this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

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.

36.5 / A DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE WITH THE SEA: NEW YORK ESTUARY

Sarah Cameron Sunde will conclude thirteen-year durational project in New York City on September 14 (photo courtesy Sarah Cameron Sunde)

Who: Sarah Cameron Sunde
What: Conclusion of nine-year artistic environmental journey
Where: Hallet’s Cove, special viewing areas, and online
When: Wednesday, September 14, free, 7:27 am – 8:06 pm
Why: Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist and director Sarah Cameron Sunde began 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea back in 2013, in which she stands in bodies of water for full twelve-plus-hour tidal cycles, with the public invited to join her in person or online. The work, which has been performed on six continents, was inspired by the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, to the community, humanity, and artists specifically. The piece comes to its conclusion on September 14 with 36.5 / New York Estuary, when Sunde will be at Hallet’s Cove at 31-10 Vernon Blvd.; you can go in the water with her, watch the livestream at home or with others at Brookfield Place, Manhattan West, Riverside Park Conservancy, Gallatin Galleries at NYU, Mercury Store in Brooklyn, the RISE center in Far Rockaway, or the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor in Staten Island, or check it out from viewing stations on the northern tip of Roosevelt Island or the Upper East Side. There will also be remote participants from Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Aotearoa—New Zealand. In conjunction with the finale, Sunde cofounded Kin to the Cove, a community organization that hosts site-specific workshops, discussions, and other events.

The work has previously been performed in Maine, Mexico, San Francisco Bay, the Netherlands, the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, the Bay of All Saints in Brazil, Bodo Inlet in Kenya, and Te Manukanukatanga ō Hoturoa in Tāmaki Makaurau. Sunde explained in a statement, “36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea is my attempt to translate the seemingly abstract idea of climate change and sea-level rise into our bodies. It’s also about Time on many different scales: a durational work that unfolds over thirteen hours that has taken nearly a decade to complete. The tide tracks time on my body viscerally, which functions as a metaphor for the changing environment. The water is my collaborator, and the risks are real. I stay present in the sensations, attempt to embody the ocean, and find a way to endure the struggle while decentering my human experience and acknowledging potential futures. The public is invited to stand in the water with me for however long they like and to participate in a series of artistic interventions from the shore, creating a human clock that communicates to me each hour as it passes.”

On October 6 at 6:00, NYU dean for the humanities Una Chaudhuri will moderate “Standing with the Sea: Reflections on Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea” at Gardner Commons in Shimkin Hall, followed by a screening of an updated video on the outside Bobst Library wall.

BIJAYINI SATPATHY: DOHĀ

Bijayini Satpathy concludes her MetLiveArts residency on September 13 (photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Who: Bijayini Satpathy
What: MetLiveArts performance
Where: Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
When: Tuesday, September 13, $35+ (includes museum admission), 7:00
Why: MetLiveArts artist in residence Bijayini Satpathy concludes her residency with Dohā, taking place September 13 at 7:00 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. In the evening-length work, the Indian principal dancer, master teacher, and respected scholar explores ritualized prayer while embracing playfulness as she searches for the divine. Satpathy will also give give a talk on Odissi dance at the New York Public Library on September 19 at 6:00 as part of the new Dr. Sunil Kothari Honorary Lecture series; admission is free with advance registration.

HISPANIC GOLDEN AGE CLASSICS | LOPE DE VEGA: THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES

Who: Red Bull Theater
What: Online benefit reading and free discussions
Where: Red Bull Theater online
When: Monday, September 12, $25, 7:30
Why: Red Bull Theater kicked off its “Hispanic Golden Age Classics — Lope de Vega” initiative on September 8 with the panel discussion “Lope de Vega & Shakespeare,” exploring how the Bard and Spanish playwright and novelist Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio both wrote works about the Capulets and the Montagues; UCLA professor Barbara Fuchs and UCLA PhD candidate Rhonda Sharrah were joined by actor Dakin Matthews, who wrote the new rhyming translation that is being used. The “Diversifying the Classics” programming is centered by a live, online reading of Lope de Vega’s The Capulets and the Montagues (Castelvines y Monteses) on September 12 at 7:30 (available through September 18 at 11:59 pm), performed by Junior Nyong’o as Romeo and Cara Ricketts as Juliet, along with Anita Castillo-Halvorssen, Christian DeMarais, Carson Elrod, Topher Embrey, Alejandra Escalante, Jake Hart, Paco Lozano, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Timothy D. Stickney, and Matthews, directed by Melia Bensussen. On September 15 at 7:30, members of the creative team will participate in the interactive online Bull Session “The Capulets and the Montagues.”

“Castelvines y Monteses is the sixth comedia I have translated, and my first Lopean adventure — after three Alarcóns, one Tirso, and one Moreto. It was a bracing experience to dip for the first time into the font from which sprang all later comedias,” Matthews explains in an introductory essay. “And it was just as bracing to work with material that so closely accorded with that of Shakespeare, who has been the subject of my lifelong fascination and study. And there, of course, lies the first trap that I — and any translator who comes to Lope’s version of the Romeo and Juliet story — must try to avoid. (Which I did not make any easier on myself, I confess, by my determination to use the equivalent Shakespearean proper names in an effort to make the play more appealing to English-speaking producers and audiences.)” Meanwhile, Sharrah notes, “Miguel de Cervantes, [Lope’s] contemporary and rival, may not have meant it entirely as a compliment when he called Lope a ‘monster of nature’ (monstruo de la naturaleza). Yet Lope’s prodigious output was fundamental to developing the theater of his age, and to our understanding of it today. The monster of nature left us many gifts.”

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: JANN WENNER IN CONVERSATION WITH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Who: Bruce Springsteen, Jann S. Wenner
What: Virtual and in-person discussion
Where: 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 1395 Lexington Ave., and online
When: Tuesday, September 13, $60 (includes book), 7:00
Why: “I went to the Rolling Stone offices on a Monday morning in mid-May 2019. My assistant met me downstairs to take my attaché case, as I was still walking with two canes. It was a gray day in New York, one of rain, with a forecast for more all week. When I got to our second-floor lobby, workmen were putting up plywood to protect the walls from the movers,” Jann S. Wenner writes in “The Last Days,” the prologue to his new memoir, Like a Rolling Stone (Little, Brown, $35). Cleaning out his office, he writes, “I took down Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of a young Pete Townshend, his hands bloody from playing his guitar. . . . I packed up the small wood and metal sculpture of a skier that Patti Scialfa sent for my birthday.” Describing the memoir itself, he posits, “Our readers often referred to Rolling Stone as a letter from home. This is my last letter to you.”

On September 13, Wenner will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss his memoir with his longtime friend Bruce Springsteen, who has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone by himself fourteen times and another eight with others; the conclusion to Wenner’s prologue is a reference to Springsteen’s most recent album, Letter to You. Bruce, whose wife is Patti Scialfa, has been the subject of numerous RS interviews, but this time he turns the tables, interviewing Wenner about the new book, delving into the New York City native’s often controversial life and career. Springsteen says of the memoir, “If you were young, alone, and in the far lands of New Jersey, Rolling Stone was a dispatch from the front, carrying news of a bigger world and another life awaiting. Like a Rolling Stone is a touchingly honest memoir from a man who recorded and shaped our times and of a grand life well lived. It is a wonderfully deep and rewarding reading. I loved it.”

The book features seventy-seven chapters that explore the counterculture, politics, family, and such journalists, musicians, and pop-culture icons as Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph J. Gleason, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, John Belushi, Jackie Onassis, Tom Wolfe, the Dalai Lama, and the Grateful Dead. In addition to being the founder and publisher of Rolling Stone, Wenner, a cofounder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has interviewed such figures as Bono, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, and Townshend for the magazine; Jagger and music executive Ahmet Ertegun inducted Wenner into the hall in 2004. Tickets are $60 and come with a copy of the book, which will be signed for those attending the event in person.

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL 2022

Fouad Boussouf’s Näss will be performed at the Joyce as part of FIAF fest (photo © Charlotte Audureau)

CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL
FIAF and other locations
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 9–October 28, free – $75
212-355-6100
fiaf.org

FIAF’s fifteenth annual Crossing the Line Festival is another journey into exciting, challenging, and experimental music, dance, and theater from the French-speaking world. Running September 9 through October 28, the programs take place at such venues as Abrons Arts Center, New York Live Arts, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the Joyce, and BAM in addition to FIAF’s Gallery, Florence Gould Hall, and Skyroom.

“For our first year curating this festival, we wanted to honor its founding principles: presenting compelling multidisciplinary art forms throughout the city, bringing acclaimed cutting-edge French and Francophone productions to our shores, and nurturing dialogue between international and New York-based artists,” curators Mathilde Augé and Florent Masse write in a program note. “The fifteenth edition of the festival features a diverse group of audacious artists engaging with the most pressing issues of our time — including gender, sexuality, human connection, race, and climate change — and exploring new territories in performing arts.”

None of the nine live performances — there were supposed to be ten but Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s FRATERNITY, A Fantastic Tale had to be canceled because of visa problems — has ever been seen before in New York, including several North American, US, and world premieres. The mix of dance, theater, art, music, and literature hails from Senegal, France, South Africa, Rwanda, the United States, and Morocco, examining societal change, Vaslav Nijinsky, science, Cheikh Anta Diop, intergenerational culture, the political views of René Char and Frantz Fanon, and a Detroit rave.

In addition, FIAF is hosting the fall open house celebration Fête de la Rentrée, highlighted by an opening reception for Omar Ba’s “Clin d’oeil” art exhibition on September 9 at 6:00 (free with RSVP) and a Sunset Soirée at Le Bain on October 12 at the Standard Hotel (free with RSVP). Below is the full Crossing the Line schedule.

Helena de Laurens stars in Marion Siéfert’s _ jeanne_dark _ at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival (photo © Matthieu Bareyre)

September 9 – October 28
Exhibition: “Clin d’oeil,” by Omar Ba, FIAF Gallery, free

Wednesday, September 14, and Thursday, September 15
Theater: _ jeanne_dark _, by Marion Siéfert, starring Helena de Laurens, North American premiere, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $40, 7:30

Wednesday, September 21
Theater: Traces – Speech to African Nations, by Felwine Sarr and Étienne Minoungou, with Étienne Minoungou and Simon Winsé, New York premiere, Abrons Arts Center, $25, 8:30

Thursday, September 22, through Saturday, September 24
Dance: And so you see… our honourable blue sky and ever enduring sun… can only be consumed slice by slice…, by Robyn Orlin, performed by Albert Ibokwe Khoza, US premiere, New York Live Arts, $15-$35, 7:30

Saturday, September 24
Theater: Freedom, I’ll have lived your dream until the very last day, by Felwine Sarr and Dorcy Rugamba, featuring Marie-Laure Crochant, Majnun, Felwine Sarr, and T.I.E., North American premiere, Florence Gould Hall, $40, 7:30

Thursday, September 29, and Friday, September 30
Performance: Fire in the Head, by Christopher Myers, world premiere, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, $20, 7:30

Thursday, October 6, through Saturday, October 8
Dance: The Encounter, by Kimberly Bartosik, performed by Kimberly Bartosik, Claude “CJ” Johnson, Burr Johnson, Joanna Kotze, Ryan Pliss, Kalub Thompson, Mac Twining, River Bartosik-Murray, Logan Farmer, and Ellington Hurd, world premiere, FIAF Skyroom, $30, 7:30

Thursday, October 13, through Saturday, October 15
Dance: CROWD, by Gisèle Vienne, US premiere, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, $35-$75, 7:30

Tuesday, October 18, through Sunday, October 23
Dance: Näss, by Fouad Boussouf, New York premiere, the Joyce Theater, $20-$55

Thursday, October 27, and Friday, October 28
Theater: The Terrestrial Trilogy, a Performance in Three Parts: Inside, Moving Earths, and Viral, by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, with special guest Bruno Latour, North American premiere, FIAF Florence Gould Hall, $40