this week in theater

FRAGMENTS

Marcello Magni deals with a disappointing existence in ACT WITHOUT WORDS II, one of five short Beckett plays that make up FRAGMENTS at BAC

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 5, $75
866-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org
www.bouffesdunord.com

If you missed C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s widely praised production of Fragments at the Baryshnikov Arts Center back in fall 2011, you have another chance, as the show has returned for a splendid encore run through May 5. The Theatre for a New Audience presentation is directed by theater masters Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne, whose entertaining version of The Suit ran at BAM this past winter. Fragments consists of five extremely short minimalist plays by Samuel Beckett, each one an existential gem in its own right. Totaling a mere fifty minutes, they flow into one another effortlessly as they examine loneliness and despair with a wicked sense of humor. In Rough for Theatre I (1979), original Complicité members Marcello Magni and Jos Houben play a pair of destitute souls, the former a blind and rather bad violinist, the latter a one-legged man who pushes himself about on a box and believes that maybe, if they team up, they can make more money, but their prospects don’t look good. In Rockaby (1981), Kathryn Hunter, who was so outstanding in Hideki Noda’s experimental The Bee at Japan Society last year, is dazzling as a woman citing initially repetitive nonsensical text that soon begins to take shape as she contemplates the death of her mother and her own impending demise, the words coming together in a virtuosic display of poetic grandeur.

In Act without Words II (1956), Houben and Magni play two men who live in large white sacks and are individually awakened by a goad that comes down from above; in turn, each man puts on the same suit, socks, hat, and shoes, but while Houben does it with a kick in his step, Magni is disappointed in the world, releasing a series of hysterical sighs as nothing goes his way. Hunter, in fine, deep, gravelly voice, returns for the solo Neither, originally an operatic collaboration between Beckett and Morton Feldman that begins, “to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow / from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither.” Come and Go (1965) concludes the evening, with Houben, Hunter, and Magni wearing fabulous dresses as they gather on a park bench; one by one, they walk away for a moment, giving the other two the opportunity to gossip about her until all three have been the target of playful maliciousness. Fragments is a delightful collection of absurdist pieces that combine to form a wonderful whole. “When [Beckett] discovered theater,” Brook writes in a program note, “it became a possibility to strive for unity, a unity in which sound, movement, rhythm, breath, and silence all come together in a single rightness.” Such a unity of rightness can be found in this stellar production.

TRIBECA FAMILY FESTIVAL STREET FAIR & TRIBECA/ESPN SPORTS DAY

Crowds will flock to TriBeCa for film festival street fair and sports day on Saturday

Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair: Greenwich St. between Chambers & Hubert Sts., free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day: North Moore St. between Greenwich & Wall Sts., free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.tribecafilm.com/festival

The Tribeca Film Festival celebrates the TriBeCa neighborhood with its annual downtown street fair on April 27, a full day of special activities for children and adults. There will be signature dishes from such local chefs as Morimoto of Tribeca Canvas, Jehangir Mehta of Mehtaphor, Keith Klein of Milk Truck, and Rachel Thebault of Tribeca Treats, along with specialties from Bubby’s, Kutsher’s Cavaniola’s, Grandaisy Bakery, and others; live performances by the Amazing Max, Judy Pancoast, Jody Prusan, LAVA Brooklyn, TADA!, Noel MacNeal, Rolie Polie Guacamole, and the casts of Rock of Ages, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, Motown: The Musical, Cinderella, and Kinky Boots; plenty of arts & crafts booths; a green-screen studio backlot and other film-related activities; and a free screening of The Smurfs, with an appearance by Christina Ricci and a sneak peek at The Smurfs 2. Meanwhile, Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day will be taking place nearby, featuring a full slate of sports-related events, including live performances, demonstrations, competitions, and lessons involving basketball, hockey, badminton, fencing, flag football, cricket, jump roping, lacrosse, Ultimate Frisbee, women’s baseball, golf, soccer, sailing, and more, with street teams from the Rangers, the Mets, the Red Bulls, and others.

TWI-NY TALK: NICK VAUGHAN & JAKE MARGOLIN: A MARRIAGE: 1 (SUBURBIA)

Nick and Jake collaborate both personally and professionally, using their life together as a starting point in their art

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
April 23 – May 4 (Tuesday – Sunday, 8:30), $10 in advance, $20 within twenty-four hours
Installation free Tuesday – Sunday 2:00 – 10:00
212-647-0202
www.here.org
www.nickandjakestudio.com

Married couple and professional partners Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin have taken over HERE, filling the downtown arts center with the multimedia immersive presentation A Marriage: 1 (Suburbia). Employing the visual sensibility of Gilbert & George, Nick and Jake examine what has become of the American Dream and the concept of the nuclear family through photography, video, performance, and installation that will continue to evolve from April 23 through May 4. In the art exhibit, which is free, they employ maps that have been reconfigured to portray superimposed families on them and/or video of the two men in the background; pages from John Updike’s Rabbit Run torn out and put on a wall, with highlighted phrases and blue lines connecting them to tell a different kind of suburban story; a hallway of colorful light boxes depicting the conventional 1950s ideal of the American family; and wall sketches that will be added to over the course of the two weeks. Every night will feature a sixty-minute live show ($10 in advance, $20 within twenty-four hours) featuring text written by Jessica Almasy and performed by Jess Barbagallo, with long-duration actions by Brandon Hutchinson and Libby King (April 23-25), Sean Donovan (April 26-30), and Chantal Pavageaux (May 1-4); brand-new Guggenheim Fellow and award-winning choreographer Faye Driscoll serves as consulting director.

“It was super fun for me to work with Nick and Jake; they are both so earnest, humble, and smart and amazingly open inside their process,” says Driscoll. “I loved working on ideas around performance in a visual art context; it opened up my thinking around my own work and gave me some new structures of making, and permission for a different type of exploration. But I think it really helped that all three of us have backgrounds in working in theater. We very easily found a common language around dramaturgical questions and rigor. And we all have an easy willingness to engage in the labor involved in making things. We did a lot of figuring out on our feet, which is how I think best. I think in A Marriage there is clear play with that merged and excessive space of togetherness of coupledom, but as opposed to the work just becoming insular and exclusive, there is actually something deeply generous and activist happening in what Nick and Jake are creating.” At the center of that togetherness and activism is an exploration of America’s changing relationship with same-sex marriage. Nick and Jake, who are still part of the TEAM arts collective where they met, discussed that and more as they prepared for the start of this fascinating undertaking.

twi-ny: Did either of you grow up in the suburbs?

Jake: Neither of us grew up in the suburbs. We both grew up in small university cities, Nick in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I in Berkeley, California. I think it’s safe to say that we both grew up with a healthy distrust of the suburbs — growing up, my family hosted a singing group at our house in which Malvina Reynolds’s “Little Boxes” was a pretty frequent request. Growing up with parents who had no interest in the suburban version of the American Dream is part of why I grew up thinking that the suburbs were for other people. But I also felt that because I was gay it wasn’t an option, even if I wanted it. I grew up knowing a fair number of kids who lived in the suburbs of the Bay Area, and many of them were nonwhite, and not wealthy, which I mention only to say that I didn’t have a view of the suburbs as a place that was exclusively white or monied. But my sense of it was that the suburbs were exclusively heterosexual. And as I realized that I didn’t fit into that, I had a real sense that even had I wanted anything to do with the suburbs, I wouldn’t be welcome — that the ’burbs weren’t for people like me.

twi-ny: What do you think has happened to that American Dream since your were kids?

Jake: When we talk about the “American Dream” we are talking about the heteronormative version that aspires to a suburban nuclear family. There are as many different versions of the American Dream as there are people in this country, so I just want to clarify that we are using it as a cliché. And I think a major shift has happened since we were kids, which is that this version of the American Dream is now opened up to include LGBTQ people. Even growing up in a hyperliberal place, I had a sense of gay people as being abnormal – a deviance from the norm that are tolerated because Berkeleyites are tolerant and open-minded people, but still a group of people who are in some way going to have to live on the outside of mainstream society. As many things about gay culture have been accepted into the mainstream since we were kids, now that set of aspirations that were traditionally exclusively for heterosexuals, aspirations towards suburbia, the nuclear family, and all of that – are on the table.

Nick and Jake explore the suburban ideal of the American Dream in immersive multimedia installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: An earlier part of A Marriage at HERE included your watching twenty hours of Fox News. What are your feelings toward America’s evolving relationship with same-sex marriage, primarily as portrayed in the media?

Jake: That piece was trying to get at how we are surrounded by these media portrayals of same-sex marriage, almost swimming in these sound bites. And we’d been floored by the general tone on Fox News about same-sex marriage – it felt so belittling whenever we saw it. That said, I should fess up that Nick and I don’t own a TV, and other than when we are on tour with the TEAM or other projects (or holing up in motels to make art pieces), we watch very little TV. Probably my greatest exposure to how the media portrays same-sex marriage is the package of clippings from the New York Times and various Bay Area publications on the topic that my mother sends us every few months.

In general I am so thrilled by the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, both by the country in general and by the media that I am exposed to. Thrilled and grateful for the hard work and sacrifices that have been made by so many people to make this happen. However, I feel a certain ambivalence about this acceptance because I wonder who’s terms this acceptance is on. I wonder about the sense that we are accepted as long as we conform to a version of heteronormative social structures that people have spent the last however long – forty years? – trying to dismantle. I grew up with plenty of models of people living outside the construct of marriage – whether it be raising a family with their partner and never getting married or remaining single. So while Nick and I have a pretty traditional marriage in all respects other than our gender, I don’t have a sense that it is an inherently superior situation than any other. It just works for us.

As we were creating this piece, this ambivalence felt very strong – a real sense of “Now we have the option of fitting into all this iconography, but do we want to have anything to do with it? This inevitable-feeling march towards the mainstream, do we want it or are we losing something really important tied to our heritage as a people relegated to being the Other.” And then the Prop 8 case gets argued in front of the Supreme Court, and when I hear the justices waffling about “Is this really the right time?” and “Can’t we just wait for the states to decide on their own?” I find that I swing completely in the opposite direction and feel strongly, “How dare anyone say that I am different or that our relationship is in any way inferior” and find that I want that mainstream acceptance – that I feel completely entitled to it.

twi-ny: Among your collaborators is one of our favorite people, Faye Driscoll. How did that collaboration come about?

Nick: She’s one of our favorite people too! I first met Faye when I designed the set for Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge a few years ago. For the third section of the epic piece (which Faye choreographed) we stripped the space bare and taped out “‘scenery’ on the wall.” I’ve been following her work ever since and have collaborated on a couple of operas which she choreographed and I designed.

It was after the premiere of You’re Me at the Kitchen, though, that Jake and I decided to ask her to help us out with this project. She has such a clear and deceptively simple way of cutting to the core of visual ideas. You always have the sense watching her work that things are actually happening, that there’s a real exchange taking place. She’s also one of the smartest people I know. It seemed, therefore, only natural to ask her to help us curate and develop the eleven nightly actions for our piece, none of which is dance, per-se. . . .

twi-ny: The images of you and Jake in the installation evoke the work of Gilbert and George. Did they serve as any kind of influence or inspiration?

Nick: Absolutely. I don’t know if it would have been possible for the two of us as a couple and artistic team not to address Gilbert and George in some way. At some level I think their work was probably influencing us from the very beginning of our collaborations, but I don’t know that we realized it until their retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago.

I think there is a very different approach to performance and it’s something that has certainly come up multiple times as we’ve developed the nightly actions. G&G were revolutionary in that they presented themselves as objects, stripped (or at least muted) of identity. Our presence in our work (hopefully) serves to frame the world through our eyes so you’re looking with us, not at us.

But there are small references peppered throughout the piece: There’s a large wax panel work that bears a slight reference to G&G in its framing. There are three sprayed-paint performances that I think in some way give a little nod to the silver and red body paint of the duo. But there are also other little nods to other artists who have inspired us.

There’s a piece in the downstairs hallway (and bathrooms) that lightly reference this wonderful Sol Lewitt piece Jake and I saw at MassMOCA last year in which he took an art criticism journal and diligently connected every use of the word “art” so you got this strange kind of matrix and it turned the text into this impenetrable geometric construction. We’ve taken a much looser approach, deconstructing John Updike’s Rabbit Run and attempting to give some kind of graphic anchor to the images that feel related, from a very subjective set of criteria.

Installation includes geographic portraits made of cut maps emphasizing negative space (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: You met while working together at the Team, and now you’re married. How has the dynamic of living, working, and performing together impacted your relationship?

Jake: One thing we joke about is that normally your spouse is the person you can come home to and gripe about work and your coworkers. . . . We can’t really do that. Our collaboration came out of conversations that we had while on tour with the TEAM as well as while on tour with Yoshiko Chuma. It feels that through the TEAM we have the most wonderful outlet for making theater with a group of the smartest and most talented people we know. And we realized that we shared an interest in installation art and how performance functions in that setting, and what started as daydreaming while on tour turned into works-in-progress at various places and ultimately this residency at HERE.

The show will change over time, with people encouraged to return to see where things have gone. Dare we read anything into the work as coming from your real-life marriage?

Jake: Each night of the show we will do a different performance action, so they will accumulate over the course of the run, while a fourteen-day-long action in which we, Brandon Hutchinson, Libby King, Sean Donovan, and Chantal Pavageaux read the entire oral arguments of Perry v. Schwarzenegger into clear bags, creating an expanding sculpture of the captured breath. We hope that people will come by later in the run to see how this has evolved, and the tickets are structured to encourage that – the ticket that you purchase is good for return visits so that people might stop by for ten minutes on a later night to check in on it all.

This question makes me laugh – I suppose it does feel like our marriage evolves over time and that if you check back in with us at a later point it will have gotten larger and more complicated and more fleshed out . . . but I suspect that is true of all relationships.

Earlier this year we were debating whether we should condense the performance actions into brief excerpts that could all be performed each night — and ultimately decided that they really only function if they are given the room to take a whole evening each — that their duration is at the core of the thing. Perhaps there’s an analogy there with our marriage, and probably with marriage in general – that it’s slow work, and things take time to breathe and grow, and that in fact this expansive time is a really good thing. A great perk of being married is that there isn’t the pressure to get things right immediately, because we’re in it for the long haul.

(A Marriage: 1 (Suburbia) runs April 23 – May 4 at HERE and will include several special programs. The April 24 performance will be preceded by “Cocktails & Context” at 7:30 and will be followed by the panel discussion “The Ambiguity of Acceptance,” and the May 1 show will be followed by a discussion moderated by Risa Shoup and featuring Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer, Erin Markey, Glenn Marla, and Tony Osso.)

JULIUS CAESAR

Royal Shakespeare Company sets JULIUS CAESAR in contemporary Africa (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through April 28, $25-$125
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

New Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran makes a smashing debut with his unique take on the Bard’s Roman tragedy Julius Caesar. Inspired by the Robben Island Bible – a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare that was annotated by South African political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, while being held on Robben Island – Doran sets the play in contemporary Africa, performed by an all-black British cast. The action begins about fifteen minutes prior to curtain, as a group of men and women have gathered for a political rally, holding up signs that read “Caesar” and dancing to live music (by Akintayo Akinbode) played by a small band using traditional instruments. They also share their faith in Caesar with early-arriving audience members sitting down front, talking to them and handing them flyers. The loose, fun atmosphere is soon interrupted by the appearance of Julius Caesar himself (Jeffery Kissoon), who is greeted by such supposed followers as Markus Brutus (Paterson Joseph), Caius Cassius (Cyril Nri), and Casca (Joseph Mydell). A wild soothsayer (Theo Ogundipe) predicts doom, but Caesar is too wrapped up in his own glory to worry too much about it. But as Caesar’s thirst for power grows, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, and others conspire to murder him, with Mark Antony (Ray Fearon) caught somewhere in the middle, trying to be a man of the people while also lamenting Caesar’s demise.

The deed is done, setting things in motion in stirring production of JULIUS CAESAR at BAM (photo by Richard Termine)

On December 16, 1977, Mandela highlighted the following passage from Julius Caesar in the Robben Island Bible: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once. / Of all the wonders that I yet have heard. / It seems to me most strange that men should fear; / Seeing that death, a necessary end, / Will come when it will come.” Working off that quote, Doran builds this stirring production around the concept of fear. Once the audience is seated, two guards come out, whipping their truncheons down hard, sending chilling sounds echoing through BAM’s Harvey Theater, getting everyone’s attention, both on- and offstage. Casca is afraid that Cassius might not be loyal to Caesar, Brutus is afraid that Caesar has gone mad with power, the people are afraid to be left without a strong leader, and Mark Antony is afraid for Rome’s future amid so much treachery. Looming over it all is a huge statue of Caesar, its back facing the crowd. Doran’s production is fresh and vibrant, breathing new life into what is one of Shakespeare’s most straightforward, less complex tales. It all takes place on Michael Vale’s cold, gray, multilevel concrete set, with the crowd wearing modern clothing and the main characters changing into black togas. The cast is strong, with Mydell and Joseph particularly effective in their key roles in a play that still resonates today, relating to recent revolution, assassination, and the general confusion of a conflicted citizenry. Julius Caesar continues at BAM through April 28, with members of the company participating in an Artist Talk following the April 26 performance.

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

Proud southerner Elisabeth Gray takes on six roles in new one-woman show (photo by Ewa Skowska)

TRIPLE DISTILLED SOUTHERN GOTHIC
SoHo Playhouse, the Huron Club
15 Vandam St.
Monday nights at 8:00 through May 13, $20
866-811-4111
www.sohoplayhouse.com
www.newumbrella.org

Southern native Elisabeth Gray evokes the ghosts of Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor in her new one-woman show, Southern Discomfort. Over the course of seventy minutes, Gray explores personal loneliness as she portrays six characters in seven vignettes, ranging from nineteen-year-old Josh Robinson Riddle, a one-handed North Carolina lad working at a gun show, to ninety-one-year-old South Carolinian Penelope Weaver, who bookends the New Umbrella production with her aging mind’s meanderings. Gray, who was born and raised in the South and recently made her Broadway debut in various small roles in the short-lived Breakfast at Tiffany’s, also plays twenty-seven-year-old Alabamian Julia Hanover, who is obsessed with crooked faces; forty-one-year-old Tennessee truck driver Jonny Stutts, who discusses porn with an unseen traveling companion; fifty-two-year-old Cheri Kane, who is giving a speech at the Olive Branch Mississippi Women’s Historical Society announcing that the club has accepted its first black member; and sixty-three-year-old William Ernest Fells, a Georgia man eulogizing his deceased wife. In the show — which is subtitled Triple Distilled Southern Gothic and runs Monday nights through May 13 in the Huron Club bar downstairs at the SoHo Playhouse, with free bourbon-and-lemonade cocktails — Gray and director Daniel Zimbler take on such topics as racism, sexism, guns, ideals of beauty, violence against women, love, family, and the Civil War without getting preachy or pedantic. Sometimes Gray’s point is too abstract, as in the pieces involving Weaver, but otherwise she employs a careful subtlety while avoiding clichés and stereotypes. She also involves the audience by occasionally using various paying customers as characters in her stories, pointing them out in the crowd and addressing them directly. (Try to get their early if you want a table instead of sitting on a stool at the bar or on a long couch.) At its heart, Southern Discomfort works because there’s a basic truth inherent in Gray’s telling; in the program notes, she explains that all of the characters are based on actual people she has known, resulting in believable situations that touch on both the comic and the tragic.

MOTOWN THE MUSICAL

Hitsville, U.S.A. comes to Broadway in new jukebox musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through December 30, $49-$159
www.motownthemusical.com

Motown: The Musical opens with a battle of the bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops from the 1983 Motown 25 television special, setting the too-fast pace for this watered-down ride through the history of the legendary record label and its founder, Berry Gordy. With a book by Gordy based on his 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown, the jukebox musical features snippets from nearly sixty songs from the Detroit label’s stellar catalog, whipping past in sped-up fury, re-created by a talented cast of performers who, of course, “ain’t nothing like the real thing” (a tune that, by the way, is not in the show). Brandon Victor Dixon is solid as Gordy, a dreamer who goes from odd job to odd job until deciding to start his own music company. He puts together an amazing group of singers, from Marvin Gaye (Bryan Terrell Clark), Smokey Robinson (Charl Brown), Stevie Wonder (Raymond Luke Jr. and Ryan Shaw), and Mary Wells (N’Kenge) to the Marvelettes, Gladys Knight (Marva Hicks) and the Pips, and Martha Reeves (Saycon Sengbloh) and the Vandellas. But this by-the-numbers story of Hitsville, U.S.A., directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, focuses too much on the relationship between Gordy and Diana Ross (Valisia LeKae), feeling more like a public apology than a realistic depiction of their years together, both personally and professionally, particularly her solo debut in Las Vegas that involves forced audience interaction. Gordy also forces in set pieces related to the civil rights movement and such tragedies as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King that are driven by clichés.

Raymond Luke Jr. nearly steals the show as young Michael Jackson (played alternately by Jibreel Mawry), channeling the superstar on such Jackson 5 classics as “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” and “I’ll Be There,” but that also is a major problem with the production, which works so hard to impress the audience with its re-creations, resulting in truncated versions that come off more like a talent show, albeit a pretty darn good one. There are also a few new songs written by Gordy and Michael Lovesmith that are standard Broadway musical fare. Motown: The Musical is like an old record spinning on an even older turntable, going a little too fast, filled with skips and scratches as the needle follows the grooves, but in the end, the songs are so good that you just might not even care about all those hiccups.

BLUES FOR SMOKE

Rodney McMillian, “Asterisks in Dockery,” mixed-media installation, 2012 (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 28, $14-$18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In 1960, jazz pianist and composer Jaki Byard released his solo debut, Blues for Smoke, an improvisatory record that features on its cover a train puffing out dark clouds as it makes its way down the tracks. The album lends its name to an exciting multimedia exhibit at the Whitney that examines the impact of the blues on the arts. The show is highlighted by David Hammons’s extraordinary 1989 installation, “Chasing the Blue Train,” which greets visitors on the third floor. A blue train makes its way across tracks that take it through a tunnel covered in coal and a landscape with upturned piano tops as John Coltrane’s 1957 Blue Train album plays from a boom box, the work riffing on Coltrane’s name (coal, train) while celebrating the blues. Zoe Leonard’s “1961, 2002-Ongoing” consists of a row of suitcases of different shades of blue, evoking impermanence and creating a mystery about what might be inside; nearby, Martin Kipperberger’s “Martin, into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself” is a life-size replica of the artist standing in the corner, suffering from a case of the blues. Specially commissioned for the show, Kori Newkirk’s “Yall” consists of a shopping cart nearly completing a circle of blue on the floor, calling to mind exclusion, homelessness, and failed capitalism. Kira Lynn Harris lines a stairwell and entrance with silver Mylar in “Blues for Breuer,” paying tribute to the architect of the Whitney building, which will be taken over by the Met in 2015 when the Whitney moves downtown.

Installation view, Blues for Smoke (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Works by Martin Wong, Martin Kipperberger, Zoe Leonard, and others form a blues aesthetic at the Whitney (photo by Sheldan C. Collins)

Curated by Bennett Simpson in consultation with Chrissie Iles, “Blues for Smoke” also features works by Romare Bearden, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Liz Larner, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rachel Harrison, Mark Morrisroe, Alma Thomas, Beauford Delaney, Kara Walker, William Eggleston, and Lorraine O’Grady, all contributing to the overall examination of the blues aesthetic. A media room includes viewing stations where people can watch classic performances, while Stan Douglas’s “Hors-champs” plays continuously in its own space on the first floor, offering a unique view of a live recording on the front and back of a screen hanging from the ceiling. In addition, the Whitney is hosting a series of live events that continue through the end of the exhibition, which closes April 28, including “Blues for Smoke: Matana Roberts, Keiji Haino, and Loren Connors” on April 20 at 8:00 (featuring a solo performance by Roberts and a duo guitar improvisation by Haino and Connors), “Through the Lens of the Blues Aesthetic: An Evening of Short Films Selected by Kevin Jerome Everson” on April 25 at 7:00, the live concert “Blues for Smoke: Annette Peacock” on April 26 at 7:00, and the three-day “Blues for Smoke: Thomas Bradshaw,” in which the playwright will be creating a new piece that will be shown April 26-28.