Theater: Pan Pan performs The Seagull and Other Birds

Reviewed in the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/theater/review-the-seagull-and-other-birds-turned-upside-down.html?_r=0

At the front of the stage, from left, Una McKevitt, Judith Roddy and Gina Moxley in “The Seagull and Other Birds” at Abrons Arts Center. 

Description below is from the web site: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/pan-pan-seagull-birds.html

The Seagull and Other Birds is a roller coaster reimagining of Anton Chekhov's much-loved comic masterpiece. The performance centers around a concise new version of The Seagullintegrated with a number of works specially commissioned by the company. Through the wormhole of the new work, Chekhov’s characters find themselves in extraordinarily different contexts: classic plays, TV shows, YouTube and stuff they’ve just made up. The result is playful and uncompromising – expect lots of talk about art, some action, and tons of love.

“What we need are new artistic forms.
And if we don’t get new forms it would be better if we had nothing at all.”
(Konstantin, The Seagull, 63)

Pan Pan is the longest-established contemporary theatre company in Ireland, founded in 1991 by co-artistic directors Aedín Cosgrove and Gavin Quinn. The company has constantly examined and challenged the nature of its work and has resisted settling into well tried formulas. Developing new performance ideas is at the centre of the company’s raison d’être which is born from a desire to be individual and provide innovation in the development of theatre art. All the works created are original, either through the writing (original plays) or through the totally unique expression of established writings.

    Cast Andrew Bennett, Una McKevitt, Gina Moxley, Daniel Reardon, Judith Roddy, and Dick Walsh
    Director Gavin Quinn

Music: De Materie (The Matter) by Louis Andriessen 2016 at the Armory, NYC

Composer: Louis Andriessen
Director: Heiner Goebbels
Stage and Lighting Designer: Klaus Gruenberg
Costume Designer: Florence von Gerkan
Sound Designer: Norbert Ommer
Dramaturg: Matthias Mohr
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
Conductor: Peter Rundel
ChorWerk Ruhr

There seems to be a growing interest among artists to merge science and art in performances. In De Materie we observe or have explained: chemistry (behavior of gases in dirigibles and smoke hazes), physics (three double pendulums swinging simultaneously), mathematical principles (ideas of perfection of lines and open shapes that extend into infinity), and biology (herding instincts of sheep). The history of two famous women are touched upon: Marie Curie, devoted to her husband and to their discoveries of radioactive particles, and Hadewijch, the 13th century mystic enraptured with God. A 17th century scientist explains why he believes in the existence of "atoms" - some smallest indivisible units of matter, the building blocks of the material world. 

The set design took advantage of the mathematical principles of randomness. The audience could create innumerable connections between what was seen and heard, forming their own patterns and relationships of rhythm and cause-and-effect. Were those sheep also listening to the music, moving on the beat? 

It was entertaining because we, the audience, like to be busy with our observing brains. A floating dirigible gives us something to experience, something to take our breath away. The sheep give us endless moments of anticipation. But overall, I wonder if either science or spirit or art are actually enhanced by placing them beside each other. For me, it still feels like a puzzle where the pieces have been pressed together but the picture remains disjointed. It was a beautiful entertainment, rich in tone and visually engaging. Perhaps I'm asking too much if it has not deepened my understanding of either science or spirit.  -- dp

Film: Guillaume Nicloux's "Valley of Love." Starring Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardie. 2016

Needing to come to terms with the suicide of their adult son, Isabelle and Gérard meet each other at Death Valley. It is many years after their divorce and they are fulfilling the final wish of their son. Though they don't understand the purpose of their actions and only hope for the impossible - that their son might come back to life - they slowly experience transformation. Anguish chips away at their defenses; they gradually reveal the intimate details of their current lives. We sense that they need each other despite their emotional roadblocks.
This is a brilliant film that captures the wide range of ambiguity that's left after messy human relationships have ended. The heat, wind, sun, tedium, fear: every scene can be understood as an outward, physicalized expression of this couple's emotional pain, their state of slow timeless endurance, their desperate expectations of the magical. The director has created a beautiful and safe place for the audience to experience catharsis.  -- dp

Film: Cameraperson by Kirsten Johnson, 2016

Bits of footage from Kirsten Johnson's long career as a cameraperson for numerous films, shot around the world, have been edited together to make her own feature film called Cameraperson. It is largely a roller coaster ride through intimacy - with people and places - that have experienced extreme violence or life's most difficult decisions or corruptions. It has the sense of "revisiting" at a later time, when spring has returned and the fields are planted once again. The memory of trauma lies hidden in the place - but we can guess only barely hidden in the heart and mind of the Cameraperson.

Theater: FLY by Crossroads Theatre Company at the New Victory Theater, NYC

 Found this description on Youtube:

The year is 1944: Allied forces liberate Rome; British and US troops storm the beaches of Normandy; and, on an airfield in Alabama, four brave young men join the first black military aviators in United States history. FLY, a theatrical action-adventure, beautifully employs dance and video projection to illuminate the tremendous courage and resilience of the Tuskegee Airmen. From training to combat, experience the anguish, fears and triumphs of a brotherhood who fought for freedom abroad—and at home. Thrilling, inspired and uplifting, FLY soars.

http://www.crossroadstheatrecompany.org/shows/fly

Film: Dégradé by filmmakers Tarzan and Arab Abu Nasser, released 2015

From a review by Amir Bogen, 5/21/15: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4659147,00.html

"Dégradé" is the first feature film of twin brothers Ahmed and Mohamed Abu Nasser, known as filmmakers Tarzan and Arab Abu Nasser,
…

It's a small film which takes place in one location – a beauty parlor in Gaza, which is visited by women of different ages from different sectors. It's a "small and colorful piece of heaven," where a future bride sits alongside a cynical divorcee, a young pregnant woman, a religious woman covered from head to toe, the beauty parlor's owner who came from Russia, a rebellious hairdresser and an elderly bitter woman played by Nazareth-born Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass. The film's cast also includes actresses Maisa Abd Elhadi and Manal Awad.

Together they create an emotionally charged microcosm which is discharged in conversations about politics, religion and of course men, as opposed to the men who discharge their differences of opinion by firing their Kalashnikov rifles on the street.

This difference between the sexes is emphasized when the hairdresser's lover, the son of a local clan, steals a lion from the infamous Gaza zoo, an act seen by the local Hamas leaders as a spit in the face. They launch a war against him and his family, turning the street into a very dangerous and noisy place.

Based on a true story. 'Dégradé'

The Abu Nasser brothers say the film is based on a true story. "There was a powerful family that had a lion from the zoo, and the government attacked this family to take it," Tarzan explained in an interview. "When Hamas came to power in 2006, they looked to take out all of the various clans to assert their control, looking for reasons each time."

"They killed like 15 members of the family," Arab added.

The viewers experience all these events from within the beauty parlor, where the women are asked to stay until danger is past. But the danger doesn’t pass for hours, and with the gunfire and blast sounds outside, the women share intimate moments inside, in which they discuss their love stories, their approach towards life, secularism versus religiousness and Gaza's deterioration. Granted, Israel is often mentioned in a negative context, but the discussion focuses on the Hamas government and the Palestinian society which is being torn under its rule.

"Women in Gaza are like all other women in the world, although their suffering is very unique," the 26-year-old brothers said in an interview to the local media. "We need women in order to bring about change in Gaza. They are our heroes because despite the ongoing war, they represent life.

"The movie includes battles outside the beauty salon, but inside they continue with their love stories. They want to remain beautiful, hoping for a date or marriage. While people are shooting at each other on the street, putting on lipstick becomes an act of protest: Holding on to humanity no matter the circumstances, keeping hope alive."

While the film's characters mostly discuss their personal life, their distress is clear and so is the harsh criticism directed at Hamas and the street gangs. "All they bring is violence. They don't let us live peacefully," the women charge, pointing an accusing finger at the religious woman, who declares: "Just because I look like this doesn’t mean I voted for them."

Music: Yo La Tengo, Alvin Lucier, Ecstatic Music Festival 2/17/16

At the Merkin Concert Hall:

Pioneering indie rock band Yo La Tengo present an evening centered around their relationship with the work of seminal composer Alvin Lucier. - See more at: http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/ecstatic-music-festival-yo-la-tengo-alvin-lucier/#sthash.nRtlt8GM.dpuf

Theater: Sense and Sensibility by Bedlam Theater, Judson Garage 2/20/16

SENSE & SENSIBILITY

by Jane Austen, adapted for the stage by Kate Hamill

directed by Eric Tucker

CAST:

Laura Baranik, Kate Hamill,

Nigel Gore, Jason O'Connell,

Andrus Nichols, John Russell,

Vaishnavi Sharma,

Samantha Steinmetz,

Eric Tucker, Stephan Wolfert

Theater: A View from the Bridge

From left, Mark Strong, Russell Tovey, Phoebe Fox and Michael Gould in "A View From the Bridge” at the Lyceum Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

From the NYT's review By BEN BRANTLEYNOV. 12, 2015: 
"This must be what Greek tragedy once felt like, when people went to the theater in search of catharsis."

From wikipedia:
The play is set in 1950s America, in an Italian American neighborhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It employs a chorus and narrator in the character of Alfieri. Eddie, the tragic protagonist, has an improper love of, and almost obsession with, Catherine, his wife Beatrice's orphaned niece, so he does not approve of her courtship of Beatrice's cousin Rodolfo.

Theater: Nice Fish at St. Anne's Warehouse 2/18/16

“When you are in town, wearing some kind of uniform is helpful, policeman, priest, etc.,” 

Nice Fish is the performance of a collection of poems by the Minnesota poet Louis Jenkins, beautifully intertwined to suggest the passage of time - from the long time one waits for a fish to bite, to the passage of time under the influence of first loves, time that compares the boundlessness of youthful hopes to the emotional rigidities settling in with age, and finally the passage of a lifetime.  -- dp

Music: Jasper String Quartet at Carnegie Hall 2/19/16

Jasper String Quartet

J Freivogel, Violin

Sae Chonabayashi, Violin

Sam Quintal, Viola

Rachel Henderson Freivogel, Cello

Program
HAYDN String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1
AARON JAY KERNIS String Quartet No. 3, "River" (NY Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
DEBUSSY String Quartet in G Minor

A video recording of River is at this link.

Theater: The Museum of Memories, at the New Vic Theater

NIE Theatre

Oslo, Norway, Prague, Czech Republic & Cambridge, England

He was a brother, a student, a neighbor and a first love. Seated amidst the rusty drawers that scale the walls of the MUSEUM OF MEMORIES, witness the beautiful and touching stories of a boy who took his own life and now lives on in the remembrances of others. Through a mix of physical theater, multiple languages and live music, the five ensemble members of NIE Theatre (Past Half Remembered, New Vic 2008) tenderly reconstruct his life.

Hailing from all over Europe—France, Poland, Norway, England, the Czech Republic—the members of NIE Theatre (New International Encounter) prove that theater is an international language. Their shows fuse live music with multilingual dialogue to tell captivating stories from multiple perspectives. This compelling medley of languages enhances characterization and promotes the universal themes of each show.

Theater: Under the Radar Festival 2016, Employee of the Year

From the Public Theater web site [http://www.publictheater.org/en/tickets/calendar/playdetailscollection/utr/2016/employee-of-the-year/?SiteTheme=UnderTheRadar]:

A play with children for adults. Five young girls tell the story of J., whose house burns down, taking with it everyone and everything she has ever known. From this moment, a singular journey begins. Performed in 600 HIGHWAYMEN’s arresting theatrical style and featuring the original songs of David Cale, Employee of the Year asks what it is to find your own way through life. 600 HIGHWAYMEN is an Obie-Award winning theater company creating works by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone.

600 Highwaymen is the moniker for theater artists Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone.
… Their current project, The Fever, will premiere in 2017.

David Cale, composer.

Main web site: http://www.600highwaymen.org/calendar/

Film: Peggy Guggenheim, Art Addict

Theater: Under the Radar 2016, Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort - Germinal

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/theater/review-germinal-sheds-a-light-on-creativity-and-all-creation.html

Review: ‘Germinal’ Sheds a Light on Creativity and All Creation
By BEN BRANTLEYJAN. 7, 2016
Under the Radar 2016: Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort - Germinal

[excerpt:]

The evolution here is that of human awareness. The progression goes from thought to nonverbal communication to spoken language to ever-expanding consciousness of self, and the place of self in relation to everything else. And, oh yes, along the way something that feels like art emerges as a means of giving order to that big disordered mess that is life.
This creation team does have a lot of sophisticated technology at its command that was certainly not at the disposal of its ancient ancestors. From within what seems like a blank black space, the cast members discover pickaxes, computer-control panels, microphones and sound equipment that allow them to give form to their discoveries. (The show’s technical conception is by Maël Teillant.)

Thus supertitles are projected (the spoken dialogue is mostly in French), but in diverse ways that ingeniously suggest how humans come to know and claim their own thoughts. 

Projected words and diagrams also play a significant role when the team decides it’s important to organize the phenomenology of all they are encountering. (Material objects fall into the classification of things that go “pocpoc,” when they are struck; abstractions and feelings are grouped under things “that do not go pocpoc.”)

Such a dichotomous sensibility, from the culture that gave us both René Descartes and Marcel Marceau, may sound too preciously Gallic for some. But “Germinal” operates in the very best French tradition of combining whimsy with profundity, and a double consciousness of precise, egoistic individuality with anonymous universality. 

I defy anyone not to be thrilled by this production’s conclusion. By that time, our band of four has embraced the higher rules of physics and metaphysics and come to understand notions of catharsis, thermodynamics and even karmic bliss. 

It’s been a long haul for them — eons — and they’re now starting to realize that everything, material or otherwise, must end. New concepts like depression, anger and resignation come to the fore. 

But so does transcendence, the kind that four people with voices and rhythm and a blessed sense of the importance of ritual can deliver. In creating a world, they’ve created a play, a thing of rippling, radiant light to be savored before the darkness closes in once more.   --
By BEN BRANTLEY, New York Times

Under the Radar 2016: Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort - Germinal

Theater: RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN'S "The King and I" at Lincoln Center 2016

Cast:

• Kelli O'Hara

• Hoon Lee

• Ruthie Ann Miles

• Ashley Park

• Conrad Ricamora

• Edward Baker-Duly

• Jon Viktor Corpuz

Theater: Nilaja Sun's "PIKE ST."

From: http://www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/epic-pike-street-2015.html

In the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge on the Lower East Side, a struggling family prepares to ride out the next big storm.  Unable to move her teenaged daughter Candace, whose mysterious aneurysm has rendered her unable to move or breathe on her own, down five flights of stairs in their crumbling tenement, mother Evelyn plans for more than just survival: as the storm approaches, she fights for healing and redemption. 

PIKE ST. marks Sun's first solo show since her international hit, the OBIE-award winning NO CHILD..., and features her trademark humor, political incisiveness, and virtuosity as she brings to life the entirety of the Lower East Side, from decorated Puerto Rican war veteran Manny to octogenarian downstairs neighbor Mrs. Applebaum to Candace herself. 

Theater: John Kevin Jones' retelling of "A Christmas Carol"

In December 1867, Charles Dickens arrived in New York City for a month of sold-out performances of his beloved holiday classic, A Christmas Carol.

Actor John Kevin Jones portrays Mr.Dickens as he tells his timeless Christmas tale in the elegant intact Greek Revival parlor of the landmark 1832 Merchant’s House Museum.

Film: Mustang (2015), Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Early summer. In a village in northern Turkey, Lale and her four sisters are walking home from school, playing innocently with some boys. The immorality of their play sets off a scandal that has unexpected consequences. The family home is progressively transformed into a prison; instruction in homemaking replaces school and marriages start being arranged. The five sisters who share a common passion for freedom, find ways of getting around the constraints imposed on them.
- Written by Festival de Cannes

Directed By: Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Film: Jafar Panahi's Taxi

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_(2015_film)):
Taxi (full title Jafar Panahi's Taxi; Persian: تاکسی‎‎), also known as Taxi Tehran, is a 2015 Iranian drama filmstarring and directed by Jafar Panahi. The film premiered in competition at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival^[2]where it won the Golden Bear^[3] and the FIPRESCI Prize.^[4] In 2010, Panahi was banned from making films and travelling, so his niece Hana Saeidi, who also appears in the film, collected the award on his behalf.^[5]