this week in theater

NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM VINTAGE BUS BASH, FULL MOON FESTIVAL, IT’S YOUR TERN! AND MORE ON GOVERNORS ISLAND

New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash pulls into Governors Island on Saturday (photo by Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

Governors Island
Saturday, July 8, most events free
govisland.com/events

Tomorrow is a busy day on Governors Island, one of the city’s genuine summer treasures. The New York Transit Museum Vintage Bus Bash (11:00 am – 4:00 pm, free) pulls into Colonels Row, four classic old vehicles that used to shuttle passengers around the city. You’ll be able to check out 1956’s Bus 3100, 1958’s Bus 9098, 1959’s Bus 100, and 1971’s Bus 5227. The seventh annual Full Moon Festival takes place from 12 noon to 2:00 ($50-$61) on the Play Lawn, with Vic Mensa, Larry Heard a.k.a. Mr. Fingers, Kelela, DJ Harvey, Connan Mockasin, Abra, Jeremy Underground, Axel Boman, Tops, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Selvagem, Donna Leake, and Mass Meditation by the Big Quiet. The fourth annual It’s Your Tern! Festival (12 noon – 4:00, free) celebrates the threatened common tern, many of which have been nesting on Tango Pier. There will be games, arts and crafts, a scavenger hunt, a special spotting scope viewing, and bird tours led by Annie Barry and Kellie Quinones. The free Rite of Summer Music Festival in Nolan Park presents “Pamela Z — Works for Voice and Electronics” at 1:00 and 3:00, a live performance by the San Francisco-based composer and media artist. In addition, you can visit such free continuing exhibitions and programs as “The Public Works Department Presents: Sanctuary City,” “Christodora: Nature, Learning, Leadership,” “New York Electronic Art Festival,” “Art of Intuitive Photography,” a family-friendly literary party at “The Empire State Center for the Book,” the NYC Audubon Summer Residency, “Escaping Time: Art from U.S. Prisons,” “Billion Oyster Project Exhibit,” “Sculptors Guild Presents: Currently 80,” A.I.R. Gallery’s “Taken on Trust,” the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Island Outpost, LMCC’s “A Supple Perimeter” by Kameela Janan Rasheed, the Woolgatherers’ “Genesis 22,” and the Dysfunctional Theatre Company’s “Dancing with Light.”

BROADWAY IN BRYANT PARK 2017

Groundhog Day is one of many musicals that will present stripped-down versions of production numbers in Bryant Park this summer (photo by Joan Marcus)

Bryant Park
40th to 42nd Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursdays, July 6 to August 10, free, 12:30
bryantpark.org

The annual summer Broadway in Bryant Park series features stripped-down performances Thursday afternoons at 12:30 from numerous current and upcoming Broadway and off-Broadway musicals, offering a free sneak peek at shows that are lighting up the Great White Way and elsewhere. Below is the full schedule.

Thursday, July 6
STOMP, Groundhog Day, Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera, with the winner of Steinway’s Rising Star on Broadway Contest, hosted by Christine Nagy

Thursday, July 13
Kinky Boots, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, School of Rock, Soulpepper on 42nd Street, with the Aruba Tourist Authority Carnival Dancers, hosted by Delilah

Thursday, July 20
Waitress, Chicago, Cats, Spamilton: An American Parody, hosted by Rich Kaminski

Thursday, July 27
A Bronx Tale, Anastasia: Home at Last, Avenue Q, The Imbible, hosted by Delilah

Thursday, August 3
Miss Saigon, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Broadway Dreams, with the Aruba Tourist Authority Carnival Dancers, hosted by Bob Bronson

Thursday, August 10
Come from Away, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bandstand, Curvy Widow, with Brooke Shapiro, hosted by Helen Little

GHOST LIGHT

An actress (Rebekah Morin) goes through a tech rehearsal in Ghost Light (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Wednesday – Monday through August 6, $30-$50
www.lct.org
www.thirdrailprojects.com

Brooklyn-based Third Rail Projects, the immersive-theater masterminds behind Then She Fell, which has been leading audiences down the rabbit hole for five years at the Kingsland Ward at St. John’s in Williamsburg, and The Grand Paradise, which took guests on an unusual island vacation last year in a renovated Bushwick warehouse, have now moved uptown to Lincoln Center, where Ghost Light continues at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater through August 6. The show, conceived, directed, and choreographed by two of the company’s founding artistic directors, Zach Morris and Jennine Willett, is an unpredictable journey through nearly every nook and cranny of the Claire Tow, from storage closets, hallways, and dressing rooms to the balcony, the break room, and the inner stairway. Named for the electric light that is left on in a theater for safety reasons even when no one is there, the two-hour show has a premise involving ghosts that never quite comes to fruition, but most everything else is a complete blast. The audience is divided into groups again and again — don’t expect to spend the entire evening with the companion you came with — as they are guided through multiple areas, where actors share stories about the backstage machinations of creating the magic of theater. My journey began with a silly Shakespeare scene in which everyone was given a task, from holding up a mirror to help a woman check her hair to putting on fake armor and participating in a dress rehearsal complicated by personal drama. Shortly after that, we’re spying on a man (Edward Rice) and a woman (Julia Kelly) having a secret rendezvous, which feels long and extraneous. But everything that follows is far more intriguing and entertaining, including a beautifully choreographed dance in the main theater with a diva (Roxanne Kid) and a well-dressed gentleman (Cameron Michael Burns).

A troubled star (Roxanne Kidd) has a meltdown in a stairwell in Third Rail Projects’ latest immersive production (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Other highlights include a splendid monologue by a sad Beckett-like clown (Ryan Wuestewald); the diva having a breakdown in a stairwell; Sam the janitor (Josh Matthews) explaining some important maintenance details; an intimate song by the would-be Shakespearean lead (Elizabeth Carena); and the swirling organized chaos that occurs moments before the curtain goes up. It is often difficult to know which sets have been designed by Brett J. Banakis (Big Love, Coriolanus) and which are just the way the Claire Tow is; I was particularly fond of two small spaces occupied by dozens of miniature sets, trying to see if I could recognize previous Lincoln Center Theater productions. There are also plenty of inside jokes, terrific costumes by Montana Levi Blanco (Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, War), and splendid work by Alberto Denis as the stage manager as well as the real stage manager (Kristina Vnook) and assistant stage managers (Stephanie Armitage, Nick Auer, Jack Cummins), who might just have the most difficult jobs of everyone while blurring the distinction between the show and the show-within-a-show. (The large, valiant cast also includes Rebekah Morin, Joshua Dutton-Reaver, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Tara O’Con, Niko Tsocanos, Jessy Smith, Carlton Cyrus Ward, and Donna Ahmadi as the usher.) In many ways, it’s like a miniature Sleep No More, except you can’t follow your own path. Ghost Light shines a fun and fascinating light on the creation of theater, mysterious ghosts and all.

TWI-NY TALK: JODY OBERFELDER — THE BRAIN PIECE

Jody Oberfelder Projects will present The Brain Piece at New York Live Arts June 28 – July 1 (photo by Christopher Duggan)

JODY OBERFELDER PROJECTS: THE BRAIN PIECE
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Wednesday, June 28, gala benefit $200, 7:30
June 29 – July 1, $25-$35, 7:00 & 9:00
212-691-6500
newyorklivearts.org
www.jodyoberfelder.com

New York-based director, choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker Jody Oberfelder’s The Brain Piece, premiering at New York Live Arts June 28 – July 1, continues her exploration of our internal organs, following on her extraordinary 2013 piece, 4Chambers, an immersive, multimedia, interactive journey inside the human heart. Performed by Oberfelder, Mary Madsen, Pierre Guilbault, and Hannah Wendel along with ten dancer docents, The Brain Piece is divided into two parts, “Mind Matters / Head Space” and “World of Brain,” combining film, visual art, installation, dance, music, and text for an audience limited to 72 members. The cerebral, multimedia piece includes her award-winning short film Dance of the Neurons, made with Eric Siegel, which turns firing synapses into a colorful, joyous dance. Oberfelder, a travel and yoga enthusiast and former lead singer of the punk band the Bagdads, founded Jody Oberfelder Projects in 1989 and has previously presented such works as The Titles Comes Last, Moved, Re:Dress, and Throb. The charming, gregarious, always energetic creator took a break from rehearsals to tell twi-ny all about The Brain Piece.

twi-ny: We recently bumped into each other at the Whitney Biennial, where you were serving as a docent for Asad Raza’s “Root sequence. Mother tongue,” an installation of living trees paired with specific objects, one of which you contributed. As museumgoers made their way through the exhibit, I couldn’t help but think of it as a kind of improvisatory dance with nature, especially with you there. What was that experience like?

jody oberfelder: We’re actually called caregivers. The people who pass through sometimes don’t know we’re positioned as such as we, as you describe, do this improvisatory dance with people in conversation. The show has been up since March and we’ve seen the trees go from bare, to blossom, to leafing, and now they can’t wait to get planted outside. Many people have passed through. Asad’s work balances organic, inorganic, and human all in the space. Having a person in the room is as important as the trees and the caregiver’s placed object. I’m learning that conversation is often this invisible thread that links things together in the present.

twi-ny: Your work is very scientific; were you interested in science when you were a kid?

jo: I would not say I grew up with a scientific bent. I had a fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Dowd, who explained the digestive system with panache (“…and out the other end” — we were all snickering). I’ve come to science through the body, and through a curiosity about what makes us alive. There is a beautiful ecosystem within us and a giant cosmos outside of us. Did you ever see that film by Charles and Ray Eames — Powers of Ten — it’s all about zooming out and zooming in. That, to me, is what science is about. Things can be very specific and very vast.

twi-ny: Yes, Powers of Ten is quite eye-opening. How did you find/choose your science collaborators — Dr. Wei Ji Ma, Cecilia Fontanesi, and Ed Lein — and what did each one bring to The Brain Piece?

Word of mouth.

Cecilia is a dancer and a neuroscientist. She met one of my dancers, Mary Madsen, at a party. I loved talking with her from the very beginning. The thing she said, “The brain is everywhere in the body,” totally clicked with my premise of dancers illuminating brain life.

Wendy Suzuki, who helped illuminate the brain-body connection for me, introduced Wei Ji to me. Wei Ji has been a great collaborator. He comes to rehearsals to “fact check” and advise. He’s in Dance of the Neurons. I audited his class at NYU on illusion. We did a combo lecture / performance in Amsterdam.

Another neuroscientist introduced Ed Lein to me: Gary Marcus. My company manager at the time, Clare Cook, was giving him private Pilates lessons. Gary and I had several conversations, which culminated in him saying, “You know, you should meet Ed from the Allen Institute for Brain Science. He specializes in the biology of neurons.” Ed and I had a back and forth on a kind of Skype sketchpad, and he drew little pictures of how neurons are formed that eventually became the literal storyboard for Dance of the Neurons. I embellished, of course, and played with all the ways neurons “dance” and form synaptic connection. I’m most grateful to these scientists, who are also artists.

twi-ny: Without giving too much away, how will the physical space of New York Live Arts come into play? Only the second half will take place in the theater on a proscenium stage, correct?

jo: It’s my hope that there really is no separation between the sections, that the more experience-based portions of the work continue to inform the world of the brain in the theater. There are nine films in part two. When you go to movies, you don’t question that the actors are not that big. I think the problem with live theater is that we’re in a long shot for too long. I’m creating an atmosphere of a giant brain with moving parts. I think this is the nature of brain plasticity: zoom in for close-ups, see what the alignment of neurons are doing at this time, how we’re constantly in a perceptual loop.

Jody Oberfelder served as a caregiver for Asad Raza’s “Root sequence. Mother tongue” at the Whitney Biennial (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Jody Oberfelder served as a caregiver at the Whitney Biennial (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: 4Chambers involved a significant amount of interaction, at one point bringing the audience into physical contact with the dancers. Will there be anything similar in The Brain Piece?

jo: You’ll see.

twi-ny: Good answer. I only recently learned that the doctor who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein actually removed his brain and brought it home to study. What is the most unusual thing you learned about the brain while making this piece?

jo: That the brain is a noisy place and we’re constantly trying to figure things out and make sense of the world. And that our bodies are the vehicles for us to sensorially enter the world. Ask a neuroscientist to define “mind” and they have no clear thing to pin down. There were philosophers, then psychiatrists, and now great discoveries in seeing the pictures in the brain, seeing what makes things go off, decay, or become more plastic, make connections: That’s the dance of neurons. But the mind — it’s like vapor. We breathe in present and past. It’s in constant motion. And dancers are the perfect vehicles to convey this movement.

twi-ny: How have the two works brought the heart and the mind together for you?

jo: The heart leads to the mind. When working on 4Chambers, I interviewed Wendy, who talked about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and how all the way down from our brains our hearts operate. We feel our hearts, but it’s triggered by the mind. You know how what your brain is doing by what your heart is doing, and vice versa. “I can put my hand on your heart and feel your heartbeat, but if I put my hand on your skull, I can’t feel your thoughts.”

twi-ny: Regarding Dance of the Neurons, your choreography has always been very cinematic, and The Brain Piece includes that short film, which has been garnering prizes at festivals. How do you see the two disciplines merging in your work?

jo: Thank you. Someone at a festival said I was a filmic choreographer. I like that. I’m pretty visual. Like a filmmaker, I’m in the business of arranging time and space and hidden narrative. I use a lot of improvisation around ideas and look for dancers who can take the ball and run with it. I like to think that if I give the performers imaginative tasks, the content will form, and it’s my job as a director and choreographer to prepare for a rehearsal with a loose storyboard of possibilities, then go deeply inside the physical investigation for the interaction with audience members, the films, and the onstage content. Devising content is a matter of honing in on what feels right.

I worked with a wonderful dramaturg this time around: Jessica Applebaum. The piece has had many renderings. She helped me not be afraid of the complexity of the subject matter and to go forward making. Details and big picture always in mind. Jessica has also left me a lot of space these last months to figure it out on my own. Today our neuroscientist, Wei Ji, was there to see me finish the finale in our last moments of our last rehearsal!

I love it now. I’m even surprised by it.

twi-ny: I’m very much looking forward to being surprised by it as well. This might be an obvious closing question, but now with the heart and the brain covered, do you anticipate continuing to explore the mind-body connection with different organs as the focus?

jo: The sex organs will probably be combined with the guts. Like when you feel something in your gut. Intuition. Power.

THE TRAVELING LADY

Slim (Larry Bull), Mrs. Mavis (Lynn Cohen), and Judge Robedaux (George Morfogen) discuss local matters in Horton Foote’s The Traveling Lade (photo by Carol Rosegg)

HORTON FOOTE’S THE TRAVELING LADY
Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 30, $65-$95 ($39-$49 with code TTLRED)
212-989-2020
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Austin Pendleton’s revival of Horton Foote’s 1954 Broadway play, The Traveling Lady, is essentially a simple little diversion, a gentle, bittersweet slice-of-life drama that is singularly American. The show, which opened Thursday night at the Cherry Lane, takes place in a small town in Foote’s home state of Texas, where he set most of his works, including the Tony-nominated The Trip to Bountiful, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man from Atlanta, the Orphans’ Home Cycle, and the trio of shorts that make up Harrison, TX. It’s 1950, and folks are gathering in Clara Breedlove’s (Angelina Fiordellisi) quaint backyard (designed by Harry Feiner, who also did the lighting). Stopping by on the day of Miss Kate Dawson’s funeral are Mrs. Mavis (Lynn Cohen), a cranky old lady who enjoys torturing her daughter, the kindhearted Sitter Mavis (Karen Ziemba); Judge Robedaux (George Morfogen), a frail, elderly man who doesn’t mind a bit of gossip here and there; Mrs. Tillman (Jill Tanner), a fanatical Bible-thumping teetotaler who brings in reclamation projects to cure them of the evil ills of drink and crime; the friendly Clara, who welcomes the company; and Clara’s brother, Slim Murray (Larry Bull), a hardworking, soft-spoken man who has recently been widowed. Arriving on this hot day is Georgette Thomas (Jean Lichty) and her young daughter, Margaret Rose (Korinne Tetlow), who have ridden the bus all night and are looking for a place to live while waiting for her husband, Henry (PJ Sosko), to get out of prison. But she is surprised to discover that he has already been freed and is working for Mrs. Tillman, who is determined to reform him. But that’s a whole lot easier said than done.

Sitter Mavis (Karen Ziemba), her mother (Lynn Cohen), and Henry Thomas (PJ Sosko) hang out in Clara Breedlove’s yard in Austin Pendleton production at the Cherry Lane (photo by)

A collaboration between Cherry Lane Theatre’s Founder’s Project and La Femme Theatre Productions to celebrate the centennial of Foote’s birth — the playwright was born in 1916 and passed away in 2009 at the age of ninety-two — The Traveling Lady is a creaky, old-fashioned tale of a more simpler time in America, a story that shows its age. Pendleton (A Day by the Sea, A Taste of Honey), one of the busiest off-Broadway directors around, has several characters enter and leave via the narrow Cherry Lane aisle, which is probably supposed to make the audience feel more a part of the atmosphere but instead becomes overused relatively quickly while also confusing the geography of the location. Cohen (I Remember Mama, Big Love), who also portrayed Mrs. Mavis in a 2006 revival at Ensemble Studio Theater, is wonderfully nasty as the ornery old soul, who might not be quite as doddering as she sometimes likes to appear. “Yep. I remember all of it. I remember everything that happened in this town,” she says. Bull (The Coast of Utopia, Rocket to the Moon) is strong and solid as Slim, a man’s man who is unable to share his true feelings. Tony winner Ziemba (Contact, Steel Pier), Tanner (Dividing the Estate, Enchanted April), and Cherry Lane founding artistic director Fiordellisi (Out of the Mouths of Babes, Catch the Butcher) are fine as the chatty women, but there is little chemistry between Sosko (Row After Row, Reentry) and Lichty (Nora, A Loss of Roses); of course, their characters have not seen each other for a long time, but the audience is unlikely to care whether they get back together or not. Lichty, who cofounded Le Femme with Pendleton and Robert Dohmen, fares better as the sensitive mother, but Sosko is hampered by Henry’s desire to form a band, a subplot that goes nowhere. Foote, who won screenwriting Oscars for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, instills the hundred-minute intermissionless The Traveling Lady with some charming moments, but there are not quite enough of them to sustain this production above being a nice, pleasurable detour.

THE RECEPTION

Donovan & Calderón throw a party to remember in The Reception, continuing at HERE through June 24 (photo by Maria Baranova)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
June 14-24, $25 (use discount code BUBBLY to save $5) – $45, 8:30
212-647-0202
www.here.org
www.donovanandcalderon.org

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, continuing at HERE through June 24. 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.

RIVER TO RIVER 2017

Maria Hassabi presented an informal preview of her latest work this summer on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The latest iteration of Maria Hassabi’s Staged series will move be performed in City Hall Park as part of the River to River Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations downtown
June 14-25, free
www.rivertorivernyc.com
lmcc.net

The best free multidisciplinary arts festival of the summer, River to River packs a whole lot into a narrow amount of time. Sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this year’s activities, which, as always, focus on more experimental presentations, take place June 14-25 at such locations as Governors Island, Federal Hall, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Fulton Center, City Hall Park, and other downtown areas. While everything is free, some performances require advance registration because of space considerations. In addition to the below events, Katja Novitskova’s “EARTH POTENTIAL” Public Art Fund exhibition opens June 22 in City Hall Park, photographer Kamau Ware’s “Black Gotham Experience” interactive storytelling project will pop up at various places throughout the fest, LMCC’s Open Studios allows visitors the chance to meet with dozens of artists, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “A Supple Perimeter” will be on view at LMCC’s Arts Center and Movie Theater Exterior on Governors Island.

Wednesday, June 14, 6:00
Wednesday, June 21, 8:00
Sunday, June 25, 7:00
The Dance Cartel: R2R Living Rooms, with DJ Average Jo and special guests, Pier A Harbor House
One of the most energetic companies around, the Dance Cartel will host a trio of live music and dance performances at the River to River Festival hub, with plenty of audience participation.

Thursday, June 15, 3:00 & 6:00
Monday, June 19, 3:00
Netta Yerushalmy: Paramodernities #2 and #3, National Museum of the American Indian
South Carolina–born choreographer and performer Netta Yerushalmy’s “Paramodernities” series deconstructs landmark dance works within the framework of modernity. For River to River, she will present Paramodernities #2, examining Martha Graham’s Night Journey, and Paramodernities #3, investigating Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, accompanied by scholars who will take part in public discussions. The seventy-five-minute production will move around inside the National Museum of the American Indian.

Thursday, June 15, 7:00
Saturday, June 17, 7:00
Sunday, June 18, 7:00
A Marvelous Order, Fulton Center
Joshua Frankel, Judd Greenstein, Will Rawls, and Tracy K. Smith have collaborated on the multimedia opera A Marvelous Order, which delves into the famous fight between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs over the future development of New York City. For the River to River Festival, they will present a twenty-five-minute excerpt at the Fulton Center, with Eliza Bagg, Tomás Cruz, Lucy Dhegrae, Christopher Herbert, and Dashon Burton as Robert Moses and live music by NOW Ensemble, conducted by David Bloom.

Friday, June 16, 6:00
Amir Elsaffar: Rivers of Sound — Not Two, the Plaza at 28 Liberty
American jazz trumpeter and composer Amir Elsaffar celebrates the release of his latest record, Not Two (New Amsterdam, June 16), with a two-hour performance at the Plaza at 28 Liberty featuring his seventeen-piece Rivers of Sound orchestra.

Friday, June 16, 3:30
Saturday, June 17, 3:30
Sunday, June 18, 3:30
Jodi Melnick: Moat, Fort Jay, Governors Island
Choreographer, dancer, and teacher Jodi Melnick, who has said, “I am truly, madly, deeply in love with movement,” has teamed up with visual artist John Monti for Moat, a sixty-minute site-specific performance taking place in the moat that surrounds historic Fort Jay on Governors Island.

Beth Gill’s Catacomb will be performed in Federal Hall for the River to River Festival (photo by Brian Rogers)

Saturday, June 17, 8:00
Sunday, June 18, 8:00
Monday, June 19, 8:00
Beth Gill: Catacomb, Federal Hall
In May 2016, Bessie Award–winning choreographer Beth Gill presented the site-specific Catacomb at the Chocolate Factory, a dreamlike physical and psychological exploration of what we see and who we are. For River to River, the aching sixty-minute performance moves to historic Federal Hall.

Saturday, June 17, 12 noon – 6:00
Sunday, June 18, 12 noon – 6:00
Saturday, June 24, 12 noon – 6:00
Sunday, June 25, 12 noon – 6:00
The Set-Up: Island Ghost Sleep Princess Time Story Show, the Arts Center at Governors Island
For five years, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey have been collaborating with men and women from multiple dance disciplines, presenting unique performances that push the boundaries of the movement arts. Their project now culminates in a grand finale on Governors Island, with dance masters I Nyoman Catra (Balinese Topeng), Proeung Chhieng (Cambodian), Junko Fisher (Okinawan), Saya Lei (Mandalay-style, classical Burmese), Jean-Christophe Paré (French baroque), Kapila Venu (Indian Kutiyattam), and Heni Winahyuningsih (Javanese refined) and musicians Jonathan Bepler, Reiko Fueting, and Megan Schubert. “Many dances on an ISLAND, a GHOST of what they were, having lost details during a long SLEEP but nevertheless the PRINCESS of their destiny. This TIME it is one STORY, full of fortuitous meetings, grave errors, and happy misunderstandings. It’s a SHOW, folks!” Cardona and Lacey explain. You can see the complete schedule here.

Monday, June 19, 6:00
Tuesday, June 20, 2:00
Wednesday, June 21, 2:00
Faye Driscoll: Thank You for Coming: Play, Broad and Wall Sts.
At last year’s LMCC Open Studios on Governors Island, the endlessly inventive Faye Driscoll offered a work-in-progress showing of the second part of her participatory “Thank You for Coming” series, which began in 2014 with Thank You for Coming: Attendance Play later moved to the BAM Fisher. She now revisits Play, staging a forty-minute version at the intersection of Broad and Wall Sts.

Tuesday, June 20, 4:00 – 8:00
Night at the Museums
Many Lower Manhattan museums and cultural institutions will stay open late on June 20, offering free entry to historic sites along with special programs. Among the participants are the African Burial Ground National Monument, China Institute, Federal Hall National Memorial, Fraunces Tavern Museum, Museum of American Finance, Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, National Archives at New York City, National Museum of the American Indian, National September 11 Memorial Museum (advance RSVP required), 9/11 Tribute Center, NYC Municipal Archives, Poets House, the Skyscraper Museum, and the South Street Seaport Museum.

Wednesday, June 21, 5:00
Thursday, June 22, 3:00
Friday, June 23, 3:00
Marjani Forté-Saunders: Memoirs of a . . . Unicorn, Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum
Pasadena-born, Harlem based dancer and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders, who previously was in the Urban Bush Women Dance Company, brings her solo Memoirs of a . . . Unicorn to the South Street Seaport Museum, a collaboration with media designer Meena Murugesan and sound designer Everett Saunders that relates to the history of Black American magic.

Thursday, June 22, 7:00
Friday, June 23, 7:00
Saturday, June 24, 7:00
Sunday, June 25, 5:00
En Garde Arts: Harbored, Winter Garden, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St.
En Garde Arts, which was founded by Anne Hamburger to “catalyze social change” through immersive theater, will stage the sixty-minute site-specific collage play Harbored, about Willa Cather, Lewis & Clark, and Cather’s character Ántonia. The piece, featuring more than fifty performers, is written and directed by Jimmy Maize, with an original score by Heather Christian sung by the Downtown Voices Choir and movement by Wendy Seyb. During the day, you can share your immigration story with them and it just might be incorporated into that night’s show.

Friday, June 23, 6:00
Sunday, June 25, 6:00
Maria Hassabi: Staged? (2016) — undressed, City Hall Park
Last summer, Maria Hassabi presented Movement #2 on the High Line, a dance performed by Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, and Oisín Monaghan as people passed by. That morphed into Staged, which ran at the Kitchen in October. Now Hassabi is bringing Staged? (2016) — undressed to City Hall Park, where four dancers will move around Katja Novitskova’s “EARTH POTENTIAL” exhibition.