Film: "1945" directed by Ferenc Torok, 2017

From:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/movies/1945-review-ferenc-torok.html
By BEN KENIGSBERG
OCT. 31, 2017

Ferenc Torok’s lean, suggestive Hungarian feature, “1945,” shot in gorgeous, high-contrast black-and-white, is a Holocaust film built, consciously or not, on a reversal of the tropes of the western, down to ticking clocks that might as well be nearing high noon. The visiting men in black hats — a father (Ivan Angelus) and his adult son (Marcell Nagy) — aren’t villains out for revenge, but Orthodox Jews, who have come to the village at the end of the war. They are transporting trunks said to be filled with perfume or cosmetics. The purpose of their journey is obscure.

The two barely speak over the course of the film; the guilty villagers talk among themselves. “We have to give it all back,” the town drunk (Jozsef Szarvas) tells the clerk, Istvan (Peter Rudolf), believing that the strangers have a connection to the town’s deported Jews. Dismissing the concern, Istvan nevertheless understands that fear; he played a pivotal role in betraying the local Jews, a sin for which his opiate-addicted wife (Eszter Nagy-Kalozy) holds him in contempt. As the film slowly reveals how the village’s veneer of civility is built over a foundation of treachery, the darkened foregrounds suggest conspirators hiding in plain sight.

Theater: "Margarete" by Janek Turkowski, Under the Radar 2018

From:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/theater/in-solo-shows-lip-syncing-hamlet-and-investigating-home-movies.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share 
By JESSE GREENJAN. 9, 2018

But it is “Margarete,” by Janek Turkowski, that feels, despite its deceptively homey aspect, more profoundly experimental.

For one thing, “Margarete” takes place in a small, dingy classroom tucked away among the Public’s public spaces. The audience of about 16 people is seated on a motley collection of chairs, stools and cushions. Coffee and tea are served in mismatched china.

The gesture is both disarming and thematic. It was at a German flea market, we learn, that Mr. Turkowski, who often works with found video, bought for 20 euros the trove of eight-millimeter-film reels he now begins to project. Genially, self-deprecatingly and in charmingly accented English — he pronounces the “w” in “answer” — he tells the story of how he became captivated by what are evidently someone’s silent home movies. But whose? And why should we care?

Even overlaid with lovely recorded music (by Roger Anklam and Przemek Radar Olszewski), the films do not at first seem fascinating, filled as they are with banal images of people en route to Eastern European tourist sites in what seems to be the late 1950s or early 1960s. Here is a bus! Here’s a cruise ship! Here’s a brutal Soviet-style building called (we are mordantly told) the “finger of culture”!

But the finger of culture points in unexpected directions; as Mr. Turkowski becomes fascinated with one particular figure who appears in much of the footage, so do we. She is a white-haired woman he provisionally calls Margarete, and the bulk of the play’s 55 minutes consists of his sometimes comical attempt to pin down her real identity and understand the meaning of her movies. One scene, which Mr. Turkowski repeatedly replays on a video transfer and enlarges for study as if it were the Zapruder film, suggests, at least to our credulous host, a possible spy mission at a nuclear facility. Another hints at a gender transformation.

I won’t say what Mr. Turkowski eventually discovers; the revelation may not be on the scale of a Cold War thriller but in its ordinariness turns out to be just as exciting. Or rather: exciting and sad, as old family mementos so often are. (The found-audio mystery “Say Something Bunny!” has a similar setup.) It seems that humans must look for meaning in everything — and seeing that dramatized in Mr. Turkowski’s retelling was enough, for me, to turn “Margarete,” though just a bunch of film clips, into theater. For what does theater need beyond a story and someone willing to let it unfold?

Theater: The Children, by Lucy Kirkwood

From the review in the NYT's: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/theater/review-in-the-children-manhattan-theater-club-lucy-kirkwood.html?_r=0

[...] I doubt “The Children” would feel so important without Rose’s agenda and the challenge that comes with it. I will say only that it has to do with selfishness in both its ordinary and also its existential varieties. When Rose tells Robin that “we can’t have everything we want just because we want it,” she means, yes, the love of one’s youth, but that’s just the start. A good death is not guaranteed. Even electricity, as the local disaster has proved, is not a right. 

And if, as Hazel smugly insists, you must “leave a place cleaner than you found it,” what does that mean about the earth we bequeath to our children, blotched as it is with our awful mistakes and overrun with centenarian yoginis? 

Those children, with their childish parents, may have reason to think Ms. Kirkwood’s title is double-edged. Who’s selfish now?

Written by Lucy Kirkwood;
Directed by James Macdonald
Cast: Francesca Annis, Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay

Opera-requiem “IYOV” by NOVA OPERA, Prototype Festival 2018

A Note from the Artist:

We created the opera-requiem IYOV in the synthetis genre. We aimed to get rid of most musical and theatrical cliches: from the great post-romantic opera to the modern chamber tradition. 

The rejection of classical theatrical "action" allowed us to dig deeper into the sound-scape. The traditional operatic libretto was replaced by the mix of biblical story and canonical Requiem texts. 

Job has become very important for us. He was a legendary prophet who is important for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Thus, Job is a mythological interconfessional figure. 

A special aspect of the performance is working with the prepared grand piano. We opened the lid and immersed our vocal ensemble into its inner world, mixing the resonances of the piano strings with the vibrations of the human voice, and using the wooden deck of the instrument as percussion.

An opera-requiem, IYOV is a story of the biblical character Job’s life, pride and disbelief. Named for the Hebrew word for Job, IYOV centers on the man’s search for life's meaning through a synthesis of musical and theatrical techniques ranging from ancient Greek drama to baroque opera and more. Combining minimalism and the avant-garde, neoclassicism and rock, the music of IYOV features polyphonic choral episodes and instrumental interludes that alternate with a full range of the human voice: everything from classical, jazz and folk singing to breathing, screaming, whispering and overtone singing. At the center of IYOV’s musical landscape is an exceptional piano that sonically transforms into a self-contained orchestra, echoing a harpsichord, drums, and even a synthesizer and other electronic instruments. An extraordinary Ukrainian opera, IYOV blends an emotional journey, the birth of a new sound, and the endless possibilities of the human voice.

Director Vladyslav Troitskyi
Conductor & Composer Roman Grygoriv
Composer Illia Razumeiko

Live Video Mixer Mariia Volkova
Lighting Designer Nataliya Perchyshena
Sound Engineer Caley Monahon-Ward

Nova Opera:  http://novaopera.com.ua/

Cast
Actor Marina Celander
Singer Mariana Holovko
Singer Ruslan Kirsh
Singer Andrii Koshman
Singer Hanna Marych
Singer Yevhen Rakhmanin
Singer Oleksandra Turyanska
Instrumentalist Zhanna Marchinska
Instrumentalist Andrii Nadolskyi
Instrumentalist Illia Razumeiko

IYOV was created in 2015 at the order of the festival of contemporary art, GogolFest. IYOV is made possible by the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

NOVA OPERA is a group of young Ukrainian artists the aim of which is search for new ways of developing of music theatre. Musicians create the new synthetic genres and experiment with untypical music and stage performances. The music language of the performances hasn’t got any aesthetic borders and freely unites avant-guard and rock, Gregorian choral and trip-hop, new baroque and folk improvisations. The vocal-instrumental ensemble of NOVA OPERA investigates possibilities of human voice and uses non-academic methods of playing music instruments such as prepared piano, bit-box, body-percussion and so on. The use of achievements of traditional theatre is mixed with the modern technologies: vj-ing and live-electronic music. 

Vlad Troitskyi is a key figure in contemporary Ukrainian art. Founder of Kyiv DAKH theatre, GOGOLFEST festival and cult ‘DakhaBrakha’ and ‘Dakh Daughters’ bands. His performances are always multilayered in shapes and meanings, and if we trust that the mission of a theatre is to provide a spectator with nourishment for mind and soul, allow him to feel catharsis and cleansing, this place is where one can find genuine performing art.  

More: http://novaopera.com.ua/video/

Theater: Pursuit of Happiness, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and EnKnapGroup, Skirball NYU 2018

http://tickets.nyu.edu/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=7235

OBIE-Award winning, New York-based performance group Nature Theater of Oklahoma takes on the American Dream and the bleak desert of its aspirational aftermath. Created in collaboration with six dancers of the highly acclaimed Slovenian dance company EnKnapGroup, the piece charges through a rough-and-tumble, endlessly morphing myth of the Wild West, where whiskey pours, fists fly, and bullets ultimately settle the score. 

Through hyper-masculine high jinks and disruptions of submissive stereotypes this fast-paced, entertaining and affecting piece careens towards a shocking and unseemly Hollywood end. With a brief detour to Baghdad, this raucous dance-theater performance hybrid travels from the dark corners into which we collectively chase our wildest dreams to the anarchic frontiers of lust, greed and violent means to examine the “unalienable right” to happiness. 

The programme of EN-KNAP Productions is financially supported by: City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture and Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
An EN-KNAP Production
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS is co-produced by Théâtre de la Ville and steirischer herbst.
The project is supported by U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana.

https://youtu.be/CKWFLOkucI4 

Opera: Fellow Travelers, Prototype Festival 2018

http://prototypefestival.org/show/fellow-travelers/

At the height of the McCarthy era in 1950s Washington, D.C., recent college grad Timothy Laughlin is eager to join the crusade against Communism. A chance encounter with handsome State Department official Hawkins Fuller leads to Tim’s first job, an illicit love affair with a man, and an entanglement that will end in a stunning act of betrayal. Based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel, Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce's Fellow Travelers is an extraordinary personal journey through the intriguing, gut-wrenching world of the 1950s American witch-hunts, and the often overlooked “Lavender Scare.” Directed by Kevin Newbury and featuring the American Composers Orchestra in the opera's New York debut, this acclaimed Cincinnati Opera production pairs American Minimalism with troubadour-like melodies, reflecting the tension between two men’s professional, public lives and their private, forbidden longings.

Composer Gregory Spears
Librettist Greg Pierce
Director Kevin Newbury
Conductor George Manahan

Cast
Timothy Laughlin: Aaron Blake
Hawkins Fuller: Joseph Lattanzi
Mary Johnson: Devon Guthrie
Senator Potter & Bartender: Vernon Hartman
Estonian Frank, Interrogator, & Sen. McCarthy: Marcus DeLoach
Potter’s Assistant, Bookseller, & Priest: Christian Pursell
Tommy McIntyre: Paul Scholten
Miss Lightfoot: Alexandra Schoeny
Lucy Cecilia: Violetta Lopez

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/an-opera-about-gay-life-in-dc-in-the-fifties?mbid=social_tablet_e

Theater: Dane Terry in "Jupiter's Lifeless Moons" at COIL PS122, 2018

From The NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/theater/dane-terry-coil-festival-jupiters-lifeless-moons.html?_r=0

“Dane gets these ideas, and they sort of bubble up from his unconscious,” Ms. Heyman said by telephone. “They are like these icebergs that seem totally separate from each other, and then he finds out they’re actually related. This piece was created largely through the iceberg process.”

Film: BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY (2017)

When Nazi U-Boats torpedo a ship carrying 83 school children during World War II, Hollywood movie star, Hedy Lamarr, decides to exact revenge. At night, after shooting her scenes on set, she works on a secret radio system that will allow the Allies to torpedo Nazi U-Boats with deadly accuracy. Her sketches remain ideas until a chance encounter with an eccentric composer enables her to transform them into useful technology. The secret communication system she creates is groundbreaking and eventually changes the course of history. It would make a terrific fictional film, but this story happens to be true. Hedy Lamarr, the screen siren who was called "the most beautiful woman in the world" and starred alongside Hollywood giants like Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, invented a wireless form of communication called "frequency hopping" that revolutionized mobile communications all over the world, a feat that would directly lead to the creation of secure communications for wireless phones, Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi technology itself.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bombshell_the_hedy_lamarr_story/

Theater: Re-Member Me, by Dickie Beau, Public Theater 2018

When award-winning lip sync maestro and intrepid drag fabulist Dickie Beau realized that he might never play Shakespeare’s tragic prince, he decided to turn himself into a human Hamlet mix-tape. He would channel audio recordings of great historical performances of theater's most famous role to “re-member” the ghosts of Hamlet from the past.

Humorous and haunting, Re-Member Me is part documentary theatre, part 21st-century séance adventure through cultural landscapes and a contemporary ghost story. In an ode to the impermanence of personhood and posterity, Beau chronicles the remarkable story behind the greatest Hamlet almost never seen.

The “Human Hamlet mixtape” features excerpts from the Hamlets of Sir John Gielgud, John Barrymore, Peter O’Toole & Kenneth Branagh.

Created and Performed by Dickie Beau
Collaborator and Director Jan-Willem Van Den Bosch

Lighting Design Marty Langthorne
Stage Manager Naomi Harvey
Special Props Fani Parali
Additional Costumes Provided by The Almeida Theatre, London

Voices by Sir Ian Mckellen (Actor), Sir John Gielgud (Actor), John Wood (former Theatrical Agent), Sir Richard Eyre (Director and former Artistic Director of The Royal National Theatre), Stephen Ashby (former Dresser at The Royal National Theatre), Sean Mathias (Director), Suzanne Bertish (Actress), and John Peter (former Chief Critic of The Sunday Times).

https://publictheater.org/Tickets/Calendar/PlayDetailsCollection/UTR-2018/Re-Member-Me/

Theater: Farinelli and the King, Shakespeare's Globe, Belasco Theater 2018

"Farinelli and the King" tells the true story of Philippe V (played by Mark Rylance), a Spanish monarch on the brink of madness. He finds unexpected solace in the voice of world-renowned castrato Farinelli.

Farinelli’s papers show that the repertoire he sang for the king included hundreds of different
pieces of music from Pergolesi, Scarlatti and other composers. Through Farinelli, the king had
discovered at last, after many years of suffering, a satisfactory therapy for his disorder.

The nine musical selections, all chosen from arias first sung by the real-life Farinelli in the 1730s, range from “Ho perso il caro ben” from “Il Parnasso” to the melting “Bel contento” from “Flavio.”

Playwright: Claire van Kampen
Director: John Dove
Producer: Shakespeare's Globe

Mark Rylance as Philippe V of Spain
Melody Grove as Isabella Farnese, queen and wife of Philippe V
Sam Crane as Farinelli

Countertenor voice of Farinelli performed by either:
Iestyn Davies
Eric Jurenas
James Hall

http://www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com/
http://www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com/_docs/FarinelliHenryKamen.pdf
http://www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com/_docs/Farinelli-David_Cote.pdf

Opera: Hansel and Gretel, Met Opera 2018

http://www.metopera.org/Discover/Synposes-Archive/Hansel-and-Gretel/

Composer
Engelbert Humperdinck
Librettist
Adelheid Wette
Conductor
Donald Runnicles

Gretel
Lisette Oropesa*
Hansel
Tara Erraught
Gertrude
Dolora Zajick
Peter
Quinn Kelsey
The sandman
Rihab Chaieb**
The dew fairy
Hyesang Park**
The witch
Gerhard Siegel

Theater: Thunderstorm 2.0, Under the Radar Festival 2018

From the web site: https://publictheater.org/Tickets/Calendar/PlayDetailsCollection/UTR-2018/Thunderstorm-2/

Cao Yu's early 20th-century drama Thunderstorm, regarded as a masterpiece in Chinese theater, is dismantled and reassembled in this new interpretation helmed by internationally acclaimed director Wang Chong. Using real-time video editing and sound mixing from action occurring on stage, a hypnotic, near-silent movie unfolds to tell the explicit story of two female characters discovering that they have been cheated on by the same womanizing playboy. 

Updating the story to a Beijing official's home in the 1990s, Wang and his company of Beijing performers reinvent the classic play to reflect the complexities of contemporary capitalist-communist society, the ubiquity of technology and the sex-obsessed global landscape. Chong incorporates live pingtan players, a centuries-old form of traditional Chinese musical storytelling, to create the dialogue and soundtrack onstage. 

Text by Cao Yu
Script by Wang Chong / Yang Fan / Liang Anzheng
Directed by Wang Chong

Performed by Gong Zhe, Wang Xiaohuan, Li Jialong, Yu Tianjian, Yu Shixue, Cheng Zhen, Gu Qianwen, Wang Yuzhi, and Lu Sicheng

Pingtan Musicians Jiang Xiaobo and Xie Yan