another great play by Alice Childress: Wedding Band

 

Of all the fine plays I saw last year, Trouble in Mind, by the late, great Alice Childress, was my favorite, so I was thrilled to learn that another play of hers, Wedding Band, was being revived by Theater for a New Audience.

I saw Wedding Band last weekend and found it, if anything, even more brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable than Trouble in Mind. Directed by Awoye Timpo, it's performed by a terrific cast, with the extraordinary Brittany Bradford in the lead role of Julie, a black woman in love with a white man she can't legally marry. Though set in 1918, the play feels as timely as ever.  

Wedding Band has just been extended until May 22. Catch if if you possible can.

https://www.tfana.org/current-season/weddingband/overview

Meanwhile Trouble in Mind has just received several well-deserved Tony nominations, including best play revival, lead actress (LaChanze), and featured actor (Chuck Cooper). I hope that more Childress revivals are in the works--I'd like to see everything she wrote. She's one of the greats.

A BLOCK IN TIME: Christiane Bird's latest

My friend Christiane Bird, a wonderful writer and intrepid traveler, has authored several classics, beginning with The Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S. (first published in 1991, now in its third edition).

Next came Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran (2001) which begins thus:

"I went to Iran to flirt with my childhood. I went to Iran to court the unknown. I went to Iran to see the effects of the Islamic Revolution for myself."

She followed with another book on the Middle East, based on her travels in Kurdistan and research into the history and culture of the Kurdish people: A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistian (2004).

 Next, in 2010, came a fascinating popular history, The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West.

 

I can't wait to read her latest, A Block in Time, which, in Chris's words, "tells the story of NYC through the prism of a single block and the lives of people who once lived and worked there. Among them: a freed slave, who was the first owner of the block; a Dutch family with ties to the pirate Captain Kidd; an abortionist rumored to have had an affair with a high-society man; and an arriviste who dared breach the social hierarchy of the Gilded Age."

 

The block in question is next to Madison Square Park: 23rd Street to 24th Street between Broadway/Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. Tomorrow, Monday, March 21, she'll be reading close to that block: at Rizzoli's Bookstore, 1133 Broadway.  (I'll be there.)

 

Then on March 23, at 12:35 pm, she'll be doing a radio interview with Alison Stewart on WNYC. I'll try to catch that, too.

 

Don't miss the LEMON GIRLS!

 

The Talking Band's latest is a beautiful, spirit-lifting show.

See my friend Elizabeth Zimmer's review in the Village Voice:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2022/03/14/the-artful-artlessness-of-the-lemon-girls/

 

THE TALKING BAND--LIVE AGAIN!

One sign that New York City theater life is beginning to return to some semblance of normal is a new, live show by the Talking Band.  The last time I saw a show of theirs in a theater was Theater of No Illusions in February, 2019--a show that in retrospect might seem to have been slightly prophetic, set, as it was at a funeral parlor near the US-Canadian border where two asylum seekers take refuge.

Last night was opening night of their latest--Lemon Girls or Art for the Artless--which La Mama, their frequent venue, describes as  "A comedic and revelatory music and dance/theater celebration of older women and the thrill of unlikely art."

 Sounds good to me!  I'll be at this Sunday's matinee.  You have till March 27 to catch it.

https://www.lamama.org/shows/lemon-girls-2022

 

 

 

my favorite play this year: Trouble in Mind

After a successful run off-Broadway in 1955, Alice Childress's first full-length play was scheduled to open on Broadway.  But Trouble in Mind had some tough things to say about racism in the theater, so the author was asked to asked to tone it down.  She refused--and the run was canceled.  Now, a mere 66 years later, you can catch Childress's masterpiece on Broadway with an excellent cast led by the brilliant LaChanze, Tony Award winner for The Color Purple. Produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, it's running through January 9 at the American Airlines Theatre.  Don't miss it!

From The Wooster Group: The B-Side: "Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons"

 Three years ago, at St. Ann's Warehouse, Jim and I caught the Wooster Group's extraordinary show The-B Side, directed by Kate Valk--a rendition of the 1965 album Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons: blues, work songs, spirituals, and other music and talk from the state's segregated agricultural prisons, recorded by folklorist Bruce Jackson. While the LP was played, performers Eric Berryman, Jasper McGruder, and Philip Moore sang along, and Berryman added commentary from Jackson's book Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues.  Through Monday, September 14, the Wooster Group is making The B-Side available on their website:

http://thewoostergroup.org/blog/

It was like nothing else I've seen.  Catch it if you can!

 

 

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME: see it before it closes

. . . if you haven't already.  The story of how, as a teenager, actor/writer Heidi Shreck put herself through college by performing in debates about the U.S. Constitution sponsored by the American Legion, What the Constitution Means to Me is a unique and extraordinary show--and timelier than ever.

The play--nominated for Tonys and other awards--is running through August 24.  If you miss it in New York,  try to catch it (with a new cast) in the national tour, scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in January 2020.

First begun in 1938, the competition still exists.  For a description, see

https://www.legion.org/oratorical/about

and the rules

https://www.legion.org/oratorical/rules

Can't wait to read!

The Great Eastern, Howard A. Rodman's imagining of Captain Ahab confronting Captain Nemo, forthcoming in June from (appropriately) Melville House.

The Great Eastern

For information about Howard' book tour (including an appearance at the  Center for Fiction in Brooklyn on June 12:

howardrodman.com

Brooklyn Folk Festival this Friday

It took me a few years to get myself to the Brooklyn Folk Festival, but, with a rich variety of terrific performers, music and dancing workshops, historic documentaries, jams, crafts, and eats,  it soon became one of the highlights of spring for me.  


http://brooklynfolkfest.com/.

One of these days, maybe I'll even catch their Banjo Toss into the Gowanus Canal. 

Nassim

"It's like a pop-up book," said my friend Peter, about the play we'd just seen--NASSIM--which is named for its Iranian author, Nassim Soleimanpour, and has to do with, among other things, the challenges he's faced in getting his work into the world, and the need to overcome the barriers of language and culture that divide us. It was an astute observation:  NASSIM wasn't like anything else I've seen--but it was a bit like a picture book, and I ended up seeing it twice.

The first time, late last year, I thought, my sisters (both educators) would love this.  Then in January, my sisters were coming to town for a long weekend, and discount tickets were available, so I seized the opportunity, knowing that the show would be different since the guest actor would be different from the one I'd seen.  But there would be Farsi lessons, there would be tomatoes, and there would be audience participation.

My sisters loved the show, and, once again, I did, too.

It's running through April 20 at City Center, and for some performances you can find out who the guest actor will be.

https://www.nycitycenter.org/pdps/2018-2019/nassim/

The Talking Band's latest

I'm a huge fan of the Talking Band--for me, one of NYC's finest theatrical treasures--but I sometimes miss their shows because, typically, they only do one a year, running a mere 2-3 weeks.

This year, along with a couple of friends, I'm going to their latest--City of No Illusions--on opening night, 2/8, at La Mama. 

Here's how they describe the show, which runs through February 24:


"Set near the U.S. - Canadian border in Buffalo, New York, a funeral home run by two twin sisters has inadvertently become a sanctuary for two young immigrants."

 They're currently offering $20 tickets for the first four performances, with the discount code CITY1.
  
How can you resist? 

https://talkingband.org/works/city-of-no-illusions/ 

A Question of Honor . . .

Or, in Italian, Una questione d'onore.  Directed by Luigi Zampa and released in 1966, it's a broad satire of family feuds and honor killings in Sardinia--darkly hilarious, outrageous, and original. And as if a documentary about the culture of the region were embedded in it, the film also offers extraordinary scenes of Sardinian music, dancing, and courtship and wedding customs. 

I just saw A Question of Honor at MOMA, where it's part of a series of films starring the actor Ugo Tognazzi, billed as Tragedies of a Ridiculous Man. I hope to catch more of the other gems in the series.

You have one more chance to see this one--on December 13, at 7:30.

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/4952

Closing this weekend--Don't miss!

I just saw a terrific production of Maxim Gorky's first play, Meshahnye, at the Theater for the New City. Written in 1901 and first produced a year later, it's a drama of family conflict during the upheaval of pre-revolutionary Russia.  Director and co-translator Jenny Sterlin introduced the show with a warning that the intermission would be a "hard" 10 minutes because "it's a long play--it's Russian."   Long it is--we got out a few minutes before 11--but worth every minute.

It closes on September 30.

theaterforthenewcity

Yes, Karen Finley's back!

But then, she never left.

Brilliant, fearless, and deep, Karen Finley will forever be associated with a 1989 performance, We Keep Our Victims Ready, in which she applied chocolate to her bare torso, while speaking disturbing truths about sexual abuse and the claims of love that accompany it.

Outraged conservatives spearheaded the passage of a law mandating that NEA grants comply with "general standards of decency and respect for all the diverse beliefs and values of the American public," thereby leading the NEA to veto Finley's latest grant application, along with those of three other artists. The NEA Four, as they were called, sued the agency on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were being violated, won in the lower courts, but in 1998--after the Clinton administration elected to continue the appeal--lost in the Supreme Court.

Through the years since, Finley has continued speaking truth to power in performance and in print.
 
Her latest, Grabbing Pussy, is as timely and provocative as the title suggests.

You can catch her Sunday, August 5 and 12, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre at the West Bank Cafe, in New York City, an intimate space that's well-suited for her.

And on September 12, she'll be at the ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival.

She tours, too.

Arlington

I was a bit disappointed to learn, some years ago, that the amazing play I was about to see was by not Edna (female) but Enda Walsh.  You have through May 28 to catch his latest in New York City--the  haunting and mysterious dystopian vision Arlington--at St. Ann's Warehouse. Powerful, innovatively designed, and beautifully performed, it's a play I'd see again if it were running longer.

/http://stannswarehouse.org/show/arlington/


Lucky for me, and perhaps for you, the Irish Arts Center has extended through June 4 its installation of Rooms, three shorter works by Walsh.  I just bought a ticket.

http://irishartscenter.org/rooms

The wit and wisdom of George Eliot

Despite my best intentions, I've never got around to rereading Middlemarch, and I haven't read anything else by George Eliot in a very long time.  But at last, years after a former roommate raved about it, I'm deep into Daniel Deronda, her brilliant last novel.  Besides a gripping story and vivid characters, she supplies, on virtually every page, deep insights into the human condition, as relevant as ever to our times.

Here's how she begins Chapter 21:

"It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?  Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.  Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.  Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be'--and the many-coloured creation is shriveled up in blackness.  Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon."


We must not let those about to run the show in our government this term "wax unbound."

The Talking Band's back!

The Talking Band just seems to keep getting better and better.  Each year, I end up saying their latest show may be their best yet--but, remembering Delicious Rivers (2006), The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (2011), and Marcellus Shale (2013), among others, I should qualify that as "one of their best."

Martin Luther King weekend through the first weekend in February seems to be one of the Talking Band's favorite times to bring us their latest.  This year, it's Burnished by Grief, which despite its name, is, as billed, a romantic comedy, albeit with some dark and scary passages amid the whimsy, romance, and slapstick.

Like last year's Golden Toad--the three-hour ambulatory wonder that the company gave us for their fortieth anniversary--it's a great show about New York City, deeply rooted in real life.  But in contrast to the Toad, Burnished by Grief whizzes by in 85 minutes, on a single set--a minimalist backyard garden overlooked by windows from adjacent buildings, and exercise bicycles within shouting distance of a street corner where a musician plays tuba.

It's inspired by playwright Ellen Maddow's experiences as a mediator in Brooklyn Civil Court, and as always in a Talking Band show, a few lovely, quirky songs and other music (also written by Maddow) add emotional resonance.


Though I try to see everything the Talking Band does, because of their limited seasons in New York, I sometimes miss a show.  I'm so glad I didn't miss this one.

Burnished by Grief is playing at LaMama, 74 East 4th Street, through February 7. 

For information go to:


http://talkingband.org/works/burnished-by-grief-2016/

Who's Your Baghdaddy?

Take an Iraqi con man with a good story looking to defect.  Add intelligence operatives, German and American, ready to hear it.  Mix with former UN weapons inspector who finds it echoes what he's sure is true. A US administration ready to act on it.  What do you get?  The war that got us where we are today.

Who's Your Baghdaddy? Or How I Started the Iraq War--a brilliant political musical having to do with bizarre events that led to the Gulf War--proposes that some of those responsible have formed a support group to deal with their guilt. With excellent performances, a fine, rap-inflected score, and lively choreography, the show's as hilarious as it is disturbing.  Not surprising, given that director Marshall Pailet, who wrote the music and co-wrote the book (co-author A.D. Penedo wrote the lyrics), was the writer and director of the wonderful musical spoof Triassic Parq.

In this incarnation (at an intimate theater-in-the-oval at the Actors Temple Theater, 339 W. 47 St.), you have through this weekend to catch Who's Your Baghdaddy?  I trust there'll be others before too much longer, but next time you might not experience actors bounding in and out of the seat next to yours.  

Remaining performances are Saturday-Sunday, November 21-22, at 3:00 and 8:00 each day.  

For information, see whoisyourbaghdaddy.com

Who's Your Baghdaddy? is based on an unproduced screenplay by J. T. Allen, which was inspired by reporter Bob Drogin's coverage of these events for the Los Angeles Times.

I'm now reading Drogin's book Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War, which tells the story at length.  It's riveting.

Also at MOMA: the great Jacob Lawrence

Another don't-miss at the Museum of Modern Art, running through Monday, September 7:  One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Works.  This is a rare opportunity see the Lawrence's entire series of 60 paintings portraying the Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to the cities of the North, half of which are now owned by MOMA and half by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

In 1941, when Lawrence completed the series, he was all of 23--with much great work yet ahead of him.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1549

Yoko at MOMA - last chance!

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971, at the Museum of Modern Art is the sort of show I tend to miss--running a long time, not a labor of love first on my list, feels like a cultural duty.

Fortunately, an afternoon visit from my niece JoJo earlier this month got me there.   The show was a revelation--one of the highlights of my summer--and I've been thinking about it ever since: 

The riveting film made from Ono's performance Cut Piece.  Was the thing that happens at the end of the film really spontaneous--or staged?  Either way, the piece is brilliant, and if the bit at the end was staged, Ono is a brilliant actress as well. 

Her White Chess Set:  leaders all over the world should be playing with it.

Her book Grapefruit--a compendium of drawings and instructions for every day of the year.  Copies of its pages are posted on the walls of one of the rooms in the exhibit  Walking slowly, reading them, JoJo and I wanted to be able to bring them home, and were happy to find that we could buy the book in the gift shop. 

It's a great source of inspiration--for making art, for writing, and for living.

Yoko Ono was a woman ahead of her time--a woman of genius, which, luckily for both of them, John Lennon realized.  

MOMA, however, was behind the times and slow to appreciate Ono.  Hence, her self-created debut at the museum, which she called Museum of Modern [F]art, in 1971, and which seems to have consisted mainly of the claim that she had released flies on the museum grounds. .  Belatedly, MOMA is now acknowledging the innovative and influential body of work that led up Ono's 1971 appearance there--let's hope that her next show at the museum doesn't take nearly as long. 

The show is closing next Monday, September 7.  If you haven't been yet, go.   If it travels to your town, get yourself there.  If I'm there, I'll go again. 

In the meantime, get yourself a copy of Grapefruit.  

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1544