this week in theater

BERTOLT BRECHT’S THE MOTHER (a learning play)

Pelagea Vlasov (Kate Valk) has some qualms with the butcher (Ari Fliakos) and his wife (Erin Mullin) in The Mother (photo by Nurith Wagner-Strauss / Wiener Festwochen)

THE MOTHER
The Wooster Group
The Performing Garage
33 Wooster St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 20, $40
Return engagement: February 18 – March 19, $30-$40
thewoostergroup.org

It’s hard to believe that in its nearly half-century existence, the Wooster Group has never before presented a work by Bertolt Brecht, the German modernist whose revolutionary ideas about theater appear to be right in line with the experimental Soho company’s vision. So it’s exciting not only that the Wooster Group is now tackling Brecht’s seldom-performed 1932 play, The Mother, but has done such a fine job with it.

Not to be confused with Brecht’s more well known anti-Fascist Mother Courage, The Mother is one of Brecht’s Lehrstücke, a learning play meant to bring the actors and the audience together while also taking a social stand. “The aim was to teach certain forms of political struggle to the audience,” Brecht wrote in 1933 about the show when it was at the Schriften zum Theater. “It was addressed mainly to women. About fifteen thousand Berlin working-class women saw the play, which was a demonstration of methods of illegal revolutionary struggle.”

Based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel, the play is built around the simple and illiterate Pelagea Vlasov (Kate Valk), who just wants to make tea and soup and protect her son, Pavel (Gareth Hobbs), who recently had his pay cut by a nickel an hour. “Me, I’m no help to him anymore,” she says. “I’m a burden.”

Pavel is involved with a pair of radicals, Semjon (Ari Fliakos) and Masha (Erin Mullin), who are illegally handing out leaflets calling for a strike against the powerful Suklinov factory. They are assisted by a teacher named Fyodor (Jim Fletcher) who doesn’t believe that their actions will lead to any viable change.

“Like the crow in the snowstorm, feeding her baby, she can’t feed her, what does she do? No way out, no way out. And crows are the smartest animal in the world, after humans,” the teacher talk-sings. “Whatever you do / It won’t be sufficient. / The situation’s bad / It gets worse. / It can’t go on like this / But what is the way out?”

The Wooster Group rehearses its unique interpretation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Mother (photo by Erin Mullin)

When she discovers what Pavel is up to, Pelagea turns courageous, demanding to hand out the leaflets herself so her son can be safe. A policeman (Fletcher) starts sniffing around, so Pelagea moves in with the teacher, who is not thrilled that his calm life has suddenly been upended. After the workers’ representative, Karpov (Fliakos), returns with an unsatisfactory deal, the revolutionaries sing, “Good, this is the breadcrumb / Ah, but where is / The whole loaf?” Events get ever-more dangerous as Pelagea takes up the cause, praising Communism, while the police, factory sympathizers, and strikebreakers loom in every corner.

In true Wooster Group style, The Mother is wildly unpredictable, hysterically funny, and emotionally poignant, winding itself in and out of Brecht’s words. Addressing the audience following the song “Praise of Communism,” the teacher explains about Brecht, “You know, for somebody who says he doesn’t want emotions in the theater, there’s a lot of emotion in that song, you know — it’s the end of madness, it’s the end of crime, is that not sentimental?” Props are smashed and then replaced. Projections by Irfan Brkovic on the back wall and a monitor focus on the factory town and a rallying flag, with original music by Amir ElSaffar.

The set, built by Joseph Silovsky, consists of a long table where the characters often sit, interacting with a laptop and the script itself; a small room where Pelagea worries about her son; a clothesline used for multiple purposes; a chalkboard where Fyodor writes important words; two doors that are labeled “Way” and “Out,” a sly reference to the song “The Question of the Way Out”; and a keyboard played by Pavel. There’s also a monitor above the audience that shows old crime movies, dictating the pace and enhancing the themes for the performers. Cofounding artistic director Elizabeth LeCompte ably brings those disparate elements together through eighty tense minutes and eleven scenes, including “What can a mother do?,” “The Mother gets a lesson in economics,” and “The war is here.”

WG founding member Valk and Fletcher (the teacher, the policeman, the prison guard, a strikebreaker) are always a joy to watch, and they lead the way in this stellar production. Fliakos (Semjon, Karpov, the gatekeeper, jobless Gorski, Vasil the butcher) and Mullin (Masha, the butcher’s wife, the Bible lady) stand right with them through minor costume changes and musical breaks. No one portrays the worker Smilgin because, as the narrator explains, they didn’t have enough money in the bank.

Speaking of money, LeCompte points out in a program note that a “spirit of repurposing” guided the show. “Nearly everything in the production has been repurposed from previous Wooster Group works. This includes performers, ideas, set elements, and all but two props: the aqua typewriter and yellow telephone. In addition to Brecht and Gorky, the company used such sources as educational media (PeeWee’s Playhouse, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie), Slavoj Žižek’s YouTube videos, the 1958 German version for the Berliner Ensemble, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, books by and about Brecht, and 1930s gangster movies on TCM.

Continuing at the Performing Garage through November 20 (the show is back for a return engagement February 18 – March 19), The Mother was initially supposed to premiere in 2020, but the group took advantage of the additional pandemic downtime by continuing to work on it. (It debuted in June 2021 at Vienna’s Wiener Festwochen.) During the lockdown, I watched several videos Wooster posted about their progress, and their process, not all of which made the final cut — if a production like this can ever be called final. The script has a warning that “it may contain text that no longer appears or has been changed, and it may lack text that has been added for a given performance.”

Just as Brecht, in writing The Mother, was teaching about political struggle and theatrical form (he called the play “a piece of anti-metaphysical, materialistic, non-Aristotelian drama — that is, dramatically seen, of a very highly developed type”), the Wooster Group is teaching political struggle and Brecht himself to the audience, which is seated on mats on risers, with no backs. It’s been done previously as a melodrama, a call to action, and a politically driven full-on musical, but the Wooster Group has made it into something else entirely.

SHEEP #1

Sachiyo Takahashi’s Sheep #1 is at Japan Society November 4-7 (photo © Skye Morse-Hodgson)

SHEEP #1
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
November 4-7, $23
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Shortly after crash landing in the Sahara Desert, the isolated pilot narrator of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince recalls, “You can imagine my surprise when I was awakened at daybreak by a funny little voice saying, ‘Please . . . Draw me a sheep . . .’” After several failures, the pilot draws a picture of a crate, explaining that the sheep is inside. The boy, aka the little prince, is very happy, noting, “Where I live, everything is very small.”

Japan-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist Sachiyo Takahashi uses that section of Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, which also explores differences between grown-ups and children, in Sheep #1, which runs November 4–7 at Japan Society. Sachiyo tells the story using small puppets from Nekaa Lab, which she founded in 2006, projected onto a screen to make them look life-size (or bigger). The cast includes Sheep, who claims not to act but to play, and Rabbit, who says Nekaa Lab is “an eternal playground for the curious mind.” Among the other lab members (stuffed toys and figurines) are Cat and Polar Bear.

Sheep #1 is an example of Sachiyo’s Microscopic Live Cinema-Theatre, which tells stories using objects, live music, and camera projections and is able to, in Cat’s words, “even magnify the hidden emotions.” The wordless show, which made its US debut at the Tank in 2018, will be performed and projected live by Sachiyo, with pianist Emile Blondel playing original music with excerpts from Franz Schubert on Friday and Saturday and bassist Kato Hideki playing an original score on Thursday and Sunday, accompanying Sachiyo’s electroacoustic soundtrack.

The opening-night show will be followed by a reception with the artists. Sachiyo, who has been awarded several grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, has previously staged such works as Everything Starts from a Dot and Not Outside, which also starred Sheep, in addition to performing as Miya Okamoto in such Shinnai-bushi sung-storytelling presentations as Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Night in Winter and the upcoming The Emotions.

TWI-NY TALK: MARTÍN BONDONE / ODD MAN OUT

Martín Bondone and Teatro Ciego are bringing unique presentation to New York City (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

ODD MAN OUT
Flea Theater
20 Thomas St. between Broadway & Church St.
Original run: Tuesday – Sunday, November 3 – December 4, general admission $50 ($35 November 3-8); VIP $90
Encore engagement: Tuesday – Sunday, January 18 – February 19, general admission $50 ($35 seniors and students); VIP $90
oddmanoutnyc.com
theflea.org

One of the most unusual theatrical experiences I had during the pandemic lockdown was Odd Man Out, which arrived at my apartment in a box. An international collaboration between TheaterC in New York and Teatro Ciego in Argentina, the package contained items that interacted with all five senses, including an eye mask that was to be worn while while listening to an audio stream through your own headphones.

The sixty-five-minute show, written by Martín Bondone, directed by Bondone, Carlos Armesto, and Facundo Bogarín, and featuring original music by Mirko Mescia and sound design by Nicolas Alvarez, was originally performed with an in-person cast and audience at Teatro Ciego in Buenos Aires, a company that specializes in productions in complete darkness. Nearly half the troupe is either blind or has low vision. Recorded using 360-degree binaural technology that makes it feel as if the characters are moving around in space, the play follows successful blind Argentine musician Alberto Rinaldi (Gonzalo Trigueros) as he flies on Pitchblack Airlines from New York City back to Buenos Aires. During the trip, his mind is flooded with memories of seminal moments from his life, involving his mother (Alejandra Buljevich) and father (Ignacio Borderes), his teacher (Buljevich), his music partner Jamal Jordan (Modesto Lacen), and his true love, Clara (Carmen Boria).

Delayed by the pandemic, Odd Man Out is making its New York premiere November 3 to December 4 at the Flea, where the blindfolded audience will put on headphones and experience the show together, as if they’re all on the same plane, sitting next to Rinaldi as he shares his tale. Preparing for the official opening on November 9, Bondone discussed theater, the coronavirus crisis, blind artists, and more with twi-ny. [Ed. note: The show is back for an encore engagement January 18 to February 19.]

twi-ny: What prompted the beginning of Teatro Ciego?

martín bondone: In 1991, there was an experimental theater course in my hometown, Cordoba, Argentina. The roots of theater in the dark are in Zen meditation: Darkness is used as a medium to find oneself. After years of development, in 2001, blind artists started getting involved in the company, and in 2008 the first Teatro Ciego space was founded in Buenos Aires. This will be the first space in the world that offers a complete repertoire of shows developed in complete darkness. Teatro Ciego develops experiences in the dark that range from dining experiences to kids shows. We have since then grown the brand to tour in Latin America, Spain, and, most recently, New York.

Odd Man Out offered a theatrical journey in a box to be experienced at home during the pandemic (photo by twi-ny/ees)

twi-ny: Odd Man Out was here just prior to the pandemic, with live actors; how did the idea to package the experience at home in a sensory box come about?

mb: When the quarantine mandates closed everything around the world, we were forced to put a stop to all planned productions in both Argentina and New York and the Latin American tour. We employ over one hundred people, which made the shock huge both financially and emotionally. We produce one hundred percent of our shows, but we also have a marketing division where we create experiences in the dark for companies and institutions.

The first few weeks we spent figuring out how to keep the story going, and the emerging feeling was “If people can’t go to the theater, we will bring the theater to the people.” We created a sensorial box with an eye mask and different elements that would allow the person to smell, taste, touch, and hear the experience from home. The audio was accessed through a QR code and heard from the person’s own headphones.

This alternative was a huge success and allowed us to keep our doors open and our employees working during those tough times.

twi-ny: I loved the at-home presentation. How do you anticipate that my experience in person will be different?

mb: There’s already a shift in energy when you go to a physical space and share an experience with others. That’s what makes the theater such a wonderful place. This experience is called “semi-live” since, despite listening to the experience with an individual device, we have staff members operating the rest of the devices that will allow you to feel the many sensorial moments throughout the story: wind, rain, various smells, etc. It’s a completely different experience when you can just surrender to things happening and enjoy the ride.

Audiences gather together to experience Odd Man Out in person (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

twi-ny: Are there plans to eventually stage the show with live actors again?

mb: Yes, it’s our goal to be able to build an organization that trains and employs people to develop Teatro Ciego’s technique in New York. Once the situation changes and we can safely achieve our goal, we look forward to sharing this dream of ours with the New York theater scene.

twi-ny: Did you find yourself more or less productive during the pandemic?

mb: From a distance now, yes, maybe a bit less productive. It was hard to regroup and rebuild our team. This crisis forced us to think outside our comfort zone and face a tough situation. Luckily we came out stronger than before, and now we are able to offer the variety of shows we were offering before the pandemic. What sets us apart is that we never stopped working, training, and growing, and now we have new options to offer that we wouldn’t have if not faced by adversity.

twi-ny: Another touring show, Simon Stephens’s Blindness, involves headphones, binaural recording, and not-quite-total darkness, with no actors present. Do you see such shows as being a temporary by-product of the pandemic, or do you think it has a future of its own, especially since it can be available to people all over the world?

mb: No one really knows what the future holds, especially now. However, we have a history of successfully building this type of sensorial shows for over fifteen years in Argentina and the rest of the world. In fact, we developed a binaural sound show for a Disney event over ten years ago.

We are proud to say we are pioneers at utilizing this technology for theatrical experiences. We humans crave new experiences constantly; we need to be challenged and entertained from new perspectives. We hope to keep feeding this need for new experiences and challenging our senses for many years to come.

twi-ny: Since Teatro Ciego started, great strides have been made regarding the acceptance of creators and performers with different abilities in hearing, seeing, and body, although we still have a long way to go. Has that been a noticeable change with Teatro Ciego, either with the cast or the audience? What barriers need to be taken down next?

mb: One of the best things about working in darkness is that everyone involved in the experience, actors, technicians, audiences, are equals. By removing the visual stimuli, all the preconceived biases of color, gender, size, physical ability are removed.

We are in a moment in history where all social movements are facing that inclusive direction and we need to keep working together to finally have equal treatment for everyone regardless of their skin tone, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, or physical condition.

Odd Man Out re-creates a flight taking a blind musician back home to Buenos Aires (photo courtesy Odd Man Out)

twi-ny: In school you studied social economics; has that had an impact on your approach to writing?

mb: Not so much for writing but definitely for producing. Argentina has a lot of incredibly beautiful, artistic ideas that usually die for the lack of a business mind. By developing Teatro Ciego as a social construct but also economically sustainable, we won the freedom to let our imagination soar. Writing comes more from my personal experiences and my life. From my own universe.

twi-ny: Care to share what you’re working on next?

mb: Right now we are focused on the opening of Odd Man Out at the Flea.

We are also working on developing the American version of our current kids experience, Mi Amiga la Oscuridad (“My Friend the Darkness”). We are also developing partnerships with various New York City restaurants for our dining experience “A Ciegas Gourmet” (“Blind Gourmet”). In the far distance, we dream of a live musical in complete darkness.

twi-ny: That sounds exciting. During the pandemic, New York City became a ghost town; what was Buenos Aires like during Covid?

mb: The pandemic was a big reminder that we are really all connected. Just like New York, Buenos Aires was a desert. Economically, we took a huge hit to an already damaged structure, and the cultural and touristic areas were gravely impacted. We feel super privileged to be able to return to what we love doing and having such a great response from our audience.

twi-ny: Finally, if you’re coming to New York City for the show, what else do you plan to do while you’re here, now that just about everything has reopened?

mb: We plan to travel to New York City again next year when we hope to be able to develop the full show, to hire and train a full company that can work in complete darkness. For this opportunity, we were lucky to have our lead producer and resident director, fellow Argentinian Lola Lopez Guardone, fly to Buenos Aires to train with us and bring the specifics to New York. Lola is a New York City resident and has ample experience in immersive theater. Between her, our partner Carlos Armesto, and the whole PITCHBLACK team in New York, we know our show is in good hands. However, we look forward to visiting the city again in 2022 and hopefully experience Sleep No More, which we couldn’t get to on our last trip.

GOTHAM STORYTELLING FESTIVAL

FRIGID NEW YORK: GOTHAM STORYTELLING FESTIVAL
The Kraine Theater
85 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
November 2-14, $15-$20
www.frigid.nyc

Native New Yorker Michele Carlo titles her new solo show What a Difference a Year Makes, and what a year it has been. What a Difference a Year Makes will be performed live November 3 and 13 at the tenth annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, which takes place November 2-14 at the Kraine Theater in the East Village as well as online. Tickets for each of the eleven programs are sliding scales beginning at $20 in person (full price gets you a drink ticket) and $15 at home. The festival kicks off with a double bill of Jackson Sturkey’s work-in-progress, The Devil, about his private Christian high school and Lucifer, and Gastor Almonte’s The Sugar, in which the stand-up comedian discovers he has diabetes. On November 3 and 8, comedian Alexander Payne (not the film director) presents his autobiographical monologue Home Stories, about growing up in South Central. On November 4, Una Aya Osato and some of her friends share personal tales of contracting the coronavirus in Still Sick: Stories of Long Covid, while on November 4 and 10, Reilly Arena retells George Orwell’s Animal Farm using a pair of sticks.

On November 5, David Lawson hosts ACES: Storytelling Sets from Some of NYC’s Best, consisting of ten-minute monologues by David Perez, Annie Tan, Aditya Surendran, Courtney Antonioli, and others. On November 6, 7, 10, and 28, Kylie Vincent delves into childhood sexual abuse in Bird, while several participants contribute to Awkward Teenage Years on November 6. Keith Alessi’s Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me but Banjos Saved My Life, which was named Most Inspirational Show at the 2019 Frigid Fringe Festival, is back at the Kraine on November 7. Four-time Moth StorySLAM winner Jamie Brickhouse channels Joan Crawford, Joan Collins, Monica Lewinsky, Peggy Lee, Helen Gurley Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and others on November 7 and 12 in Stories in Heels: Tall Tales of the Glamorous Women Who Changed My Life. And on November 11 and 13, Mayflower descendant Trav SD celebrates the four hundredth anniversary of the first Thanksgiving in The Pilgrim’s Progress. In her piece, author, podcaster, and story coach Carlo searches for the silver lining in life during the pandemic, which is just what the Gotham Storytelling Festival is offering all of us for two weeks.

TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992

Karl Kenzler, Elena Hurst, Wesley T. Jones, Tiffany Rachelle Stewart, and Francis Jue star in reimagining of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight (photo by Joan Marcus)

TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through November 21, $35-$70
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Anna Deavere Smith has brilliantly reimagined her 1993 one-woman show, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, for this moment in time, for a cast of five portraying more than two dozen characters, all involved in some way in the LA riots that followed the Rodney King verdict nearly thirty years ago. Originally scheduled to premiere in the spring of 2020 as part of Smith’s residency at the Signature Theatre, which began in October 2019 with a superb remount of her 1992 solo show, Fires in the Mirror, about the Crown Heights riots, Twilight has been updated and expanded to include references to the murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the nearly three decades since Deveare Smith created the work, a number of different productions have tackled it. In 2001, the play was turned into a film with Deavere Smith as part of PBS’s Great Performances series. During the pandemic, a virtual edition of the play was performed by twenty-one students at the Roxbury Latin School in Massachusetts, and a one-woman version starring Jazzma Pryor ran at Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre in September. The Signature released a short Zoom preview in July with a slightly different cast that failed to capture the scope and majesty of the final product, which opened at last on the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center on November 1.

The play is exceptionally performed by Elena Hurst, Francis Jue, Wesley T. Jones, Karl Kenzler, and Tiffany Rachelle Stewart, using verbatim dialogue accumulated by Smith from 320 interviews with subjects ranging from King’s aunt Angela, former LA police commissioner Stanley K. Sheinbaum, store owner and gunshot victim Walter Park, gang truce organizer Twilight Bey, and author and professor Elaine Kim to attorney Charles Lloyd, community activist Gina Rae aka Queen Malkah, semitruck driver and beating victim Reginald Denny, liquor store owner Jay Woong Yahng, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Taibi Magar directs with a captivating ferocity.

Elvira Evers (Tiffany Rachelle Stewart) is one of dozens of characters who share their thoughts about the Rodney King riots in Smith play (photo by Joan Marcus)

LAPD officer Ted Briseno, one of four cops accused of beating Rodney King, laments that his children might not look up to him as a hero anymore. An anonymous juror in the King trial says that members of the jury have received letters from the KKK asking them to join after they acquitted the officers. Real estate agent Elaine Young talks about how she was safe and sound in Beverly Hills and explains how she “was such a victim” because of all her cosmetic facial surgeries.

Sgt. Charles Duke of the LAPD’s special weapons and tactics unit, testifying for the defense, supports the use of control holds, or chokeholds, despite evidence that it kills suspects, primarily Black men. Discussing his own run-in with bigoted policemen, sculptor and painter Rudy Salas Sr. says, “I grew up with the idea that whites, are . . . Physically . . . I still got that, see that’s a prejudice that whites are physically . . . inferior, physically afraid of minorities. People of color, Blacks, and Mexicans. It’s a physical thing,
It’s a mental, mental thing that they’re physically afraid. But you see I still have that prejudice against whites. (But.) I’m not a racist!”

Reginald Denny co-assailant Keith Watson declares, “You got to realize the not guilty verdicts was heavy on everybody’s mind. I followed the trial cause I wanted to see if justice works and on that particular day justice didn’t work.” Free the LA Four Plus defense committee chairperson Paul Parker exclaims, “Basically, it’s that you as Black people ain’t takin’ this shit no more. Even back in slavery. ’Cause I saw Roots when I was young. My dad made sure. He sat us down in front of that TV when Roots came on, so it’s embedded in me since then. And just to see that, eh, eh! This is for Kunta! This is for Kizzy! This is for Chicken George! Now we got some weapons, we got our pride, we holdin’ our heads up and our chest out. We like, yeah, brother, we did this!” Former LA Times journalist Hector Tobar returns for a 2021 interview that places the events of 1992 in a contemporary context.

The actors perform on a central platform, occasionally using a chair or table. They change clothing quickly, either in the wings or right onstage. At one point, dozens of costumes are dumped on the floor, evoking the disarray during the riots. Often, as one monologue is finishing, the actor for the next segment walks up to the platform in silhouette. (The effective set is by Riccardo Hernández, with costumes by Linda Cho, lighting by Alan C. Edwards, sound by Darron L West, and projections by David Bengali.)

Each character is identified by accompanying text, along with the title of that segment; for example, “The words of Elaine Brown, former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, ‘Bad’” and “The words of Daryl Gates, former chief of Los Angeles Police Department, ‘It’s awful hard to break away.’” Archival video footage of the riots, including the beatings of King and Denny, are shown on a pair of video monitors at the right and left as well as the back screen, immersing the audience in the horrific events of 1992–93, which look all too familiar in 2021.

Francis Jue is one of five actors portraying multiple characters in Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at the Signature (photo by Joan Marcus)

I was deeply moved by Deavere Smith’s solo Broadway version, which ran at the Cort Theatre in 1994, but this new Signature iteration blew me away. Running more than two hours with an intermission, Twilight flies by at a relentless, furious pace, a nonstop parade of individuals directly and indirectly discussing systemic racism, police brutality, anti-Asian hate, classism, journalistic biases, government indifference, and looting. “Oh yes, I am angry! It is all right to be angry!” Congresswoman Maxine Waters proclaims. “The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, riot is the voice of the unheard,” echoing what Waters and others have said about the rash of Black men killed by white police officers this century.

In a program note, Deavere Smith explains that the play is very much about gathering, about diverse people coming to the table despite their differences, ready to talk — and to listen. In the play’s most theatrical and involving scene, “A Dinner Party That Never Happened,” Brown, Parker, Rev. Tom Choi of the Westwood Presbyterian Church, Asian American man Jin Ho Lee, Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters, and former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley sit down at a table, eating and drinking while appearing to speak to one another. (At the performance I attended, one of the actors accidentally knocked over a glass of wine, and as several other cast members wiped it up, staying in character, it made me think of a ritual spilling of wine, an apt metaphor for what was happening onstage.)

Two-time Tony nominee and Pulitzer finalist Deavere Smith (House Arrest, Let Me Down Easy) and Obie winner Magar (Blue Ridge, Is God Is) have woven together a pseudo-conversation from the individual transcripts, in which the participants discuss responsibility, roots, justice, Saddam Hussein, commitment, and community. “I’m saying that these are the long haul,” Brown explains. “We just be thrown back and we will be twenty more years trying to figure out what happened to Martin, Malcolm, and the Black Panther Party.” It’s now nearly thirty years later and, sadly, as Twilight reveals, we are still trying to figure that out.

LACKAWANNA BLUES

LACKAWANNA BLUES
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 12, $59
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In 2006, the HBO film of Lackawanna Blues earned John Papsidera an Emmy for Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie, or Special and S. Epatha Merkerson won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Rachel “Nanny” Crosby. But in the Broadway debut of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s one-man show, which premiered at the Public in 2001 and continues at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 12, Santiago-Hudson proves once again that he can do it all by himself.

In the ninety-minute play, Santiago-Hudson, serving as actor, writer, and director, portrays more than two dozen characters that were part of his childhood growing up in the steel town of Lackawanna in upstate New York, focusing on his five-year-old self and the woman left in charge of his care, the beloved Miss Rachel, also known to the tight-knit community as Nanny. Ruben’s mother had financial problems stemming from drug abuse, and his father did not live with them. Through the age of eleven, he often lived with Miss Rachel, who ran a pair of boardinghouses, one at 32 Wasson Ave., where young Ruben met such fanciful figures as Numb Finger Pete, Sweet Tooth Sam, Ol’ Po’ Carl, Small Paul, Mr. Lucious, Freddie Cobbs, and Mr. Lemuel Taylor; Santiago-Hudson embodies each of them with shifts in his voice and physical movement as he relates funny and poignant anecdotes about fishing, baseball, and domestic violence.

He wanders across Michael Carnahan’s intimate set, consisting of a few chairs, a small table, the front door of 32 Wasson Ave., a hanging window, and a back wall that evokes the boardinghouse, beautifully lit by Jen Schriever (with several cool surprises). Sitting in one corner is New York Blues Hall of Fame guitarist and Grammy nominee Junior Mack, playing music composed and originally performed onstage by Bill Sims Jr.; Mack previously performed in Sims’s band, so it is a natural hand-off. He interacts well with Santiago-Hudson, sometimes coming to the forefront, other times whispering under Santiago-Hudson’s dialogue. Occasionally, Santiago-Hudson whips out a harmonica and blasts away with verve. (The warm sound design is by Darron L West.)

Lackawanna Blues is a celebration of a town that was enjoying the fruits of prosperity, not a dirge about marginalized people suffering hard times. The play begins with Santiago-Hudson declaring, “Nineteen fifty-six. Lackawanna, New York, like all Great Lakes cities, was thriving! Jobs everywhere, money everywhere. Steel plants, grain mills, railroads, the docks. Everybody had a new car and a conk. Restaurants, bars, stores, everybody made money. The smell of fried fish, chicken, and pork chops floating in the air every weekend. In every bar the aroma of a newly tapped keg of Black Label, Iroquois, or Genesee beer, to complement that hot roast beef-on-weck with just a touch of horseradish. . . . You could get to town on a Monday and by Wednesday have more jobs than one man can take. These were fertile times.” There were problems, but the people knew how to take care of one another, with Miss Rachel at the center. “Nanny was like the government if it really worked,” Santiago-Hudson says.

Santiago-Hudson is no stranger to one-man shows; in 2013 at the Signature, he portrayed his mentor and friend, the late August Wilson, in How I Learned What I Learned. He has directed and/or starred in numerous Wilson works, winning a Tony for his role as Cantwell in Seven Guitars and earning a Drama Desk Award for directing Jitney and an Obie for helming The Piano Lesson. He won an Obie Special Citation for the original production of Lackawanna Blues, while Sims earned an Obie for his music.

On Broadway, Santiago-Hudson makes you think you see every character, smell every smell, witness minute details of every scene even though he never changes his costume or introduces props. It’s a compelling, deeply personal performance that feels right at home in the 622-capacity theater as he marvelously succeeds in inviting the audience into his past. When asked at a talkback about what happened to his mother, he said that would be a show unto itself while sharing some of the specifics of her tragic yet hope-filled life. Sounds like a heckuva sequel.

THIS IS ME EATING___

Et Alia Theater’s This Is Me Eating___ has been turned into an immersive, in-person experience (photo courtesy Et Alia Theater)

THIS IS ME EATING___
The Alchemical Studios
104 West 14th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Saturday, October 30, free with advance RSVP, 4:00 – 9:00
www.etaliatheater.com

“I like my body,” Maria Müller says at the beginning of her video This Is Me Eating Those Stupid Comments. “Or at least I’ve grown to like it.” The short is one of five made by members of the two-year-old New York City–based Et Alia Theater as part of This Is Me Eating___, in which women share their personal thoughts about food and body image.

In This Is Me Eating My Taste Buddies, Ana Moioli explains, “Life can get pretty shitty. You can’t trust anyone. People betray you. But you can trust food. Even in the darkest times, food will always be there for you. Now, what if, suddenly, you weren’t there for food anymore?” The online project, which was an official selection of the NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival, also features Giorgia Valenti’s This Is Me Eating My Eating Disorder, Luísa Galatti’s This Is Me Eating My Weight, and Deniz Bulat’s This Is Me Eating Alone Thinking About Eating Together in addition to public submissions from around the world, which you can watch here.

Et Alia, which “strives to foster an accepting community that provides a safe space where people can take risks, push themselves outside of their comfort zones, and collide with an array of international voices which may be culturally unfamiliar,” is now presenting a live version of This Is Me Eating___, taking place October 30 at the Alchemical Studios on West Fourteenth St. There will be four forty-five-minute cycles, starting at 4:00, followed by an open discussion at 8:00. The immersive sessions, directed by Debora Balardini, designed by Dave Morrissey, and conceived by Valenti after Moioli received a City Artist Corps Grant, combine projection, sound, and movement that expand off the videos but are wholly new. Admission is limited to twenty to twenty-five audience members per cycle as people are encouraged to consider how they would fill in the blank in the title; among the virtual submissions were Thais Fernandes’s This Is Me Eating My Anxiety, Ana Carolina’s This Is Me Eating the Time We (Don’t) Have, Bianca Waechter’s This Is Me Eating My Anger, Kendall DuPre’s This Is Me Eating My Words, and Bruna da Matta’s This Is Me Eating and Being Eaten.

“Come ready to be part of these women’s inner and outer explorations of their eating habits, traditions, and mental reflections,” co-artistic director Valenti said in a statement. “Come ready to feel part of a creative process and absorb this global process. You might just discover you are not so alone.”

Et Alia has previously staged Hasnain Shaikh’s Running in Place at Dixon Place, Müller’s On How to Be a Monster at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò and the Tank, and None of the Above at Rattlestick’s Global Forms Theater Festival. “Do you eat for pleasure or survival?” Galatti asks in This Is Me Eating My Weight. The same can be asked about live theater, especially as we come out of a pandemic lockdown.