The Public’s 2009-10 Season.

The Public has announced.

Some good names, some interesting shows, lots of diversity.

So why do I feel like I’ve seen all this stuff already?

Under The Radar.

Under The Radar opens tonight, and Alexis at the Voice has a good preview:

Though Russell boasts a long and thriving relationship with solo performance, he confesses an ambivalence toward the form. “I always try to avoid one-person shows,” he says—he’s surprised and “kind of embarrassed” to discover just how many he’s programmed in this year’s festival. Yet he has ensured plenty of variety within the genre: Little commonality exists between Gare St. Lazare’s adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s First Love; Bamuthi Joseph’s dance-driven monologue; Lee Breuer’s puppet plays Summa Dramatica and Porco Morto; Dargel’s ballads concerning elective amputation; Jim Fletcher’s performance of Tim Etchell’s orgy of declarative sentences, Sight Is the Sense That Dying People Tend to Lose First; and Lemon Andersen’s confessional County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle, in which he invites audiences to “watch me deal with ridicule and shame . . . by turning myself into the king of poetry spit fame.”

I will be on hand pretty much every night of the festival, making sure the LuEsther Lounge (aka the afterparty–aka the FREE afterparty) runs smoothly.

You should come.  Tickets to each show at The Public are $15, which is ridiculous and unheard of for the quality you’re going to get.  The shows are crazy, inventive, beautiful, everything.  I’m not selling this to you — just come see it.

TAKING OVER extends.

You’ve got another chance to see it.

If you’ve recently moved to the city (within the last ten years, let’s say), then I think you MUST go see this.

If you’ve been here forever, then I think you MUST go see this.

Seriously.

Go see the damn show.

Under the Radar is Gonna Be Fun This Year.

I’m not in it, but I’ll be there.

The great thing about UTR is that I don’t recognize a lot of the names when they’re announced, but I come to appreciate them when I finally see them.  This year (like last year) has a solid hip-hop theater representation, with Lemon Anderson (of Universes and Def Poetry Jam fame) and Marc Bamuthi Joseph (who brings his play the break/s), along with Reggie Watts, who really isn’t hip-hop theater in the traditional sense (and how effing great is it that I was able to just casually talk about the “traditional sense” of hip-hop theater?) but uses all kinds of hip-hop technology (and how effing great is it that I was able to just casually talk about “hip-hop technology”?) to create something that’s kinda rock and kinda brilliant.

Here’s the line-up:

EVENTS AT THE PUBLIC

3 Years, 8 Months, 20 Days
Amrita Performing Arts, Cambodia
Directed by Annemarie Prins (The Netherlands)

Architecting
Created by the TEAM

COUNTY OF KINGS: the beautiful struggle
Written and Performed by Lemon Andersen
Developed and Directed by Elise Thoron

First Love
Gare St. Lazare Players, Ireland

Into The Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest
Created by Holcombe Waller
Performed by Holcombe Waller and the Healers

LIGA, 50% reward & 50% punishment
Kassys (The Netherlands)

Sight is the sense that dying people tend to lose first
Written and directed by Tim Etchells
Performed by Jim Fletcher

the break/s: a mixtape for stage
Marc Bamuthi Joseph for The Living Word Project
Directed by Michael John Garcés

Transition
Performed by Reggie Watts
Created by Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith
Directed by Tommy Smith

Woyzeck
Sadari Movement Laboratory
In association with AsiaNow (Korea)

OFFSITE EVENTS

Addicted To Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre’s 20th Century
By World/Inferno Friendship Society
Co-Conceived and Directed by Jay Scheib
WEBSTER HALL

Call Cutta In A Box
An intercontinental phone play by Rimini Protokoll (Haug/Kaegi/Wetzel)
GOETHE INSTITUT, NEW YORK

England
By Tim Crouch (UK)
CHELSEA ART MUSEUM

Pataphysics Penyeach: Summa Dramatica/Porco Morto
Written and Directed by Lee Breuer
MABOU MINES STUDIO

Removable Parts
Created by Corey Dargel
Performed by Corey Dargel and Kathleen Supové
Directed by Emma Griffin
HERE ARTS CENTER

Siren
By Ray Lee
Performed by Ray Lee and Harry Dawes.
HERE ARTS CENTER

The Crumb Trail
Written by Gina Moxley
Directed by Gavin Quinn
PERFORMANCE SPACE 122

Go See TAKING OVER.

Danny Hoch is one of the reasons I do theater the way I do it.  I saw his Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop back in 1997 (wow…way back when), and was struck by how he was able to use what he saw around him to create important, exciting, fun theater that mattered.  Years later, I got to meet him through my own playwriting, and got probably the biggest validation of my young career when, after the first real reading of Welcome to Arroyo’s, a producer asked Danny what kind of work his Hip-Hop Theater Festival produced, and Danny pointed back to our stage and said “that.”  (I hope that sentence makes sense.)  Years after that, I found myself at Danny’s house, stirring the intricate squash-based meal he decided to whip up for a small group of friends who had come back to his place after a reading of Till the Break of Dawn.  I say all this to point out that I have undying respect for and gratitude towards Danny as an artist, a producer, and a human being.

So maybe I’m a little biased, but I think that his new play Taking Over is one of the best pieces of theater I have ever seen.  It does exactly what great hip-hop theater should be doing in this day and age: combining worlds, making disparate ideas and styles and cultures meet to form something new and powerful.  It’s personal and it’s political.  It’s hilarious and completely serious.  It’s a relatively even-handed study of gentrification that still manages to take a strong point of view and stick to it wholeheartedly.  I love this play.   You need to go see it.

Danny Hoch is Back.

(Danny Hoch is a great artist and one of the reasons that I do what I do. He’s also a friend. I support his work wholeheartedly. I’ll be seeing this show in Brooklyn–you should see it whenever it rolls through your borough.  Also note–I’m keeping this post on top for a few days to spread the word, but I’ll have all kinds of content throughout the week.  Read past the first post.  And now, a note from D. Hoch himself. )

What up NYC Family! It’s been a while since I last performed here at home in NYC and I got a new solo show that opens at the Public Theater in November. But THIS WEEK I start a little tour of the boroughs with the show and ALL PERFORMANCES ARE FREE. I’m gonna hit the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn in three neighborhoods that are being hit hard with changes, namely the South Bronx, LIC and Williamsburg.

It would be an honor to have you there and support. Of course if you wanna wait until the Public Theater so you can support my pocket, then I won’t be offended if you wait until November. But the boro joints promise to be hot, and there are also a few post-show discussions.

Warning: The language is strong, and there is absolutely NO LATE SEATING. They will NOT let you in, even if you get there 5 min late. No exceptions.

Please nobody ask me for free for free tix because the TIX ARE FREE TO EVERYONE. But you MUST reserve them. NOT here on Facebook, but you can reserve tix at hhtf.org or at this link:
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/107/1222869600000;jsessionid=7A7E4BBB3E70AD4CA3B3EC59A94CAEF3.app4

For group tix, contact Mike Primo
michael@hhtf.org

The performance schedule is:

Oct 1-4, Bronx FREE
Oct 6,7,9,10 Queens FREE
Oct 11 Brooklyn FREE
Nov 7 – Dec 14 Manhattan (Public Theater – Not Free

Hope to see you all at one of the shows this fall.

Danny
(representin’ P.S. 220, J.H.S. 157, LaGuardia H.S.)

The Public Theater’s 08-09 Season

The Public just announced their 08-09 season.

For me, the big news is (unsurprisingly) that Danny Hoch’s Taking Over is going to have its New York premiere, finally. For those who don’t know, Danny is one of the fathers of hip-hop theater, and his solo work is one of my major inspirations as an artist. And he’s a good man, and a heck of a cook. I absolutely cannot wait to see this show.

There are some huge names in this season: Guare, Sondheim, Wolfe, Sher, Glass, Akalaitas, Durang. Am I disappointed to see no new names, no Latinos, no Asians, two African-Americans, and only two women represented? Of course. Do I think it’s a defendable season? Probably–these names are likely to sell tickets, and The Public needs to be responsible on that front. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that smaller projects (Under the Radar, the LAB, the various readings) as well as the creative casting that the Public does so well will flesh some color back into the place.

Still, it’s very, very interesting to see a season like this, especially when NYTW is condensing their output. Who is going to be doing new playwrights and new playwrights of color especially?

If not The Public, then who?

Ophelia.

On Sunday night I won tickets to see Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park. I used the “Virtual Line” option via publictheater.org, and I highly recommend it. I know at least one other person who won tickets Sunday on only his second attempt; it was my second attempt too. If you’re going to go see the show (or the second one this summer, Hair–I’ll definitely be there for that), go with the online option as your first choice, and if you don’t get tickets, show up at the theater a little bit before and see if they’ve got empty seats. The theater was maybe 75% full, and that was before the thundershowers at intermission.

The last time I saw Hamlet was a few years back in London, and it was not at all a good experience. I spent a sizable chunk of the performance fantasizing about how, if I for some reason had to jump onstage and conduct an impromptu fight scene, take out the most people in the least moves. After that production, I told myself this: “Hey, I don’t like Shakespeare. I mean, really. It’s not fun. Even when it’s good, which this production here in London is not, I don’t really like it much. At all.” So I decided not to go see Shakespeare anymore when I could help it.

And then the Public cast Claire Fisher as Ophelia, and I didn’t have much choice.

Claire Fisher = Lauren Ambrose of course, star of Six Feet Under. Claire Fisher also = my favorite female TV character of all-time, and maybe my favorite TV character of all-time, up there with Eric Cartman, Ryan O’Reilly, and 75% of the cast of The Wire. Last year, she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and I was in Cleveland, so I missed it. I knew I had to make time to see her in this. The thing I didn’t really consider was this: Ophelia has got to be the weirdest character in theater.

She does nothing. She wants nothing. She reacts. Constantly. And then she goes crazy. And that crazy scene lasts forever, but all she’s doing is singing doggerel and, in this production, drawing a grave in chalk (which is a pretty cool image). It’s not exactly the kind of role that highlights Lauren Ambrose’s talents, although there was one moment that almost made the whole thing worth it: when she leaves the stage for the last time, she says goodbye–and it’s haunting, and it’s deep somehow, and it changes her from crazy and completely lost to somehow aware of her madness, to somehow resigned to her fate and even in charge of it. I can’t really explain how she does it, but there’s this thing Lauren Ambrose does (she did it all the time in Six Feet Under, and she even did it in Can’t Hardly Wait, which is a super-underrated teen movie) where she throws levels of desperation underneath a tough exterior. This isn’t that, but it’s similar; she’s working in complexity to every word, even with a character that hardly offers opportunity to do so.

And it’s kind of funny that her final moment is the highlight of her performance here–if you’ve seen Six Feet Under all the way through you know that the final sequence of that show–built around Claire Fisher–is the best thing that happened on that show, and one of the best things that has ever happened on television. She comes up big down the stretch, which is not always the case with most actors and/or shows.

Ophelia is particularly interesting to me right now, because my friend Aya Ogawa is about to open her play Oph3lia at Here. I was around at the beginning of this piece a few years back (when we both, along with Christina Anderson) were Van Lier Fellows at New Dramatists. I’ve seen a few incarnations of the piece, and it’s kind of thrilling (especially in terms of stage pictures and choreography), but I’m going to have a different connection to heart of the play now after having seen Hamlet again.

I’ll write more about Hamlet in another post. The short of it is that I’m not sure how I feel about the lead performance or, for that matter, the whole thing. And it’s long. And it’s Shakespeare, which I don’t like. I’m not ashamed to admit it. BUT…if you don’t have a self-imposed Shakespeare ban, it’s worth checking out.