Tag Archives: wade thompson drill hall

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: THE HEAD & THE LOAD

head and the load

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 4-15, $40-$90, 2:00/7:00/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org
www.theheadandtheload.com

South African multidisciplinary artist and certified genius William Kentridge creates charcoal drawings, live-action and animated films, operas, multimedia installations, museum and gallery exhibitions, sculptures, collages, chamber pieces, university lectures, circus-like processions, and one-man shows, including a recent performance of Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate Dada speech at Harlem Parish. For his latest unique, complex presentation, he is bringing the eighty-five-minute The Head & the Load to the Park Avenue Armory, where it will run December 4-15. The work was commissioned by 14-18 NOW and Park Avenue Armory along with Ruhrtriennale and MASS MoCA as part of the centenary of the end of WWI. “The Head & the Load is about Africa and Africans in the First World War. That is to say about all the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism that were heated and compressed by the circumstances of the war,” Kentridge explains on the event website. “It is about historical incomprehension (and inaudibility and invisibility). The colonial logic towards the black participants could be summed up: ‘Lest their actions merit recognition, their deeds must not be recorded.’ The Head & the Load aims to recognise and record.” The title comes from the Ghanaian proverb “The head and the load are the troubles of the neck,” and the work pays tribute to African porters and carriers who served the French, German, and British armies during the war.

The technical aspects of productions are always pristine. Kentridge is credited with concept and design and is the director; his longtime collaborator, Philip Miller, composed the score and handled the music concept and orchestration, while Thuthuka Sibisi is cocomposer and music director. The projection design is by Catherine Meyburgh, with Janus Fouché, Žana Marović, and Meyburgh doing video editing and compositing. The choreographer is Gregory Maqoma, with cinematography by Duško Marović, costumes by Greta Goiris, sets by Sabine Theunissen, lighting by Urs Schönebaum, and sound by Mark Grey. The North American premiere at the armory will be performed by actors Mncedisi Shabangu, Hamilton Dlamini, Nhlanhla Mahlangu, and associate director Luc De Wit; featured vocalists and musicians Joanna Dudley, Nhlanhla Mahlangu, Ann Masina, Bham Ntabeni, Sipho Seroto, N`Faly Kouyate on kora, Mario Gotoh on viola, Tlale Makhene on percussion, and Vincenzo Pasquariello on piano (among other members of the Knights chamber orchestra); dancers Maqoma, Julia Zenzie Burnham, Thulani Chauke, Xolani Dlamini, Nhlanhla Mahlangu; and ensemble vocalists Mhlaba Buthelezi, Ayanda Eleki, Grace Magubane, Ncokwane Lydia Manyama, Tshegofatso Moeng, Mapule Moloi, Lindokuhle Thabede, and Motho Oa Batho. Kentridge, Miller, and Sibisi will participate in an artist talk on December 6 at 6:30 with Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford, placing The Head & the Load in political context.

William Kentridge’s The Head & the Load runs at Park Ave. Armory December 4-15 (photo by Stella Olivier)

“The test is really to find an approach that is not an analytic dissection of a historical moment, but which doesn’t avoid the questions of history. Can one find the truth in the fragmented and incomplete? Can one think about history as collage, rather than as narrative?” Kentridge asks. “Carrying through the idea of history as collage, the libretto of The Head & the Load is largely constructed from texts and phrases from a range of writers and sources, cut-up, interleaved, and expanded. Frantz Fanon translated into siSwati; Tristan Tzara in isiZulu; Wilfred Owen in French and dog-barking; the conference of Berlin, which divided up Africa, rendered as sections from Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate; phrases from a handbook of military drills; Setswana proverbs from Sol Plaatje’s 1920 collection; some lines from Aimé Césaire.” Meanwhile, Miller and Sibisi explain, “During the First World War, the English Committee for the Welfare of Africans sent hymn books, harmonicas, gramophones, and banjos to the African battalions so that they could entertain themselves. What songs of war, love, and longing might have been made by these African men in the trenches on the Western Front or in the camps of East Africa? . . . What did the Great War sound like to the African soldiers and carriers who fought in it? Their experiences were not considered significant enough to be recorded or archived. We can only imagine the noises they heard or the music they made, through the multitude of voices and sounds we have created in The Head & the Load.” As always with Kentridge, expect the unexpected, and the extraordinary.

THE SIX BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS

Anne de Keersmaeker’s adaptation of The Six Brandenburg Concertos comes to the Park Ave. Armory this week

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
October 1-7, $45-$95
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.rosas.be/en

Belgian choreographer Anne de Keersmaeker has been making deeply thoughtful, intellectually exciting, stunningly beautiful work — “the art of dance as an act of writing movements in space and time,” as it says in the mission statement of her company — for nearly four decades. On October 1, just a few weeks after its September 12 world premiere in Berlin, her eagerly anticipated adaptation of The Six Brandenburg Concertos opens at the Park Avenue Armory, home to several great explorations of Bach, from the 2014 St. Matthew Passion by Peter Sellars, with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, to the 2015 Goldberg by pianist Igor Levit and visual artist Marina Abramovic. De Keersmaeker’s piece is choreographed for sixteen members of all generations in her Rosas company, performed to all six concertos played live by noted baroque orchestra B’Rock, conducted by Amandine Beyer, who has worked with De Keekrmaeker previously. With costumes by An D’Huys and set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld, Ivo van Hove’s partner and regular collaborator, the two-hour piece promises to be a fascinating look at the interplay of pattern in music and movement, interpreted by masters.

six brandenburg concertos

De Keersmaeker has never shied from setting her works to music that is both challenging and fiercely beloved; in 1980, her well-known Violin Phase was performed to the music of Steve Reich, and just a year ago in September, twi-ny was riveted by her work with Salva Sanchez on A Love Supreme at New York Live Arts, performed to John Coltrane’s classic album. “Like no other, Bach’s music carries within itself movement and dance, managing to combine the greatest abstraction with a concrete, physical, and, subsequently, even transcendental dimension,” De Keersmaeker has said. In a recent interview with Jan Vandenhouwe, artistic director of Kunsthuis Opera Vlaanderen Royal Ballet Flanders, De Keersmaeker noted, “Just like Bach in composing, I have to impose rules on myself which over time I can break. . . . Measure by measure we try to compensate Bach’s musical counterpoint with a choreographic counterpoint. It is certainly an enormous challenge to match the logic of the dance vocabulary with that of the music.” It’s a challenge that will be met in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall during this very special week of performances, by De Keersmaeker and her co-creators and dancers, Boštjan Antončič, Carlos Garbin, Frank Gizycki, Marie Goudot, Robin Haghi, Cynthia Loemij, Mark Lorimer, Michaël Pomero, Jason Respilieux, Igor Shyshko, Luka Švajda, Jakub Truszkowski, Thomas Vantuycom, Samantha van Wissen, Sandy Williams, and Sue Yeon Youn. De Keersmaeker and Beyer will take part in an artist talk with Performa founding director and chief curator RoseLee Goldberg on October 4 at 6:00; the event is sold out, but it will be streamed live on Facebook here.

IVO VAN HOVE AND THE COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE: THE DAMNED

Ivo van Hove’s overwhelming theatrical version of The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory thorugh July 28 (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Ivo van Hove’s overwhelming theatrical version of The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory through July 28 (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
July 17-28, $35-$175, 7:30/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

When France’s legendary Comédie-Française invited innovative Belgian director Ivo van Hove to team up with the three-hundred-plus-year-old company for the prestigious Avignon Festival in 2016, he selected to adapt Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, the 1969 film about the demise of a wealthy steel clan during the rise of the Third Reich. The multimedia piece was presented prior to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States as well as before Brexit and much of the fascistic movement taking hold around the globe, but it feels like it could have been written yesterday, particularly given Trump’s recent stand on steel and other tariffs. The spectacular production has triumphantly moved into the Park Avenue Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, where it immerses, confuses, delights, intrigues, captivates, and perplexes the audience over the course of 130 unpredictable minutes. In fact, afterward, when we were waiting for the bus on Lexington Avenue, an older woman approached us and, explaining that her two friends could not go at the last minute so she was alone, was desperate to discuss what we all had just seen, as she wasn’t sure whether she liked it but was deeply affected by it. Then, on the bus, as my wife and I talked more about the show, a younger woman sitting in front of us, also by herself, requested to join our conversation because she too wanted to know what we thought in order to help her navigate her own experience. Such reactions are not uncommon following works by van Hove, which are almost always fascinating and inventive whether they’re disappointing (Antigone, The Crucible), breathtaking (A View from the Bridge, Kings of War, Cries and Whispers), or somewhere in between (Lazarus).

Makeup tables are incorporated into production of The Damned at Park Avenue Armory(photo by Stephanie Berger)

Makeup tables are incorporated into the staging of The Damned with the Comédie-Française (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The audience sits in rising rafters in front of the large, impressive set, designed by van Hove’s longtime partner and collaborator, Jan Versweyveld, who also did the bold, brash lighting. At stage left are makeup tables and ottomans where characters occasionally change costumes (by An D’Huys) and speak directly into a live camera that projects the scene onto a giant screen at the back. At stage right is a row of wooden coffins where characters are led after they are dead. Tal Yarden’s projections also include archival footage of steel plants and fascism on the rise in Germany. The cast features Didier Sandre as family patriarch Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, who is preparing to choose his successor to save his business in light of the Third Reich’s power grab. In the mix are Joachim’s second son, Konstantin (Denis Podalydés); Konstantin’s son, Gunther (Clément Hervieu-Léger); Sophie (Elsa Lepoivre), the widow of Joachim’s eldest son, who is having an affair with Friedrich Bruckmann (Guillaume Gallienne); Joachim’s youngest son, the unstable Martin (Christophe Montenez); Joachim’s youngest daughter, Elisabeth (Adeline d’Hermy), who is married to Social Democrat Herbert Thallman (Loïc Corbery), with whom she has two girls, Erika (Madison Cluzel) and Thilde (Gioia Benenati); and family cousin Wolf von Aschenbach (Eric Génovese), who has joined the SS. The story is based on the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, and Enrico Medioli; although the film was in English, the play is in French and German, with English surtitles for the former. Sound designer Eric Sleichim’s wide-ranging original soundtrack was influenced by Bach, Strauss, Schütz, Buxtehude, and Rammstein, with music by saxophone quartet Bl!ndman.

Ivo van Hove’s The Damned takes on fascism in Nazi Germany following the burning of the Reichstag (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Despite many dazzling scenes, The Damned ends up being rather confounding. So much of it is ingenious, but too much of it is repetitive within the show itself as well as within van Hove’s oeuvre, meaning that newcomers to his work might leave much more blown away than his regular attendees. It’s a wholly impressive production, with compelling acting, well-orchestrated blood and gore, curious metaphorical meanderings, and live cameras that evoke Mario Mancini’s original cinematography. But the complex narrative and bevy of characters can get overwhelming, as can some of the spectacle. There’s a coldness that, even if it matches the soul of the film, is lacking something onstage. But despite all that, it is still a must-see, as is everything that van Hove does, whether with the Comédie-Française or his stellar home troupe, Toneelgroep Amsterdam.

THE DAMNED

Ivo van Hove’s The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28 (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
July 17-28, $35-$175, 7:30/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

Ivo van Hove has dazzled audiences with unique theatrical interpretations of such complex films as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Persona, and Scenes from a Marriage, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, and John Cassavetes’s Opening Night and Faces. The Belgian director continues his affection for difficult cinema with his adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1969 The Damned, an exploration of power and decadence in 1930s Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, and Enrico Medioli were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay for the film, which stars Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Umberto Orsini, and Charlotte Rampling. Van Hove is directing the work not for his home company, Toneelgroep in Amsterdam, but for France’s legendary Comédie-Française, which was founded in 1680. “In my view, it is the celebration of evil,” van Hove, who has also directed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and A View from the Bridge on Broadway and is reviving West Side Story, says about the dark tale. The work features set and lighting design by van Hove’s longtime collaborator and partner, Jan Versweyveld, costumes by An D’Huys, video by Tal Yarden, and sound by Eric Sleichim. The North American premiere takes place at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28; van Hove will be participating in an artist talk with Laurie Anderson on July 19 at 6:00. In addition, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is hosting “Visconti: A Retrospective,” consisting of more than a dozen films by the Italian director, continuing through July 19 with such gems as Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard, The Innocent, and, on closing night, The Damned.

NICK CAVE: THE LET GO / WEATHER OR NOT / THESE BAGS WE CARRY ARE FILLED WITH PROMISE

Jorell Williams holds his hands up near the beginning of Nick Cave’s Up Right presentation at the Park Avenue Armory (photo by James Ewing)

Park Avenue Armory and other locations
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
Through July 1, $17-$45
www.armoryonpark.org
nickcaveart.com

Multidisciplinary artist and fashion educator Nick Cave offers relief and release from these hard times with Up Right, a ritual-laden immersive performance that slowly builds to an explosive dance party in the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall in the Park Avenue Armory, part of his major installation The Let Go. As visitors enter the hall, they encounter the hundred-foot-long, forty-foot-high “chase,” two enormous curtains made of many-colored Mylar strips, representing social justice, that glitter in the light as they glide across the space. You can walk through them, but don’t sit on any of the small stools among them, which are for the performers. Ticket holders sit on the periphery on the floor, on benches, or in folding chairs as the curtains stop moving and Darrell Nickens begins playing the piano. Members of Vy Higginsen’s Sing Harlem Choir, consisting primarily of teen girls of color, enter the room, followed by a dozen men with their hands up, in the now-all-too-familiar “Don’t shoot” pose. Jorell Williams starts singing the gospel classic “Wonderful Change” while he and the other men sit in the stools and are dressed by men and women in white lab coats, putting them in Cave’s shaman-like soundsuits, made of colorful accessories that completely cover the body, hiding their gender, age, race, ethnicity, etc. The Sing Harlem Choir then performs a gospel version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” from Carousel, as the men in the soundsuits march and dance around the room to choreography by Francesca Harper and Cave and approach some audience members, taking their hands and making connections. It’s all rather tame, obvious, overly simplistic, and repetitive, like the United Colors of Benetton telling us that we can indeed all get along. But after the ninety-minute show, the hall turns into a dance party where some of the performers return and move and groove to the hot beats with anyone who wants to now cut loose as “chase” winds around the space again.

Nick Cave’s soundsuits are activated as part of The Let Go (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Taking place Wednesdays through Fridays through July 1, Up Right ($35, 8:00) is only one of a number of Let Go programs that are part of the installation, which is curated by Tom Eccles. On Saturdays and Sundays, the general installation is open to the public ($17, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm), with DJs getting things rocking at 2:00, including Joe Claussell on June 16, JD Samson on June 17, Noise Cans on June 23, Sabine Blaizin on June 24, Sammy Jo on June 30, and Tedd Patterson on July 1, with games of Twister, Soul Train lines, soundsuit invasions, a special line dance that you can rehearse here, and more. Numerous sections of the soundsuits are on display in various period rooms, bursting with color and mystery. On June 14 ($25, 7:00), the Freedom Ball should be a splashy evening of fashion, music, and dance, hosted by Matthew Placek and featuring Marshall Jefferson, Ladyfag, Papi Juice, Saada of Everyday People, and others. There will be a Dress to Express ball-style costume contest at 11:00 with $20,000 in prize money spread around three categories, State of the World, Unlike Anything Else, and Dare-Flair; among the judges are artist Mickalene Thomas, art collector and consultant Racquel Chevremon, and Cave. And on June 26 ($45, 7:30), “An Evening of Artistic Responses: The Let Go” brings together songwriter and musician Nona Hendryx, vocalist and artist Helga Davis, dancer and choreographer Harper, and FLEXN dance pioneer Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and the D.R.E.A.M. Ring for site-specific performative responses curated by Cave, who in 2013 transformed Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into a wildly inventive petting zoo for “Heard•NY.”

Nick Cave’s Tondos deliver a critical message in “Weather or Not” at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cave fans will also want to check out “These bags we carry are filled with promise,” the new kaleidoscopic three-dimensional mural he and his design collaborator, Bob Faust, have installed in the lobby of New York Live Arts; the opening reception is June 15 from 4:30 to 6:30. On view through September, the soundsuit mural is made from woven bags and is meant to represent the hopes, dreams, and aspirations we all carry inside us but don’t always let out. And through June 23, Cave’s “Weather or Not” exhibition at Jack Shainman in Chelsea is a gorgeous collection of eye-catching wire Tondos that swirl with life on the walls; the mesmerizing, bold colors are based on weather patterns, but they’re superimposed on barely visible scans of the brains of black youths suffering from PTSD because of gun violence. As always, Cave offers beauty and originality tinged with both hope and fear.

YERMA

An unnamed woman (Billie Piper) and her partner (Brendan Cowell) consider starting a family in Simon Stone’s sizzling Yerma (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Monday – Saturday through April 21, $40-$135
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Australian director Simon Stone puts domesticity and obsession under a microscope in the blistering, no-holds-barred Yerma, which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory. His adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s radical 1934 drama, part of the Spanish poet and playwright’s seminal Rural Trilogy that also includes Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba, digs deep into the heart and soul of a woman who wants to have a baby but is having trouble conceiving. In a coproduction between the armory and the Young Vic, Stone moves the play to modern-day London, where a thirty-three-year-old blogger identified only as “her” (Olivier Award winner Billie Piper) and her forty-three-year-old partner, international businessman John (Brendan Cowell), have just bought a three-floor apartment. At first the couple is deliriously happy with their life, thrilled to be free of bourgeois expectations, when the woman suddenly and surprisingly decides she wants to have a baby, but John’s enthusiasm is questionable. They have difficulty conceiving, and soon all kinds of connections to sex and reproduction appear, from her pregnant sister, Mary (Charlotte Randle), married to a philanderer, to a former boyfriend, Victor (John MacMillan), now father of a two-year-old, who gets a job at her office. Her twenty-one-year-old assistant, Des (Thalissa Teixeira), talks about her extremely active sex life while the woman’s mother, Helen (Maureen Beattie), can’t stop complaining about raising kids. In none of the situations is having children and being a parent ideal; instead, each person faces their own demons. Over several years, as the woman battles infertility, she descends into an ever-more-difficult struggle to maintain balance in her life as madness threatens.

Two sisters (Billie Piper and Charlotte Randle) evaluate their situations while their mother (Maureen Beattie) looks on in Park Ave. Armory production (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Yerma unfolds on Lizzie Clachan’s spectacular stage, reconfigured specifically for the massive fifty-five-thousand-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which has previously been transformed in dazzling ways for productions of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, Matt Charman and Josie Rourke’s The Machine, and Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth, among other plays, art installations, and music events. The audience is seated on risers on two sides of the stage, a horizontal space encased by glass, making everyone a voyeur peering into someone else’s personal life, as if turning the woman’s blog into a physical reality. The woman is trapped within the glass structure, which evokes her mind; she is the only one who ever makes contact with the walls, except for when her mother washes it early on, not wanting to get involved too much in her daughter’s problems. Each side of the audience can see the other through the glass; at first it looks like it could be a reflection, but it’s not, equating everyone, as if the story we’re all experiencing could be happening to any one of us.

At certain angles, the actors are reflected multiple times; thus, it is often possible to see four or five ghostly, unformed versions of Piper, visible far off to the right and left and across to the other side of the audience. It is a powerful dramatic effect that makes her deepening issues that much more universal. The lightning-fast set changes by lighting designer James Farncombe occur in sudden blackness as magisterial arias echo loudly throughout the space and a monitor announces the next chapter, which have such names as “Conception,” “Disillusion,” and “Deception,” followed by phrases both descriptive and ominous. In addition, the characters are mic’d in such a way that their voices seem transcendent as they echo above them. (The gorgeous music and sound design is by Stefan Gregory.) It’s a testament to Stone and the exceptional cast that they do not let the complex staging overwhelm the intimacy of the story. Nothing is done simply for show or to merely revel in the magic of theater; every aspect of the production has been ingeniously crafted to organically intersect into a wholly involving and shattering experience that will leave you physically and emotionally exhausted as well as thoroughly exhilarated.

A couple’s relationship evolves and devolves in Yerma at the Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

In her North American stage debut, Piper (The Effect, Treats) is electrifying as her character devolves from a fun-loving, sexy, multifaceted woman into a mental wreck falling into the lower depths of the human condition; it is a brave, bold, unforgettable performance that leaves it all out on the stage and on the glass, literally and figuratively. Cowell (Life of Galileo, The Dark Room) marvelously complements her as John, maintaining the mystery behind the man’s fears and desires as he reacts to his partner’s gut-wrenching unpredictability. As a collective unit, the cast displays the wide range of emotions associated with pregnancy, from conception, the morning after pill, and abortion to motherhood, postpartum depression, and separation. It never lets up for a second throughout its one hundred minutes, with no detail extraneous; an early discussion of a certain sexual position only later lends insight into John’s unspoken feelings about potentially becoming a father, and even the characters’ names have been carefully chosen, with biblical and historical references or descriptions of who they are and what they want. And yet Toneelgroep Amsterdam veteran Stone (The Wild Duck, Miss Julie) has opted to not call the woman “Yerma” even though that is the title of the play — the name is shouted out only once in Lorca’s original — emphasizing her lack of identity without a child while reminding us again that she is us. It’s a terrifying prospect, brought to life in this stunning, brutal production.

THÉÂTRE DU SOLEIL: A ROOM IN INDIA

Le Theatre du Soleil performs A Room in India directed by Ariane Mnouchkine at the Park Avenue Armory on December 4, 2017. A collective creation by the Théâtre du Soleil Directed by Ariane Mnouchkine Music by Jean-Jacques Lemêtre Together with Hélène Cixous With the exceptional participation of Kalaimamani Purisai Kannappa Sambandan Thambiran (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Hélène Cixous gives a tour-de-force performance in Théâtre du Soleil’s epic A Room in India at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

UNE CHAMBRE EN INDE
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 5-20, $45-$150
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
www.theatre-du-soleil.fr

One of the true joys of experiencing anything at the Park Ave. Armory, from film and dance to music, theater, and art installations, is to see how the spectacle-driven institution has reinvented itself for its latest production. Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford’s Macbeth took place in a narrow stone-bounded pathway that turned to mud. Audience members were encouraged to walk around the space to fully immerse themselves in Shen Wei’s Undivided Divided. And visitors could have fun on large swings in Ann Hamilton’s The Event of a Thread. Ariane Mnouchkine and Théâtre du Soleil’s epic four-hour A Room in India, running through December 20, does not disappoint. Upon entering the armory, guests are wanded by the Great Police Security Brigade, guards wearing fanciful uniforms. In one of the period rooms, attendees who preordered dinner sit down for a buffet-style meal by chef Gaurav Anand of Moti Mahal Delux. (During intermission, free chaat, masala peanuts, wine, and water are served as well.) Inside the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, you’ll first come upon an open dressing room tucked under the seat risers, where you can talk to the performers as they are getting ready, applying makeup and getting into costume. To the left is a bookstore, while to the right is a carpeted and pillowed area where some of the actors prepare with vocal exercises about fifty minutes before showtime and which ticket holders are invited to watch. The long, deep set is on the east side of the hall; the audience seating rises on the west. Even the program is unique, a booklet packed with information, including inspirational quotes and excerpts from the main character’s journal. “It was as if we were refugees from history,” Cornélia writes. “All about our bedroom, the times had been unleased. We wondered what would become of us, we wondered what to call this, this chaos.”

A Room in India the Théâtre du Soleil (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Ariane Mnouchkine returns to the Park Ave. Armory with latest spectacle, A Room in India (photo by Stephanie Berger)

A Room in India is chaotic indeed, but wonderfully so, with a decidedly feminist take on the state of the planet, especially one lacking in legitimate, compassionate leadership. A theater company is in India for a performance when its leader suddenly has a manic episode and quits the troupe, leaving his assistant, Cornélia (Hélène Cixous), in charge, to her surprise and dismay. The entire play takes place in the same enormous room, in which the furniture is constantly being moved around and changed save for an ever-present bed, where Cornélia sleeps; it is often difficult to know which scenes are really happening and which are Cornélia’s (Freudian?) dreams and nightmares come alive, often spurred by telephone calls from the company’s administrator, Astrid (Thérèse Spirli). Mnouchkine, who was previously at the armory with Les Éphémères in 2009 as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, throws just about everything she can into the mix as she explores the responsibility that theater has both to inform and entertain, shining a light on society’s ills and thrills; among those making an appearance are Shakespeare (Maurice Durozier), King Lear (Seietsu Onochi) and Cordelia (Man-Waï Fok), Mahatma Gandhi (Samir Abdul Jabbar Saed), Anton Chekhov (Arman Saribekyan), the God Krishna (Palani Murugan), and Charlie Chaplin, along with bumbling police led by Lt. Ganesh-Ganesh (Omid Rawendah), local mobster S. S. Loganathan (Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini), monkeys (Seear Kohi, Saribekyan) who can’t believe what evolution has wrought, a holy white cow (Ghulam Reza Rajabi or Saribekyan), a pimp (Rawendah), the Taliban, and rickshawallahs. Torture alternates with farce, including a riotous Terukkuttu scene of a film being made in the desert. Two sections from The Mahābhārata are presented. Meanwhile, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre’s entrancing music is played in a separate room stage left by Ya-Hui Liang and Marie-Jasmine Cocito. Mnouchkine — whose father, Alexandre, produced such films as Jean Cocteau’s L’Aigle à deux têtes, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose, Philippe de Broca’s L’Homme de Rio, and Claude Lelouch’s Un homme qui me plait — doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch; the show does not need to be four hours long, as there is repetition and various needless moments, but Cixous is so delightful as Cornélia, and the cast of thirty-five is having so much fun, that you might not really care that much about the shortcomings and instead just revel in the daring, exhilarating spirit of the superb production as a whole.