this week in (live)streaming

THIS IS WHO I AM

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani play a father and son who are separated by more than just distance in This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

WOOLLY ON DEMAND: THIS IS WHO I AM
Through January 3, $15.99 single, $30.99 household
www.woollymammoth.net
playco.org

Woolly Mammoth and PlayCo’s This Is Who I Am is the best play created during the pandemic that is not specifically about the pandemic. Presented in association with American Repertory Theater, Guthrie Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Amir Nizar Zuabi’s poignant, exquisitely told seventy-minute Zoom work is a treat for all five senses while exploring such issues as love, loss, loneliness, grief, memory, and distance, so much a part of our life amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Zuabi, who was raised in Palestine, was the associate director of Young Vic London for eight years, and is now artistic director of the ShiberHur theater in Haifa, set his 2013 site-specific show, Oh My Sweet Land, in kitchens in real apartments, where small audiences would cram in and watch a woman cook while telling stories about Syrian refugees; everyone was handed a delicacy she made on the way out. This Is Who I Am also takes place in real kitchens, but in this case belonging to two actors portraying an estranged father and son reconnecting over Zoom; you might not get a bite of the spinach-and-onion-stuffed dumpling-like peasant dish known as fteer that they make together, but you will feel as if you can touch, smell, and taste it, in addition to watching and listening to their intimate, heart-tugging conversation. (However, you will get the recipe so you can prepare it yourself in your own kitchen.)

The father (Ramsey Faragallah) is Zooming in from his home in Ramallah, while the son (Yousof Sultani) is in New York, having left the West Bank city years ago to become an art curator, a job his manly, hardworking father fails to understand. As they go step-by-step through the recipe of their late wife/mother’s favorite dish, they talk about the past and delve deep into their relationship, which changed drastically during her prolonged illness. “She used to make such incredible food. Why this, why fteer?” the son asks. “It was the first thing she prepared for me,” the father replies. “She said to me, ‘This is who I am. I am a pocketful of surprises.’”

As they add the ingredients, the differences between them are revealed not only through the dialogue but by how they are making the dish. While the son uses modern utensils and measures everything precisely, the father uses his fingers and judgment with the salt and the sumac, the onions and the yeast. “You were always a horrible cook,” the son says, as if referring to his role as a father as well. The father declares that his lentil soup is to die for, which leads the son to quip, “Death is definitely one of the consequences that can occur as a result of your lentil soup.”

Making fteer together leads them to “fill the gaps” of their lives. When they brush on the olive oil, they remember the olive trees of Ramallah; where the father waxes poetic about the beauty, culture, tradition, and sustenance they represent, the son recalls that the “trees are drenched in blood. They live in a land that had so many people claim it, so many people die for it. You walk around those trees and you feel the reverence of history; I walk around those trees and I hear the shouts of slaughtered men that had to sacrifice themselves to keep it.” When the son insists that water has to be lukewarm, considering it a “safe” temperature, the father interprets that as his son yet again taking the easy way out, not going for the extremes of hot and cold. As they reach the end of the preparation and get ready to place the food in the oven, their topics grow ever-more-serious, with accusations and condemnations being squeezed out like the juice of a lemon, tart and bitter.

Turkish immigrant Evren Odcikin (When My Mama Was a Hittite, Nine Parts of Desire), the associate artistic director at OSF, directs the show with a natural, realistic grace, keeping the actors onscreen the entire time, next to each other in static boxes without camera movement, close-ups, or cuts; we’ve all been part of so many Zoom calls with friends and family and watched a multitude of live, online cooking programs that it’s easy to forget that this is a play and that the two men are fictional constructions. Instead, you’re likely to feel that you’re eavesdropping on an intensely private moment between two complex individuals as they intimately discuss trust, fear, memory, choice, disappointment, and what makes a person a hero.

Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani rehearse Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This Is Who I Am (photo courtesy PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company)

LA-born actor, writer, and teacher Faragallah (The Profane, Homeland) and Northern Virginia native Sultani (Heartland, Photograph 51) are marvelous as father and son, fully embodying their characters just as the dish they are making brings their wife/mother to life. Faragallah portrays the strong and stalwart father with a tender vulnerability that is deeply affecting, while the handsome, hirsute Sultani is sensitive and authentic as the seemingly intractable, unyielding son who is harboring a critical secret. Just follow the movement of their eyes; they might not be in the same room, but their innate attachment is palpable.

In October, Woolly Mammoth’s Woolly on Demand season kicked off with Telephonic Literary Union’s fun Human Resources, which took place completely over the phone as a “choose your own adventure” series of prerecorded messages. This Is Who I Am comes to us live, in real time, via cameras in the actors’ homes in an honest, intrinsically human story that captures who we are and what we are facing without ever mentioning the pandemic we are suffering through; it’s a timeless story whose time is now, for people everywhere.

(This Is Who I Am continues through January 3; tickets are $15.99 for one and $30.99 for a household. On January 2, you can take part in a postshow community meetup hosted by A.R.T. with the Boston Palestine Film Festival by registering here. It’s also worth checking out the archived December 20 virtual panel discussion “Story as Resistance: The Joys, the Heartbreak, and the Food.”)

OLD VIC: IN CAMERA — A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Andrew Lincoln shines a light on a different aspect of Scrooge’s psyche in Old Vic adaptation (photo by Manuel Harlan)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
The Old Vic, London
Through December 24, £10-£65
www.oldvictheatre.com

For its fourth “In Camera” presentation, the Old Vic has revived Jack Thorne’s 2017 reimagining of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which moved to Broadway in fall 2019 and plans to return next holiday season. Thorne’s bold adaptation minimizes the traditional ghost story elements and instead develops a narrative that focuses on Ebenezer Scrooge’s childhood trauma (George Samuel Townsend plays him as a boy, Andrew Lincoln as an adult) and how it influenced his development into the greedy, heartless man he now is — revealing the psychological damage wrought by a demanding, overbearing father (Michael Rouse), never mentioned in Dickens’s original; the boy’s relationship with his adored sister, Fan (Melissa Allan), named only once by Dickens; and his one chance at love with Belle (Gloria Obianyo), the daughter of his employer, Mr. Fezziwig (Clive Rowe), who in this version runs a funeral parlor, although Dickens himself never elucidates Fezziwig’s business.

The heart-tugging Cratchit family — Scrooge’s clerk, Bob (John Dagleish), Bob’s wife (Maria Omakinwa), and their children, including the lame Tiny Tim (Rayhaan Kufuor-Gray, Lara Mehmet, Lenny Rush, or Eleanor Stollery) — is almost an afterthought in Thorne’s retelling, while Scrooge’s deceased partner, Jacob Marley (Rouse), is given more prominence, as is Scrooge’s nephew, Fred (Eugene McCoy). The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are portrayed by a trio of women (Julie Jupp, Golda Rosheuvel, and a surprise third character) who are not daunting spirits but rather have much more intimate connections with Scrooge.

Old Vic’s “In Camera” livestreamed production of A Christmas Carol follows Covid-19 protocols (photo by Manuel Harlan)

The Old Vic’s “In Camera” series, live plays streamed direct from its London stage, adhering to all Covid-19 protocols and performed without an audience, previously offered very short runs of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer with Michael Sheen, David Threlfall, and Indira Varma, Stephen Beresford’s Three Kings with Andrew Scott, and Duncan MacMillan’s Lungs with Claire Foy and Matt Smith. Helmed by Tony-winning artistic director Matthew Warchus (Matilda, God of Carnage), A Christmas Carol is riveting theater for most of its two-hour length. The action is filmed with multiple cameras that give tantalizing close-ups as well as long views, while the tech crew often utilizes split screens so expertly that it’s sometimes difficult to figure out whether actors are actually next to each other or are socially distancing, especially during several handshakes.

Lincoln (The Walking Dead, Parlour Song) is sensational in one of the most familiar roles ever written, playing Scrooge as a flawed human being rather than a brutally cold and unforgiving ogre. It’s a welcome change, as are the changes brought to other minor characters, with stand-out performances by Obianyo, Rowe, and Rosheuvel. The cast also features Rosanna Bates as Jess, Tim van Eyken as Nicholas, and Sam Lathwood as Ferdy. This is not your grandparents’ Christmas Carol.

The set by Rob Howell, who also designed the period costumes, is anchored by a slotted-wood floor, with frames without doors through which characters enter and exit and dozens of lanterns hanging from the ceiling. At the 2017-19 in-person shows, audience members received clementines and cookies; the Old Vic tries to maintain a level of interactivity by having an online quiz that begins about an hour before the play starts and by providing a family activity pack that can be downloaded for free here.

Which brings us to the ending. Throughout the show, Christmas carols are played by a masked band in the balcony, consisting of pianist and musical director Will Stuart, cellists Christopher Allan and Pedro Vieira da Silva, violinist Clare Taylor, and clarinetist Martin Robertson. The songs often get in the way of the narrative, especially with Thorne’s (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, His Dark Materials) unexpected twists, but it all becomes particularly annoying when the music, acting, and staging all combine to go way over the top during Scrooge’s rethinking of what Christmas means. What was a gripping, tense tale instantaneously lapses into a tired traditional holiday finale, turning its back on everything that came before. It had challenged what we know about this classic story but then settled for the lowest common denominator for its conclusion, which is a shame. Or, of course, I’m just being a scrooge. Bah, humbug.

PAM TANOWITZ DANCE: FINALLY UNFINISHED PARTS 1 & 2

Pam Tanowitz Dance’s Finally Unfinished streams from the Joyce through December 26

JoyceStream
The Joyce Theater
December 12-26, $13
www.joyce.org
pamtanowitzdance.org

Pam Tanowitz Dance (PTD) continues its digital site-specific season with Finally Unfinished: Part I, streaming from the Joyce through December 26. During the pandemic, with theaters emptied by health restrictions, the Bronx-born Tanowitz, who was a 2013 Joyce Residency Artist, has created several outdoor works that take dance fans and performers outside. David, a solo for American Ballet Theater principal dancer David Hallberg as part of “ABT Today: The Future Starts Now,” is set at the Glass House in New Canaan, while Solo for Russell: Sites 1-5, a solo for New York City Ballet principal dancer Russell Janzen for NYCB’s New Works Festival, guided viewers around the Lincoln Center campus, from the Illumination Lawn to the Damrosch Park Bandshell. (In June 2019, Tanowitz’s Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures took place in several locations in Nelson A. Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City for the 2019 River to River Festival.)

Now Tanowitz has returned to the Joyce Theater, where she has presented such works as Passagen and Heaven on One’s Head in February 2014, Sequenzas in Quadrilles and the story progresses as if in a dream of glittering surfaces in September 2016, and New Work for Goldberg Variations in December 2019, with a multipart show created specifically for online viewing through JoyceStream. Made following Covid-19 protocols during a residency on Governors Island, the work, following an iteration livestreamed from the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia on October 15, is a “flexible dance piece” that is set in and around the Joyce, from the proscenium stage to the wings, from the aisles to the balcony.

“We finally finished Finally Unfinished, but it’s never really finished,” Tanowitz announces before the curtain literally rises on Jason Collins, Christine Flores, Zachary Gonder, and Victor Lozano, who perform Gustave Le Gray, No. 2 on an empty stage. The four barefoot dancers, wearing tan shorts and T-shirts designed by Reid Barthelme and Harriet Jung, move gingerly in unison to a score by Caroline Shaw played by pianist Amy Yang; the camera shoots them from multiple angles, with closeups of their bare legs and long shots from the back of the theater.

After ten minutes, they are joined by Brittany Engel-Adams, Lindsey Jones, and Melissa Toogood for the explosion that is Finally Unfinished: Part 1. Amid piped-in crowd noises (“Field Recordings” by Dan Siegler) and recordings of cues from PTD’s 2014 appearance at the Joyce (“Cueing Sound Score,” with the disembodied voices of Laurie Benoit and Jeff Segal), Toogood takes over the stage, dressed in a full-length space-age onesie with a hood, followed by a masked cameraman in the same outfit. Soon everyone has changed costumes (including some garb that incorporates the design and color of the seats in the audience, the curtain, and the carpeting) as they dance to “Furtive Movements,” an electronic score by Ted Hearne, performed by cellist Ashley Bathgate and percussionist Ron Wiltrout. It all builds to an exhilarating crescendo until a peaceful and quiet finale with, of course, no applause.

But it’s not quite over; Finally Unfinished: Part II continues online with what PTD calls “a Digital Curio Case.” Designed by Jeremy Jacob and beginning with old footage of a clapping crowd, Part II reveals some of Tanowitz’s inspirations and creative process, including text (“Nowhere is a dead end”), cutouts of the dancers, a collection of clips from films in which characters perform playful dances using their fingers on a table (The Gold Rush, A Band Apart, Benny & Joon), a behind-the-scenes look at costumes by Barthelme and Jung and scenery by Suzanne Bocanegra, recommended reading, and more.

From the dances to the multimedia scrapbook, it’s a judicious and entertaining tribute to the Joyce using the internet as medium during a health crisis that has left us all in front of our screens, unable to experience dance and other live entertainment in person. As Tanowitz says, “It’s a different format now. / What format should it be? / We finished it for you. / It’s never finished for me.”

STAND WITH TEACHERS

Who: Stevie Van Zandt, Eddie Vedder, Margo Price, Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Hagar, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Lowell Levinger, Matisyahu, Whoopi Goldberg, Melle Mel, Tom Morello, Edward Norton, Vincent Pastore, Maureen Van Zandt, Trønd Fausa Aurvåg, Steinar Sagen
What: Holiday fundraiser for TeachRock
Where: TeachRock
When: Monday, December 21, $25-$150, 8:00
Why: “Little Steven’s TeachRock program brings an essential curriculum of music and culture into school and makes it available at no cost to educators. In a time of cutbacks in arts funding, Steve’s programs are keeping kids engaged in the arts, and in school — this is his greatest legacy,” Bruce Springsteen said about his longtime E Street Band cohort Stevie Van Zandt’s TeachRock, an organization dedicated to teaching arts, and specifically popular music, in schools. Part of the nonprofit Rock and Roll Forever Foundation, TeachRock has adapted to remote learning by making available special lesson packages for children of all ages.

On December 21 at 8:00, Van Zandt and TeachRock will host a benefit fundraiser highlighted by performances by board members Springsteen and Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder, Margo Price, and Matisyahu in addition to appearances by Sammy Hagar, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Whoopi Goldberg, Melle Mel, Tom Morello, Edward Norton, Vincent Pastore, Maureen Van Zandt, and, from Lillyhammer, Trønd Fausa Aurvåg and Steinar Sagen. Tickets are $25 or $150 to get your name added to the TeachRock Solidarity Wall. “Music connects us, even when we must be apart,” Van Zandt said in a statement. “Our amazing teachers stood by us and provided structure, emotional support, and a reassuring sense of normalcy to our children during Covid. Now we’re going to stand with teachers and provide them the resources they need to keep kids engaged, emotionally healthy, and learning.” The hourlong event will be followed by a Holiday Video Jukebox featuring songs by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, Darlene Love, Dean Frasier, and others.

HOMESICK

Danielle Agami looks deep inside herself in Homesick (photo courtesy Source Material)

HOMESICK
December 20 – January 10, $10-$25 (pay-what-you-can)
www.homesickthefilm.com
www.sourcematerialcollective.com

Israeli-born, LA-based dancer and choreographer Danielle Agami has reimagined her autobiographical solo piece, Framed, which had its world premiere in May 2018 at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, as the fifteen-minute film Homesick, streaming online December 20 to January 10. In the work, she looks deep inside herself as a woman and a creator, asking such questions as “What is expected for me to provide? Will dance be enough? Am I enough?” Directed by Samantha Shay and photographed by Victoria Sendra for Source Material, Homesick follows Agami as she moves from her apartment to a bar (where she is served by real-life Icelandic cocktail bartender Martin Cabejsek) to an indoor flower market (where she is joined by Jordan Klitzke) to a vast outdoor landscape and, as an encore, around Jerry Moss Plaza at the Music Center in LA.

For much of the film, Agami, a former Batsheva dancer and gaga teacher who has run Ate9 Dance Company since 2012, first in Seattle, then in LA, changes between a black negligee, head shaved, to regular clothing and fuller hair, moving in fits and starts on her hands and knees, shaking her head in trancelike gestures, petting a cat, and extending her arms as if searching for freedom and love. “For me, there are two kinds of home,” she narrates. “There is the outer, and the inner. When I feel safe and peaceful in my surroundings and my mind, I feel at home, and everything falls into place.” Agami dances to a pair of haunting songs by Iceland-based Danish musician Sara Flindt, aka ZAAR, “Homesick” and “How Many Hearts.” The film is followed by a Q&A with Agami (Pick a Chair, calling glenn), Shay (In These Uncertain Times, Light), Sendra, and Flindt, moderated by CalArts professor of dance cinema Francesca Penzani.

THE LONG GOODBYE: ONLINE EDITION

Actor, activist, and rapper Riz Ahmed takes viewers on a personal journey of music and storytelling in one-time-only livestream of The Long Goodbye

Who: Riz Ahmed
What: One-man show with music and stories
Where: BAM, Manchester International Festival
When: Saturday, December 19, $6.75 – $27 (pay-what-you-feel), 3:00
Why: Back in March, British actor, musician, and activist Riz Ahmed was scheduled to premiere his one-man show, The Long Goodbye, at the Manchester International Festival, followed by a run at BAM this fall, but the pandemic lockdown scrapped those plans. Emmy winner Ahmed has appeared in such films as Nightcrawler, Sound of Metal, and his latest, Mogul Mowgli, such television shows as Dead Set, The Night Of and The OA, and such plays as Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and the opera Gaddafi in addition to being a founding member, known as Riz MC, of the hip-hop band Swet Shop Boys, which has released the full-length record Cashmere and the EPs Swet Shop and Sufi La. This past March, he released the concept album The Long Goodbye, featuring such tracks as “The Breakup (Shikwa),” “Can I Live,” “Deal with It,” and “Karma,” with such special guests as Mindy Kaling, Mahershala Ali, and Hasan Minhaj. You can check out his latest video, “Once Kings,” here.

Ahmed combines all those talents in his virtually reimagined The Long Goodbye: Online Edition, streaming live one-time-only on December 19 at 3:00. Co-commissioned by MIF and BAM, the thirty-minute presentation is a companion piece to the full show, which has been postponed to 2021, once theaters are allowed to open and welcome audiences once again. Directed by Kirsty Housley with sound by Gareth Fry, the show is a personal journey with live music and storytelling that asks the question: “How did we get here?” Tickets are $6.75 to $27 based on what you can pay, but they are very limited, so act now if you want to catch what should be a unique, compelling experience.

VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITIES

VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITIES
the wild project
December 16-20, $20, 8:00 (extended Saturdays at 3:00 & 8:00, January 2 – February 27)
www.virtualimpossibilities.com

Over the summer, New York City-based mentalist and magician Eric Walton created a Zoom show for private clients and holiday parties, displaying his feats of wonder for individuals, couples, and groups. He is now taking the sixty-minute presentation, Virtual Impossibilities, public through the Lower East Side arts and culture hub the wild project. From December 16 to 20 [ed. note: extended Saturdays at 3:00 & 8:00, January 2 – February 27], Walton will be dazzling an unlimited amount of audience members with card tricks, word games, and more in this fully interactive online performance. Walton’s previous shows include Esoterica and Eric Walton: Mentalist, which incorporate philosophy and metaphysics into his many mysteries; he has also created the fun short “Welcome to the Show!” A Rube Goldberg Machine, delivered the lecture “The Psychology of Magic,” and writes and recites such poetry as “An Injunction to the Poet to Embellish, Elaborate, and Barnumize.” In addition, he is a proud vegan and activist. Tickets are $20 per household; come ready to participate and to have your mind blown.