Trump was indicted on 37 federal charges, the Ukrainian Dam collapsed after being exploded by a bomb, maybe; fighting and fires continued in Sudan; smoke from Canada’s wild fires amassed over New York City, giving us the distinction of, once again, being Number One, this time in having, on Wednesday June 7, the worst air quality in the world. With all this happening amid the thousands of arts and cultural events here, this past week I was privileged to see three of these inspiring performances, which have lingered in head and my heart and I’m grateful once again to be alive, even in the midst of global horrors.
Close Up: Three East Village Stories
At Metropolitan Playhouse on Fourth Street, my husband Arthur Rivers and I saw the final performance on June 4, 2023, of Close Up: Three East Village Stories, solo performances based on interviews with downtown folks. Three actors performed stories of three characters, who the actors had interviewed to create the monologues. For the first piece Marisol Carrere, in gender-bending fashion, played Nick Drakides, acting out his story of his crooning Frank Sinatra songs in front of his apartment building on 124 East Fourth Street while Laraine Goodman tap danced out front. East Villagers anassed around them to watch and even the cops got into it, creating a spotlight for them with their policing equipment.
Then Linda Kuriloff played Marcia A. Richard, now a crisis counselor, but formerly a woman who ended up in the women’s Third Street Shelter. From her interviews Linda related wild stories of traumatic events in Marcia Richard’s life, including that Marcia had been arrested many times—but, she said, getting arrested was good for her, like arrested meant she could finally get A Rest. Then her life turned around, she got sober and began writing. She is the author of the memoir of addiction and recovery, M!ss D!agnosed. Marcia Richard was in the audience and I kept one eye on her as she laughed and cried along with what looked and sounded like a perfect replication of her mannerisms, playful language, and compelling story.
The reason my husband and I came to see this play was for the last solo in which Michael Turner played Rafik Bouzgarrou, restaurateur and owner of Bin 141 on Avenue A, a place we dine at often. The minute Michael Turner came out and moved quickly about the stage as he “set up” for a day at work in the restaurant, shifting tables around, putting out expresso for passersby, and telling his story growing up in Tunisia on an olive farm, it was clear he nailed it. Rafik is a big guy, and Michael Turner not so much, but I was convinced I was watching Rafik himself, as he spoke with Rafik’s accent, told his story of coming the USA, finally to New York City and naming Bin 141 for his brother who passed. Turner had Rafik completely down, his accent, his rapid-fire movements, the way he pauses, and he’d only spent one morning interviewing Rafik as he worked setting up before opening.
This was part of a wonderful series put on by The Metropolitan Playhouse, The Alphabet City Monologues. “Over nearly 20 years, we have asked actors to interview the theater’s East Village neighbors—residents, shop owners, denizens—and create verbatim monologues from those interviews, sharing our neighbors’ stories. Theatrical snapshots, in a sense, of the people who make up the world right around us, these oral history performances are detailed portraits, but much, much more.”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at BAM
My husband and I see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at least once a year at City Center, our Christmas present for each other. On Saturday, our friend Eli called, said she had an extra ticket and—bam, I was at BAM to see the Ailey Company. I’d never seen them at this venue before and I was thrilled to spend an evening with Eli. This was Ailey’s modern masters program with my all my favorite choreographers, Ronald K. Brown, Robert Battle, Paul Taylor, and Kyle Abraham.
The first piece, a tribute iconic Judith Jamsion. by Ronald K. Brown was his 2009 work Dancing Spirit, which began with stylized movement and loosened into the more modern African based funky Ronald K. Brown choreography. The dancers demonstrated just how complex and alive their dancing spirt can be. I glanced at my friend Eli, more of a hip hop person, to see their thoughts. When I saw the glow on their face, I knew the Ailey company and Ronald K. Brown brought the goods. Eli said the costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya created a whole choreography of their own. Made me think of Deborah Jowitt’s article in the Village Voice from 1972, “You Can’t Choreograph a Penis.”
Next up was Robert Battle’s work For Four from 2021—a short, fast tour de force. The quick turns and movements made the audience erupt in joy. This was followed by Duet, a 1964 work choreographed by Paul Taylor that was also beautifully danced with exquisite lines in their form-fitting costumes.
The final work was the 2022 Are You in Your Feelings by Kyle Abraham with music by various artists including Erykah Badu and Jazmine Sullivan, which my companion Eli grooved along with in the seat next to me. The fun and tension of relationships between and among couples of various arrangements of genders, held us and the rest of the audience in rapture.
Yoshiko Chuma’s shockwave delay at La Mama
Writer Michael (Mickey) Hawley came with me for the final performance on June 11, 2023, of shockwave delay at the Ellen Stewart Theatre of La Mama. In this program, conceptual artist, Yoshiko Chuma, whom I’ve followed since the 1980’s, remixed and sampled forty years of work in her anniversary program for her company School of Hard Knocks. As it began, the host said it would be 180 minutes long. I gulped. No way. I went over and over the math. 180 minutes. Could Yoshiko really expect us to sit through three hours of this performance? Sit we did, enthralled the whole time.
She says her work has been called “organized chaos,” but in watching this final performance, I was once again struck by her brilliance and very tight composing skills. Her design and direction, including stunning array of constantly manipulated props, with music, films, and dance, all combined to create an overall experience that kept me/us involved in the moment. One element of Yoshiko Chuma’s genius is her ability to gather and use superb musicians, dancers, wordsmiths, designers, and filmmakers. This show highlighted the clever, fun, moving work of pianist Dane Terry. Just the right touch of power and lightness.
The program started with the utterly horrifying footage from Bruce Conner film Crossroads from 1976 that utilizes in slow-motion footage of the July 25, 1946 nuclear test by the United States destroying Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. With that opening, where could she go? But shift she did. She described it this way, “Musicians, dancers and designers interact, but not directly—a parallel to incidents of sound, text and action, a metaphor for endless continuous circles of life, fluctuating between utopia and war.”
For her work, Yoshiko travels to many war-torn parts of the world and uses people from those places to amplify the political and personal elements of her work. She wrote, “I seek the place where a crossover can happen, where we can share. For 40 years, I have worked with young artists all over the world; and formed relationships across huge gaps of time, space and age, including Japan, Albania, New York, Romania, Macedonia, Afghan, Venezuela and Amman in Jordan.” She uses people she met on her travels and their private histories in often dire circumstances to create a world the opposite of war, a work of miracles. At one point she used large swaths of fabric that filled the stage and that dancers manipulated to create glorious flowing tents and waving water-like movement with the rippling sound of an ocean of fabric. Then for the ending, Dane Terry came out alone, sat at the piano and sang a plaintiff version of We’ll Meet Again from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove. A perfect ending for both the movie and performance.
After we left, Mickey said her work was so bold and inventive that it revived his faith in art and New York City too. Indeed. With all the banning and hatred going around, we do need our faith in the arts renewed. Besides, we are now all graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, going on, as Yoskiko says, to the University of Adversity.
Three for Three Plus One
Yesterday, June 15, 2023, I attended a new salon produced by Alyce Dissette, AMT TALKS! These gatherings at American Mime Theatre take place monthly, are free, 90 minutes from 6:00 – 7:30PM, and are on the 3rd Thursday each month (except August). Last evening, Tanisha Jones and I heard Evan Neiden talk about his program Monsters in the Wires: Theatre Anywhere for an Audience of One. He described a number of Candle House Collective’s innovative immersive theater personalized for one participant at a time by phone. Crazy and wild post-covid theater imaginings. If a participant in the phone/theater conversation got triggered, they’d created a safe word to end the way the conversation was going. A safe word. Damn, I could use a safe word for some of my conversations and meetings. A person starts yattering on, I get to say the safe word and, hallelujah, we move on. Brilliant.
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