with his birth in Texas in 1948 and the tragic death of his father, a railroad porter, four years later. Johnson visits his grandmama, attends a liberal integrated elementary school, excels at UCLA, and becomes a driver for a wealthy white woman. Daniel seamlessly switches between characters, from his angry mother to his brash father to his sensible, soft-spoken grandmother, performing brief, urgent interpretive dance movements at the end of each scene (choreographed by Michael Tomlin III). He is haunted by his father’s fate, dying “a colored death,” and is determined to have his own, unique identity. “I am somebody,” he says in different ways throughout the play, as if Johnson is trying to convince himself that he matters, that he will be seen. But trouble brews when he recounts his time with the US organization, a rival to the Black Panthers, as Johnson does something that he regrets.
Presented in association with the Fire This Time Festival and Watts Village Theater Company,The Duat is part of the third episode of the “Not a Moment, But a Movement” series; the first episode was introduced by Vanessa Williams and featured Angelica Chéri’s one-person play Crowndation; I Will Not Lie to David, while the second episode explored “Black Nourishment” with spoken word artists. The Duat is preceded by a conversation with Watts co-artistic director Bruce A. Lemon Jr. and LA-based visual artist Floyd Strickland and is introduced by Wayne Brady.
The Duat unfolds in the tradition of such solo-show geniuses as Anna Deavere Smith, Dael Orlandersmith, and Charlayne Woodard, as Daniel (Insecure,Urban Nightmares) portrays multiple characters detailing the Black experience in America. He doesn’t change costumes but alters his tone of voice as the narrative sometimes repeats itself from different points of view. Director Taibi Magar (Is God Is,Blue Ridge) zooms in for closeups of Daniel’s face and feet, then pulls back to reveal percussionist David Leach playing several instruments in the background, the spotlight behind him casting him in silhouette. (The effective lighting is by Brandon Baruch, with sound design and original music by David Gonzalez.) Mason (The White Dress,Onion Creek) pulls no punches as Johnson looks back at his life, warts and all, trying to understand who he is and what awaits him.
THE INTERNATIONAL PUPPET FRINGE FESTIVAL
The Clemente Center, 107 Suffolk St.
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave.at 104th St.
August 11-15 live, August 16-31 online, most events free puppetfringenyc.com www.theclementecenter.org
“I could never be on stage on my own. But puppets can say things that humans can’t say,” British comedian, actress, and ventriloquist Nina Conti once explained. You can see a bevy of puppets this month at the International Puppet Fringe Festival, running August 11-15 in person at the Clemente on the Lower East Side, with a few special programs at the Museum of the City of New York, then moving online August 16-31. The fest, hosted by Teatro SEA and the Clemente, is part of the inaugural Puppet Week NYC and features a wide range of programming involving puppets, including live presentations, book readings, workshops, panel discussions, exhibition openings, and panel discussions, most of which are free. “The Clemente is a fitting home for the festival’s events, as puppetry found an early home here in the 1990s and we continue to foster diverse puppet performances in our theater spaces,” Clemente executive director Libertad Guerra said in a statement. “Our hope is that Puppet Week NYC draws attention to this thriving and evolving art form uniting theater with all the visual arts and attracting people of all ages, backgrounds, and cultural identities.”
International Puppet Fringe Festival founder and producer Dr. Manuel Morán added, “During the pandemic, when our curtains couldn’t go up, our roster of puppet makers and puppeteers were eagerly preparing to enthrall audiences with their creative talents, and we can’t wait to finally share their work with you.” This year’s honoree is Vincent Anthony, founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts. Below is the full schedule. Oh, and don’t forget what writer and illustrator Guy Davenport once warned: “I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.”
Wednesday, August 11
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
“Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente” exhibition opening, 5:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, 5:30
Opening Remarks and festival’s dedication to Vincent Anthony, 6:00 The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30 Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00 The Shari Lewis Legacy Show by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 8:00
Thursday, August 12
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00 Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba, Episode 2: Dominican Republic, Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 1:00
Papier-Maché in a Two-Day Workshop, part 1, $50, 2:00
Puppet Celebrity Red Carpet, hosted by Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop, 6:00
“Puppets of New York” Opening Celebration, Museum of the City of New York, 7:00 Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00 Muppets Take Manhattan (Frank Oz, 1984), $15, 8:00
Friday, August 13
Construction and Hybrid Puppets Manipulation Workshop by Carolina Pimentel, $50, 10:00 am
“Dream Puppet” Making Workshop with Marina Tsaplina, El jardín del paraíso Community Garden, noon – 8:00
Out of the Shadows Panel: A Conversation about the Henson Festivals, with Leslee Asch, Cheryl Henson, Dan Hurlin, Manuel Moran, and Michael Romanyshyn, 4:00 Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00 Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00 La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00 The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30 Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Slam / Cabaret: Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner, with Bruce Cannon, Piedmont Bluz, and Valerie and Benedict Turner, 8:00
Saturday, August 14 Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 11:00 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
NIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 1, with Jacqueline Wade, Kuang-Yu Fong, and Ginew Benton, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, noon
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00 Los Colores de Frida / The Colors of Frida by SEA, 1:00 The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 1:00 Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00 Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 1: Cuba y Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
Teatro SEA’s Theatre Book Series Presentation, 2:30 Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 3:00 Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 4:00 Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00
Puppet States by Paulette Richards, 5:00 Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00 La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00 The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30
Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
The Puppetry Guild of Greater NY presents . . . The Bawdy Naughty Puppet Cabaret, 8:00
Sunday, August 15 Little Red’s Hood by Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, 11:00 am Beautiful Blackbird: An African Folktale by Lovely Day Creative Arts, 11:00 am The Marzipan Bunny by A Couple of Puppets, 11:00 am
Giant Puppet Encounter & Mascot Encounter, 11:30 am
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon Chicken Soup, Chicken Soup by WonderSpark Puppets, 1:00
2-D Puppet Workshop for kids by Junktown Duende, 1:00 Penguin in My Pocket by Kurt Hunter, 1:00 Títeres en el Caribe Hispano: Episode 2: República Dominicana and Episode 3: Puerto Rico, 2:00
The Pura Belpré Project by SEA, 3:00 Harlem River Drive by Bruce Cannon, 3:00 Karagoz by U.S. Karagoz Theatre Company, 4:00 Once Upon a time in the Lower East Side . . . by JunkTown Duende, 5:00 Salt Over Gold and other Czech & Slovak fairy tales with strings by Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, 5:00 La Macanuda by Deborah Hunt, 6:00 The Triple Zhongkui Pageant by Chinese Theatre Works, 6:30 Los Grises/The Gray Ones by SEA, 7:00
Puppet Dance Party, 8:00
Tuesday, August 17
A Conversation with Vincent Anthony, hosted by Dr. Manuel Morán and John Ludwig, 7:00
Thursday, August 19
Puppetry 101 with Aretta Baumgartner, 7:00
Friday, August 20
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Kidscapes, short films for children, noon
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 5:00
Saturday, August 21
Puppetry Museums around the World Panel, noon
Tuesday, August 24
Puppetry and Its Healing Properties in Therapy, hosted by Erica Scandoval and Karen Ciego, 7:00
Thursday, August 26
UNIMA-USA Symposium: Conversations on Puppetry, Social Justice, and Diversity: Part 2, with Monxo Lopez, Paulette Richards, Jungmin Song, and Edna Bland, moderated by Claudia Orenstein, 7:00
Friday, August 27
Handmade Puppet Dreams: Dreamscapes, short films for adults, 8:00
Saturday, August 28
Conversations with Puppet Fringe Artists and Troupes in English, noon
Tuesday, August 31
“Glocal” Rethinking, American Puppetry: Opening Eyes Wider by UNIMA-USA’s World Encyclopedia Puppetry Arts, with Karen Smith and Kathy Foley, 7:00
Founded in 1970 by JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow, Mabou Mines has presented multidisciplinary experimental works at such New York City venues as the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Kitchen, Paula Cooper Gallery, Theater for the New City, the Performing Garage, La MaMa, the Public Theater, the Skirball Center, Classic Stage, HERE Arts Center, St. Ann’s, New York Theatre Workshop, and Abrons Arts Center during its legendary, influential half-century history. Amid a pandemic lockdown, it has now turned its attention to Zoom for its latest production, Carl Hancock Rux’s virtual Vs., continuing August 6-8. The fifty-minute piece was written by Rux and directed by Mallory Catlett, the two new co-artistic directors of the East Village–based company.
Vs. channels Franz Kafka, Hélène Cixous, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin through an absurdist lens as four figures are brought before an interrogator, answering the same repetitive bureaucratic questions with a sly didacticism and a tongue-in-cheek pedantry amid the language of rhetoric —or the rhetoric of language. The four witnesses are played by Becca Blackwell, David Thomson, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, and Perry Jung; the audience serves as the visual component of the monotone interrogator, who is heard off camera. Beware of your Zoom background, because you will occasionally be front and center, your face and body covered by a black silhouette (unless you move), as if you are the anonymous interviewer.
Innocuous questions are answered with mini-essays that will make you feel like you’re back in grad school, except now with a sense of humor. When asked if they were born in November, the first witness testifies, “Not if we are to consider an opposition to phallogocentricism and the hegemonic ideals contained in patriarchal culture uniting theory and fantasy, challenging such discourse within the frameworks of a constitution blown up by law. Certainly not if we are to consider language as a central trope and your appropriation and adaptation of language, or challenge to, genre (as language); or the anarchic strategy of regulating forces of hegemonic and phallogocentric culture encoded in language and hierarchical oppositions or distinctions between what I am and what you are; between what is black or white, man or woman. Not if we are to ignore the elementary rubrics of binary principles which lie at the heart of most human structures.”
If you didn’t already know you were in for something different, you’ll start realizing it when the second witness gives the same exact answers as the previous one, word for word.
The third witness responds only in Spanish, giving the most emotional answers (which are translated in the chat). Asked about being born in November, they declare, “Why do you keep asking me if I was born in November? Who cares? I said I don’t know. Ay, what are you, crazy? . . . Stop asking me where I am from and when I was born; did I ask you personal questions?”
Four witnesses make their case in Mabou Mines’ virtual Vs.
Finally, the last witness, asked if they want a glass of water, responds, “God forbid, if there be a God, I prefer something other than water. Something untainted by conservatives, that would be cool. Let’s both have one. You can tell so much about a person by what zie, zim, zir, zieself, sie, sie, hir, hirs, hirself, ey, em, eir, eirs, eirself, ve, ver, vis, vers, verself, tey, ter, tem, ters, tersel, e, em, eir, eirs, emself are drinking. Whether the drinker is loved, or has loved at all. Whether the drinker is now or long ago. Whether the drinker is drinking first harvest, or near the end. Bird of prey? Predator?”
During each interrogation, digital designer Onome Ekeh fiddles with the technology, playing around with color and resolution, making the witnesses go out of focus or disappear into backgrounds, surrounding them with random objects, or creating multiple versions of them. Just as the four subjects refuse to take the questions seriously, they also won’t let their identities be clearly delineated. We learn nothing about who they are, why they are there, or what the interrogator is trying to find out, although the truth seems to be at the center of it all, whatever that is. (Am I referring to the truth or the center there? I honestly don’t know.) “The danger is you, and this council, and this hearing, and this senate, and its polity, paying too much attention to a conciliatory approach to existence,” one witness says. “The first shall go. The last shall come. Age comes. The body withers. Truth comes as itself, a dissembling.”
Throughout the show, you can watch the reactions of your fellow audience members. While I found much of the play very funny in a sarcastic, screw-authority kind of way, it appeared that I was the only one laughing. It’s certainly not a comedy, nor is it a purely academic look at an insecure future. Well, actually, it might be that. In a statement about the production, Rux, a poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, actor, director, singer, and songwriter, explains, “The last four years of American — and for that matter, global — politics has revealed repetitive yet unprecedented abject horror as it relates to historical oppression and colonialism. Vs. attempts to engage the audience in a tribunal of sociopolitical rifts; a discourse that may or may not attempt to lay blame on a nation state and that ultimately reveals the nation state to be ‘us,’ or, rather, ‘we the people.’ The questions it attempts to address are complicated and yet quite simple: What is the history of oppression? Who are the oppressed? What is the final and definitive language of freedom, justice, and liberty for all? What are our tools for human survival?”
Rux (Talk,The Baptism) is not joking around there, making important points about where we are as a culture in the twenty-first century. The same points are dealt with in the play, just not so directly. If you take it completely seriously, you might be bored with the repetition and the apparent lack of advancement of the narrative. But seek out the satirical bent to better appreciate its unique style. Otherwise, God help us all, if there is a God.
Tickets for Third Rail Projects’ virtual, interactive Return the Moon go on sale August 6
Who:Third Rail Projects What: Livestreamed interactive online production Where:Third Rail Projects Zoom When: August 11 – September 30, $15, $42, $67 Why: What is a company that specializes in site-specific immersive theater supposed to do during a pandemic lockdown? Brooklyn-based Third Rail Projects has come up with an answer: Return the Moon, a live, participatory Zoom presentation that begins previews August 11 for a September 8 opening. Conceived and directed by Zach Morris, the seventy-five-minute multimedia production explores remembrance and recurrence, featuring Alberto Denis, Joshua Gonzales, Justin Lynch, and Tara O’Con, with choreography by Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and the cast, sound and original music by Sean Hagerty, and visual design by Morris. “I was curious how we might create a ‘remote’ project that felt inviting and intuitive, communal and personal,” Bessie winner Morris said in a statement. “I wondered what inspiration might be found in this now ubiquitous platform that has become kind of an artifact and metaphor for the dissonance of distanced connection. I was interested in what it meant to craft a work specifically for this medium that would acknowledge and engage with its strengths, its all-too-familiar challenges, and also capitalize on the opportunities that it could afford that would be otherwise impossible in a traditional theater setting.”
Third Rail has previously taken adventurous audiences down the rabbit hole in a former parochial school in Then She Fell, behind the scenes at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater in Ghost Light, and to a beach resort in a Bushwick warehouse in The Grand Paradise. You experience Return the Moon from the confines of your own home and are encouraged, but not required, to participate in the shaping of the narrative, which deals with an old fable about the moon; in addition, afterward, you will receive a package in the mail continuing the exchange between audience and performer. Tickets go on sale August 6 but are limited to sixty per show, so act quick, because they are sure to go fast for this popular, innovative company. The standard price is $42, but you can pay it forward by contributing $67, with the difference helping subsidize $15 tickets for those who cannot afford more.
