La MaMa Spoleto Open Calls for Submission
Posted April 25, 2012 at 12:41 pm
L a M a M a Spoleto Open is the Fringe event of Spoleto, from June 30th to September 15th 2012. A long summer program that helps the City to open and become alive, offering a creative environment where one can discover new talents and meet interesting forms of art. It creates a place and a time full of surprises and creativity, during which one can present their work, exchange ideas, discover new possibilities, establish new collaborations, meet new people, open unexpected opportunities and have a good time.
As a special fringe event of the Festival dei 2Mondi Spoleto, La MaMa Open aims to involve and give visibility to emerging artists in the international art scene and to preview new projects developed by more established artists, during periods of creative residency in Spoleto. La MaMa Spoleto Open is becoming an eagerly awaited appointment for the festival’s audience, for many professionals searching to discover new talents and for those artists who wish to present their work in the context of this important international festival.
In 2012 the festival will take place throughout the summer from late June to mid September. The call for proposals is open to every kind of artistic event: individual artists, dance companies, theater, urban and street artists, musicians, buskers, videographers, musicians, DJs and VJs, performers, dancers, designers and visual artists.
SPOLETO OPEN PROGRAM
SELECTION THROUGH INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
The Spoleto Open program presents the work of artists selected through the international call for participation:
− performances for conventional theater spaces (theater, dance, performance),
− performances for unconventional places outdoors or indoors (theater, dance, performance),
− Music (concerts for various outdoor and indoor locations),
− visual arts (painting, video, installation),
− Buskers and street performers,
− Comedians and live acts.
CLICK HERE for complete information
CLICK HERE for Entry Form
Goodbye, Cruel World, I’m joining the Circus – Poor Baby Bree Review
Posted April 23, 2012 at 12:43 pm
by Jason Zinoman, New York Times
They say theater is the most ephemeral art, and yet it’s not just the landmark buildings on Broadway that remind us of ghosts of show business past.
Just look at our current nostalgic moment: obsolete artistic forms from the Victorian era are making a comeback. One year after a minstrel show was staged on Broadway in “The Scottsboro Boys,” the British music hall returns in “One Man, Two Guvnors.” And now here comes old-time vaudeville in “Poor Baby Bree in I Am Going to Run Away.”
In a meticulous, charming performance that will appeal most to those with an interest in New York history, Bree Benton, whose alter ego is Poor Baby Bree, speaks in a precise New York accent that doesn’t exist anymore. She performs obscure songs a century old and commits to a maudlin Bowery waif character whose mix of pluck and innocence belongs to another time. READ MORE >>
Master of Puppets
Posted April 19, 2012 at 1:12 pm
by Alexis Clements, The L Magazine
Have you ever seen a performance with over 300 puppets in it? Have you ever seen a puppet perform surgery? Welcome to the world of performance and puppet artist Theodora Skipitares who has been making work for the stage since her beginnings in the thriving performance art community of downtown New York in the 1970s. Her influences and interests have ranged from early female Body Artists to Indian epic narratives to the stem cell scientist Doris Taylor, among others. Her newest piece, Prometheus Within, which is being presented as part of La MaMa’s 50th anniversary season (April 13-29, 66 E 4th St), brings together a number of currents that have coursed through her work for years. I spoke with Skipitares by phone one morning while she was at work in her studio to learn more about her career and her latest work. READ MORE >>
“Prometheus Within” is an engaging hour of theater – NY Times
Posted April 18, 2012 at 11:26 am
by Ken Jaworowsky, NY Times
Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give a man some knowledge, and he’ll create a genetically modified salmon that could escape and wreak havoc on our ecosystem. That’s one of the messages of “Prometheus Within,” a transfixing if occasionally didactic new work written and directed by Theodora Skipitares at La MaMa.
Taking Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound” as a starting point, Ms. Skipitares uses that story of the Greek god — who was punished for giving fire to humans — to explore modern medical science. Scenes from the ancient play are interspersed with stories of genetic engineering and experimentation, fascinating and frightening real-life tales told with actors, props and puppets. READ MORE >>
“her shows are like living museums” – Poor Baby Bree review
Posted April 16, 2012 at 3:20 pm
by Jason Fitzgerald, Backstage
Vaudeville may be dead, but like the most unflappable boards-treader, its ghost is doing three shows a week at La MaMa. Since 2005, singer and actor Bree Benton has built a career on her alter ego, Poor Baby Bree, a forlorn ragamuffin whom Fanny Brice might have played in her heyday. Benton is so committed to this obsolete style of performance that her shows are like living museums, delivering the refreshing pleasure of an uncanny time warp.
Benton’s latest, “Poor Baby Bree in I Am Going to Run Away,” offers two versions of Bree. First, we see her as a precocious young child—a la Shirley Temple or the young Judy Garland—who’s run away from home to join the circus (sorry, “soy-cus”) and brings her “dollies” with her. Cut to many years later, and she is a faded flower, forced to make a living on the streets after a failed three-ring career. Think Liza Minnelli meets the Brothers Grimm.
As with any classic vaudeville, Bree’s morbid narrative is mostly an excuse to deliver a series of idiosyncratic songs, here dating from the 1890s to the 1920s, with titles such as “I’ll Pin Another Petal on the Daisy,” “I’ve Got a Pain in My Sawdust,” and my personal favorite, “Oh, How I Love to Dunk Doughnuts!” She’s joined onstage by a pianist (Franklin Bruno), a violist (Karen Waltuch), and a horn player (Jacob Garchik, on trombone and tuba), who match her quirky energy and skewed comic sensibility.
READ MORE >>
Powerful and Visionary Stunning – Urban Odyssey
Posted March 29, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Reviewed by Rachel Wohlander, TheaterOnline.com
Puppetry is an ancient art, believed to date back to 30,000 B.C., and stems from traditions in Egypt, Africa, Asia and Europe. Dance is a similarly ancient and multicultural tradition. Loco7, formed in 1986 by Federico Restrepo, is a dance company created to expand the use of puppetry in dance theater. The fusion of dance, music and puppetry seems so natural perhaps because it holds a solid position in our collective subconscious dating back to its ritualistic roots. Loco7 makes these ancient forms new and surprising.
Loco7′s production of Urban Odyssey, at La Mama through April 8, is a powerful and visually stunning interdisciplinary production, and a sensory banquet. Co-created by Restrepo (also performer, director, choreographer and puppet designer) and Denise Greber (also performer and costume-designer), it is the culmination of a ten-year exploration in depicting the experience of immigration to America, based on Restrepo’s own journey from Colombia. An interplay of puppets, masks, live music, video, dance and poetry explore the internal and external struggles an immigrant faces. READ MORE >>
Urban Odyssey on NY1
Posted March 22, 2012 at 1:35 pm
NY1′s weekly segment “Your Weekend Starts Now” shows entertaining picks for great things to do this weekend all around the city. NY1′s Arts reporter Stephanie Simon filed the following report.
“Urban Odyssey” show
www.loco7.org
Let puppeteers “LOCO 7″ pull some strings for you with their new show, Urban Odyssey. It’s a drama about the experience of immigrants traveling to the United States, featuring actors and puppets. Showtime is Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $25.
Turning Giggles and Snickers Into a Hoot – That Beautiful Laugh Review
Posted March 21, 2012 at 12:51 pm
by Catherine Rampell, NY Times
It’s hard to imagine anything funnier on a New York stage right now than a man struggling to stuff his body through a clothes hanger.
As with all great comedy, exactly why this is so funny is hard to explain. But Carlton Ward, with veins bulging and limbs mangling, makes it work.
Mr. Ward is one of three clowns starring in “That Beautiful Laugh,” a sporadically sidesplitting show at La MaMa. In just shy of an hour, Mr. Ward, Alan Tudyk and Julia Ogilvie deliver a variety show of stunts and absurdities, often incorporating other simple props, like a bed sheet and grapes. READ MORE >>
This is an evening in the theater you won’t soon forget – The Kreutzer Sonata
Posted March 19, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Reviewed by Victor Gluck, TheaterScene.net
Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9, known as the Kreutzer Sonata, is considered one of the most erotically charged pieces of classical music. Inspired by it, Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, (the most Dostoyevskian work he was to write) was so controversial on the subject of lust, love, marriage and divorce that it was immediately banned by the Russian authorities.
Would you believe that a multimedia stage adaptation of this monologue would be one of the most spellbinding theater events you are ever likely to see? Of course, without Hilton McRae’s consummate performance as the narrator Pozdynyshev, philosopher and murderer, this production from London’s Gate Theatre would be unthinkable. Nancy Harris’ brilliantly crafted script includes a live performance of the Beethoven sonata played by Sophie Scott (as Pozdynyshev’s long-suffering wife) on piano and Tobias Beer, as his friend Trukhachevski (and the wife’s supposed lover), on violin. Though they never get a chance to speak, we see them reenact Pozdynyshev’s memories and imaginings, both live and on film. The Gate Theatre’s co-artistic director Natalie Abrahami has brought all the elements perfectly together for an unforgettable and disturbing evening of theater.
Both the novel and the stage adaptation are set in a Russian railroad car, most likely traveling away from Moscow, the scene of much of the action of the narrated tale. Harris has kept the cast down to three by eliminating Tolstoy’s early chapters in which an entire carriage of people debate love, lust, marriage, divorce and celibacy, revealing Tolstoy’ personal views on these subjects, that indulging in carnal lust is the root of all evil, even when sanctified by marriage. This takes away much of the philosophic and societal underpinnings of Tolstoy’s story, but Harris has something else in mind.
The dramatist has made the play more dramatic by focusing entirely on Pozdynyshev’s monologue which uses his life story as his example of the effects of carnal lust and unbridled jealousy on the relations between men and women, even in the highest circles. Simultaneously, the other two actors wordlessly, albeit accompanied by music, act out the events he recounts as well as his agitated imaginings. This is made possible by Chloe Lamford’s railway car setting whose back wall is at first a screen for the film clips of Dan Stafford-Clark and the video of Ian William Galloway. Later in the evening it becomes a transparent scrim that lets us see Pozdnyshev’s drawing room and his wife’s grand piano and witness Scott and Beer accompanying each other in the Beethoven sonata while our narrator continues his story.
When the play begins, Pozdynyshev who has been sitting in the car (angled so that he is facing the audience) addresses us as though we were his traveling companions. He warns us that he has just been acquitted so that there is no need for us to change our seats. We know from the beginning that he is guilty of some horrendous crime for which there were mitigating circumstances. He then tells us the story of his life, how he indulged in his sexual passions like all men of his generation and social class, until he met and fell in love with the innocent and lovely girl who became his wife. When they began their marital relations during the honeymoon, the new husband felt like he was defiling her every time he took advantage of his conjugal rites. For him, marriage was no better than legalized prostitution.
Eight years later, after his wife has had five children, the doctors tell her she can not safely have any more. Suddenly she becomes even more beautiful to Pozdynyshev who falls in love with her all over again. With more free time, she takes up her piano again. When Pozdynyshev’s old friend Trukhachevski, now a noted violinist, returns from Paris and looks them up, the stage is set for a tale of rampant jealousy and violent reaction. We never know if the wife and the violinist are ever lovers, but as the story is told only from the husband’s point of view, we know exactly what he is feeling at all times.
Told unemotionally in a calmly elegant and precise manner, The Kreutzer Sonata slowly causes us to realize with growing dread that we are listening to a philosopher who is also a madman. We should have been warned: one of the first things he tells us is that to him “an evening of music … is like an evening spent at a brothel. You pay your money, you perspire – there is a vague feeling of release, followed by a temporary feeling of elation and you return to your life as it was, a bigger fraud than before.” And so we are warned that music and sexual passion are inevitably linked, like in Beethoven’s Violin Sonata, No. 9.
Although McRae does all the talking, he breaks up his monologue in various ways, sometimes through actions, other times, through his acting. Again and again, he handles a handkerchief which he later shows us spread out in full. He continually gets up to take glasses of tea from a samovar on a small table under the window. He plays with a child’s yoyo. He lights a cigarette. He smiles at times, politely; at other times, he gives us more of an arrogant smirk. He strolls around the car. He removes his coat. He mops his sweating brow, and as he gets to the high point of his story, he seems almost overcome with the emotion of recalling his jealousy. Snatches of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata punctuate the action, driving it to its inevitable denouement. McRae is utterly mesmerizing, and as the story approaches its climax, you can almost hear every heart in the theater pounding in unison.
In the end, Pozdynyshev has proved that if the couple had “for once have seen each truly – not as man and wife – but man and woman,” the tragedy would never have occurred. Tolstoy’s (and Beethoven’s) Kreutzer Sonata has once again worked its magic as the authorities feared it would 123 years ago. Natalie Abrahami’s direction is seamless and graceful, never obvious or intrusive, but always working towards the common goal. The beautifully modulated lighting, in both the downstage railroad car and the upstage depiction of Pozdynyshev’s drawing room, is the creation of Mark Howland, while Kate Flatt is responsible for the movement in the pantomimed scenes that recreates Pozdynyshev’s fevered imagination.
Unlike Othello, also overcome by the green-eyed monster, the fact that Hilton McRae’s Pozdynyshev never raises his voice makes the telling of his story even more chilling. Nancy Harris’ magnificent adaptation is a marvel of economy and of subtle rewrites that place everything in the speaker’s troubled mind. Sophie Scott and Tobias Beer’s playing of the Beethoven violin sonata will make you want to hear the Kreutzer Sonata in its entirety. This is an evening in the theater you won’t soon forget.
Tom Murrin Obituary on NY Times
Posted March 16, 2012 at 12:15 pm
NY Times, published March 14, 2012
Tom Murrin, a performance artist whose frenetic shows fashioned kooky narratives out of found objects and homemade masks and made him a longtime favorite in the downtown avant-garde arts scene in New York, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Patricia Sullivan.
Mr. Murrin, whose stage names were Tom Trash and, later, the Alien Comic, was a playwright and an avant-garde impresario as well as a performer of his own shows, which he was apt to put on almost anywhere — on the street, in music clubs and on stages that included landmarks of experimental theater in New York like La MaMa, Dixon Place and P.S. 122.
For years he put on monthly celebrations of the full moon, in which he and other artists thanked the moon goddess he called Luna Macaroona for shining good fortune upon the world. READ MORE >>
Tom Murrin (1939–2012)
Posted March 12, 2012 at 5:37 pm
We mourn the passing of Tom Murrin, aka the Alien Comic, and celebrate the life and work of this wonderful, unique artist, great friend and gallant colleague.
Tom came to La MaMa in 1964 and was an important contributor to, and playwright of, the Playhouse of Ridiculous, especially with his play Cockstrong which toured Europe.
Tom was our #1 Colleague, Supporter, Enabler, Cheerleader, Mentor to all of us who dared to call ourselves performers, presenters, programmer-curators, composers, designers, visual and performance artists. Tom is uniquely beloved in New York’s downtown arts community; he would always encourage up-and-coming younger artists and cheer on the more established artists from the sideline.
Thank you TOM MURRIN for being such a good friend and supporter, for your compassion and intelligence, and for your work as an artist that influenced all of us so deeply.
We will never forget you.
Confession Spun Accross the Miles – The Kreutzer Sonata
Posted at 12:08 pm
by Ben Brantley, New York Times
He cannot stop talking, this stranger on a train. And though much of what he says isn’t pleasant, you can’t stop listening, either. There is, after all, something mesmerizing about confession in a smoky railroad car, delivered by someone you’ll never see again.
The allure of tales told in transit is as ancient and enduring as Homer. And it’s an appeal that’s exploited with deliciously old-fashioned verve (and some ingenious new-fangled accessories) in “The Kreutzer Sonata,” Nancy Harris’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s 1889 novella, which opened Sunday night in the tiny First Floor Theater at La MaMa. READ MORE >>
Martin Denton’s review on Hot Lunch Apostle
Posted March 9, 2012 at 2:54 pm
by Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com
The Talking Band’s Hot Lunch Apostles did for me what art is supposed to do: it shook me up, made me question fundamental assumptions, and launched a dialogue (sometimes internal, sometimes with others) about some core issues of humanity. This is jolting rather than comforting theater, and in a few different ways it’s sometimes hard to watch. It’s not for everybody, but I recommend it strongly for those in search of rich, insightful, experiential theater. It requires an open mind and an open heart.
The show is about a bedraggled carnival trouping through the American heartland, and indeed our first encounter with it, before we’re in our seats, is on the midway, where we can view some of the sideshow exhibits, buy hot pretzels and soft drinks, and try to win a prize or two. (One of the “acts” is a pair of musicians, one of whom is portrayed by Loudon Wainwright, who performs one of his compositions.) READ MORE >>
The G-String Brigade Faces a Destitute Age – Hot Lunch Apostle Review
Posted at 1:48 pm
by Ben Brantley, New York Times
The bravery-in-theater award this year goes to … no, not one of those flying masked men from “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” The winners are Tina Shepard and Jack Wetherall for fearlessly recreating their 1983 performances in the Talking Band’s “Hot Lunch Apostles” at La MaMa.
O.K., it’s not all that uncommon for actors to return to roles they created years earlier. Rex Harrison showed up on Broadway as Henry Higgins decades after he first appeared in “My Fair Lady,” and Carol Channing portrayed the title character in “Hello, Dolly!” in the 1960s and again in the mid-1990s. But may I point out that in those shows, Harrison and Ms. Channing always wore flattering and concealing period costumes? READ MORE >>
Talking Band’s Hot Lunch Apostles Serves Up Religion, Raunch, and Desperation
Posted March 2, 2012 at 3:05 pm
by Rachel Kranz, The Brooklyn Rail
“Agony in the garden, everybody!”
The stage manager has just called the next scene and the company scrambles to set up for it. With about two weeks to go before opening night, they’re still working with a combination of real, substitute, and “work-in-progress” set pieces, including three large, unpainted wooden boxes and two huge ladders.
Cast member Jack Wetherall pushes one of the boxes a few feet toward stage right and then looks at it thoughtfully. “I sort of remember it hugging the ladder last time,” he says.
“Last time was Tuesday,” comments fellow cast member Tina Shepherd.
Jack laughs. “No,” he says. “Twenty-eight years ago!” READ MORE >>
A Girl Between a Rock and a Very Lonely Place – I Killed My Mother Review on NYT
Posted February 21, 2012 at 1:28 pm
by Ben Brantley, New York Times
Unless you hang out with Medusa, you probably haven’t experienced what it feels like to be turned into stone. This novel and disturbing sensation is now on offer at the First Floor Theater at La MaMa. It comes from a girl who is not a gorgon but has the ability to make a person feel as invisible and dispensable as a rock in a quarry.
The formula for this transformation, as practiced by the actress Melissa Lorraine Hawkins in Andras Visky’s “I Killed My Mother,” is fairly basic: She turns her back on her target, disgorges the word “Never” in a primal scream, with a twisted tongue, and then turns around. For all intents and purposes, you, her victim, are now dead, or at any rate no more alive to her than a stone. READ MORE >>
Erosion review on winesburg, ohio
Posted at 1:07 pm
by cassie m, winesburgohio.tumblr.com
I saw the dance-theater spectacle Erosion: A Fable tonight at La MaMa Theater in the East Village. It was put on by the Loom Ensemble, a tightly functioning unit of hyper-talented people who can — to put it concisely — do everything. It’s not a perfect piece of work, keeping in mind that I’m biased by an exhaustion with critiques of corporate culture that rely heavily on The Ignored Homeless Person serving as a barometer against which characters morals are measured and judged (deep breath), but there are moments throughout its one hour and twenty minute course that I thought were very real, very fine achievements of theater. Dream sequences, sparsely light and sparsely scored, in which the dancers limbs shuddered and twitched in convincing, catatonic distress. Impressively constructed set pieces, deployed at key climatic moments, that managed to explode the confines — both narrative and actual — presented by a tiny, tiny room. Deft physical humor, witty jokes, and some characters that were very likable even when they weren’t, like bossman Julia, sharply creased as a pair of trousers, but all the more charming for her totally neurotic adherence to the rules, dammit.
I really liked seeing it.
BlogCritcs.org review – You, My Mother
Posted February 15, 2012 at 2:44 pm
by Jon Sobel, BlogCritics.org
Even though it’s only February, I feel secure in saying that You, My Mother is one of the year’s most interesting and unusual theatrical works. Though it’s called an “opera project” by its creators, a group known as the Two-Headed Calf, that’s only an approximation. The libretto is mostly sung. But it, and the music, and the staging, are all so purposely disjointed that by the time the show has forced us into its surrealist/avant-garde mode we don’t feel that we’re in a familiar artistic environment that we can safely describe as “opera” or even “theater” in the traditional sense. READ MORE >>
Broadway World Review – You, My Mother
Posted at 2:21 pm
By Trish Vignola, BroadwayWorld.com
The World Premiere of You, My Mother opened this week at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre (66 East 4th Street). Produced by the Obie Award-winning performance group Two-Headed Calf, this limited engagement is running now through February 20th. Created by composer Brendan Connelly and playwright Karinne Keithley Syers along with Obie Award-winning composer Rick Burkhardt and playwright Kristen Kosmas, You, My Mother is an opera project in two parts. The production is directed by Brooke O’Harra, with music performed by Yarn/Wire + Strings. READ MORE >>
Mom-entously original
Posted at 2:05 pm
by James Jorden, New York Post
No tenors, no arias, no orchestra pit, no plot. Can “You, My Mother”really be called an opera?
Yes, it can! Despite the lack of traditional trappings, this new work by downtown troupe Two-Headed Calf does exactly what opera is supposed to do, brilliantly melding music and text to deliver an emotional wallop. READ MORE >>