this week in (live)streaming

BOOK SIGNING WITH KIMBERLY BROWN: NAVIGATING GRIEF AND LOSS

Kimberly Brown will celebrate new book at Rubin Museum on November 4 (photo courtesy Kimberly Brown)

Who: Kimberly Brown
What: Book launch
Where: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
When: Friday, November 4, free, 6:30 – 8:30
Why: “Unsuccessful attempts to deny, bypass, or discharge pain create disappointment or frustration and increase our suffering. Why do I still feel so angry? When am I going to stop being so tired? These can also make our feelings even more powerful, insistent, and overwhelming, because they need to be heard and cared for by you before they can resolve,” meditation and mindfulness teacher Kimberly Brown writes in her new book, Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others. Brown’s follow-up to July 2020’s Steady, Calm, and Brave: 25 Practices of Resilience and Wisdom in a Crisis, Navigating Grief and Loss pairs chapters with guided practice; for example, “There Is Nothing Wrong with You” is linked with “Stay,” “When People Behave Badly” with “Forgive and Remember,” and “Mourning and Social Media” with “Skillful Speech.”

“I wrote the book to share the practices that supported me after my dear friend Denise died, and when my elderly dad had a health crisis during the pandemic, and included chapters on divorce and job loss too because not all painful losses are deaths,” Brown explained in a Substack post. “I hope it will remind everyone that profound loss doesn’t have to overwhelm or destroy us because we can learn useful and simple tools to meet our pain and sadness with kindness and wisdom, and open our beautiful hearts to ourselves and everyone else — to connect in our sorrows as well as our joys.” Brown will be at the Rubin Museum on November 4 to sign copies of the book as part of the institution’s free K2 Friday Nights program. Brown is one of the teachers in the museum’s Mindfulness Meditation series on Mondays; you can listen to past sessions here. In addition, on November 15 at 7:00, Brown will celebrate the book’s release with an online party hosted by Mindful Astoria.

HULU’s RAMY: RAMY YOUSSEF IN CONVERSATION WITH HASAN MINAJ

Who: Ramy Youssef, Hasan Minhaj
What: Recanati-Kaplan Talks, Ramy screening and discussion
Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. between Ninety-First & Ninety-Second Sts., and online
When: Friday, October 14, $20-$45 in person at 8:00, $25 online at 9:05
Why: In April 2019, the first season of Hulu’s Ramy began streaming, an unusual semiautobiographical comedy about an Egyptian-American ne’er-do-well and his family, trying to make a life for themselves in New Jersey, balancing tradition with contemporary mores. The very funny, often cringy show was created by Ramy Youssef, who also serves as star, writer, and executive producer. The series, which launched its third season on September 30, features Youssef as Ramy Hassan, who is searching for love and faith, with Hiam Abbass as his mother, Amr Waked as his father, May Calamawy as his sister, Laith Nakli as his uncle, and Mohammed Amer and Dave Merheje as his best friends. On October 14, Youssef will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss his life and career with Peabody-winning American comedian and political commentator Hasan Minaj (The Daily Show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj). In-person tickets are $20-$45 and include a screening beginning at 8:00; online tickets are $25 and start at 9:05.

WILLIAM SHATNER: STILL BOLDLY GOING

Who: William Shatner, Joshua Brandon, Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson
What: Livestreamed discussion
Where: Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center online
When: Thursday, October 6, free with RSVP ($28 with a copy of the book), 7:00
Why: “I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely . . . all of that has thrilled me for years. Where matter in the universe came from, where it’s going, why it’s expanding . . . I know very little, but I know just enough about the universe to be in its thrall, in awe of its mystery.”

So writes William Shatner in his latest book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder (Atria, October 4, $28), which includes such essays as “We Belong Together,” “Listen to the Animals,” and “There’s Beauty in Everything.” Now ninety-one, the actor, singer, horseman, and astronaut, whose grandparents emigrated from Ukraine and Lithuania, will launch the tome in a virtual presentation from the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center on October 6 at 7:00, speaking with his coauthor, Joshua Brandon, and moderator Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson. Registration is free, or you can order the book with the RSVP for $28. “I probably say wow more now than when I was a child, and I am absolutely enchanted by that fact,” Shatner explains in the introduction. “I don’t know how not to be doing. I really would regret not giving myself a chance to experience something new and to learn in the process.” Words to live by from a living legend.

THEATER TALKS — DEATH OF A SALESMAN: A CONVERSATION WITH WENDELL PIERCE, SHARON D. CLARKE, ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS, AND MIRANDA CROMWELL

Who: Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, André De Shields, Miranda Cromwell, Salamishah Tillet
What: Panel discussion on new Death of a Salesman revival
Where: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL), 515 Malcolm X Blvd., and online
When: Monday, October 3, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman have all starred as Willy Loman in Broadway productions of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1949 American classic, Death of a Salesman. You can now add to that prestigious list Wendell Pierce, in the latest Broadway revival, now in previews for an October 9 opening at the Hudson Theatre. The cast features Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke as Willy’s wife, Linda — both won Oliviers for their performances in the West End production — along with André De Shields as Ben, Khris Davis as Biff, and McKinley Belcher III as Happy, the first all-Black Loman family on the Great White Way.

On October 3 at 7:00, Pierce (The Wire, The Piano Lesson), Clarke (Holby City, Caroline, or Change), and Tony and Emmy winner De Shields (Hadestown, The Full Monty) will be joined by director Miranda Cromwell (Magic Elves, Pigeon English) and moderator and Pulitzer Prize winner Salamishah Tillet for a discussion at the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; presented in conjunction with the 92nd St. Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, the free event is being held in person and online, and advance registration is required. “So many of the elements of the play are fundamentally questioning of the American dream, and when you put that through the perspective of the Black experience, that enriches it,” Cromwell said in a statement. “The obstacles are harder, the stakes become higher.”

ARCHER ELAND: TEXTPLAY

Textplay imagines a digital conversation between Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard

TEXTPLAY: TOM STOPPARD AND SAMUEL BECKETT IN CONVERSATION
NYU Skirball digital
Through December 3, $20
nyuskirball.org

During the pandemic lockdown, when companies did not have access to theaters, I experienced numerous cutting-edge live presentations made for laptop, desktop computer, telephone, and smartphone, over Zoom, Instagram, and various new interactive digital platforms, many of which were eye-opening, ingenious ways for creators to connect with one audience member at a time. The latest attempt at this solo virtual magic is Archer Eland’s Textplay, an NYU Skirball production that takes place on your smartphone or desktop device, a real-time imagined, prerecorded texting conversation between absurd theater masters Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard. Unfortunately, it is not virtual magic, although it borders on the absurd.

In a 2019 article in the Guardian about Beckett, Robert McCrum writes of a late-1960s gathering at which Stoppard, a young journalist, encounters the Irish playwright for the first time. Stoppard confides, “I was at that time in a strange state of [Beckett] worship, and it hadn’t occurred to me that you could actually meet him. To me, he was a kind of spiritual presence. So I was incapacitated. I was at this party, feeling like a yokel from Bristol. . . . Someone said ‘Would you like to meet Sam?’ ‘Sam?’ ‘Samuel Beckett.’ Apparently, ‘Sam’ was in the kitchen. So I was led off and introduced to ‘Sam.’ Of course I hadn’t the faintest equipment to exploit this meeting. I have no idea what I should have said, and what he might have said in reply, and after a few minutes I backed away.”

While Beckett was a major influence on Stoppard, I can’t find evidence that they were close friends, close enough to, were Beckett still alive (he died in 1989 at the age of eighty-three), be chatting buddies. I also don’t know if the eighty-five-year-old Stoppard is a digital gossiper. But in Textplay, which in the Urban Dictionary is defined as “simulated foreplay,” Beckett and Stoppard engage in a thirty-five-minute nonsexual chat about art and theater (and hair), goading and chiding each other, complete with emojis and typos.

“We made great discoveries, landed on the moon, cured disease, defeated injutice [sic],” Stoppard claims. Beckett rebuffs, “NO! No we didn’t . . . nice try. We wrote nothing and tricked people into thinkng [sic] it meant everything. All we did was tart up a hole and claim it was an abyss . . .”

Upset that Harold Pinter gets Pinteresque but they get Beckettian and Stoppardian, Tom writes, “Stoppardian sounds like a train station in Wales,” while Sam complains, “Beckettian sounds like a disease.”

Alas, those are among the only memorable exchanges in the play, which, once it begins, can’t be paused or rewound without starting again from the very beginning. The viewer watches the conversation from the point of view of Stoppard; we see his posts as he types them, including much rewriting as his thought process is revealed. That is interesting at first but quickly becomes tedious, especially one long message about the meaning of art in which Stoppard types several responses but deletes them (argh, letter by letter) before deciding on what to send to Beckett. The pacing is also off in Beckett’s replies, which are instantaneous and appear to know exactly when Stoppard’s are done; there is just no way he could have physically written many of them in the time it takes for him to post them.

When I sit in the theater, I never check the time, but I found myself doing so on my smartphone over and over to see how close to the end we were. The idea of making the phone the primary vehicle that delivers this story is a good one, since the object itself is anathema in theaters, where people are told over and over to power their phones down — yet invariably someone’s phone goes off at just the wrong dramatic moment. In addition, the phone constantly begs for our attention no matter what else we are doing; it seems like some people just can’t sit in a theater for two hours without obsessively checking it. But with Textplay, that pull is even stronger, since you won’t be bothering anyone around you if you sneak a peek at social media or your email while Beckett and Stoppard chatter on. And you won’t miss a thing.

TOM STOPPARD IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL KEHLMANN

Who: Tom Stoppard, Daniel Kehlmann
What: Conversations & Performances discussion
Where: Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92Y online
When: Sunday, September 18, in person $15-$31, online $20, 4:30
Why: “Anti-Semitism is a political fact. It’s a bit soon for it to be a party platform, but when it is there will be Austrians to vote for it,” a character states in Tom Stoppard’s new Olivier Award–winning play, Leopoldstadt, which opens October 2 at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. On September 18, Stoppard will be at the 92nd St. Y to inaugurate the eighty-fourth anniversary of the Unterberg Poetry Center — a year younger than he is — to discuss the play, which was partly inspired by his family history. The British playwright and screenwriter will be joined by German and Austrian author and translator Daniel Kehlmann, who has written such novels as You Should Have Left, Tyll, and Fame and translated Leopoldstadt into German.

Stoppard, born Tomáš Sträussler in 1937 in what is now the Czech Republic, is arguably the greatest living playwright of the last sixty years; his works include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and The Coast of Utopia, earning four Tonys and two Oliviers for Best Play. Sir Thomas has also won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. His latest play, his most personal, begins in Vienna in 1899, in the Jewish quarter known as Leopoldstadt, and features more than three dozen characters; directed by Tony and Oscar nominee Patrick Marber (Closer, Notes on a Scandal), it is currently scheduled to run through January 29, 2023.

THE FACADE COMMISSION: AN EVENING WITH ARTIST HEW LOCKE

Who: Hew Locke, Tumelo Mosaka, Kelly Baum
What: Conversation about “The Facade Commission: Hew Locke, Gilt”
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
When: Thursday, September 15, free with RSVP, 6:30
Why: On September 15, Scotland-born, Guyana-raised, London-based sculptor Hew Locke will unveil his Met Museum facade commission, Gilt, which will be on view through May 23, 2023. The four-piece work references the Met collection, focusing on appropriation, power, and colonialism through a theatrical lens.

“Hew Locke creates emotionally powerful and visually striking work that will stop you in your tracks. This site-responsive commission for the museum’s facade will be informed by Locke’s deep knowledge of the Met’s collection and will reference the institution in ways both direct and indirect, recovering and connecting histories across continents, oceans, and time periods,” Met director Max Hollein said in a statement. Curator Sheena Wagstaff added, “Hew Locke uses a delirious aesthetic of abundance and excess to reflect themes of deep urgency in the past and present, including wealth, imperial power, and prestige, astutely critiquing their visual iconography through reclamation.”

The third facade commission, following Wangechi Mutu’s The NewOnes, will free Us and Carol Bove’s The séances aren’t helping, Locke’s aptly titled Gilt will be explored in a panel discussion September 15 at 6:30 with Locke, Columbia University director and curator Tumelo Mosaka, and Met curator Kelly Baum; you can attend in person at the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium or watch the livestream online.