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

TINY HOUSE

Westport Country Playhouse’s virtual Tiny House is streaming through July 18

TINY HOUSE
Westport Country Playhouse
Through July 18, $25 per viewer, $100 per household
www.westportplayhouse.org

In Westport Country Playhouse’s virtual version of Michael Gotch’s first full-length play, Tiny House, Sam (Sara Bues), referring to her childhood, says, “I still hate fireworks.” Her mother, Billie (Elizabeth Heflin), asks, “You do?” Sam responds, “Yeah, they scare me. Like gunshots. Or someone jumping out and yelling boo! They don’t feel like a celebration. They feel like bad surprises.”

There are a lot of fireworks and bad surprises in store for the wisecracking Billie, the ultraserious Sam, Sam’s snarky husband, Nick (Denver Milord), and Billie’s second husband, the goofy but likable Larry (Lee E. Ernst), as the family comes together for the Fourth of July holiday at Sam and Nick’s new, and extremely small, eco-conscious house in the mountains. Billie is used to the finer things in life, which changed when her first husband was sent to prison; she also has very different political views than Nick does, leading to some vicious battles.

“Solar, bio-friendly, 100% recycled materials, tiny carbon footprint, completely self-sustaining. We’re like pioneers, I guess,” Nick explains. “My firm got Interior Design magazine up here after we finished the build, did a shoot; they’re going to follow the story for the first year or so. In installments.”

“Nice,” Larry says.

Nick adds, “Sam’s writing the copy for it —”

“—in monthly installments —” Sam cuts him off.

“Nice!” Larry repeats.

“— like a real-time journal,” Nick says.

“The Donner party kept a journal, too,” Billie snipes. “For a while.”

They are soon joined by neighbors Win (Stephen Pelinski) and Carol (Kathleen Pirkl-Tague), Renaissance Faire veterans who arrive in Medieval (and, later, Middle-Earth) costumes and make such pronouncements as “Hear ye! Hear ye! Kingdoms Major and Kingdoms Minor! Your Monarch
approacheth! Tremble and be amazed!” and “Zounds, he knows! / A fellow traveller!”

Meanwhile, another neighbor, Bernard (Hassan El-Amin), is a Keats-spouting, marmot-offering, well-armed survivalist who believes the end of the world is coming. “My sources are active. Triangulated and triple sourced,” he warns Nick and Sam, continuing, “Verifiable intel, not misdirection. Multiple potential flash points worldwide. Zero Hour feel to it.” Nick responds, “I don’t know, you know? Stuff I’m hearing just feels like garden-variety neo-Cold War saber rattling if you ask me.” As the fireworks approach, so does the sturm und drang as dark family truths emerge amid one key piece of advice for all to heed: “Don’t fuck with an elf.”

The show was originally workshopped with a different cast at Westport in 2018 and performed in January 2019 by the Resident Ensemble Players at the University of Delaware under the title Minor Fantastical Kingdoms, with that cast reuniting for this virtual edition, with playhouse artistic director Mark Lamos helming all three iterations. Part of Westport’s ninetieth anniversary virtual 2021 season, the one-hundred-minute Tiny House is tailor made for this moment in time as we emerge from lockdown, when we faced isolation and loneliness, unable to see friends and family for more than a year as we fought over politics and sought bits of joy in unexpected places.

Tiny House was filmed by Lacey Erb with the actors in different locations, performing in front of green screens, employing methods mastered by the Irish Rep; in fact, the digital design, which includes benches, chairs, and couches that make it appear that the actors are together in the same space and looking out at the forest and a vast mountain landscape, is by longtime Irish Rep designer Charlie Corcoran, based on Hugh Landwehr’s original set. Dan Scully served as editor, with costumes by Tricia Barsamian (Will and Carol’s getups are particularly fun and fanciful) and music and sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen.

The cast is highlighted by a wickedly delicious turn by Heflin (The Government Inspector, The Odd Couple), who never misses a beat as we learn more about her character’s situation, and Bues (Falling Away, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window) as Billie’s daughter, who is having issues dealing with the sins of her parents. The show will be available on demand through July 18; you can check out a symposium about the work here, and there will be a talkback on July 12. Next up for Westport is John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable in November.

THE SHED: OPEN CALL

“Open Call” features eleven immersive installations by emerging NYC-based artists (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

OPEN CALL
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Thursday – Sunday through August 1, free with advance RSVP, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
646-455-3494
theshed.org

In December 2020, I saw Aisha Amin’s Friday, a short film about a historic Brooklyn mosque, as part of the BAM virtual series “Programmers’ Notebook: New York Lives.” Its reinvention as the immersive installation The Earth Has Been Made a Place of Prayer for the fourth iteration of the Shed’s “Open Call” group show is emblematic of the current exhibition, which focuses on works by early-career New York City–based artists that explore ritual, diverse communities of color, and coming together as we emerge from the Covid-19 crisis. Amin’s film is projected on four screens hanging from the ceiling, forming a large “X,” and viewers are encouraged to watch it while sitting on one of thirty-two red and white prayer rugs that face Mecca, as if we’re all members of Masjid At-Taqwa in Bed-Stuy. “My film documents a communal prayer that happens every Friday afternoon in a confined space. It takes place in a room that is small for the amount of people who come to pray,” Amin says in a Shed interview with fellow “Open Call” artist Cindy Tran. “So, I’ve been thinking, too, about what it means to be in such close corners with people. For the audio, I had placed a recorder in the mosque to capture the two-hour prayer, and the amount of coughing and throat-clearing and sniffling and chatter I recorded. . . . Now, it would be a terrifying experience to go there if you didn’t have a mask and weren’t vaccinated, but there’s also something so nice about the closeness of the people in that space.” After I sat down, several other people joined me as we formed our own temporary community.

The exhibition features eleven installations in addition to thirteen live performances that have just concluded, chosen from approximately fifteen hundred applications, dealing with grief, loss, and mourning as well as joy, hope, and public congregation. Ayanna Dozier’s Cities of the Dead is a compelling faux documentary that details Solomon Riley’s (Ricky Goldman) dream of creating “Negro Coney Island” on Hart Island, which was scheduled to open July 4, 1924, before the city stepped in and halted the project. Hart Island was later used as a potters field for victims of AIDS and Covid-19, which disproportionately affected people of color. Kenneth Tam’s video sculpture The Crane and the Snake explores Asian American hazing and assimilation.

Aisha Amin reimagines her film Friday for Shed exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Simon Liu invites viewers into a partially enclosed circular space to experience Devil’s Peak, a multichannel audiovisual journey into the troubled city of Hong Kong, a flurry of images with hidden bonuses just outside in one corner. Pauline Shaw’s stunning The Tomb-Sweeper’s Mosquito Bite uses MRI scans, science, memory, and the idea of diaspora in a large, hanging tapestry counterbalanced by objects encased in hand-blown glass vessels. “Autobiographical memory relies very much on the dormant network, so it’s really hard to separate what is happening in your daily life and what is happening in your memory,” she explains in a Shed talk with Liu. “Our notions of self, memory, and everyday experience are completely intertwined. Those are the intricate, scientific details of the MRI process. I’m translating the images that resulted into felt.”

Pauline Shaw explores memory and the diaspora in The Tomb-Sweeper’s Mosquito Bite (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Emilie Gossiaux takes on anti-disability and anti-animal prejudices and celebrates her relationship with her seeing-eye dog in True Love Will Find You in the End, a pair of life-size sculptures that exhibit both human and canine characteristics shown holding hands. Stand in the middle of Tajh Rust’s Passages to read a quote from Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant, “I made an attempt to communicate with this absence,” stenciled repeatedly on two freestanding partially mirrored glass panels, evoking colonialism and migration. You’re encouraged to walk through Anne Wu’s A Patterned Universe, a kind of architectural playground with decorative elements representative of Flushing’s Chinese immigrant neighborhood. Esteban Jefferson pays tribute to a friend who passed away in 2019 with We Love You Devra Freelander, a pair of paintings documenting the passing of one year. Caroline Garcia mourns the loss of her mother in The Headless Headhunt, incorporating the Indigenous Filipino practice of headhunting related to grief, here enhanced with augmented reality.

And Le’Andra LeSeur’s There is no movement without rhythm, consisting of five rectangular screens arranged in a circle so people can stand in the middle, was inspired by jazz and blues and Gnawa male-dominated ceremonial traditions that LeSeur commandeers by filming herself holding objects and grasping her naked body. “I love the idea of thinking about what’s happening right now in this time and how we as artists are really processing and pushing forward with creation as a framework for healing,” LeSeur tells Open Call artist AnAkA in a conversation that gets to the heart of the exhibition as a whole. “And I’m also interested to hear you talk about this kind of collective movement. I think right now, in this time, it’s not necessarily about self, it’s about we and community, how we’re doing things not just for now but for the future. Even if we don’t have the opportunity to celebrate what we’re reclaiming, we’re creating a space for the future to have this opportunity to celebrate. And the beauty in that is really profound.”

EXPLORING SEVEN SACRED NAMES

Who: John Schaefer, Michael Harrison, W. H. S. Gebel, Ashley Bathgate, Tim Fain
What: Online album release party and discussion
Where: Arts Letters & Numbers YouTube
When: Wednesday, June 30, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: “I wanted to show how beautiful simple harmonies can be, especially in just intonation . . . and [to create a work] that would serve as an introduction inviting listeners and musicians to start perceiving just intonation as an infinite harmonic system encompassing limitless possibilities on a spectrum between simplicity and complexity,” contemporary classical composer and pianist Michael Harrison says about his new album, Seven Sacred Names (Cantaloupe Music, June 2021). On June 30 at 7:00, Harrison, a Guggenheim Fellow, will celebrate the album’s release with an online party and discussion featuring cellist Ashley Bathgate and violinist Tim Fain, who both play on the record, and author, astrophysicist, and modern Sufi mystic W. H. S. Gebel, who wrote the liner notes and whose book Nature’s Hidden Dimension: Envisioning the Inner Life of the Universe served as inspiration to Harrison. Seven Sacred Names is a song cycle consisting of seven compositions and a reprise about “an awakening primal Self,” according to Gebel; the songs include “”Hayy: Revealing the Tones,” “Alim: Polyphonic Raga Malkauns,” “Qadr: Etude in Raga Bhimpalasi,” and “Sami: The Acoustic Constellation,” with such guests as Roomful of Teeth, Ina Filip, violist Caleb Burhans, tabla percussionist Ritvik Yaparpalvi, and composer/dhrupad/vocalist Payton MacDonald.

Harrison writes about one of the songs, “‘Al Mureed’ is the fourth of the seven names and signifies the birth of desire, the motivation needed to direct the will which awakens as a response to the dawning of relationship. The created world has become more interesting because now there is love, lover, and beloved; there is the possibility of relationship and of learning about and understanding the divine qualities as they manifest by sensing their vibration.” The event, which is presented by Arts Letters & Numbers as part of the “SunShip: The Arc That Makes the Flood Possible” exhibition for the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion at the seventeenth Venice Architecture Biennale and is free with advance RSVP, will be hosted by John Schaefer of WNYC’s New Sounds.

ASK A CURATOR: DAVID HAMMONS AND GORDON MATTA-CLARK IN THE WHITNEY’S COLLECTION

David Hammons’s Day’s End pays homage to Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 deconstruction of an abandoned warehouse (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Adrienne Edwards, Elisabeth Sussman
What: Live virtual discussion about David Hammons, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Day’s End
Where: Whitney Zoom
When: Wednesday, June 30, free with RSVP, 6:30
Why: The Whitney’s “Ask a Curator” series continues June 30 with “David Hammons and Gordon Matta-Clark in the Whitney’s Collection,” a live Zoom discussion about Hammons’s recently installed permanent work, Day’s End, an homage to Matta-Clark’s 1975 similarly named intervention in an abandoned industrial building on Pier 52 at the southern edge of Gansevoort Peninsula. Whitney curators Adrienne Edwards and Elisabeth Sussman will also explore other works in the museum’s collection by the two artists, some of which were on display last fall in “Around Day’s End: Downtown New York, 1970–1986.”

The Whitney and Hudson River Park collaborated on David Hammons’s Day’s End (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Over the course of seven years, Hammons created a 325-foot-long brushed-steel outline of the warehouse, placed in its exact same former location, a ghostly reminder of what — and who — is no longer there, a reference to the gay community that congregated in the area in the 1970s and 1980s until the AIDS crisis took so many lives. “I look at it as a statue because I’ve seen so many statues in the city and they’re all about memories,” Hammons says in a Whitney video of the dedication ceremony, which he chose not to attend. Half on land and half in the water, it’s a powerful work — officially part of Hudson River Park, not the Whitney — filled with mystery that draws the attention of passersby, many of whom may think it is the skeleton of a new building, especially since there is construction under way right next to it. Down the pier is Little Island, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg’s lovely oasis, and across the street is the Whitney itself. (The Diller-von Fürstenberg Family Foundation was one of many donors who helped fund Hammons’s piece as well.) Admission is free with advance RSVP; Edwards and Sussman will be taking questions from the audience during the event.

AGAINST THE CURRENT

AGAINST THE CURRENT (Óskar Páll Sveinsson, 2020)
Quad Cinemas
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through July 1
212-255-2243
quadcinema.com

After watching Óskar Páll Sveinsson’s Against the Current, you may not want to kayak around the entire island of Iceland, but you’ll probably want to start planning a trip to this extraordinary Scandinavian nation. In May 2019, Veiga Grétarsdóttir set off from her picturesque hometown of Ísafjörð on a three-plus-month, 1,250-mile journey circumnavigating the entire country in a sixteen-foot solo kayak, paddling counterclockwise, against the current, something that had never been done before. Following her along the coastline, in a fishing boat, and using drones, director and cinematographer Oskar Pall Sveinsson documented the hazardous expedition in vivid detail in the new documentary Against the Current, a film that features a barrage of spectacular shots not only of the sea and the topography of Iceland but of humanity’s tiny place in the world, set to a score by Högni Egilsson.

Along the way, Sveinsson also tells the story of Grétarsdóttir’s recent transition to becoming a woman; born male, she participated in rugged sports when she was younger but also hid what she considered a shameful secret: a compulsion to wear women’s clothing. As a man, she married a woman and had a daughter, but she ultimately decided to go through the surgery to change her gender and then prove to herself and others her physical and emotional strength by kayaking around Iceland. Sveinsson cuts between the treacherous trip and photographs and videos from Grétarsdóttir’s childhood and marriage, with her parents, friends, daughter, and doctors sharing stories about her; every single one accepts her transition, although it was perhaps most difficult for her ex-wife. “I often say that switching your gender like that is the biggest and most complex change you can make in your life,” psychiatrist Óttar Guðmundsson, who was part of Grétarsdóttir’s transgender team, explains. “You can’t change your life more drastically than that.”

Against the Current documents Veiga Grétarsdóttir’s remarkable story

Grétarsdóttir was initially joined by three kayakers, including Örlygur Sigurjónsson, who stuck around the longest, but ultimately she was left on her own, as expected. She would paddle for as many as thirteen hours a day, then pull over onto the coast, eat, and sleep in a tent, occasionally coming into contact with local people. One such supporter was sheep farmer Elisabet Petursdottir, who says, “I feel, regarding all the prejudice, that you’re not supposed to discuss things. All talk is shut down. It would be better to talk about things and solve the problems instead of creating them. In my opinion, everybody should have an open mind. Thank God we are all not made from the same mold. People must be allowed to be as they are.”

Grétarsdóttir holds nothing back, delving deep into aspects of her life that involved depression and even suicide attempts. She hopes that completing the circumnavigation will help her as well as others dealing with issues of personal identity. “I’ve dreamed of it for a long time, but having gone through everything, the transitioning, I decided to live my life, make my dreams come true,” she says. And every step of the way, there are visuals that will take your breath away. The film continues at the Quad through July 1; you can watch a Zoom interview with Grétarsdóttir and Sveinsson (Under the Surface, Ransacked) hosted by the Gene Siskel Film Center here.

THEATER OF WAR FRONTLINE: MICHIGAN

Who: Taylor Schilling, Bill Camp, David Strathairn, Nyasha Hatendi, Bryan Doerries
What: Livestreamed Zoom reading and discussion
Where: Theater of War Zoom
When: Wednesday, June 30, free with RSVP, 8:30
Why: Theater of War continues its extraordinary pandemic programming with “Frontline,” an evening of dramatic readings featuring Taylor Schilling, Bill Camp, David Strathairn, and Nyasha Hatendi of scenes from ancient Greek plays by Sophocles (Ajax, Oedipus the King, Philoctetes, Women of Trachis) that relate to today’s health care crisis. Following the reading, there will be a discussion facilitated by director, translator, adapter, and artistic director Bryan Doerries focusing on nurses, doctors, first responders, and other health care professionals, hosted by Michigan Health & Hospital Association and Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Care Network of Michigan. Admission is free; if you haven’t seen any of Theater of War’s events, now is the time; among their other recent presentations are The Oedipus Project exploring the pandemic and the climate crisis, Antigone in Ferguson looking at racialized police violence, End of Life and King Lear Project examining caregiving and death, and Poetry for the Pandemic.

AN EVENING WITH GIBNEY COMPANY: GIBNEY’S 2021 VIRTUAL GALA

Who: Gibney Company
What: Thirtieth anniversary benefit gala
Where: Gibney online
When: Tuesday, June 30, free – $30, 7:30
Why: Founded in 1991 by choreographer Gina Gibney, Gibney Dance will be celebrating its thirtieth anniversary as a socially active company with a virtual gala on June 30 at 7:30. The evening will feature the world premiere of the dance film Dream Scenarium, by choreographic associate Rena Butler and performed by the newly expanded troupe, along with a look at both the history and future of Gibney Dance. Admission is free, although donations of $30 (or any amount) will gladly be accepted.