You know you’re in for a treat at the theatre when one of the performers brings down the house by taking a single, stylized breath of air. Yes, the New York Times decreed that the veteran performance group Parallel Exit could get laughs ‘simply by breathing,’ and the capable comedians were quick to prove them right. Their new show Everybody…
Transgender themed movies far outnumber transgender themed plays: “In a Year of 13 Moons” (1978); “Paris Is Burning” (1990); “Ma vie en rose” (1997); “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999); and “Transamerica” (2005) all have raised the consciousness about transgender women and men who not only struggle with the important issue of sexual status and gender reassignment surgery but also battle fear,…
There has been “Acoustic Kitty” and “Project Pigeon” in the CIA’s arsenal of operations. Marc Rogers’s “Asymmetric” currently running at 59E59 Theater C adds another: the rather oddly named “Icarus Drone” operation. Mr. Rogers’s tasty espionage drama centers on retired agent Josh (Sean Williams) using his interrogation skills to discover to whom the fifth floor mole has been leaking information…
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” Revelation 1:17b-18 In her challenging and remarkable performance piece “Hard Rain,” currently running at 59E59 Theater B, Barb Jungr alludes to the often cryptic nature of Bob Dylan’s lyrics. There…
What Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” did for the complacency of the 1960s, Walter Mosley’s “Lift” attempts to do for the beginning of the twenty-first century. These important plays collectively challenge the racial, cultural and class consciousness of the American landscape. “Lift” uses the trope, here an extended metaphor, of the…
“The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’” Obadiah 1:3 Obadiah tried to warn Edom to repent of its pride, its inexorable hubris – but to no avail. The nation had…
Lauren Gunderson’s “Bauer,” currently playing at 59E59 as part of the 5A Series, transforms the rhythm, the form, the line, and the order of Rudolph Bauer’s life and work into sheer unbridled magic. The events of Bauer’s life – from his arrival in the United States in 1939 to his death in 1953 – are well known and accurately rehearsed…
The boys and girls in Dylan Coburn Gray’s extended prose-poem performance piece are Irish and their particular rant is about life and times in Dublin, which is a specific matrix of cultural fundamentals. Although “Boys and Girls” features four narratives (chapters), the speakers are identified only as A, B, C, and D and therefore these are universal stories that connect…
“Through the way where hope is guiding,/Hark, what peaceful music rings;/Where the flock, in Thee confiding,/Drink of joy from deathless springs.” – “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (Words by Martin Janus) Mona Golabek’s “The Pianist of Willesden Lane” is an extraordinary Master Class in the resilience and healing of memory, the power of storytelling, and the enduring mystery of the…
Douglas de Souza’s “666 DSM” concludes its brief run at the 59E59 East to Edinburgh Festival and prepares to face its opening at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2014. Mr. de Souza and his director/producer Cindy Sibilsky have several challenges to face and overcome before rubber hits runway in The Burgh. In six vignettes, writer/performer Douglas de Souza rants…