Festival Season Round-Up: Part 1
OR, A Gingerbread Man Yelled In My Face About "White Dick Penetration"
The First Bad Man
Created & performed by Pan Pan; presented by Lincoln Center & Under the Radar at the Samuel B. and David Rose Building at Lincoln Center
A misfire from the typically intriguing Pan Pan Theatre. We are invited to join a book club, meeting today in a nondescript Lincoln Center rehearsal room. This club only reads one book: Miranda July’s The First Bad Man, her debut novel about a woman who finds unexpected sexual awakening with a physically abusive houseguest. As the group keeps reading and re-reading July’s surreal novel, they grow increasingly fixated on its every minute detail and begin to lose their grip on reality.
It’s a wonderfully bizarre premise, but sadly the show goes nowhere. Early scenes tracing the group’s obsession with the novel are intriguing, and the choice of July is a savvy one — whether the show feels mocking or celebrating of her work will depend on your own preconceived notions. But in a baffling move, the show devotes much of its 75 minute runtime to simply reenacting the novel. The club members, having been introduced, are then never returned to. If there was a point here, it escaped me.
this house is not a home
Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Ping Chong and Company, as part of Under the Radar
Building upon his viral Google doc “you niggas in trouble,” which he co-created with Trevor Brazile, writer/performer Nile Harris’ this house is not a home is a madhouse of theatrical chaos. Moving freely between monologue, dance and improv, Harris brutally dissects every element of our broken culture: virtue-signaling liberal politics, the milquetoast non-profit arts scene, our facile dialogue around identity and much more. He does it all within a dazzling, in-yer-face theatrical package — at one point, when dressed in a frightening gingerbread man costume, Harris leaned directly into my face while yelling about “white dick penetration.”
In keeping with the Dimes Square aesthetic that birthed this show, Harris is better at tearing up the status quo than suggesting any kind of path forward. But is there even a path forward? Dimes Square is dead. So, tragically, is Brazile. We’re already done, Harris seems to suggest by show’s end. It is already over.
Open Mic Night
Presented by Mabou Mines & Performance Space New York, as part of Under the Radar
Open Mic Night is a minor work within the growing oeuvre of writer/performer duo Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey. But minor Peter & Julia is still a major event.
The 50-minute show is a memorial, of sorts, for Brooklyn performance space Life World, a venue co-founded by Weiss and Mounsey (among others) which closed last year. Weiss first runs through his favorite memories from the space’s chaotic lifespan. (My favorite: “a small fire at the VHS screening of Freddie Got Fingered.”) Then he performs a Life World-style open mic set, complete with crowd work.
Truly, no-one does crowd work like Weiss. He will shuffle over to you, mumble a fragment of a question, then abandon the interaction before you can form a full thought. “You were late,” he reminded one audience member, who had indeed arrived tardy, offering his mic for comment. Or, later on: “I’m behind you” — Weiss is standing behind this audience member — “…what, uh…what’s going to happen now?”
If this sounds hostile, part of Weiss and Mounsey’s charm is that their oddness always feels friendly. There is a deliberate discomfort to their work, for sure, but we are not the butt of the joke. We are simply invited, for a little burst of time, into the madness that is this duo’s shared chaotic mind.
Being Up in Here and All the Other Businesses that Don’t Concern You OR When You See a Buncha Black People Running, What Do You Do?
Presented by The Exponential Festival at The Brick
A sci-fi adjacent meditation on our human need for constant forward momentum, with specific concern for Black bodies, Marissa Joyce Stamps’ Being Up in Here… is a bit too abstract to ever become involving. The play follows best friends Aaliyah (Alexis L. Dobynes) and Eli (Aja Downing), who have received magical sneakers from guardian angel Madame Dieufely (a delightful Marie Flore Stamps) and are running across land, space and time towards…I’m not sure what. In fairness, Aaliyah and Eli don’t seem entirely sure either.
Being Up in Here… dives into a number of intriguing themes: our constant need to achieve, the instinct toward competition with our peers, and finding value in rest. But these ideas never find any shape or specificity. The production is also oddly sleepy and, despite the four elliptical machines on stage, features barely any running.
Stamps does find magic in one quiet, late-night moment of connection between Aaliyah, Eli and two other “runners” they meet along their travels, Quin (Mariyea) and Jacquel (Danté Charles Crichlow). When the four sit together and attempt, awkwardly and haltingly, to find their way towards a connection, the language comes alive. Here are four confused kids, floating in the darkness, wondering what it is they are even running towards.
Clown Gym's Clown Flex: a joyful, messy variety show
Presented by PhysFestNYC at Stella Adler Center for the Arts
Festival season can be tough. Too many shows, many tackling dark, difficult themes. So what a refreshing delight is the arrival of PhysFest NYC, a playful new festival celebrating the art of physical theater. (The name could use work — physical theater here refers to clowning, mime and so on, but I did initially think it was a festival celebrating buildings.)
PhysFest offered a broad mix of work for its kick-off year. I attended a variety show hosted by Clown Gym, a jubilant evening packed with a broad array of clownery: Richard Saudek’s “Stool Act,” one man’s valiant struggle to sit down on a stool; “Yoga For Billionaires,” Sarah Raj’s hilarious send-up of obnoxious yoga retreats; and Dante Fuoco’s comically tragic “A King Dyed Pink Is Doomed to Die,” about a pigeon dyed pink for a gender reveal and then tossed back into the wild.
Clown master Bill Irwin was the evening’s special guest and final performer, and host Julia Proctor riffed amusingly on his presence throughout the evening, at one point performing a selection from Waiting For Godot and demanding Irwin’s feedback. (He informed Proctor that women are not allowed to perform Godot, and that this infraction would be reported.) All of the artists' love and respect for Irwin was delivered back by the man himself tenfold, and the whole evening felt like a warm hug. Hopefully, this is the first of many PhysFests to come.
The Promise
Presented by PROTOTYPE at HERE Arts Center
A musically thrilling but ultimately frustrating musical journey. Sort of like Fleabag meets The Bengsons’ Hundred Days, The Promise is a song cycle created and performed by Dutch singer-songwriter Wende, co-created by Chloe Lamford and co-written with Isobel Waller-Bridge (Phoebe’s sister).
Strictly as a concert, it is a rollicking success: Wende’s vocal range is astonishing, Imogen Knight’s movement work deft and energizing, and the intense, roof-shaking sound work gets the heart racing. The songs, some sad and slow, others stadium-tour level bangers, prove a perfect mix.
But what is this show about, exactly? According to the show synopsis, the topic is “the complexities of human relationships in our modern era,” which points to the problem — The Promise is about everything, and therefore nothing. I learnt afterwards that the lyrics were written by five writers through collective workshops, which made sense. Wende performs these numbers skillfully, but she is not telling her story, nor following any individual journey, a choice which holds the show back from greatness.
The Black Circus of the Republic of Bantu
Presented by New York Live Arts, as part of Live Artery & Under the Radar
Among the most audacious and unsettling theatrical pieces I’ve seen in years. Performance artist Albert Ibokwe Khoza recreates the human zoos and exhibitions which paraded Black bodies before Western audiences in the 1800s (and even into the 1950s). Khoza first takes on the persona of a Bantu native on display, stripping naked, dancing wildly and rubbing their naked body against every individual audience member. (Consent is not sought.) Then Khoza shifts into the role of Western exhibitor, pulling up two audience members, placing monkey masks over their faces and screaming at them to dance for us.
I haven’t even mentioned that upon arrival, each audience member’s hands were tied together (loosely) with a piece of string. Whether you are called up or not, each of us is part of the display.
This is not a subtle piece, but it works. The central role-reversal device is potent and effective. Our brief discomfort, visceral though it may be, is minuscule compared to the lifelong suffering which so many endured. And no-one in the room is putting themselves through more than Knoza, a magnificent and fearless performer.
Knoza wishes to end with a traditional Bantu dance for us, but questions, in recorded voiceover, whether they can celebrate the form for a Western audience without falling into exotification. By the end, they do dance for us, and it is beautiful. But the question hangs in the air, and there is no easy answer.
ROAR!
Created by Lindsey Hope Pearlman & BREAD Arts Collective; presented by The Exponential Festival at Cloud City
An enjoyable if wildly overstuffed musical retelling of the story behind “the most dangerous movie ever made.” Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren’s infamously disastrous Roar! featured over 150 lions, tigers and other dangerous animals, who the couple also lived with. Around 100 crew members were bitten or maimed during filming. Cinematographer Jan de Bont was scalped by a lion, while actress Melanie Griffith — Marshall and Hendren’s daughter — was mauled and nearly lost an eye.
There are so many insane, fascinating, elements to this story. Rather than picking a focus, BREAD Arts Collective ambitiously attempts to include them all. So we careen between narration by Griffith’s daughter Dakota Johnson (Elizabeth May, doing an excellent Johnson impression), confessional interviews with Marshall’s dopey sons (as Johnny, Wes Zurick is a standout) and even meta-theatrical gossip sessions among the cats themselves, baffled by their masters’ idiocy.
The tonal whiplash proves overwhelming. Writer/director Lindsey Hope Pearlman wants to have fun with this story while still acknowledging the horrible trauma this shoot caused, dueling motives that can’t quite coexist. But Andrew Lynch’s songs are witty and sharp, and the staging is ingenious. And I could never be mad at any show featuring a song titled, “The Ballad of Jan de Bont.”