Art Hag

Just Gowanus: An Interactive Performance Tour

A preview of Artichoke Dance Company's Just Gowanus: An Interactive Performance Tour

This weekend Artichoke Dance Company will premiere Just Gowanus, a walking tour detailing the area’s past, present, and future, interspersed with dance performances inspired by the unique Brooklyn neighborhood.

The two-hour tour will highlight several noteworthy spots in Gowanus—the 4th Street Turning Basin, bioswales, recycling facilities, plant nurseries—making stops at significant sites including the Salt Lot, the Whole Foods promenade, and Sponge Park to discuss the impending rezoning of the neighborhood, the EPA’s cleanup of the Superfund-designated Gowanus Canal, and other environmental concerns in the community such as flooding, brownfields, the urban heat island effect, and combined sewer overflow (CSOs).

At each stop, four Artichoke dancers will perform short works and lead interactive experiences that illustrate the “geography’s significance” and encourage audiences to “reflect on the place and future.”

The tour kicks off at the Salt Lot, home of a DSNY salt shed, Big Reuse’s NYC Compost Project, and Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s (GCC) education and stewardship programs. Just past the towering mountain of salt used on icy roads during snowstorms (and from which the dancers make a dramatic entrance), visitors will find an oasis overlooking the canal—GCC’s verdant garden and nursery.

“This site is going to go away for a while,” Lynn Neuman, Director of Artichoke Dance, noted during a preview of the tour. As part of the Gowanus Canal cleanup, two CSO tanks will be built to hold excess rainwater during heavy storms to prevent overflow into the canal. One eight-million-gallon tank will be constructed at the northern end of the canal and one four-million-gallon tank will be built at the Salt Lot. GCC will need to find a temporary home for its outdoor facilities until the tank is completed in 2028 and the Conservancy can move back.

Walking through Gowanus Canal Conservancy's garden at the Salt Lot. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

Artichoke dancers descend from the salt pile.

Dancers presented flower bracelets made of recycled plastic to audience members. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

Artichoke Dance Company performs at the Salt Lot in Gowanus.

Artichoke dancers perform at the Salt Lot in Gowanus.

Across the canal from the Salt Lot is Public Place. If the city approves the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning, which is currently in the public review phase, a divisive development, Gowanus Green, is planned for the city-owned Public Place site, Neuman explained. If given the okay, a school, a public park, and six affordable housing towers rising as high as 28 stories will be developed. For decades, Public Place was home to the Citizens Works Manufactured Gas Plant, making it “one of the most toxic sites along the canal,” Neuman said. Though the coal tar contaminating the site is currently being remediated by National Grid, and developers vow to clean it up further, many in the community argue that it will never be safe to live above and that it is unjust to house low-income families on the land.

These are just some of the concerns that will be raised during the Just Gowanus tour. “There’s so much going on and so much controversy around Gowanus right now that getting the information out, I think, is really important,” Neuman said. “And trying to present it in a way that isn’t leading in one way or the other, but just gives the information, so that people can make informed decisions.” She added that while listening to public testimony during the community board hearing for the rezoning she heard “a lot of speculation about what’s actually going on.... I’m hoping to disseminate some facts.” Neuman would like audiences to learn more about important issues in the neighborhood and obtain “some sense of how they can get active…to know that activism is not scary. It’s very doable,” she insists.

Artichoke Dance Company performs by the Gowanus Canal at the Whole Foods promenade. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

A preview of Just Gowanus.

Artichoke Dance Company performs by the Gowanus Canal.

Neuman is a member of 350Brooklyn, a group that addresses the climate crisis, and the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice (GNCJ) which fights to advance racial, economic and environmental justice in Gowanus. The dancer and choreographer first became involved in environmental activism about ten years ago. “It started with plastic pollution for me,” she recalls. “I adopted an older Labrador when I moved to Brooklyn, and I didn’t know this about Labs, but they try to eat everything. I was constantly pulling stuff out of her mouth and one day I realized it’s all plastic. [All the litter] on the street was plastic.” Neuman reached out to the Earth Institute at Columbia University and connected with Ph.D. students researching plastic pollution. With their help she organized a bus tour that took groups to see various trash and recycling facilities across the city.

A decade later, she’s organized another tour focused on Gowanus—seamlessly integrating performance, education, and activism. Originally planned to be staged last summer, the production had to wait a year due to the pandemic. “It’s been in my head for a really long time, and now we finally get to do it,” Neuman said. She spent a lot of time at the sites highlighted on the tour and worked with her dancers to “devise different improvisational approaches that illustrate what I see as happening there.” Bold gestural movements of limbs as well as powerful leaps and bounds beautifully evoke the natural surroundings. One dance portrays the “progression of the history of the canal from a salt marsh to industrialization,” Neuman explained, while another reflects cycles, those found in nature or the cyclic phases of city development processes. Some of the music composed to accompany the dances incorporates sound samples recorded around Gowanus, including birdsong and mechanical rhythms.

A preview of Just Gowanus at Sponge Park in front of the Gowanus Dredgers' Boathouse. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

Artichoke Dance Company performs at Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.

A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

Lynn Neuman, Director of Artichoke Dance Company, and her dancers at the end of the Just Gowanus preview.

Artichoke dancers are known to perform in billowing skirts composed entirely of single-use plastic bags. “[The dancers] have been dancing in plastic bags—which are really hot, by the way—for about five years, until we passed the plastic bag ban legislation in New York State,” Neuman noted. “Now there’s a nation-wide comprehensive plastic bill that would eliminate single-use plastic bags and other single-use plastics that are not recyclable.” During the tour audiences will be given tips on how to get involved in the community and beyond, such as pushing NYS representatives to support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021.

Even if you closely follow what’s going on in Gowanus, you are likely to learn something new during this enlightening and entertaining event. This innovative mix of dance, information, and advocacy showcases what makes the neighborhood special while highlighting the potential changes that might rob Gowanus of its charms.

Founded in 1995, Artichoke Dance merges dance, environmental activism, and civic engagement. Just Gowanus is the company’s third production that focuses on the Gowanus neighborhood and collaborates with residents and local organizations. In 2017 Artichoke produced Global Water Dances on the Gowanus Canal and in 2019 they presented the Gowanus Visions Festival of Art and Action.

A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)

Gowanus Canal Conservancy, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, and the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice (GNCJ), partnered with Artichoke Dance Company for the Just Gowanus Tour.

Just Gowanus: An Interactive Performance Tour
Saturdays & Sundays |July 10 & 11; July 17 & 18 at 2pm
Tour begins at the Salt Lot, 2 Second Avenue, Gowanus
Tickets $30

Death Become Her | BRIC

Death need not be final according to the group exhibition currently on view at BRIC. Employing objects commonly associated with death—a cemetery, flowers, shrouds, and memorials—the ten female-identifying artists showcased in Death Becomes Her demonstrate that the act of mourning the dearly departed can serve as a pathway to "self-discovery, inquiry, and introspection."

Death Becomes Her installation view. Mimi Bai's Conjuring a future full of pasts (2020) is in the foreground and three images from Keisha Scarville's Placelessness of Echoes (and kinship of shadows) are displayed on the left.

Catalina Ouyang, past imperfect (Lipotes vexillifer), 2019, and past imperfect (Psephurus gladius), 2019

Nona Faustine’s self-portrait series inspired by the Greek myth of Persephone was shot amongst tombs and mausoleums at Brooklyn's historic Green-Wood Cemetery. The cinematic photos feature Faustine portraying Demeter, the goddess of harvest. Dressed in black or golden cloaks, she mourns and waits for her daughter Persephone who was forced into marriage with Hades, the god of the dead and the underworld.

(L-R) Nona Faustine's Demeter in Mourning, Magic power divine beauty and grace, Isis, all 2020

Nona Faustine, Isis, 2020

Kim Brandt, Untitled (Greenwood), 2019

Projected onto a screen is footage of Kim Brandt’s Untitled (Greenwood), performed at the cemetery last summer as part of a series presented by Green-Wood in partnership with Pioneer Works. Performers interacted at the cemetery’s circular Cedar Dell in an examination of relationships among the living in a space that memorializes the dead.

Ceramic works by Heidi Lau (2019-2020)

Ceramic works by Heidi Lau (2019-2020)

Detail of Heidi Lau's ceramic works

Inspired by Taoist and folk mythology, Heidi Lau’s ceramic sculptures represent "silenced histories" or "ritual objects, funerary monuments, and fossilized creatures" that have been lost or transformed over time. Rachel Grobstein’s miniature sculptures depict actual roadside memorials, featuring tiny recreations of a ghost bike, candles, stuffed animals, and flowers left on streets and highways to commemorate lost loved ones.

Rachel Grobstein, Ghost Bike, 2019

Rachel Grobstein, Hwy. 285, 2018

Rachel Grobstein, William, Bushwick Avenue, 2018

Rachel Grobstein, Rt. 46, 2018

On select Fridays and Saturdays, Gyun Hur will be on site to perform I wouldn’t know any other way, an installation that features the artist resting in bright yellow dust she creates by shredding silk flowers into a powder that blankets the floor. The piece symbolizes "impermanence and assimilation," Hur’s family and homes, both in her native South Korea and in Atlanta, where she grew up.

Gyun Hur, I wouldn't know any other way, 2020

Gyun Hur, I wouldn't know any other way, 2020

Death Becomes Her at Gallery at BRIC House

Two artists will be featured at Green-Wood Cemetery in programs presented in conjunction with the BRIC exhibit. McKendree Key will host 5 x 10 @ The Catacombs, discussions about death and dying on Saturdays in March (14, 21, 28). Freya Powell’s immersive performance piece Only Remains Remain will honor the unidentified migrants buried in mass graves in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Texas (Saturday, April 11).

Encouraging discussion and reflection, Death Becomes Her is an enlightening meditation on death that asserts we can learn about ourselves by confronting loss.

Death Becomes Her
Gallery at BRIC House, 647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view February 20 through April 19

Olivia Beens: The Storyteller | El Barrio's Artspace PS109

Tuesday (Feb. 4) is your last chance to check out The Storyteller at El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, a retrospective of NYC-based artist Olivia Beens’ 40-year career. 

Beens’ oeuvre includes performance, installation, and sculpture and addresses identity, spirituality, motherhood, and feminism. Born in 1948 in Holland, Beens moved with her mother to Portugal when she was four. The pair moved to Flushing, Queens when Beens was seven after her mother married an American.

The Storyteller: Olivia Beens Through The Decades, on view at El Barrio's Artspace PS 109

She received her BFA in sculpture from Pratt and earned an MFA from Hunter College where she began exploring performance and installation work. While still studying sculpture at Hunter, Beens created Images, Reflections, and Projections, an installation based on her year at a Catholic boarding school in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Exhibited in 1980, the work transformed a gallery into a chapel, with dozens of Polaroid self-portraits lining the walls depicting Beens as an artist, Goddess, mother, etc. A group of nuns’ habits—each stamped with “Warning: This habit contains an irritant”—floated ghostlike in the center of the room. An altar displayed a pair of scissors and braids of the artist’s hair to illustrate the “ritual of becoming a nun,” Beens explained at the gallery on Sunday, “they cut your hair.”

Spread over two floors at El Barrio’s Artspace, the exhibition features photos and video clips of Beens’ earlier installation and performance pieces on the lower level, including Fit and Flab Diaries (1985), a performance in which Beens and a fellow artist built cubicles in the basement of the 22 Wooster Gallery and lived there with their young children on weekends for a month. “After placing real personal ads in the East Village Eye, namely looking to meet a New World Man, Fit (played by Diane Spodarek) and Flab (played by Beens) discover their neighbor, played by Ian Prior, is just who they are looking for,” according to the wall text.

“There was a scripted performance that was about 20 minutes long that we did, I don’t know, every hour, and then the rest of it really was improvised,” Beens recalled. Visitors were invited to watch the performances and observe the two women, the two eight-year-old children, and the “New World Man” go about their day. Fit and Flab focused on “single mothers trying to survive,” Beens explained, “because that’s what we both were.”

Photos of Beens in The Satyr Silenus series (1984) in which she took the identity of the mythological satyr

In The Satyr Silenus, another performance series, Beens “inhabits the identity” of the Greek mythological satyr Silenus, the foster father of Dionysus, complete with animal furs, a phallus, and a tail made from her own hair. Silenus’ Summer Romp was performed in Cummington, Massachusetts where Beens was an artist-in-residence in the mid-1980s. “I involved the community. I cast body parts of community members,” Beens said. The participants traveled from a cemetery into the woods where they played drums then reconstructed the body of Dionysus using the body casts. “It involved everybody, which I wanted to do, and created ritual as performance,” Beens said of the work.

In 1980, Beens separated from her son’s father and she and the young boy moved to Canal Street (at Ludlow). “I moved into an apartment that had been uninhabited for over 40 years,” she said. “The windows were tinned up, the ceilings were falling down. There was rubble all over the place. I found objects that people left behind.”

Among the household items, linens, clothing, and newspapers she discovered was a wedding photo that she enlarged and placed behind window bars from the tenement. Another photo she unearthed features a young boy dressed in a suit and top hat. Beens framed the professionally shot portrait of the boy with curtains left behind by former tenants and painted stars and “symbols of America” on the background. “I would love to know who that little boy is,” Beens said. “He looks so prominent and confident.”

The Life of an Apartment (1983)

The Life of an Apartment (1983)

Beens’ two images from The Life of an Apartment series were included in an exhibit at ABC No Rio called Not for Sale: A Project Against Displacement. “I went to the Buildings Department and I got all of the documents on change and renovation and I wheat-pasted them” onto the walls of the gallery, Beens noted of her project that addresses the city’s ongoing gentrification. 

Beens lived in the 800-square-foot Canal Street apartment for 38 years before moving into an apartment at 215 East 99th Street two years ago. The building, where El Barrio’s Artspace is located, was transformed from PS109 into an affordable artist community in 2014 and offers nearly 90 affordable live/work units to artists. Beens noted that her son went to school in the building years ago. “It was hard for me to leave,” Beens says of her longtime residence downtown. “I was basically a Lower East Side artist and moved uptown.”

She loves her new home which is ten blocks away from the Covello Senior Center where she works from and also teaches ceramics. Beens began teaching art in NYC schools in 1982 and officially retired about nine years ago. “I am retired but I’m not retired,” said the active 72-year-old.

In the 1990s, while raising her son and working as an artist and an art teacher, Beens transitioned into “more sculptural work”—art that she “could leave and come back to.” The series, Object Spirit, features assemblages composed using found objects such as animal bones, wood, feathers, and shells. Simplifying her practice and working with nature drew Beens to these organic materials. “I have a really great love of nature. I mean I love the city…but I love being in the woods and by the sea because I feel in harmony with that.”

Who's Web? (1999)

Safiya's Song (1995), Beens made this piece for her late friend, the poet Safiya Henderson-Holmes 

Cave Dweller (1998) was inspired by the altars Beens saw in Chinatown shops and restaurants when she lived on Canal Street

The first work in the series, Spirit Ladder (1991), composed of bones, wood, pieces of glass, and wire, was made during a trip to Long Island. “I spent some summers out on Long Island and I would see these pieces of driftwood and bones along the beach and thought, ‘These have such a wonderful inherent quality to them.’ I wanted other people, and myself, to see and appreciate it. Then I thought I can assemble them to make really ritualistic pieces, so they come out of performance work in a way, and in a certain kind of spirituality that is self-identified. It’s not Catholic. It’s not Buddhist. It’s shamanistic, if anything.”

Spirit Ladder, 1991

Self-Composing Mandala, 2001

Her Icons series incorporate natural materials, hair, and bones, with copper “as a conductor of universal forces, situating the works in a unique devotional context,” according the wall text. Celebrating femininity, the works were inspired by Beens’ “interest in feminism and fertility figures. Women giving life, preserving civilization and passing it on to subsequent generations,” the artist says in the exhibition catalogue.

(L-R): Icons - A Hair's Tale (2008) and Alone Again (2010)

In the early 2000s, Beens took a trip to Prague to visit her mother’s sister who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The artist was overcome with emotion at the meeting. “When I saw my aunt, I just started crying,” she recalled. "It was an emotional response…. In Turkey there is this cistern and there are these columns that they call Column of Tears.” Beens associated her experience with the structures at the Basilica Cistern and began creating ceramic teardrops. Her series features column-like structures composed of dozens of dangling drops representing teardrops as well as rain, blood, and oil.

(L-R): Column of Tears - Magnolia (2010) and Lija's Tears (2013)

The shape of the teardrops that Beens constantly formed led the artist to create sculptures of small heads. “Those are little heads that I work on kind of endlessly,” she said. “They’re all made individually and I work with them starting with simple pinch pot method and I develop a relationship, something strikes me, it reminds me of somebody, or a certain expression develops,” she continued. “I love making the hair—it’s all fun—but the hair becomes this abstract kind of thing.”

Frozen in Time (2013-present), a selection of Beens' glazed ceramic heads

A closer look at Frozen in Time

More sculptural heads

Dakini's Dance (2017)

Olympiad (2017)

The heads feature meditative or knowing expressions, mischievous grins, and vivacious swirls of hair. A series of larger, more recent head sculptures feature multiple faces, adding to their mystery. Influenced by Asian art, Beens says the many faces that encircle the sculptures or poke out of a subject’s hair illustrate “how a being encompasses other beings and other lives that came before it and may go after it.”

These recent sculptures were created while Beens worked on the centerpiece of the exhibition, Baroque Passages (2012-2019) a group of ceramic busts and wall pieces which the artist created following the death of her mother. “She comes from Prague,” Beens said of her mom. “It’s a very Baroque city."

Baroque Passages (2012-2019) on the back wall. (Foreground L-R): Dakini's Dance (2017); Concerto in Bronze and Gold (2017); Bodhisattva for Yvonnne (2013)

The death mask in Baroque Passages

A closer look at Baroque Passages

Beens began the homage by creating a symbolic death mask. The artist says she “thought about churches and what’s on the ceiling and the way that the afterlife is depicted. These are fragmentary items that have to do with sky and angels,” she explained. Beens gets emotional when discussing the work, which is being shown in its entirety for the first time. The meditative, multifaceted work, featuring faces and religious icons on a warm mauve background, is moving tribute to her mother.

The Storyteller (2018)

The title of the exhibit was taken from The Storyteller, a sculpture Beens created in 2018. A torso, which “harkens back to either the Venus de Milo or the Victory of Samothrace,” rests above a skirt of netting, dotted with fragments of glass, that envelopes a group of small ceramic heads. “That came to me actually riding in a taxi cab, in the rain, seeing the reflections and what was going on inside and outside and around,” Beens explained. “She’s protecting or harboring other entities, other lives, or stories.”

Beens and her Shih-Poo Marwan stand in front of Baroque Passages

“I realized as we were putting the show together, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been telling stories,” Beens noted. Incorporating influences from classical art, primitivism, and different religions and cultures, the artist’s diverse body of work tells fascinating stories of a New Yorker’s personal experiences as a woman, mother, activist, and artist.

The Storyteller| Olivia Beens Through the Decades
El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, 215 East 99th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenues), NYC
Exhibition on view January 10 through February 4

Grazia Capri | Lipani Gallery, Fordham University at Lincoln Center

Last Friday, December 16^th, the artist, choreographer, and dancer Grazia Capri performed her work Corpi in Vertigine #2 (Bodies in Vertigo #2) before an audience at Fordham University’s Lipani Gallery located at Lincoln Center. The work is an exhibit of raw emotion and energy by an engaging performer.

The compelling, non-narrative, 34-minute piece is, according to the performance notes, a modern study on the struggle of “having to choose between who we really are and who we choose to show to the world…. Our nature is stifled, hidden in our deepest depths, causing an existential vertigo.” Before Capri took the stage, provocative artworks by Francis Bacon, Frida Kahlo, and others, were projected onto a screen followed by text excerpted from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Umberto Saba’s Ulysses, and Eugenio Montale’s Perhaps One Morning. These striking, sometimes unnerving, references inspired and informed Capri when producing her work, as she explained in the Q&A that followed the performance.

Originally from Italy, the artist now based in Brooklyn has been dancing since the age of five. She began choreographing solo pieces in 2008, showcasing her work throughout Europe. With Corpi in Vertigine #2 Capri exposes emotional vulnerability on a small stage with minimal props just steps from her audience—reaching, stretching, twisting, folding, and pushing herself to dizzying limits. Her movements were accompanied by the sounds of a moody cello mixed with the urban din of street and subway traffic.

Corpi in Vertigine #2 begins with Capri standing still, head down, her hair obscuring her face, while a heavy heartbeat pounds over a soundtrack of city noises. Her hands slowly creep up her thighs, menacingly pinching at her skirt. The tension rises until the artist collapses and stoically rebounds, pulling or whipping her hair back and forth in a frenzy, and tugging at her clothing and removing them in a sort of shedding-of-the-skin to reveal another layer of herself. Her expressive eyes accentuate her bold, evocative movements revealing a sense of anxiety, struggle, and a “journey in search of the self, a forgotten identity.” After she removes her top and skirt, revealing a black bikini, the audience travels with her to the ocean. Sounds of crashing waves wash over her as she vigorously spins her arms as if swimming, or threatens to dive off the platform she stands on into a mysterious sea. The final segment finds her dressed again in a return to the internal unease she battles with intensity and determination.

Among the selected passages projected onto a screen at the start of the piece, Saint Augustine’s Confessions seems to best describe the overall performance—“and I carried with me my soul mutilated and bleeding which could no longer now put up with being dragged about. I continued to roll in the mud of an abyss and in the darkness of false thinking, often I tried to stand up only to fall down again even harder.” Capri personified this frustration and anguish through movement—kicking and spinning unsettlingly on the floor, repeatedly dropping and rising, continually reining in and losing control of her demons in this physical and emotional powerhouse of a performance.

Capri’s movements suggest both hope and resignation in the final moments of the piece. As explained during the Q&A, she prefers that the audience interpret Corpi in Vertigine #2 based on their own experience of her highly charged and personal performance. However you choose to read this complex, poetic work, there is no denying Capri is a bold, expressive, and unique performer. Learn more at www.graziacapri.org.

Photos by Nathan Haselby

Waiting for Godot | The Cort Theatre

Samuel Beckett's famed absurdist play Waiting for Godot at The Cort Theatre features stellar performances by acting veterans Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.  Two tramps—dotty Estragon (McKellen) with his bothersome boots, and thoughtful Vladimir (Stewart) with his scratchy bowler hat (and prostate troubles), meet by a bare willow tree and wait, and wait, and wait for the never-appearing Godot.  Though unkempt and dressed in tatters, McKellen's animated Estragon is still charming and Stewart's straight man Vladimir hints at refinement.

The long-time friends pass the time joking, reminiscing, and philosophizing.  The pair banter like an old couple - their chemistry and camaraderie is apparent and a joy to watch.  Things get a bit uncomfortable when boisterous, whip-cracking Pozzo (Shuler Hensley) arrives with his slave Lucky (Billy Crudup).  Pozzo's brutish treatment of the drooling Lucky is unnerving though the two provide a needed distraction for Estragon and Vladimir.

Beckett's challenging play raises more questions than it answers while the two leads search for the elusive—meaning, God(ot), death?  The openendedness of the story can be frustrating for those who want closure, but the brilliant, often humorous, performances by McKellen and Stewart make the waiting more than worth it. 

Waiting for Godot plays in repertory with Harold Pinter's No Man's Land until March 30th.  Directed by Sean Mathias.  More info here.  Buy tickets here.  Click here for a video of a recent interview with Ian McKellen at the WNYC studios.

Estragon's boots

Twelfe Night | Belasco Theatre

William Shakespeare's lively rom-com Twelfe Night at the Belasco Theatre is a fun and joyous romp.  Presented as it would have been staged during the Bard's time with an all-male cast, the actors get dressed onstage into their period-appropriate costumes pre-show while musicians play traditional Elizabethan instruments around them. The stage is lit with candles and some audience members are seated in booths on the wings of the stage.

The gist of the story:  shipwrecked Viola (Samuel Barnett) disguises herself as a young man, Caesario, and serves Duke Osirus (Liam Brennan).  Osirus sends Caesario to declare his love for the Countess Olivia (Mark Rylance), who is mourning the death of her father and brother and has sworn off love for seven years.  Olivia however quickly changes her mind and falls madly in love with Caesario while Caesario/Viola in turn falls for Osirus.  Other shenanigans ensue with the outstanding supporting cast, notably Olivia's rabble-rousing, busy-body lady in waiting, Maria (Paul Chahidi), and Olivia's stick-in-the-mud steward Malvolio (Stephen Fry).

Rylance's Olivia is superb gliding across the stage in gorgeous, black mourning gowns—initially  somber and serious but quickly reduced to a hysterical, desperate, young woman in love.  A frenetic, silly story, there is never a dull moment in this charming production.  The exuberant, talented cast seems to be having a grand time during the performance, and it is contagious.

Twelfe Night is presented by Shakespeare's Globe in repertory with Richard III.  Both close February 16th.  Get tickets here.

The performers preparing pre-show: Mark Rylance (bottom left), Stephen Fry (center), Paul Chahidi (right).

Monkey: Journey to the West | Lincoln Center

I really wanted to love Monkey: Journey to the West.  Being a long-time fan of Blur and Damon Albarn, I was excited to learn that he and his Gorillaz collaborator, Jamie Hewlett, and the director Chen Shi-Zheng, had adapted the 16th-century, classic Chinese novel for the stage.  I've been anxious to see the production since it debuted at the Manchester International Festival in 2007, so I was incredibly excited to learn that it was set to open up this year's Lincoln Center Festival on July 6th and play for three weeks.

After seeing it this past weekend, I was left feeling disappointed.  While I did enjoy the eclectic mix of  electronic/Chinese Opera/pop music Albarn composed (the catchy, girly Heavenly Peach Banquet will be stuck in your head for hours!), the colorful and quirky visuals (Hewlett designed the sets, costumes, and created animations), and the dynamic (though at times out of sync) acrobatics, martial arts and aerial stunts, the dialogue and narrative are seriously lacking.  Granted the fable is pretty complicated, but the narrative is so choppy and confusing that it doesn't even come close to telling a clear or cohesive story.  The show's program offers a scene-by-scene synopsis that provides a shallow explanation of what is happening.

Quick summary:  The Monkey King, born from a stone egg, one day realizes that we are all destined to die.  Not cool with the prospect of his demise, Monkey seeks out the Daoist Master Subodhi who grants him immortality and gives him the name Sun Wu Kong - Monkey with the Realization of Emptiness.  Monkey then obtains armor and cloud-hopping shoes, giggles annoyingly and acts obnoxiously (whilst wearing a yellow tracksuit reminiscent of Albarn's Blur days), wreaking havoc under the sea and up in heaven, causing Buddha to imprison him under his palm for 500 years. 

Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, releases Monkey under the condition that he accompany  and protect the wet blanket monk, Tripitaka, on a voyage to India to collect Buddhist scriptures.  They are joined by the languid Sandy (a general who was exiled to a river of sand and eats humans for kicks), a white horse (who was formerly the Dragon Prince), and the mildly amusing Pigsy, a gluttonous, lusty Daoist sage.  Aside from Pigsy, the sidekicks aren't all that interesting.  Their intriguing backstories might have spiced up their roles if they hadn't been glossed over.  You learn more about Sandy and the white horse by reading the program. 

The crew encounters some obstacles along their journey—The White Skeleton Demon (who tries to eat Tripitaka), The Spider Woman (who tries to seduce them), and Princess Iron Fan (who possesses a magic fan they need to extinguish a fire).  Monkey gets kicked out of the group for his erratic behavior and penchant for violence and then returns to save everybody, and they all ultimately reach Paradise and enlightenment.

Hewlett's animations could have helped fill in many of the show's gaping holes—he could have added fun introductions and descriptions of characters (many minor characters come and go, in and out of nowhere), and while the super-titles introduced the names of each of the nine scenes (as well as translated the Mandarin dialogue and lyrics into English), he could have added some narrative graphics to entice the audience with clues as to what was about to happen.  His animations were particularly helpful in scenes that might otherwise have been difficult to portray, like Monkey's birth, or Monkey's turning into a bee so he can fly down Princess Iron Fan's throat and fight her from within (seriously).

Overall, Monkey: Journey to the West is a visual and musical treat.  The many kids in the audience seemed engrossed throughout and delighted by the exciting spectacle.  For the adults - just don't expect to be enlightened. 

Learn more at monkeyjourneytothewest.com (two hours, no intermission).  Through July 28th.

 

Nick Cave | Grand Central Terminal

On Sunday, I hopped on the subway and went up to Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall to check out the second-to-last performance of Nick Cave's terrific Heard NY.

Both wings of Vanderbilt Hall featured roped off areas containing 15 of Cave's horse suits resting on sawhorses, along with a platform for a harpist and a percussionist to play.  Arriving at 10:40am for the 11:00am performance, the crowds for both show areas were already five people deep!  One section on the side of the roped off area was reserved for parents with small children.

Promptly at 11:00am, The Ailey School dancers filed out and put on their horse suits.  Each horse required two dancers - a head and a rear-end.  When all the suits were donned, the horses began to trot around their pens accompanied by the gentle harp, playfully interacting with viewers and inviting them to pet them.  The children seemed particularly thrilled to touch the charming, colorful horses.  After a few minutes, the harpist stopped playing and the percussionist took over with a powerful, infectious beat.  The horses began dancing wildly.  The William Gill-choreographed movements included the horses' heads bopping to the music as well as the horses' bottoms (separating from their front halves) springing up and energetically bouncing and spinning around, creating wonderful rustling sounds with their straw costumes.  After a few minutes of the joyful, reckless abandon, the drums started to slow down, as did the raving horses, until they became still, and it was all over.

As a part of a series of events commemorating Grand Central's centennial, Cave's Heard NY was a vivacious and extraordinary twenty-minute celebration that entertained both children and adults.  If only commuters were treated to such wonderful bouts of whimsy all the time.  March 25th - 31st. Learn more at Creativetime.org.  See my September 2011 post on Cave here.  And this is just awesome - Brooklynvegan.com.

Waiting for the dancers at Vanderbilt Hall

Some of the dancers getting ready

 

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