Tag Archives: la mama

THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

Henrietta Iscariot (JoAnna Rhinehart) watches her son, Judas (Gabriel Furman, left), play as a child in Stephen Adly Guirgis revival (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa
66 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Thursday – Saturday through March 26
lamama.org

In 2015, New York City native Stephen Adly Guirgis won the Pulitzer Prize for his off-Broadway hit Between Riverside and Crazy. In January, he was named a Residency One Playwright at the Signature Theatre, for which he will produce a series of old and new plays for the 2018-19 season. So the time is ripe for a look back at some of his earlier work, beginning with his time as coartistic director of the LAByrinth Theater Company. As part of its “Theatre and Social Justice” series, the Actors Studio, in conjunction with La MaMa, is presenting a rare revival of Guirgis’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which debuted in 2005 at the Public Theater, where it was directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman and starred Eric Bogosian as Satan, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Pontius Pilate, John Ortiz as Jesus of Nazareth, Deborah Rush as Henrietta Iscariot, and Sam Rockwell as Judas. The cast of the revival, made up of members of the Actors Studio, might not be quite so well known, but Oscar winner Estelle Parsons directs this new version with a dynamic unpredictability and an intimate edge as Judas’s lawyer appeals his conviction for betraying Jesus and being sentenced to Hell.

Mary Magdalene (Burnadair Lipscomb-Hunt) makes her case in THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

“No parent should have to bury a child . . . No mother should have to bury a son,” Henrietta Iscariot (JoAnna Rhinehart) says in the prologue, standing under an umbrella, the sound of rain cascading through the Ellen Stewart Theatre. “I buried my son. In a potter’s field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners,” she adds, immediately humanizing a figure who has been considered the worst of all villains through the centuries. The stage then becomes a makeshift courtroom (the set is by Peter Larkin) in a place called Hope in downtown Purgatory ruled over by cynical judge Frank Littlefield (Jay Johnston), who has little patience for his young bailiff, Julius of Outer Mongolia (Liana Jackson), or with the proceedings in general. Defense attorney Fabiana Aziza Cunningham (Suzanne DiDonna) seeks mercy and forgiveness for Judas (Gabriel Furman), who is catatonic, unable to speak for himself. The prosecutor is butt-kissing blowhard shyster Yusef Akbar Azziz Al-Nassar Gamel El-Fayoumy (Daniel Grimaldi), who, when given permission to approach the bench, declares, “It is a lovely bench! Splendid and sturdy like the great derriere that rests upon it!” Among the witnesses called to testify are Pontius Pilate (Leland Gantt), Caiaphas the Elder (Count Stovall), Simon the Zealot (Gabe Fazio), Mother Teresa (Bob Adrian), Sigmund Freud (Timothy Doyle), and Satan (Javier Molina) as the jury looks on, headed by foreman Butch Honeywell (Stephen Dexter). Saints such as Matthias of Galilee (Lash Dooley) and Peter (Con Horgan) chime in from the rafters, while Jesus (Michael Billingsley) wanders around seriously but quietly, carefully observing the trial.

Prosecutor El-Fayoumy (Daniel Grimaldi) grills Mother Teresa (Bob Adrian) as judge Frank Littlefield (Jay Johnston) looks on (photo by Shashwat Gupta)

Despite its nearly three-hour length (with intermission), the play flies by, anchored by several stirring monologues, including a sensational bit by Delissa Reynolds as Saint Monica, speaking in hip-hop, who proclaims, “I was axed to look into the case of Judas Iscariot by this Irish gypsy lawyer bitch in Purgatory named Cunningham. She wanted me to do some naggin’ to God on Judas’ behalf, and, quite frankly, I was impressed by her nagging abilities — cuz that bitch nagged my ass day and night for forty days . . . But I don’t nag for juss anybody, and I definitely don’t nag for no mothafuckah I don’t know, so I went down to check out Judas for my own self — he looked fuckin’ retarded.” The night we saw the play, two of the main actors stumbled over too many lines, but in general the cast, which also features Burnadair Lipscomb-Hunt as Mary Magdalene, Richarda Abrams as Gloria, and Beth Manspeizer as Loretta, a young woman on life support, is strong; many of them will also appear in the next Guirgis revival, Our Lady of 121st Street, as the Actors Studio plans to remount most of his plays. In The Last Days, Guirgis explores blasphemy, faith, selling out, abortion, anti-Semitism, a New York City overrun by “violent devil-worshipping cannibals,” the crucifixion, justice, and personal responsibility that is addressed in a long, heartfelt, and melodramatic monologue by Honeywell about remorse and regret. The play examines why, at least in theory, Jesus offered forgiveness to everyone except Judas, his onetime bestie, while also holding out hope that he will indeed grant atonement to us all.

GOD OF VENGEANCE (GOT FUN NEKOME)

Brothel owner Yankl (Shane Baker) believes paying for a new Torah scroll will protect his daughter’s innocence in controversial GOD OF VENGEANCE (photo by Ronald L. Glassman)

La MaMa, First Floor Theatre
74A East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 22, $36
212-475-7710
www.newyiddishrep.org
lamama.org

On March 6, 1923, between acts of God of Vengeance, which had begun its Broadway run at the Apollo Theatre on February 19, detectives informed the twelve actors and the producer that they had been indicted for “unlawfully advertising, giving, presenting, and participating in an obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure drama or play.” The cast of the show, which was written by Sholem Asch in Yiddish in 1906 but performed in English at the Apollo following a downtown engagement at the Provincetown Playhouse, included Morris Carnovsky, Sam Jaffe, and director and star Rudolph Schildkraut, who had originated the role of Yankl in the 1907 German version; the producer was First Amendment lawyer Harry Weinberger, who fought the charges and ultimately won on appeal. God of Vengeance is currently running at La MaMa, in a fine, if bumpy, New Yiddish Rep production that continues through January 22. One of the main reasons the play is being revived now is that the controversy that swirled around it almost a century ago is the subject of Rebecca Taichman and Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel’s Indecent, which is transferring to Broadway in April after playing the Vineyard Theatre last spring. It also feels necessary as anti-Semitic rhetoric increases around the world; in fact, there is often debate whether the play itself contains anti-Semitic sentiment. Performed in Yiddish with English supertitles, God of Vengeance is a tale of family and responsibility in a Jewish Orthodox community. Yankl (Shane Baker) operates a brothel out of his basement, which makes him nervous about the future of his teenage daughter, Rifkele (Shayna Schmidt), so the less-than-virtuous businessman decides to pay for a new Sefer Torah for his daughter, believing the deed will protect her innocence and help find her a good husband despite what goes on downstairs, which is no secret. Even rabbi and matchmaker Reb Eli (New Yiddish Rep artistic director David Mandelbaum) knows what goes on below, but as long as there’s money in it for him and the Torah scribe (Eli Rosen), he is willing to look the other way. At a party for some local destitute people, Yankl declares, “Poor or rich, let the whole town know! What I am, I am. What she is, she is. It’s all true — everything. But if they say a word against my daughter . . . I’ll split their heads with this bottle!” Later, when pimp Shloyme (Luzer Twersky) suggests that Rifkele would “do good business” as a prostitute, Yankl explodes, crying out, “If you mention her name, I’ll slit your guts. She doesn’t know you, and you don’t know her!” Yankl is also upset with his wife, Sarah (director Eleanor Reissa), who has encouraged Rifkele to become friendly with one of the prostitutes, Manke (Melissa Weisz). “I don’t want my home mixing with downstairs! Keep them separate from each other. Like kosher and treyf!” he demands. But the friendship grows into something more when Rifkele and Manke declare their love for each other in a beautiful, heartwarming scene that leads to a lesbian kiss. It’s an unforgettable moment, gorgeously staged — and the one that resulted in the indictments and arrests back in 1923.

The relationship between virginal Rifkele (Shayna Schmidt) and prostitute Manke (Melissa Weisz) leads to a stunning moment in New Yiddish Rep revival of Sholem Asch play (photo by Ronald L. Glassman)

God of Vengeance also features Caraid O’Brien as Hindl, Rachel Botchan as Reyzl, and Mira Kessler as Basha, three other prostitutes, who share memories of what led them to sex work. Reissa sets the story in an indeterminate time period, which occasionally gets confusing, and the acting is inconsistent, although Schmidt, who played Miss Forsythe in New Yiddish Rep’s Death of a Salesman, and Weisz, in her off-Broadway debut, are both terrific, eliciting an exciting chemistry. Billy Martin’s music curiously lets the audience know when a new character is about to enter Vicki Davis’s crowded set. Neither Baker (NYR’s Waiting for Godot) nor O’Brien, who is also a playwright and author, is Jewish, yet they have appeared in numerous Yiddish productions; Twersky and Rosen are former Hasids, while Reissa is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. The play, known as Got Fun Nekome in Yiddish, was first presented to the public in a German version directed by Max Reinhardt and starring Schildkraut; in 2002, Donald Margulies wrote an English-language adaptation that starred Ron Leibman, Diane Venora, and Marin Hinkle. And in 2013, a production in Poland, where the play was originally banned, has an audience age restriction: No one under sixteen is allowed. Asch himself was ostracized from the Jewish community when, between 1939 and 1949, he wrote a trilogy about Christianity, The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary. Thus, God of Vengeance returns to New York City with quite a history. The New Yiddish Rep version is an admirable, if not wholly successful, revival, but one that is well worth seeing, especially for those theatergoers planning on going to Indecent when it arrives at the Cort Theatre in April.

WINTER 2017 PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt team up for A STUDY ON EFFORT at Invisible Dog Center as part of COIL festival

The always exciting winter performance festival season gets under way right after New Year’s, with a slew of popular programs occurring all over town and in multiple boroughs. PS122’s COIL 2017 festival, the last under artistic director Vallejo Gantner, consists of fourteen events, with a dozen performances, a sewing bee, and the Red + White Party. The Public Theater’s fourteenth annual Under the Radar fest includes twenty-one programs, centering on experimental music, theater, and dance, along with postshow discussions and the Incoming festival within a festival. The NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate the centennial of Thelonius Monk’s birth while also concentrating on social justice. Focusing on “socially and aesthetically marginal and subversive artists tearing at the boundaries of form and wrestling with the realities of identity,” American Realness was founded in 2010 by Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor and Abrons Arts Center in 2010, directly modeled after the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival; the eighth annual event comprises more than two dozen performances, readings, workshops, discussions, installations, and a party. The fifth annual Prototype festival, which presents cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater, hosts seven productions, an anniversary party, panel discussions and talkbacks, and the Out of Bounds series of free performances in public spaces. Below are a handful of recommendations for each of the above January festivals.

COIL
Multiple venues
January 3-22
www.ps122.org/coil-2017

January 3, 4-7, 10-15
CVRTAIN, by Yehuda Duenyas, immersive virtual reality experience, 151 Gallery, 132 West 18th St., $10

January 5-8
Custodians of Beauty, by Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, dance-theater piece exploring beauty, La MaMa, the Downstairs, 66 East Fourth St., $20

January 7-10
Basketball, by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, dance exploring past shames, Howard Gilman Performance Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $20

January 8
Umyuangvigkaq: PS122 Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee, by Emily Johnson/Catalyst, featuring breakfast, “This Is Lenapehoking: Countering Perceived Invisibility,” “Indigenizing the Future: The Continuance of Aesthetic, Invention, Ceremony,” “My Dad Gives Blueberries to Caribou He Hunts: Indigenous Process and Research as Ceremony,” and “Radical Love: Indigenous Artists and Our Allies,” Ace Hotel New York, 20 West 29th St., free with advance RSVP, 11:30 am – 6:00 pm

January 12-14
A Study on Effort, by dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $20

Tania El Khoury’s GARDENS SPEAK give voice back to dead Syrian activists and protesters (photo by Jesse Hunniford)

UNDER THE RADAR
Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 4-15
publictheater.org

January 4, 6, 10
Erin Markey: Boner Killer, words and music by Erin Markey, directed by Ellie Heyman, starring Markey and Emily Bate, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, $25

January 6-9
Gardens Speak, interactive sound installation about ten deceased Syrian activists, by Tania El Khoury, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Abe Burrows Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

January 9
Incoming! They, Themselves and Schmerm, written and performed by Becca Blackwell, directed and developed by Ellie Heyman, the Robert Moss Theater at Playwrights Downtown, 440 Lafayette St., $25, 5:00 & 8:30

January 11, 12, 14, 15
Latin Standards, written and performed by Marga Gomez, directed by David Schwizer, Martinson Hall, the Public Theater, $25

January 12-15
Time of Women by Belarus Free Theatre, about a trio of women (Maryia Sazonava as Iryna Khalip, Maryna Yurevich as Natalya Radina, Yana Rusakevich as Nasta Palazhanka) fighting for a free and democratic Belarus, written by Nicolai Khalezin and Natiala Kaliada and directed by Khalezin, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Shop Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate one hundredth birthday of Thelonius Monk (photo by William P. Gottlieb)

NYC WINTER JAZZFEST
Multiple venues
January 5-10
www.winterjazzfest.com

January 6, 7
NYC Winter Jazzfest Marathon, multiple venues, $45-$55 per day, $80-$90 for both

Sunday, January 8
Thelonious Monk Makes a Hundred, panel discussion, the New School, Fifth Floor Theater, 55 West Thirteenth St., 3:00

Thelonius Monk 100th Birthday Improv Show, with Kris Davis, David Virelles, Shabaka Hutchings, Sam Newsome, Marc Ribot, Charlie Burnham, Erik Friedlander, Linda Oh, Trevor Dunn, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille, and Deva Mahal playing Solo Monk, Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., $20-$25, 8:00

Tuesday, January 10
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra: A Concert for Social Justice, with special guest Geri Allen and arrangements by Carla Bley, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $30-$40, Social and Environmental Justice panel at 6:00, show at 8:00

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works at Abrons Arts Center as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 5-12
americanrealness.com

January 5-7
An Evening of Solo Works by Meg Stuart, including XXX for Arlene and Colleagues and Signs of Affection, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 6, 7
Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, by Kimberly Bartosik / daela, duet for Joanna Kotze and Lance Gries, inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale sculpture, Gibney Dance, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, $15

January 6, 7, 10
Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (s), solo by Trajan Harrell, first work in series, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 7, 8, 9, 10
Adult Documentary by Juliana F. May, piece for five dancers about trauma and form, Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, $20

January 8
In the Works: Dance in Process Resident Artists & Guests, with performances by Melinda Ring, Anna Sperber, Michelle Boulé, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Gibney Dance Company, Antonio Ramos, Katie Workum, Bjorn Safsten, Yanira Castro, iele paloumpis, Gibney Dance Choreographic Center, 890 Broadway, free, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

FUNERAL DOOM SPIRITUAL will have its New York premiere at National Sawdust as part of Prototype festival (photo by M. Lamar)

PROTOTYPE
Multiple venues
January 5-15, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

January 5
Out of Bounds: Amirtha Kidambi, inspired by Nina Simone’s performance at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:00

January 5-14
Mata Hari, composed by Matt Marks, directed and with libretto by Paul Peers, conducted by David Bloom, and starring Tina Mitchell, HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., $30

January 6
Out of Bounds: Leah Coloff, inspired by Patti Smith’s Kimberly and a set at CBGB’s, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:30

January 6, 7, 9
Breaking the Waves, New York City premiere of opera based on Lars Von Trier film, composed by Missy Mazzoli, directed by James Darrah, conducted by Julian Wachner, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and starring Bess McNeill and Jan Nyman, NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl., $30-$75, 7:30

January 13, 14
Funeral Doom Spiritual, multimedia concert by composers M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and librettists Lamar and Tucker Culbertson, with Lamar on piano and vocals, string arrangements by Hunt-Hendrix, and additional arrangements by James Ilgenfritz & the Anagram Strings, National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth St., $30, 7:00 & 10:00

COIL 2016

Ranters Theatre’s SONG kicks off COIL 2016 festival (photo by Jorge Lizalde)

Multiple venues
January 5-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
www.ps122.org

Every January, New York City is home to a handful of performance festivals that feature cutting-edge and experimental theater, dance, music, and installation art. PS122’s home at 150 First Ave. is scheduled to reopen this summer following a major renovation, but in the meantime you can experience its innovative programming at COIL 2016, taking place at various venues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. “COIL 2016 attacks the very concept of boundaries and of limits. The boundaries between ideologies, life and death, the contemporary and historic, human and machine, light and darkness, audience and performer,” PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner explains on the event website. “Limitations of time, identity, age, and geography disappear. The work we will see this year deals with evolutionary transformation — personal, social, and artistic.” COIL begins on January 5 with Ranters Theatre’s Song (January 5-8), a sixty-minute immersive sound and visual installation at the New Ohio Theatre in which the audience can sit or lie down on the floor. Composer and vocalist Samita Sinha collaborates with Red Baarat percussionist Sunny Jain, guitarist and sound designer Greg Mcmurray, lighting designer Devin Cameron, visual artist Dani Leventhal, and director Ain Gordon on bewilderment and other queer lions (January 6-10, Invisible Dog Art Center), an intimate investigation of ritual and mythology through music, text, and image. Choreographer Jillian Peña’s Panopticon (January 9-17, Abrons Arts Center), a copresentation with American Realness, uses reflections to give a kaleidoscopic effect to a duet by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin.

At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Australians Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up for Morphia Series (January 12-16), an eighteen-minute phantasmal environment for twelve audience members at a time. Annie Dorsen, whose Magical with Anne Juren was a highlight of COIL 2013, is back with Yesterday Tomorrow (January 13-16, La MaMa), in which Hai-Ting Chinn, Jeffrey Gavett, and Natalie Raybould go on a multimedia musical journey from the Beatles’ “Yesterday” to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Asia Society will be hosting Xi Ban and Po Huang Club’s one-night only Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 (January 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 & 9:30), which melds Peking Opera with southern blues. The festival also includes niv Acosta’s Discotropic (January 6-10, Westbeth Artists Community), Frank Boyd’s The Holler Sessions (January 6-17, Paradise Factory), Kaneza Schaal’s Go Forth (January 7-12, Westbeth), David Neumann’s I Understand Everything Better (January 10-16, the Chocolate Factory), Ranters Theatre’s Intimacy (January 11-16, New Ohio Theatre), Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation (January 13-17, Invisible Dog), Jonathan Capdevielle’s Adishatz / Adieu (January 15-17, Abrons Arts Center), and Michael Kliën’s Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (January 15, Martha Graham Studios, 3:00 – 7:00).

JANUARY PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Who: COIL
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, art, and discussion, organized by PS 122
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center, Chocolate Factory, Vineyard Theatre, Invisible Dog Art Center, the Swiss Institute, Asia Society, Parkside Lounge, New Ohio Theatre, Danspace Project, Times Square
When: January 2-17, free – $30
Why: Dancers and choreographers Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith in Rude World; Temporary Distortion’s durational multimedia live installation My Voice Has an Echo in It; Faye Driscoll’s extraordinary, interactive Thank You for Coming: Attendance; Alexandra Bachzetsis’s Diego Velázquez-inspired From A to B via C

Who: Under the Radar Festival and Incoming!
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, and art, organized by the Public Theater
Where: The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., and La MaMa, 74 East Fourth St.
When: January 7-18, free – $40
Why: Daniel Fish’s A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again based on audio recordings of David Foster Wallace; Marie-Caroline Hominal’s The Triumph of Fame, a one-on-one performance inspired by Petrarch’s “I Trionfi”; Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950s; Toshi Reagon’s Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower: The Concert Version; Reggie Watts’s Audio Abramović, in which Watts will go eye-to-eye with individuals for five minutes

Who: American Realness
What: Interdisciplinary festival featuring dance, theater, music, art, conversation, discussion, readings, and a workshop, organized by Abrons Arts Center
Where: Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St.
When: January 8-18, $20
Why: World premiere of Jack Ferver’s Night Light Bright Light; Cynthia Hopkins’s A Living Documentary; Tere O’Connor’s Undersweet; Luciana Achugar’s Otro Teatro: The Pleasure Project; My Barbarian’s The Mother and Other Plays; Dynasty Handbag’s Soggy Glasses, a Homo’s Odyssey

Who: Prototype
What: Festival of opera, theater, music, and conversation
Where: HERE, St. Paul’s Chapel, La MaMa, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Park Ave. Armory, Joe’s Pub
When: January 8-17, $22-$75
Why: The Scarlet Ibis, inspired by James Hurst’s 1960 short story; Carmina Slovenica’s Toxic Psalms; Bora Yoon’s Sunken Cathedral; Ellen Reid and Amanda Jane Shark’s Winter’s Child

Who: Winter Jazzfest NYC
What: More than one hundred jazz groups playing multiple venues in and around Greenwich Village
Where: The Blue Note, (le) poisson rouge, Judson Church, the Bitter End, Subculture, Bowery Electric, others
When: January 8-10, $25-$145
Why: Catherine Russell, David Murray Infinity Quartet with Saul Williams, Jovan Alexandre & Collective Consciousness, Marc Ribot & the Young Philadelphians with Strings, So Percussion Feat. Man Forever, Theo Bleckmann Quartet with Ambrose Akinmusire, and David Murray Clarinet Summit with Don Byron, David Krakauer, and Hamiet Bluiett

UNDER THE RADAR 2014

The Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 8-19, $20-$28 (UTR Packs $75 for five shows)
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The tenth edition of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival is another diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, roundtable discussions, and free live music, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Among the sixteen shows, most of which take place at the Public, are 600 Highwaymen’s The Record, a dance-theater work that brings together a roomful of strangers to comment on the relationship between performer and audience; John Hodgman’s one-man piece, I Stole Your Dad, in which the Daily Show “resident expert” shares intimate, personal stories about his family and technology while baring himself onstage; psychiatrist Kuro Tanino and his Niwa Gekidan Penino company’s The Room Nobody Knows (at Japan Society), about two brothers getting ready for the older one’s birthday party; Andrew Ondrejcak’s Feast, in which a king and his court (starring Reg E. Cathey) have a farewell dinner as Babylon collapses; and the American premiere of hip-hopper Kate Tempest and Battersea Arts Centre’s Brand New Ancients (at St. Ann’s Warehouse), a multidisciplinary show about everyday life in a changing world. Also on the roster is Sacred Stories, Toshi Reagon’s thirtieth annual birthday celebration with special guests; Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man improvisation, Rodney King; a reimagining of Sekou Sundiata’s blessing the boats with Mike Ladd, Will Power, and Carl Hancock Rux; Cie. Philippe Saire’s Black Out (at La MaMa), Edgar Oliver’s Helen and Edgar, Lola Arias’s El Año en que nací / The year I was born (at La MaMa), SKaGeN’s BigMouth, tg STAN’s JDX — a public enemy, Sean Edward Lewis’s work-in-progress Frankenstein (at the Freeman Space), excerpts from ANIMALS’ The Baroness Is the Future, and Daniel Fish’s Eternal, the last three also part of the Incoming! Festival within a Festival.

Kate Tempest will rap about the state of the world in BRAND NEW ANCIENTS (photo by Christine Hardinge)

In addition, there will be numerous postshow talkbacks, a pair of workshops with Sara De Roo and Jolente De Keersmaker of tg STAN on January 10-11, four noon Culturebot conversations January 11-12 and 18-19, and Coil, Under the Radar, Prototype, and American Realness have joined forces to present free live concerts every night from January 9 to 19 in the Lounge at the Public, including Invincible, Christeene, Ethan Lipton, Heather Christian & the Arbonauts, Sky-Pony, Timur and the Dime Museum, the Middle Church Jerriesse Johnson Gospel Choir, M.A.K.U. Sound System, DJ Acidophilus, and Nick Hallett, Space Palace, and Woahmone DJs.

QUEER NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Sineglossa’s REMEMBER ME is part of second Queer New York International Arts Festival

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
October 23 – November 3, free – $18 (many shows $10 suggested donation)
212-598-0400
www.queerny.org
www.abronsartscenter.org

In a 2012 Huffington Post blog about the first Queer New York International Arts Festival, artistic codirector André von Ah wrote, “Queerness, in perhaps its barest and most basic concept, is about breaking the rules, shaking things up, and challenging preconceived ideas.” The second QNYIA continues to shake things up with twelve days and nights of performances, panel discussions, film screenings, workshops, and other events at such venues as Abrons Arts Center, the Invisible Dog, La MaMa, Joe’s Pub, and New York Live Arts, but sadly, it will be proceeding without von Ah, who curated this year’s programming with artistic director Zvonimir Dobrović but sadly passed away suddenly last month, still only in his mid-twenties. This year’s festival, which is dedicated to von Ah, opens October 23 with the U.S. premiere of Ivo Dimchev’s P-Project at Abrons Arts Center, the Bulgarian artist’s interactive piece that uses words that begin with the letter P to investigate societal taboos. Italy’s Sineglossa uses mirrored screens in Remember Me, based on Henry Purcell’s opera about Dido and Aeneas. Audience favorite Raimund Hoghe pays special tribute to von Ah with An Evening with Judy, in which he channels Judy Garland, Maria Callas, and others. Poland’s SUKA OFF investigates skin shedding in its multimedia Red Dragon. Brazil’s Ângelo Madureira plays “the dreamer” in his contemporary dance piece Delírio. Croatia’s Room 100 presents the U.S. premiere of its dark, experimental C8H11NO2. Dan Fishback offers a concert reading of The Material World at Joe’s Pub, the sequel to You Will Experience Silence; Fishback will also participate in the October 26 panel discussion “Creating Queer / Curating Queer” at the New School with Carla Peterson, Tere O’Connor, TL Cowan, Susana Cook, and Dobrović. The Club at La MaMa will host the New Music Series, featuring M Lamar, Shane Shane, Enid Ellen, Nath Ann Carrera, and Max Steele. The festival also includes works by Bojana Radulović, Elisa Jocson, Guillermo Riveros, Daniel Duford, Bruno Isaković, Gabriela Mureb, Heather Litteer, CHOKRA, Antonia Baehr, and Antoni Karwowski, with most shows requiring advance RSVPs and requesting a $10 suggested donation.