this week in theater

AMERICAN REALNESS

Keyon Gaskin’s IT’S NOT A THING is part of American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Duncan Gray)

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org

The seventh American Realness festival consists of twenty cutting-edge theatrical presentations ($20 each), a movement workshop ($90), and four free lectures and discussions over the course of eleven days, January 7-17, almost exclusively at Abrons Arts Center. There’s so much going on that every day features between six and ten events spread throughout the venue, which includes the Experimental Theater, the Playhouse, the Underground Theater, and room 201. Two performances take place at other venues: The great Jack Ferver, who has a well-deserved rabid fan base for his deeply personal and intimate, often confessional multidisciplinary works, returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) at Gibney Dance (January 13-16), an updated version of a piece that debuted in 2012 at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival and in which the audience becomes part of the action. And Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen also employs interactivity in her multimedia 69 Positions (January 15-17, $15), which connects sexuality and public space in MoMA PS1’s VW Dome. Back at Abrons, the New York premiere of Heather Kravas’s dead, disappears (January 7-11) integrates Richard Serra’s Verb List into a solo work about words and movement, woman and object. In choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson’s Star Crap Method (January 9-17), performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein, and Velez-Jackson and lighting designer Kathy Kaufman improvise as they examine the role of sound, light, music, and movement. In the world premiere of Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream (January 13-17), Markey and Becca Blackwell bring to life the love between a girl and a pontoon boat/horse. M. Lamar’s Destruction (January 13-16) investigates the white supremacist world order using Negro spirituals. Sadness is at the heart of the New York premiere of Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag (January 7-10), performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, and Brendan Dougherty collaborate on Culture Administration & Trembling (January 7-8), which explores the nature of spectatorship.

The festival also includes Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia (January 8-17), Keyon Gaskin’s it’s not a thing (January 8-11), Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB<3 (January 9-12), Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships (January 9-12), Sara Shelton Mann, Hennessy, and Norman Rutherford’s Sara (The Smuggler) (January 11-13), Yvonne Meier’s Durch Nacht und Nebel (January 11-16), Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers’ Mira El! (January 12-15), choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck’s Mass (January 13-15), the world premiere of the Bureau for the Future of Choreography’s Score for a Lecture, and James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s Over the River | Through the Woods diptych (January 16-17). In addition, Kravas, Lewis, Jenn Joy, and Kelly Kivland will discuss “Melancholia and Precarious Virtuosity” on January 8 at 3:30, Claudia La Rocco, Lane Czaplinski, Annie Dorsen, Yelena Gluzman, Katherine Profeta, and others will explore the question “How Should the Present Think About the Future?” on January 9 at noon, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Thomas J. Lax, Soyoung Yoon, and Cassie Mey will delve into “A Charming Uproar: On Documenting Dance” on January 10 at 3:30, Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz will lecture on “I Am Black (You Have to Be Willing to Not Know)” on January 17 at 11:00 am, and Movement Research will host the workshop “Creative Differences” with La Rocco on January 7, 10, and 12 ($90).

PROTOTYPE

Enda Walsh’s first opera, THE LAST HOTEL, is part of fourth annual Prototype festival (photo by Hugh O’Conor)

Multiple venues
January 6-17, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

The fourth annual Prototype, consisting of pioneering, cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater works by classical and postclassical composers, takes place January 6-17, consisting of seven presentations at multiple venues. The world premiere of composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek’s Angel’s Bone, about two angels returning to earth, features Abigail Fischer, Kyle Pfortmiller, Jennifer Charles, Kyle Bielfield, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and NOVUS NY and runs January 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15-17 at 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center on Greenwich St. Vavrek also wrote the libretto for composer David T. Little’s Dog Days, making its New York City premiere January 9-11 ($25-$81) at NYU’s Skirball Center; the work is based on the short story by Judy Budnitz. Greek tragedy meets the Vietnam War in composer Heidi Rodewald and librettist Donna Di Novelli’s The Good Swimmer, a first-look presentation running at HERE January 7-17. Irish playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh (Lazarus, Once, Hunger) wrote the libretto and directs composer Donnacha Dennehy’s The Last Hotel at St. Ann’s Warehouse January 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15-17 ($51-$61). Brooklyn-based five-piece Bombay Rickey brings its cinematic sound to HERE January 8-9 and 15-16 with a sixty-minute opera-cabaret work directed by Kristin Marting. Gregory Frateur and Nicolas Rombouts’s multimedia song cycle Sága makes its American premiere January 9-10 at National Sawdust. And on January 17, FIAF will host a one-time only concert reading of Jorge Sosa and Laura Sosa Pedroza’s La Reina, featuring mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock, Laura Claycomb, and Christopher Burchett and conducted by David Allan Miller; it will be followed by a discussion moderated by Lawrence Edelson.

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL

Dorothée Munyaneza and Compagnie Kadidi’s SAMEDI DÉTENTE is part of Public Theater’s annual Under the Radar Festival (photo by Laura Fouqueré)

The Public Theater unless otherwise noted
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 6-17, $25 unless otherwise noted
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The Public Theater’s 2016 Under the Radar Festival features eighteen innovative music, dance, and theater hybrids from around the globe, taking place primarily at the Public’s many stages. The fun begins with the French duo of Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort and Germinal (January 6-9, the Public’s Newman Theater), who use the magic of theater to build the world from scratch. Lars Jan and Early Morning Opera combine a 1950s typewriter with kinetic light sculptures in The Institute of Memory (TIMe) (January 8-17, the Public’s Martinson Hall), as Jan delves into his father’s past as a Cold War operative. Director Andrew Scoville, composer Joe Drymala, technologist Dave Tennent, and writer Jaclyn Backhaus team up for the live podcast People Doing Math Live! (January 8 & 17, the Public’s Shiva Theater), complete with audience participation. Canadian duo Liz Paul and Bahia Watson’s two-woman show pomme is french for apple returns to Joe’s Pub on January 10 & 17, exploring womanhood in unique ways. DarkMatter, the trans South Asian spoken-word duo of Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, will perform the concert #ItGetsBitter at Joe’s Pub on January 12 & 14. Individual tickets for Martha Redbone’s new Bone Hill (January 13-16, Joe’s Pub), a collaboration with Aaron Whitby and Roberta Uno, are sold out, but you can still catch the show as part of a UTR Pack (five shows for $100). Nikki Appino and Saori Tsukuda’s Club Diamond (January 13 & 17, Shiva) combines silent film, live music, and Japanese techniques to explore the concept of truth in thirty-five minutes. Dorothée Munyaneza, who was born in Rwanda and currently lives in France, brings her Compagnie Kadidi to the Public’s LuEsther Hall for Samedi détente (January 14-17), looking back at the 1994 genocide, joined by Ivorian dancer Nadia Beugré and French musician Alain Mahé. Japan’s Toshiki Okada, who was previously at UTR in 2011 with Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech and in 2013 with the Pig Iron Theatre Company for Zero Cost House, will be back at Japan Society with God Bless Baseball (January 14-17, $35), which examines America’s pastime in Korea and Japan.

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq takes a unique look at NANOOK OF THE NORTH at Under the Radar Festival (photo by Nadya Kwandibens)

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq will perform live to Robert J. Flaherty’s 19922 silent film, Nanook of the North, January 15-17 at the Newman, reclaiming her heritage, joined by percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot. The 2016 Under the Radar Festival also includes 600 Highwaymen’s Employee of the Year (January 7-17, Martinson Hall), Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s The Art of Luv (Part I): Elliot (January 8-17, the Public’s Anspacher Theater), Sister Sylvester’s They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain (January 9 & 16, Shiva), I Am a Boys Choir’s demonstrating the imaginary body or how i became an ice princess (January 10 & 16, Shiva), Ahamefule J. Oluo’s Now I’m Fine (January 12-17, Newman), Guillermo Calderón’s Escuela (January 13-17, LuEsther Hall), Wildcat!’s I Do Mind Dying — Danse Précarité (January 14 & 17, Shiva), and Dane Terry’s Bird in the House (January 15-16, Shiva). In addition, numerous performances will be followed by Q&As with members of the creative teams, and there will be two free round-table discussions at the Public, “Assembly Required: New Media, New Dramaturgies” with Jan, André M. Zachery, and others on January 16 at noon and “Destroyer of Worlds” with Janani Balasubramanian, Abigail Browde, Calderón, Michael Silverstone, and Vaid-Menon on January 17 at noon.

COIL 2016

Ranters Theatre’s SONG kicks off COIL 2016 festival (photo by Jorge Lizalde)

Multiple venues
January 5-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
www.ps122.org

Every January, New York City is home to a handful of performance festivals that feature cutting-edge and experimental theater, dance, music, and installation art. PS122’s home at 150 First Ave. is scheduled to reopen this summer following a major renovation, but in the meantime you can experience its innovative programming at COIL 2016, taking place at various venues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. “COIL 2016 attacks the very concept of boundaries and of limits. The boundaries between ideologies, life and death, the contemporary and historic, human and machine, light and darkness, audience and performer,” PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner explains on the event website. “Limitations of time, identity, age, and geography disappear. The work we will see this year deals with evolutionary transformation — personal, social, and artistic.” COIL begins on January 5 with Ranters Theatre’s Song (January 5-8), a sixty-minute immersive sound and visual installation at the New Ohio Theatre in which the audience can sit or lie down on the floor. Composer and vocalist Samita Sinha collaborates with Red Baarat percussionist Sunny Jain, guitarist and sound designer Greg Mcmurray, lighting designer Devin Cameron, visual artist Dani Leventhal, and director Ain Gordon on bewilderment and other queer lions (January 6-10, Invisible Dog Art Center), an intimate investigation of ritual and mythology through music, text, and image. Choreographer Jillian Peña’s Panopticon (January 9-17, Abrons Arts Center), a copresentation with American Realness, uses reflections to give a kaleidoscopic effect to a duet by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin.

At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Australians Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up for Morphia Series (January 12-16), an eighteen-minute phantasmal environment for twelve audience members at a time. Annie Dorsen, whose Magical with Anne Juren was a highlight of COIL 2013, is back with Yesterday Tomorrow (January 13-16, La MaMa), in which Hai-Ting Chinn, Jeffrey Gavett, and Natalie Raybould go on a multimedia musical journey from the Beatles’ “Yesterday” to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Asia Society will be hosting Xi Ban and Po Huang Club’s one-night only Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 (January 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 & 9:30), which melds Peking Opera with southern blues. The festival also includes niv Acosta’s Discotropic (January 6-10, Westbeth Artists Community), Frank Boyd’s The Holler Sessions (January 6-17, Paradise Factory), Kaneza Schaal’s Go Forth (January 7-12, Westbeth), David Neumann’s I Understand Everything Better (January 10-16, the Chocolate Factory), Ranters Theatre’s Intimacy (January 11-16, New Ohio Theatre), Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation (January 13-17, Invisible Dog), Jonathan Capdevielle’s Adishatz / Adieu (January 15-17, Abrons Arts Center), and Michael Kliën’s Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (January 15, Martha Graham Studios, 3:00 – 7:00).

TAKE CARE

Brittane Rowe, Ashton Muñiz, Rachel Lin, and the rest of the Bats perform with the audience in TAKE CARE at the Flea Theater (photo by Bjorn Bolinder)

The Flea Theater
41 White St. between Broadway & Church St.
Thursday – Sunday through January 25, $15-$35
866-811-4111
www.theflea.org

If edgy participatory theater is your thing, especially with a distinctly controversial political bent, then Take Care is the show for you. The world premiere by the Bats, the Flea Theater’s resident company of young actors, is an immersive production that essentially begins the moment you enter the building on White St. in TriBeCa. You will be led downstairs to the basement one at a time by a Bat to a folding chair, where you decide how much you want to participate – featured participants will be given solo responsibilities, group participants will always be accompanied by at least one other participant, and voyeurs will mostly stay in the background. For nearly fifty minutes, the Bats use the central motif of hurricane destruction to explore climate change and racism in contemporary America, interacting with audience members who might shout a racist slur, get doused by a hose, or share a personal story. Each participant receives a unique series of precisely timed instructions, and everyone has enough time to prepare for their involvement. (Several monitors around the room display a running clock, in addition to various related videos.) “Everything you do tonight is perfect and absolutely right,” Rebeca Rad assures the crowd near the start. “If you mess up, it’s right. If you’re late, it’s right. If you laugh or cry or sit down early, it’s the absolutely right thing to do.”

Written by Elastic City’s Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith and directed by Smith, the Flea’s new artistic director, Take Care is a vibrant, thought-provoking, and fun show, even if the links between hurricanes, global warming, segregation, civil rights, and individual identity are often quite a stretch. The eager, energetic cast, which consists of Tommy “Tsunami” Bernardi, Maki Borden, Rachel Lin, Ashton Muñiz, Derek Christopher Murphy, Rad Pereira, Brittane Rowe, Isabella Sazak, Ryan Stinnett, and Catherine Woodard, does an excellent job of keeping things moving (along with choreographer and understudy Ethan Hardy) and making sure the participants are kept busy, even though audience members might at times find themselves outside their comfort zones, which of course is part of the point. I asked to be a featured participant, and I ended up with a scary responsibility that had me agonizing for forty minutes and fifty seconds (it was scheduled for 40:50), as it sets in motion events that result in a rather potent open discussion. No matter which participant level you choose, Take Care will have you looking deep inside, facing some harsh realities about yourself as well as where America is as a country today. Smith calls the show “a perfect storm to expose the ways we take care of and neglect one another,” and it is indeed very much about both the individual and the collective and how we consider our fellow human beings. Each performance is significantly different, as it changes depending on the audience. It also has a major effect on the Bats themselves; the night we went, one of the actors broke down in tears at the conclusion, moved by the power of what had just happened. It’s not for everyone, but adventurous theatergoers should not hesitate to become part of what is going on in the Flea’s basement Thursday through Sunday nights through January 25.

COLIN QUINN: THE NEW YORK STORY

Colin Quinn explores the history and development of the New York character in one-man show (photo by Mike Lavoie)

Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 31, $25-$96
212-989-2020
www.colinquinnthenewyorkstory.com
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Colin Quinn likes to tackle big subjects. In 2010, the actor and comedian took Broadway audiences on a journey through the history of the world in Long Story Short. In 2013 at the Barrow Street Theatre, the gruff Brooklyn-born comic explored American history in Unconstitutional. In his latest seventy-five-minute one-man show, The New York Story, based on what he claims will be his only book, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, Quinn examines the development (and death) of the New York persona. “Our tourist attraction is the people. Nobody else had people like this,” he says near the start of the show. “Smoking cursing rude sarcastic pushy loud fast-talking outspoken. It’s not a pleasant personality but it was entertaining and honest.” Slowly ambling across Sara C. Walsh’s old-time set, which features a classic New York City stoop, a laundry line of drying clothing, stacks of wooden crates, and small flags from many nations, Quinn discusses the Indians, the Dutch, the British, the Germans, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans, and the blacks, not afraid to be politically incorrect as he details what each ethnicity, religion, and race contributed to New York City. He’s no stranger to edgy material: He hosted the politically oriented comic talk show Tough Crowd, was formerly the anchor of “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, has a recurring role on Girls, and played Amy Schumer’s father in Trainwreck. He can be wickedly funny about each group while respecting their individual heritages, but he’s also clearly upset about where we are today, seemingly drained of our uniqueness as New Yorkers. “First of all: positivity, inclusion, non-judgmentalism, those are all great qualities to have,” he points out. “But not in New York. This city was supposed to be the sanctuary city for the judgmental, the obnoxious, the non-positive. That’s the thing. And somewhere along the way we decided to appropriate the rest of the country’s positivity.”

The show, which begins with Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker” and concludes with Ace Frehley’s “Back in the New York Groove,” is directed by Jerry Seinfeld, who also helmed Long Story Short. It includes projections of city monuments and subway signs that are sometimes hard to make out, and Quinn often seems to be trying too hard to hit his mark instead of being more natural. But his verbal delivery is superb, speaking to the audience like he’s sharing a beer with us instead of lecturing like a professor, rambling through broken sentences as he uses his gruff Brooklyn Irish accent to expound on the state of the city he, and we, love. “The immigrants are the only ones who are still authentic,” Quinn explains. Amid all the laughs, the truth hurts. Tickets for the show are allocated geographically, from $56 for the Coney Island and Red Hook seats in the rear to, getting ever closer to the stage, $76 for Hell’s Kitchen and $96 for Washington Heights and Yonkers.

THESE PAPER BULLETS!

THESE PAPER BULLETS! mixes Shakespeare with the Fab Four at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 10, $75
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

These Paper Bullets!, Rolin Jones’s Yale Rep transport of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to swinging 1964 London, looks and sounds great. Jessica Ford’s Mary Quant-inspired Mod costumes feature polka dots, brightly colored miniskirts, and fashionable boots and shoes, while Billie Joe Armstrong’s Beatlesque songs offer a fun twist on the Fab Four’s musical style. Unfortunately, the rest of this overly silly frenetic farce is dreadfully unfunny, a Monty Python-like sketch that in this case goes on for a long, drab two hours. The Quartos — Ben (Justin Kirk), Claude (Bryan Fenkart), Balth (Lucas Papaelias), and Pedro (James Barry) — are England’s hottest band, making women swoon wherever they go. Claude has fallen for Twiggy-esque model Higgy (Ariana Venturi), the daughter of hotel owner Leo Messina (Stephen DeRosa), while Ben and fashion designer Bea (Nicole Parker) develop a kind of love-hate relationship. Everything threatens to come crumbling down when fired drummer Don Best (Adam O’Byrne), Pete’s brother, decides to exact revenge on the Quartos and their manager, Anton (Christopher Geary), with the help of reporter Boris (Andrew Musselman). Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is suspicious of the Quartos and their success, so Mr. Berry (Greg Stuhr) sends Mr. Cake (Tony Manna) and Mr. Urges (Brad Heberlee) undercover to find out what the band is really up to. The shenanigans are annoyingly detailed throughout by TV journalist Paulina Noble (Liz Wisan), including a ridiculous appearance by the queen (Geary). These Paper Bullets! is supposed to be a madcap romp melding Shakespearean iambic pentameter with the sheer glee of Richard Lester’s Beatles films, but it falls flat again and again, despite a game cast. Jackson Gay, who will be directing Much Ado About Nothing this spring at Cal Shakes, can’t make heads or tails of Jones’s nonsensical script (the two previously collaborated on The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and The Jammer, both at the Atlantic), getting a total of two chuckles out of me as the Bard and Beatles references zoom by at a groaning pace. In a nice touch, the Quartos perform such songs as “Give It All to You” and “Love Won’t Wait” on a rotating stage in the shape of a vinyl record; Green Day’s Armstrong, whose American Idiot ran on Broadway five years ago, knows his Mop Tops, but most of the rest of These Paper Bullets! shoots nothing but blanks, desperately in need of some real help.