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Pregnant Catholic Girls Destroy American Theater!: A Crucible

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A CRUCIBLE follows the high school drama club at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception as it sets out to stage Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible. Conflicts erupt when ideas about sexuality and contemporary performance begin to influence the young actors and their POV about the production. The young women and men, fueled by a passion for black magic and avant garde tropes, stage a coup to build a performance that addresses their own lives. This original play re-appropriates the writing of Arthur Miller, as well as Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol’s diaries, John Huston’s film The Misfits and other texts. A CRUCIBLE is a darkly comic play about the power and problems of performance.

A cast of nine will embody twenty-three different roles and lead the audience on a hallucinogenic survey of classical, modern and post-modern theater. The cast includes Heather Litteer (Big Art Group), Haley Rawson (Tenement Street Workshop), Chris Tyler (Our Hit Parade, Dixon Place), Robb Martinez (The Acting Company), nicHi Douglas (Political Subversities), and more — ALL OF THEM WITCHES!

I went to the opening night for the show and I’ve been meaning to post about it but have been waaaay tooo fuckin’ busy with my life the past few weeks… Sorry! Hope you saw it /// hope it runs again… I was really fucking tired the night I saw it, so gonna do my best to recap in some sorta meaningful way….

For those that didn’t see it…Basically a bunch of high school catholic girls get it in their head that they want to create experimental theater; after one of the girls visits their aunt in NYC who turns her on to the wild stuff happening off off off Broadway, she returns to school and convinces her friends that they could mount an experimental version of the Crucible if they can sway their closeted teacher/priest. But he’s busy pining over the recent hospitalization of his favorite male student and cannot believe the girls want to do something experimental! In the meantime, the girls get really catty and start infighting which leads to chaos ruining everything! But then an unexpected prince arrives to save the day! And then everyone gets pregnant which leads to daytime talkshow fame, but no play….

***Fuck… can’t find my notes… when I find my notes I’ll update this more… it was really funny + i jotted down details but yeah my memory has been fucked the past few weeks!been way too busy… ***

GRRRLS ON FILM!

GRRRLS ON FILM! celebrates the work of women, trans people, and genderqueer filmmakers, writers, performers, and other creators, especially but not exclusively those whose work has been influential to or stems from riot grrrl and queercore movements. the series is held by page 22′s page poetry salon (curated by lee ann brown) in the former home of geraldine page at 435 W. 22nd St. in Manhattan. for ten consecutive weeks, GRRRLS ON FILM! meets Thursday nights, doors at 8pm. the night will begin with the salon and end with the screening. audience space is limited and dependent on rsvp. to do so, please send an email to grrrlsonfilm@gmail.com, and feel free to let us know now which nights you’d like to attend as we have rsvp lists going for the whole series. all events are free and open to those that rsvp first, but for those that are able to do so, a suggested donation of $10 would really help cover all the costs incurred in putting this event together. we will supply some food and/or drinks every week but suggest everyone BYOB and/or bring something to share!

“Group Sex on the Living Room Floor” by Amanda Davidson a work-in-progress play as part of “Mundane Fantasy” at BAX

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Group Sex on the Living Room Floor is a work-in-progress story about longing and debt, told by three performers of any gender who share the roles of a couple, their rivals, and an imaginary baby. Poised at the edge of a collapsing economy, these characters wrestle with the desire to escape, whether through online gaming or conversations with people who might not exist. With spare dialogue and a kaleidoscope structure, GSOTLRF shifts between real, virtual and imaginary worlds to ask: What does it mean to owe someone something? How do we connect under pressure?

 

Mundane Fantasy
February 10-11, 8PM
BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (421 5th Ave)
$15/gen. $8/low income [Buy tickets]

Mundane Fantasy, curated by Faye Driscoll as a part of BAX’s Performance and Discussion series, features works by Dages Juvelier Keates, PARTED IN THE MIDDLE, and Sacha Yanow.

“I was drawn to these artists because of their unique creative perspectives and how they are each—in very different ways and through their various mediums— illuminating the relationship between the mundane, the personal and the mythical/fantastical with a smart, sincere and queer sensibility,” says Driscoll.

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PARTED IN THE MIDDLE, co-founded with Nathanial Putnam, is Amanda Davidson in collaboration with the world. partedinthemiddle.wordpress.com.

Jess Barbagallo is a writer and performer. She has performed with Big Dance Theater, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, and The Builders Association. She is a founding member of Half Straddle (The Knock-Out Blow, Sliding Whores, Nurses in New England, In the Pony Palace/Football, Away Uniform), the Red Terror Squad (Family Bed) and the Dyke Division of 2HC (Room for Cream. She has written the plays Grey-Eyed Dogs (Dixon Place Mondo Cane Commission), I’ll Meet You in Tijuana (Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab), Saturn Nights (Incubator Arts Project), and Men’s Creative Writing Group (Playwriting Resident of the Invisible Dog Art Center).

Aden Hakimi isn’t very good at bios but he likes you, so he’s going to try. Born and raised in the Bay Area, he studied Theatre at Northeastern University before packing up and moving to Brooklyn. Aside from performing, Hakimi keeps busy as a video editor (currently at MTV/VH1) He is the founder of Midnight Productions, an independent film company whose first feature film, “The Beverages,” he co-directed/edited/starred in. Most importantly, he is an Aquarius. He’d like to thank his cats, Pip and Little Bit, for keeping it real.

Kourtney Rutherford is a theater artist and adult/childhood educator. She has worked with several renowned downtown theater companies including Witness Relocation, Radiohole, Half Straddle, and Big Dance Theater, with whom she won a 2010 Bessie New York Dance and Performance award with the company for her work in “Comme Toujours Here I Stand.” Kourtney is approaching completion of her master’s degree in educational theater from City College.

Two Boys One Opera

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When I was young I set a bunch of lofty goals for myself to achieve before I could happily die… the older I get the more I realize I must continually set higher and higher points of satisfaction because life is full of odd moments wherein I realize I’ve achieved happiness I never conceived. Watching “Two Boys” provided such a moment: never had I thought the acronyms O.M.G. or 7-1/2 cc able to attain the snooty status of operatic. But they have, as well as many others. It truly was a beautiful moment watching Susan Bickley move the simplistic O.M.G. to newfound vocal heights. Sadly, she didn’t pronounce it O.M.G., instead she sung OOOOOH MY GAWWWDDDDD in order for the traditional Opera going crowd to understand the acronym written out on the Talking Notes screen. Bringing Internet acronyms into the opera surely must have been a challenge for the creative minds behind Two Boys as Internet acronyms aren’t known to be very poetic language gestures. Instead, they’re usually argued to be the end of the English language… Eat your heart out, Keats, for language is rapidly (d)evolving. The detective on the case, played by Bickley, hired to solve the attempted murder of Jake, played by Jonathan McGovern, challenged Internet language in the end of the first act as she questioned the necessity of the dark online reality the two boys delved into. But the show as a whole seemed to prove her wrong as the dark world of the Internet triumphantly declares its role in the modern world, for better or worse, as the characters reveal their own “must-achieve” life goals.

The show opened with the detective pouring herself a drink whilst singing of the senseless crime she must solve. She explains that nothing makes any sense and that a gardener, missing girl, and a spy are involved. Linear thought is then abandoned as Jake enters the stage and lays in a hospital bed, his mother comes to his side as a doctor explains that he may not awake. The detective then enters into the hospital reality to ask about the fallen boy. The mother praises her son, who in the end, is revealed to be a genius. Then Brian, played by Nicky Spence, enters and is questioned by the detective in regards to his involvement in the crime. Brian wholeheartedly denies the murder charge and says the gardener is to blame. The detective meets Brian’s parents, played by Rebecca Stockland and Paul Napier-Burrows, both demand that Brian be released to no avail. Throughout the play it becomes more and more apart neither knew their son as well as they believed, and Brian’s daily life was a performative mask hiding his deep desire for acceptance and intimate love. At one point, Brian declares the internet is better than the world, it’s more real and full of all kinds of people his parents and teacher’s can’t see.

The “friends” Brian’s authority figures can’t see are the missing girl (Rebecca), played by Mary Bevan, and the spy (Fiona), played by Heather Shipp. Rebecca is Brian’s personification of love; despite ever meeting her physically, she leads him down his dark path after meeting on a message board. Fiona is Rebecca’s aunt, a spy that works for the government; she holds the keys to Brian’s mysterious passage. The two women seduce Brian with tales of love, money and secrecy. Brian fixates on the reality they weave for him and winds up enslaved to the stories they spin, never does he question their words nor does he heed their warnings. The show uses collaging techniques to effectively bring all the different realities and stories to life simultaneously, video is coupled with singing as the many voices are portrayed.

Being in the audience for opening night was a treat for me as the dark, other worldy subject matter: a teenage stabbing, internet chatrooms, and cybersexual predators are all too familiar yet rarely are they discussed outside of the privacy of our computer screens. And it’s the dark side of the net that has long fascinated me as it’s hallways and labyrinthine social capabilities have provided me a more enriched life. I’m very pleased golden boy, Nico Muhly, took up such a progressive piece and brought it to life. I don’t want to give away the ending, but I caught on to the unrevealed subplot driving the narrative early on and I really felt for both boys. Both evil, full of love and desire yet unable to express their wantonness due to the trappings of our savage day to day reality. The genius of one proves to be the death of the other; the true magnificence of the show comes in the myriad of surprises. From the very beginning the ending is revealed, yet continually what one thinks to be truth, shifts. Perhaps an homage to the fickle nature of truth, which has become more and more evident with the addition of wikipedia, wikilinks and other such sites to the world. One only needs to flip on the nightly news to understand just how scary and dangerous our present world, but at the Opera, one is able to transcend the trappings as the grimmest truths are elevated to beautiful, lofty heights.

Get tickets…

I DO! Communal Review: The Lily’s Revenge

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I think it’s fair for me to say, as a guy my age dealing with my socioeconomic level, that I’ve seen a lot of theater. While most boys save their pennies for the latest videogame system or computer game, I was busy reading something, not working, and trying to scam a door guy at some low level performance art house. That said, you won’t catch me at too many Broadway Productions, but I’ve seen enough to understand what they’re about. I know experimental theater best. You know, the weird stuff. The stuff so off the wall an audience member might be paid to see so the creative team doesn’t feel their work was in vain.

I can’t help myself. I love theater. I’d go to more Broadway shows if I could afford them, but I can’t, so I stick to shows at PS122 or wherever I can get a reasonably priced ticket. When I first heard of The Lily’s Revenge, I was excited that for $20 I’d get five hours of theater. It’s like a junky suddenly getting thirty bags for the price of ten! But then there was the fear of overdosing and I felt that fear creeping in as a probability as I waited in the rush ticket line from 9am-7pm the first time I saw the show, feeling ever so terrible from my escapade the evening before involving no sleep, lots of drugs/booze and casual sex.

It’s been about a year and a half, and I remember thinking as I waited in line, “This is it. I’m gonna walk outta here a full blown junkhead or I’m going to overdose and be really pissed off.” Even as the play began and the actress playing Time warned the audience that we’d all die or be stuck inside the play forever, I knew it must be fate. I’d waited this long though so there was no way of turning back, a junky never turns back…

Now zoom forward a year and a half and my life has radically changed! I’m living in NYC and I’m a full-fledged Lily lovin’ zombie! Oh what a difference five hours (and a year and a half) can make when not planted in front of the television munching on popcorn and slurping fingers for tidbits of greasy chicken. Living in NYC afforded me the lovely opportunity to meet Taylor Mac (whose theatrical outer exterior suggests he’s a club kid that got smart and done good!) last winter and after listening to him gush about the re-staging of The Lily’s Revenge in San Francisco, I knew I needed to return to that city to mainline my favorite drug, and so that’s exactly what JT and I did. We contacted the Magic Theater, found a way to get tickets without having to pay for them (THANK YOU PATTIE!) and headed west…

It was weird for me because the first time I saw The Lily’s Revenge I had traveled in opposite directions: I’d come from my old homestead in San Francisco to NYC to dose myself on ten days of theater. For ten days JT and I saw one to two plays a day, and The Lily’s Revenge was just another name of a play I was supposed to try and see before I saw it. Now, The Lily’s Revenge means so much more to me. It’s the one show that I know will “take me there.” Nothing I have ever seen is as unique and thoughtfully put together as The Lily’s Revenge. Future play writes beware: your works have major competition in my heart…

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Peter and the Wolf: Recapped.

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A few weeks ago we posted an interview with Marc Arthur about his highly anticipated theatrical adaptation of Peter and the Wolf. Alas, the time came and the time passed and now all we have to share are our memories, but the memories those that ventured out to see the play share are grand,  for Marc’s adaptation truly dazzled. His vision was a unique one, with a cast largely made up of kids using live action painting and dance to tell the tale. After interviewing Marc (and since I have known his work for awhile) I had a sense that the play would truly break apart traditional theatrical conventions, but waited with bated breath to see if his description would match the actual experience of viewing the play.

After the lights dimmed and the play began all anxieties faded as the audience wandered into a fanciful tale full of color and extreme language rarely expressed through children. A favorite line of my girlfriend and mine was spoken by one little girl to the other and was something like, “Do you see what nature did to you?” The line was used as a jab, the little girl belittled was a duck that was regularly harassed and put down by the other girls for being unable to fly. Eventually the little duck burst into tears and confessed, “Because I love Justin Beiber.” The line invoked laughter in much of the audience, but in retrospect it truly was a peculiar laughter since so many little girls are caught in the same emotional reverie as the little duckling that couldn’t fly. Am I really that immature that I find humor in a little girls pain as she longs for her idol? I guess I too “am a sick man and a spiteful man,” the Grandfather quoted Fyodor Dostoevsky as s/he took the stage from a seat in the audience.

Breaking the wall between audience and show wasn’t the only way the play broke convention, in the end the whole play evolved into an auction house wherein the live-action painting that continually evolved throughout the play was bidded away at somewhere  around 100,000 pounds. I’m sure every director in the audience cringed as they, for the first time, realized the enormous opportunity theater provides to auction off art. After this, the ballerina’s took stage again,  by now though, their outfits and faces were covered in paint, another reminder of innocence’s fragile nature, the once clean little girls, like the rest of the characters, prove just how dirty and simultaneously beautiful the world can be.

Here’s a short little clip I took of a choreographed dance scene of Peter painting while the Ballerina’s took flight into reverie:

Reminding us of Our Humanity: An Inclusive Interview with Taylor Mac

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Taylor Mac isn’t just our favorite living theater person, he is one of our favorite artists making work today period. After seeing “The Lily’s Revenge,” his five hour manifesto at the Here Arts Center in 2009, we became full on Mac fans and haven’t missed out on anything he’s done in New York since then. We recently had the honor of being able to meet him for a two on one interview just before the final week of performances for his newest play, “The Walk Across America For Mother Earth,” took place at LaMama’s Ellen Stewart Theater. Since our interview, Mac played a number of successful shows down under in Australia and he is now in rehearsals for an all new production of “The Lily’s Revenge” in San Francisco, which Stephen and I will both be going to see in April. (Californians and travel savvy theater lovers, get your tickets now before they sell out and you have to wait all day like we did for rush tickets.)

It is our pleasure and privilege to offer you this conversation. May it thrill and touch you as deeply as it has us.

Enjoy!

MP: Hi Taylor! We’re both very excited to sit down with you and discuss your work but are finding it a little tricky to figure out exactly where to start with so much to talk about… Could you maybe tell us a bit about what it was like to be part of the first production to go up at La Mama since Ellen passed away? What sort of feelings has that brought up in you?

TM: I never actually met Ellen. I’d seen her a lot though. I saw her introduce shows with her infamous cow bell and I had a lot of respect for her and even more so now after having read various obituaries that have come out. I am so amazed that she created her legacy in her forties. It’s really remarkable that she was able to do it at a time when women weren’t able to do those things, let alone black women. She led a very inspiring life and I feel honored to be part of the first show at LaMama since her death. I also feel honored for the chance to work with The Talking Band who had worked with Ellen for so many years.

That said, my goals are different. Ellen’s goals were committed to Off Off Broadway and the Talking Band is committed to Off Off Broadway, but if I never do another Off Off Broadway show in my life I will be so frickin’ thrilled. It’s complicated. The industry is such a mixed bag. I’m so happy to be part of its legacy…

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Interview With Marc Arthur + Peter and the Wolf

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Whenever I tell people about my friend Marc Arthur, I can’t help but describe him as one of my crazed genius friends. Ever since I first met Marc (at some drunken crazed party in San Francisco wherein everyone was some version of male/female parading their bodies like peacocks strutting for a sexual encounter) I’ve had the joy of expanding my notions of theater and performance art. Marc Arthur’s work strips theater of its essential elements to create a new model for live performance, fusing physical media with live action to articulate a combined logic of the performing and visual arts. His shows have been produced by LaMaMa, Dixon Place, New Langton Arts, and The Living Theater. Arthur frequently collaborates with legendary underground filmmakers the Kuchar brothers and beloved drag performance artist Vaginal Davis. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice (2007) and Frise, Hamburg (2009). Arthur studied at Universität der Künste, Berlin; the California College of the Arts, San Francisco; and in the dramatic writing program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. It brings me great joy and excitement to announce his latest work, Peter and the Wolf, is coming to fruition. Be sure to buy tickets and check out the interview we did so you all can get a better understanding of the beautiful work he’s been lovingly working diligently on so that theater may progress.

Here’s the interview:

MP: Hey Marc! It’s really great to meet up with you and talk about Peter and the Wolf, wanna start out by talking about the inspiration for its creation?

MA: Yeah! It started about two years ago. I was hiking in Big Sur when I had a very communal experience with a wolf. When I first saw it I thought it was going to attack me. I retreated but the wolf caught my eye. There was something about this creature that was so human. The animal and I bonded and I ended up spending the night there with it. At the time I was also doing work at New Langton Arts. I conceived of a show where each character in Peter and the Wolf would be represented by a different artist – there would be an exhibition and every artist would submit a work based on their character. It’s evolved since then into a more performance based piece.

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J.T. Ross and Talya Epstein Debut “Masturbation Remote” This Sunday @ The Bushwick Starr

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As some of you may know I have been working on a collaborative performance piece off and on now for the past eight or so months.  After various periods of down time and breaks in our creative process, Talya and I are finally ready to premier  our new work; Masturbation Remote as part of the Bushwick Site Fest this Sunday afternoon March 6th at 3:30 pm.

Masturbation Remote is a first time collaboration between Talya and I and we are very excited to be sharing it with all of you.  Here is a short paragraph about the work:

Masturbation Remote is a trio involving one male, one female, and an obsolete television which receives only static signals. The two performers, like the constantly searching television, exist in states of confusion, longing, and uselessness. There is a continual power struggle between the three in attempts to find balance and understanding between the immediate given circumstances and the endless possibilities of the unknown.

The Bushwick Site Festival is  sponsored by Arts In Bushwick and is in its third year.  It is only one of the fantastic neighborhood wide art festivals that happen over the course of the year and the only one solely  dedicated to performance.  Arts In Bushwick and the events they throw are in many ways the heart and soul of the Bushwick arts community, keeping an important focus on community in a neighborhood that is quickly changing.

The Site Fest functions around five “hub spaces” that all show various work all weekend, but the festival also includes performances at  a number of “satellite spaces” (apartments, studios, street corners, galleries etc) scattered throughout the neighborhood.  There is an amazing unified feeling that the festival evokes and it is rare in New York City for this much multidisciplinary work to be shown and attended in celebration not only of the art on display, but also of the neighborhood that is housing it.

The entire festival is free and run by volunteers.  It is a true gift to not only the neighborhood of Bushwick, but also to the borough of Brooklyn and on a greater scale, the city of New York.

We look forward to you sharing this very special event with us.  See you round the hood!

Masturbation Remote

Date: Sunday March 6th

Time: 3:30

Location: The Bushwick Starr 207 Starr Street (Between Wykoff and Irving, right down the street from the Jefferson L Train Stop)

Price: FREEEEEE!!!!

 

Photos by Ryan Mekenian

Saturn Nights and Ugly Duckling Poetry

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This past month has brought New York City residents more snow and slushy days spent narrowly escaping mini curbside lakes than the past few years combined. Fortunately, one of my favorite Left Coast artists arrived to help me bare it! Sadly, she left Friday morning and I already miss you greatly Ariel Goldberg… but the night before she left she took me to one of my favorite places in town, St. Mark’s Church, to see her friend Jess Barbagallo‘s new play SATURN NIGHTS. Saturn Nights is running January 27, 28, 29, 30, 31; Feb 1, 3, 4, 5 (8pm curtain) and I firstly would like to say I suggest ya’ll go check it out. It’s super weird. I’m not sure how articulate a review I can offer, but I would suggest you see it!

Saturn Nights is a dark play both in the physical sense and content wise. I tried to take notes during it, but most of my notes ended up written word upon written word that created a great collage affect that maybe I’ll incorporate into one of my paintings but due to my lack of memory, makes for difficulty in reviewing. Let me see… The play used a lot of mixed media tactics to slowly unfold a mysterious story full of dark truths and characters that seemed very odd, mundane and alone in their peculiarities with desires as American as ketchup. The acting in the play is superb and the dialogue gives attention to the small details that playwrights often overlook, offering audiences the chance to open their vision to odd complexities they’d normally not recognize. Spiritual epiphanies occur. An omnipresent radio narrator with a smooth lustrous voice strings characters along and offers weird insights into the cult of spirituality and its crossing with the cult of personality. The family the play follows believes their “dead” father is meditating in the backyard near a hole that many characters often look into simply because it seems there is something beautiful in the whole worth looking at. Many joints are smoked. Incest again tries to snare a relative. Basically, if you believe paganism should triumph over all then yes, you should see Saturn Nights. I think I’m going to go see it one more time as well!

Directed by Meghan Finn

FEATURING:

Lucy Alibar, Emily Davis, Joseph Gregori, Nic Grelli, Laryssa Husiak, LaToya Lewis, Rachel Murdy, Kristen Sieh, Anna Foss Wilson & Greg Zucculo

Produced by Wayne Petro & the longest lunch

Set Design by Mary Chan

Sound Design by Chris Giarmo

Video Design by Jared Mezzocchi

Lighting Design by Paul Toben

Costume Design by Michael De Angelis

Friday my heart began aching for love so I headed to the Old Stone House – the oldest house in Brooklyn still standing – for a poetry reading put on by Ugly Duckling Presse. Cedar Sigo, Julian Brolaski, and Kate Colby were on the bill, all are Ugly Duckling Press authors, the latter two are newbies to the press. Cedar opened up the night, my favorite line being “I have ladies eyelashes/ my ears stick out/ but I am smart” and yeah Cedar is great. I’ve been a fan of his since I lived in the Bay Area, which I sadly said said goodbye to quite a while ago.

Julian Brolaski and Kate Colby followed Cedar’s lead. Both have recently been published by Ugly Duckling and the press showed its range by housing both readers in the same night. Julian was witty, funny and very young whereas Kate was more traditional and serious in tone. Throughout the night I kept reloading pages on my phone hoping a certain someone would respond to me. I hate the anxiety and inability of being able to focus when the need for response overtakes all others. With global instant communication bound to human fingers, it seems we will never get what we want when we feel we need it.

Thank god for artistic deviations from personal obsessions, without cheap escapes I’m pretty sure there would be many more bullets in heads.