Who: Blake Shelton, Dave Matthews, Jimmie Allen, Jason Mraz, Michael Ray, Shy Carter, the War and Treaty, John Rzeznik, Dispatch, Keala Settle, Mt. Joy, Augustana, Indigo Girls, Lucie Silvas, Annie Bosko, Bre Kennedy, CJ Hammond & Sloane, Veridia, Public, Michael Cerveris, the McCrary Sisters, Sam Wade, Roger Daltrey, Steve Connell, Michael McDonald, Kenny G, Jeff Tweedy, Nick Wheeler, Greta Van Fleet, Adam Gardner, Ray Parker Jr., Jerry Dipizzo, Taye Diggs, Ben Wysoki, the Harleys, Dublin Gospel Choir, Jim Sheridan, Storme Warren, Nicole Ryan What:“A Festival of Music & Stories of Life On & Off the Road” Where:Ryman Auditorium When: Wednesday, December 16, free (donations encouraged), 8:30 Why: “It is so important that music fans and governments realize the impact this virus is having on millions of self-employed people who make the music industry function to bring much needed joy to our lives,” Roger Daltrey says about the effect the pandemic lockdown is having on the people who make a living supporting the work of superstar musicians. Daltrey will be appearing along with dozen of other rock, country, pop, R&B, and gospel musicians at “Lift Up,” a festival streaming live on Twitch from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville that benefits the entertainment and events industry. The concert will feature the brand-new song “12 Million,” written by Sam Wade and LEVL UP music supervisor Keith Levenson in tribute to the crews that make music happen from behind the scenes. “Almost my whole adult life I have been touring in one shape or form and the road crews on my team and the venue crews that welcomed us and helped us put on a great show are all part of my extended touring family,” Cisco Adler said in a statement. “They really make it possible for artists like me to do what we do, and they are truly unsung heroes. They are also the first to be hit hard by a situation like this, so part of our mission at NoCap is to get shows happening again and get these good people back to work.”
Good things come to those who wait. If there’s one thing we’ve learned during this pandemic, it’s that we need to have patience. Help is on the way, but if we as a nation follow protocols and have strong leadership, we can each make a difference, even with an administration that has turned its back on its people. We also have to be patient with the return of live theater as companies around the world experiment with Zoom, livestreaming, recording onstage without an audience, and other attempts to bring storytelling to a starving public.
So there I was on December 9, watching the hundredth-anniversary premiere of Theater for the New City’s livestreamed revival of the popular Yiddish play The Dybbuk, performed live onstage and broadcast over the Stellar platform. The chat function was on, so virtual attendees started getting ornery quickly when the show didn’t start exactly on time. And once it did, there were significant technical problems involving superimposed text, the green screening, and, most important, the sound, with a screeching electronic score drowning out the dialogue. Several people in the chat began complaining, even demanding a refund. But a solitary voice of reason explained that this is an opening night different from in-person opening nights and everyone should calm down. And she was right, because the tech crew was on the case, and after a near-disastrous beginning, the rest of the play was wonderful.
Written in 1914 by Jewish playwright S. An-ski, aka Shloyme Zaynvl Rapoport, who hailed from what is now Belarus, The Dybbuk premiered at the Elyseum Theatre in Warsaw on December 9, 1920, one month after An-ski’s death at the age of fifty-seven. Presented in association with New Yiddish Rep, this new English-language adaptation (with a fair sprinkling of Yiddish) is by NYR artistic director David Mandelbaum. The Dybbuk takes place in an old Jewish shtetl, where a long-arranged match between Menashe and Leah, the daughter of the wealthy Sender, dooms the love young student Khanan has for her. But on her wedding day, she is possessed by a spirit who will not let her marry Menashe, and the case soon comes before the judgment of the learned rabbi.
Cool backgrounds propel Theater for a New City virtual revival of classic Yiddish play (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)
Director Jesse Freedman eventually works out the kinks in real time and gets everything in sync — with lighting by Alexander Bartieneff, sound by Eamon Goodman, and video by Tatiana Stolpovskaya — resulting in a moving and delightful production that features fun backgrounds and solid performances by Darrel Blackburn, Amy Coleman, Hannah Gee, Lev Harvey, Lucie Lalouche, Thomas Morris, and Mandelbaum as the rabbi. “A play about possession seems particularly suited to the times. The country has been possessed by the evil spirits of strife and division and could use a good exorcism to bring it back to its senses,” Mandelbaum said in a statement. “An intrepid group of artists is soldiering on through this pandemic minefield to honor the one-hundredth anniversary of this iconic play with the battle cry of their calling: ‘The show must go on.’ This will be a spiritual fusion of live performance and digital artistry. The ‘possession’ of live theater by the spirits of techno-wizardry.”
So be patient; the show will go on. It might not get off to a big start, but it packs quite a wallop by the finish.
For more on The Dybbuk, which was also made into a classic 1937 Yiddish film directed by Michał Waszyński, you can check out the Congress for Jewish Culture’s recent panel discussion “The Dybbuk at 100” on Facebook with playwright, translator, and theater historian Nahma Sandrow, Baruch College assistant professor and author Debra Caplan, and author and UT Austin senior lecturer in Yiddish Itzik Gottesman, moderated by writer, translator, actress, and theater historian Caraid O’Brien. The organization will also be presenting its own production of The Dybbuk on December 14 at 7:00 in Yiddish with Mike Burstyn, Shane Baker, Mendy Cahan, Refoyel Goldwasser, Amitai Kedar, Yelena Shmulenson, Suzanne Toren, and Michael Wex, directed by Allen Lewis Rickman; it can be seen here.
Who:Engelbert Humperdinck What: Engelbert Humperdinck’s first Christmas special Where:Looped When: Saturday, December 12, $25, 3:00 Why: Engelbert Humperdinck. Christmas concert. Livestreamed from his California home. Virtual meet and greets. Need I say more?
Who:Molière in the Park theater company What: Livestreamed performances and Q&As Where: FIAF Facebook and Molière in the Park YouTube When: Saturday, December 12, free with RSVP, 2:00 & 7:00 (show will be available for viewing through January 3) Why: After staging Zoom adaptations of three classic seventeenth-century plays by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin — better known as Molière — Brooklyn-based Molière in the Park is getting significantly more contemporary with its latest live, online production, playwright, TV writer, and educator Christina Anderson’s new work, Pen/Man/Ship. Following The Misanthrope,Tartuffe, and The School for Wives, Molière in the Park moves into the late nineteenth century with Pen/Man/Ship, which takes place in 1896 aboard a ship heading for Liberia shortly after the US Supreme Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson to uphold the constitutionality of racial segregation under the concept of “separate but equal.” The cast features Crystal Lucas-Perry, Kevin Mambo, Jared McNeill, and Postell Pringle; the parable is directed by Molière in the Park founding artistic director Lucie Tiberghien using Liminal Entertainment Technologies’ StreamWeaver software, which takes actors out of Zoom boxes and puts them in front of backgrounds that more resemble indoor and outdoor sets while also allowing the tech crew to work together regardless of where they are. Copresented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance and the LeFrak Center at Lakeside, the play will be performed live twice on December 12, at 2:00 and 7:00, followed by Q&As with the creatives; a recording will be available for on-demand viewing through January 3.
Immersive production of Inside the Wild Heart has been reimagined for online livestreaming (photo by Erika Morilla)
INSIDE THE WILD HEART
Thursday – Sunday through December 20, $20-$50 (based on what you can afford)
Encore run: Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, February 12 – March 28, $15-$50 www.group.br.com
I’m an immersive theater junkie. Put on a show in an abandoned hotel or warehouse, in an empty church or a cemetery, or behind the scenes at an arts venue and I will be first in line. There’s just something about wandering among storylines and characters on your own path and schedule, even when knowing you’re likely not to see everything or understand completely what’s happening and I’m there, from Sleep No More,Then She Fell, and Ghost Light to The Grand Paradise,Empire Travel Agency, and Counting Sheep.
I don’t know how I missed Group.BR’s Inside the Wild Heart, which was first presented in a Williamsburg gallery in 2016, then two years later at Aich Studios, an 1848 brownstone and former foundry in the Gramercy Park area. The New York-based Brazilian company filmed one of the 2018 shows, enlisting nine friends with cameras to place themselves throughout the three floors and a mezzanine and take continuous video without getting in the way of the audience, which is allowed to walk, stand, and sit wherever they want as they chase the action over two hours. Artistic director Andressa Furletti didn’t know what she would do with the footage until the pandemic hit and she discovered the Gather.town digital platform, which she immediately realized would supply her with just what was needed in order to virtually reimagine the show, which is based on the writings of prominent Jewish author Clarice Lispector. Thus, it turns out that I didn’t miss the show after all; via the innovative platform, I was able to amble, observe, follow, and interact not only with the recorded footage but with other live audience members as well.
Group.BR uses the Gather.town digital platform to bring the interactive Inside the Wild Heart to the internet
Inside the Wild Heart features characters, dialogue, and plots from nine novels and eight short stories by the Ukraine-born Brazilian Lispector (1920-77), who wrote such books as Near to the Wild Heart, The Passion According to G.H., The Stream of Life, and The Woman Who Killed the Fish. Each audience member is assigned a video-game-like avatar that they guide with their keyboard across an animated architectural rendering with couches, chairs, a fireplace, a bathroom, screening areas, and a bar where they can take a break and speak with others. Everyone is encouraged to keep their cameras on but their microphones muted except when they’re in the bar; whenever you’re in a room, you can not only see the other avatars who are there as well but you can see their names and photos at the top of the screen. There’s also a live chat where you can connect with one another, but the night I went, nearly all the other comments were in Portuguese.
Don’t be in a hurry to try to see everything quickly; you have time to take it slow and linger in a room for fifteen minutes or more as the semblance of a story takes shape, a nonlinear narrative told through video, still photographs, dance, music, prerecorded film, and various surprises. You might encounter a woman in a claw-foot tub, people preparing for a wedding, a lady with a whip, and a ghostlike figure climbing stairs, with talk of love, murder, motherhood, the Society of Shadows, the Tree of Secret Desires, and the existence of God. Make sure to find the rare television interview with Lispector, who shares such thoughts as “Adults are sad and solitary” and “I think that when I’m not writing I’m dead.” Other Lispector quotes pop up here and there, including “Getting lost is also a way,” “What I desire doesn’t have a name yet,” and “If you were you, how would you be and what would you do?”
The show is directed by Linda Wise and performed by Balardini, Furletti, Mirko Faienza, Patricia Faolli, Fabiana Mattedi, Gio Mielle, Gonçalo Ruivo, Yasmin Santana, Ibsen Santos, and Montserrat Vargas, with scenic design and art installations by Vargas and Furletti, costumes by Jussara Lee, lighting by Charlie Jarboe, score by Sergio Krakowski (with Mario Forte on violin), and video design by Paul Leopold. Together they have managed to ably re-create the immersive theater experience online, resulting in a fab interactive presentation that is a lot of fun while introducing you to quite an eclectic writer.
Inside the Wild Heart runs Thursday to Sunday through December 20; on December 10, Group.BR will celebrate the centennial of Lispector’s birth with “Clarice’s Day,” a free sixteen-hour party on Zoom, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube that includes “The Morning Is a Premature Flower” with Balardini (5:00 am), videos of scenes from the books Besieged City and A Breath of Life as performed in Inside the Wild Heart (10:00), such readings and/or discussions as “Clarice in English” (10:20), “Clarice and Visual Arts” (11:00), “Clarice in Life and Works” (12:30), and “Clarice and Theater” (5:00), a musical performance of Sara Carvalhos’s “Perto do Coração Selvagem” by Késia Decoté on the toy piano (2:30), short films (3:00), and a special 7:00 screening of the full play, followed by a talkback. [Ed. note: Inside the Wild Heart is back for a much-deserved encore run, February 12 – March 28.]
MANSAI NOMURA’S KYOGEN: KAGAMI-KAJA (A MIRROR SERVANT) + SHIMIZU (SPRING WATER)
Japan Society
Launch with Watch Party: Wednesday, December 9, free with RSVP (suggested price $5-$20), 8:30 (available on demand through December 31)
Live Talk + Q&A with Mansai Nomura on YouTube: Saturday, December 12, 9:00 www.japansociety.org
A Holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property, kyogen actor Mansai Nomura returns to Japan Society — virtually — in an online double feature launching with a livestreamed watch party complete with real-time commentary on December 9 at 8:30. Nomura, the star of the cult movie duology Onmyoji, was last at Japan Society in 2015 with the Mansaku-no-Kai Kyogen Company, founded by his grandfather in 1957 and then run by his father, Mansaku Nomura, staging the solo piece Nasu no Yoichi, based on a chapter from The Tale of the Heike, as well as Akutaro (Akutaro Reforms) and Bonsan (The Dwarf Tree Thief). (Nomura was previously seen in New York City in March 2013 in Sanbaso, Divine Dance, a collaboration with Hiroshi Sugimoto that was copresented by Japan Society at the Guggenheim.)
This time Nomura, the artistic director of Setagaya Public Theatre, will be performing in two works. The new Kagami-kaja (“A Mirror Servant”) was written for Nomura by comedian, novelist, rapper, and avid gardener Seiko Ito; Nomura conceived of and directs and stars in the story about a servant who gets trapped in his reflection. The evening also includes the traditional piece Shimizu (“Spring Water”), a complex tale involving a trickster servant and a tea ceremony. Nomura will introduce each show, and he will also take part in a live talk and Q&A on December 12 at 9:00 that will delve into the history of the seven-hundred-year-old art form known as kyogen. Admission to both events is free, although there is a suggested donation of $5 to $20 based on what you can afford during these challenging times, during which Japan Society has continued to deliver innovative, cutting-edge programs online. If you miss the livestream of the double feature, it will be available for on-demand viewing through December 31; the discussion will take place on YouTube.
Who: Paul Pfeiffer, Eiko Otake, Amina Henry, Morgan Bassichis, Mona Chalabi, Ivy Mix, Mariana Valencia, Jessica Lappin, Maggie Boepple What:LMCC benefit fundraiser Where:Lower Manhattan Cultural Council online When: Wednesday, December 9, free with RSVP (donations accepted), 7:00 Why: Since 1973, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has “served, connected, and made space for artists and communities in NYC through programs that deepen artists’ creative practice and afford them opportunities to share their process and work with local communities.” Rarely has that been more important than during the pandemic lockdown. On December 9 at 7:00, LMCC’s annual fundraiser goes virtual with “A Toast to Downtown,” celebrating the great work the organization does not only in Lower Manhattan but on Governors Island and other locations. This year’s civic leadership honorees are Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin and former LMCC president Maggie Boepple; in addition, Amina Henry (The Animals, Bully) will receive the Sarah Verdone Writing Award, Eiko Otake will be presented with the Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts, and Paul Pfeiffer will receive the Michael Richards Award for Visual Arts.
The evening will include video from Pfeiffer, who will show excerpts from a new work as well as from 2001’s Orpheus Descending, which was installed at the World Trade Center and follows the life cycle of a flock of chickens; a new video from Eiko, made for this gala and recently shot on location at LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island; and appearances by LMCC artists and alumni Morgan Bassichis, Mona Chalabi, Ivy Mix, and Mariana Valencia. It’s free to RSVP, but $20 gives you a chance to win a limited edition “100 New Yorkers” print by Chalabi based on her 2020 River to River project, $50 helps fund artist residencies, $100 supports grants to neighborhood arts communities, and $250 gives artists the opportunity to share their work and their creative process.
