twi-ny talks

TWI-NY TALK: JAMAR ROBERTS OF ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Jamar Roberts will perform new solo on December 9 in final appearance as Ailey dancer (photo by Paul Kolnik)

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 1-19, $29-$159
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Jamar Roberts has spent nearly half his life with Alvin Ailey. First with Ailey II, then with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since 2002, the thirty-nine-year-old Miami-born Bessie Award winner was named the company’s first resident choreographer in 2019; has created such works as 2016’s Gêmeos, 2017’s Members Don’t Get Weary, 2019’s Ode, and 2020’s A Jam Session for Troubling Times, which was filmed on the roof of the troupe’s midtown studio at the Joan Weill Center for Dance.

During the pandemic, Roberts also created two short films for the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series, the fierce and unrelenting solo Cooped and A Chronicle of a Pivot at a Point in Time, a piece for five dancers in the corner of a studio, their shadows echoing hauntingly against one wall; both feature a tense electronic score by David Watson. In addition, Roberts debuted his fifteen-minute solo, Morani/Mungu (Black Warrior/Black God), at City Center’s 2021 digital Fall for Dance program.

On December 9, as part of AAADT’s annual winter season at City Center, Roberts will perform for the final time; he is retiring from dancing with the six-minute solo You Are the Golden Hour That Would Soon Evanesce, accompanied by pianist and visual artist Jason Moran playing his composition “Only the Shadow Knows (Honey).” On December 3, Ailey premiered Roberts’s mesmerizing Holding Space, which was first seen virtually. The twenty-four-minute piece for thirteen dancers, set to an electronic score by Canadian musician Tim Hecker and featuring scenic design and costumes by Roberts, explores healing and presence and is highlighted by a movable onstage open cube in which dancers perform brief solos. At the debut, I was sitting across the aisle from Roberts, whose eyes were zeroed in on the stage every second.

I spoke with the easily likable Roberts, who smiles and laughs often, over Zoom about his transition from dancer to choreographer, the future of virtual presentations, his newfound love of jazz, and more.

Jamar Roberts discusses the pandemic and his career during Zoom interview (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: When you started at Ailey, did you ever anticipate transitioning to choreography? Not all dancers want to become choreographers.

jamar roberts: No, not at all. When I got into the Ailey company, I wanted to be a fashion designer; that was the main thing on my list, and then there were three or four other things. Choreography was, like, number ten.

twi-ny: What were some of the others?

jr: Illustrator, animator, meteorologist, those kinds of things.

twi-ny: So what was your initial feeling when you were named the first resident choreographer in the company’s history?

jr: I was like, cool, only because they had hinted at it before, so I kind of felt it coming, but it didn’t really hit or register until I was well into my second piece.

twi-ny: What’s it like choreographing for your friends and colleagues?

jr: Oh, it’s great. I don’t really like the hierarchy, you know, where it’s like, I am the choreographer, I sit in the chair, you listen to me and you do what I say. I don’t really like that, so I get on the floor and I do the movements too, so for me it’s great because it feels like more of a collaborative effort, that we’re all in it trying to make the same thing. I always tell them I know everything and I know nothing at the same time. I can get the conversation started, but by the end of the day, you’re going to be the ones onstage dancing the work, so your input is essential.

twi-ny: During the pandemic you’ve been incredibly active and prolific. When did you first decide to forge ahead with virtual works?

jr: I didn’t make a decision; I would just get a commission and I would accept it. So I guess the answer to that would be when I got the first commission, which was the Guggenheim Works & Process virtual commission [Cooped.]

twi-ny: For that commission, you’re performer, choreographer, and film director. You really threw yourself right into the whole thing.

jr: Yeah, but if you make something, you’re going to have an opinion about how it should look, what environment it should be in, so the director part for me wasn’t anything more special or significant than the way that you would direct things in the studio, when you make a dance for the theater.

twi-ny: You could have put the iPhone somewhere else and not captured the same claustrophobic effect of confinement.

jr: It’s true. I think that artmaking is part, what, 20% skill, and the rest is taste; the majority of it is taste, and problem solving, and if you’re a person that’s making things and you’re relatively bright and you have a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn’t — and some of us have that to varying degrees — you just trust your instincts and you go. I am no filmmaker, although I appreciate the sentiment; I’m not a director, but I’m an artist, I’m a person who likes creating, I’m a person who likes to see what I like to see, and if other people like to see what my eye is drawn to, then that’s great. But I’m not really here to put a title on anything. I’m just here to enjoy what it is I’m doing and feel good about it when it’s done.

twi-ny: The reaction to Cooped and so many of your other works has been phenomenal; people do want to see what you want to see. You followed Cooped with Morani/Mungu (Black Warrior/Black God), an intimate solo, and then the exhilarating Jam Session for Troubling Times, which you filmed with a team of dancers outside, although the dancers weren’t allowed to touch each other. What was it like to finally work with dancers, get out in the fresh air, yet still have this barrier, this space between each performer?

jr: When somebody tells you that you have to make a dance but they can’t touch each other, immediately it’s the end of discussion. You just have to deal with the cards you’ve been dealt. I guess at that point I just figured out, well, how am I going to do this. I didn’t really think too much about it because it was what it was.

twi-ny: It was so exciting to watch because just seeing people dance outside in this space was freeing for the viewer too. Your work during the pandemic was very much about space: Cooped is claustrophobic, Jam Session is on the Ailey rooftop, Chronicle has the dancers in a corner, and then with Holding Space you actually have a huge open cage that’s both threatening and liberating. Did these spatial elements progress naturally, or were you looking for confining imagery?

jr: The only one where I specifically looked for confining imagery was for the film Cooped. Everything else happened naturally. I think that because it happened naturally speaks to the kind of person I am. I know some people had a hard time during quarantine, stuck in their apartments, but I actually found it quite . . . great. There’s an aspect of my personality that feels very comfortable at home in confined spaces. I’m also six-four, so I’m always forced into confined spaces, like cars or airplanes. I don’t know, maybe subconsciously there’s a thing there.

twi-ny: Well, I’m much shorter than you and I don’t feel quite as confined, I think, as you do. What part of the city were you quarantining in?

jr: I was in Inwood. We were on tour in Texas in March 2020, and it got shut down. I was at home for about a week and then went to St. Louis to try to ride it out with some friends there. Cooped was made in the basement of their home. So the majority of it was in Missouri, and back and forth to New York.

twi-ny: A lot of your work, prepandemic, pre–George Floyd, and then after, is about the Black body, gun violence, racial injustice, and how Covid-19 disproportionately impacted communities of color while also celebrating, as you’ve said, “strength, beauty, and resilience.” How do you achieve this without expressing these elements explicitly?

jr: I think it’s because I’m a nice guy. [smiles] I mean, when the environment and the things that are going on around you are so heavy, you don’t have to say that much. For me, it really becomes about setting the tone for the moment and then on top of that just doing what dance does, which is inspire. Do you know what I mean? We inspire through images, beautiful images, beautiful movement. The rest is baked into the moment that we’re in.

twi-ny: On December ninth, you’ll be performing for what will be the final time, dancing You Are the Golden Hour That Would Soon Evanesce. Why did you decide now is the right time?

Jamar Roberts’s Holding Space is highlight of Ailey winter season at City Center (photo by Christopher Duggan)

jr: I decided now because my body is at the point where it can no longer keep up with the demands of a full-time professional dance career.

twi-ny: How do you think you’ll feel when it’s over? Are you going to be relieved, excited, sad, or do you have no idea?

jr: I don’t really think it’s the closing of a chapter; I think it’s the opening of a new one. This’ll probably be only the second time that I’ve ever been seen onstage doing my own work. I don’t know, I definitely won’t be crying, and I won’t feel sad at all.

twi-ny: As we come out of the lockdown and theaters are open and dancers can touch each other, do you anticipate making future virtual works or will you be sticking to in-person presentations?

jr: Why not both? I hope in the future they’re not called virtual pieces anymore, that they’ll just be called films. Because the word virtual makes it sound like it’s the B-plan. I think it’s all the same. You can have a virtual piece onstage — just throw a camera on the dancers as they’re dancing and have that be displayed. It’s all tools in the same bag; it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Yeah, I think dance has to think a little big bigger?

twi-ny: When you’re not involved with dance, and it seems like you’re always involved with dance, if you have any free time, what do you do?

jr: I try to connect with my friends and the people I love. I try to be a normal person and go to the clubs. I go to dinner and go and see shows. This past summer — summer in New York is always great because you can go and see so much music, jazz festivals in particular, jazz clubs, seeing live music and other performers. I try to keep my head in what’s going on.

twi-ny: You weren’t always a jazz fan, were you? [Roberts has set pieces to compositions by Moran, John Coltrane, Don Pullen, Nina Simone, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie in addition to Fela Kuti and the Last Poets.]

jr: No, I grew up with Brandy, and Britney Spears, and Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé, Alanis Morissette, Björk, and all that music. My family never played jazz in the house; it was probably some gospel music, old sermons from the ’50s, and that’s it. But I had to learn it, I had to teach myself that stuff because I was dancing these works that Alvin Ailey choreographed, and they were all to jazz music. And if I wanted to be able to interpret that work authentically, I had to know what the hell it is I was listening to, where it came from, what was happening at the time in which it was made, just so that I could as a performer come across as authentic, with conviction. I went down the rabbit hole, I guess.

TWI-NY TALK: MICHAEL DORF / CITY WINERY

Entrepreneur and impresario Michael Dorf takes a much-deserved break during the pandemic (photo courtesy Michael Dorf)

City Winery New York
25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St.
646-751-6033
citywinery.com
michaeldorf.com

In Indulge Your Senses: Scaling Intimacy in a Digital World, music entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael Dorf writes about opening night at his new club, City Winery: “By then, the smartphone and social-media revolution was underway, and I realized why music fans were showing up in droves. Like me, they had inadvertently let technology disrupt their connection to music — and now they were coming to City Winery to get away from their devices. They were eager to escape their hermetic digital bubble, excited to watch their favorite musicians pluck real guitar strings and slam actual drum skins while also nourishing their other senses — the dramatic sight of a legendary performer up close, the aroma of the winery, the taste of great food and wine, the touch of a nearby friend. . . . Man, it feels great to be back in the real world.”

The Wisconsin-born longtime New Yorker and married father of three wrote those words in 2019 about a 2008 New Year’s Eve concert by Joan Osborne, but he could just as easily have written them today, as the country emerges from a lengthy pandemic lockdown. The amiable and driven Dorf started the much-loved Knitting Factory in 1986 with Louise Spitzer, when he was a twenty-three-year-old Washington University psychology and business graduate. (“We had no idea what we were doing!” he has admitted.) In 2008 he opened City Winery on Varick St., an intimate venue where fans came for food, wine, and music. Among the many acts who played there were Richard Thompson, Kasey Chambers, Robyn Hitchcock, the Mountain Goats, Living Colour, Bob Mould, Nanci Griffith, Eric Burdon, Los Lonely Boys, Lucinda Williams, Todd Rundgren, Steve Earle, Ian Hunter, Ed Sheeran, and Prince. Dorf has also presented “The Music Of” concerts at Carnegie Hall, paying tribute to such musicians as Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, the Who, and Joni Mitchell with all-star lineups, raising money for music education in schools.

In 2020, just before the coronavirus crisis stopped the world, City Winery moved to a thirty-two-thousand-square-foot space on Pier 57 in Hudson River Park. During the pandemic, Dorf and City Winery hosted special livestreamed holiday concerts for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Father’s Day and virtual seders for Passover. Early on, Dorf, who also runs City Vineyard, became a vocal advocate for the reopening of bars, restaurants, and music venues, citing numerous inconsistencies and incongruities in government regulations. Following strict CDC guidelines, City Winery is back in business, with music, food, and wine flowing. The upcoming schedule includes Suzanne Vega, John Waters, Betty, Los Lobos, Aimee Mann, and David Broza.

On December 13, City Winery and the Town Hall are joining forces for the seventh annual John Henry’s Friends benefit to raise funds for the educational needs of autistic children; the concert features Steve Earle and the Dukes with special guests Bruce Springsteen, Rosanne Cash, Willie Nile, and the Mastersons.

Dorf recently shared his thoughts with twi-ny on coming out of the lockdown, charity concerts, the future of livestreamed shows, and how great it feels to be back in the real world.

twi-ny: You were one of the leading advocates for reopening New York City, especially entertainment venues. What were the major issues that you felt the government wasn’t getting?

michael dorf: We all agreed, we needed to do things safe. But in the bureaucratic fear in the beginning, there was no practical thinking around seating vs. standing, paid tickets vs. just free music, etc. We wanted to take the smart Dr. Fauci approach to the gatherings, whether it was rapid testing, social distancing, and provide real world producer input so that we could follow what was being advised but dovetailed for live performances.

twi-ny: A lot of people like to knock Sen. Schumer, but he really pushed Save Our Stages. What was his involvement like?

md: People like to bash everyone and that is unfortunate. Chuck Schumer and several others helped enormously to push for our industry. He understood live music, theater, dance, and the impact it was having, not just on our venues, but on all our people, the ecosystem of the live entertainment world. I have tremendous respect for him because of this.

twi-ny: Your virtual seders were a blast. Going forward, will you do some kind of hybrid Passover?

md: Breaking bread (in this case matzah) around the table with other human beings is the essence of the seder. Now, my Passover event, which I’ve been doing in New York City for over twenty-five years now, is certainly not your normal seder. So, I think a hybrid is our future, three hundred people live in on our room in NYC and another few thousand around the globe.

twi-ny: You also hosted several special holiday streaming shows with artists from around the country, and you have livestreams coming up with Jacob Whitesides, Sa-Roc, the Empty Pockets, and Woofstock. Will you be doing more of that in the future, or do you see that coming to an eventual end?

md: Again, our business is to create live, intimate gatherings of people and sell them food, wine, great service, and an experience they will remember. We can’t do that as well virtually (especially the selling of wine), but certainly when it is practical for us to add the livestream for shows and events so that people who can’t travel to any of our venues can partially experience the event.

twi-ny: When you first reopened, what was the reaction of artists and audiences? Was there any initial hesitancy on the part of either or both?

md: Audiences are still a bit hesitant, especially as we live in a world where breakthrough cases happen, even with all our strict protocols of vaccine-only admissions and masks for all unless eating and drinking. Nevertheless, people miss the magic of live entertainment and when you get to it, it is an emotional experience that one misses. Artists are so grateful to be working again and audiences grateful to be entertained. Together, we are seeing lovefests every night with very happy fans and artists.

twi-ny: Were those reactions different at your various locations? Or was the situation pretty much the same in Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Philly, the Hudson Valley, and DC?

md: It is similar. In Nashville, perhaps a little weirder given the local political insanity and freer laws. But for the most part, we have worked hard to push smart policies on admission and staff throughout the pandemic. It’s not over either.

twi-ny: No, it’s not. City Winery is renowned for its vintages. Has the pandemic, as well as climate change, affected your vineyards?

md: Well, thanks for the positive on the wine. The pandemic has only made working in the winery and harvest more difficult from a labor perspective. However, global warming, the fires and temperature out west and in Europe, has severely affected the crop, the yield. The lack of water has made some vineyards not be able to deliver their grapes. It is only going to get more difficult for a supply of grapes, and prices on wine will be going up.

twi-ny: Are you loving your new location on the Hudson? What do you think of your neighbor, Little Island?

md: Love our new location; the entire neighborhood is filled with the arts — architecture, visual arts, cool businesses, and, yes, Little Island is very cool. We are also near the Whitney Museum, the Meatpacking District, the High Line, and so many other cool buildings.

twi-ny: City Winery has always put on terrific benefit shows, raising money for music education in schools with your annual “The Music Of” concerts at Carnegie Hall. Next up is Carly Simon in March, with Darlene Love, Livingston Taylor, Bettye Lavette, Jimmy Webb, and more to be announced. Can you share who might be feted in the future?

md: I’m a kid in a candy shop, thinking about the future shows at Carnegie. The music of Stevie Wonder, CSN, Dolly Parton, U2, Sting, so many other great songwriters out there to do. There are so many artists that love them and want to pay homage to them. And there remains much-needed cash to the music programs that serve undersupported youth in schools around the country.

twi-ny: On December 13, you’re teaming up with the Town Hall for the seventh annual John Henry’s Friends Benefit, featuring Steve Earle & the Dukes and several of his amazing colleagues. What can you tell us about that show and the charity?

md: We have done this to support our friend Steve Earle, who is really the hero of this evening. His son is autistic and goes to the Keswell School, which this benefits. Steve makes the importance of this real by explaining to the audience the severity and challenges and why we need to support this program. It’s very powerful stuff, and this year’s show is going to blow people away. It feels great for all of us at City Winery to help raise these important funds.

twi-ny: You seem to have been going nonstop for decades; do you ever take a break? When you’re not at City Winery, what cultural things are you doing elsewhere?

md: I like to hike, need to hike. I like to golf, need to golf. I like wine, I like my kids, I like my friends. But I love what I do. I love creating spaces where people can gather, indulge their senses, and creating lasting memories. It keeps me going, and we have a lot more still to do and grow. Five new locations in 2022 and many more before I am done.

TWI-NY TALK: STEPHEN PETRONIO / PETRONIO’S PUNK PICKS AND OTHER DELIGHTS

Stephen Petronio leads an open rehearsal in preparation for La MaMa shows (photo by Paula Court)

PETRONIO’S PUNK PICKS AND OTHER DELIGHTS
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
The Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East Fourth St. between Second Ave. & Bowery
November 18-21, $21-$30
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
petron.io/event/lamama

At a recent open rehearsal streamed on Zoom, Newark-born, Manhattan-based choreographer Stephen Petronio said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to look back at some of those works from some of those smaller little gems that we love.” The result is “Petronio’s Punk Picks and Other Delights,” running November 18–21 at La MaMa. The evening consists of eleven short solos and duets, going back to 1993, set to songs by the Stranglers, the London Suede, Anohni, Nick Cave, Elvis Presley, Yoko Ono, Rufus Wainwright, and Radiohead, as well as Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre Du Printemps,” performed by Larissa Asebedo, Kris Lee, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Tiffany Ogburn, Ryan Pliss, Nicholas Sciscione, and Mac Twining. Petronio will also present the world premiere of Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s multimedia and then we hit the boundary where the sun’s wind ceases . . . , with music by LVDF, Heliopause, and Anne Müller.

Founded in 1984, the Stephen Petronio Company was one of the busiest troupes during the pandemic. Beaming in first from their individual homes, then gathering together at the Petronio Residency Center (PRC), a 175-acre haven in the Catskills, the tight-knit company performed new pieces, hosted online galas and master classes, put on a virtual season at the Joyce, and had a public birthday party for Petronio. Over that time, Petronio kept a quarantine journal that has been published in a deluxe hardcover limited edition, In Absentia, with lavish photos by Sarah Silver and Grant Friedman. In addition, Petronio is expanding his Bloodlines program, in which he restages classic works by such choreographers as Yvonne Rainer, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Trisha Brown, to include a “futures” section that so far has featured new commissions by Davalois Fearon and Mercer.

While preparing for SPC’s debut at La MaMa, the always engaging and candid Petronio answered questions about choreographing “when the world stopped,” returning to the stage, what music is on his current playlist, and more.

Stephen Petronio released the deluxe hardcover book In Absentia during the pandemic (photo by Sarah Silver)

twi-ny: Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious question: How does it feel to be back working in theaters? At your open rehearsal following Fall for Dance, you said “it was exciting and frightening and emotional.”

stephen petronio: It’s all of those things but particularly with this body of work, it’s like finally, we can really focus in with a microscope on some of the details that are the underpinnings of what is at the center of a particular body of work and the delicious focus of what we do in the studio.

twi-ny: SPC was one of the most active companies during the pandemic lockdown. How soon after March 2020 did you decide to forge ahead at such a pace online?

sp: I decided immediately because that’s my survival instinct. My legs kept moving and I felt that to stop, we would all be overwhelmed with uncertainty and fear. I thought it best to use our physical practice to keep us grounded.

twi-ny: How important was PRC to that decision?

sp: I don’t think we would have been able to do it without PRC. First of all, I had a completely safe space to work in and I immediately began teaching classes on Zoom to the dancers just as a way of being together and then we began making on Zoom as a way of staying in touch with our practice. Then I began to realize that we could actually make stuff to show other people. I could only do that because of PRC. And then when I was able to work out the finances, I was able to bring the company up fairly regularly for a few weeks at a time across those endless months of lockdown. We also quickly realized that we could be a haven for other choreographers who could make it up to us.

twi-ny: You really took advantage of everything that Zoom has to offer. What was it like choreographing such virtual works as #GimmeShelter and Are You Lonesome Tonight that way?

sp: A complete nightmare! I hadn’t seen Zoom before the pandemic and it took me time to understand the lag time in relationship to making movement with music. And I also began to see many other people working on Zoom and some it was really fun and inventive and I was looking for a way to use the technology in a method that was true to my own work.

twi-ny: You also celebrated your sixty-fifth birthday over Zoom; did you have a good time? It was fun to watch.

sp: I had an amazing time and it was very emotional because it was such a lonely and isolated time; it was really fun to be with people in a very relaxed way.

twi-ny: You kept a journal during the pandemic that you’ve released as a deluxe book, In Absentia. What spurred you to keep that kind of diary?

sp: When the world stopped, I began to do all the things that I do that remind me of myself, remind me of my body, my thoughts, my emotional life, and so I went to writing as a natural response to check in with myself in a regular way. I did a memoir, Confessions of a Motion Addict, about ten years back and so a writing practice is not new to me and it seemed like such an important event that we were living through that I wanted to mark it in some way.

Jaqlin Medlock dances from her home during online presentation (photo courtesy Stephen Petronio Company)

twi-ny: My two favorite dancers during the lockdown were Sara Mearns and Jaqlin Medlock. (I named them Best Solo Dance Performance in the twi-ny Pandemic Awards, along with Jamar Roberts.) You have such an amazing rapport with Medlock, which was evident in your recent open rehearsal; what makes her the ideal SPC dancer?

sp: She is sharp as a razor, I’ve known her for over ten years so we’re so fluid together in terms of my thought process and language, and she’s incredibly determined to get things exactly the way she wants it. She’s a monster for details, and watching that [#GimmeShelter] solo come into focus up to the final recording was such a delight.

twi-ny: SPC performed at Fall for Dance at City Center, and next up is La MaMa. You’ve never performed there before, although I believe you’ve lived near there for a long time. What made you want to perform there this time around?

sp: I moved onto St. Marks Place in 1979 and lived there for many, many years. Normally, it’s hard for me to figure out the finances for my company’s performance in a theater of that size. My executive director, Jonas Klabin, was having drinks with the director of programming, Nicky Paraiso, of La MaMa at a performance and began to open up a discussion about it. Of course, I’ve known Nicky for years. But this is a time to do things that we really want to and let the economics fall as they may. La MaMa is such a gem of a place to perform and this is the perfect moment.

twi-ny: I love La MaMa, and I see Nicky all over town, always checking out what’s going on. “Petronio’s Punk Picks and Other Delights” consists of eleven numbers set to music by a wide range of artists. You’ve previously done an evening of songs by Nick Cave, Underland; if you could choreograph a whole album by anyone, what would it be? Is there a specific song you’d love to choreograph but haven’t been able to?

sp: Nick Cave was a highlight. I did a work to a catalog of Lou Reed songs [The Island of Misfit Toys], which was another miraculous moment in my life. I’ve been tempted to tackle Leonard Cohen’s body of work but his poetry is so dense that I’ve been hesitant. Leonard Cohen’s song “Democracy” is an anthem I’d love to have a go at!

Stephen Petronio walks down the outside of the Whitney as part of Trisha Brown retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: I would love to see that! What kind of music do you listen to when you’re not thinking about songs for dances?

sp: I’m listening to Bach a lot, Billie Eilish; I’m very fond of female vocalists in particular. Lana Del Rey has a new album out that’s pretty damn good. And I’m loving St. Vincent.

twi-ny: Now that you’ve embraced the virtual world, do you see the future of SPC as a hybrid one, or are you going to concentrate solely on in-person shows?

sp: I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to become hybridized. We jumped in and we’re in. But it’s so delicious to be back in front of an audience. And the shows at La MaMa are a total love letter to the people that have been following me over the years. It’s really fun to make a show that’s so much about the joy of the work that I’ve made with incredible dancers over the years and to music that I completely love. This is music that has moved me, and to pass it to this current generation of titan dancers seems just right. We’re still here!

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.

TWI-NY TALK: ANTHONY BARILE / 1-2-3 MANHUNT

Anthony Barile with Ilene Kristen in Tony DiMurro’s 1-2-3 Manhunt, opening October 10 at Theater for the New City

1-2-3 MANHUNT
Theater for the New City
155 First Ave. between Ninth & Tenth Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through October 24, $15-$18
theaterforthenewcity.net
www.123manhunt.com

“I really thought I had a place in telling stories in film or theater,” actor, restaurateur, Realtor, and kung fu instructor Anthony Barile says to me over Zoom. “People like me are needed. I feel I have a story to tell; I can portray a person like me who has a story to tell.”

I’ve known Barile since high school on Long Island, where he lettered in football and basketball; I never expected that all these years later, I’d be interviewing him about his performance in a play, Tony DiMurro’s 1-2-3 Manhunt, which opens October 10 at Theater for the New City. The show is set on a Lower East Side tenement roof and deals with Alex (Santo Fazio), an old school Italian American man returning to the neighborhood, and Alec (Chris Paul Morales), a Chinese American teenager dreaming of a career as a professional baseball player. Barile portrays Alex’s best friend, Frankie, which came relatively easy; in real life he’s best friends with Fazio, who he met in 1985. They last appeared onstage together in a 1994 revival of Michael Gazzo’s Hatful of Rain at the Actors Studio, helmed by original director Frank Corsaro, that attracted such luminaries as Norman Mailer and Shelley Winters.

Barile’s path to becoming an actor was a circuitous one.

“It was completely by accident,” the Brooklyn-born Barile explains. “I was going through a lot of changes at this particular point of my life. It was around 1990. I was in a long-term relationship that had ended, and, with that kind of life jolt, I decided to take the time for myself to explore things.”

He quit college the day Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died, drove a bread truck, then moved to Manhattan in the mid-’80s and started snapping a lot of pictures around the city. He took a photography class at SVA, a martial arts class — “I thought, I kinda like to fight, so this would be good” — and studied film production at NYU, a connection that led him to acting.

“A lot of friends I met, through my roommate at the time, were actors,” he remembers. “I was invited to a barbecue on the Fourth of July, and one of his friends was studying with Sandra Seacat. She was at this barbecue and got to speaking with me and invited me to her acting class. It was unrelated to acting — she wasn’t that kind of person. She’s a wonderful human being, a phenomenal acting coach; she was just interested by me. I don’t know, she embraced me. She was thinking, ‘This guy’s been through some stuff, he’s leaving his twenties — he should come to my class.’

“Because that’s what her classes were about, finding out who you are, in a healing way. I’m like, I don’t think so; it’s not really my thing. But then I’m thinking that if I want to work with actors in film, maybe it’s a good idea I understand how they think, how they operate, what the process is. So I go.

Former Three of Cups co-owners Anthony Barile and Santo Fazio reunite onstage for the first time in twenty-five years

“I still have my notes, my journal from that day — it was mandatory that you take notes. I read it every once in a while, and I was writing, ‘These people are nuts. They’re super self-indulgent and just out of their minds. This is an insane way to spend a day.’ But I continued in her class because I was fascinated. I’d go to her special workshops, where there would be people who would come from all over the country, some big names. I was never really starstruck; being a New Yorker and living in New York City, especially in the ’80s and then the ’90s, you see famous people all the time. But now I’m watching their process. It was amazing. And now she wants me involved, she wants me acting; she snuck it in on me.”

Barile, wearing a Mets hat and Pretenders T-shirt, shakes his head and laughs as he recalls what happened next.

“We’re doing all kinds of Chekhov pieces. Now, I’m going to be honest with you; I’d never read Chekhov. I don’t know who Chekhov is. This is not my world. Okay, I’ll read it. So I read it and I’m like, ‘Well, this is pretty crazy stuff. Do I understand this even? And then she gives me a scene partner, a name actor, and another friend of mine. We’re doing a scene from Kafka’s The Trial. Again, this is so foreign to me.

“The name actor is getting ready to audition for a major motion picture, so he’s there to get his chops together. So I go up to Sandra and I say, ‘Sandra, you think I should tell him that I’ve never acted before?’”

He laughs again. “And she’s like, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no. What’s acting? You’ll only make him nervous. There’s no reason for that. Just go, go live, go do the work I’m telling you to do, and go live this scene.’ So I did, and it was kind of phenomenal. So that was the beginning of the bug.”

Barile learned a lot more than acting from the workshops.

“As a human being, it was like an exorcism of my soul. We did dreamwork and numerology and method sensory work, we studied Indian philosophers and poets, Jungian psychology. It made me look at my life and go, ‘What has been going on?’”

Anthony Barile and Santo Fazio share a moment while appearing together in Hatful of Rain at the Actors Studio

His next teacher literally threw the book at him.

“I went on to study with Susan Batson — that was another insane experience where I wasn’t fully prepared for what I was walking into at all. The first time she saw me, she said to the other students, ‘Who’s the Anthony Quinn–looking motherfucker?’ It was an audition class; I didn’t know that. She would have us dance in a circle, speak our thoughts, and then she would write a monologue every day and have you perform it in front of a director and casting agent. Your job was to get the job.

“But she was so brutally tough. She threw things at me at times. She would sit in her apartment with her back against a bookcase. This one time, I remember, my character was supposed to cry in this emotional moment. And my crying was so phony that she just reached back, grabbed a book off the shelf, and flung it at me. I didn’t see it coming, so I got hit in the head by it. She’s like, ‘What the fuck is that? Don’t ever fucking do that in my fucking class again. Get the fuck out of here. If you really gotta cry, pull a hair out of your nose, but don’t do that shit.’

“I didn’t go back for weeks after that, but then I went back, and she tells me, ‘You’re either very brave or very stupid.” Barile also studied with such other prestigious teachers as Marcia Haufrecht and Sheila Gray.

In December 1992, Barile, Fazio, and a third partner had opened the Three of Cups, a Southern Italian restaurant on First Ave. Three of Cups cook Anthony Alessandro was an Actors Studio member, and when one of the supporting actors in Hatful of Rain wasn’t working out, Alessandro asked Barile to take over the role of Chuch, a junkie who was played by Harry Guardino in the 1956 original Broadway production.

“I was scared shitless. What an amazing experience. But I was terrified,” Barile readily admits. “I had gone knee deep into studying; I was entrenched. But all of that work went out the window because I was so fucking scared. Fortunately, the actors in this play were so good that all I really had to do was listen — listen backstage, listen onstage, and I was in it. I just opened my heart and listened, learning to just really be free.”

His next show changed his life. His friend Mark Nassar, a Three of Cups regular, had originated the role of Tony in the hit immersive play Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding. Nassar suggested that Barile join the cast in 1995, portraying the groom’s best friend. At the end of his one-year run, Barile started dating Justine Rossi, who played Tina. The two later married; they now live in Bayside and have two kids in college.

“What a great gift it’s been,” Barile says of Tony n’ Tina. Before the pandemic, he was asked to come back as the priest, Father Mark, and has performed the role in New York as well as in Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Orleans. He’ll be playing Tony’s father in Chicago in November, and recently his daughter appeared in the show, which includes a heavy amount of improv.

“Owning Three of Cups was very helpful in that. What they call it in Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding is table work, because it’s a wedding, you’re dealing with dinner guests. So my interaction with my customer base at Three of Cups got me ready for that. By nature, I’m a ballbreaker. I like comedy; I’m not afraid to break horns or just tell you what I think. So all of those things helped each other. And that training makes me a stronger actor for sure.” He would later appear in plays by David Mamet and John Patrick Shanley in black box theaters, including inhabiting a half dozen characters in Mamet’s Edmond. Three of Cups, where Justine had also worked before they were married and which hosted live music and comedy in its downstairs space, closed in April 2018.

Anthony Barile stands outside his beloved Lower East Side restaurant, Three of Cups

In 1998, Barile played the brutally violent Sally Hipps in DiMurro’s fabulously titled Moe Green Gets It in the Eye at La Tea Theater at the Clemente Soto Velez Arts Center on the Lower East Side.

“I connect to Tony’s writing,” Barile says. “He’s very New York, writing about the Italian American experience. I’m very familiar with that because a lot of the characters he writes about I know very well, whether they be family members, acquaintances, friends, people I’ve worked with. I like his language, and he’s a super guy as well.”

In 1-2-3 Manhunt, which is directed by William Roudebush with set design by Julie DiMurro, Tony’s wife, Barile plays another tough guy, Frankie. They were supposed to begin rehearsals in March 2020, but the pandemic canceled that. Since then, DiMurro has made small changes to incorporate the coronavirus crisis and other current events. They chose not to rehearse or do any readings over Zoom, getting together instead for the first time about a month ago.

“My favorite thing about my character is his enjoyment of a good laugh,” Barile explains. “He loves a good laugh, and he’s a ballbreaker. Listen, the writer knows me. Tony put things in the piece that are straight references right out of Three of Cups, because he used to visit me there all the time.”

Barile is also thrilled to be working with Fazio again.

“It’s like, wow. He’s my best friend in the show,” he tells me. “I’ve known Santo since 1985. It’s fun telling him stories onstage in character, because he’s my best audience. He can recognize when I’m in truth.”

A huge Mets fan — he was at Shea Stadium and Citi Field for the deciding World Series games in 1986, 2000, and 2015 — he is not thrilled with where the club is after a disastrous year.

“It will be a blow-up off-season, from top to bottom, starting with the front office,” he says. “They suck. It’s a curse. I was miserable. I can’t even believe my investment emotionally.”

I ask him what it’s like wearing a Yankees hat in the show.

“Frankie is definitely a baseball fan, and I figured that him being from Staten Island, he’s a Yankees fan. It also was a way for me to know I was playing someone else, not myself, because I’m most comfortable and successful in characters that aren’t too far removed from who I am.
In my approach to a character I like to have at least one part of my costume/wardrobe anchor me to him. In this case it’s the Yankees hat, for sure. As the great Lee Marvin once said, ‘Show up on time, know your lines, and let the clothes do the acting.’”

Barile and his wife also starred together as a couple preparing to go out for the first time since the pandemic took hold in Kevin Alexander Leonidas’s short film You Can’t Fix Stupid, and Barile, aka Mummy, appeared in David Shapiro’s seven-part documentary series Untitled Pizza Movie, about famed pie man Andrew Bellucci.

“I enjoy a good story,” Barile says. “You just want to be natural about it. Just tell the story.”

TWI-NY TALK: AYA OGAWA AND THE NOSEBLEED

Aya Ogawa portrays their son and father in new play at Japan Society (photo by Maria Baranova)

THE NOSEBLEED
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
October 1-3 & 7-10, $30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
ayaogawa.com

“The Nosebleed chronicles my journey of confronting what I think is one of the biggest failures of my life, which is that when my father died almost fifteen years ago, I failed to do anything to honor him or his life because of the nature of our relationship,” Japanese American playwright-director Aya Ogawa says in a promotional video for their latest work, the final version of The Nosebleed, running October 1-3 and 7-10 at Japan Society. The absurdist, comic show, previously known as Failure Sandwich and in which four actors play Ogawa while Ogawa portrays their own son and father, serves as a healing ritual for Ogawa and the audience, especially as the coronavirus crisis continues and nearly everyone has experienced some kind of loss.

Over the summer, the Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based Ogawa, a 2021 Barbara Whitman Award finalist, mounted an online version of Ludic Proxy, an interactive virtual play that takes place in the past (Pripyat, post-Chernobyl), the present (Fukushima, post-disaster), and the future (New York, underground), inspired by the death of their mother. Ogawa previously adapted the text for Alec Duffy’s Our Planet, an immersive production that led a small audience through the historic Japan Society building; they have also directed Haruna Lee’s Obie-winning Suicide Forest at the Bushwick Starr and A.R.T./New York Theatres (where its run was cut short by the March 2020 lockdown) and have written and directed Oph3lia at HERE, Journey to the Ocean at the Rubin Museum, Artifact at the Performance MIX Festival, and A Girl of 16 at Clemente Soto Velez’s Latea Theater.

Copresented with the Chocolate Factory, The Nosebleed is performed by Ogawa, Lee, Drae Campbell, Peter Lettre, Aya Saori Tsukada, and Kaili Turner. I have seen Ogawa at numerous events at Japan Society, where they used to work in the Performing Arts department, but now they are returning as the center of attention. “To be able to come back there, as an artist, and to be so welcomed by former colleagues, is a huge blessing,” they explained. Opening night will be followed by a reception with the artists.

Taking a break from rehearsals, Ogawa discussed motherhood, family relationships, the immigrant experience, theater during the pandemic, and more with twi-ny.

twi-ny: The Nosebleed deals with your complex relationship with your father; Ludic Proxy was partly inspired by the loss of your mother. In researching and writing each work, did your thoughts about your parents, and your relationship with them, change?

aya ogawa: Ludic Proxy was an exploration of my own grieving process — an exercise in imagining how to find the strength to continue living after the death of my mother — had I not had children of my own. It was less about my actual relationship with her, so I would say in that case, my relationship with her did not change.

The Nosebleed, however, is explicitly about my father and my relationship with him — my perceptions and memories of him (which are subjective and flawed). The process of writing the play forced me to recall and examine a lot of things I had not thought of for many years, and this revisiting and especially the embodying of his character has definitely changed my feelings toward him.

twi-ny: How has The Nosebleed developed from earlier iterations at BAX and the Public?

ao: The script is not that different from when it was presented at the Public. (I wrote in a new character after my showing at BAX). However, the staging for each presentation has been unique and tailored to each space. I’ve been blessed to retain most of the original cast. I’ve had to replace one actor (who is now in grad school abroad), and I feel blessed again to have found someone who is not only a stellar performer but a collaborator who is able to bring her whole self and lived experience into the rehearsal room.

twi-ny: What was the rehearsal room like?

ao: We have very strict COVID safety protocols in place, which I discussed with the company before we began this process. I’d heard nightmares about other shows shutting down or having to replace actors, etc. I can’t afford to replace actors, or stop a rehearsal process and pick it up again at another time, so I had to plan for the most conservative measures to keep us all safe. Everyone on my team is fully vaccinated, rehearse masked, take PCR tests every week, and have rapid home tests available if anyone is feeling under the weather.

Despite all of these measures, or perhaps because of the assurance and safety they provided, the process has been joyful and very productive. The piece was originally conceived as an immersive performance, but we have decided to prioritize safety and put the audience in the house.

twi-ny: In the show, you play your son and your father, linking three generations. What is that experience like every night onstage?

ao: This is the first time I have ever appeared in my own play. It was never something I craved doing; in fact, the thought is kind of embarrassing. I decided to appear in the play as my father because the piece demanded it. The crux of this piece, and for it to work as it was intended — as something transformative and healing — I had no choice but to take responsibility for it and play the part. The experience of playing my son and my father is cathartic and exhausting.

One thing that really came to the forefront when creating an autobiographical play was just how violent the act of embodying a character can be. It takes a great deal of responsibility and trust to hand over the portrayal of my life to other people, and trust is needed in both directions.

Aya Ogawa wrote, directed, and stars in The Nosebleed (known as Failure Sandwich in an earlier iteration above) (photo © Ryutaro Mishima)

twi-ny: For your work in progress Meat Suit, you describe motherhood as a “shit show.” You have two children; what was the pandemic lockdown like for you and your family?

ao: At first, it was kind of wonderful. Suddenly we had so much time together, so much unstructured time. There was no panic to make lunches or rush to get them to school on time, etc. We spent time gardening, cleaning the house, cooking. But then, of course, we figured out how to function in the lockdown. School happened on Zoom, as did a lot of my work. I was grateful to have work, and it was a fruitful time, in many ways, to be forced to develop work with great limitations, but it was also exhausting. Pandemic parenting continues right now — and remains pretty trying.

twi-ny: Do you still have family in Tokyo? If so, how often do you generally go back, and have you been able to do so recently?

ao: I am the only person in my immediate blood family living in the U.S. All of my relatives and family are in Japan. Since having kids, I have made it a point to visit every summer. We have not been able to visit since 2019 and it’s really painful.

twi-ny: This past March, you reimagined Ludic Proxy as an interactive online production. What are your thoughts about streaming theater? Do you see it as just a stopgap, or do you anticipate creating more online work in the future?

ao: The second act of Ludic Proxy was conceived with video game mechanics embedded into the script, so it was clear to me that it could very naturally translate to the screen as long as we could retain the audience interactivity. I actually don’t think the pandemic is going to ever “go away,” so it is important for theater-makers to think about how our medium is being transformed. As soon as The Nosebleed closes, I’m going into a video shoot for a puppet play that was originally conceived as a live, in-person puppet show but is now a performance film made for camera.

twi-ny: One of your themes throughout your career has been immigration and cultural identity. How has that changed for Japanese Americans since your first works, going back twenty years?

ao: The experience of the immigrant is not a static, monolithic story. It is varied and complex and ever-changing — so I can only speak for myself, not the larger Japanese-American population. I happen to be positioned in a particular place where I feel like I have access to multiple lenses — I am an immigrant myself but pass as a child of an immigrant. I have Japanese-Taiwanese-American children who I’ve made sure have access to their Japanese culture, but I’m also torn between wanting them to have their own experiences and interactions with the culture and sharing my experience of leaving Japan, a deeply sexist culture. Japan can be rich and beautiful. It can also be toxic and suffocating. So can America.

SMITHSONIAN LECTURE BY SETH DAVID RADWELL — AMERICAN SCHISM: HEALING A DIVIDED NATION

Seth David Radwell discusses American Schism with Tucker Carlson

AMERICAN SCHISM: HEALING A DIVIDED NATION
Smithsonian Associates lecture
Monday, September 13, $25, 6:45
www.si.edu
americanschismbook.com

During the pandemic, I had a regular Zoom happy hour with a group of longtime friends going back to nursery school and grade school. Our politics were all similar, so we avoided fights about Trump, Fauci, the Supreme Court et al. One of our regulars was Seth David Radwell, who, following a successful business career that has included being the head of e-Scholastic and Bookspan and president and CEO of direct-to-consumer company Guthy-Renker, was so disturbed by the state of political discourse across the nation that he wrote a book about it.

American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation (Greenleaf, June 29, $25.95) examines our current partisan situation, and inability to talk to one another about virtually anything without it becoming political, through the lens of the two Enlightenments of the eighteenth century, the Radical and the Moderate. Radwell is on a furious book tour, making appearances on numerous podcasts and online interview shows. On September 13 at 6:45, he will deliver a lecture, “American Schism: Healing a Divided Nation,” as part of the Smithsonian Associates streaming series.

Radwell writes in the prologue of his book, “As I hunkered down at home to weather the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, I struggled to overcome the sense of shock at how suddenly and utterly our world had been turned upside down. But as I contemplated my state of mind, oscillating rapidly between depression, anxiety, and frustration, I sensed that well before the onslaught of the pandemic I had already fallen into a profound state of disillusionment. As the world came to a halt, the health crisis simply gave me the time and space to realize it. The root cause of this disillusionment was related to the shattering of an ideal image that I had, perhaps, clung on to for far too long.”

He continues, “How had it come to be that over the last four years my entire conception of the American credo had crumbled? My vision of America was firmly rooted in the ethos of both freedom and equality; my America was a place where everyone had a fair shot at building a rewarding and fulfilling life, where each individual could define their own idiosyncratic version of success, and where we collectively formed a country of shared values with mutual respect for individual differences. That vision felt unambiguously inconsistent with the America of 2020. Just how and when did my America disappear? Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth? If it did exist, how did it disintegrate so quickly in just a few years? Or was its ruin a slow process of decay that began undetected (by me) much earlier? I was determined to explore these questions, to understand the origins of my disillusionment.”

Radwell not only searches out the causes but provides answers for how we can move forward together. One of his themes is getting the two Americas to talk to each other in a reasonable manner. He brought this plan into reality recently when he sat down for a long-form interview on Tucker Carlson Today, for which some of his readers chastised him. “I received an onslaught of feedback related to my appearance on Tucker Carlson Daily on Fox Nation and the clip shown on his evening cable show,” he wrote in an email blast to his subscribers. “Some chided me for appearing on Fox since the station has a ‘track record of misinformation and propaganda masquerading as news,’ as one person wrote me. Others congratulated me for having the ‘courage’ to appear on such a venue.” The divide is everywhere.

Amid a flurry of interviews and his preparation for the Smithsonian lecture, Radwell took the time to answer questions about the Counter-Enlightenment, reason and unreason, top-down populism, Tucker Carlson, fine wine, and more.

twi-ny: You’ve been working on the book for several years; what effect did the pandemic lockdown have on your research and writing?

seth david radwell: It’s been about three years, although I had developed some of the ideas before that. I have been reading and researching the thesis actively starting in late 2018. I had much material in the form of notes up through 2019. But it was March 2020 when COVID first hit that I sat down and began writing every day in intense twelve-hour sessions. Since that time I have been working on it full-time.

twi-ny: In addition to discussing the two Enlightenments, you also delve into the Counter-Enlightenment, tracing it to the Second Great Awakening, the religious fervor of the first decades of the nineteenth century, as well as anti-elite and anti-intellectual sentiments. Would you characterize the American right’s embrace of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, or Tucker Carlson’s recent encomium to the Taliban, as an expression of top-down populism (populist sentiments exploited by elite actors for their own ends), the Counter-Enlightenment, or something more ominous?

sdr: There is certainly a global trend toward autocracy characterized by “strongmen” who win some sort of election to gain legitimacy but then consolidate, usurp and abuse power, and begin curtailing the freedoms associated with an open liberal society. The American right has embraced this. One of the tools that most of these autocrats deploy, along with those associated with Trumpism, is the top-down populism described in the book.

At the same time, as I discuss in the book, populism is complex — there are many strains of it, often with both positive and negative characteristics. The top-down populism we are talking about here is an emotional appeal that plays on people’s fears of both the “other” (immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, etc.) as well as the elite establishment (who they perceive has ignored their concerns for too long). Autocratic politicians are hostile to elite institutions, and to expertise in general, and pronounce these feelings regularly to gain support and relate to their base. Because this later trend rejects expertise overall, it is also hostile to truth and data. That is the Counter-Enlightenment.

twi-ny: In the current political climate, do you have a recommendation for accommodating both Counter-Enlightenment forces as well as the Radical and Moderate Enlightenment thinkers, or must one be decisively excluded from power?

sdr: “Counter-Enlightenment forces” can be a confusing phrase. For example, most religious movements are based in faith and rely less on reason. So these are Counter-Enlightenment forces that are very much involved in the lives of most Americans. But our republic was founded on the premise that these domains should be kept outside the civic arena — with a firm separation of church from state. This has been frequently violated in our history — as one example, Billy Graham was quite close and influential to many presidents.

twi-ny: In researching and writing the book, did you reconsider a specific political belief you have held?

sdr: Yes, I had always considered myself fairly left leaning, but I began to appreciate aspects of conservative/libertarian philosophy more thoroughly.

twi-ny: How did your business experience help you when marketing the book?

sdr: Well, there is no question that my marketing expertise has played a role. But most ventures I led professionally (i.e., Proactiv) were multimillion-dollar brands with huge advertising budgets. My marketing of the book has been mostly guerrilla tactics and “hand selling” that I am doing personally as a labor of love.

twi-ny: As part of that hand selling, you’ve been interviewed on many podcasts, in lieu of in-person readings and signings. Were you a podcast listener prior to the pandemic? If so, what are some of your favorites?

sdr: Yes, I love podcasts, mostly of the NPR variety — I was a religious listener to Ezra Klein on VOX Media.

twi-ny: You recently appeared on Tucker Carlson Today and managed to have a productive and engaging discussion. What was that experience like?

sdr: He was extremely generous, thoughtful, and open to the ideas in the book. Quite a different persona than his cable “news” show at night.

twi-ny: Did meeting him in that way change any feelings you previously might have had about him?

sdr: He is very intelligent and deeply appreciative of the ideas in American Schism. His on-air celebrity status is an entirely different matter.

twi-ny: On September 13 at 6:45, you will be delivering the Smithsonian lecture “American Schism: Healing a Divided Nation.” What will you be concentrating on?

sdr: The session will summarize certain aspects of the book but will focus on the path forward out of this mess, delineating both structural changes and mindset changes that can begin the healing process.

twi-ny: Is America in as much trouble as it seems?

sdr: The fundamental change begins with taking back control of the debate from the extremes to the frustrated majority.

twi-ny: American Schism has been a great success, reaching #1 on Amazon. What were your initial goals in writing the book?

sdr: It has been doing well, but remember it has gone to #1 on Amazon in very niche categories, like rational philosophy and civics. In the broader areas such as comparative politics and political parties, it has often been a top-ten bestseller.

twi-ny: What’s your next step?

sdr: I would like to build a ground-up movement, which I call Fight Unreason with Reason, by sharing the ideas in the book with a larger audience. So I am hopeful the book will gain more momentum in the months forward. But we are off to a good start. My biggest hope is the viral marketing element — that readers who appreciate the ideas share them. For example, of the seventy-five reviews on Amazon, sixty-nine are five-star, so most readers like the book so far.

twi-ny: You’re a gourmand and wine connoisseur with a partner who knows his way around the kitchen. What is the latest amazing meal the two of you have had at home, and what wine did you have to go with it?

sdr: I am very lucky to have such an excellent cook as a partner. Tonight he is preparing roasted Cornish hens with braised vegetables. I will open a Grand Cru burgundy to pair, but I haven’t picked it yet.

twi-ny: You are also a big-time theater and opera fan. Have you been to any live indoor performances yet?

sdr: I have not yet been back to performances, with the exception of Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga at Radio City. I love opera and theater and I miss both terribly. But the positive is that without them, I have had more time to focus on the book.