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

THE SEEING PLACE THEATER: SWEAT

Who: The Seeing Place Theater
What: Live Zoom productions of Pulitzer Prize–winning play
Where: The Seeing Place Theater Zoom and YouTube
When: Saturday, February 27, 7:00, and Sunday, February 28, 3:00, $10-$50, live (available on demand through March 3)
Why: The East Village’s Seeing Place Theater, which has previously presented live Zoom versions of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman and Liz Duffy Adams’s Dog Act as part of its Ripple for Change series during the pandemic lockdown, is turning next to Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2016 stunner, Sweat. I saw the powerful work, about how changes at a factory impact a Reading, Pennsylvania, company town, first at the Public, then on Broadway at Studio 54, and both blew me away. The SPT cast, which is made up of more than 50% BIPOC performers, features Miguel Fana as Evan, Lori Kee as Tracey, Logan Keeler as Jason, Juanes Montoya as Oscar, David Nikolas as Stan, Justin Phillips as Chris, Philipe D. Preston as Brucie, Joy Sudduth as Cynthia, and Eileen Weisinger as Jessie; the play is directed by Brandon Walker.

“Income inequality, incarceration, and corporate greed are things faced by millions of Americans, many of whom feel like there is no way out from underneath them,” producer and TSP executive artistic director Erin Cronican said in a statement. “This play presents these problems as a microcosm of a larger fight over racial equity and a sense of belonging — the small town that is the setting of Sweat is really Anytown, USA. These problems affect us all.” There will be two live performances, February 27 at 7:00 and February 28 at 3:00, after which a recording will be available on YouTube on demand through March 3; tickets are $10-$50 based on what you can afford, with proceeds benefiting the Fortune Society, the mission of which “is to foster a world where all who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated will thrive as positive, contributing members of society.” Each live performance will be followed by the interactive talkback “Doing Issues-Based Plays in a Trauma-Filled World”; in addition, on March 3 at 7:00, speakers from the Fortune Society will lead the discussion “Action Steps — Racism and Economics: The Social Impact of Recession.” As Chris says in the play, “A couple minutes, and your whole life changes, that’s it. It’s gone,” something that is truer than ever these days.

BIRDS OF BROOKLYN WITH HEATHER WOLF

Who: Heather Wolf
What: Webinar on the birds of Brooklyn
Where: Brooklyn Bridge Park YouTube
When: Friday, February 26, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: If you missed the initial broadcast of Heather Wolf’s virtual discussion “Birds of Brooklyn,” you’ll get another chance on February 26 at 7:00, when the event is repeated by Brooklyn Bridge Park on its new YouTube channel. The California-born, Brooklyn-based Wolf, a former circus guitarist and current juggling teacher, maintains “The Birds of Brooklyn Bridge Park” blog, where she posts photos and avian observations. She is also the author of the 2016 book Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront (Workman, $14.95) and, in the before times, led birding walks in the park. Among her most recent photos are of a ring-billed gull, a red-throated loon, a double-crested cormorant, a northern cardinal, and three brant in midair.

GALERIE LELONG — DIALOGUES: MAKING VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE

Who: Alfredo Jaar, Koyo Kouoh
What: Livestreamed conversation
Where: Galerie Lelong & Co. online
When: Thursday, February 25, free with RSVP, 1:00
Why: Chilean-born, New York-based artist, architect, photographer, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar specializes in sociopolitical interventions and installations, such as The Skoghall Konsthall, Culture = Capital, Shadows, and Lament of the Images. On February 25 at 1:00, he will discuss his sixteen-year work The Rwanda Project 1994-2010 with Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa executive director and chief curator Koyo Kouoh, kicking off the new series “Galerie Lelong: Dialogues.” The talk, “Making Visible the Invisible,” will focus on his investigations and photojournalistic field research done in Rwanda over six years, resulting in twenty-five works he calls “exercises in representation.” The Zeitz Museum, located in Cape Town, South Africa, is currently home to “Alfredo Jaar: The Rwanda Project,” on view through May 23, consisting of photographs, mounds of slides, black file cabinets, and a neon sculpture that declares, “So much to do today / kill memory / kill pain / turn heart into a stone / and yet / prepare to live again,” documenting the Rwandan genocide that occurred while the world watched and did nothing. “Galerie Lelong: Dialogues” will continue with conversations with Mildred Thompson, whose “Throughlines, Assemblages, and Works on Paper from the 1960s to the 1990s” runs at the gallery through March 27, and Tariku Shiferaw, who will have his first show with the gallery in the spring.

ARTISTS & COMMUNITY: FIRST LOVE

Who: Bill Camp, JoAnne Akalaitis, Alisa Solomon
What: One-man show and live discussions
Where: TFANA Vimeo
When: Thursday, February 25, free with RSVP, 7:00 (available through March 1 at 7:00)
Why: “I associate, rightly or wrongly, my marriage with the death of my father, in time. That other links exist, on other levels, between these two affairs, is not impossible. I have enough trouble as it is in trying to say what I think I know.” So begins Samuel Beckett’s short story First Love, which was written in French in 1946 but was not translated into English by the author until 1973. Theatre for a New Audience will be presenting a theatrical adaptation of the work performed by Tony and Emmy nominee and Obie winner Bill Camp (The Crucible, Homebody/Kabul, The Queen’s Gambit), streaming February 25 at 7:00 through March 1 at 7:00; admission is free with advance RSVP. The show, a confessional that deals with death, desire, and solitude, is directed by six-time Obie winner JoAnne Akalaitis, with lighting by Jennifer Tipton, costumes and scenery by Kaye Voce, and video design by Eamonn Farrell. Camp has previously appeared in Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Sore Throats, and Notes from Underground at TFANA; in 2007-8, he collaborated with Akalaitis, Tipton, and Voce on Beckett Shorts at New York Theatre Workshop.

“If theaters opened up tomorrow, I wouldn’t do this on the stage: it’s made specifically for Zoom and our times, and very do-it-yourself,” Akalaitis said in a statement. “Part of my wanting to do it is to acknowledge that the world has changed. One of the big game players in cultural change was Samuel Beckett, to whom I owe so much. It just felt right to put this work by a young, war-damaged Beckett — this mean-spirited, mordant, misanthropic piece from the point of view of this fucked up, misogynist character — in the hermetic setting of Zoom.” Part of TFANA’s “Artists & Community” series, the performance, filmed over Zoom from Camp’s family home in Vermont, will be supplemented by two live talks with Akalaitis, Camp, and other members of the team, moderated by Alisa Solomon, on February 25 and 26 at 8:45.

WALKING WITH GHOSTS: GABRIEL BYRNE IN CONVERSATION WITH SARAH McNALLY

Who: Gabriel Byrne, Sarah McNally
What: Livestreamed discussion
Where: McNally Jackson Books Zoom
When: Thursday, February 25, $5, 7:00
Why: “How many times have I returned in my dreams to this hill. It is always summer as I look out over the gold and green fields, ditches foaming with hawthorn and lilac, river glinting under the sun like a blade. When I was young, I found sanctuary here and the memory of it deep in my soul ever after has brought me comfort. Once I believed it would never change, but that was before I came to know that all things must. It’s a car park now, a sightseers panorama.” So begins award-winning actor Gabriel Byrne’s widely hailed, poetic, soul-searching memoir, Walking with Ghosts (Grove Press, January 2021, $26).

The seventy-year-old Dublin native has appeared in such films as The Usual Suspects and Miller’s Crossing, such television series as In Treatment and Vikings, and such Broadway productions as A Moon for the Misbegotten and Long Day’s Journey into Night. On the book, he recounts his childhood in a working-class family, his discovery of the theater, and his battle with addiction with grace, humor, and bracing honesty. On February 25 at 7:00, he will speak with McNally Jackson Books founder Sarah McNally about the memoir and his career, live over Zoom. Admission is $5, but you can get those five bucks back if you buy a copy of the book when registering for the event and using discount code BYRNE5OFF.

A CELEBRATION OF OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

An all-star lineup will pay tribute to Octavia E. Butler on February 24 via Symphony Space

Who: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, N. K. Jemisin, Walter Mosley, Imani Perry, Yetide Badaki, Adepero Oduye
What: Readings and conversations
Where: Symphony Space Virtual Space
When: Wednesday, February 24, $15, 7:00
Why: In honor of the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of award-winning American science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who died on February 24, 2006, at the age of fifty-eight, a stellar group of writers and actors are gathering virtually at Symphony Space for an evening of readings and live discussion. A feminist and, arguably, an Afro-futurist, Butler wrote such works as Kindred, Bloodchild and Other Stories, and the Patternist, Xenogenesis, and Earthseed series. In her 1998 MIT speech “Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction,” she said, “It’s impossible to begin to talk about myself and the media without going back to how I wound up writing science fiction and that is by watching a terrible movie.The movie was called Devil Girl from Mars, and I saw it when I was about twelve years old, and it changed my life.” There’s no telling how many people’s lives were changed by reading Butler; the evening will feature playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, authors N. K. Jemisin, Walter Mosley, and Imani Perry, and actors Yetide Badaki and Adepero Oduye.

USE YOUR HEAD FOR MORE: DIGITAL PREMIERE AND LIVE CONVERSATION

Who: Justin Hicks, Meshell Ndegeocello
What: Live conversation about Hicks’s Use Your Head for More
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center Zoom
When: Wednesday, February 24, free with RSVP, 8:00 (Use Your Head for More available on demand through March 1 at 5:00)
Why: On February 24 at 8:00, multidisciplinary artist and performer Justin Hicks, who was born in Cincinnati and is based in the Bronx, will be joined by DC-born singer-songwriter, musician, and ten-time Grammy nominee Meshell Ndegeocello to talk about Hicks’s world premiere commission from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Use Your Head for More, which is streaming for free through March 1 at 5:00. The half-hour piece is an experimental audiovisual poem with spoken text based on a 2004 conversation Hicks had with his mother, found sound and background vocal samples from members of his family, and rich, dreamlike imagery, from empty corners and doors to a wrinkled hand repeatedly rubbing a wall, all bathed in a golden glow and filmed in his home. “The saying ‘Use your head for more than a hatrack’ became a song my mom wrote as a reminder to her children that mining your imagination offers a way to create lushness with little at hand,” Hicks said in a statement. “She would also use it in moments to let us know that your brain is much more valuable than anything you could acquire. She used songs to remind us of things that kept us safe.”

Use Your Head for More, which features editing by Breck Omar Brunson, lighting by Tuce Yasak, cinematography and styling by Kenita Miller-Hicks, and vocals by Jade Hicks and Jasmine Hicks, is part of the BAC Artist Commissions initiative, which was started in September 2020 to support new online works made during the COVID-19 pandemic; Mariana Valencia’s brownout premieres March 1, followed by Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm March 15-29, Stefanie Batten Band’s Kolonial May 3-17, Tei Blow’s The Sprezzaturameron May 17-31, and Kyle Marshall’s STELLAR June 7-21.