Theater: Peace for Mary Frances, The New Group, 2018

PEACE FOR MARY FRANCES
By Lily Thorne
Directed by Lila Neugebauer

Scenic Design Dane Laffrey, Costume Design Jessica Pabst, Lighting Design Tyler Micoleau, Music and Sound Design Daniel Kluger

Mary Frances has lived a good life; she's ninety years old and ready to die. Born to refugees fleeing the Armenian genocide, her last wish is to die peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Her dream collides with reality as three generations of explosive women flood her small New England home to battle for their family’s legacy. Mary Frances must navigate the volatile relationships of the children she raised -- or die trying. Lois Smith stars as a tenacious survivor, struggling to break the bonds that tie her to this life. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, Lily Thorne’s Peace for Mary Frances is a wrenching and caustically funny portrait of an American family in crisis.

Theater: Time’s Journey Through a Room by Toshiki Okada, 2018 NYC

Time’s Journey Through a Room is set one year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This intimate, multi-layered play observes how hope can spring up alongside sadness and fear, and change can be realized if we are awake to the present moment.

Written by
Toshiki Okada
https://chelfitsch.net/en/

Translated by
Aya Ogawa

Directed by
Dan Rothenberg

Featuring:
Maho Honda
Yuki Kawahisa
Kensaku Shinohara

Set Design:
Anna Kiraly

Costume Design:
Maiko Matsushima

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiki_Okada :

Okada focuses on connecting to his audience's sense of alienation by separating speech and movement in his plays. Okada's hyperrealistic style is often referred to as "super real Japanese," which draws influence from Oriza Hirata's "quiet theater" movement from the 1980s.
His works are distinguished by the use of fragmented and abbreviated idiosyncratic language in the vernacular of Japanese in their twenties, which is deliberately inarticulate, drawn out, and circular. 
...
Okada believes that his actors should be able to manipulate their consciousness and balance their attention on both their words and movement. The gap between language and the body is the lived experiences each performer gathers from their environment to bring to their performances, and they use the external body to reflect those lived experiences or "images." Okada advises his actors to not be overly attached with the language or the physicality of the performance so that the audience can interpret the "image," themselves. Actors are one single entity to the image; in addition, Okada uses "the performance's disjointed elements of language, movement, design, music, and more" to signify the "image" in his plays.

Theater: Replay, Nicola Wren

REPLAY

Written and performed by Nicola Wren
Directed by George Chilcott
DugOut Theatre

Featuring the voices of Will Brown, Tanya Kraljevic, and Mark Weinman

When a fiercely independent, workaholic police officer receives an old cassette tape with a message from her big brother on it, she is propelled back to her vibrant childhood and forced to confront a tremendous loss.

Replay is an intimate, moving, and life-affirming story about learning to celebrate the past, however painful.

Film: Columbia University Film Festival 2018 (CUFF)

Three Nights and a Goat (Tres Noches y una Cabra)
An unexpected arrival sets off a war between two neighboring families.

Director: Nicolas Becerra
Writer: Ben Gottlieb

Talent Night at Auschwitz: Bunk Five
After he survives a shocking trauma, a 14-year-old boy retreats to his flamboyant imagination, a dark and glittering dreamworld. His fortress becomes a prison as memories refuse to stay buried in the sand.

Writer/Director: Max Rifkind-Barron
Producer: Alex Peace

Del Rio
A young mother separated from her daughter during a border patrol raid on the US/Mexico border struggles to make her way back to her daughter.

Director: Raj Trivedi
Writer: Raj Trivedi

The Bee
McKenzie is preparing for an important spelling bee. Just days before the bee, she grows increasingly insecure about her eyebrows. When her mother won't allow her to get them threaded, McKenzie takes matters into her own hands.

Director: Keenon Nikita
Writer/Producer: Alexandria Ashley

Knights in Newark
Armed with her vivid imagination, a young girl completes a secret project on the roof of her apartment building to protect her family from a dreaded curse brought upon by the Knights in Newark.

Director: Nic Yulo  
Writer/Producer: Christopher Abeel

One Sunny Day
On Ross’ 14th birthday, he wishes for his lifelong dream of watching the sunrise on a beach. But this is a lofty aspiration for Ross, who suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum—a rare genetic disorder that makes his skin intolerable to ultraviolet light.

Writer/Director: Minjae Chang
Writer/Producer: Elliot Zarrabi

Everything's Fine: A Panic Attack in D Major
A musical comedy about a woman at the onset of her quarter-life crisis and her existential journey through the various stages of anxiety in song and dance.        

Writer/Director: Zack Morrison    
Producer: Taylor Ortega    
Cast: Carly Blane, Derek Klena, Tait Rupert, Chelsea Watts, Alyson Reim, Elise Vannerson, Lauren Luciano

Tail End of the Year (年尾巴)
On Chinese New Year Eve, ten-year-old Yang Lan is anxiously waiting for her singer mother to come home. While her big family is celebrating loudly with Mahjong, fireworks, dinner, and laughs, she struggles to reconcile her urge to feel, at least for a brief moment, loved.

Writer/Director: Chieh Yang
Producer: Yu Yen Cheng  

Green
An undocumented Turkish pedicab driver unwittingly draws police attention, endangering his brother, his community, and himself.

Writer/Director: Suzanne Andrews Correa
Writer/Producer: Mustafa Kaymak

Happy Mask
A man suffering from depression is given a mysterious happy mask that allows him to keep up a cheerful appearance. However, is the smile genuine?

Director: Yi Liu      
Writer: Yi Liu, Sarah Abdulla
Producer: Luca Marcovici  

Horizon
To realize her dream of discovering uncharted space, a determined female astronaut must choose to leave her humanity behind.  

Writer/Director: Nic Yulo    
Producer: Mahak Jiwani    

Saturno
After her brother is killed in a drug bust operation, a guilt-stricken Luna begins to see his spirit and struggles to make meaning of his appearances to help him find peace.

Director: Bianca Catbagan
Writer: Chantel Clark

Curandera
Maruja, an Andean woman with mystical powers, works at a household where a little girl never seems to stop acting out her rage. Being able to see the images that haunt the little girl's mind, Maruja decides to try to heal her with the help of a special brew.    

Director: Mauricio Rivera Hoffmann
Writer: Mauricio Rivera Hoffmann
Cast: Magaly Solier, Danaya Sladkov, Katerina D’Onofrio  

Theater: Operation Crucible @ 59E59, Brits Off-Broadway 2018

OPERATION CRUCIBLE

By Kieran Knowles

Directed by Bryony Shanahan

With Salvatore D'Aquila, Kieran Knowles, Christopher McCurry, and James Wallwork

"Sheffield was on fire. It was glowing orange, like hell, like a furnace, like steel."

On the December 12, 1940, during World War II, a single bomb reduced the Marples Hotel, which stood proudly in Fitzalan Square in Sheffield, from seven stories to just 15 feet of rubble. Only one of the ten compartments in the hotel's cellars withstood the blast. Trapped within it were four men.

This is their story, from beginning to end...

"A SMASHING FIRST PLAY BY KIERAN KNOWLES... A CAST OF EXACTLY FOUR, ON A NEAR NAKED STAGE, MANAGED TO SUMMON THE ENORMITY OF THE SHEFFIELD BLITZ."
- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

★★★★ "GORGEOUSLY POETIC...THESE MEN AND THEIR STORIES STAY WITH YOU."
- The Stage

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.

=======

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.