this week in theater

FELT SAD, POSTED A FROG (and other streams of global quarantine)

A man (Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.) in Berlin shares his thoughts and fears during the pandemic in six-part online play (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

FELT SAD, POSTED A FROG (and other streams of global quarantine)
May 7-8, 7:30, and May 9, 2:30, $15-$35 (depending on what you can afford and how many people are watching with you)
www.thecherry.org

“Why does catastrophe turn me on so much?” asks one of the characters in the Cherry Artists’ Collective’s Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine). The new play, which premiered last weekend and continues May 7–9, was created specifically for these difficult times; it consists of six interwoven tales related to the coronavirus pandemic, written by playwrights from around the world and performed by actors in their homes, where they are sheltering in place.

I wouldn’t say that catastrophe turns me on; the Covid-19 crisis has been a rocky rollercoaster ride and will be for quite some time to come, eliciting an ever-changing onslaught of emotional (and physical) upheaval. For the first several weeks following the March 12 shutdown, I was in a quandary. As someone who has been covering art and culture in New York City since May 2001, I didn’t know what to do with myself, with no plays, art exhibitions, concerts, films, dance programs, food festivals, or book launches to attend and write about. I’ve always focused on events that require people to get off their couches and leave their residence, and now we were all stuck inside. While Netflix bingeing can serve its purpose, it’s not a replacement for live entertainment.

My last post prior to the shutdown was, ironically enough, a March 11 review of a stirring production of Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at Second Stage. For the next month, I wrote only a few pieces about public sculpture; I usually post two or three times a day, but I didn’t have anything to cover while creators were dealing with the shuttering of their outlets. Part of me reveled in the newfound freedom I had, even though I was trapped at home, but I could also feel my motivation fading away. And then came Zoom (and Instagram Live and Facebook Watch Parties) and a whole new approach to livestreaming — which brings us back to the Ithaca, NY–based Cherry.

A single woman (Erica Steinhagen) gets virtual dating advice from WikiHow (Dean Robinson) in brightness of the screen warming our skin (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

I watched a seven-minute prerecorded short film about a Zoom meeting. I checked out new dance performances, unfiltered celebrity interviews. I saw a live fifteen-minute Zoom opera about a Zoom meeting. Prior to the pandemic, I was obsessed with FOMO, a fear of missing out on a cool event when I was already at a different cool event. Before arts organizations started figuring out what to do during the shutdown, my life actually got a bit more peaceful and calm, if not necessarily exciting. But what was initially a trickle of livestreaming arts turned into a barrage, and the conflicts were unnerving me. Should I watch experimental theater or a conversation and viewer Q&A with a favorite artist, which were happening at the same time? I needed, craved live stimulation, watching something with other people simultaneously. And then I was invited to Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), a live two-hour show about how various men and women were dealing with sheltering in place, written by six playwrights from around the world, performed by actors in their homes. I was giddy with anticipation, ready to experience live theater again, prepared to sit down at my computer and pretend that I was at the venue. Even though I could pause the show and come back to it later, I was determined to make it through the entire play without getting up to get a drink, without checking Facebook, without going to the bathroom, without answering the telephone, as if I were in my seat on the aisle and not alone in my home office. It turned out to be so much harder than I imagined.

Directors Samuel Buggeln and Beth F. Milles shift back and forth among six distinct tales. In German playwright Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Felt Sad, Posted a Frog, a man in Berlin (Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.) is keeping a video diary, making short statements about what he is going through. He keeps going to the open closet behind him, as if it might contain some answers. In Argentine film director Santiago Loza’s Buenos Aires, a recently separated older couple (Nora Susannah Berryman and Rafael Eric Brooks) deal with their sudden isolation after having been together for so long; it’s the only section that contains visual, cinematic elements involving light and color.

Romanian-American writer, poet, and journalist Saviana Stanescu’s Zoom Birthday Party gathers Oana (Helen T. Clark), a college student in New York, her brother, Radu (Joseph D’Amore), who is with their grandparents in Oești, Romania, and their mother, Lia (Elizabeth Mozer), who is taking care of a handsy elderly man in Milan; Oona’s online birthday celebration doesn’t go quite as planned. In Salvadoran playwright Jorgelina Cerritos’s After, a woman in San Salvador (Natasha Lorca Yannacañedo) worries about her family while a narrator (Jeffrey Guyton) watches over her from above. A man from WikiHow (Dean Robinson) in a small frame at the top right gives advice to a single woman (Erica Steinhagen) obsessed with dating in Iva Brdar’s brightness of the screen warming our skin, which is set in the playwright’s native Belgrade. And in National Book Award finalist Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s untitled segment, Jamie (Amoreena Wade), Chelle (Cynthia Henderson), and Coretta (Sylvie Yntema) are in Upstate New York, hopeful for the future.

Jamie (Amoreena Wade) and Coretta (Sylvie Yntema) have an online confab in Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s segment of Felt Sad, Posted a Frog . . . (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

The six sections explore a potpourri of pandemic problems, from toilet paper, essential services, cats, and misinformation to bats, race, alcohol, and salvation. Some of the vignettes are more successful than others, with the work of Simmons Jr., Yntema, and Steinhagen standing out. Noah Elman effectively handles the live video mixing and design. (Be prepared to see a lot of nostrils.)

Although I did indeed view the show straight through, uninterrupted, it was not easy. At more than two hours, it is too long; it just kept going and going, eventually making me angry, although I enjoyed it overall. But at least part of that reaction might have been more of my FOMO; throughout the play, the temptation to check my email, post something on Facebook, look for news updates about the virus, see what my family was up to, etc., was simply overwhelming. It’s not even about the quality of the production; I’ve been unable to sit through all of the National Theatre Live presentation of Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and it took me three days to finish Albert Serra’s extraordinary film Liberté. I was able to read a short story in the New Yorker by Haruki Murakami but am making ridiculously slow progress on his latest novel.

I feel like Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, whose character, photographer L. B. Jefferies, is stuck in his New York City apartment, confined to a wheelchair as he recovers from a broken leg. The antsy Jeff hangs out by the window, using binoculars to peer into the rooms across the courtyard; they used to represent different television channels, each depicting a different genre, but now they mimic a Zoom meeting screen or the endless websites that offer alternative forms of entertainment these days. We’ve trained our brains to jump from window to window, whether browser or app, with no small amount of help from clever advertising tech fiends eager for precious seconds of our attention. Jeff eventually focuses on one specific apartment, where a murder might have taken place. Now I have to figure out a way that I can do the same, concentrate on one play, dance, concert, interview, art tour, etc., at a time and not wilt under the barrage. And yes, I did post a frog.

THE OEDIPUS PROJECT

oedipus project

Who: Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Oscar Isaac, Jeffrey Wright, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Glenn Davis, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Jumaane Williams
What: Live Zoom theatrical production by Theater of War
Where: Eventbrite link sent with RSVP
When: Thursday, May 7, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Theater of War Productions (TOWP) presents dramatic readings of plays and speeches by Sophocles, Tennessee Williams, Euripides, Conor McPherson, Aeschylus, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene O’Neill, Frederick Douglass, and others, examining them through a contemporary sociocultural lens, focusing on such themes as addiction and substance abuse, gun violence, the prison system, natural disasters, consent, genocide, and caregiving. On May 7 at 7:00, the company, which was cofounded in 2009 by Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, will turn its attention to the current pandemic with the Oedipus Project, a free online initiative that will feature an all-star roster of actors giving a live, dramatic reading of scenes from Sophocles’s fifth-century BCE classic, Oedipus the King. The play deals with such elements as arrogance, pride, power, guilt, and truth and was first performed during the Plague of Athens, an epidemic that killed about a third of the population. The impressive cast, who will be performing from wherever they are sheltering in place, consists of Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Oscar Isaac, Jeffrey Wright, Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Glenn Davis, and Marjolaine Goldsmith. “There are people suffering out there, dying from the hateful plague, and this is what you choose to do with your time?” Jocasta asks in Doerries’s translation; Doerries also directs the show and will facilitate a live, interactive discussion about the impact of Covid-19 on families and communities, joined by New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams. TOWP is planning other productions to help those facing loneliness, trauma, loss, and mental and physical illness during this time of isolation.

THE HOMEBOUND PROJECT: THEATER FOR THE FRONT LINE

homebound

Who: Christopher Abbott, Glenn Davis, William Jackson Harper, Jessica Hecht, Marin Ireland, Raymond Lee, Alison Pill, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Thomas Sadoski, Amanda Seyfried, more
What: New online theatrical works to benefit No Kid Hungry
Where: Link supplied by the Homebound Project upon donation
When: May 6-10, 20-24, June 3-7, $10 or more, 7:00
Why: With audiences, playwrights, actors, directors, teachers, students, and most everyone else sheltering in place with theaters and schools closed, playwright Catya McMullen and director Jenna Worsham have come up with a unique program to bring works to a play-starved populace while also raising money for children in need. The Homebound Project pairs playwrights and actors in works created specifically for this time, performed from wherever everyone is hunkering down during the pandemic. From May 6 to 10, May 20 to 24, and June 3 to 7, ten short plays by ten playwrights performed by ten actors will stream for a limited time. To get the key to the virtual doorway, you have to make a minimum donation of $10 for each section; all proceeds go to the national nonprofit No Kid Hungry, which, as part of Share Our Strength, seeks to solve poverty and hunger issues around the country, and especially right now amid a terrible crisis. Worsham said in a statement, “The Homebound Project grew from a desire to support frontline organizations by doing what we artists do best: creating and gathering, in newly imagined ways. Our mission is to provide sustenance: critical provisions for those in need, an opportunity for isolated artists to collaborate, and (we hope) a way for audiences to access the communal empathy that theater provokes.”

The first ten actor/playwright combinations have been announced, and the list is beyond impressive, dealing with the theme of “home”: Christopher Abbott (James White, The Rose Tattoo)/Lucy Thurber (The Insurgents, Transfers), Glenn Davis (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow)/Ren Dara Santiago (Siblings, Something in the Balete Tree), William Jackson Harper (An Octoroon, The Good Place)/Max Posner (Sisters on the Ground, Snore), Jessica Hecht (The Assembled Parties, Fiddler on the Roof)/Sarah Ruhl (In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage), Marin Ireland (On the Exhale, Ironbound)/Eliza Clark (The Metaphysics of Breakfast, Edgewise), Raymond Lee (Tokyo Fish Story, Vietgone)/Qui Nguyen (Living Dead in Denmark, Vietgone), Alison Pill (Three Tall Women, Blackbird)/C. A. Johnson (All the Natalie Portmans, Thirst), Elizabeth Rodriguez (Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, The Motherfucker with the Hat)/Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Describe the Night), Thomas Sadoski (Other Desert Cities, reasons to be pretty)/Martyna Majok (Cost of Living, Ironbound), and Amanda Seyfried (Big Love, Mamma Mia!)/Catya McMullen (Everything Is Probably Going to Be Okay, A**holes in Gas Stations). Each section will be available from 7:00 pm of the first day to 7:00 pm of the last day, after which the link will be taken down. The participants for round two, which will examine “sustenance,” are Uzo Aduba/Anne Washburn, Nicholas Braun/Will Arbery, Utkarsh Ambudkar/Marco Ramirez, Betty Gilpin/Lily Houghton, Kimberly Hébert Gregory/Loy A. Webb, Hari Nef/Ngozi Anyanwu, Mary-Louise Parker/Bryna Turner, Christopher Oscar Peña/Brittany K. Allen, Zachary Quinto/Adam Bock, Taylor Schilling/Sarah DeLappe, and Babak Tafti/David Zheng; among those expected for the third segments are actors André Holland, Joshua Leonard, Ashley Park, and Will Pullen and playwrights John Guare and Daniel Talbott, so it’s hard to go wrong, especially for this cause and with donations starting at a mere ten bucks. (Feel free to give more if you can.) Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry in New York, explained, “In New York City alone, kids in need are missing nearly 850,000 school meals every day while schools are closed because of the coronavirus. We have a plan to feed kids, but the need is great, and it’s going to take all of us — actors, cafeteria staff, elected officials, everyday people — to offer the time, talent, and resources to reach them.”

THE NEW GROUP: WHY WE DO IT

why we do it

Who: Cynthia Nixon, Bobby Cannavale, Derek McLane, Edie Falco, Erica Schmidt, Donja R. Love, Scott Elliott
What: Weekly discussions about the draw and power of theater
Where: The New Group Facebook page
When: Wednesdays at 4:00, May 6 – June 10, free with advance RSVP, followed by limited Zoom Q&A for $100 donation
Why: Theater companies have been coming up with unique ways to stay in touch with their audiences now that all live, in-person staged productions have been postponed or canceled for the near future. The New Group is joining the online gatherings with “Why We Do It,” a weekly conversation series hosted by company founding artistic director Scott Elliott. Every Wednesday at 4:00, Elliott will speak live online with a member of the New Group family, beginning May 6 with Cynthia Nixon, who has directed Steve and Rasheeda Speaking for the troupe. The impressive lineup continues May 13 with Bobby Cannavale (Hurlybury), May 20 with set designer extraordinaire and board chairman Derek McLane, May 27 with Edie Falco (The True), June 3 with playwright and director Erica Schmidt (Cyrano, All the Fine Boys), and June 10 with playwright Donja R. Love (one in two). All conversations are free, but advance registration is necessary. Each talk will be followed by a smaller “Drinks with” Zoom Q&A with the main guest, limited to twenty participants who make a $100 tax-deductible donation and will get a recipe for an original drink from mixologist Sammi Katz.

HERE AT HOME: THE RECEPTION

Donovan & Calderón throw a party to remember at HERE Arts Center in The Reception, which will be streamed as a live watch party on May 6 (photo by Maria Baranova)

HERE Arts Center
Facebook Live Watch Party
Wednesday, May 6, free, 7:00
www.here.org
www.donovanandcalderon.org

With theaters shuttered during the pandemic, HERE Arts Center has opened up its vaults to present previous productions on Wednesday nights, first streaming them via a live, free (though donations are accepted) watch party on Facebook before making them accessible for later viewing. On May 6 at 7:00, HERE will be showing The Reception, which was performed there in June 2017. It should be fascinating to watch it in context of the coronavirus, now that there are no in-person gatherings of any kind. Here is my original review:

This is one party you are not going to want to miss. HERE Resident Artists Donovan & Calderón invite audiences to a rather surreal gathering in the exhilaratingly funny and utterly bizarre dance-theater piece The Reception. Actor, dancer, and writer Sean Donovan and actor, director, and scholar Sebastián Calderón Bentin have been collaborating since 2003 on such cutting-edge works as Not Unclear, The Climate Chronicles, and 18½ Minutes. For The Reception, they have put together quite a guest list: master choreographers Jane Comfort and Ishmael Houston-Jones, performer and choreographer Leslie Cuyjet, actress Hannah Heller, and the well-mustachioed Donovan himself, an extremely talented comic actor who was a standout in such recent productions as the Builders Association’s Elements of Oz and the first two parts of Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming trilogy. The five fabulously dressed partygoers — the costumes are by Felix Ciprián, with Heller’s sparkling gown a particular stunner — drink, dance, nosh, and schmooze on Neal Wilkinson’s circular wooden stage, cluttered with a couch, a few chairs, a table of snacks and bottles of alcohol, and a light-up globe. Snippets of dialogue come front and center and then disappear into the background, ranging from silly jokes to more serious tales of sexism, misogyny, and ageism, as Houston-Jones tries to score with every other character in hysterical ways. Words and actions repeat, high-heeled shoes come off and are put back on, and Donovan grows ever-more desirous of the “tarty things,” all set to Stevie Wonder’s infectious “Another Star” from his groundbreaking 1976 double album, Songs in the Key of Life. Tension and anxiety wax and wane, stimulated by a sly little take on a fundamental horror movie trope. The fun sound design is by Brandon Wolcott and Tyler Kieffer, which is complemented by Amanda K. Ringger’s inventive lighting, especially when the story takes a creepy turn. And the ending is splendidly mad.

Hannah Heller, Sean Donovan, Leslie Cuyjet, Jane Comfort, and Ishmael Houston-Jones hold nothing back in The Reception (photo by Maria Baranova)

Codirected by Calderón and Donovan, The Reception was inspired by such classic European cinema as Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad, Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Jacques Tati’s Playtime, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura. It was originally titled “Abbadon,” which in Hebrew means “place of destruction” and in Revelation refers to a king who was the “angel of the Abyss,” a hellish place of confinement. The five characters are trapped in their own private sphere, alternating between being deliriously happy, then nervous and worried, concerned for their immediate future. The social-gathering aspects of the show are beautifully precise even with improvisation, expertly detailing the interaction among the bash attendees, from movement to language to facial gesture, especially since all of the performers have collaborated previously on multiple projects: Cuyjet has danced with Jane Comfort and Company since 2005, Donovan and Heller both portrayed Dorothy Gale (and other roles) in Elements of Oz, and Houston-Jones and Comfort teamed up for The Studies Project, among other collaborations, making the proceedings that much more believable no matter how strange it gets. But underneath it all, literally and figuratively, lies the unknown, a dark side from which there might be no escape. In which case, the only thing to do is to keep on partying.

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON (Live on Zoom)

witch

Who: Red Bull Theater
What: Live unrehearsed online Zoom reading
Where: Red Bull Theater website and Facebook and Vimeo
When: Monday, May 4, free, 7:30
Why: In 2011, Red Bull Theater staged Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley’s 1621 Jacobean tragedy, The Witch of Edmonton, at the Theater at St. Clement’s. The New York-based company, which on April 20 brought back the cast of its 2015 revival of Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore for a free, online, live unrehearsed reading, is now doing the same with The Witch of Edmonton, assembling most of the original cast for a virtual presentation on May 4 at 7:30. Performing from wherever they’re sheltering in place will be Charlayne Woodard as Elizabeth Sawyer, Craig Baldwin as Warbeck and Countryman, Justin Blanchard as Frank Thorney, Christopher Innvar as Sir Arthur Clarington, Carman Lacivita as Somerton and Countryman, Christopher McCann as Thorney, Amanda Quaid as Katherine, Everett Quinton as Old Ratcliffe and Anne Ratcliffe, Miriam Silverman as Winifred, Derek Smith as Dog, Raphael Nash Thompson as Justice, Sam Tsoutsouvas as Carter, and newcomers Antoinette Robinson, David Manis, and Carson Elrod, with music by Daniel Levy. In a statement, company founder Jesse Berger, who directed the 2011 production, explained, “We want to engage you and our entire community with something stimulating and of genuine value. We’re not promising a finished performance but rather a unique way to experience the rarely seen The Witch of Edmonton.” It’s free to watch, although donations are accepted. Next up in this program are live, unrehearsed readings of Red Bull’s bloody good 2016 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus on May 18, its 2005-6 version of Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy on June 1, and Jeffrey Hatcher’s fab 2017 adaptation of Gogol’s The Government Inspector on June 15.

DAYS OF POSSIBILITIES

orloff

Who: New Circle Theatre Company
What: Live Zoom performance of Days of Possibilities
Where: Facebook Live
When: Monday, May 4, free, 7:00
Why: On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four unarmed college students at Kent State University during a protest against the US bombing of Cambodia. New Circle Theatre Company in New York City will commemorate that tragic event, which shook America to its core, with a live performance of Rich Orloff’s Days of Possibilities, an online adaptation of his 1989 documentary theater piece Vietnam 101: The War on Campus, for which he interviewed more than one hundred alumni of Oberlin College. Created specifically for Zoom, the new play will feature twenty actors performing from their homes; it is directed by David Kronick. In a statement, Orloff, whose other plays include Advanced Chemistry, Someone’s Knocking, Big Boys, and Chatting with the Tea Party, said in a statement, “I think the events of that era need to be remembered, not just for their historical importance, but for lessons we can use today. Days of Possibilities offers stories of hope and courage during a time of great uncertainty. To fight for what they believed in, students risked being expelled, jailed, tear-gassed, and even shot. I think we can be inspired by the idealism of that time, especially if we don’t want to accept today’s social and political problems as inevitable and instead choose to find ways to fight for a better world. The technological tools we can use today were undreamed of fifty years ago, but I like to think that dreaming and working for a better future is timeless.” On Monday night at the same time, the play will also be performed by theater companies in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California as well as a high school in Arizona. (If you miss the livestream, you can catch the recorded show later.)