this week in (live)streaming

SF PLAYHOUSE: ZOOMLETS AND MORE

San Francisco Playhouse
Mondays at 10:00 through March 1, free with RSVP (available on demand for an extended period of time)
www.sfplayhouse.org

San Francisco Playhouse has been busy during the pandemic lockdown with its Zoomlet series, new and classic short works premiering at 10:00 EST on Monday nights, bookended by an introduction and an in-depth discussion often featuring the playwright in addition to the actors, director, and SFP cofounder and artistic director Bill English. Up next is Perfect Numbers by Diana Burbano, about a homeless woman and a philosophical octopus, with Stacy Ross and Michelle Talgarow, directed by Katja Rivera, streaming live February 22, followed March 1 by the final winter presentation, River’s Message by Conrad A. Panganiban, directed by Jeffrey Lo.

After the initial livestream, most of the works can still be seen on demand on the company’s website. A handful of the early entries are no longer available, and you’re likely to kick yourself for missing them: The Logic by Will Arbery with Jesse Vaughn and E. J. Gibson, directed by Michael Torres; Night Vision by Dominique Morriseau with Joseph Pendleton and Tristan Cunningham, directed by Margo Hall; Great to See You by Theresa Rebeck, with Susi Damilano, John Walker, and Pamela Walker; and The Forgotten Place by Jeff Locker, with James Seol and Jomar Tagatac, directed by Lo.

However, you can still catch eighteen works, including Walls Come Tumbling Down by Genevieve Jessee, with Leigh Rondon-Davis, Kenny Scott, and Dwayne Clay, directed by Darryl V. Jones; Two Pigeons Talk Politics by Lauren Gunderson, with Nic A. Sommerfeld and El Beh, directed by Tracy Ward; an excerpt from The Bacchae by Euripides, with Anthony Fusco and John Douglas Thompson, directed by Carey Perloff; Flight by DeLanna Studi, with Eileen DeSandre, Brent Florendo, and Tanis Parenteau, directed by Marie-Claire Erdynast; Cashed Out by Claude Jackson Jr., with Rainbow Dickerson, Carolyn Dunn, and Lulu Goodfox, directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, which has been commissioned for a full-length production; and an excerpt from Oedipus Rex  by Sophocles, with Steven Anthony Jones and Thompson, directed by Perloff, in addition to works by Ian August, Lee Cataluna, Candrice Jones, Dipika Guha, Lynne Kaufman, Geetha Reddy, and Aaron Loeb. Most of the programs run more than an hour, but the plays themselves are between ten and forty-five minutes. The introductions and postshow talks reveal a fun camaraderie among the participants, who are truly enjoying the experience, even if it is over Zoom, with everyone chiming in from wherever they are sheltering in place.

SFP has also been hosting live Fireside Chats with some of the best playwrights and directors in the business, including Simon Stephens, Pam MacKinnon, Rajiv Joseph, Lauren Yee, Aaron Posner, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Luis Alfaro, and several of the Zoomlet writers, moderated by English, which you can watch here. In addition, SF Playhouse was among the first companies to get permission to stage works in their theater, without an audience and adhering to all Covid-19 protocols. Last season included Yasmina Reza’s Art, Brian Copeland’s solo show The Jewelry Box, and Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World. “Act II: Adjusting Mid-Air” consists of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [Hieroglyph] March 13 through April 3, Julia Brothers’s one-woman show I Was Right Here March 27 to April 17, and Ruben Grijalva’s Shoot Me When . . . May 1 to 22.

LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT: WITH GREAT POWER COMES NO ACCOUNTABILITY BY JILLY BALLISTIC

Jilly Ballistic’s With Great Power Comes No Accountability kicks off Playwrights Horizons’ Lighthouse Project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Playwrights Horizons
416 West Forty-Second St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through February 28, free
www.playwrightshorizons.org

Theaters around the country are facing severe financial hardships as a result of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, but the enormous dollar bill in the window facade of the shuttered Playwrights Horizons building on West Forty-Second St. is only partly about money; it’s primarily about the cost of death, specifically the ultimate price paid by hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from Covid-19. The piece is titled With Great Power Comes No Accountability, and it is by Jilly Ballistic, who has been decorating the subway and subway platforms for decades. The title of this aboveground work was previously used by Ballistic on an L train platform on January 31, 2020, before the full nature of the health crisis was known. The giant note of legal tender is signed by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Ballistic initially wrote on it, “IMAGINE 352,464 of these. Now imagine they’re bodies,” in a word bubble being spoken by President George Washington. Ballistic has returned to the bill several times, using a Sharpie to cross out that number and write in 399,053, then crossing that out and adding 427,626. The coronavirus crisis is costing America in multiple ways, each and every day.

“It’s difficult to conceptualize such large numbers, especially when those numbers are linked to something so tragic as these deaths. There’s a danger, though, if we don’t fully grasp the atrocity: we allow those in power to get away with murder. What better way for a politician to understand our pain than using money as a metaphor?” Ballistic says in her artist statement. She sees the piece as “a reflection on corruption, failure, value, and death in America.” The work is the inaugural installation in Playwrights Horizons’ Lighthouse Project, which is curated by artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein, a founder of the Silence=Death Project, and two-time Tony-winning set and costume designer and activist David Zinn (The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation). With Great Power Comes No Accountability will remain on view through February 28, to be followed by commissions from Ken Gonzales-Day, Dread Scott, and others.

Jilly Ballistic’s With Great Power Comes No Accountability looks at the cost of the coronavirus pandemic (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“This year, this theater is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary under remarkably strange circumstances: a global pandemic, a historical reckoning, and a constitutional crisis,” artistic director Adam Greenfield explained. “In this moment, we want to rediscover the ways our building can be used, to expand the range of artists and disciplines we present, to create a culture of inquiry that pervades the entire building, inside and out, so that genuine artistic innovation can be met with genuine openness.” Zinn added, “I know a lot of things are happening quietly inside of theaters to meet both this racial and economic moment, but I also feel like theaters have a moral responsibility to communicate to the world outside the building. What we’re making is a vehicle for communication — for this need for our buildings to speak for this moment. Jilly’s piece in particular addresses this moment with weight and a sense of political irony that is heartbreaking, and it’s responsive to current events in a very immediate way.”

The Lighthouse Project will also include online conversations, workshops, concerts, and other events addressing this dire moment in time. You can watch the first two talks, “Public Art / Public Space” with Greenfield, Ballistic, Finklestein, and Joy Episalla and “Theater and Society” with Natasha Sinha, Michael R. Jackson, Heather Raffo, Michael John Garcés, and Mimi Lien, here. Up next is “Profiled” on March 3 at 7:00 with Sinha, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Clint Ramos, and Gonzales-Day talking about Gonzales-Day’s Playwrights installation, which will consist of two large-scale digitally edited photographs, part of his long-term series that looks at portraiture through historical memory, race, museum display, moral character, beauty, and the body.

THE BELLE’S STRATAGEM

Red Bull will delve into Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem, in latest benefit reading and Bull Session

Who: Red Bull Theater company
What: Livestreamed benefit reading of Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live
When: Monday, February 22, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through February 26 at 7:00); Bull Session, February 25, free with RSVP, 7:30
Why: In her plan “Staging the 18th-Century Prostitute for the 21st-Century: A Dramaturgical Approach to Teaching Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem,” professor Melinda C. Finberg wrote of Hannah Cowley’s 1780 work, “While The Belle’s Stratagem is set firmly in the fashionable society of late-eighteenth-century London, and its style is reminiscent of Cowley’s Restoration and Augustan predecessors, Cowley’s comedy demonstrates concerns about the laboring classes and their relationship to the moneyed elite. The title of Cowley’s comedy pays homage to one of her favorite Augustan playwrights, George Farquhar (1677-1707), and his The Beaux’s Stratagem (1707), and like many of these earlier comedies, The Belle’s Stratagem juxtaposes two story lines: Letitia Hardy’s ingenious plot to win the heart of her betrothed, Doricourt, against the marital problems of jealous Sir George Touchwood and his wife, the naïve Lady Frances. Both plots concern men learning to respect the women in their lives both before and after marriage, and are further connected by questions regarding the nature and fluidity of identity. Interwoven with these plots are transitional scenes among servants, tradesmen, and con artists who make their livings off the excesses of fashionable life.”

You can find out how relevant the play still is when Red Bull presents a benefit reading of The Belle’s Stratagem on February 22 at 7:30, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch and starring Cecil Baldwin, Jasmine Batchelor, Mark Bedard, Neal Bledsoe, Lilli Cooper, Peter Jay Fernandez, Santino Fontana, Tony Jenkins, Lauren Karaman, Aaron Krohn, Heather Alicia Simms, and Chauncy Thomas. The reading will be available on demand through February 26 at 7:00. On February 25 at 7:30, a live Bull Session on the play, which was advertised back in the day as “A Variety of Serious and Comic Songs,” will feature Upchurch, scholar Dustin D. Stewart, and members of the cast discussing the work and Cowley, who decided to take up playwrighting after a “dull night at the theater” and was involved in a professional rivalry with Hannah More (Percy, The Search after Happiness).

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH

Purim is one of the most joyous of holidays of the year, when Jews around the world gather together to celebrate the defeat of the evil Haman and the saving of the Jewish people in the Persian city of Shushan in the fifth century BCE. Temples host “spiels,” humorous sketches telling the story of Queen Vashti, King Ahasuerus, Mordecai, Esther, and Haman; congregants arrive in costume and use noisemakers known as groggers every time Haman’s name is mentioned; the traditional fruit-filled three-cornered pastry known as hamantaschen is served; plenty of alcohol is mandated; and the whole Megillah, the Book of Esther, is read. With synagogues shuttered because of the pandemic lockdown, the party has gone virtual, with festivities zooming in from all over for you to enjoy from the confines of your home. All of the below events are free; some require advance registration.

On February 21 at 2:30, the Congress for Jewish Culture is presenting Itzik Manger’s Megillah Cycle, an adaptation of the 1968 Broadway musical The Megilla of Itzik Manger, conceived and directed by Mike Burstyn, who will reprise his original roles of the Interlocuter and the master tailor Fanfosso in addition to playing King Ahasuerus, previously portrayed by his father, Pesach Burstein. The international cast also includes Shane Baker, Eli Batalion, Jamie Elman, Daniel Kahn, Lia Koenig, Noah Mitchel, Eleanor Reissa, Joshua Reuben, Suzanne Toren, Allen Lewis Rickman, Yelena Shmulenson, and Avi Hoffman (as Haman), many of whom should be familiar to fans of Yiddish theater here in New York City. The free show, which will be performed in Yiddish with English subtitles, with commentary written by the late Joe Darion, artwork by Adam Whiteman, and music by Uri Schreter, will be broadcast on YouTube, where it will be available for an unlimited amount of time.

On February 22 at 7:00, the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus is holding the grand finale of its Yiddish Purim Song Workshop & Sing-Along, led by Binyumen Schaechter (free with advance RSVP).

As you can tell, Purim is supposed to be a party, and the funniest party of them all is likely to be Met Council’s appropriately titled “Funny Story,” a free virtual table read of the Megillah with an all-star cast of comedians: Elon Gold, Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Jeff Garlin, Judy Gold, Jeff Ross, Russell Peters, Susie Essman, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Bari Weiss, Claudia Oshry, Violet Benson, Montana Tucker, and Eli Leonard, benefiting the organization’s Covid-19 Emergency Fund.

The National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene will be livestreaming its Purim blowout February 22 to 25, with a fifteen-minute Yiddish lesson with Motl Didner on Monday at 1:00; Zalmen Mlotek’s Purim-themed “Living Room Concert” on Tuesday at 1:00; the Hava Tequila Cabaret with Adam B. Shapiro, Dani Apple, Stephanie Lynne Mason, Daniella Rabbani, Lauren Jeanne Thomas, Bobby Underwood, Mikhl Yashinksy, and Michael Winograd on Wednesday at 7:00; and “The Megillah in Yiddish” reading, followed by a performance by the Brooklyn klezmer band Litvakus, on Thursday at 7:00.

On February 25 at 7:00, the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is putting on “The Masked Megillah,” a spiel inspired by the popular television program The Masked Singer. While the shul is not divulging the secret identities of who will be sharing the story of Purim in song and dance, the teaser features the one and only Tovah Feldshuh, from Golda’s Balcony and The Walking Dead.

And from February 25 to 28, the Yiddishkayt Initiative is offering a Purim edition of the International Virtual Yiddish Fest, consisting of “Bright Lights . . . Big Shushan: A Musical Megillah” with Cantor Shira Ginsburg on Thursday at 8:00; “Shmoozing with Avi,” featuring Phillip Namanworth the Boogie Woogie Mystic, on Thursday at 10:00; Aelita’s “Songs from the Heart” concert on Friday at 4:00; Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel Tam (Gimpel the Fool) starring Dori Engel on Friday at 8:00; a “PurimShpiel” concert with the Chorny-Ghergus Duo on Saturday at 2:00; the multimedia “KhapLop,” beloved children’s stories translated into Yiddish by Miriam Hoffman and read by her son, actor Avi Hoffman, on Sunday at noon; and a watch party of Itzik Manger’s Megillah Cycle on February 28 at 2:00.

THE CATASTROPHIST

THE CATASTROPHIST
Streaming through July 25, $30
www.marintheatre.org
www.roundhousetheatre.org

Atlanta-born, San Francisco-based playwright Lauren Gunderson’s two favorite topics are science and theater. At only thirty-nine, she is the most produced living American playwright. She’s written works about mathematician Ada Lovelace and polymath Charles Babbage (Ada and the Engine), scientist and intellectual Émilie du Châtelet (Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight), a young Isaac Newton (Leap), astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (Silent Sky), and physicist and chemist Marie Curie (The Half-Life of Marie Curie) in addition to several twists on Shakespeare (The Book of Will, The Heath, The Taming, and Toil & Trouble). She did not have to look very far for her latest play, which cleverly combines the two: The protagonist has been sleeping next to her for more than a decade, her husband, virologist Nathan Wolfe.

Written during the pandemic, The Catastrophist is a one-man show set in 2016 as Wolfe (portrayed by William DeMeritt), a self-described “virus hunter” and the author of The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, the founder and former CEO of Metabiota, and the founder and former board chair of Global Viral, combats the Ebola outbreak with his team. “I try to predict pandemics, because, if you can predict pandemics, you just might be able to prevent them,” he explains. “How does the futurist not see his own future? How does the catastrophist not plan for his own catastrophe?” he asks.

This play may be specifically about Ebola, but it clearly relates to what we’re going through now with Covid-19, which has shuttered theaters around the world, impacting Gunderson’s livelihood. “Theater is not science,” Wolfe says. “That I know. It’s the opposite. [The playwright] makes the ending whatever she wants it to be. I can’t do that. In fact that would be scientific fraud. Is there theatrical fraud? Isn’t that what theater is? Very nice, well-lit fraud?”

William DeMeritt portrays Nathan Wolfe in Lauren Gunderson’s pandemic play The Catastrophist (photo courtesy Marin Theatre Company)

The story is intensely personal as well, as Wolfe discusses how many of his close male relatives died in their forties; in 2016, he is forty-six and worried about his own health, especially now that he is married and starting a family. As he details his relationship with his father, he considers what kind of a dad he will be, in a world that can be so quickly devastated by an epidemic. “First we have to address our general scientific illiteracy as a species,” he points out. “Everyone has to read Shakespeare in order to be considered well educated, right? But we’re not required to fully understand our place in the tree of life? Shakespeare’s more important than that? Than all of life as we know it! I have a feeling my wife is going to object to this line of thinking. I like plays, but fuck plays! Why focus on fiction when we can’t seem to handle what’s real?”

The Catastrophist was filmed live onstage at the Marin Theatre in San Francisco (coproduced with Round House Theatre in DC), with no audience. When the play deals with Wolfe’s professional life, DeMeritt delivers his lines like he’s giving a TED Talk, determined but not very theatrical as he walks about the empty stage. In fact, Wolfe is a TED Talk veteran, with such scientific monologues as “Why We Have Virus Outbreaks & How We Can Prevent Them” and “What’s Left to Explore?” under his belt. The play is much more intimate and moving when Wolfe digs down deep into his private fears and desires; DeMeritt gets more emotional, displaying a heartfelt vulnerability as director Jasson Minadakis (The Whipping Man, Equivocation) and cinematographer Peter Ruocco bring the camera closer to him, focusing on his eyes, his slumped body, so different from his straight, stalwart stance as the brilliant, successful scientist giving a lecture.

The Catastrophist is very much a work of its time, from subject matter to execution, currently available only over the internet. “Viruses depend on other life to survive. But don’t we all?” Wolfe asks. “All life depends on other life. No one exists in isolation.” Ultimately, though, Wolfe sums everything up when he admits, “It’s a risk being married to a playwright. They usually get the last word.” And The Catastrophist is no different.

HOTEL GOOD LUCK

Seth Soulstein plays a basement DJ facing loss and abandonment in the Cherry’s livestream of Hotel Good Luck

HOTEL GOOD LUCK
State Theatre, Ithaca, New York
February 12-20, $15-$45, 7:30
www.thecherry.org
newohiotheatre.org

One man’s obsession with death and fear of the end threaten to overwhelm his sanity in the Cherry Artists’ Collective’s offbeat, entertaining adaptation of Mexican playwright Alejandro Ricaño’s existential, seriocomic Hotel Good Luck, streaming live through February 20 from the historic State Theatre in Ithaca, where it is being performed without an audience, following all Covid-19 protocols. Although the Spanish-language original premiered in 2015 and Jacqueline Bixler’s astute translation dates from 2019, the play feels fresh and timely, dealing with the eternal themes of loss, loneliness, and disconnection that are so prominent in the current pandemic.

Seth Soulstein stars as Bobby, a grown man living in his father’s basement, where he broadcasts a radio show to four listeners. It’s November 5, and he shares with us on a slide projector screen how his four grandparents died of absurd circumstances, all on November 6 in successive years. Bobby opines that there are “four undeniable truths: 1. Everyone dies. Everyone. 2. Death can be fucking amusing. 3. The world is full of ridiculous coincidences. 4. I fucking hate the sixth of November.”

Terrified of what the next day may bring, Bobby enters what might be a dream or a nightmare, opening the refrigerator and floating into a parallel universe at the Hotel Good Luck where the dead are alive, including his beloved pet, Miller the melancholic dog, and maybe, just maybe, his ex-girlfriend, Lily, may take him back. He meets an alternate version of his best friend, Dr. Larry Torcino (musician and composer Desmond Bratton), his psychoanalyst who, when not at work, plays his double bass in the far corner. He tells Bobby what might be going on with him:

Larry: You don’t need a psychologist, Bobby. What you need is a physicist.
Bobby: A physicist?
Larry: A physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics.
Bobby: Where am I gonna find a physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics?
Larry: It just so happens that I’m a physicist and a specialist in quantum mechanics. It’s my night job. Do you mind if I change my jacket? . . .

A DJ (Seth Soulstein) gets caught up in multiple universes in Hotel Good Luck

Larry goes on to explain, “According to the principle of dimensional simultaneity, two or more realities can coexist in the same space and time. . . . Every little movement we make, Bobby, splits our universe into an infinite series of possibilities. Every little movement instantly opens up an adjacent universe that we can’t see, just an inch away. You’ve apparently discovered in your dreams, Bobby, a portal between one parallel universe and another.”

Soulstein has an irresistible charm as Bobby, a pathetic schlemiel who is not the most thoughtful and caring of men. He wanders across the stage, followed by cameraman Jules Holynski, searching for answers that may never come. However, some elements are within his grasp, such as letters from his mother and father that he magically plucks out of the air, offering new information about his parents’ relationship. Director Samuel Buggeln, who also designed the set — the bold lighting is by Chris Brusberg, with sound by Don Tindall and live video mixing by Noah Elman — takes us behind the scenes as Soulstein moves around the space.

Copresented by New Ohio Theatre, Hotel Good Luck is the second livestreamed, translated play the Cherry has done at the State Theatre, following Josephine George’s English-language adaptation of Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s A Day. While A Day was notable for how it revealed the technology behind the production, which involved Zoom boxes and green screens, Hotel Good Luck is a more standard presentation onstage, but with a more compelling narrative, particularly while we’re sheltering in place, hiding from a deadly virus.

It’s a comforting thought that, especially in these troubling times, we might be able to find what we’re looking for in the magical Narnia looming in the back of our fridge, but it’s not exactly practical in real life. It might not be quite what we need, either, as Bobby discovers. And when it comes right down to it, if you’re a schmuck in one universe, you’re probably a schmuck in another as well. “One has to keep believing, during this brief moment, that nothing is lost,” he says to Lily over the phone. If only.

THE MANIC MONOLOGUES: A VIRTUAL THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE

Who: Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, Craig Bierko
What: Monologues about how real-life individuals are dealing with mental illness
Where: McCarter Theatre Center
When: Thursday, February 18, free, 7:00 am
Why: In May 2019, Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister brought their show, The Manic Monologues, to Stanford University, an evening of true stories about people dealing with mental illness. The project was inspired by a psychotic breakdown Stanford University PhD geology student Zach suffered; he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The play has now been reimagined for online viewing by director Elena Araoz with multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi; it will start streaming through McCarter Theatre Center on February 18 at 7:00 am, performed by an all-star cast and featuring interactive design and technology, including sound, writing, and doodling. “With this digital endeavor, McCarter hopes to reinforce its role as a cultural organization dedicated to innovative projects that spark timely dialogue and strengthen community,” McCarter resident producer Debbie Bisno said in a statement. “In pivoting to virtual creation in Covid, we’ve uncovered exciting ways of combining art and ideas. And, we are excited to make this work, and the conversation around mental health, accessible to a wider and more diverse audience than we would have in a traditional live staged-reading format. These are silver linings!”

Presented in association with Princeton University Health Services, the 24 Hour Plays, and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance at the Lewis Center for the Arts, The Manic Monologues, originally planned for a staged reading prior to the pandemic lockdown, consists of twenty-one real-life tales told by actors Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Ato Blankson-Wood, Mike Carlsen, Maddy Corman, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C. J. Wilson, and Craig Bierko; in an effort to further reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness, there will also be links to a resource guide, video interviews with experts and advocates, the script, and other related material.