This Friday - October 2 from Noon to 4:00 EDT (9AM-1PM PDT) - is the first ever National Summit on Arts Journalism at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles. We're taking part in the presentation of ten projects in arts journalism from around America, and each we think has something to say about the future of how we cover the arts. It will be in the auditorium of the journalism school in front of an audience of 200, but it's primarily conceived of as a virtual online event. Arts America is a participating blog.
Here is a live link that will enable you to watch it live on Friday, October 2 beginning at noon EDT.
It was both whacky and wonderful in the Berkshires over the Columbus Day Weekend. My friends from Boston could not get a room nearby, so they did not get to enjoy the Trockaderos de Monte Carlo who played the Hunter Center at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. It was a great show, and you can read my review here:
While North Adams is in no danger of becoming another Provincetown, it surely was nice to see a little diversity in the artistic offerings. And the sold out houses for the "Trocks" indicates that there is a market here for both more dance, and more camp.
Kooza is worth a trip, and the expense for good seats. It is the ultimate spectacle, with both roll-in-the-aisles-laughter from the clowns, and heart-stopping, breath-taking acrobatic acts. Cirque du Soleil is often imitated, but all those second rate companies simply pale in comparison to the real thing, as this traveling edition of Kooza now playing in Boston proves. That includes the the horrible arena shows that Cirque inexplicably sends around the country with Clear Channel Entertainment. If you like beer signs and scoreboards to clutter up your view of the stage, and have very good eyesight, I suppose these horrid arena productions are ok, but my advice is to avoid them like the plague. Most seats are too far away from the stage to see much, and if I wanted to watch them perform on a flat two-dimensional screen, I would rent the DVD. David Shiner wrote and directed Kooza
Kooza was written and directed by the immensely talented David Shiner, and he has done a magnificent job. You can read my full review at Berkshire Fine Arts, the online magazine
"Cirque du Soleil delivers an unforgettable evening of outrageous clowning, astounding acrobats and colorful spectacle that is best described as "Theatrobatics!" Best of all, Kooza is the newest and funniest of their touring shows and even given the pricey tickets, worth every penny."
Kooza's run in Boston has just been extended until October 12, and I would not be surprised if there was one more week's extension, since they do not have to be in D.C. until late in the month. Here is the schedule:
Memorial Day weekend brought with it the openings of two superb, if serious, plays. I Am My Own Wife at Barrington Stage Company and The Caretaker at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. So it was a welcome change of pace when Shakespeare & Company decided to open with a superb reworking of Georges Feydeau's French Farce, The Ladies Dressmaker, under the title of The Ladies Man.
If you missed my rave review over at Berkshire Fine Arts, well, you really should read the full account of this fun evening:
The biggest delight of the evening was the re-discovery of Elizabeth Aspenlieder's immense comedic talents. In a note after the performance, she wrote that she had worked hard on her " 47 entrances and exits…wild! In fact so much so I tore all my intercostals during rehearsals last week…we are all bruised and beaten but are having a ball." As I said in my review, farce is hard work, especially if you want to make it all look so easy.
I have said it before, and repeat again: do not miss this production, things this funny only come along once in a great while! The Ladies Man runs all Summer long.
When I walked into the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Unicorn Theatre last Sunday afternoon, I gave up the glorious Berkshire sunshine and lush carpet of green for the grey and dingy squalor of a London flat. In creating the set for their season opener, The Caretaker, scenic designer Jonathan Wentz has done such a convincing job of hopeless chaos, I wanted to escape back to the flowers of Spring, and the hope of renewal that was just beyond the theater walls.
Pinter is hard. If you take his work seriously, you have to surrender your own comfort level and exchange places with his sodden characters who have so little to live for. As the press release states so cooly:
Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is an enigmatic and sinister comedy about the struggle for power. The fragile relationship of two brothers, Aston and Mick, is turned upside down when Davies, a homeless man, enters their lives. Since its premiere in 1960, this play has been recognized as a landmark in 20th century drama.
Director Eric Hill comments: “I’m excited to examine the dramatic tension and mystery of Pinter – always a study in trying to get behind the words and underlying causes of the relationships.”
I think this play was a triumph as I wrote in my review in Berkshire Fine Arts, but it is also depressing. Honest examination of the human condition is rarely upliftiing, at least in Pinterland.
Just don't see it on a glorious spring day, save it for a cloudy or rainy one. Pinter is brilliant, this production is absorbing, but it is also deeply affecting.
The Barrington Stage Company under Julianne Boyd has been taking a lot of risks in recent years, starting with their move to Pittsfield from Great Barrington. Happily most of their regular audiences took the change in stride. They too benefit from a wonderful new theatre and larger base of fellow theater-goers. The company is no longer just a summer operation, it presents plays almost year round.
So it was only a small surprise when they announced they were doing the Doug Wright Tony and Pulitzer winning I Am My Own Wife with the incredibly talented Vince Gatton playing the three dozen or so roles in this one man play.
At Berkshire Fine Arts, Charles Giuliano did the lead review, and declared it more powerful and absorbing than the original Broadway production:
Charles and I decided this play deserved more attention than just a single review, and so I undertook to write a second story, detailing the conflicts and debates that still rage about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. She was the one and only transvestite to reign in Berlin during the Communist era.
In my research on Charlotte, I read numerous other takes on her life. The best of the lot was in a review of her film, I Am My Own Woman, found at Planet Out. Its details were a little too frank for inclusion in my own article in Berkshire Fine Arts.
Now a 60-something lady who loves to don Victorian lingerie and display her ever-youthful butt, Charlotte speaks fondly of her mostly deceased ex-lovers. She's always had a penchant for older men, and time has outrun most of them.
There was a time, after the Wall went up, when gay East Berliners were barred from meeting one another in public; gay bars were closed and gays were prohibited from placing "contact ads" in newspapers or magazines. That's when Charlotte met one of her great loves in response to a number scrawled on the wall of a public latrine.
Her story seemed to both absorb and mystify many in the Berkshires audience who listened in polite, presumably stunned, silence. There is wonderful humor in the production, but not many in the opening night audience laughed. So I quietly chuckled as the bon mots were delivered by Gatton.
In my treatment, I decided that Charlotte was not only his own wife, but her own husband as well. You can read why I came to that conclusion here:
Pangea Day is a worldwide celebration of our common humanity, expressed in unique films by people like you and me. It will take place on May 10, 2008, and in the Berkshires the films will be screened at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield from 2 to 6 pm. It is but one of thousands of venues in more than 60 countries around the world. Admission is free.
As many of you know, I am a big fan of the TED program, and here is what curator Chris Anderson wrote me in an email:
"The best way to watch Pangea Day is not just as a normal TV show or web-stream. It should be watched as a community event. We want the sense of the great global village gathering around a campfire. We already know of more than a thousand self-organized screenings taking place in homes, clubs, and movie theaters. We expect thousands more come May 10.
As many of you know, the day is the result of the combined efforts of countless TED supporters around the world, inspired by the TED Prize wish of film-maker Jehane Noujaim. She dreamed of a day when people around the world could share the the same film experience at the same time. The idea has grown into a giant global project... thanks to you. To get a sense of the scale of ambition, please take a minute to watch this beautiful trailer.
Here's the state of play: - Out of thousands of submissions, we have assembled a fantastic line-up of films. There are about 20 in total, ranging in length from 2 to 15 minutes (most of them around 5). They all tell powerful stories, often without language, of what it is to be human. They are, by turns, funny, touching, dramatic, inspiring. - But you won't just be watching films. You'll be watching the world watching. We're bringing in live audience images from around the world. Watching a film about reconciliation is one thing. Watching it while simultaneously witnessing the reactions of people who are supposed to hate each other will be something else altogether. - The day also features a dozen powerful three-minute talks from scientists, film-makers, story-tellers and global visionaries. Just as a session at TED takes us on a journey stimulating every part of our brains, so will Pangea Day. Don't dismiss it as a warm & fuzzy peace-fest. The project builds on the latest ideas in anthropology, psychology and technology. We'll be revealing how. - The whole program is being broadcast in front of a live audience of 1,000 (from more than 50 countries) at a spectacular set being built at a Sony Studios soundstage in Los Angeles. - It will look and feel like nothing you've seen before. "
I will post some examples as they become available.
The controversy over Christoph Büchel's Training Ground for Democracy is not likely to end anytime soon. I wrote about it on this blog last Summer, and the exhibit has since been deconstructed, demolished, and damned to the landfill.
And the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes has nothing on what the artist and museum have been doing with the tons of paperwork created in the flurry of discovery requests leading up to the infamous trial. Both plaintiff and defendant got exactly what they wanted: a hook to hang fund raising and income producing efforts on.
Rather than suffering harm, the controversy is ultimately turning into a pot of gold for both of them.
Büchel has taken his boxes of legal documents and begun to show them at exhibits at his own gallery in New York, Maccarone, and at Art Basel Miami Beach. His increased notoriety no doubt helped him capture the $100,000 Hugo Bass prize. He has priced some of the documents from the trial at a quarter of a million dollars. The artist as capitalist is an impressive thing to behold.
Meanwhile Joe Thompson, head of Mass MoCA and his development staff have turned the controversy into patron gold. At a fundraiser held in New York, the museum raised a million dollars, four times as much as the event generated before. It is also noteworthy that the previously unendowed museum has now raised some $12 million for its long range stability, one-third towards its goal of $35 million.
And though the museum lost ground in terms of attendance during the year the Büchel project tied up its main gallery, it has since racked up significant increases in visitation, some of which has to be attributed to the greater awareness the controversy brought.
The New York Times wrote about this today in their Sunday Arts Section complete with a slide show:
Accusations, Depositions: Just More Fodder for Art By RANDY KENNEDY
The battle between Christoph Büchel and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, one of the most publicized and minutely dissected the art world had ever seen, continues. The legal documents as art - NY Times Photo
To me, the exhibition of legal papers is fairly dull, deserving the mundane setting of a classroom rather than that of a gallery. But even if these paper works end up in a museum somewhere, there is as message to be learned here. Celebrity sells.
It appears that both the museum and outraged artist have made a satisfying brew from their lemons.
Under the sensitive control of Pamela Kurstin, the Theremin becomes jazz, or lounge music, and a violin or a bass. Watch her masterful vibrato and note flanging.
She plays and discusses her theremin, the not-just-for-sci-fi electronic instrument that is played without being touched. Songs include the classic "Autumn Leaves," Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" and a composition by David Mash, "Listen: the Words Are Gone."
You can find her performance here, at the TED Conference site:
Jesus is portrayed in a diaper debating the Devil, with Springer as referee.
The Ku Klux Klan surprises us, swishing their gowns in an energetic chorus line.
The KKK sings and dances for the JerryCam.
Jerry and guests with big hair go hand in hand.
Jerry's chorus is anything but Greek.
The "real" Jerry has real guards recruited from the Chicago Police Department.
Jerry has strange guests on the Operatic version of his show.
Opera is not a dead art. Far from it. But it has been a long time since a new opera had protesters picketing performances, especially in the less fundamentalist U.K. Because the content of Jerry Springer - The Opera includes the characters of Jesus and the Devil depicted in less than worshipful words and images, it has raised a howl of outrage, one heard even in the USA where its scheduled Broadway run was cancelled due to skittish backers. American audiences, they think, are far too conservative for this.
Perhaps the spectacle of a tap dancing Ku Klux Klan sent a few too many chills down their spine and into their pocketbooks. Yet it seems that this opera has sold out its run wherever it has played. In 2007 several regional companies mounted productions, taking enormous risks with their resources and supporters, but weathering the storm, and in once case, extending the run by a month.
Recently, it played two nights at Carnegie Hall in a production where Harvey Keitel played the non-singing role of Jerry Springer. Of course it was sold out, and received rave notices from the New York Times, which does not compliment new works easily.
Many excerpts of the opera are available on YouTube since the entire production was televised on the BBC. On January 7 2005, the day before the broadcast, the BBC announced that it had received over 47,000 complaints about its plans to screen the opera – the most complaints ever received about a British television broadcast.
Many commentators, including the BBC, attributed such a high volume of complaints to an orchestrated campaign by various Christian groups. Supporters of the BBC's broadcasting of the show pointed out that the supposedly blasphemous content was clearly presented as a fantasy in the mind of the dying central character and was not intended to be a serious comment on Christ or Christian theology. John Beyer, chairman of Mediawatch-UK, argued that the BBC should shoulder much of the blame for the campaign against the opera since they had promoted the opera as "pushing back the boundaries of taste" and "controversial" when it had never been intended to offend the groups who campaigned against it.
In the past year there have been five productions of the opera in the USA. The two concert presentations this week at Carnegie Hall, plus full productions at Chicago's Baliwick Repertory Theatre, Minneapolis Music Theater and Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. The Chicago production ran with extensions, for three months, selling virtually every ticket it could print.
Upcoming are productions in February at Stage West in Des Moines, and in midsummer at Studio Theatre's Secondstage in Washington, D.C., a production I hope to see and report on both here and for the web magazines Maverick Arts and Berkshire Fine Arts.
Christians express their distress over the opera's content, ignoring its ultimate moral message.
One of the reasons Christians get upset at the opera is its use of profanity. "It has been accused of including "8,000 obscenities"—it is not known where this count originated, but the 8000 figure is popularly quoted. This however is impossible, as 8000 obscenities over the show's 120 minute runtime would mean that there were 66 obscenities a minute, and thus 1 and a half a second. Several publications, including the Daily Mail and The Sun, claimed a figure of "3,168 mentions of the word fuck and 297 of the word cunt".
As stated in the BBC's findings, however, "the reported figure was in fact a vast exaggeration. In reality, there were 96 uses of "fuck" and nine uses of "cunt". While a substantial number, this was not necessarily unacceptable in terms of late night terrestrial television." The numbers resported were found by multiplying the number of cast members singing a profanity at the same time, ie the reported 297 uses of the word cunt is the result of multiplying the 33 cast members with the genuine amount of uses of the word, ie, nine times.
According to director Stewart Lee, there are 174 swear words in all." From here:
There is a DVD of the opera, though since it was issued in the UK I am not sure if it will play on all US machines. Other than the YouTube excerpts I am not aware of any music excerpts being available. Anyone can use the comments section to add resources, and I will make updates on additional productions through comments as well.
This is a work well worth seeking out, for blessed are the singing, pole-dancing fetishists. As Ben Brantly wrote in the New York Times:
Those who attended “Jerry Springer,” which stars an affectingly disaffected Harvey Keitel in the nonsinging title role, expecting to snigger and hoot were not disappointed. There’s a guaranteed off-the-charts camp quotient in a show that sets the televised confessions of pole-dancing housewives and men with diaper fixations to music that often leans more toward Bach than Broadway.
In terms of sheer audacity, “Jerry Springer” is a helluva lot funnier than, say, “Young Frankenstein.” This is, after all, a work that features numbers with mock-liturgical titles like “Jerry Eleison.” And though I’d love to say that the demonstrators who assembled outside the theater on Tuesday to protest a show that “blasphemes our Lord” would be disarmed if they ever got to see “Jerry Springer,” I can’t.
A "Trock" Dancer Prepares
The ballerina is doing a "ponche" with one leg en pointe and the other pointing at midnight, a feat which i have never seen a male dancer able to perform.
And this is the gorgeous "Fish" Dive, which is as complicated as a it is beautiful and only lasts a second or two.
The acrobats (below) reach new heights (above) using stilts
The opening act of Kooza is spectacularly choreographed.
David Shiner wrote and directed Kooza
Kooza is Clowns, Acrobats and Spectacle
Shakespeare knows how to have fun
The cast has as much fun as the audience. (Kevin Sprague photos)
James Barry as Mick (l) and Jonathan Epstein as Davies in The Caretaker opening the Berkshire Theatre Festival season.
Promo image from the movie "I Am My Own Woman" which tells the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf as a young man (center), a young woman (left) and Charlotte herself in her later years.
Vince Gatton as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in "I Am My Own Wife" at Barrington Stage Company through June 8.
Photo manipulations by Larry Murray with thanks to Charles Giuliano for the Joe Thompson photo.
But the paperwork lives on.
The artist as capitalist is an impressive thing to behold.
The legal documents as art - NY Times Photo
