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.

 

JANE ANGER at the New Ohio Theatre

 

Back in 1589, one Jane Anger published the earliest known feminist pamphlet in English, Jane Anger, her Protection for Women. Pretty much all we know about Jane (assuming she was indeed a she) is in those pages, of which only one copy survives.  

But playwright Talene Monahon has huge fun envisioning a history for Jane involving William Shakespeare in Jane Anger: The Lamentable Comedie of Jane Anger, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard.

As you might assume from the title, this is no deep dive into feminist history, but it is deeply hilarious, providing many a welcome belly-laugh. 

Played with over-the-top verve and gusto by Amelia Workman as Jane, Michael Urie as Shakespeare, Ryan Spahn as Francis, and Monahon as Anne Hathaway, and directed by Jess Chayes, it's at the New Ohio Theatre through March 26.

https://newohiotheatre.org/

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

The Moors

I sometimes oversell shows I love to friends, whose expectations are then a bit disappointed, so I should say upfront that The Moors may not be everyone's cup of tea.  But if you have any interest in the literature of past centuries and in writing by women of any century, you should catch this wild and brilliant satire of all things Bronte, by Jen Silverman, produced by the Playwrights Realm. You have through March 25.

http://www.playwrightsrealm.org/

Gardens Speak

Last month I participated in a play, Gardens Speak, part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar festival, that I'm still thinking about.   Here's what I remember:

In an outer room, the guide instructs you to take off your shoes and put on a light raincoat.  

In the next room, you sit on one of two benches along two facing walls.  In the middle of the room is a rectangle with grass, dirt, and ten wooden tombstones--the garden.

You are given a piece of paper with a name in Arabic.

You step into the garden and look for the tombstone with the name matching the one you hold.

When you find it, you brush the dirt off a plaque at the base of the tombstone to reveal the name in English.

You lie down with your head at the base of the tombstone, and the voice of the deceased whispers his or her story in your ear, as if coming from the grave beneath you.

These are all victims of the Assad regime in Syria, many of whom were secretly buried in gardens and parks.  

When you're done listening to the story, you cover the name,  return to the bench, where you find a small notebook in which you are invited to write a letter to the martyr whose story you heard.

You go back to the grave, this time to its foot, and sit a while, as you learn is the custom in Syria.  If you write a letter, you bury it there--perhaps you find letters that others have written.

The letters will eventually be shared with the families of the victims.

Finally you return to the anteroom, where you can wash your feet in a foot bath.

It has been only 45 minutes.

You wish many, many others could share the emphathy-inducing experience you had in that room.


Gardens Speak is the work of performance artist Tania El Khoury, who is based in London and Beirut.

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