Can You Hear Me Now?

Recommendations for the coming week; Unspecific Fear of the Future Invades Chelsea art scene

What: Sweet Paprika
Location: The D Lounge (near Union Square)
Date Friday’s; Check the web site
Cost: $5
Bohemian Factor: Low
Geek Factor: Just enough of us to get the obscure jokes.

What: Chelsea Art Galleries
Location: W. 25th and W. 26th Street
Date Mondays-Fridays in Summer
Cost: FREE
Bohemian Factor: High
Geek Factor: Low

It looks to be a good week ahead for the bohemian on a shoestring!

I’m excited to discover Sweet Paprika, at $5, a chance to hear some talented comics (a happy proportion of them female) in a low-key atmosphere. Not every punch line is a bull’s eye, but the freshness of the talent and lack of artifice, in addition to an intimate atmosphere, makes for a ridiculously good deal. Paprika host and comic Ophira Eisenburg was flying solo the night I came (she usually teams with Allison Castillo) but she definitely held her own. And drinks for under $10! I felt like I was in Brooklyn.

And as long as I seem to be unable to disassociate myself with robots, puppets and comics (no doubt some suitable combination of all three will show up sooner or later), I have to plug this workshop tomorrow at 6th and B Gardens in Alphabet City, where wanna-be illustrators can learn how to draw their favorite comic book characters. I do so wish I could come, just to see who shows up, but alas, I will hopefully be another event, attending my first Warm Up at PS 1, in Queens.

Tomorrow night is also The Tank’s three-year anniversary party. Their mission of providing creative, affordable public events and a creative environment for artists “engaged in the pursuit of new ideas” is admirable, and their mercurial acquisition of new locations in the hellish NYC real estate market is truly Herculean. I dropped by their Chashama digs not long ago for a little comedy and found myself singled out by the singer/comedienne at the microphone. Hey, what girl doesn’t want to be the target of a vulgar serenade?

For those who ever have weekdays free, I recommend several Chelsea art exhibits that seem to offer a great deal of whimsy, but are apparently inspired by the artists’ tempestuous premonitions of our imminent doom from commercialism, tourism, imperialism, and other evil things yuppies tacitly condone. While I confess that the connection was not always intuitive, the three shows were much more along the lines of thoughtful, provocative and silly than just plain “downer.”

I first saw Saya Woolfalk’s fuzzy, tentacled creations at the 2004 Scope Art Fair, resembling the kinds of made-up species that are used to host children’s edutainment. For the video now on display at CUE Art Foundation, she puts actual people into these costumes and then films them performing choreography that could simultaneously be warfare or uninhibited sex. Intriguingly, it’s an interracial couple, but we can only tell by their hands. The artist’s states that her work illustrates the “commoditized representations of desire,” and perhaps that’s why it’s a little creepy to project malice onto these creatures, with all their floppy body parts. They do seem vaguely familiar, either from a fabric softener commercial or an 80’s cartoon or a Stephen Spielberg movie, it is just hard to say.

The undercurrent of malice was definitely more detectable at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, where “Montezuma’s Revenge” is intended to showcase rifs on tourism and the inclination of, presumably Western society, to fetishize the exotic. According to the press release, “the longing for paradise has been transformed by manipulative industries,” and while that certainly was evident in many of the photos, I couldn’t help but fall for the enormous jellyfish hanging from the ceiling. Although the exhibition copy warned that these guys “convey an anxious tone, despite their tactile and luminescent qualities,” I couldn’t help but think that they would make a great apartment accessory for parties, if I had $20,000 to spare. Hey, here’s a great opportunity for one of those “manipulative industries” – perhaps they can talk to the artist about a licensing agreement?

I knew on my first go round that the artists participating in the James Cohen Gallery’s “A Brighter Day” exhibit had some weighty issues on their minds, although “collective anxiety” wouldn’t necessarily have been my first choice for the underlying theme. (Although, I supppose, not a bad idea to tap into everyone's doom-and-gloom, given the most recent implosion in the Middle East) The work presented is certainly cynical, but more in the smart-ass vein, than the nihilistic one, so it's not always clear whether or not these pieces are delivering an urgent admonition about a grim future or just toying with us by self-referentially dismissing their own value. (One amusing print on the wall bears the following text in multihued colors: “When I Am Happy I Will No Longer Have To Make These.”)

There is other text, including a bench made by the ubiquitous Jenny Holzer (I won’t give away the message inscribed in it) and a wall that sports “I Deserve Less” scrawled over and over again, presumably from an over-privileged adult succumbing to ennui. But my favorites were the visual pieces – a colony of mushrooms, growing more alien and menacing with each new vertical layer; a living room wall with high brow accessories showing missing pieces, as if they’ve been violently ripped apart; an untitled work that invokes a wild configuration of what could be body parts or machinery; and well, a sort of cell phone demon camouflaging in a tapestry created by two filmmakers from London. I am definitely not doing justice in my descriptions, but believe me, if my cell phone started making that kind of face at me, I’d succumb to “collective anxiety” as well.

You Could Learn A Lot From a Bunny*

Chashama’s Dance Festival Presents the Finance Set With Options…(but not that kind)

*with all due respect to Vince and Larry

What: Oasis Festival 2006
Location: Chashama at 217 E. 42nd Street
Date July 10-July 21, 2006
Cost: FREE
Bohemian Factor: Performers: High; Audience: Low (This IS midtown, after all…)
Geek Factor: Low

Audiences, especially I-need-my-wireless-device-stapled-to-my-person New Yorkers, are used to getting instructions before performances. However, at Chashama, when a woman in a red dress tells her audience to turn on their cell phones, and in fact, make a phone call during the piece, nobody seems concerned.

It turns out that choreographer Erin Malley is counting on the audience to dictate what her dancers are going to do next, based on phone calls, a deck of cards, and doorbell-like buttons on the window that produce WB cartoon-like sound effects.

Of course, the fact that the MC for this event is a tall and aggressive man in a giant blue bunny costume is already a pretty good indicator that the work presented as Chashama’s Oasis 2006 Festival is going to be, say, a tad different from a night at The Joyce.

Oasis is a festival of modern dance, now in its ninth season, presenting 20-minute pieces by a roster of 40 choreographers for free between July 10 and July 21. They are performed on the stage in front of Chashama’s window onto 42nd Street, so that those already in attendance have the additional entertainment of watching not just the dances, but the evolving facial expressions and body language of briefcase-carrying midtown wheelers and dealers who stop, look up from their cell phone head sets, and become confused, revolted, excited, or all of the above, by the performance just inside the window. Many of them, wrested out the crowd by our Bunny-Man, walk in through the open door and add themselves to the audience, while others hesitate for a minute and resist the weirdness. At any rate, the decision-making moment is always fun to watch.

Did I mention there was dancing?

Malley’s piece features several dancers embodying different florescent colors (with their wigs, they could double as the Color Kids). But this is no “Choose Your Own Adventure” style improvised dance- (e.g. I wouldn’t recommend shouting “Do the Macarena!”). Each dancer has a cell phone whose ring sends them off on a mini-solo (the numbers for each are displayed on posters on the window). Movement phrases correspond to a series of large mysterious cards with words written on them, picked out by audience members/passers by. (The cards have the phrased “Play the Dance” written on them, with pictures of – mysteriously – dollar bills). This is not the place to be if you want to shun the limelight. Ms. Malley will see you trying to blend in with the crowd and thrust the deck of cards your way.

Despite the horrific humidity, at least half of the audience is persuaded by Malley to watch the piece from the Chashama’s window outside, where the four noise-making buttons have been suctioned-cupped to the windows (“Go ahead and PUSH our buttons!” she yells out authoritatively.) Some were less shy about this than others: one of the very well-groomed, youngish executive types is particularly zealous about pushing all the buttons, which we are advised not to do as it would be difficult for the dancers to follow all the "requests" simultaneously. While the theme song of Green Acres sends the Dancer Dressed in Green into motion, Bunny Man comes out and announces he needs a cigarette.

“You came outside to tell us THAT?” Malley asks in mock horror.

Later on, Malley is shadowed, inside the window, by another dancer in a similar red dress and blond wig, who tempts her with an apple. The choreographer seems to think about eating fruit a lot (a banana shows up later on), but of course, who doesn’t?

Malley’s show is just one of the 40, of what is sure to be a varied program (the preceding number featured two women locked into mortal combat; intense and intimate, though not gratuitous, it did lure a large number of male spectators inside).

What Bunny-Man has announced to potential viewers is also articulated to me by one of the dancers (in a slightly less confrontational way, of course): that the purpose is to make modern dance accessible to those who never would never consider heading to the Joyce or City Center, who view it as too esoteric. By plopping a visceral, interactive experience practically on their laps as they head to and from work, Malley’s piece and the Oasis Festival could entice those in the Charles Schwab set to slow down and push the buttons.

Seeing Red, Part 2

Exploiting the sinister mystique of Soviet-era paranoia makes for riveting courtroom drama…and a sexy literary haven.


Location: KGB Bar
Date June 25, 2006
Cost: FREE
Bohemian Factor: Yes, But On Their Best Behavior (Hipsters do not dare act cliquish at KGB)
Geek Factor: Low

The menacing aura of Societ-era intrigue -referenced in the Keen Company's most recent play- is put to far more glamorous use at KGB, a 23-year old fixture in the East Village that is also a beloved arty enclave for rising literary talent. At the season’s conclusion of their Sunday Night Fiction series, authors Scott Snyder, Anthony Giardina and Kathryn Weber, read chapters from their recently published work, and - despite the raucous and intrusive noise of a theatre performance going on in an adjacent space, the cramped standing-room only density of bodies, and the less than stellar miking - it demonstrated once again that these readings are far and above more engaging than your standard, explicitly commercial bookstore readings. Although the Sunday Night Fiction series resumes in the fall, there are diverse literary events at KGB throughout the summer (An August 9 event offers judaica + erotica. I love New York!) Suzanne Dottino does an excellent job of curating the series: the voices presented by all three were so uniquely distinct from one another, that differences in their narrative styles were heavily pronounced. (They also recently launched their own literary magazine, as well)

Appropriately, enough the space use to be a Ukrainian Labor Home. Soviet-themed paraphernalia and all red walls reinforce the speakeasy-ish feeling, and imbues the space with an intimidating sense of history, even if feigned (it was founded two years after the USSR’s collapse in 1993). The guy sitting on my left mentioned he had come in the early 1990’s, and he was pretty sure “that the bartender is the same guy.”

Yes, the crowd is self-consciously arty – chances are the people next to you know one of the authors, and/or are writers themselves. They will ask you which one of the writers you know; but they are just as amiable if you tell them you are not.

And what beats a reading where the crowd is full of old acquaintances rather than fawning strangers? They know when to push the speaker’s buttons, whether something is truly funny or expected, and when a line of dialogue is truly surprising. Such allegiances tend to turn a rote one-way performance into a two-dialogue. Young-ish, early career writers suddenly feel the need to justify their artistic choices to their familiars, forging spontaneous moments that would clearly not be happening at your nearest Barnes & Noble. Earlier this spring, an up-and-coming young writer of a new collection of short stories paused upon a phrase he wrote to describe a self-loathing, religious gay man’s capitulation to his carnal impulses. Suddenly self-conscious, he interrupted himself about five seconds into the next passage to muse over his choice of words: “That’s a rather creepy phrase isn’t it?‘ Non-vaginal warmth.’ I don’t think I realized that until hearing it out loud.”

Seeing Red, Part 1

Exploiting the sinister mystique of Soviet-era paranoia makes for riveting courtroom drama…and a sexy literary haven.

What In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Location: Connelly Theater
Date June 23, 2006 (The show has completed its run, but check out the Keen Company’s web site for future productions,)
Cost: $19 (I know, I know...My next post will be about something free, I promise!)
Bohemian Factor: Low
Geek Factor: Lower Than You’d Think

The extreme conservatism of the Bush administration, combined with the opprobrium it has incited among left-leaning New Yorkers, has in fact blessed every play that addresses war, greed, civil rights or corruption into an allegory jackpot for the downtown theatre community. But so many productions have been singled out by their directors, reviewers or PR agents for their incisive allusions to today’s headlines that I fear this phenomenon is becoming a bit of an irresistible trap, especially south of 14th street, (although admittedly, even blockbuster musicals appear to want to get a piece of the partisan pie.) I fear that referencing a war already unpopular with audience members also provides some a too-convenient dramaturgical shortcut, allowing director and playwright and actor off the hook when it comes to delving any script’s specific core ideas.

It is with that caveat in mind that I went to see “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” While I hesitate before using this space as a platform to review plays, especially those that have since closed, what I experienced was such a perfect example of audience-actor chemistry, that I find myself urging thoughtful theatre-goers to check out future work performed by the Keen Company, an off-off-Broadway company, whose mission is, apparently to produce sincere plays. Given my wariness when artists of any kind renounce irony, my eyes were beginning to roll before I’d even bought my ticket.

But I could save myself the trouble (or at least, my ocular reflexes). If anyone has earned the right to invoke the most fearful predictions on where our current leaders are taking us, Carl Forsman, artistic director of Keen Company, certainly makes the case. The play was written in 1968, with the shadow of McCarthy era memories lingering not too far behind. In Heinar Kipphardt’s script, physicist Robert Oppenheimer, infamous for his role in overseeing the construction of the world’s first atomic bomb, is facing the humiliating and career-decimating circumstances of losing his security clearance at the elite Los Alamos laboratory, the same lab where his leadership brought him stardom the previous decade. While the conclusion of the US’s engagement with Japan brought the scientist stratospheric fame, the grisly comprehension of his role in the mass destruction at Hiroshima haunted Oppenheimer, understandably reticent about launching a nuclear arms race with the Soviets. During his hearing before the board of the Atomic Energy Commission, Oppenheimer, portrayed with endearing humanity by Thomas Jay Ryan, faced accusations that the US’s inability to manufacture an even more lethal hydrogen bomb with the haste desired by the Eisenhower administration was a result of his communist sympathies and other “unpatriotic” inclinations.

This play is not unique in focusing on Oppenheimer, whose multidisciplinary gifts and artist-size angst has made him a popular biography subject in every possible medium. While a three-hour courtroom drama with a minimum of action might sound like a hard sell, the monologues of testimony (and, as a courtroom drama, there are a lot of these) are a mini-roller coaster ride, teasing audiences with alternating doses of certainty, doubt and suspense as to whether the voices of reason will triumph against the draconian steps of a hawkish government. Of course, over three hours, no one would actually care about this question at all if the characters faltered in commanding our sympathies. Contemporary parallels were discreetly implied, except when zealous audience members started to clap as a character defended civil liberties or bitterly condemned the excesses of the anti-communist hysteria. The understated delivery, and the subtlety of the idea war set up by the script didn’t call for this (the applause quickly died out quickly, as it became clear that this kind of response just didn't fit into the world created by the play, in which no one loses their composure, no matter how irate- or demoralized- they become.)

May plays about science, of late, have taken on the form of raucous pastiche cabarets, and well, this is definitely not one of those. It is somber and gradual, but the able cast of actors imparted real fear, particularly the prosecution. The deeply impassioned and articulate arguments, presented by actors Rocco Sisto and Matthew Rauch were terrifying in the forcefulness of their logic. In a country in the grips of an anti-Soviet frenzy, the well-intentioned defense team, with its cohesive but self-righteous blandness, is no match for this kind of ardor, especially coming from those who genuinely believed they were fighting for freedom, democracy and of course, mom and apple pie.

But the primary reason I felt that the show is squarely in the middle of the kinds of entertainment I consider to be populist, despite its esoteric subject matter, was because of what happened during intermission: everyone in the audience turned to their neighbors, to ask them what they thought. On a Friday night, a young couple -typical of east village denizens - entered into heated but cordial dialogue with a group of theatre-goers in their 60’s, all lingering in the rain to debate the parallels to today and whether Oppenheimer has sold out on his friends. Then of course, the conversation turned to where they all had dinner reservations. Well, it is New York, still after all. And three hours is a long time to sit on an empty stomach.