Music: The Future is Bright, Elliot Cole, Peter Ferry and the NYU Percussion Ensemble, May 7, 2018

The NYU Percussion Ensemble performed a portrait concert of music by Elliot Cole featuring:

soloist Peter Ferry on the new multimedia concerto The Future Is Bright, Cole performing his bardic tale Hanuman's Leap, and a premiere of a new piece for 75 flowerpots.

Program:

Flowerpot Music (NYU Book)

Paths

Postludes 1

Juniper

Postludes 2

Bells

Beehive

Postludes 4

The Future is Bright (film by Jodie Mack)

Hanuman's Leap

Film: RBG, 2018

At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior's rise to the nation's highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans - until now. RBG is a revelatory documentary exploring Ginsburg 's exceptional life and career from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and co-produced by Storyville Films and CNN Films.

Genre:
Documentary
Directed By:
Betsy West, Julie Cohen

Film: Becoming Who I Was (2018) documentary

In northern India's sparsely populated and mountainous Ladakh region, an impoverished young boy is discovered to be the reincarnation of an esteemed, high-ranking Tibetan monk. Born displaced from his original monastery in Tibet, the boy is denied his rightful place. Amid growing doubts and mounting expectations in the community, the boy and his elderly godfather embark on a gruelling, improbable trek across India to return the young monk-to-be to his rightful monastery before it becomes too late.

Genre: Documentary
Directed By: Chang-Yong Moon, Jin Jeon

Theater: Seed Folks, starring Sonja Parks at The New Vic, NYC 2018

Performed by: Sonja Parks
Directed by: Peter C. Brosius
Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN

Based on the book by Newbery Medal-winning author Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks tells the story of a neighborhood brought together by one small girl planting seeds in an abandoned lot. We sat down with award-winning actress Sonja Parks, who brings to life each and every resident of Gibb Street.

Sonja Parks on Creating Each Character in SEEDFOLKS (excerpt from https://www.newvictory.org/Blog/April-2018/Sonja-Parks-Seedfolks):

Why do you think theater is important at this moment in time?
Theater teaches us how to empathize with one another. When we go to the theater, we exist in the same space together, watching other human beings navigate their problems and challenges. Often, we discover that the things we think divide us, really unify us—our insecurities, faults and places where we fall short. When we're able to connect with another person, it's harder to dismiss their humanity.  

What's the most memorable audience reaction you've seen to Seedfolks?
There's one moment in the show where I introduce two audience members to each other. One night, I noticed a little girl who was sitting in the front row. She was so sweet and so involved in watching the show that I couldn't ignore her! I went up to her and asked her name. She hesitated for a few seconds and then, quite seriously, said, "My name is Princess Sonja." The whole audience laughed and I, too, had to stifle a smile. I said, "It's so nice to meet you, Princess Sonja. Would you mind coming with me for a minute?" After checking with her father, she took my hand.
I noticed an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair sitting far-stage right. I took Princess Sonja over to him and asked the gentleman his name. "My name is Saul," he said. I replied, "Nice to meet you, Saul. Saul, this is Princess Sonja." Without missing a beat, the little girl jumped into his lap and gave him a big hug. "Hi Saul!" she screamed. The gentleman was surprised for a second, but then he hugged her right back and said, "Hi, Princess." There was a collective "awwww" from the audience. I gently disentangled the Princess from the gentleman and took her back to her parents.
When people drop their guard and exist in a moment with one another, that's when the real theater magic can begin!

https://www.parentmap.com/article/show-and-tell-scts-seedfolks-one-woman-masterpiece

Theater: We Live by the Sea, "Brits Off Broadway" series at 59E59 2018

WE LIVE BY THE SEA

Devised by Patch of Blue
Directed by Alex Howarth
With Alexandra Brain, Tom Coliandris, Lizzie Grace, and Alexandra Simonet

Katy wears orange on Thursdays, purple on Sundays, and eats three fish fingers for tea every day. She lives with her sister, Hannah, and her imaginary dog, Paul Williams, and she'll ask to tap your shoes before she can say hello. When the new boy in town breaks her routine, their lives are changed in unexpected ways. Katy wants to tell you their story.
A visual play with a live electronic score about autism, friendship, and a very big wave.

The multi-award-winning Patch of Blue brings We Live By The Sea to New York after sold out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Beijing, and the Arts Theatre, London West End.

Theater: The Bats perform "LOCKED UP BITCHES" at The Flea Theater, 2018

Book & Lyrics by Catya McMullen
Music by Catya McMullen & Scott Allen Klopfenstein
Directed & Choreographed by Michael Raine

Get ready for some RUFF bitches! When Pipsy, a pedigree cocker spaniel, lands at the Bitchfield Animal Shelter, she becomes the center of a turf war between the dogs and the cats. Initially a long running #serialattheflea, LOCKED UP BITCHES is a sweet, psychotic, queer, and outrageously funny hip-hop parody mash-up of a certain Netflix prison drama and Bernstein-Sondheim musical.

This world premiere production features The Bats, Lacy Allen, Leila Ben-Abdallah, Xandra Clark, Charly Dannis, Ure Egbuho, Philip Feldman, Katherine George, Arielle Gonzalez, Alice Gorelick, Alex Haynes, Cristina Henriquez, Tiffany Iris, Adama B. Jackson, Jenny Jarnagin, Marcus Jones, Mia Longenecker, Bre Northrup, Emma Orme, Juan “Skittlez” Ortiz, Jennifer Parkhill, Alexandra Slater, Ryan Wesley Stinnett, Tanyamaria, Xavier Velasquez and Keith Weiss.

The creative team includes Scott Allen Klopfenstein (Music Director & Arranger), Kerry Blu (Co-Music Director), Yu-Hsuan Chen (Scenic & Properties Designer), Eva Jaunzemis (Costume Designer), Jonathan Cottle (Lighting Designer), Megan Deets Culley (Sound Designer), Zach Serafin (props master), J. David Brimmer (fight director), Kimille Howard (Assistant Director), and Cody Hom (Stage Manager).

Catya McMullen is a playwright and comedian. Her short play, Missed Connection won the 37th Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival, was directed by Leslye Headland and is published by Samuel French. She is the author of the plays GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD (EST/Youngblood, The Lark), AGNES (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Everything is Probably Going to be Okay (Rattlestick), We Pray to Elephants (EST/Youngblood developed), A**holes in Gas Stations (EST/Youngblood, Ground UP Productions developed), LOCKED UP BITCHES (The Flea World Premiere, The PIT), Rubber Ducks and Sunsets (World Premiere Ground UP Productions), and The Collective (Triskellion Arts) along with numerous shorts. She is a proud alum of the Obie Award-winning EST/Youngblood and a company member of The Middle Voice Theater Company; the apprentice company of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. She was a finalist for the City Theater National Award for Short Playwriting and is the Creator of the WE ARE ANIMALS series, a quarterly variety show series she writes with Scott Klopfenstein of the Gold Record selling band Reel Big Fish, where she raps under her feminist hip hop alias “Chihuahua Fancy.” BA: UNC Chapel Hill Dramatic Art, Creative Writing.

Theater: The Bats perform "ms. estrada" at The Flea Theater, NYC 2018

By The Q Brothers Collective
Directed by Michelle Tattenbaum

The boys at Acropolis U are too preoccupied with the Greek Games to treat their ladies right. But fierce feminist goddess, Liz Estrada, rallies her besties to take a stand – and campus chaos ensues.

A Hip-Hop remix of Aristophanes’ classic comedy, ms. estrada may well be the Girl Anthem of 2018.

Music directed by Postell Pringle (a member of the Q Brothers Collective) and choreographed by Ana “Rokafella” Garcia.

ms. estrada features The Bats, the resident acting company at The Flea, including Dolores Avery, Caturah Brown, Raiane Cantisano, Marguerite Frarey, Jack Gilbert, Arielle Gonzalez, Jenna Krasowski, Madeline Mahoney, Maggie McCaffery, Michael Ortiz, Karsten Otto, Malena Pennycook, Zac Porter, Hassan Nazari Robati, Jonathon Ryan, Ben Schrager, Pearl Shin, Lily Sondik, Monique St. Cyr, David A. Wallace, Quest Washington and Brittany Zaken.

The creative team includes John McDermott (Scenic Designer), Robin I. Shane (Costume Design), Oona Curley (Lighting Designer), David Ferdinand (Sound Designer), Claire Edmonds (Assistant Director), Marina McClure (Assistant Director), Daniel Prosky (Assistant Scenic Designer), Emily White (Assistant Costume Designer), Keithlyn B. Parkman (Assistant Lighting Designer), Megan Deets Culley (Assistant Sound Designer), Gina Solebello (Production Stage Manager), Rebecca Darling (Assistant Stage Manager) and Keith Middleton (Step Choreographer).

Film: The animated films of Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia

The Hand / Ruka
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1965, 35mm, 18m
No dialogue
Trnka’s final work is a powerful, deeply personal allegory about the plight of the artist toiling under the restrictions of a totalitarian government. The story of a simple sculptor who is menaced by a giant, disembodied hand that forces him to bend to its will, it was banned by the Communist censors for two decades—but has since taken its place as an acknowledged masterpiece of animation.

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Passion / Vasen
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1962, 9m
No dialogue
A boy’s need for speed causes problems throughout his life in this triumph of modernist design, which blends puppet, stop-motion, collage, and cutout animation with a gothic humor and Pop Art–like visual design.

Cybernetic Grandma / Kyberneticka babicka
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1962, 28m
Czech with English subtitles
Trnka took a turn into Space Age sci-fi surrealism with this dark, dystopian satire on automatization in which a child traverses a forbidding technological wasteland to meet (surprise!) her uncanny new robotic grandmother.

Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose / Archandel Gabriel a pani Husa
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1964, 29m
No dialogue
Adapted from a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, this irreverent, medieval-set lampoon of religious hypocrisy mixes Christian iconography with bawdy black humor to tell the tale of a lusty Venetian monk who assumes the guise of the angel Gabriel to seduce a married woman.

Film: HOCHELAGA, LAND OF SOULS

Director François Girard
Canada 2017
99 minutes

Writer François Girard
Editor Gaétan Huot
Cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc
Cast Samian, Raoul Max Trujillo, Vincent Perez

The latest from internationally acclaimed director François Girard (Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin), Hochelaga, Land of Souls is a mesmerizing time travel drama spanning eight centuries of layered indigenous, colonial, and contemporary histories. When a sinkhole suddenly opens up on the field of a downtown Montreal football stadium during a game, the city’s past and present begin to intersect. As part of the investigation of the event, an archaeological dig is set up on the site, believed to have been at one time the Iroquois village of Hochelaga. Uncovering artefacts and clues to Montreal’s extraordinary past, Baptiste Asigny, a young archaeologist of Mohawk heritage, embarks on an incredible journey of discovery through the tangled history of his at once modern and ancient city. Girard’s film moves seamlessly between pre-European times, the age of the French explorer Jacques Cartier and his first contact with the Iroquois people, as well as the subsequent convulsive political and social events that occurred in this very space over the centuries right up to Asigny’s own contemporary Montreal. It is an imaginative cinematic weave, a stunning tapestry of time and space, memory and identity.

François Girard’s remarkable career has spanned video art, television, contemporary dance, music, and cinema, and has yielded such diverse works as Le dortoir (1991), Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live (1994), and Bach Cello Suite #2: The Sound of Carceri (1997). His feature films include: Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993), The Red Violin (1998), Silk (2007), and Boychoir (2014). Girard has also directed operas at international venues, including most recently his critically acclaimed Parsifal in New York.

Film: Just to Be Sure - Ôtez-moi d'un doute

Carine Tardieu
2017 France/Belgium
100 minutes

Family ties don’t get much more complicated than the ones in this witty, winning seriocomic charmer. Erwan (François Damiens) is a middle-aged bomb disposal expert who finds himself facing a different kind of explosive situation when he learns that the man who raised him is not, in fact, his biological father—and that the woman (Cécile de France) he is seeing may in fact be his half-sister. What sounds like the makings of a Greek tragedy plays out with sparkling élan thanks to the clever script and sharply drawn characters—flawed, flesh-and-blood people fumbling their way through extraordinary circumstances.

Music: Wu Man & Huayin Shadow Puppet Band NYC 2018

Wu Man
(this video is from a 2017 performance):
(this video comes from an earlier performance in Sydney in 2014):

Film: The Lion Sleeps Tonight - Le lion est mort ce soir

Nobuhiro Suwa
2017 France/Japan
103 minutes

Living legend Jean-Pierre Léaud stars in this playfully self-reflexive ghost story, which functions as a consideration of cinema, mortality, and the actor’s own status as an emblem of film history. He plays Jean, an aging movie actor who, as he prepares to shoot a death scene, finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover (Pauline Etienne). Meanwhile, he has visitors of another kind: a band of children who cast him in the DIY haunted house movie they are making. Director Nobuhiro Suwa channels the spirit of Rivette as he spins a wonderfully loose-limbed tale that delights in the infinite possibilities of filmmaking. Plus: the gratifying sight of Léaud chucking apples at a gaggle of pesky youngsters.

Film: The Workshop - L’atelier

https://youtu.be/MAFGIe6GcBg

Laurent Cantet
2017 France
113 minutes

The Class director Laurent Cantet returns with another unique, provocative exploration of French society as seen through the eyes of the next generation. In the sunny coastal town of La Ciotat, a diverse group of teenagers assembles for a summer writer’s workshop led by Parisian novelist Olivia (César Best Actress nominee Marina Foïs). As the group talks through the novel they are co-writing—a murder mystery set in their town—the ethnic and political fault lines between them are gradually exposed, provoked by the brooding Antoine (Matthieu Lucci), whose fascination with far-right extremism grows increasingly worrying. What plays out is a tense, gripping, up-to-the-minute dispatch on the state of contemporary France.

Film: See You Up There - Au revoir là-haut

https://youtu.be/WMTyn_fKjCM
Albert Dupontel
2017 France/Canada
117 minutes

Nominated for a whopping 13 César Awards, including Best Film, this stylish comic caper is a breathless, whimsical wild ride through Jazz Age Paris. After an accident in the trenches leaves him disfigured, ex–World War I infantryman and artist Edouard (BPM star Nahuel Perez Biscayart) takes to opium and creating outrageously stylized masks to hide his scarred face. Along with a fellow former soldier (director Albert Dupontel), he hatches an audacious get-rich-quick scheme: designing and collecting on war monuments, then absconding with the money before building them. What ensues is a dizzying adventure bursting with elaborately staged set-pieces and spectacularly surreal costume design.

From the book: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2014/may-august/au-revoir-la-haut-pierre-lemaitre
The title of Au revoir là-haut (Goodbye until we meet in heaven) comes from a letter written by a soldier just before his execution for treason in 1914. It is a sign of the emotions that permeate the book. Awarded the 2013 Prix Goncourt, Au revoir là-haut portrays a society that wants to honor the dead but also forgets the living veterans.

Film: Jeannette, The Childhood of Joan of Arc

Bruno Dumont
2017 France
105 minutes

The ever-unpredictable Bruno Dumont (Slack Bay) takes another thrilling hairpin turn with this audacious, 15th century-set heavy metal musical composed by Igorrr (aka Gautier Serre). It’s 1425, and 8-year-old shepherdess Jeannette—the future Joan of Arc—already has the weight of the French nation on her shoulders as she grapples with matters of the soul, the ongoing Hundred Years’ War, and the feeling that she is meant for something great. Along the way there are head-banging nuns, surreal angelic visions, and a cavalcade of hard-stomping electro-rock song and dance numbers recorded live on location. The result is an ecstatically unique and transportive experience that is, at heart, the story of a young heroine realizing her destiny.

Film: The Sower - Le semeur

Marine Francen
2017 France/Belgium
98 minutes

In the midst of Napoleon’s 1851 coup d’état, a remote French village is depleted of all its men, leaving only the women to tend to the fields while wondering what became of their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers. Into this matriarchal society wanders a stranger (Alban Lenoir), his presence stirring up both political suspicion and carnal desire among the young women, who view him as their last chance to repopulate the community. Through bucolic, golden-hued images that recall the paintings of Jean-François Millet, director Marine Francen weaves a quietly provocative, fable-like tale that rewrites its historical moment from a female perspective.

Film: A Paris Education

Jean-Paul Civeyrac
2018 France
137 minutes

Etienne (Andranic Manet), a serious and impressionable shaggy-haired young cinephile, leaves behind his steady girlfriend (Diane Rouxel) in Lyon to study film in Paris. Settling into a dingy flat with a rotating cast of roommates, he immerses himself in a bohemian world of artists, intellectuals, and fellow film geeks who excitedly share their passion for Bresson, Ford, and obscure Russian directors. It’s a seemingly idyllic life of the mind—until more complicated matters of the flesh, as well as jealous creativity, intrude.

Shooting in timeless black and white and interweaving references to philosophy, music, and cinema—from Pascal to Mahler to Parajanov—unsung auteur Jean-Paul Civeyrac conjures a bittersweet ode to the heady days of student life.

Film: Montparnasse Bienvenüe

Léonor Serraille
2017 France
97 minutes

When the toxic 10-year relationship that has defined her adult life implodes, 31-year-old Paula (rising star Laetitia Dosch, nominated for a Best Newcomer César Award) finds herself adrift on Paris’ Left Bank. With no money, no job, and no idea what’s next, the turbulent Paula resorts to a series of desperate lies in order to keep a roof over her head. But this young woman is more resilient than even she initially realizes.

Made by an almost entirely female crew, Léonor Serraille’s debut feature—winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes for best first film—is a refreshingly complex portrait of an all-too-human heroine veering between instability and strength as she makes a place for herself in the world.

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?