(Erik Piepenburg’s and Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 5/3; via Pam Green.)
Lin-Manuel Miranda
The creator of “Hamilton” was nominated for best book of a musical, best original score and best leading actor in a musical.
Q. “Hamilton” set a record for the most nominations ever this morning. What do you make of that?
A. It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely humbling and incredible.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/03/theater/tony-awards-reactions.html?_r=0
(Mark Brown’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 5/31.)
This, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, is a timely moment for Headlong theatre company to present this exceptional revival of Frank McGuinness’s iconic 1985 play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. Just as theEaster Rising in Dublin in 1916 was a historic juncture in the shaping of Irish Republican politics, so the Battle of the Somme was formative in the evolution of its rival tradition, Ulster Loyalism.
(Marisha Karwa’s article appeared on DNA 5/29; via Pam Green.)
Netting laurels in a career spanning over 300 films in 55 years hasn't stopped Sir Ian McKellen from learning on the job, discovers Marisha Karwa
Sir Ian McKellen is a bundle of energy. Having sat through 10 media interactions in a span of 120 minutes, the 77-year-old snatches a couple of minutes for a smoke break, as he scampers between rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
He is a man on a mission. During his six-day visit to Mumbai this past week – his first to India – to promote the British Film Institute-curated Shakespeare on Film event, McKellen has a packed calendar: an hour-long Twitter chat, media interactions, a public tête-à-tête with Aamir Khan, a film screening, a film festival inauguration and soirées with the upper crust before he jets off to Shanghai, China where he will likely have an equally action-packed schedule.
http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-the-bard-s-ambassador-2217565
Sean Hayes stars in a return engagement of David Javerbaum’s comedy, in which the Almighty comes down to earth to clear up a few misconceptions. Joe Mantello directs. In previews. Opens June 6.
Offerings at the annual festival of new work include Cat Crowley and Nate Weida’s “Blue Plate Special,” a queer doo-wop musical; Anthony Natoli’s “Justin Timberlake vs. Ryan Gosling,” a comedy about the Mouseketeers turned A-listers; and Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin’s “Ambition: The Female American Serial Killer Musical.” Opens June 6.
Halley Feiffer’s play, directed by Trip Cullman for MCC Theatre, follows the unlikely friendship between a young woman and a middle-aged man whose mothers are in the same cancer hospital. In previews. Opens June 7.
At the “Brits Off Broadway” festival, Alan Ayckbourn directs his newest play, in which a war veteran returns to his home town; it runs in repertory with “Confusions,” his 1974 collection of linked one-acts. In previews. Opens June 9.
A new musical by Jonathan Brielle explores the romance between James Joyce and his wife and muse, Nora Barnacle. Directed by Michael Bush. In previews. Opens June 6.
Noah Diamond adapted this “lost” musical comedy, which marked the Broadway début of the Marx Brothers, in 1924, and finds the brothers trying to amuse a wealthy heiress. In previews. Opens June 2.
Continuing Target Margin’s two-season exploration of Eugene O’Neill, four different theatre artists interpret the four acts of “The Iceman Cometh” in repertory. Opens June 2.
In Gregory S. Moss’s comedy, directed by Carolyn Cantor, a city kid spends the summer at a Rhode Island beach town, where he meets a feisty local girl. In previews. Opens June 8.
Estelle Parsons and Judith Ivey star in Israel Horovitz’s play, in which four woman arrive in Paris for the funeral of a hundred-year-old man who loved them all. Previews begin June 7.
Adam Rapp (“Red Light Winter”) wrote and directs this drama, in which a guy who lives alone in Paducah, Kentucky, is visited by two teen-age girls. In previews. Opens June 7.
In Philip Ridley’s satire of the housing market, presented by the “Brits Off Broadway” festival, a young couple have a chance at buying their dream house. Previews begin June 2. Opens June 7.
The Irish Rep returns to its renovated home with Conor McPherson’s drama, directed by Ciarán O’Reilly and starring Matthew Broderick as a widower who seeks counselling after he sees his wife’s ghost. In previews. Opens June 9.
Moscow’s Theatre of Nations stages an evening of vignettes based on the stories of the Siberian-born writer and filmmaker Vasily Shukshin, as part of the Cherry Orchard Festival. In Russian, with English supertitles. June 8-11.
In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz for LCT3, two siblings are confronted in their mother’s hospital room with a secret about their grandfather’s past. In previews. Opens June 6.
Robin Goldfin raps with SV’s Bob Shuman
Robin Goldfin is a playwright, performer and teacher. His most recent project is Suddenly, a Knock at the Door, a play based on stories by award-winning Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret with original live music by Oren Neiman. Robin’s own 10-minute play The Acoustics, directed by Ken Talberth was part of Artistic New Directions’ Eclectic Evening of Shorts in March 2010. His solo play, The Ethics of Rav Hymie Goldfarb, directed by David Carson premiered in The Midtown International Theatre Festival in summer 2005. (“Splendidly crafted” wrote nytheatre.com.) Robin’s other writing has been published in Tikkun Magazine, Zeek, and The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide; and in the anthologies Queer Stories for Boys: True Stories from the Gay Men’s Storytelling Workshop and One on One: The Best Men’s Monologues for the 21st Century. As a performer, Robin danced for five years with Laurie DeVito’s She-Bops and Scats, a concert jazz dance company and taught Simonson Jazz Dance Technique in New York and abroad. Robin has held artist’s residencies at Makor, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and The Mishkan Omanim (Artists Residence) in Herzylia, Israel. A member of PEN American Center and The Dramatists Guild, he holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dramatic Writing from New York University and is Clinical Professor of Writing in NYU’s Liberal Studies Program.
What led you to write Suddenly, a Knock at the Door—and why and how did you decide that an American writer would and could be right to adapt Israeli short stories?
I love the Hebrew language. I began to learn it when I was about 9 and became fluent maybe 40 years later. I love Etgar’s stories in Hebrew because to me they read like children’s stories for adults—they have a deceptive simplicity and great depth underneath. That’s the same way I read the stories in Genesis. I wrote Suddenly, a Knock because I wanted to learn about storytelling. I am by nature more of a poet, and plays (like stories) need a plot. So I took one of the best storytellers I know and decided to learn from him.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 1 to 7PM, or by appointment
La MaMa Galleria | 47 Great Jones St.
Free Admission
Curated by Harrison Tenzer
Opening: Friday, June 17th, 6-8 PM
Panel Discussion: Sunday, June 19th, 12-2 PM
La MaMa Galleria is pleased to present Ingo Swann: A Remote View, a one-man exhibition of paintings and collages by Ingo Swann. An acclaimed psi-researcher and author, Swann participated in over a hundred academic and government-backed research studies, which investigated human psychic powers as a reality – one that modern science systematically trivialized as unfounded or abnormal.
Swann pioneered the skill of “remote viewing,” a psychic ability that allowed one to see physically distant locations, such as the surface of planets. When the CIA discovered the existence of Soviet psi-spies at the height of the Cold War, they turned to Swann and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to train a group of military personnel in remote viewing, with the goal of creating their own psychic spies. This project, code named Stargate, ran from 1978 to 1995. During this period, Swann was told that his findings would never be shared with the public, out of the fear that civilians might begin to harness their psychic abilities to dismantle the status-quo. Swann's sense of repression was further compounded by the fact that he was a gay man living within a homophobic culture. Art, however, allowed Swann to freely express both his psychic inclinations and his sexual desires. A Remote View, as a title, references Swann's psychic ability as well as his status as an outsider, remote from the cultural norms of his homophobic and psi-phobic society.
The paintings and collages included in the exhibition – spanning the early 1960s to the late 1990s – illustrate the unique way that Swann viewed the world. After abandoning his dream of commercial success in the late 1950s, Swann continued to paint only what gave him joy: primarily, the energy that he saw radiating from the people around him. Swann saw this energy - chi, aura, force – as uniting all living things to one another. He believed that if people were to harness their extra-sensory perceptions, to see these forces as he could, the world would change for the better. For this reason, this exhibition focuses on works from throughout his life that depict energy radiating from figures in rays, flames, mandalas, and halos. His subjects range from the mythological and ancient to hippies and hustlers. The latter of which, he may have seen outside of his home and studio on the Bowery in Manhattan.
Ingo Swann: A Remote View is a rare opportunity to see Swann's artworks, many of which have never been exhibited, blocks away from his home and studio. In these works, we experience the pleasure of watching the transformation of the East Village and its inhabitants through a visionary’s eyes. When compelled by society to repress his power and desires, Swann refused, choosing instead to use his art as a way to freely express himself, and in so doing, to compel others to find their authentic selves by reconnecting with the energy that courses through us all.
On Sunday, June 19th, from 12-2 PM, curator Harrison Tenzer will moderate a conversation between Hunter O’Hanian, Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, Founder and Director of the American Visionary Art Museum; and Elly Flippen, Ingo Swann’s Niece.
About Ingo Swann
Ingo Swann was born in Telluride, Colorado in 1933. Since 1970, Swann has been interviewed or profiled in dozens of magazines, including Time, Reader's Digest, Smithsonian and Newsweek. He has published more than ten books on various psychic subjects such as remote viewing aliens on the Moon and Earth, how individuals can develop their future-seeing abilities, and the intersection of sexuality and psychic energies. His artwork is in the collections of The National Air and Space Museum, Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.), The American Visionary Art Museum and the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. His works have been included in “CLEAR," an exhibition at Gagosian, Los Angeles in 2014, "The Rainbow Serpent" at Gagosian, Athens last year, and are currently in "Cock, Paper, Scissors” at ONE Archives at USC Libraries, Los Angeles. Swann passed away in New York City in 2013. He is survived by his sister and several nieces, nephews and grand nieces and nephews.
(Lyn Gardner’s article appeared in the Guardian, 5/27.)
1 Les Blancs
Lorraine Hansberry is best known for her play A Raisin In The Sun and for inspiring Nina Simone’s To Be Young, Gifted And Black. She died, aged 34, before she could complete Les Blancs, a huge sprawling indictment of colonialism and the mess it left behind. Centred on a Christian mission in a bitterly divided African country, the play was later pieced together by her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff. Director Yaël Farber delivers a production that drips with atmosphere, both febrile and haunted. It’s one of the best shows you’re likely to see on a British stage this year, and these are your last chances to catch it.
National Theatre: Olivier, SE1, to Thu
2 Hamlet
Twenty-five year-old Paapa Essiedu’s superb performance in Simon Godwin’s revival sees him become the first black Hamlet in RSC history. Convincingly young, his cockiness gives way to confusion in a production that transposes Elsinore to a modern African country. Excellent support comes from Tanya Moodie as Gertrude and Natalie Simpson as Ophelia.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, to 13 Aug
3 The James Plays
Rona Munro’s epic trilogy, which spans the turbulent reigns of James I, II and III of Scotland, comprises seven-and-a-half hours of history leavened by puppetry, song, dance and fierce debate. Munro’s script is chewy and muscular and Laurie Sansom does it proud in a production that has a stylish swagger and knows how to tell a good, complex story.
Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Sat & Sun; touring to 3 Jul
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/27/five-of-the-best-plays
“Hamilton” brought a boost. “The Lion King” provided ballast. And Broadway, once again, broke a record: The theater season that just ended attracted more people, and more money, than any before.
Broadway seems to be defying the cultural odds: An ancient art form in the digital age, it is strengthening thanks to an ever-increasing influx of tourists and a resurgent enthusiasm for musical theater.
The season that ended on Sunday included 13,317,980 visitors to Broadway shows — a record number, up 1.6 percent over the previous season, according to figures released on Monday by the Broadway League. Theaters grossed $1.373 billion, also a record, up 0.6 percent over the previous season, although the grosses are not adjusted for inflation.
(via David Gibbs, DARR Publicity)
New York, NY – La MaMa proudly presents I’m Bleeding All Over The Place: A Living History Tour, conceived and directed by Brooke O’Harra, text by Brooke O’Harra and Casey Llewellyn, with Erin Courtney, Kristin Kosmas and Heidi Schreck, and original music by Brendan Connelly. I’m Bleeding All Over The Place runs from June 16 – 26, 2016 at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, located at 66 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery in New York City.
Tours take place on June 16 – 19 and June 22 – 25 at 7pm, 7:30pm and 8pm. Matinee tours take place on June 18, 19, 25 and 26 at 3pm, 3:30pm and 4pm. Each tour starts promptly and lasts approximately 45 minutes. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to the tour. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students and seniors, and can be purchased online athttp://lamama.org or by calling 646-430-5374. A limited amount of $10 tickets are available for each tour.
For more information visit http://lamama.org, Like them on Facebook at http://bitly.com/lamamaFB and follow them on Twitter and Instagram @LaMaMaETC. The tour’s Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/events/1720495881563549.
Take the tour! I’m Bleeding All Over the Place: A Living History Tour delves into the exhilarating and awkward emotional space of being out of time and out of step. Guided by ten performers, audiences move through a series of theatrical encounters where bodies, biography, performance tropes, and original text come together to create an unforgettable experience that probes the potential of spectatorship. Stepping into the emotional landscape of everyday conflict, this work examines how gender and sexuality, story, conflict and resolution fuse in the dynamic space between performers and their audience. An exploration of the politics and mechanisms at play in the theatrical form, I’m Bleeding All Over The Place asks us to own our expectations, confront our autonomy inside of the group and to challenge ourselves to address how we are implicated in the creation of the event. This act of coming together and appearing before each other produces an authorship of meaning that is both a collaborative effort and an individual act of will. On this tour individual histories, the culture at large, even the formal apparatus of theater become part of the transformative energies that implicate the actor into a political body. Thrilling collision? I’m Bleeding All Over The Place: A Living History Tour offers you a chance to find out. This piece travels through space, but does not involve audience participation.
(Niki Kitsantonis’s article appeared in The New York Times, 5/26.)
ATHENS — A Greek archaeologist who has been leading a 20-year excavation in northern Greece said on Thursday that he believed he had unearthed the tomb of Aristotle.
In an address at a conference in Thessaloniki, Greece, commemorating the 2,400th anniversary of Aristotle’s birth, the archaeologist, Konstantinos Sismanidis, said he had “no proof but strong indications, as certain as one can be,” to support his claim.
The tomb was in a structure unearthed in the ancient village of Stagira, where Aristotle was born, about 40 miles east of Thessaloniki. According to Mr. Sismanidis, the structure was a monument erected in Aristotle’s honor after his death in 322 B.C.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/europe/greece-aristotle-tomb.html?_r=0