Tag Archives: Nuyorican Poets Cafe

THE HAUNTING OF LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda takes a hard look at Hamilton

Who: Nuyorican Poets Cafe
What: Livestream of previously recorded production of The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
Where: Nuyorican Poets Cafe Facebook Live and Zoom
When: Tuesday, July 14, free (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: In August 2015, Tennessee-born writer playwright, poet, novelist, lyricist, and essayist Ishmael Reed wrote the magazine article ”Hamilton: the Musical: Black Actors Dress Up like Slave Traders . . . and It’s Not Halloween” for CounterPunch, criticizing the smash hit by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who Reed called a “very clever salesman.” Reed followed that up with the play The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, which ran at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in May 2019 and reimagined Miranda as a Scrooge-like character visited by ghosts of slaves, Native Americans, and others who set him straight on America’s original sin. The play was directed by Rome Neal; the cast includes Jesse Bueno as Miranda, Robert Turner as George Washington, Zachary Clarence as Alexander Hamilton, Roz Fox as Harriet Tubman, and Tom Angelo as Ron Chernow, whose biography of Hamilton served as the basis for Miranda’s show. (The Haunting won three Audelco Awards, for Turner, Fox, and costume designer Carolyn Adams.) With the filmed version of Hamilton now streaming on Disney+ and statues of the nation’s Founding Fathers in danger of being torn down, a controversy has resurfaced about the way Miranda dealt with such slaveowners as Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton himself. The Nuyorican Poets Cafe will be streaming a recorded version of The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda from the May 2019 engagement on Facebook Live and Zoom on July 14 at 8:00.

LOWER EAST SIDE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS: THE MT. OLYMPUS OF LES LOVE! and more

festival of the arts

Who: Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, William Electric Black, more
What: Live concert and summit (and many other events)
Where: Theater for the New City
When: Saturday, May 23, free, 8:00 (festival runs May 22-24)
Why: Since 1996, Theater for the New City’s annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts has been a harbinger of summer, three days of multidisciplinary performances taking place in and around the organization’s East First St. home. But the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular weekend event goes virtual because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it’s slowed down in the least. From May 22 to 24, the festival, whose theme is “Renaissance: Arts Alive 25,” will feature 250 participants providing music, dance, theater, discussion, and more, all for free. The centerpiece occurs on May 23 at 8:00 with “The Mt. Olympus of LES Love!,” a concert with an amazing lineup consisting of Charles Busch, Phoebe Legere, Penny Arcade, Austin Pendleton, David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, and William Electric Black, followed by a summit that attempts to answer the question “Where do we go from here?”

The three-day celebration will feature such speakers as Nii Gaani Aki, Michael Musto, Brad Hoylman, Carlina Rivera, and Candice Burridge; theater excerpts with Barbara Kahn, Anne Lucas, Eve Packer, Greg Mullavey, the Drilling Company, Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater, Nuyorican Poets Café, and others; comedy from Reno, Stan Baker, Trav S.D., Wise Guise, Izzy Church, Epstein and Hassan, and Ana-Maria Bandean with Gemma Forbes; dance with Ashley Liang Dance Company, Constellation Moving Co., Dixon Place, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Wendy Osserman Dance Company, Thunderbird American Indian Dancers, and Zullo/RawMovement; music by Donald Arrington, Allesandra Belloni, Michael David Gordon and the Pocket Band, Art Lillard, and Yip Harburg Rainbow Troupe; cabaret with KT Sullivan, Marissa Mulder, Eric Yves Garcia, Aziza, and Peter Zachari; and poetry readings by Coni Koepfinger, Tsaurah Litzky, Lola Rodriguez, Bob Rosenthal, Lissa Moira, and Brianna Bartenieff; along with puppetry, film screenings, children’s events, and visual art, all for free, although donations are gladly accepted.

PERFORMANCE SPACE NEW YORK EAST VILLAGE SERIES: AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA

Performance Space New York is reborn in the East Village

Performance Space New York
150 First Ave. at East Ninth St.
Sunday, February 18, free, 6:00 pm – 1:00 am
212-352-3101
performancespacenewyork.org

After a major renovation, one of downtown’s best and most diverse venues is back, as Performance Space New York, formerly known as PS122, celebrates its return with a free event on Sunday night, “Avant-Garde-Arama.” Kicking off the East Village Series, the festivities will feature live performances from six to nine on several stages by a vast array of creators, including Adrienne Truscott, Erin Markey, Hamm, Holly Hughes, John Kelly, John Zorn, La Bruja of Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Penny Arcade, Pharmakon, Reggie Watts, and Sister Jean Ra Horror, among many others. At nine, a dance party takes over, with JD Samson, Justin Strauss, and more. The evening’s hosts are the Factress (Lucy Sexton), Carmelita Tropicana, and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. On its website, the venue declares, “Performance Space New York was born in the East Village in 1980 as Performance Space 122 when a group of local artists occupied the empty building that had been home to Public School 122 and started making performance work as a passionate rejection of corporate mainstream culture. Today, almost forty years later, Performance Space New York is faced with a radically transformed neighborhood unaffordable for young artists and a national political climate that feeds off social inequity more than ever. Moving back into our newly renovated spaces, the inaugural East Village Series asks what kind of art organization we need to become in light of this ever-more-exclusionary social and political context.” The East Village Series continues through June with such presentations as “Focus on Kathy Acker,” “Women’s History Museum,” Diamanda Galás and Davide Pepe’s Schrei 27, a world premiere by Sarah Michelson, Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s CLUB, Penny Arcade’s Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, and Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper, and Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Them.

SUMMERSTAGE — THE NUYO PRESENTS: STACEYANN CHIN / NTOZAKE SHANGE / SARAH KAY

Ntozake Shange (photo © Adger Cowans 2015)

Ntozake Shange will be at free SummerStage spoken-word show August 9 in East River Park (photo © Adger Cowans 2015)

Who: Staceyann Chin, Ntozake Shange, Sarah Kay
What: SummerStage program with Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Where: East River Park, FDR Drive between Jackson & Cherry Sts.
When: Wednesday, August 9, free, 7:00
Why: Any chance to see poet, playwright, activist, novelist, children’s book writer, and feminist Ntozake Shange is a special opportunity, so don’t miss her on August 9 when she comes to East River Park in a spoken-word SummerStage program held in conjunction with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Winner of Obie Awards for Mother Courage and Her Children and for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, the Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship and nominated for a Tony, a Grammy, and an Emmy, Shange changed her given name from Paulette Williams while in graduate school, choosing one that means “she who comes with her own things” (Ntozake) and “who walks like a lion” (Shange), which represents her quite well. She’ll be joined at East River Park by Brooklyn-based, Jamaica-born Staceyann Chin, a self-described “out poet and political activist” and single mother who has appeared on and off Broadway and written a memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, as well as New York poet and Project VOICE founder and codirector Sarah Kay, who began reading her poetry publicly in the city when she was fourteen, has published such books as No Matter the Wreckage, b, and The Type, and gave the extremely popular TED talk “If I should have a daughter . . .” in 2011.

DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL

Corey Glover will kick off Downtown Urban Arts Festival on March 4 at Joe’s Pub

DUAF
Joe’s Pub, Nuyorican Poets Café, HERE, Tribeca Film Center
March 4 – April 9, $10-$30
www.dutfnyc.com

The fourteenth annual Downtown Urban Arts Festival gets under way this week, kicking off with Corey Glover & Friends playing a one-time-only intimate show at Joe’s Pub on March 4 ($30, 7:30). The five-week extravaganza, dedicated to promoting diversity, features music, theater, poetry, and film over five weeks at several venues below Fourteenth St. Other highlights include Joe Gulla exploring growing up gay in an Italian family in The Bronx Queen (March 8, Joe’s Pub, $20, 7:30), the open poetry slam “Words Matter” with Miguel Algarin, Reg E. Gaines, and others at Nuyorican Poets Cafe (March 17, $12, 9:00), Anthony B. Knight Jr.’s No Cowards in Our Band, about Frederick Douglass (March 25, HERE, $18, 7:00), Dean Preston’s Canned Laughter, about a recluse who is asked to resurrect his children’s television show (March 30, HERE, $18, 7:00), and three days of short films at the Tribeca Film Center (April 7-9, $10, 8:00).

FIRST SATURDAY: HISPANIC HERITAGE

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, October 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s October free First Saturday program pays tribute to National Hispanic Heritage Month — which actually runs September 15 to October 15 — on October 3, kicking things off with a performance by Garifuna traditionalist Aurelio Martínez, who is not only a singer-songwriter but was the first black member of Honduras’s National Congress. Known simply as Aurelio, he will be highlighting songs from his latest record, 2014’s Lándini, which includes such tracks as “Sañanaru,” “Milaguru,” and “Durugubei Mani.” (You can sample the songs here; Aurelio will also be playing a free show at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center on October 15.) First Saturday also features live performances by Danza Fiesta: Baile y Teatro Puertorriqueno, DJ duo iBomba (DJ Beto and DJ Ushka), the Gregorio Uribe Big Band, the Humberto Ramírez Quintent, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Cave Canem poets Willie Perdomo, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Rio Cortez. In addition, Richard Aste and Edward J. Sullivan will lead a curator talk on the new exhibition “Impressionism and the Caribbean: Francisco Oller and His Transatlantic World,” art workshops will teach participants how to paint still lifes like Francisco Oller, you can settle in for a game of dominoes, Raquel Cepeda will read from and discuss her most recent book, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina, with her husband, Sacha Jenkins, and children are invited to sing and dance to Spanish and English songs with ¡Acopladitos! And the galleries are open late so you can check out such other exhibitions as “The Rise of Sneaker Culture,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY,” and “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence.”

FIRST SATURDAY: REMIXING THE AMERICAN STORY

Valerie Hegarty, “Still Life with Peaches, Pear, Grapes and Crows”; “Still Life with Watermelon, Peaches and Crows”; and “Table Cloth with Fruit and Crows,” canvas, stretcher, paper, acrylic paint, foam, papier-mâché, wire, glue, gold foil, epoxy, fabric, thread, dimensions variable, in “Dining Room, Cane Acres Plantation, Summerville, South Carolina” (photo by Brooklyn Museum)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its free First Saturday program during the July 4 weekend, the Brooklyn Museum looks back at American history through dance, music, art, literature, and film. “Remixing the American Story” includes live performances by the Hungry March Band, Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, Frankie Rose, the Brown Bag All Stars, and the Redhawk Native American Arts Council, pop-up gallery talks, a dance workshop, a Forum Project discussion on current events, a poetry slam with the Nuyorican Poets Café, a photo booth, sketching of live models based on portraits in the “American Identities: A New Look” exhibition, and screenings of Michael and Timothy Rauch’s StoryCorps’ animated shorts, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the organization that is collecting an oral history of the country. In addition, artist Valerie Hegarty will give a talk about “Alternative Histories,” her fascinating interventions into three of the museum’s period rooms, which have been seemingly destroyed by a murder of crows. The galleries will remain open late so visitors can also check out “John Singer Sargent Watercolors,” “The Bruce High Quality Foundation: Ode to Joy,” “LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “‘Workt by Hand’: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts,” “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” “Raw/Cooked: Caitlin Cherry,” and other exhibitions.