Red Bull Theater teams up with UCLA to present new translation of Spanish Golden Age comedy
Who:Red Bull Theater company What: Livestreamed benefit reading of new translation of Ana Caro Mallén’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs Where:Red Bull Theater website and Facebook Live When: Monday, November 16, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:30 (available on demand through November 20 at 7:00) Why: For its latest livestreamed reading, Red Bull is teaming up with Diversifying the Classics | UCLA to present a brand-new translation of Spanish Golden Age poet and playwright Ana Caro’s The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs (“Valor, agravio y mujer.”) Part of La Escena 2020, the second edition of Los Angeles’s Festival of Hispanic Classical Theater, the seventeenth-century comedy focuses on a woman’s boundary-crossing encounters with issues of society and gender, justice and honor, specifically related to her former lover, Don Juan. In their introduction to the new translation, Marta Albalá Pelegrín and Rafael Jaime write, “Through this stirring tale of a woman’s courage to right the wrongs she has suffered, the play holds up to scrutiny contemporary notions of masculine honor and offers in their place a vision that opens up space for women and their agency.”
The reading will be performed by Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Helen Cespedes, Natascia Diaz, Carson Elrod, Anthony Michael Martinez, Sam Morales, Alfredo Narciso, Ryan Quinn, Luis Quintero, and Matthew Saldivar and is directed by Melia Bensussen; there will be a live, interactive Bull Session with some of the artists involved and UCLA professor of Spanish and English Barbara Fuchs and California State Polytechnic English and modern languages associate professor Pelegrín on November 19 at 7:30, also free with RSVP. The reading will be available on demand through November 20 at 7:00.
Rosanne Cash and A. M. Homes appear in new Met film Eye of the Collector (photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images North America)
Who:Rosanne Cash,A. M. Homes What: Prerecorded film with songs and poems Where:Met MuseumFacebook and YouTube When: Tuesday, November 17, free, 7:00 Why: In conjunction with the exhibition “Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection,” which continues through November 30, the Met is hosting the free virtual presentation Eye of the Collector. In the half-hour film, directed and edited by Phyllis Housen, singer-songwriter extraordinaire Cash, whose albums include Seven Year Ache, The List, and She Remembers Everything, and Homes, who has written such books as Days of Awe, This Book Will Save Your Life, and The Mistress’s Daughter, share songs and poems, accompanied by images from the exhibit, which features works by Paul Strand, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Joseph Cornell, Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, Cindy Sherman, Richard Avedon, and many others, promised as a 150th anniversary gift to the Met from Tenenbaum and Lee. The film will be streamed over the Met’s Facebook and YouTube pages on November 17 at 7:00.
“The pandemic and the protests were the perfect storm of isolation, longing, inspiration, longing, fear, and hope,” Cash writes about her new single, the sociopolitical “Crawl into the Promised Land,” adding, “Living in New York City was a pressure cooker, particularly in April and May, when the deaths were spiking and the city sealed itself off, and utterly changed. But strangely, there was also a sense of unity and community, and the potential for transcendence. I kept thinking of the model in physics, where things have to fall apart in order to re-assemble themselves in a more refined, evolved state. . . . I need more space and time to understand what happened, what we are still going through. Why we elected such an unfit person to guide us, why we kill Black people with impunity, why our leaders dismantle and mock every institution we have painstakingly created to hold us safe, why some deaths matter and others don’t. I won’t be here ‘fifty years away from here,’ but someone I gave birth to, or someone they gave birth to, will live in those times and understand, and maybe pass the knowledge on to me, even in another world or another life. The magnitude of the moment requires time and an ocean of reflection.” That is precisely what Cash and Homes will be offering on Tuesday night.
Davina Semo’s Reverberation rings out in Brooklyn Bridge Park through April 18 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:Davina Semo,Daniel S. Palmer What:Livestreamed discussion Where:Public Art Fund Zoom When: Monday, November 16, free with RSVP, 5:00 Why: “Ring them bells, ye heathen / From the city that dreams / Ring them bells from the sanctuaries / ’Cross the valleys and streams / For they’re deep and they’re wide / And the world’s on its side / And time is running backwards / And so is the bride,” Bob Dylan sang on his 1989 album, Oh Mercy. You can ring them bells from the sanctuary of Brooklyn Bridge Park, across the East River, in Davina Semo’s interactive installation Reverberation, which continues through April 18 along the Pier 1 waterfront promenade. Reverberation consists of five large-scale bronze bells in pearlescent orange paint, named “Reflector,” “Singer,” “Dreamer,” “Listener,” and “Mother,” that visitors can ring by pulling on a chain, each clapper with unique drilled holes to emit a slightly different sound, evoking wakeup calls, warnings, alarms, calls to action, prayer, and change, and the dinnertime announcement for families to come together, all taking on new meanings during the Covid-19 crisis. (You should bring your own hand sanitizer if you plan on grabbing the galvanized steel chain, and remember to observe social distancing.)
Davina Semo will discuss her outdoor installation in a virtual Public Art Fund talk on November 16 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“Bells are very much part of our urban landscapes,” Semo says in a Public Art Fund video. “They are easy to ignore in a way because they’re so ubiquitous, and oftentimes they are housed in institutions that for better or worse are no longer relevant or are maybe relevant in ways that we want to change. I was interested in taking the form and this ancient tool and democratizing the process in this way that I hope could be meaningful to the person ringing the bell and also to the community at large.” On November 16 at 5:00, the DC-born, San Francisco-based Semo will take part in a free Public Art Fund talk with curator Daniel S. Palmer, cosponsored by the Cooper Union. As Dylan also sang, “Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf / Ring them bells for all of us who are left / Ring them bells for the chosen few / Who will judge the many when the game is through / Ring them bells, for the time that flies / For the child that cries / When innocence dies.” (You can see twi-ny’s slideshow of Reverberationhere.)
FIAF’s virtual gala on November 16 features live music and dance from Florence Gould Hall
Who: Jonah Bokaer, Isaiah João, Nadia Khayrallah, Hala Shah, Rourou Ye, Cal Hunt, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Bryan Wagorn What:Virtual gala Where:FIAF online When: Monday, November 16, free with RSVP, 7:00 Why: The French Institute Alliance Française will be holding its gala on November 16 at 7:00, featuring livestreamed performances direct from the stage in Florence Gould Hall. The soirée “Le Petit Gala: Outside the Box” will include the live world premiere of Jonah Bokaer Choreography’s Softer Distances, a dance solo and quartet with Jonah Bokaer, Isaiah João, Nadia Khayrallah, Hala Shah, and Rourou Ye; FlexN specialist Cal Hunt’s solo dance Gliding: From Brooklyn to Paris; and France en chansons (“L’invitation au voyage” by Henri Duparc, “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, “Sous le ciel de Paris” in honor of Juliette Gréco) with opera countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and pianist Bryan Wagorn. The limited in-person dinner in the FIAF Skyroom is sold out, but you can also participate by bidding in the silent auction, where you’ll find jewelry, wine, art, perfume, a Frédéric Fekkai experience, a private piano lesson with Wagorn, furniture, food, luxury bags, and more. All proceeds benefit FIAF’s cultural, artistic, and educational programs.
Keith (K. Todd Freeman) and Ronnie (Jon Michael Hill) reconnect online after fifteen years in What Is Left, Burns (photo by Lowell Thomas)
WHAT IS LEFT, BURNS
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Through November 30, virtual membership for six shows $75 www.steppenwolf.org
The pandemic lockdown of theaters across the country has come with a side benefit that I hope you’re all taking advantage of: the opportunity to see live and prerecorded work by companies around the world from the comfort of your home. Of course, it’s not the same thing as sitting in a dark venue, being part of an audience, watching a story unfold in the same time, air, and space as the performers, but we have to make do with what we have. I’ve been particularly drawn to theater and dance created during the crisis as creators experiment with Zoom and other platforms to bring entertainment to a public starved for it. Which is why I’m excited that Chicago’s fabled Steppenwolf Theatre has just kicked off its Steppenwolf NOW program, a virtual series that consists of six online works through June 2021.
First up is James Ijames’s What Is Left, Burns, streaming this month. During the health crisis, people have been communicating more than ever via video, logging on with friends and family, sometimes digging deep into the past to reach out to those who might not be part of their lives anymore. In What Is Left, Burns, a literature professor and a former student reconnect after fifteen years, bringing up long-left-unsaid feelings as they take stock of their lives without each other. “It’s been a long time,” says the younger Ronnie (Jon Michael Hill) with a big smile. “Yeah, it has. Actually, honestly, I wasn’t sure you’d respond to my email,” replies the older, tentative Keith (K. Todd Freeman). “I wasn’t sure either,” the more open and emotional Ronnie says. Over the course of twenty-three minutes, the full extent of their relationship is revealed, involving love, lies, personal and professional jealousy, and, above all, loneliness, which we each have been facing in our own ways during Covid-19.
Though not about the pandemic, What Is Left, Burns is tailor-made for our current state of mind. By now we are used to watching others on our computers like never before, and Tony nominees Freeman (The Song of Jacob Zulu,Airline Highway) and Hill (Eastbound & Down,Superior Donuts), who last performed together onstage in 2009 in Tina Landau’s production of The Tempest at Steppenwolf — Freeman as Caliban, Hill as Ariel — do an outstanding job of making us feel just the right amount of uncomfortable as we peer into their private conversation; Freeman is appropriately jittery as Keith, who is hesitant to share too much at the outset, while Hill is bright and engaging as the bubbly Ronnie, who smiles widely even as he harbors discontent at what happened between them. Ijames uses his experience as a director (The Brothers Size), playwright (Kill Move Paradise), and actor (Angels in America) — he portrayed Franco in a Philly production of Superior Donuts, the role that earned Hill a Tony nomination — to craft an intimate tale that works on multiple levels.
Director Whitney White rhythmically cuts from Keith, sitting in his chair with books, CDs, and photos around him, as well as a computer open to the TED Legacy Project talk “The fight for civil rights and freedom” with John Lewis and Bryan Stevenson, while Ronnie is in front of a much more sparse background as he moves throughout his apartment. White (What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord) adds interstitial abstract scenes that bathe the two boxes in mysterious pastel blues, greens, and reds, with droning sound and music by Justin Ellington that take us further into the characters’ complex psyche. Lowell Thomas serves as director of photography and video editor, using iPads, laptops, and phones from multiple angles to avoid the action becoming too static, which is the case with so many Zoom presentations. What Is Left, Burns is a strong start to Steppenwolf NOW, which continues with Isaac Gómez’s two-act radio play Wally World in December, Rajiv Joseph’s ten-minute Red Folder with Carrie Coon in January, Vivian J. O. Barnes’s Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! in February, Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s Where We Stand in April, and Sam Shepard’s Ages of the Moon with Randall Arney and William Petersen in June.
The Cherry Artists’ Collective will present English-language world premiere of A Day online
Who:The Cherry Artists’ Collective What: English-language world premiere Where:Livestream from the State Theatre of Ithaca When: November 13-14, 19-21, $15-$45, 7:30; live Zoom discussion Monday, November 16, free with RSVP, 4:00 Why: While theaters are still closed to audiences, many companies are using their spaces to perform works onstage and stream them live and/or recorded online. I’ve seen Yasmina Reza’s ‘Art’ from the San Francisco Playhouse, Albert Camus’s The Fall from FIAF, and Sarah Kane’s Crave from the Chichester Festival Theatre in England (with a masked audience before the new lockdown was announced). From November 13 to 21, the Ithaca-based Cherry Artists’ Collective will present the English-language world premiere of Québecoise playwright Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s 2018 award-winning A Day (Une journée) from the friendly confines of the State Theatre of Ithaca.
Translated by Josephine George, the ninety-five-minute play covers twenty-four hours in the ordinary life of four mysteriously interconnected characters, portrayed by Karl Gregory, Jahmar Ortiz, Erica Steinhagen, and Sylvie Yntema. The actors will be performing in multicamera green-screen booths at the theater, directed by Wendy Dann, with video mise en scène by Cherry artistic director Samuel Buggeln, mixing live and prerecorded audio and video that features other members of the collective as well. Performances take place November 13-14 and 19-21 at 7:30; tickets are $15 (minimum), $25 (recommended), or $45 (supporter). For a sneak peek, you can check out a short clip from a Zoom rehearsal above. In addition, Chapdelaine and Buggeln will take part in a live Zoom discussion moderated by Mat Fournier on November 16 at 4:00.
Roz Chast and Calvin Trillin sit down for a 92Y online talk with Budd Mishkin on November 12
Who:Roz Chast, Calvin Trillin, Budd Mishkin What: 92Y Talks & Readings Where:92Y online When: Thursday, November 12, $15, 7:00 Why: Preeminent New Yorkers Roz Chast, Calvin Trillin, and Budd Mishkin come together for the inaugural presentation of the 92nd St. Y’s new series “New York Then and Now with Budd Mishkin.” On November 12 at 7:00, New Yorker cartoonist and Society of Illustrators Hall of Famer Chast and longtime New Yorker contributor and author Trillin will discuss the state of the city with moderator, broadcast journalist, and master interviewer Mishkin.
