the summer runs out but artistic happenings are afoot all over the place! there’s never a moment to bucharest … ! i heard recently that my pal you nakai (see beaucoup des choses artlog #3) will be premiering with no collectiveconcertos no.4 at the national museum of modern art in tokyo on the evening of august 29. according to an email “it will be music for the blind, the blinded, plus a number of personalized audiences.” and it is gratis. mama mia!
speaking of adventurous programming… i hope everyone has seen this doozy of a trailer. it is a whopping 17 minutes and 58 seconds! ok, ok. i suppose the abundant programming of this year’s incubator arts project season justifies the loquacious length and such candid whoppers as “we all look like jerks.” a truer statement as never been uttered (!). what bold and adventurous programming, bravi to the curators! i must admit, i greatly enjoyed the casual and self conscious (and perhaps at times a tad boastful!) ponderings of these cute artists.
inhale/exhale
i hope to see each and every show! i await with particular baited breath both gas, that old brechtian double doozy and the frank boudreaux penned very-long-title-of-intrigue-and-importance (ie, everything that is the case for two young women on the eve of the great war among other elegant lies…ahem…you couldn’t make this stuff up!)
oh and to be entirely clear: i use “doozy” and “whopper” in their most positive and happy mealesque iterations, associations and connotations. let us reclaim la langue anglaise, mes amis!
it was with great pleasure i took in the recent weasel festival. mama mia. what a joy. i have long had connections to the brooklyn college coterie. i attended the school briefly as a lass in the ancient 90s… pte
(pre tibet era).
((if you don’t know about the time i spent in tibet and nepal–not to mention my amorous relations with a certain salvador dali llama!–you will have to ask me about it at my next live conference in geneva.))
(((yes my friends, i have been invited to attend the davos conference in 2013 (!) i can hardly believe it … its about time!)))
1.weasel festival
anyway, the weasel festival offered four ruminations on maurizio malaparte’s writings by playwrights Paul Ketchum, LaShea Delaney, Megan Murtha and Mark Sitko with direction by Jose Zayas. Each playwright was more pugnacious and punctilious than the last (in the best of ways, mind you!) and the evening had a surprisingly coherent air to it—despite the tricky nature of presenting 4 short pieces on a theme.
I was most taken with the fellow playing malaparte. though his Italian accent was not of the real life sumptuous kind, it also was not dreadful or offensive to those who speak la lingua del bel paese. it was—to put a word on it—passable. and I say this as a complimento totale! so many who take on an accent for a role do so to absurd effects forcing listeners to bypass the content of the speech and focus solely on the character of delivery. hmph! this malaparte, on the other hand, gave a proper blend or rolled rs and understandable vowels. a suggestion of an accent that placed viewers in the land of la dolce vita but reminded us to listen and pay attention to what we were hearing and now how it was being said.
allora! a nazi party, young women sneaking into a nazi party, poetic whores and wounded men from battle were the backdrops to this most pleasurable evening. I should say fascism has always held a certain fascination for me so it was no surprise i enjoyed myself. and having insight into the stellar team of artists made me enjoy it all the more (I understand they rehearsed for a mere two weeks … che miracolo!)
props must also go to producers Amina Henry and Dennis Allen: Bravi!
2. the banned and brecht
now then .. about the banned, i mean band. i recently took in sara farrington’s untitled play about brecht’s girlfriends & boyfriend & wife at foxy films, a fine brooklyn establishment that might be mistaken for a black box apartment. while the play was a bold and impressive undertaking, i found myself most swept away with the musings of les musiciennes, a band (!) of cute toots (johnny gasper, gavin price and jack frederick) who retreated up to a quivering loft and played strange tunes from things like TK and TK. their quiet sounds were of a most curious nature and transported the audience back in old weimar germ. though there were no nazis in this spettacolo, i certainly felt the nefarious presence of fascism. bravi a tutti. the two main gal actresses megan emery gaffney and erin mallon were quite fine in what were challenging roles and i look forward to seeing this play grow and expand in other venues.
his head floats!
(i should mention in my younger and more vulnerable years i often confused brecht with beckett. be warned: the two are not the same!)
3. other banneds
while speaking of the banned i must mention this fine feathered fellow who has been–you guessed it–banned from his native country!
quel domage. for gangnam style is indeed a most delicious fashion and should be sported the world over! i cannot say the same for the excellent horse-like lady, which to my ears sounds like propaganda with a capital kim jong un! if i may offer a suggestion to the young leader, take a cue from your southern better half and squirt some gangnam style into your excellent horse like lady tunes. hmph!
my friends–c’est tout for now. but a word to the wise. when you go on a little sojourn or vacanza try to take the tranquility with you as you know you won’t find it on a herky jerky manhattan bounding bus sans internet!
tuesday evening i attended un certo concerto given by icelandic band sigur rós. for many years it was a dream of mine to hear them play. (i recall a cousin’s description of seeing them strum their sounds…she had a near religious experience!) in fact, i have often considered marking down sigur rós as my religion on various forms and faxes. (the impudence to even ask a person’s religion!)
i recall first hearing the group’s mystical music at a collective sleep over in dear cape cod. ooh those salad days of late nights and early risings! it felt transcendent hearing this music–and very cool. i was amazed years later when i had the good fortune to travel to island not once but twice. the music made so much more sense seeing the other worldly moonscape of that country.
not the most moonlike of scapes but hopefully you get the drift
and the joys of introducing lovers and friends to the find sounds of sigur rós is a gift that keeps on giving…
anyhow, it was a delight to hear them play. to me, their music is about possibility. possibility of another world to live in. i imagine the elves of dear old island living in a kind of world that is unimpeded by such foolishness as gender dichotomies, class struggles, ethnic turmoils and dreary old capitalism. not to mention war and killing! hmmph! rather, i imagine a space–a universe, even–where the soul–and a searing one at that–is put to the forefront! where everyone can just exist in bliss. perhaps i wax on too much but it is the truth. that is what this kippy hears when i hear those specifically amorphous tunes.
che possibilita!
leave it to a bystander to burst the bubble of my reverie. the young woman (specimen, really) had a kind of “california voice.” you know the kind. it pieces the ear (and the air) with vapid comments and an up talk tick, not to mention an overly confident vocal fry. “i don’t know why i’m even here?” she droned. “i don’t know any songs of their except the famous one. ohmyg-d, is it starting? this is it, right? omg this is it”
ugh. i have never wanted to shhh someone so much! and yet i felt it would not have been in the kindly elfin spirit of sigur rós. so i bit my tongue.
2. baals to the wall
there was no tongue biting at hoi polloi‘s baal–only teeth gnashing! what a marvelous experience it was. everyone should go. and everyone can afford to: it is pay-what-you-can. (and you even put the $ in a can!) one can even do the can-can pre-show in the smartly decored newly minted jack space.
che spazio!
i don’t think i’ve even seen such a crazy play that “breaks all the rules” actually staged (and staged in such a manner that was similarly of an enfant terrible nature!) what a refreshing wind of misogyny that ruffled my feathers. it was almost sweet and quaint to see his treatment of les femmes (and consider modern dramatists like mr. rapp who aren’t so far from the brechtian apple tree). let us remind these auteurs that misogyny rhymes with gynecology. hmph! go to baal to see a crazy play with similarly terrified participants. the actors careen through the space and there are many of arresting images and sounds. (not to mention a taiko drummer who thrums throughout).
one of the most deliscious moments came during a quieter scene (sadly, these ears managed to hear probably only 60% of the play’s text–but the acting and design were so good it didn’t matter) in it, the characters are in a bar having a quotidian chat and one could detect from a tiny radio operated by an actor the sounds of a pop song.
the tune was this:
the first time i heard this ditty i was in the back seat of a cab en toot (i mean, route) to omaha, nebraska. one of my many international homelands. it was early in the morning and as the cab driver and i whizzed past hideous brooklyn billboards in the early grey morning light these words caressed my ears: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! … could it be nietzsche’s anthem applied to pop?! how horrifying and meraviglioso all at once! i wanted to burst from a brain jam. then i wanted to tap my foot.
whoever chose this song during baal is a genie.
i will write more on silence and the last 13P play in a following post. for now i am off to see the girl of the golden west.
a bien-toot!
kippy
ps. look how i have been noted on jack’s website… grazie tutti!
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