Tag Archives: ars nova

TRAVELS

James Harrison Monaco’s Travels keeps sharing stories at Ars Nova through April 20 (photo by Ben Arons)

TRAVELS
Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 20, name your price (suggested $25-$35)
212-352-3101
arsnovanyc.com

James Harrison Monaco takes audiences on a poignant and entertaining audiovisual journey in Travels, continuing at Ars Nova through April 20. The ninety-minute show, which Monaco calls “a sonic narrative collection,” is an intimate multimedia trip comprising eight tales that venture from Southern California, Cairo, Zurich, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic to Switzerland, Turkey, Iran, Mexico, and Bay Ridge.

“All of the stories we are about to tell you tonight, to a certain extent the people who first told me these stories have given me permission to tell versions of them now to you,” Monaco explains early on. “I’m not sure I’m the best person to be telling these stories, but I also know I love these stories deeply. And I’ve invited some of my favorite storytellers and musicians to help me understand and tell these stories.”

Each anecdote is related in the first person by Monaco, Ashley De La Rosa, El Beh, or Mehry Eslaminia — or a combination of them — spoken in dialogue or sung. Multi-instrumentalist John Murchison accompanies them on the bass, oud, or qanun. When Monaco, De La Rosa, El Beh, and Eslaminia are not sharing a yarn, they contribute heavy beats and dance loops on electronics (there are several laptops on a central table) or manipulate live images shown on a small wall to the left.

Meanwhile, abstract shapes and recognizable forms are projected on a rear screen and spill out above the stage, and chasing lights in LED tubes shoot across the sides of the theater in emotionally tinged colors. (The music and lights are already pulsating as the crowd enters, as if preparing for a rave.) The music supervision is by Or Matias, with set design by Diggle, appealing costumes by Sarita Fellows, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, sound by Nick Kourtides, and projections by Stefania Bulbarella.

Ashley De La Rosa is one of four storytellers and a musician in James Harrison Monaco’s Travels (photo by Ben Arons)

The first story, “Sa’eed,” is about a chemist from a porcelain factory in Cairo who is now a Lyft driver in Southern California. They bond over tiles. Monaco gushes, “Now, you need to understand that I fucking love porcelain more than any other material on this earth – I made a whole other full length show about this [Paulownia], so I won’t talk too much about it here, but we started talking passionately about this magical form of ceramic.” Thus, the floor and walls of Diggle’s set are made of black tile squares.

Monaco, who is also a professional translator, occasionally speaks in different languages as he intersperses elements from his personal life, often involving romantic breakups. We learn about the complicated relationship between landscaper/school bus driver Thomas, Gerhard, and Leopoldo. He investigates the strange cabaret visa in Switzerland primarily affecting strippers and men coming from outside the EU seeking pleasure. He visits Guanajuato, Mexico, where he encounters Aurora and Sofia, bar-hopping teachers who introduce him to narcocorrido music as they discuss food poisoning, the phases of love, and the mystery of life.

Half of the show is about Monaco’s friend known simply as R. They meet at a dinner party on the Upper West Side, where they bond over literature. A journalist, R’s adventures include prison, seeking asylum, and Persian translations of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Travels is about the stories we tell, who gets to tell them, and how we tell them. It doesn’t matter how true they in fact might be, since in many cases it’s Monaco, or one of his three surrogates, relating a story that was told to him by strangers who, through storytelling, seemingly become friends. The show is affectionately directed by Andrew Scoville in a way that makes us all feel like friends by the end — after which we will go out and tell stories about Travels, perhaps recommending it to other friends.

El Beh (Bark of Millions), De La Rosa (Mean Girls, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Eslaminia (1776), and Monaco (The Conversationalists) are warm and engaging, making connections with the crowd, especially when they venture into the audience, who are seated either in swivel chairs or, up front, on large, comfortable couches. Murchison (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812; Oratorio for Living Things) is a wizard with his numerous instruments.

At one point Monaco notes upon a surprising revelation from R, “I recall holding eye contact with him in this moment. It would be rude of me to ask directly more of this story; it wasn’t my business — his story clearly involved a lot of pain. You could see that in his eyes. And yet, there was something in our eye contact, where he was aware that there was a great story he could tell. I couldn’t ask about it directly; that would be rude.” But soon R is off and running, beginning, “This is an interesting story. . . .”

During the Mexican teachers tale, Aurora asks Monaco, “All right, who are you? What’s your story?” and then states, “Everybody travels.”

Using travel as the thread, Monaco tells us his story while making us consider our own.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

KPOP

The flashy KPOP is closing early on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

KPOP
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Through December 11
kpopbroadway.com

On Saturday night, December 3, I was at Circle in the Square, watching KPOP. I had loved Ars Nova’s 2017 immersive production at A.R.T./New York and was looking forward to the Broadway incarnation. Alas, lightning did not strike twice.

I was supremely disappointed in the revised book, which eschewed most of the behind-the-scenes drama and the progression of the plot — in the original, small groups of audience members were led through a series of rooms in which the action played out, exploring how K-pop stars are made through vocal and dance lessons, press training, makeup, and costumes, following along as a South Korean record company prepares for its major introduction to the US market. Instead, the new version concentrates on big, glittering production numbers centered around a white filmmaker documenting the rehearsals. The central creative team has not changed — the book is by Jason Kim, with music and lyrics by Helen Park and Max Vernon, music production and arrangements by Park, choreography by Jennifer Weber, and direction by Teddy Bergman. But the feeling has.

While I sat in my seat, missing all the nuance of the original story, the soul of which has been sucked dry, I looked around at the Saturday night crowd, nearly all of whom were having a great time. At Circle in the Square, the audience sits on three sides of the thrust stage, and the lighting is so bright that you can see everyone in the theater. Aside from a few pockets of empty seats in the upper corners, the house was packed, and nearly everyone was eating up every minute of the show; a colleague of mine had a huge smile on his face throughout the two hours and ten minutes (with intermission); he emailed me afterward to say that he “fucking loved” it. (Another colleague of mine said that the night he went, there was an embarrassing amount of empty seats.) People were dancing in their seats, clapping along, eyes sparkling wide at Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi’s dazzling costumes, Jiyoun Chang’s flashy, colorful lighting, Peter Fitzgerald and Andrew Keister’s propulsive sound design, and Peter Nigrini’s constant barrage of cool projections on Gabriel Hainer Evansohn’s set, which includes a mobile platform, video monitors with live footage from multiple angles, and a stage lift with a trap door where a character’s past is explored.

So the last thing I expected was, a few days later, to find out that the show was closing extremely early, on December 11, a mere three weeks after opening, having played forty-four previews and only seventeen performances.

KPOP found itself mired in controversy when Jesse Green used some highly questionable language in his negative New York Times review, leading to the producers of the show and several cast members to take to social media, demanding an apology.

Real-life K-pop star Luna takes center stage at Circle in the Square (photo by Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman)

But was that enough to lead to the surprising closing notice? Plenty of Broadway musicals survive bad reviews and thrive, sometimes for years. Was there not enough interest in K-pop, the music phenomenon that has given rise to such groups as BTS, Blackpink, and Monsta X, who play well-attended concerts around the country? KPOP tries to capitalize on that success, following the fictional girl group RTMIS (pronounced like “Artemis,” featuring its young female stars often posing as if shooting a bow and arrow) and the boy band F8 (“Fate”), a mixed bunch of young men dealing with a new member hogging the spotlight and accused of not being Korean enough. The fictional label’s star, MwE, wants to move away from her highly stylized image and be more real — maybe even become a singer-songwriter (gasp!) — and is portrayed by Luna, an actual Korean pop star who was in the hugely popular troupe f(x).

Even though it’s my job to critique theater, I don’t take pleasure when poorly reviewed shows close, even one that has spurred such nicknames as OKpop, KPOOP, and KFLOP. It might not be to my taste, but a whole lotta people were having a great time the night I was at Circle in the Square, and the audience was far more varied than the usual Broadway crowd, which is a good thing.

I just hope this experience doesn’t sour producers from taking chances on shows that bring a more wide-ranging diversity onstage and in the seats.

I called the original “an awesome journey into music making, promotion, assimilation, the desire for fame, and more,” pointing out, “Early on, Jerry [a marketing expert not in the Broadway production] explains that the mission of his agency ‘is to launch rockets into American markets.’”

Unfortunately, this rocket barely lifted off the ground.

HOUND DOG

Anneh (Ellena Eshraghi) and Ayse (Olivia AbiAssi) share a rare calm moment in Hound Dog (photo by Ben Arons)

HOUND DOG
Ars Nova @ Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 5, $5-$100
arsnovanyc.com
playco.org/events/hound-dog

A young woman reexamines critical decisions she made about her future and grief over her mother’s death in Melis Aker’s Hound Dog, an entertaining if scattershot mishmash that opened tonight at Ars Nova @ Greenwich House for a limited run through November 5.

Anneh, aka Hound Dog (Ellena Eshraghi), is a Harvard grad and guitarist-singer who returns to her home in Turkey while considering whether she should attend the Royal Academy, which has accepted her after her successful audition. Her father, the rock-and-roll-loving Baba (Laith Nakli), has been suffering since the loss of his wife, lost in a fog of alcohol and television as he dreams of going to Graceland.

Anneh’s best friend, Ayse (Olivia AbiAssi), is thrilled that she’s back, but Anneh seems distracted. She is more interested in talking with Yusuf (Jonathan Raviv), the neighborhood garbage man and flute player, than she is in creating music with Ayse. Anneh also is attracted to Charlie Callahan (Matt Magnusson), an American who was her former piano teacher.

Frank J. Oliva’s set offers a surreal fantasy in Ars Nova / PlayCo world premiere (photo by Ben Arons)

Anneh travels between reality and what appears to be some kind of fantasy world that exists inside her house, the interior of which turns into an aluminum-foil-covered concert and dance hall as music and life merge in a surreal way that seems normal to everyone but her. Amid the phantasmagorical scenes, her confusion mounts when Professor Feliz, her musicology professor at Harvard, tells her that Elvis Presley was “born in the majestically boring city of Ankara, Turkey, in the year 1961” and “was often seen strutting around Seymenler Park, accompanied by his friend, the local garbage collector and traditional Turkish instrument maestro, Yusuf.”

Through it all, a singer-songwriter and her band keep entering scenes, playing such songs as “There She Goes,” “Where It’s All Gone,” “The Groove Is on the Loose,” and “An Emptying Thing,” serving as outside observer and muse. (The songs were written by Aker and brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour.) Channeling Joni Mitchell, Liz Phair, and others, the singer shares such thoughts as “Time is lost / In my room / While you break free / From the gloom / Waking hours / You stay up late / What is life / But the breaking of the days” and “So if we choose to let you go / How will you know / That I remember / How to feel alive / Only in time / Only in time.”

As decision time approaches, Anneh’s mind is flooded with confusion, trying to figure out what to do next and where she belongs in a world where she thinks she doesn’t fit.

Directed by Machel Ross, the ninety-five-minute Hound Dog, a coproduction of Ars Nova and PlayCo, wanders all over the place, the nonlinear narrative often hard to follow. It takes a while to warm up to the characters, although eventually they become familiar and their struggles legitimate. Frank J. Oliva’s set is the star, a facade of a home with three sets of double doors on the ground floor and three sets of windows above, lit in different colors by Tuçe Yasak. Sound designer Avi Amon also serves as music director, with costumes by Qween Jean.

The crack band features Maya Sharpe on guitar, Mel Hsu on bass, Ashley Baier on drums, and Sahar Milani on lead vocals. The cast, several of whom are making their off-Broadway debuts (Eshraghi and Magnusson) and another an Emmy winner (Raviv), is fresh and engaging as they navigate a few too many awkward plot devices.

The story is a deeply personal one to Aker; in the script, she refers to Hound Dog as “me,” the setting as “a version of my hometown . . . through time and space,” and several characters as “alternate versions” of her father, childhood best friend, and teachers. Aker might be a little too close to the material; although she tackles universal issues, they don’t always gel cohesively.

In celebration of its twentieth anniversary season, Ars Nova is introducing “What’s Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price,” with tickets for Hound Dog running $5 to $100, depending on what you can afford.

THE (VIRTUAL) WILDNESS

THE (VIRTUAL) WILDNESS
Ars Nova Supra Zoom
Wednesday, May 26, $10, 7:00
arsnovanyc.com
skyponyband.com

In March 2016, I saw The Wildness at Ars Nova, writing, “Brooklyn-based eight-piece collective Sky-Pony presents a captivating treat for adventurous theatergoers with this DIY indie-rock opera, a multimedia fairy tale that filters such popular musicals as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell through a Narnia-like aesthetic and video-game narrative that fantasy fans will go ga-ga over.” Sky-Pony is now back for a one-time virtual follow-up, taking place over Ars Nova’s online Supra portal via Zoom. On May 26 at 7:00, The (Virtual) Wildness moves the story, which involves a missing leader, a messianic princess, the mysterious builder, the keymaster, and various handmaidens, five years into the future. The text is by composer Kyle Jarrow and Lauren Worsham, with incidental music by Kevin Wunderlich and video design by Eamonn Farrell; the show is directed by Ashley Tata and stars David Blasher, Lilli Cooper, Jeff Fernandes, Lindsey Ford, Sharone Sayegh, Jamie Mohamdein, Jarrow, Worsham, and Wunderlich, all from the original production.

VISION RESIDENCY: RAJA FEATHER KELLY

Tuçe Yasak’s Light Journals kicks off raja feather kelly’s Ars Nova Vision Residency

VISION RESIDENCY
Ars Nova
March 20 – April 9, $10 per show
arsnovanyc.com/SUPRA
thefeath3rtheory.com

It’s time to face facts: This is raja feather kelly’s world; we’re only living in it. Kelly is an Obie-winning choreographer, director, artistic director of the feath3r theory, and creative associate at Juilliard who has been involved with such productions as Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at Second Stage, Electric Lucifer at the Kitchen, A Strange Loop and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka at Playwrights Horizons, Fireflies at the Atlantic, and Fairview at Soho Rep and TFANA. In December he premiered his solo performance installation Hysteria in the glassed-in lobby at New York Live Arts, for which he is also making the film Wednesday, a queer-fantasia reimagining of Dog Day Afternoon that he offered a sneak peek of at a wild watch party also in December. He will be bringing back Hysteria for encore performances April 8-10.

Kelly is now curating Ars Nova’s Vision Residency program, featuring presentations by four creators: Tuçe Yasak, Tislarm Bouie, L Morgan Lee, and Emily Wells, running March 20 to April 9. “There is no separation between who these people are as artists and who they are as people. Their work is indelible and one of a kind,” kelly said in a statement. The Ars Nova Supra events begin March 20 with Yasak’s virtual installation Light Journals, inspired by poetry by Rumi, followed March 25 by Bouie’s dance film on Black masculinity, THUG; a reading on April 8 of The Women, the working title of a play in progress, led by L Morgan Lee and kelly as Kirsten Childs, Dane Figueroa Edidi, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Christine Toy Johnson, Bianca Leigh, Carmen LoBue, and Nia Witherspoon explore what it means to be a woman in today’s society; and, on April 9, kelly & Wells’s Artifact, a listening and viewing party previewing their work-in-progress Album and Opera. Tickets to each show are $10; a monthly subscription to Ars Nova’s Supra digital platform is $15. Kelly is one of seven 2020–21 Vision Residents; the others are Starr Busby, nicHi douglas, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jenny Koons, David Mendizábal, and Rona Siddiqui.

P.S.

Ars Nova
Tickets on sale through October 21 or until sold out, $35
Letters are sent for one year
arsnovanyc.com/PS

With theaters closed because of the pandemic, companies have been coming up with unique ways to share stories with a hungry public. Woolly Mammoth’s Human Resources is a labyrinthine journey through prerecorded phone messages, while On Site Opera used the telephone to transmit a live song cycle, supplemented with emails, for To My Distant Love. Ars Nova is now going even more analog in this virtual world with P.S., using the much-maligned U.S. Post Office, particularly relevant as mail-in voting is a key issue in the current presidential election. Created by director Teddy Bergman (KPOP, Empire Travel Agency) and cowriters Sam Chanse (Trigger, Fruiting Bodies) and Amina Henry (The Animals, Bully), P.S. is a durational theatrical experience that takes place in the audience’s own homes, with no digital interaction whatsoever. Limited to only five hundred $35 tickets on sale through October 21 (or until they are sold out), P.S. consists of letters exchanged between a pair of childhood friends, young women of color from a small Oregon town now navigating a contemporary America that is facing more division than ever, from racism and police brutality to misogyny and government corruption, from a health crisis and white supremacy to income inequality and social media strife. Ticket holders will receive the letters every few weeks over the course of a year as the tale plays out in real time beginning in November. There will also be an in-person grand finale once theaters are allowed to reopen, with separate tickets made available first to those households that participated in the epistolary part of the show.

DR. RIDE’S AMERICAN BEACH HOUSE

Meg (Marga Gomez), Matilda (Erin Markey), and Harriet (Kristen Sieh) hang out on a roof in Liza Birkenmeier’s Dr. Ride’s American Beach House (photo by Ben Arons Photography)

Ars Nova at Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Monday – Saturday through November 23, $35-$65
arsnovanyc.com

Liza Birkenmeier’s Dr. Ride’s American Beach House lands at a rather fortuitous moment in time. On October 18, astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir completed the first all-woman spacewalk in history. The play, which opened tonight at Ars Nova at Greenwich House, takes place on June 17, 1983, the night before astronaut and physicist Dr. Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space, aboard the Challenger shuttle. Dr. Ride was not initially part of the narrative; Birkenmeier originally intended to make a grand epic disproving the scientific method but instead concentrated on one scene, set on June 17, 1983, and only discovered later, after the work was already under way, that it had the connection to Dr. Ride, altering the plot significantly.

Best friends Matilda (Erin Markey) and Harriet (Kristen Sieh) are drinking, smoking, and gossiping on the roof of Harriet’s apartment building in St. Louis, supposedly a meeting of the Two Serious Ladies Book Club, which has nothing to do with literature but is just an excuse for the two of them to hang out. Matilda, who occasionally breaks into song, is married to Arthur and has two children, while Harriet, who writes poetry, is living with her boyfriend, Luke. Their main rule is to never discuss men while on the roof, but they can’t help themselves, especially since Harriet has an incredible story to tell about a one-night stand she just had with a biker, something she has never done before. “I don’t want to break the rule, but let’s talk about this through my perspective,” Harriet explains. “He is an object and I am the subject. He is the, the, commodity and I’m the . . .” It might not pass the Bechdel test, but it still keeps the women in charge.

Norma (Susan Blommaert) finds something to complain about to Harriet (Kristen Sieh) in Ars Nova premiere (photo by Ben Arons Photography)

They are soon joined on the roof — superbly designed with a cool slant and little in the way of safety by Kimie Nishikawa — by Matilda’s friend Meg (Marga Gomez), a butch, stout lesbian in boots, a baseball cap, and a Motörhead T-shirt. “Do you have a husband?” an oblivious Harriet asks Meg, who replies definitively, “Of course not.” Meg is bold and direct, open and honest. “Do you hate men?” Harriet asks, referring to a comment Meg makes regarding her job as a nurse. “No no, I don’t hate men; they only make me homicidal. I’ll be fine,” Meg answers. Meanwhile, hovering about is the persnickety Norma (Susan Blommaert), who is making sure that the building is run as efficiently as possible. As the long countdown begins for Dr. Ride’s journey into space — she is spending the night in NASA’s historic Florida beach house, where the astronauts have a barbecue before blasting off the planet — the four women continue to chatter away as Meg suspects that Harriet and Matilda don’t even realize that they are in love with each other.

Smartly directed by Katie Brook (How to Get into Buildings, She Is King) with a keen sense of humor and suggestive sexuality, Dr. Ride’s American Beach House incorporates the scientific method through exploration, observation, and testing. The all-woman cast and crew have a firm grasp of the material, which subtly takes on gender roles, societal expectations, sex, love, and power. It’s no coincidence that the two main characters are named after heroic female figures from children’s literature, Harriet the Spy and Roald Dahl’s magical Matilda. The two women are obviously in love with each other — Matilda calls Harriet “cupcake” and “pookie” — but are unable to understand what that even means, as they are stuck in traditional modes of thought involving the battle of the sexes, despite all that’s happening around them. Harriet uses binoculars while up on the roof — evoking Dr. Ride out in space, using a telescope — but while she peers longingly at a fashionable kitchen across the way, Meg sees a hapless man trying to kill a bug in his bedroom, criticizing his lack of skills in bed. In a reverse Samson and Delilah, Harriet decides to give up her firm control over the biker after he shaves off his facial hair; as opposed to him losing strength, she loses interest.

Besties Harriet (Kristen Sieh) and Matilda (Erin Markey) are rooting for Dr. Sally Ride in Liza Birkenmeier’s new play (photo by Ben Arons Photography)

Despite how funny the ninety-minute play is — and it’s very funny — a bittersweet edge hangs in the air. Dr. Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of sixty-one, and her relationship first with Molly Tyson in the early 1980s and then with her longtime partner, Tam O’Shaugnessy, only came to light after her death, in her obituary; she was unable to come out during her lifetime. And less than three years after her trip into space, the very same Challenger space shuttle she flew in broke apart in the air, killing all seven people on board, including thirty-seven-year-old high school teacher Christa McAuliffe. But Birkenmeier’s (littleghost, The Way Out West) poetic yet realistic dialogue — the actors frequently hesitate, repeat words, and speak in incomplete sentences — and the engaging performances by Gomez (Latin Standards, Pound), Sieh (RoosevElvis, The Band’s Visit), and Markey (Singlet, A Ride on the Irish Cream) make this more than just another theatrical ride through the contemporary female psyche, in space and on a St. Louis rooftop.