this week in theater

VISION RESIDENCY: RAJA FEATHER KELLY

Tuçe Yasak’s Light Journals kicks off raja feather kelly’s Ars Nova Vision Residency

VISION RESIDENCY
Ars Nova
March 20 – April 9, $10 per show
arsnovanyc.com/SUPRA
thefeath3rtheory.com

It’s time to face facts: This is raja feather kelly’s world; we’re only living in it. Kelly is an Obie-winning choreographer, director, artistic director of the feath3r theory, and creative associate at Juilliard who has been involved with such productions as Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at Second Stage, Electric Lucifer at the Kitchen, A Strange Loop and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka at Playwrights Horizons, Fireflies at the Atlantic, and Fairview at Soho Rep and TFANA. In December he premiered his solo performance installation Hysteria in the glassed-in lobby at New York Live Arts, for which he is also making the film Wednesday, a queer-fantasia reimagining of Dog Day Afternoon that he offered a sneak peek of at a wild watch party also in December. He will be bringing back Hysteria for encore performances April 8-10.

Kelly is now curating Ars Nova’s Vision Residency program, featuring presentations by four creators: Tuçe Yasak, Tislarm Bouie, L Morgan Lee, and Emily Wells, running March 20 to April 9. “There is no separation between who these people are as artists and who they are as people. Their work is indelible and one of a kind,” kelly said in a statement. The Ars Nova Supra events begin March 20 with Yasak’s virtual installation Light Journals, inspired by poetry by Rumi, followed March 25 by Bouie’s dance film on Black masculinity, THUG; a reading on April 8 of The Women, the working title of a play in progress, led by L Morgan Lee and kelly as Kirsten Childs, Dane Figueroa Edidi, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Christine Toy Johnson, Bianca Leigh, Carmen LoBue, and Nia Witherspoon explore what it means to be a woman in today’s society; and, on April 9, kelly & Wells’s Artifact, a listening and viewing party previewing their work-in-progress Album and Opera. Tickets to each show are $10; a monthly subscription to Ars Nova’s Supra digital platform is $15. Kelly is one of seven 2020–21 Vision Residents; the others are Starr Busby, nicHi douglas, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jenny Koons, David Mendizábal, and Rona Siddiqui.

NEGATIVE LIBERTY / POSITIVE LIBERTY

The Invisible Dog Art Center
51 Bergen St.
Thursday – Sunday, March 18 – April 18, free with advance RSVP
www.theinvisibledog.org
www.theamericanvicarious.org

The american vicarious and the Invisible Dog Arts Center follow up their socially distanced Static Apnea with Negative Liberty / Positive Liberty, an immersive performance installation for one audience member at a time. The piece explores Latvian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s Oxford lecture delivered on Halloween 1958, “Two Concepts of Liberty: Negative & Positive.” while also incorporating Anthony Barboza’s 1966 photograph, Pensacola, Florida, of a neon sign depicting the word Liberty with a broken “E” and dangling “R,” revealing the fragility of freedom, as they both relate to current events. Berlin writes:

“To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom – freedom from what? Almost every moralist in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. I do not propose to discuss either the history or the more than two hundred senses of this protean word, recorded by historians of ideas. I propose to examine no more than two of these senses – but those central ones, with a great deal of human history, behind them, and, I dare say, still to come. The first of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which (following much precedent) I shall call the ‘negative’ sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What is the area within which the subject – a person or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?’ The second, which I shall call the positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question ‘What, or who, is the source of control or interference, that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?’ The two questions are clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap.”

Conceived and directed by Christopher McElroen (Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley, Static Apnea), the installation features performers Sarah Ellen Stephens and Olivia Gilliatt, with scenography by Troy Hourie, video design by Adam J. Thompson, sound by Andy Evan Cohen, and lighting by Lucrecia Briceno. Admission is free to each eight-minute session but must be reserved in advance; slots are already filling up, so you’d best sign up fast. In addition, Barboza is included in the Whitney exhibition “Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop,” which continues through March 28.

ROMEO Y JULIETA

The Public Theater’s bilingual radio play Romeo y Julieta was rehearsed over Zoom (screenshot courtesy the Public Theater)

Who: Saheem Ali, Lupita Nyong’o, Juan Castano, Alfredo Michel Modenessi, Rebeca Ibarra, more
What: Online premiere listening party for bilingual audio production of Romeo y Julieta
Where: The Greene Space and the Public Theater
When: Thursday, March 18, free with RSVP, 6:45 (stream available for one year)
Why: Unsurprisingly, audio plays have made a comeback during the pandemic, with theaters in lockdown. Keen Company’s Season of Audio Theater has included finkle’s 1993 and Pearl Cleage’s Digging in the Dark, with James Anthony Tyler’s All We Need Is Us up next. Playing on Air, which predated the Covid-19 crisis, has posted such nonvisual works as Cary Gitter’s How My Grandparents Fell in Love, Daniel Reitz’s Napoleon in Exile, Naveen Bahar Choudhury’s Skin, and Dominique Morisseau’s Jezelle the Gazelle, featuring such actors as Julie White, Jesse Eisenberg, Marsha Mason, Ed Asner, Jane Kaczmarek, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and others.

Meanwhile, the Public Theater has presented Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck: A History Play About 2017 as well as the four-part Free Shakespeare on the Radio: Richard II, adapted and directed by Saheem Ali. Ali has now teamed up with playwright Ricardo Pérez González on Romeo y Julieta, a bilingual audio adaptation based Alfredo Michel Modenessi’s Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s heart-wrenching tragedy.

Colorful illustrations by Erick Dávila add visuals to bilingual radio play (courtesy the Public Theater)

The play alternates between English and Spanish; thankfully, you don’t hear every line in both languages, or else the show would be four hours long. However, the Public provides the script on its website so you can follow along and see the full translation. (The website also offers a visual guide to the cast and characters, a bilingual synopsis, colorful illustrations by Erick Dávila, and a trailer.) Presented in conjunction with WNYC Studios and the Greene Space, the radio play premieres on March 18 at 6:45 with much virtual fanfare, kicking off with a preshow greeting and cocktail demonstration (Mezcal Negroni or nonalcoholic Mojito), hosted by WNYC’s Rebeca Ibarra. Then the group listening party starts at 7:00, followed by a live talkback and Q&A with Ali, actors Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Juliet, and Juan Castano, who stars as Romeo, and translator Modenessi, moderated by Ibarra. Everything is free with advance RSVP, but you have to supply your own drinks.

The rest of the cast consists of Carlo Albán as Benvolio, Karina Arroyave as the apothecary, Erick Betancourt as Abram, Michael Braugher as Balthasar, Carlos Carrasco as Lord Montague, Ivonne Coll as the nurse, John J. Concado as Peter, Hiram Delgado as Tybalt, Guillermo Diaz as Gregory, Sarah Nina Hayon as Lady Montague, Kevin Herrera in the ensemble, Modesto Lacen as Prince Escalus and Capulet’s cousin, Florencia Lozano as Capulet, Irene Sofia Lucio as Mercutio, Keren Lugo as Sister Joan, Benjamin Luis McCracken as Paris’s page, Julio Monge as Friar Lawrence, Javier Muñoz as Paris, and David Zayas as Sampson. The original score by Michael Thurber is performed by Jon Lampley on trumpet, Eddie Barbash on alto saxophone, and Mark Dover on bass clarinet; bassist Thurber will also entertain the audience during intermission. The stream of the radio play will be available for one year.

BROADWAY’S BEST SHOWS: SPOTLIGHT ON PLAYS

BROADWAY’S BEST SHOWS
Discounted tickets available through March 21, $49
Streaming begins March 25 (each show available on demand for four days)
www.broadwaysbestshows.com
www.stellartickets.com

Last fall, Broadway’s Best Shows hosted “Spotlight on Plays,” a series of all-star staged virtual readings, taking actors out of Zoom boxes and filming them in more theatrical settings. Among the offerings, for $5 each, were Gore Vidal’s the Best Man with John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Williams, Zachary Quinto, Phylicia Rashad, Reed Birney, and Elizabeth Ashley; Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth with Lucas Hedges, Paul Mescal, and Grace Van Patten; David Mamet’s Race, with David Alan Grier, Ed O’Neill, Alicia Stith, and Richard Thomas; Mamet’s Boston Marriage with Patti LuPone, Rebecca Pidgeon, and Sophia Macy; Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with Alan Cumming, Constance Wu, Samira Wiley, K. Todd Freeman, and Ellen Burstyn; Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still with original cast members Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, and Brian d’Arcy James; and Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue with Colman Domingo, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tamberla Perry, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Heather Simms, Laurie Metcalf, Carrie Coon, David Morse, Kristine Nielsen, and Annie McNamara. Sorry you missed that, yes?

Fortunately, Broadway’s Best Shows is now back for another round of online productions, seven plays that can be purchased for $49 total through March 21, after which tickets can be bought individually, at a higher per-show cost. The presentations begin March 25, with each play available for four days. It’s another impressive lineup: Meryl Streep, Bobby Cannavale, Carla Gugino, Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Kline, Debbie Allen, Ellen Burstyn, Keanu Reeves, Kathryn Hahn, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, Heidi Schreck, Alia Shawkat, Heather Alicia Simms, Stith, and others will be appearing in Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Leigh Silverman (March 25), Pearl Cleage’s Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous, directed by Camille A. Brown (April 9), Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, directed by Sarna Lapine, Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders, directed by Kenny Leon, Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth, directed by Kate Whoriskey, Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. All proceeds go to the Actors Fund, which provides “emergency financial assistance, affordable housing, health care and insurance counseling, senior care, secondary career development, and more . . . to meet the needs of our entertainment community with a unique understanding of the challenges involved in a life in the arts.”

THE SHOW GOES ON: CASA VALENTINA

Harvey Fierstein and the cast of Casa Valentina will reunite for MTC’s “The Show Goes On”

Who: Harvey Fierstein, Reed Birney, John Cullum, Gabriel Ebert, Tom McGowan, Patrick Page, Nick Westrate, Mare Winningham
What: Cast reunion and watch party
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club YouTube
When: Thursday, March 18, free, noon
Why: In November, Manhattan Theatre Club kicked off a new monthly series, “The Show Goes On,” revisiting previous productions with members of the cast and crew watching filmed excerpts and talking about their experiences. In November, director Trip Cullman, narrator Rebecca Naomi Jones, music director Justin Levine, and costar Will Swenson looked at 2012’s Murder Ballad, which also featured Karen Olivo and John Ellison Conlee. In December, actors Jon Hoche and Paco Tolson explored 2016’s Vietgone, by Qui Nguyen. In January, writer-director John Patrick Shanley and star Timothée Chalamet discussed 2016’s Prodigal Son. And in February, Stephanie Berry, who played, Aunt Mama, shared insight into 2018’s Sugar in Our Wounds, written by Donja R. Love and directed by Saheem Ali.

The March edition of “The Show Goes On,” each of which runs between fifteen and twenty minutes, reunites the cast of 2014’s Casa Valentina, Harvey Fierstein’s first drama in more than a quarter century. The play, inspired by a true story, takes place in June 1962 at a Catskills bungalow where men spend weekends cross-dressing and acting like women, a safe haven where they can celebrate their feminine side. Joining in the watch party will be Fierstein and most of the original cast: Reed Birney, John Cullum, Gabriel Ebert, Tom McGowan, Patrick Page, Nick Westrate, and Mare Winningham. At the time, I wrote, “Cross-dressing might be somewhat de rigueur these days on Broadway (Kinky Boots, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), but Fierstein, [director Joe] Mantello, and an extremely talented and beautiful cast offer a very different take on this misunderstood culture, treating it with humor, intelligence, honor, courage, and, perhaps most important, dignity.” Like its title says, the show does go on, living on YouTube after its initial airing.

X the EXPERIENCE

X Joey (Cheech Manohoar) watches the sun set over the Hudson River in X the Experience

X THE EXPERIENCE
Fridays at 8:30 and Saturdays at 3:30 through May 22, $25-$50
www.xtheexperience.com

“Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep / It starts when you’re always afraid / Step out of line, the men come and take you away,” Stephen Stills sang in Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 counterculture classic, “For What It’s Worth,” inspired by the Sunset Strip curfew riots between LA rock clubs and the police. Paranoia is a continuing dilemma during the pandemic: about contracting the virus, about keeping a job, about kids going back to school and adults going back to work, and now about the country opening up as vaccines get widely distributed. “The exceptionally prolonged lockdown because of ineffective management and the subsequent social disruptions and economic misery — in many ways worse than the Great Depression, with tremendous inequities, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and despair — are already leading to rampant drug addiction, depression, suicides, and homicides,” Dr. Bandy X. Lee, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, told CNN last month. “Meanwhile, we now have a large segment of the population that has been encouraged and conditioned to avoid reality. When living in delusion, detached from reality, one naturally becomes paranoid because facts and evidence are constantly ‘attacking’ these false, cherished beliefs,” the doctor added. Of course, as Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” a quote that Nirvana adapted for its 1991 song about isolation, “Territorial Pissings.”

All of which brings us to X the Experience, an interactive, immersive online theatrical production that uses paranoia and fear as key ingredients in an exciting two-hour adventure into the dark underbelly of the near future. Conceived, directed, and coedited by Aaron Salazar and written by Jason Veasey, the show casts the viewer as a trainee for WE, an all-powerful organization that squashes individuality and personal identity in favor of the hive-minded whole. “So it’s your goal. And hope. That you can aid in someone’s journey back to the collective. To the community. To WE,” a disembodied robotic voice known as the I (Gillian Saker) commands. You are tasked with helping first X Joey (Cheech Manohoar), then X Joei (Kim Exum), to come back to the fold. WE believes it is transforming the citizenry from “self-importance to selflessness,” but there’s much more to it, as the I explains:

You. I. They. Them. Black. White. Man. Woman. / What are you? Where are you from? Who are your people? / Equity. Inclusion. Diversity. / So many questions about so many labels. / That was life. For a long time. For a lot of people. / The focus on having a society where individuals of all backgrounds could exist in an equitable and harmonious world. Where we could be every adjective we wanted and somehow would all live as one. . . . It’s time WE all let go of the constructs of gender and race and sexuality that were used to keep us apart and actually just be WE.

A HAL-like disembodied voice (Gillian Saker) is in charge in immersive virtual production X the Experience

It might sound like a nirvana of inclusiveness, but it’s also like becoming part of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. We watch X Joey and X Joei as they contemplate their choices, deciding whether to face their responsibilities to the WE or take off. All the while, as an audience member you are text messaging over WhatsApp with your supervisor, who is asking questions to ensure your loyalty to the cause. (Note: You will not be on camera or speaker at any time.)

X the Experience features an ever-shifting visual style, from high-tech computer imagery to low-tech surveillance, from stark confessional to poetic beauty, from hypnotic colors to grainy grays, incorporating music and dance into the story. Wearing headphones and turning all other devices and browsers off to immerse yourself fully in the action is highly recommended. I found myself putting my face nearly right up against my monitor to get sucked into some of the more mesmerizing animation. It is a bit too long at two hours (there is a five-minute interval) and can get repetitive, and the overall world building is ambitious though flawed, but is also like nothing I’ve seen during the pandemic. It evokes X-Files conspiracy theories, HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron-like video games, the urgency of Logan’s Run, and the opening sequence of Dr. Who, leading viewers into a mysterious universe that points toward the future of hybrid entertainment. The ominous score is by Matt Katz, Giancarlo “Ssanti” Bonfanti, and Manuel Pelayo, with yearning songs that recall Joy Division and Suicide.

X Joei (Kim Exum) has to decide her future while being constantly monitored by the mysterious WE

Salazar, the producing artistic director and founder of Poseidon Theatre Company and executive director of Alvarez Keko Salazar Productions, previously staged such works as Antigone and BitterSweet at the Cell as well as The Cooping Theory 1969: Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe?, a 2019 immersive hit at RPM Underground, where audiences followed multiple arcs through different rooms, trying to uncover the true tale behind Poe’s demise. While X the Experience can’t have the same kind of interactivity, Salazar makes viewers feel that they’re part of the story, involved in something special that is occurring in real time.

Exum (The Book of Mormon, For the Last Time) and Manohoar (Mean Girls, Mrs. Fletcher), a trained Bollywood dancer, capture the paranoia and fear of the moment, staring directly at us, practically begging us to free them from their dilemmas — which relate not only to the fictional narrative but to their reality, actors who cannot perform in front of in-person audiences, and therefore our dilemma too, sheltering in place at home. Like all of us, they just want to live happy, full lives, free of constant paranoia and fear, but we — WE? — are there to judge them in a changing social order where such judgment is appropriately shunned. But in this world, no one is innocent, and no one is to be trusted.

VIRTUAL ST. PATRICK’S DAY 2021

On March 14, 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio stated, “I am not ready today at this hour to say, let’s have a city with no bars, no restaurants, no rec centers, no libraries. I’m not there.” But he was there the next day, shutting down the city while allowing St. Patrick’s Day revelers one last chance to become superspreaders, letting them have one final party night on March 16. A year later, Gotham has suffered 775,000 cases and more than 30,000 deaths, so for 2021, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be virtual, but restaurants are back open. For those who are not planning on cramming into any pubs quite yet, there are several online gatherings to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland.

The parade, a New York City institution since 1762, will be virtual in 2021, honoring first responders and essential workers. There will be events all day long, from a livestreamed mass and a composite of previous parades to live entertainment and interviews.

The Gingold Theatrical Group, which is dedicated to the work of George Bernard Shaw, is hosting a livestreamed Irish Poetry Slam with Robert Cuccioli, Tyne Daly, Melissa Errico, Jessica Hecht, Daniel Jenkins, Andrea Marcovicci, Tonya Pinkins, Thom Sesma, Renee Taylor, Sally Wilfert, Karen Ziemba, and others taking part in an open mic night beginning at 6:00 (admission is free with advance RSVP), with people contributing poetry, songs, toasts, jokes, monologues, sayings, and more, preferably by or inspired by Irish writers. “Ordinarily, we’d be having our annual Golden Shamrock Gala on the seventeenth, but . . . nope!” Gingold artistic director David Staller said in a statement. “This shindig will take place over Zoom! Not Irish? Not a problem. On St. Pat’s, we’re ALL a little Irish. This is just a party. Not a performance. Not a fundraiser. Just a chance for us all to raise a glass and be ‘together.’”

Meanwhile, Knowledge Workings Theater Company, started in 2018 by Joe Queenan, T. J. Elliott, and Marjorie Phillips Elliott, is holding its Second Annual Virtual (Not Necessarily Virtuous) St. Patrick’s Day Celebration. Anyone can participate by making their own video, following specific instructions on YouTube here and seeing what contributors posted last year. It’s free, but it you want to donate, Knowledge suggests you do so to the Irish Rep, which is presenting JM Synge’s The Aran Islands, starring Brendan Conroy, March 16-28, including 3:00 and 8:00 screenings March 17.

On Wednesday night at 8:00 GMT, Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival concludes with Barróg Lá Fhéile Phádraig, featuring performances by Lisa O’Neill, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Caoimhe Ní Fhlatharta, Seamus and Ronan Ó Flatharta, Diarmuid and Brian Mac Gloin, Cormac Begley, Ronan O’Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly, Doireann, and Siún Glackin and Mohammad Syfkhan, sharing a big virtual hug extending across the Atlantic.