twi-ny talks

twi-ny talk: BARBARA POLLACK / MIRROR IMAGE

Barbara Pollack first visited China in 2004 (photo courtesy Barbara Pollack)

MIRROR IMAGE: A TRANSFORMATION OF CHINESE IDENTITY
Asia Society Museum
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 31, $7-$12
Artist Talk July 21, free, 7:00
Brooklyn Rail talk Tuesday, August 9, free, 1:00
asiasociety.org

In a 2010 twi-ny talk, Barbara Pollack noted, discussing her book The Wild, Wild East: An American Art Critic’s Adventures in China, “Until the late 1990s, the art world was extremely narrow-minded and unwilling to think that a major talent could come from somewhere other than Europe or North America. That has changed forever, good riddance.”

Pollack spent the following decade meeting with, writing about, and researching these major talents, in China and other countries, leading to her next book, 2018’s Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise.

Right before Covid-19 forced the lockdown of restaurants, theaters, museums, and other businesses in March 2020, Pollack’s “Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity” had been scheduled to open at Asia Society but had to be put on hold. Pollack, a writer, teacher, curator, and visual artist with a law degree, pivoted immediately and formed, with Anne Verhallen, Art at a Time Like This, a nonprofit that presents sociopolitical art, both on- and offline. Finally, after a more than two-year delay, “Mirror Image,” curated by Pollack with guest curatorial assistant Hongzheng Han, opened at the Park Ave. institution in June and has just been extended through the end of the year.

The exhibition, which Pollack sees as a kind of follow-up to Asia Society’s seminal 1998 show “Inside Out: New Chinese Art,” features multimedia works that explore the idea of “Chinese-ness” by seven artists who were born on mainland China in the 1980s, six of whom are still primarily based there. In her curatorial statement, Pollack explains, “These artists continue to push forward. We no longer view them as ambassadors from an exotic land but as representatives of a world we share.”

Pixy Liao, who lives and works in Brooklyn and was born in Shanghai in 1979, contributes intimate digital chromogenic still-lifes of parts of her and her partner’s bodies. Cui Jie creates futuristic cityscapes with hints of the past in large acrylic paintings. Tianzhuo Chen invites viewers into one of his ecstatic theatrical performances in the five-minute two-channel video Trance. Liu Shiyuan, who divides her time between Beijing and Copenhagen, combines found images with original footage in dizzying prints. Miao Ying, who lives and works in Shanghai and New York City, incorporates online gaming into her computer-animated film Surplus Intelligence, while Pilgrimage into Walden XII is a live simulation that learns over time. Tao Hui’s Similar Disguise Stills is accompanied by QR codes that take visitors into digital TikTok soap operas with nonbinary characters. And Nabuqi’s How to Be “Good Life” is a living room installation, influenced by Martin Heidegger and Richard Hamilton, that questions how popular culture invades personal spaces.

Tao Hui, Similar Disguise Stills, archival pigment prints mounted on aluminum panels, 2021 (photo courtesy of the artist, Kiang Malingue, Esther Schipper, and Macalline Art Center, Beijing)

On July 21, Pollack will moderate a conversation with Pixy and Miao at Asia Society and Nabuqi and Tao participating remotely; the talk can be viewed in person as well as online here.

Pollack is an old friend; her second book was represented by Stonesong, my wife’s literary agency. Pollack recently discussed the impact of the internet on Chinese art, putting together an exhibition during a pandemic, the Chinese art market, Chinese identity, and more in her latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: The exhibition includes a timeline that goes back to President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and Mao’s death in 1976. I know this could take a book – and you’ve written several on the subject – but, in a nutshell if possible, what have been some of the biggest changes in Chinese art and the perception of Chinese artists since then?

barbara pollack: I begin the timeline with Nixon’s visit and Mao’s death, basically the end of the Cultural Revolution, the most repressive period in modern Chinese history. The artists in this show were mostly born five to ten years later and had no experience with that kind of scary attitude toward intellectuals and creatives. In fact, they grew up in a world where there was an art infrastructure including auction houses, galleries, and, finally, new contemporary art museums. This all happened really quickly.

In the 1990s, art was still kind of underground, but by 2000, China hosted a major biennial, several official auction houses, and a few galleries. By the time these artists were exhibiting, China had an art market that rivaled that in the U.S. Most people here don’t realize that Shanghai now has a dozen contemporary art museums and there are several hundred galleries between Shanghai and Beijing and other cities. That creates an incredibly rich environment for artists to exhibit their works, despite censorship and other drawbacks.

twi-ny: The internet came to China in 1994, and much of the art in the show incorporates elements of AI, high-tech social media, and online gaming. How did the internet impact the work Chinese artists were creating?

bp: In 1994, China was still a pretty isolated, agrarian society. The internet changed everything for everyone, but mostly the generation born in the 1980s, as are the artists in this show. Suddenly you no longer had to smuggle in catalogues or merely read about shows of contemporary art elsewhere in the world. It took a while for the internet to improve, but soon you could get information directly. Artists in China learned rapidly how to have their own websites and how to email international curators. I know this firsthand by those who contacted me early on. But more importantly, before the establishment of the Great Firewall — China’s surveillance of all internet activity — people in China could learn about Chinese history not included in domestic textbooks. It was an eye-opening period and one of the reasons that this younger generation is so enthralled with the liberation that came from this technology.

twi-ny: In our 2010 twi-ny talk, you pointed out that Chinese artists were able to produce without the interference of the Ministry of Culture and that restrictions rarely impeded their output. Is that still true? That was two years before Xi Jinping took over as general secretary.

bp: I have no idea what has happened in the last two years, but it should be noted that in 2014, Xi Jinping gave a speech exhorting media, television, films, and art producers to “serve the people” and uphold Chinese culture. That’s a return to Mao’s rhetoric during the Cultural Revolution. As a result, there has been a rise in self-censorship for sure. I need to return to China to see how this has had an impact on cultural institutions and art making.

Miao Ying, Surplus Intelligence, single-channel film with sound, 2021-22 (courtesy of the artist)

twi-ny: Speaking of going to China, what was it like putting “Mirror Image” together during the pandemic? You’re used to traveling there often, but I imagine that because of Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and other political situations, that is not possible.

bp: “Mirror Image” was supposed to open in the spring of 2020, just as Covid took over New York City and museums and galleries were closed. I was devastated that the show was canceled at that point. In fall 2021, Asia Society came to me and revived the show. By then, I knew we could not ship works from China — not because of Covid but because of shipping tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. So we used “virtual shipping,” with artists sending photo works and videos digitally.

Even Nabuqi’s great installation — originally created in Beijing with elements bought at the local IKEA — was completely assembled in NYC. The artist sent us a “shopping list.” We ordered from IKEA here and then she directed the installation via Zoom with a translator in the museum. I think that’s a perfect example of how globalization can impact — even facilitate — art making in the twenty-first century. Also, several galleries — Kiang Malingue in Hong Kong, Tanya Bonakdar in Chelsea, Pilar Corrias in London, and Chambers Fine Art downtown — were incredibly helpful in sourcing works in the U.S. I really have to thank the team at Asia Society for an extraordinary effort to pull this together.

twi-ny: The exhibition includes a wild video installation by Tianzhuo Chen; a few years back, you attended one of his performances here in the city. What was it like to experience it in person?

bp: Tianzhuo’s work is the most visceral experience I have ever had in an art institution. It’s like watching wild animals refusing to get back in their cages. The tension between the space and the performers is absolutely riveting.

Pixy Liao, Play Station, digital chromogenic print, 2013 (courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art)

twi-ny: Another highlight of the show are ten digital chromogenic prints by Pixy Liao. How did you get introduced to her work?

bp: I met Pixy early in her career, around 2010, when she came to New York. She and her partner, Moro, have their own quirky band and I saw them perform at Printed Matter. I may have known her even before that. I love working with Pixy because she has no ego and comes off like a cutie pie but is actually quite brilliant and powerful. That’s the tension that comes through in the photographs. Her images really speak to people about the state of relationships in today’s gender-fluid world, not just in China or Chinese communities.

twi-ny: For people who might not know that much about contemporary Chinese art, what do you think will most surprise them about this show?

bp: Everything! Many Americans have such a limited view of China that they don’t even believe that creativity is possible in such a repressive society. It is repressive, but that is the framework that Chinese artists push against and test the limits of. Almost all of the work in the show has been shown in China without problems. Many of these artists have major markets with a new generation of young Chinese collectors, and internationally. But this may change. I’m worried about the future. Very worried.

twi-ny: On July 21, you will be moderating a conversation with four of the artists. What are some of the main topics you will be discussing?

bp: We will start with a discussion of how being born in China has influenced their choices as artists and whether that still guides their work. Then I will allow the artists to guide the discussion more or less. But this issue of identity will obviously recur throughout the evening. Most of the artists have told me they are citizens of the internet, not China. We’ll see where that leads us.

[You can watch a recording of the panel discussion here. Pollack will also be participating in a free Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment discussion on Zoom on August 9 at 1:00 with artists Liu Shiyuan and Miao Ying, moderated by Lilly Wei and featuring a poetry reading by Abby Romine.]

twi-ny talk: RUSSELL MALTZ: PAINTED / STACKED / SITE

Visual artist Russell Maltz monitors the load out for installation on Jay St. in DUMBO (photo by Matthew Deleget)

RUSSELL MALTZ: PAINTED / STACKED / SITE
Minus Space
16 Main St., Suite A, Brooklyn
Saturdays through July 30, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
www.minusspace.com
www.russellmaltz.com

When I first arrived at Minus Space in DUMBO to see “Russell Maltz: Painted / Stacked / Site,” I thought that the final phase of the Brooklyn-born visual artist’s multipart four-month retrospective had spilled out of the gallery and into the street. Since the mid-1970s, Maltz has been creating works using a wide range of materials, from concrete cinder blocks, glass, and pegboards to found wood panels, PVC pipes, paper, and a swimming pool; he has collaborated with construction companies, and he enjoys photographing artlike industrial detritus. There’s a lot of construction going on outside the gallery, some of which evoked Maltz’s use of color and materials.

Minus Space first showed his “POOL” project beginning in April, followed by “Stacks,” and now concludes with “Needles,” consisting of long, narrow vertical works of acrylic and polyurethane on glass plate and wood, suspended from a galvanized nail, each at a different height on the wall, forming three-dimensional palimpsests. Depending on where the viewer stands, they’ll experience varying depth of space in the works, including reflections of what is happening on Main St. — in this case, bringing the outside construction inside. In the main gallery each piece is a shade of blue, creating unique shadows on the walls. (There are additional works in other colors in the office.)

In conjunction with the exhibit, Maltz put up a temporary installation in a storefront at 28 Jay St., and his Scatter sculpture is part of a group show in Hillman Garden at 100 Broome St. in Luther Gulick Park this summer.

Maltz is a relaxed, easygoing guy who loves discussing art; below he talks about color, material, Brooklyn, and working during the pandemic.

twi-ny: You’re a Brooklyn boy, like me.

russell maltz: Yes, I am.

twi-ny: What do you think about how Brooklyn has changed over the years? I can’t imagine a place like Minus Space existing when I was a kid.

rm: I was born in Brownsville. My family moved to Canarsie when I was two or three years old. We lived in the Bay View Housing Project down by the Belt Parkway alongside Jamaica Bay.

twi-ny: I was born in Flatbush.

rm: Many different types of people lived [in Canarsie], mostly working class and from many ethnic and religious backgrounds. I’ve always regarded Brooklyn as a place where there is an ever-changing community of people. I think that the essence of any community and its value is all about the neighborhood. It seems that what is changing and what is inevitable is that in many places the need for development and the changes to a neighborhood that the development brings has priced out many of its current and historic residents from living in that particular neighborhood — the folks who made it what it is. Development should enrich a neighborhood and should be community-based so that the people who live there can continue to contribute to its identity and culture.

twi-ny: I couldn’t agree more. Since April, Minus Space has been showing a retrospective of your career in different phases, going back five decades. What has it been like putting together each individual section? Were you flooded with memories?

rm: Always — although, there was a prequel to the Minus Space exhibition in 2017 at the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Saarbrücken, Germany, that was accompanied by a monograph that covered work from 1976 through 2017. The work shown in Saarbrücken was mostly done in Europe during these years. The Minus Space show gave me the opportunity to build from the Saarbrücken show in that [Minus Space owner] Matthew Deleget and I decided to make this show in three phases. Each phase would represent a different period of my work and identify the common threads within the work that continue to identify the work to present.

The “POOL” project (1976–79) explored the origins of my ideas and philosophies, the “Stacked” works (1983–2022) explored works made as sites and examined how color transforms material, and the third phase, “Needles” (2018–22), explores my concerns with painting on glass. Combined with other simultaneous activities, such as at 28 Jay St., the installation of construction materials in a vacant storefront, and the “Yardbirds” installation at the Hillman Houses on the Lower East Side, painted wooden elements used by gardeners in their everyday gardening activities. All of these venues gave me a chance to exhibit the many forms that my work can take and elevate the question of what a painting can be.

twi-ny: How did Scatter come about?

rm: The Hillman Garden came about as an invitation from a good friend, the artist David Goodman. David along with sculptor Bruce Ostler invited several artists to install their work in the garden. A garden to me exudes the energy of change: changing seasons, changing growth, and changing habit. I decided to do a work that comprised numerous wooden stakes used by the gardeners (mostly people who live at the Hillman Houses) to stabilize the trees. I painted the stakes Day-Glo yellow. It started in early April as a pile of painted material leaning against the garden shed and was transformed, evolving into a work that was scattered and used by the gardeners for its original purpose. The yellow color enhanced the daffodils, complemented the daylilies, and spread a smattering of color throughout the garden in a natural and random way, creating yet another way to see a painting.

“Russell Maltz: Painted / Stacked / Site” continues Saturdays through July 30 at Minus Space in DUMBO (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: This month at Minus Space you’re showing your more recent fragile “Needles.” What were some of the main considerations when hanging the show?

rm: The “Needle” works began in 2013. I had been developing a series of works using glass because of my ongoing explorations with transparency. For this phase of the exhibition I wanted to install the most recent pieces on glass and give the work the space to breathe to establish a presence in the site and give the viewer time to experience each work as a unique one.

twi-ny: How do you decide what materials to work with?

rm: The “Needles” are a result of a serendipitous event that occurred while working in my studio. I was cutting long lengths of plywood for another piece I was working on. When the cutting was complete and as I was doing my cleanup, I saw a bunch of sawn-off strips lying in a pile on the floor; the results of one action can be the beginnings of another action — and — Aha! Well, the rest and what was to follow came quickly in that these long narrow strips evolved into the exploration of color, form, and presence with various materials in yet another way to make a painting.

twi-ny: Your use of color is striking, particularly bright yellow and green and bold red. In a recent Minus Space talk, you said that “color is the glue that holds it all together.” What comes first — material or color, and how do they come together for you?

rm: Most, if not all of my inspirations and ideas about what I make, come from everyday life, both locally and when I travel. This is a great question because the answer is not always identifiable for me, in that the order of a thing that is inspirational or evokes me into the process of making has a sequence. However, if there is one thing that might be identifiable, it would most likely be light. It is the light that is the identifier to action, and the color that is the glue that transforms and holds the work in place.

twi-ny: The show also features two red stacks (ACCU-FLO Bundled #1 & #2) in the side window that are visible to passersby. There’s a lot of construction going on in the street, so it makes for a fascinating juxtaposition. You were a carpenter and a house painter, but I can imagine your having been a construction engineer in a previous life. Do construction sites really get your juices flowing?

rm: Yes. Not so much in that the sites are there but in the sheer energy of focus, coordination, and human power and coordination that it takes to engage in the process of making.

twi-ny: How did the pandemic lockdown affect your work? Were you able to spend productive time at your Crosby St. studio, or was creating difficult?

rm: I was in New York City for the entire run of the pandemic. It was for me one of the most productive times I can remember. It gave me the time I needed to do what I want and love most to do . . . the work.

KENZO DIGITAL’S AIR AT THE SUMMIT

Kenzo Digital’s Air offers a new perspective on making connections in the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

AIR
SUMMIT One Vanderbilt
45 East Forty-Second St. at Vanderbilt Pl.
Admission: $39-$73
summitov.com
kenzodigital.com
online slideshow

“I wanted New Yorkers to come and watch their home come back to life, to reengage with their friends and family they hadn’t seen for a long time and create ritual and ceremony around human connection, which is actually the antithesis of New York, which is a highly transactional city where people are just trying to survive,” Kenzo Digital said on a private walkthrough of his multipart permanent installation, Air, near the top of the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt skyscraper. “So I want to have a place where people can forget about that aspect of their survival identity in New York and connect through a primal curiosity on a basic, authentic level.”

Kenzo, a graffiti artist, DJ, and film and video director who has worked with Kanye West and Beyoncé, had lofty goals when designing Air; he didn’t want the project to just be an Instagram-friendly tourist attraction but to generate other, more meaningful conversations, especially among New Yorkers.

“In a nutshell, what I wanted to do was essentially create an experience of physical space that was capable of having a deep emotional and psychological relationship with a human being over the course of their entire life. The idea is you walk into this space and it will feel different every time,” he explained. “I wanted to create something that specifically challenges and defies language, both the written word and the image. It’s impossible to describe what this is, even though you can break it down by its components and you’d be correct, but it’s impossible to describe the effect of the experience and the emotional impact. Everyone is wrong and right in different ways, and it will be a different wrong and right every time you come.”

Air consists of several floors of fantastical views of New York City and dramatic reflections, reaching high into the sky and way down below, of the humans occupying the space on the ninety-first floor and above. “We built the entire thing during the pandemic. It was like making art in a science fiction film. It was . . . fucking crazy,” Kenzo notes. Glass windows and mirrors are arranged in geometric patterns that result in awe-inspiring repeated imagery that forces visitors to try to find their body in the space as well as their position in the city and the world. Kenzo, whose previous installations include Social Galaxy, which featured chambers where visitors were barraged by their social media history, and the immersive haunted house Nocturnal Awakening, considers the work to be “the story of your relationship to time, your relationship to New York City, your relationship to weather, and also your relationship to yourself.

“It’s about the relationship between the natural world and the physical world,” he points out. “If there is an approaching storm from New Jersey, you will see the city as an organism react to that storm — cars, traffic, people move differently, with rain on the street, fewer people, umbrellas pop up. You can see the city as an expression of nature. People always talk about the life force of New York; Air is an organ within that life force, the heart of it that contains its spirit. This is expressing the infinite power of chaos that is the collision of uncontrollable variables: nature, time, the world, your emotions, your place in all of this.”

Visitors first take an elevator that recalls one of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity rooms, with lights flashing on and off and mirrors that reflect the passengers into an endless oblivion. You get out at “Transcendence,” a large rectangular space with tall windows that offer stunning views of the city on three sides and glass floors that reflect the inside and the outside. It will take you a while to orient yourself, especially as you look down at what appear to be multiple levels of people either upright or upside down as buildings, blue sky, and clouds merge with the interior space.

“There are so many avenues, it almost looks like they’re delivering you to the front doorstep of One Vanderbilt,” says Kenzo, who speaks quickly and excitedly, like a child with a new toy. “And because it’s positioned so symmetrically, you can almost see the city like an organized system of neighborhoods; you understand it spatially, you understand the grid, and that grid is magnified and deconstructed within the grid of reflection that exists in here.” The gridlike structure recalls the multimedia installations of the father of digital art, Nam June Paik, who arranged television sets into wholly new, living environments; Kenzo is the late Nam June’s great-nephew and the creative director of his great-uncle’s estate.

Much of the eye contact in Air is made via the reflections, so you can connect with individuals who are not in your immediate physical space, if you can find them. It’s a far cry from being on the subway, for example, where many straphangers go out of their way to avoid eye contact with anyone.

When I mention to Kenzo that it’s hard to tell who is actually on the mezzanine and what are reflections, he replies slyly, “They are asking themselves the same question about you.”

In the mezzanine, you can look down and see how the next batch of people initially react to the area. Kenzo explains, “The idea behind Transcendence II is this concept of folding time in the sense of that when you’re up here, you’re essentially watching people exposed to the concept for the first time, and so the idea of connective language through primal curiosity is in effect because you see people, just where you were a few minutes ago, processing the information at a base level for the first time. So as we were just down there, observing that there’s a physical mezzanine up here and making eye contact, everyone up here has already established equilibrium and has the foundation of knowledge and information, and everyone down there is still figuring out what’s going on.” Kenzo envisions Air as encompassing human development: “crawl, walk, run, fly.”

Kenzo Digital stands next to the Empire State Building in his permanent installation at Summit One (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The idea for Air emerged from Kenzo’s subconscious.

“This is all based on a recurring dream I’ve had for twenty-five years; it’s a strangely, deeply personal thing,” Kenzo reveals. “In the dreams there’s a fictitious skyscraper, residential; so I’ve had these dreams that took place in the top two floors, the penthouse of the skyscraper, which is circular in shape, which is why I have the two circles on the east and west side as a nod to that dream. So it’s the ability to project my dream and then put it inside of other people’s mind and then for that to be a shared dream. And oftentimes I find people dream about it after the experience.”

Affinity is a room of silver balls, reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s helium Silver Clouds, that visitors can run through, kicking the balls in the air and against mirrors and windows, each ball reflecting themselves, those around them, the view, and other balls as dozens of orbs seem to multiply into thousands in a fun deluge. “It’s constantly engaging with the city; it’s always an inside-outside experience,” Kenzo says. In another room, the inside-outside connection involves a projection of sky and clouds on the wall and the floor as scanned images of your face are added to a large screen.

Levitation puts you in a space where you are seemingly floating above the skyline, standing on a transparent floor facing a window so clear that it makes you feel like it’s not there, that you are on a ledge, midtown Manhattan right below you. Cameras are set up to take a picture and/or video of you in the space that you can pick up at the exit. As wondrous as it is to look at, it also makes you feel the interdependence between nature, technology, and humanity as well as the impermanence of life. “It’s the story of your relationship to time, your relationship to New York City, your relationship to weather, and also your relationship to yourself,” Kenzo explains. You can further those relationships by taking the outside glass elevator, Ascent.

Levitation offers a chance to seemingly float above New York City (photo courtesy Summit One)

Kenzo honors Japanese artist Kusama with her 2019 work Clouds, a collection of amorphous stainless-steel and wax floor sculptures that also reflect visitors and the sky; it is the first of a rotating series of exhibitions Kenzo will curate by other artists in the space.

Kenzo sees Air as an ever-changing, always-evolving experience that changes from day to day, hour to hour, depending on the crowd and the weather, and he wants it to be more than just a photo opportunity that’s over when you leave.

“There’s a part of you that stays in here,” he says thoughtfully.

twi-ny talk: MICHAEL NOVAK / PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY

PTDC artistic director Michael Novak is deep in thought during rehearsal for Joyce season (photo by Whitney Browne)

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
June 14-19, $71-$91 (Curtain Chat follows June 15 show)
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
paultaylordance.org

Growing up in a Chicago suburb, Michael Novak initially tried his hand at sports, but when that didn’t go very well he soon found his muse in musical theater and dance, as both a performer and a disciplined student. Dance became a form of expression that helped him through a severe speech impediment when he was twelve.

He was an artistic associate at the Columbia Ballet Collaborative at Columbia University, where he performed Paul Taylor’s solo from Aureole and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2008. He made his debut with Paul Taylor Dance Company in 2010-11 — Taylor created thirteen roles on him — and, on July 1, 2018, was named the artistic director designate.

At the time, Taylor announced, “I know that Michael is the right person to lead my company in the future. I look forward to working with him to continue my vision.” However, Taylor died that August at the age of eighty-eight, leaving Novak to take on his mentor’s legacy.

Having guided PTDC through a two-year pandemic lockdown, Novak is now ready to present three special programs at the Joyce, running June 14-19, offering something different from the company’s usual seasons at City Center. The schedule consists of Taylor’s Events II (1957), Images and Reflections (excerpt; 1958), Fibers (1960), Aureole (1962), Tracer (1962), and Profiles (1979), along with a pair of PTDC commissions: the world premiere of Michelle Manzanales’s Hope Is the Thing with Feathers and the New York premiere of Peter Chu’s A Call for Softer Landings.

On the eve of opening night, Novak, who is married to award-winning Broadway choreographer Josh Prince, shared his thoughts on transitioning from dancer to artistic director, navigating through the coronavirus crisis, and planning the future of a beloved, legendary troupe.

twi-ny: You performed with Paul Taylor Dance Company for nine years and were named artistic director designate only a few months before Mr. Taylor’s passing. What were the initial challenges of maintaining his legacy, especially with him no longer there?

michael novak: One of my goals as artistic director is to both preserve Mr. Taylor’s art, legacy, and values while also innovating to push the art form forward driven by my own beliefs and vision. Initially, many of the challenges were centered on how to hold space for the death of a founder and simultaneously move forward, bringing tens upon tens of thousands of people along with us.

But we did it, launching the Celebration Tour in 2019 — a multiyear international retrospective of the most celebrated and captivating dances by Paul Taylor — and creating PTDF Digital, a platform that created a host of unique digital engagements during the pandemic.

twi-ny: How was your transition from dancer to artistic director?

mn: The transition from dancer to artistic director was, overall, smooth. I have always had a passion for arts administration, dance history, and graphic design, so those passions have served me well, as has my education from the Columbia University School of General Studies.

twi-ny: Just as you’re establishing yourself as artistic director, the pandemic hits. What was lockdown like for you, both personally and professionally?

mn: The initial phase of lockdown was extraordinarily unsettling because I was very concerned about our dancers’ safety and company’s sustainability. Simply, we worked nonstop . . . on revamping our educational platforms, rethinking social media strategy, building new ways to engage with patrons and audiences, and, most importantly, getting our dancers back in the studio as soon as possible. We knew that if we wanted to thrive in such a volatile environment, adaptability and sustained momentum were essential.

Michael Novak performs in Paul Taylor’s Concertiana (photo by Paul B. Goode)

twi-ny: In some ways, dance thrived during the coronavirus crisis, unlike other art forms, leading to innovation in online productions. PTDF Digital included the 2021 gala benefit “Modern Is Now: Illumination.” Can you describe that title and what it has been like creating digital works?

mn: I believe modern is a movement, not just a moment. So, “Modern Is Now” is another way of creating an awareness of our present moment to create and experience something new. Being modern has been the foundation of our past and it is what propels us into the future. It has been a very thrilling opportunity to step into the digital world and reach audiences in new ways. At the same time, it has made me realize the poignancy and preciousness of live performances where audiences and artists are in the same space experiencing art together.

twi-ny: In March, PTDC returned to the stage and live audiences at the City Center Dance Festival. What was that experience like?

mn: It was wonderful to be back on the New York stage for our audiences, and at City Center, where so much of our history was made. It was emotional on both sides of the curtain.

twi-ny: The City Center shows saw Michael Apuzzo’s final bow as a dancer, and Jessica Ferretti and Austin Kelly have joined the troupe. What does it take to be a Paul Taylor dancer?

mn: Taylor dancers are known for their athleticism, power, transcendence, and, most importantly, their individuality. They are also known for their emotional range — from the comedic to the horrific, and everything in between.

twi-ny: In preparing for the Joyce season, what Covid-19 protocols were in place, and how did that impact rehearsals?

mn: Covid protocols have changed constantly over the past two years. Our board of directors has been relentless in supporting the company at every stage of this recovery, from daily testing, mask wearing, building upgrades, rehearsal schedule adjustments, etc.

twi-ny: The Joyce season includes the sixtieth anniversary of Aureole, which was a major turning point in Taylor’s career as he reexamined dance as an art form. How do you approach such a piece in 2022? You yourself danced the solo when you were studying at Columbia.

mn: This lyrical, joyful work was a controversial departure from the norm of modern dance in 1962, and it catapulted the then-thirty-two-year-old choreographer to the forefront of the dance world — a position he never relinquished. This is a seminal work that is as impactful now as it was on its premiere. We work diligently with alumni to ensure that its poignancy remains steadfast while also encouraging each artist to find their own voice within the work. It’s balancing both preservation and interpretation.

twi-ny: The three Joyce programs include major works from more than fifty years ago, a New York premiere by Peter Chu, and a world premiere by Michelle Manzanales. What was the impetus behind these specific selections, and how do they differ from the company’s usual Lincoln Center shows?

mn: As artistic director my goal is to curate theatrical experiences that celebrate both our ever-expanding dance repertory and the unique venues we perform in. I have been interested in presenting a series of performances that link early, foundational works from the Taylor canon with new works for a very long time. I am thrilled to present premieres by two of today’s most captivating choreographers, Peter Chu and Michelle Manzanales, at the Joyce.

My vision is to juxtapose the past and future of our company in one of the most intimate dance theaters in our city so audiences will understand — more than ever — how our company sits at a fascinating intersection of radicalism and beauty. These early dances by Paul Taylor were made on small ensembles, and audiences will benefit greatly from their proximity to the stage. It will be up close, visceral, and vibrant.

twi-ny: Four years after taking over as artistic director, what do you see as the next chapters for the company?

mn: The Paul Taylor Dance Company is one of the most innovative, athletic, and expressive dance companies in the world. Our next chapter takes us into celebrating seventy years of bringing the best of modern dance to the broadest possible audience.

We will continue to bring Paul Taylor’s great dances to stages around the world; curate great modern dance from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; invest heavily in the creation of new work by our resident choreographer, Lauren Lovette, and other compelling choreographers and designers; and expand our educational programming and outreach initiatives.

Modern dance is born out of a desire to innovate, rebel against convention, liberate the human body, and to express the freedom of the emotions of the soul. The need for this never subsides, and our company will never stop innovating and responding to our experiences in the world.

TWI-NY TALK: ERIC EINHORN / ON SITE OPERA: GIANNI SCHICCHI

On Site Opera returns to site-specific productions with Gianni Schicchi at the Prince George Ballroom (photo courtesy On Site Opera)

GIANNI SCHICCHI
The Prince George Ballroom
15 East Twenty-Seventh St. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
April 7-10, $50
osopera.org

Since 2012, On Site Opera has been presenting immersive works in unique locations around New York City, including Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at Wave Hill, Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, Gregg Kallor’s Sketches from “Frankenstein” in the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs, and Michi Wiancko and Deborah Brevoort’s Marasaki’s Moon at the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Met.

But when the coronavirus crisis led to a pandemic lockdown and people quarantining at home, barely venturing outside (or leaving the city entirely), the NYC-based company had to reevaluate its immediate future. Cofounding artistic director Eric Einhorn decided to continue making opera, but instead of fans coming to them, OSO would deliver the works straight to the audience, wherever they were sheltering in place.

The result was a series of innovative productions conveyed live over the phone for one person at a time (To My Distant Love); a mailed diary box featuring music by Dominick Argento, Juliana Hall, and Leoš Janáček and text by Anne Frank, Osef Kalda, and Virginia Woolf (The Beauty That Still Remains); and a live Zoom opera based on Georg Philipp Telemann’s Der Schulmeister (Lesson Plan).

Then, just as the troupe was preparing for its first site-specific indoor work in more than two years, Giacomo Puccini’s 1917–18 Gianni Schicchi at the Prince George Ballroom, Einhorn contracted Covid, forcing him to direct rehearsals over Zoom. The first of Puccini’s Il trittico (“The Triptych”), the fifty-minute comic opera tells the story of a family fighting over a will; the original was set in 1299 Florence, but Einhorn has reimagined it for the Roaring Twenties. OSO plans on staging the next two works, Il tabarro and Suor Angelica, in the coming years.

As opening night approached — Gianni Schicchi runs April 7-10 — Einhorn discussed the past, present, and future of OSO in this new age.

twi-ny: Okay, let’s start with the pandemic. What are the immediate thoughts of the head of a site-specific opera company when a health crisis suddenly shuts down indoor and outdoor venues everywhere and people lock themselves inside?

eric einhorn: I had two immediate thoughts when the pandemic hit: First, what does it now mean to be a company built on the idea of gathering in a specific space? And second, how can we as a company serve our community in these troubling times? The first question led us down a road of fascinating exploration about what constituted a site. The safest choice seemed to be to create projects that allowed each audience member’s own location to serve as the “performance site.” So many arts companies were defaulting to digital media as a way to maintain production, which made a lot of sense for most proscenium-based companies, but it did not for us. Looking at audience sites that did not involve patrons sitting on their computers (a must-have thanks to pretty immediate Zoom and YouTube fatigue) led us to create projects over the phone, through the mail, and via mobile app.

The second question of serving our community was answered through the fantastic collaborative efforts of our staff, board, advisory councils, and past artists. We offered free live watch parties of some previous productions, hosted industry panels, and offered free virtual performance coaching. All of this was rolled out in an effort to help our community remain together and offer experiences that could allow us all to focus on the things that brought us joy in the midst of the terrifying first months of the pandemic.

Eric Einhhorn directs via Zoom for latest OSO site-specific production (photo courtesy On Site Opera)

twi-ny: The phone project was To My Distant Love, a Beethoven song cycle performed for one listener at a time over the phone. How did that come about?

ee: Early in the pandemic, I was sitting in my home office going through my score collection, hoping to find some thread of inspiration in these newly troubling times. I pulled out my copy of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, which I had once performed when I was pursuing my vocal performance degree many years ago. I had always loved the song cycle for its compact pathos. Rereading the text in 2020, though, resonated in a totally new way. The poetry was about two lovers at a forced distance and the burning desire to be together again. If I didn’t know it was nineteenth-century poetry, I easily could have thought it was brand new and of the moment. Around the same time, I had been made aware of theater companies that created interactive telephone plays for an audience of one. After experiencing one for myself, I became convinced that opera (or a song cycle) could be delivered the same way. We commissioned playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza to create an interactive script around the song cycle to allow performer and audience member to connect even more, as well as preshow love letters that elicited some fantastic, in-character replies from audiences.

twi-ny: You continued this idea of delivering the company to the audience instead of the audience coming to OSO with the diary box The Beauty That Still Remains, which was mailed out. How did people respond?

ee: After our “low tech” success with the Beethoven phone project, we continued to explore the various ways that we could connect with audiences that were not truly computer-based. Inspiration for The Beauty That Still Remains came from the phenomenon of subscription boxes that now permeate every market and taste. We didn’t know how audiences would respond to a project that was mailed in installments and featured both a tactile element (the box contents) and a digital one (the prerecorded musical performances). It turns out audiences loved it! As with all of our productions, every experiential element was tied into the story, which made it all that much more immersive. Patrons from all over the world engaged with this project, and it gave us yet another opportunity to explore the boundaries of site-specific performance during a time when gathering at a site was not possible.

twi-ny: Last summer you were finally able to gather at a site with The Perfect Pig and Tapestry of New York, at the Glade at Little Island. What did you think about the performance space and Little Island itself?

ee: Performing on Little Island as part of the NYC FREE festival was an incredibly special opportunity. Little Island is such a special place, and the Glade is a magical corner of the park that is perfect for performing. While we were in rehearsals for a full, outdoor production at the same time, the performances on Little Island were actually our first in-person performances since the pandemic began. It was really quite emotional to bring this particular repertoire to Little Island for our first in-person performances in two years. The Perfect Pig is a lovely short opera for families about the self-acceptance, and Tapestry of New York was a concert of selections highlighting many of the incredible communities that make up our city. Seeing audience members of all ages gather again and to be able to perform opera for them was truly a gift. For as much as audiences needed live music again, performers and creators needed to produce again.

twi-ny: If I’m not mistaken, your first Zoom show was Lesson Plan this past January. Had you previously been using Zoom for rehearsals or other reasons?

ee: Lesson Plan was, indeed, our first Zoom-based production. We had been using Zoom since the start of the pandemic for meetings and some select rehearsals but never for a full production. When most opera companies went fully digital in 2020, we did a significant amount of self-reflection to consider what it meant to be site-specific in these times of forced distance. In exploring the idea of the audience’s own location as the “site,” as you mentioned, we created productions for the phone and through the mail. We also created a self-guided walking tour program [The Road We Came] that explored Black music history in New York City through a mobile app with prerecorded performances. When planning our 2022 season, specifically the January slot, I took the general consensus of the scientific community to heart when they said that there could very well be another Covid surge during the winter of 2021. It seemed prudent to plan another remote project rather than face the possibility of having to cancel an in-person production.

For a while, I had wanted to create something around Telemann’s cantata Der Schulmeister — a charming comedy about a curmudgeonly music teacher attempting to teach children to sing. There were some jokes in the piece with the kids singing out of sync with the music teacher that immediately made me think of Zoom delays. This seemed like the perfect project for Zoom to become the site. We wanted to expand the piece a bit and create an English translation. For that, we commissioned Rachel J. Peters, who created something incredibly special with Lesson Plan. Our cast and team of engineering wizards brought it to life in such an amazing way — and it was fully remote and live over Zoom. This production choice proved prescient, as Omicron was in full force during the production period.

twi-ny: OSO is getting down to the site-specific business again with Gianni Schicchi at the Prince George Ballroom. Why that opera in that space?

ee: The Prince George Ballroom has been on my list of potential production venues for several years, but we couldn’t quite decide on the perfect piece to perform there. In planning the 2022 season, some of our programming goals were to keep our repertoire on the shorter side and skew towards comedy. We wanted to allow our audiences to ease back into the experience of being back “on site” and, given what the last two years have been like, we wanted to make sure laughter played a significant role in that. [OSO music director] Geoff McDonald and I arrived at Gianni Schicchi for several reasons: It’s funny, under an hour, and filled with some of the best music in opera. In matching the piece to a space, the Prince George Ballroom immediately came to mind as an opulent room perfect to serve as the home of Buoso Donati, the wealthy patriarch of the opera. The large ballroom also accommodates the audience, orchestra, and performers with plenty of room to spare, making sure that no one feels cramped — another important consideration given Covid.

twi-ny: What were the rehearsals like?

ee: Rehearsals were fantastic! To be in a rehearsal studio with so many wonderful artists working on such a masterpiece was really a joy that almost made one forget about the pandemic. That said, we adhered to strict health and safety protocols that included multiple tests every week for everyone involved in the production and fully masked rehearsals — all under the supervision of a Covid compliance manager hired specifically for the production.

https://twitter.com/onsiteopera/status/1511007803728670721?s=20&t=ZEmqgRQZrNceRe4-s1fNXQ

twi-ny: The company is currently celebrating its tenth anniversary. What were your expectations when the company started in 2012? What are your plans for the next ten years?

ee: Back in 2012, On Site Opera was a side project for me. It was an experiment in producing and directing in the crazy format of site-specific production. I never could have imagined it would turn into my full-time job, nor be able to grow to support a staff and as many productions as we now do. There are still moments when I have to pinch myself. The next few years will bring several new commissions, the completion of the Puccini Trittico cycle, and further exploration of the most exciting sites in NYC and beyond. One of the great aspects of the company is its nimbleness. This allows us to remain incredibly flexible in our programming and create productions and initiatives that can serve our community most immediately. In our second decade we will remain committed to our values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility as well as rich collaborations with our community of patrons, volunteers, artists, and audiences.

twi-ny: You’ve been a leader in the digital opera movement, incorporating apps, Google Glass, and other cutting-edge technology. How is this impacting your audiences?

ee: Adoption of our various technological initiatives has been quite high across all demographics. I think that it is, in part, due to the way our tech is always integrated into our productions. Whenever we decide to include new technology, we evaluate how the tech will interact with the show, what the adoption process might be, and if it could potentially be distracting. We also are mindful that it does not create a barrier for entry for any audience members. By approaching technology from this people-first angle, our initiatives have been quite successful.

Google Glass was an incredibly exciting experiment that brought together the tech and opera communities. I was disappointed when Google changed Glass’s focus to enterprise versus retail, as it essentially closed the door to further operatic applications. Our mobile app, though, and specifically the supertitle translation module, has had an extremely positive impact on our audiences. Before the app, many of our productions did not feature projected English translations (an industry staple these days) due to our immersive seating arrangements or simply a lack of surfaces onto which we could project in our various venues. The app now allows us to always offer English translations for patrons, as well as other languages — we are now consistently offering Spanish translations and have offered Japanese on a previous show. Plans are in the works for multiple language offerings for all of our productions. Since the app is very intuitive and smartphone-based, most audiences find the use of it in performances quite easy and fun.

twi-ny: When you have time to go out, are you seeing opera, or do you have other guilty pleasures?

ee: The pandemic has made me even more of homebody than I was before. However, when I do go out, it is typically to go on some crazy adventure with my kids or see a musical with my partner.

TWI-NY TALK: RICHARD TOPOL — PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

Rich Topol plays nonreligious narrator Patrick Salomon in Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere (photo by Matthew Murphy)

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 27, $99
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

About seven years ago, I was sitting in the audience at a play when I recognized the man in front of me, actor Richard Topol. I tapped him on the shoulder during intermission and told him that I had just seen him at the Signature in A. R. Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn and had enjoyed his performance. He thanked me, saying that he was actually the understudy and that was the only time he had gone on. He was even more thankful when I told him that I had included him in my review.

Since then we’ve bumped into each other a few other times at the theater and discussed various shows we’d seen. He’s an extremely amiable mensch who clearly loves his chosen profession. Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’re likely to know his face; he has approximately fifty television and film credits, including portraying lawyer and politician James Speed in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a recurring role on The Practice, and multiple parts on several Law & Order iterations.

But his true love is theater, which he also teaches. He has appeared extensively on and off Broadway, in such plays as The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino, Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington, Alice Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide with Carla Gugino, and Paula Vogel’s Tony-nominated Indecent with Katrina Lenk as well as Tony-winning revivals of Clifford Odets’s Awake & Sing! and Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. He is currently starring in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, a scintillating three-hour exploration of anti-Semitism that travels between 1944 and 2016; Topol plays Patrick Salomon, a nonreligious Jew who has decided not to go into the family piano business.

Topol was raised in Mamaroneck and lost his father when he was twelve. He is married to actress Eliza Foss; they have one daughter, and Richard was close with his father-in-law, the late German-American composer, pianist, and conductor Lukas Foss.

During our wide-ranging Zoom conversation, Topol is thoughtful and generous, laughing and smiling a lot. Behind him in his living room is a landscape by his mother-in-law, the painter and teacher Cornelia (Brendel) Foss.

He admits that the most nervous he’s been in his life was when he hung out with Paul McCartney following a performance of Larry David’s Fish in the Dark, in which Topol played Dr. Stiles; after that, the Cute Beatle went from being his third favorite mop top — behind John and George — to his second.

A few days after Prayer for the French Republic opened at Manhattan Theater Club’s Stage I at City Center, we talked about one-person shows, getting Covid, baseball, and what it’s like being an actor in lockdown, including a detailed description of mounting a play as a pandemic continues.

Rich Topol starred as stage manager Lemml in Indecent (photo by Carol Rosegg)

twi-ny: During the pandemic, you appeared in several virtual and audio productions: You were in Melisa Annis’s Beginnings, Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck, Craig Lucas’s More Beautiful — and you played a chicken in Jimonn Cole’s Chickens.

richard topol: Oh my God! That was so much fun.

twi-ny: That was crazy.

rt: I loved Michael Potts in that.

twi-ny: You guys were great. Did you enjoy working on Zoom?

rt: No, no, no. I mean, I enjoyed working as opposed to not working. Shipwreck was the closest we got to working on a play because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks and it felt like, Okay, I’m going to rehearsal today. We did the kind of work that you do in a play before you get up on your feet. [Director] Saheem Ali was great and it was a great cast, obviously in a really interesting play. And we spent enough time with it to dig in the way you do in a play.

I mean, I also shot some TV shows over the course of the pandemic, so all of the Zoom stuff felt more like the way an actor like me connects to short-term work. You don’t develop a through-line, you don’t understand the arc of things. You’re not invested in a team, the whole idea of a team creating a thing and living together and becoming a version of a theater family, or whatever it is. Shipwreck was the closest to that.

twi-ny: As a listener, I felt it Shipwreck was one of the audio plays that worked the best during the lockdown. I got the feeling that this was a group of actors working in tandem.

rt: Right. I think because they had intended originally to produce it live, they had invested in it as fully and fulsomely as you do for a whole theater piece. There had been a lot of preparation. There was a sense of having more in the heads of the director and the producers, what we could imagine this great thing being, that infused the development and the rehearsal and experience of doing it. The Public took a lot of care in making it.

twi-ny: You finally returned to the stage in November in Portland with Searching for Mr. Moon, which is about fathers and sons, particularly about how you lost your father when you were very young and eventually found a father figure in Lukas Foss. This is your first one-man show, which you wrote with Willy Holtzman, a two-time Pulitzer nominee. What was the experience like sharing your life, in person, in front of people, back onstage? It’s a short question, right?

rt: The short answer is it was great. It was so satisfying. I remember at the time talking with people and saying, Oh my God, this is the longest period of time between . . . I was doing Anatomy of a Suicide at the Atlantic Theater Company.

twi-ny: Which was excellent. Loved it.

rt: Thank you. Yeah, I love that play. Intense. So that was the very last performance you could do in New York. And we were shut down. And so from March 12 of 2020 to November 3, 2021, was the longest period of time I hadn’t been onstage in my adult life. And I’ve been an actor for over three decades.

So it was thrilling to be back in a theater on a stage with a live audience, even though they were masked. So on the one hand, it was incredibly thrilling. And on the other hand, it was incredibly scary because it was the first play that I’d ever cowritten with anybody, and it was about my life. I felt more exposed than I’d ever felt before in my life. Willy and I had been talking about this play for a number of years. And then because the pandemic happened, we both had the time to really work on it. And that’s how it came to pass, and Anita Stewart, the artistic director of Portland Stage, was just a real cheerleader for the piece.

We did a developmental workshop in June up in Maine. That theater had stayed open through the pandemic because Maine had so few cases, because of the regulations, and because of their skill at keeping people safe. They produced a lot of one-person shows. They produced Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly — they cast a married couple who played the two parts.

But even though they’re being Covid careful, they have diminished audiences because there are a lot of people who feel, I’m not going to see a play. I’m not going to risk that.

twi-ny: A lot of people still feel that way.

rt: But Willy and I had a lot of time over the pandemic because there wasn’t much else to do to finish the play. And then Anita gave us a shot. We did the workshop, we did a live reading in front of people. It went really well and they’re, like, We want to produce this and we have a slot.

But because it’s about one of the hardest things and most personal struggles that I’ve experienced for the last forty-six years of my life, since my father died, it was scary to share, but it felt worth sharing. Willy was like, I want to write a one-man show for you. I’m like, Okay, sure. First of all, I don’t like one-person shows, I don’t like seeing one-person shows; they’re not interesting to me. I love acting with other people, and it can’t be about me because I’m not interesting. So what could it be about.

twi-ny: Three strikes and you’re out.

rt: Right. It was a total strikeout. And then Willy’s like, Come on, come on. And so initially we decided it would be about Lukas Foss, who was my father-in-law, a really interesting man who had a really interesting life. He escaped the Nazis. Like in Josh’s play, he was one of those people, a German Jew in Berlin who got out. Even though he wasn’t Jewish; he didn’t think of himself as a Jew. He had a really interesting life and a really challenging death.

He had Parkinson’s disease. He had a mind that was brilliant and fingers that could play — I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him play or listened to something. It’s unbelievable. If you can listen to him playing on Lenny Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety,” listen to the piano on that. It is unbelievable. And so the guy lost his physical abilities and his mental abilities. We thought, Okay, that’s an interesting idea for a play.

I’ve always had this obsession with searching for a father and he was my father-in-law, so let’s do that. And the play started to be about that. And the first two drafts of it were about that. It was this biodrama about Lukas and it was missing something.

Rich Topol debuted his intimate one-person show at Portland Stage in November (photo by No Umbrella Media LLC)

twi-ny: It needed more of you, probably.

rt: Yes, well, that’s what Willy said. And so, kicking and screaming, it became more and more about my relationship to Lukas and then my relationship to fatherhood. Then when my wife told the story to Willy about when she gave birth — the opening scene of the play is her giving birth to our daughter — and Eliza’s parents, in black tie, come in from a gala, bursting into the delivery room because they thought she was about to have a baby — she was about to have a baby — we’re like, What are you doing here? Get the fuck out of here. That seemed like a good starting-off point, discussing my becoming a father and my seeing the best potential father to me to help me learn how to be a father.

It was really satisfying to do. I was really glad to do it at Portland Stage, where most of the people who were watching knew nothing about me and I didn’t have to feel so exposed. I’m hoping to bring the show to New York, but I think doing it here, that’ll be scary.

Although my mother came and saw the show. My wife came and saw the show. People who know me and my life saw it. And I survived.

twi-ny: And they all want you to keep doing it. Since these are your lines and they’re about you, if a joke didn’t quite take or something emotional didn’t register with the audience, is it more or less upsetting than when you’re reciting somebody else’s words and something might not go as expected?

rt: Oh, less upsetting because I know I’m not a professional. I’m no Josh Harmon. Josh is a writer. I’m just some guy —

twi-ny: The third guy from the left.

rt: Exactly, the third guy from the left. At least in that experience I can cut myself some slack. It was the first production of the first play that I’ve ever cowritten. Willy did most of the writing. So that’s the sort of glib answer.

The truth is, most of the play, I play other people. I play my father-in-law. I play my mother, I play my wife, I play my mother-in-law. And in the scenes where I play myself, most of that writing is me, having written down my versions of stories that I’ve experienced. And so the ones that I was willing to share were the ones that couldn’t be avoided and, I guess, were the most important. Maybe I’m fooling myself. The play was well received, so I didn’t have the experience of Oh, that sucked. Right. Why am I doing this play?

twi-ny: Who talked you into this?!

rt: Who let me do this thing?

Let’s take that idea of writing and switch over to Prayer for the French Republic, which is exquisitely written. The language is so beautiful. What was the rehearsal process like?

rt: Well, it started actually in August of 2019, when Josh had been commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club to write a play. He came in with his finished draft and we did a reading of it, prepandemic and in-person. They hand delivered the scripts to everybody’s homes. They bicycled around Manhattan delivering the scripts because they didn’t want to email them. Josh was holding it close. I read it to myself and I thought, this is the best play I’ve read in ten years. And I mean, I haven’t read every play in the last ten years, but I’ve read a lot of plays and I’ve seen a lot of plays, and I thought, this is astoundingly amazing.

And so I was so excited to be part of the beginning of it. We did that reading and I think it confirmed for Manhattan Theatre Club and for Josh that he had latched on to something incredible. Then we did a couple of workshops that fall and then at the end of February of 2020. At that time I was reading Charles, actually.

Rich Topol is third guy from the right in cast and crew photo from Prayer for the French Republic opening night (photo © 2022 by Daniel Rader)

twi-ny: That’s really interesting to me, because you fit so well as Patrick.

rt: Yeah, I know. I was like, No, no, no. When they said, Will you read Patrick? I was like, No, no, no, no, no. I love Charles. No, no, please don’t. They’re like, To be honest, Charles should be, if not actually North African, at least more Sephardic, more Middle Eastern. And so I was like, Okay, fine.

Now, of course, I’m totally madly in love with Patrick and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We did a workshop right before the pandemic hit in-person. And Josh had done some incredible things. And that’s when [director David] Cromer came on board. We’re already verklempt about it. So then the pandemic hit and immediately I got the virus.

The show closed on March 12. I had symptoms on the ides of March, on the 15th of March, and I was in bed for nineteen days with Covid-19.

twi-ny: So it was bad.

rt: It was miserable. I didn’t have it like Danny Burstein; I didn’t have to go to the hospital. Or Mark Blum, a lovely man who lost his life to it. And so it was the worst it could be without being bad. And then the symptoms were gone. We have a place upstate that we escaped too, and I got a call two days later from my agents. I’m like, Why is my agent calling me? The business is entirely shut down.

And she said, You just got an offer from Manhattan Theatre Club for Prayer for the French Republic. They want to do a workshop in July and then we’ll go into rehearsal in September and run till Christmas. And I thought, Oh, that’s perfect. This is the kind of play that should be running during the election. It felt to me that it was really important that this play be put up during the election. And then, of course, a month later, they’re, like, Yeah, we’re not going to do the workshop in July. But we’re still on track for the fall. And then a month later, it’s, Yeah, we’re not going to do the play in September. It’ll be sometime in 2021. We don’t know when but we’re still committed to doing the play.

And then we did a couple of Zoom workshops. We would do a weeklong workshop with the first act of the play, then the second act. And then another few months later we did the third. So we had a lot of time processing it with Josh and helping him wrangle this epic piece into what you saw. Then we got into the rehearsal space in December. And for those of us who’d been with it for two years, we’re like, Oh my God, we’re finally getting to do it. But still there was that sense of, Who’s producing a new eleven-person play, with nobody famous? It doesn’t have any songs —

twi-ny: And it’s about the Holocaust.

rt: Exactly. So kudos to them for sticking with it. And putting it up and investing in it, saying, I’m sorry, this is too important. We’re going to put this play up. We started first day of rehearsal learning about the Covid protocols, getting tested regularly.

twi-ny: Masked?

rt: We were wearing masks around the table. And then when we started up on our feet, we were unmasked, for those who were comfortable with that. And then one of our stage managers tested positive, and luckily she didn’t give it to anybody else. But at that point we’re like, Okay, we’re just wearing masks the whole time. We do not want to be shut down.

So this was the middle of December now, right before Christmas, and shows were going down left and right. We’re like, You know what, it’s not worth it. We do not want to shut this play down. Here we have been waiting for so long to do it. Let’s do what we can. And there were conversations among the cast about, Well, what do we do at home? Some of us have children and partners, but there was a real commitment to being safe so that we could get it up on our feet. And then Josh tested positive right before tech. And so actually the last few days of rehearsal and through tech, he watched the play like this.

twi-ny: On Zoom?

rt: There was a computer open and his computerized voice would come through. And again, he didn’t give it to anybody else. And then the testing protocols, we’re getting tested every day, and you can’t come into the room until you’ve tested negative, and, knock wood, that’s been it.

For the last six and a half weeks, we have been safe and we’ve been able to do it. And audiences have come. I am pleasantly surprised at how many hundreds of people are coming to see the show every day. I had seen a number of shows when I came back from Maine, and some had nobody in the audience and some were jam packed.

twi-ny: It’s been very strange. I went to a concert where everybody had to be masked and there were some empty seats, but it was pretty much sold out. But then I went to a hockey game and sixteen thousand people are screaming, no masks, lots of eating and drinking.

rt: Yeah. And I’m not going to any of that stuff. I did go see Hot Tuna and David Bromberg.

twi-ny: I love Bromberg.

rt: I looooove Bromberg.

twi-ny: How was he?

rt: He was great, for a seventy-year-old man. He was beautiful. He was really amazing. It was a really great time.

I’ve been to some plays where I’m sitting right next to total strangers and everybody has their mask on, and this was the same. Everybody did keep their masks on, but there were some drinking and eating. So we’ve been careful and thoughtful and fortunate, and I hope we continue to be so. Because it’s a great joy to do this play. It is a really challenging piece of theater and really satisfying to act in.

Rich Topol poses with a hot car on set of EPIX series Godfather of Harlem

twi-ny: Throughout your career, and especially more recently, you’ve played a lot of Jews: Sam Feinschreiber in Awake & Sing, Fritz Haber in Genius: Einstein, Lemml in Indecent, and now Patrick, who is a nonreligious Jew. Are you Jewish, or is it just a coincidence that you play a lot of Jews?

rt: I was born a Jew. I got bar mitzvahed. I think of myself as Jew-ish. I was in The Chosen a couple of times [There’s a knock at the door and Topol gets up to answer it, then returns.] That’s the exterminator, not exterminating Jews but exterminating bugs that Nazis would think are like Jews.

I’ve also actually played a lot of Jewish narrators who step into the play. I don’t think I’m as extreme as Patrick; Patrick is a Jew who doesn’t know anything about his Judaism and is happy to not know anything about his Judaism and is somebody who thinks of organized religion as what he says in the play, which is “bullshit.”

twi-ny: Which the character Molly agrees with.

rt: Right. I don’t subscribe there. But I’m also not religious. I think of myself as spiritual and, not to be too woo-woo, I believe in the earth. I’m a tree worshiper. I’m a tree hugger. Where I feel most soulful and spiritual is when I’ve climbed a mountain and I feel small in relation to a large, amazing thing. That’s the way I connect to religion. I think that most of the major religions are about feeling good to be small under the umbrella of something that’s bigger than our oneness, that connects us all.

twi-ny: I felt that that Josh really attacked the numerous angles of how to look at anti-Semitism and Israel and American Jewry. He covered everything. And without, I think, insulting anyone and without becoming didactic and preachy.

rt: He does a great job of giving everybody a valid argument. He’s really, really, really kind to all his characters. And thoughtful in allowing them to be really articulate people who have really strong opinions, and those opinions are different. And I think that’s one of the greatest things about the play, because it leaves the audience getting to consider those ideas that you’ve mentioned from a lot of perspectives. No, not from all perspectives, but certainly from a lot of perspectives within the Jewish community.

I’m always curious about what my non-Jewish friends who come and see the show think of it. I feel like the Jews, the Jews get it, the New York Jews get it, or they have really strong opinions about it.

twi-ny: Jon Stewart would ask, is it too Jewy?

rt: I have asked that of my non-Jewish friends. I’ve actually asked that of some of my Jewish friends too. Is this too Jewy? Is it just Jewy enough? Or is it not? The ones who are not Jews often say how the Jews in the play are just a specific example of the larger issue of otherness.

Look, we live in a world where the hate for other has been unleashed. And so what to do about that? If you’re a WASP from white privilege, maybe you look at this play and think, like Patrick, What’s the big deal, you know? Even those people understand, given what we’ve lived with, at least certainly for the last few years. But the larger questions that Josh asks in the play relate to almost everyone.

twi-ny: If Lukas were still around to see you in the show, would he be happy with your piano playing?

rt: I think he would be disappointed. And I’m slightly disappointed myself too, because I knew I was going to do this part for a long time and I knew that these songs were in the piece. But I feel like he shouldn’t be a better piano player than I am in this play. He doesn’t take over the family business. He shouldn’t be a lounge singer. I sing well, and maybe I’m justifying, but I feel like I play and sing just well enough but not too well for who he is. I love the progression of the piano in the play. It goes from Molly just clinking one note to me playing something schematic to Peyton [Lusk] playing that lovely Chopin piece to the end; the piano has a journey too. It’s a symbol, a metaphor for the journey of our family.

Rich Topol meets Yogi Berra on opening night of Bronx Bombers (photo © David Gordon)

twi-ny: Okay, for my last question, I have a sort of bone to pick with you. You were a Mets fan, then you switched over to the Yankees. I mean, come on.

rt: Did I say that out loud somewhere?

twi-ny: I have my sources.

rt: Actually, it sort of timed out pretty well, you know? Because when I became a Yankees fan, the Yankee sucked. It’s interesting because it connects to the father thing.

My father died in 1975; I don’t remember whether I jumped ship in ’74 or ’75. I know I was a Mets fan in ’73, and then we moved, and my next-door neighbor was a Yankees fan. And I wanted to be his friend.

twi-ny: Right before Reggie.

rt: Exactly. So you can’t pick a bone with me if it was because my father had just died and my next-door neighbor was a Yankees fan. The Mets had been to the World Series, right?

twi-ny: Yes they had, with Yogi Berra as manager. You played Yogi in Bronx Bombers. I think a lot of people forget that. I met him once at a Mickey Mantle Foundation dinner at Gracie Mansion. He was by himself and I went over to him and said, I’m going to ask you something that no one probably ever asks you about. And I asked him about managing the ’73 Mets. He looked up, put on a big smile, and said in that Yogi way, “No one’s asked me about that in years. So I’ll tell you.” And he told me about how much fun it was doing that.

rt: That’s when I was a Mets fan. That was Buddy Harrelson, Wayne Garrett, Tommie Agee, Jerry Grote. I’m a lefty, so Tug McGraw was my hero.

twi-ny: So you played Yogi, and then you met him on opening night of the show. What was that like?

rt: He was really sweet and really happy to be there and to be seeing this play with his wife, Carmen, having this stuff brought to life.

TWI-NY TALK: SARA FELLINI (SPIT&VIGOR: ECTOPLASM)

spit&vigor’s Ectoplasm opens January 13 at the Players Theatre (photo by Nick Thomas)

ECTOPLASM
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal St. between West Third & Bleecker Sts.
Wednesday – Sunday, January 13 – February 6, $52-$99
www.spitnvigor.com

Sara Fellini is proud of being old school, but that doesn’t mean she’s old-fashioned. The actress, playwright, director, and amateur historian started the New York City–based spit&vigor theater company in 2015 with executive producer Adam Belvo, “dedicated to makeshift, skin-of-your-teeth, ad hoc theater — bringing modern voices and perspectives to the wild, chaotic, irreverent, burlesque roots of theater.”

The company has performed such works as Casey Wimpee’s The Brutes, about the three Booth brothers staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, at the Players Club, which was founded by Edwin Booth; Fellini’s NEC SPE / NEC METU, in which Fellini portrayed seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi and Belvo played Caravaggio, at the Center at West Park; Fellini’s The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, a period piece about the death of a real-life Dublin madam in 1762 and the riot that followed; and Thomas Kee’s Mary’s Little Monster, about Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley. During the pandemic, they created the site-specific Luna Eclipse, which was livestreamed using one camera from the Center at West Park.

Next up for spit&vigor is Ectoplasm, running January 13 through February 6 at the Players. (The opening was delayed more than a week because of Covid.) Written and directed by Fellini, the phantasmagoric show is set in 1912 around a séance involving a famous magician, a spiritual medium, a madame, and an uninvited guest. The title refers to the eerie white substance, supposedly spiritual energy, that would emerge from the mouths of psychics as they contacted the deceased.

Below Fellini discusses her fascination with history, creating theater during the coronavirus crisis, taking risks, and more.

twi-ny: What was your initial reaction to the March 2020 pandemic lockdown?

sara fellini: Initially, I just absolutely could not fathom it. I just didn’t believe we’d go into lockdown. My reference point at that time was SARS, so I thought the panic would die down and we would continue on as we were. spit&vigor had two productions coming up at that time — as a small company, we can’t always control where or when we produce because we have to go where residencies are offered, so through no lack of desire on our part we hadn’t actually produced anything for a while and we had spent the better part of the year prepping for the productions at the New Ohio, and then our off-Broadway debut in March and May of 2020, respectively.

I could not imagine a world in which shows would be canceled. Before Covid, I’d never even heard of a rehearsal being canceled, and now two shows of ours were dropped in a matter of months. My entire worldview was changed.

twi-ny: The company is very much about site-specific, immersive productions. What were you working on at the time that couldn’t proceed?

sf: At the New Ohio, we were working on an “embedded” version of The Wake of Dorcas Kelly. We use the term embedded to mean that the audience is kind of sitting inside the brothel, like flies on the wall, watching the production. The actors don’t see or interact with the audience, but they’re very up-close and personal. So we were going to re-create the brothel inside of the New Ohio.

Then, at the Players Theatre, which is a proscenium, we were expanding our vision to create a diorama-esque version of another “embedded” play we’ve produced several times in the past, Mary’s Little Monster by Thomas Kee. We’ve produced that play before at the Mudlark Public Theatre, a one-room puppet theater in New Orleans owned by the genius Pandora Gastelum, and at Torn Page, the historic home of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

The Players is a great space to do very intimate-feeling shows even though it’s a larger theater, because it’s very long, and you kind of get sucked into the stage. The stage becomes your entire vision when you sit facing forward. So we were planning on doing a very intimate production of a very intimate and sultry play, with a lot of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll . . . which now with Covid restrictions is an absolute NO for a while. Even if we staged it quite safely, I don’t think audiences are ready to see that kind of closeness onstage for a while.

twi-ny: Was Luna Eclipse already in process as an in-person show?

sf: No, I wrote Luna Eclipse as a response to the pandemic. I’ve always wanted to write a walk-through play (in person), and the pandemic gave me an opportunity to stretch that muscle. Luna Eclipse was a series of monologues exploring inherited mental illness (and the different historic perceptions of mental illness — are you a mystic visionary, or a failure to society?) through one family’s history, going all the way back to Roman times.

So I wrote the monologues, and we staged it at the Center at West Park as part of their incredible residency program. We did a lot of work to film the production, and livestream it, as a walk-through experience — like you were walking through the tunnel of time and encountering the different experiences of all of these ghosts. We essentially created a one-shot film in the vein of Russian Ark and 1917, except we did it live, as theater artists are wont to do.

Ectoplasm centers around a séance involving a famous magician (photo by Claire Daly)

twi-ny: Did you watch a lot of online theater during the lockdown?

sf: Um, no. I didn’t watch a lot of online theater. I hate to admit that, but I really dislike online theater. It’s so safe. And it completely misses the mark of what theater is supposed to be. I understand the impulse people have to stay safe physically, but online theater seems safe emotionally and I can’t really abide that. But you’re also talking to a person who doesn’t really like movies, either, so I’m already biased. We did Luna Eclipse, and we also did some live Zoom readings of classic TV shows for fun, but I am glad to be back in a theater and I wouldn’t ever really do online theater again in a serious way.

twi-ny: There have been a slew of recent works about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Frankenstein, including s&v’s Mary’s Little Monster. What do you think it is about her that has stimulated such interest in the past few years?

sf: In my historical research, I’ve noticed there are cycles of time where people suddenly become interested in women creators. The story of a young woman in competition with titans of literature Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley is irresistible, especially when you factor in their libertine sexual practices.

I think Mary Shelley herself interests people today for a few reasons: because she was the daughter of the legendary feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which shows a writing dynasty we rarely see through the mother’s line. She seems to have been sexually liberated in a way that we think we understand today, and she seems uniquely forgotten because her (male) creation is so ubiquitous while her name is not as well known. I think that’s a little bit of a false impression because fewer people could tell you that John Polidori rewrote the vampyre legend for popular Western culture, and, off the top of my head, I have no idea who created the mummy legend.

[Ed. note: Jane Louden’s novel The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century was published in 1827, while Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, about an archaeologist trying to revive a mummy, came out in 1903, six years after Dracula.]

Writer-director Sara Fellini used models during rehearsals for Ectoplasm (photo courtesy spit&vigor theatre company)

twi-ny: You returned to in-person shows first with Dorcas Kelly, then Hit Your Mark / Die Beautiful. What was that transition like?

sf: It was incredible to be back in a theater, with people. I wouldn’t ever go back. The first few rehearsals were very emotional.

twi-ny: How has the omicron variant, which is spreading throughout New York City (I now have it too), impacted the rehearsal process for Ectoplasm?

sf: I’m so sorry to hear that, I hope you recover quickly!

We have had to be extremely creative with rehearsals. Around the holidays, we moved rehearsals to Zoom to restrict exposure, which was torture. I created a replica set out of cardboard and used little rubber penguins as actors to go over staging, which was a nightmare. But I’m glad we did it because two of our cast members actually contracted omicron and had to continue to Zoom into rehearsals as they quarantined, even while the rest of us met in person.

Beyond that, we are testing frequently, hiring swings, which we’ve never really done before, and just doing our best and working hard, both to create a beautiful production and to keep everyone safe.

twi-ny: You also have a bent for historical re-creations, with plays involving such real-life figures as Shelley, the Booth family, Caravaggio and Gentileschi, Kelly, and now Houdini. Were you always into history?

sf: Yes, I’ve always been into history. I have trouble relating to the modern world. Ever since we started spending most of our time online, people have become irritable and impatient, turning the slightest friction or conflict into all-out war, zero to sixty, and it is so frustrating to me.

So, while a lot of the ideas and prejudices of the past are nonsense and based in ignorance and inexperience, I do think there’s a lot to be learned from people who spent all of their time noticing, negotiating, and navigating other human beings. We need that human interaction as much as we need food or water — and it’s becoming harder and harder to find it, because even when you’re in the same room as someone, after the Covid pandemic (and the pandemic of computers), people turn their faces away or fidget and squirm when they’re in the presence of other humans, myself included.

I want to rediscover our shared humanity, and I think one way to do so is turning back the clocks and finding the root source. If we combine the social aspect of the past with modern perspectives on gender, race, sexual orientation, we could have an incredibly rad world to live in.

Sara Fellini checks out part of the set for new work at Players Theatre (photo courtesy spit&vigor theatre company)

twi-ny: What other historical figures might play a part in future s&v productions?

sf: I’m developing a play at the moment about the women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, which is turning into a real romp.

twi-ny: You are a writer, director, costume designer, and actor. How do you juggle the four disciplines? When you are writing something, do you know immediately whether you will direct and/or star in it?

sf: I write plays for our company, so I generally have a good idea of who I want to be in it, what I want them to be wearing (from our costume stock), and how I would like the play to look. I think more writers should write like this, in a practical way — it’s very Shakespearean, or old Victorian theater.

A lot of theater productions seem a lot like film sets, with bloated production personnel and everybody in niche roles. We prefer to have an intimate team working together to create something personal. It’s riskier, because it means you take on a lot of the responsibility when something goes wrong and you can’t hide in your niche, but I think art is supposed to be risky, and I hope we don’t lose that mentality after all this time.