Creatures Big and Small, Remaking a 16th-Century Legend
Posted November 29, 2011 at 5:51 pm
by Catherine Rampell, NY Times
Before there was Rocky Horror, before there was Frankenstein’s monster, before even the sorcerer’s apprentice’s broom, there was Golem: the original man-made being gone awry.
The Golem stars in a 16th-century legend about a rabbi who builds a clay giant to protect the Jews of Prague from pogroms. The giant, or Golem, bats off the ghetto’s enemies with ease, but also causes so much destruction that eventually he must be put down by his creator. READ MORE >>
CAMT presents Golem – Flavorpill
Posted at 2:29 pm
by Patricia Contino, Flavorpill
Hebrew scholars and horror fans know a golem is “unshaped matter” which becomes a “creature of clay.” The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s Golem is a big guy (Steven Ryan) who protects, then terrorizes, a medieval Prague ghetto of puppets, their dancers/actors/handlers, a klezmer band (led by composer Frank London), and a charismatic, spectral Cantor (Ronny Wasserstrom). Like the Golem itself, CAMT’s adapation is filled with life. There is no dance step (innovatively choregraphed by Naomi Goldberg Haas) or emotion (even the little goat puppet sipping a drink has personality) the stringed and real-life performers cannot convey. Watching how Golem’s performing elements come together is amazing. Director Vít Horejs’ Prologue and Postscript are hard-hitting, non-preachy ways of making real this legend of fighting back against outrageous anti-Semitic claims of “blood libel,” to those unfamiliar with it.
Golem Comes to Life
Posted November 17, 2011 at 2:50 pm
by Kristin M. Jones, Wall Street Journal
It is heart-stopping to contemplate the horrors that were once endured by the Jews of Prague, from accusations of blood libel to rapes and massacres in pogroms. Out of this awful history arose the eerie legend of a larger-than-life-size man fashioned from river clay by the revered and erudite real-life Rabbi Loew, so the story goes, to protect his people from persecution, only to find that the creature proves difficult to control—a tale that has haunted literature, theater and film for generations. READ MORE >>
Pulling the Strings: The marionettes of ‘Golem’ at La MaMa will do anything
Posted November 16, 2011 at 1:07 pm
by Susan Reiter, Cityarts
These dancers truly come in all shapes and sizes. The moving figures in Golem, a production of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, range from miniature wooden marionettes (some of them made a century ago) to the lumbering, ominous title figure—a giant created out of clay—portrayed by Steven Ryan. Everyone and everything dances in this returning production, first seen in 1997—marionettes, puppeteers, moving cage-like set pieces on wheels, oven mitts that come alive as fish, and even some mops. READ MORE >>
Light as a Feather: Swedenborg review
Posted at 1:03 pm
Martha Sherman, danceviewtimes
LaMama’s 50th anniversary season opened in a flurry of wings – and 600 pounds of feathers. Ping Chong’s revival of the 1985 production “Angels of Swedenborg” has been updated to include references to iPods and flat screens, but Emanuel Swedenborg’s underlying exploration of angels above and below resonates in any era. To the entering audience, a downstage electronic ticker shared a repeating loop of news from Swedenborg, an 18th Century scientist and mystic, “The Lord has graciously opened the sight of my spirit. He has raised me into heaven and lowered me into hell, and has shown me visually what each is like.” Ping Chong’s visually rich dance theater used Swedenborg’s images to honor LaMama’s own guiding spirit. He turned the space named for her — the Ellen Stewart Theater — into a shimmering, billowing swirl of white, as angels danced among us. READ MORE >>
Go See “La MaMa Cantata” Tonight! – EastVillageArts.org
Posted November 8, 2011 at 5:35 pm
by Grace, EastVillageArts.org
Tonight is your last chance to see “La Mama Cantata” in the Ellen Stewart theater! La Mama Cantata is a theater/music piece directed, composed and written by the legendary Elizabeth Swados who met Ellen Stewart when she was only 18 years old and continued to work with throughout Ellen’s life. READ MORE >>
”if you want to see the best musical in town, head on over there.” – La MaMa Cantata
Posted at 5:20 pm
La MaMa Cantata Review
by Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
Yesterday (November 7th) was Ellen Stewart’s birthday; she would have been 92. As a fitting tribute to the late La MaMa founder/force of nature that was Ms. Stewart—and as a thrilling kickoff to a new “Monday Nights Series” at the iconic 50-years-young indie theater treasure on East 4th Street—Elizabeth Swados brought her new work La MaMa Cantata to the stage of the Ellen Stewart Theatre. It repeats again tonight, and if you want to see the best musical in town, head on over there. I feel privileged to have witnessed its premiere; left the theater feeling renewed and inspired. I hope the folks at La MaMa see fit to bring it back soon for a good long run, as this extraordinary piece of theater should be shared with as many people as possible. READ MORE >>
The Star Medicine
November 14, 2011 at 7:30pm
La MaMa Presents The eBook Launch of The Star Medicine: Book One of the Star Song Carriers Series, A Novel by Murielle Borst Tarrant
Monday, November 14, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Come enjoy an evening with internationally acclaimed Native American Performer, writer, director Murielle Borst Tarrant, as she reads excerpts from her new novel.
Hosted by Mia Yoo, Artistic Director of La MaMa
With live music by the SilverCloud Singers
Free Admission / Door Prizes / Free Giveaways
nytheatre.com review on Angels of Swedenborg
Posted November 7, 2011 at 4:56 pm
by Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
La MaMa opens its 50th(!) season with a new version of Ping Chong’s Angels of Swedenborg, which is ostensibly about the conflict between man’s spiritual and material existence, but is really an exploration and celebration of how theatrical forms of varying kinds can communicate meaning, feeling, and emotion. I won’t admit to getting everything that was going on in this dance-based multimedia work, but I was never bored, was almost always entranced and/or enraptured, and often reached a kind of transcendence. READ MORE >>
Tennessee Williams Play Set Nowhere Near the South
Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:42 pm
by Jason Zinoman, NY Times
What really stands out about the title of Tennessee Williams’s late one-act “Now the Cats With Jewelled Claws” is not the stylish image, a menacing relative to that more vulnerable feline on a sweltering roof. It’s that unexpected first word. It’s urgent and oddly apt, evoking a ringmaster selling his next act. READ MORE >>
All-Female Clown Troupe (Nearly) Bares All in Show About Art (Video)
Posted at 1:37 pm
by Barbara Chai, Wall Street Journal
Clowns Ex Machina, an all-women clown troupe, nearly bares all in a new show, “Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics.”
In the 90-minute performance, the eight women wear a range of costumes, including nude bodysuits. The show explores the pursuit of art and beauty, and refers to paintings such as Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” and Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World.” READ MORE >>
The Red-Nosed Revolution, Clowns Full-Tilt, WSJ
Posted November 1, 2011 at 1:54 pm
by Barbara Chai, Wall Street Journal
For Kendall Cornell, clowning around is about more than laughs. Her all-female clown troupe, Clowns Ex Machina, aims to carve out a bigger place in the profession for women, and to create humor with deeper meaning and a democratic spirit.
The troupe’s new show, “Clowns Full-Tilt: A Musing on Aesthetics,” aims to explore such subjects as the pursuit of beauty, free expression and the pursuit of love, and to find humor in those topics along the way READ MORE >>
“an outrageously entertaining 50 minutes” – Now the Cats review by Backstage
Posted at 12:52 pm
by Erik Haagensen, Backstage
Tennessee Williams wrote his mordantly morbid one-act “Now the Cats With Jewelled Claws” in the late 1960s, then revised it in 1981, not long before his death. An absurdist meditation on mortality, loneliness, and the general triviality of human existence, it combines bitter comedy and decadent sexuality with eccentric song-and-dance sequences. Though it may seem the work of a jaded and self-loathing outcast, it is nevertheless suffused with the compassion Williams always had for the disenfranchised. In any event, thanks to the imagination of director Jonathan Warman and his enthusiastic cast, it makes for an outrageously entertaining 50 minutes in what feels like the perfect space for it, the Club at La MaMa. READ MORE >>
An Evening with Joseph Keckler
November 18 – November 20, 2011
Friday & Saturday at 10pm
Sunday at 5:30pm
This performance fuses story telling with a powerful and elastic song voice to create one-person dramas and extraordinary operatic fantasias.
“Keckler’s voice [has] extraordinary range, richness and malleability, as he sings from low baritone to glass-shattering falsetto.”
-The Irish Times
“An arresting display of vocal control and disarming wit, but Keckler is just warming up…. a tour de force of deconstruction.”
-Baltimore City Paper
Golem
By The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre
November 17 – December 4, 2011
In a featured presentation of its 50th Anniversary season, La MaMa will reprise Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre’s dance-theater “Golem,” a stage rendition of the famed Jewish legend, conceived, written and directed by Vit Horejs. The production features music by Frank London (The Klezmatics) and choreography by Naomi Goldberg Haas. The performers will include nine actor/dancer/puppeteers and a whole cast of small to life-sized wooden marionettes.
SPECIAL BENEFIT PERFORMANCE AND RECEPTION:
Friday, November 18, minimum donation $50
For tickets, http://www.czechmarionettes.org/golembenefit.htm
Mink Stole and Joe E. Jeffreys (#104)
November 12, 2011 at 3:00pm
Double bill!
3pm Mink Stole
4pm Joe E. Jeffreys “Drag Show Video Vérité”
Drag Show Video Vérité gathers, screens, preserves and interrogates the moving image record of NYC’s vibrant male and female impersonation scenes over the past fifty plus years. This Coffeehouse Chronicles screening offers a special mash up of the project’s five full editions and was created for a recent screening at the Tate Modern in London.
Drag Show Video Vérité: The Tate Re-Mash features rare footage of:
All The Kings Men, Joey Arias, Jackie Beat, Ana Bender, Bebe Zahara Benet, Milton Berle, Justin Vivian Bond, Lady Blue, Carl With Records, Charles Busch, MargOH! Channing, Christeen, International Chrysis, Dorian Corey, Jayne County, Jason Cozmo, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, Honey Davenport, Vaginal Davis, Machine Dazzle, Flotilla DeBarge, Dayzee Dee, Agnes de Garron, Bianca Del Rio, Divine, Epiphany, Fifi Dubois, Ethyl Eichelberger, Poison Eve, Frostie Flakes, Flloyd, Jordan Fox, The Great Australian Drag Show, Logan Hardcore, Murray Hill, Mimi Imfurst, Jacqueline Jonée, Keisha, John Kelly, Kendra, Pepper La Beija, Chi Chi La Rue, Hedda Lettuce, Pearl Lin, Vickie Lynn, Lypsinka, Taylor Mac, Prada G. Major, Shelly Mars, Jeffrey Marsh, Dina Martina, Misty Meaner, MilDred, Amanda Monroe, Mario Montez, Narcissister, Genesis P-Orridge, Peppermint, Charles Pierce, Ragu Mountain Woman, Ruby Rims, Rollerena, Morgan Ebony Royel, Shequida, Linda Simpson, Chuck Sweeney, Sweetie, Switch N’ Play, Frankie Quinn, Violet Temper, Ivan The Terrible, Tigger!, Tish, Paige Turner, Charmin Ultra, M’Lady Uppercrust, Vanessa Valtre, Sherry Vine, Jesse Volt, Carlton Ward, Rose Wood, Holly Woodlawn, and many, many others.
For more information on the project visit www.dsvv.tv
Ellen’s Birthday Full Beaver Moon Show
November 8, 2011
Founding Full Moon Crew members, Lucy Sexton (The Factress) and Tom Murrin (Alien Comic), along with guest artist Salley May, and other performers, will be presenting a highly charged evening of merriment and outrage, designed to celebrate Ellen Stewart’s birthday of Nov. 7, as well as the November Full Beaver Moon on Nov. 10.
Jo Andres, another member of The Full Moon Crew, will show her new film, Liquid Tara, a meditation on the many faces of The Divine Feminine. The video installation is 8 minutes long, with a sound score by Hahn Rowe.
(Photo courtesy Jim R. Moore)
La MaMa Cantata
November 7 – November 8, 2011
“The La MaMa Cantata” is a theater music piece with actors soloists and a large chorus. The words will be made up of quotes from Ellen Stewart over the last 50 years as well as stories about her and characters she encountered in her long miraculous journey of a life. It will reflect the joy, incredible humor and guts of our leading lady as well as her struggles and fights for survival, by using Ellen’s words and spirit we will also get a story about artists with vision and travels around a world and the corners of international cities that were transformed and continue to be by the strength and heart of theater. Get ready for passion and spirit and a range of music that reflects La MaMa and Ellen Stewart herself. Nothing is predictable.
CLOWNS FULL-TILT: A Musing on Aesthetics
November 4 – November 20, 2011
Thursday – Saturday at 7:30pm
Sunday at 2:30pm
*Opens on Friday, November 4th
Sunday Talkbacks – post show, November 6th & 13th
***This show is made for adults and theater savvy kids may enjoy***
Clowns Ex Machina’s spirited, new pop-up book of a show explores familiar, 2-D representations of women – famous paintings, everyday advertisements, the stock characters of film and television. Compressed layers of representation spring to absurd and symphonic life onstage – no flat medium can stop a clown who wants to bust out! “CLOWNS FULL-TILT” is a clown-style musing on aesthetics – art, beauty and the ridiculous.
Welcome Home, Sonny T
November 7, 2011 at 7:30pm
Welcome Home, Sonny T, a new play written by William Electric Black (7 Time Emmy Award Winning Writer), directed by George Ferencz.
An aging African American activist from the 60’s, while preparing for the return of a young soldier, faces the biggest challenge of his life – a community plagued by teenagers with guns.
Featuring: Richarda Abrams, Brittany Benson, David Berry, Arthur French, Cary Gant, Marcus Lorenzo & Chriz Zaborowski
There will be a talkback with the author after the reading