here arts center

Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Boat Comedy, Puppetry, Being Very Online

By

WEDNESDAY

producer Catherine Woodard, playwright Stefani Kuo, and director Theo Maltz (image courtesy of Corkscrew Theater Festival)

delicacy of a puffin heart
July 25-August 5 at Paradise Factory, various times: $24 (pay what you can on July 28)

Presented as part of the second annual Corkscrew Theater Festival, a festival of new plays and readings showcasing up-and-coming artists, this play by writer, poet, and performer Stefani Kuo tackles the weighty topic of how female friendship and love perseveres in the midst of loss, lies, and decades of time. It does so by telling two stories: one of a lesbian couple trying to conceive in 1990s San Francisco, and one of their daughter 20 years later living in that same apartment and coping with illness. It can be hard to be a person who is consistently both living life and loving people, and this play seems to serve as a reminder of that. More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

#StopSESTA, Lobotomies, and More Performance Picks

By

THURSDAY

(poster by Mikey Heller)

Tim Platt: Live in COWncert
Thursday, April 26 at The Brick, 9:30 pm: $10

Many of us grew up watching Sesame Street. Comedian Tim Platt has recently written a song for this beloved children’s show, but that isn’t the only song he’s penned. In fact, you can see Platt’s entire repertoire of comedy music on Thursday night at The Brick when he plays a concert as part of the Brooklyn Comedy Collective’s residence at the Williamsburg theater. Sure, comedy music can be grating or cringe-inducing, but Tim’s music is neither of those things. Well, unless it’s trying to be. So, come one come all, and open your ears for songs about vegetables (as someone who once wrote an entire play about broccoli, this excites me) and all other sorts of topics, with accompanist Ben Kling and opening act Eudora Peterson. Maybe, just maybe, there will also be a cow. More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news 1 Comment

Placing A Florida Sex Offender Community On the New York Stage

By

The Cast of Life Jacket Theatre Company’s production of AMERICA IS HARD TO SEE (photo: T. Charles Erickson)

You may be familiar with the fact that registered sex offenders have to appear on an online registry or disclose their criminal status to neighbors or employers. But in Florida, a state deemed “the harshest state for sex offenders,” that’s just a sampling of the restrictions these people deemed the lowest of the low are saddled with post-conviction. When you can’t live within 1,000 feet of places like schools and parks and the world has cast eternal aspersions on you, where can you go? For those in or near the tiny city of Pahokee, Florida, there’s Miracle Village, an isolated community in the midst of the sugarcane, waiting with open arms.

More →

Tags: , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Clickbait, Cults, and… Miss Frizzle

By

(image via HERE Arts Center)

America Is Hard To See
Now through February 24 at HERE Arts Center, 8:30 pm: $35-45

Do you ever have an idea and sort of less-than-halfway execute that idea, and then spend a really long time procrastinating doing any more work on it and then find out that someone has beat you to the punch but in a way that seems really interesting and cool so you can’t help but appreciate it? Whether you have or you haven’t, that very thing happened to me with this new play. In college, I started writing a play about a trailer park community of sex offenders with nowhere else to live, based on the real manifestations of this phenomenon. I never finished it, or even came close, because writing plot is hard. Life Jacket Theater Company did, and they even traveled to Florida’s Miracle Village and interviewed its residents to create their show. Add in a helping of methodist hymns and theatricality, and you’ve got the recipe for a play that seems truly nuanced and exciting, particularly in today’s tumultuous time of #metoo reckonings. More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Patriarchal Trash, Woodland Puppetry, Black Remembrance

By

WEDNESDAY

(flyer via Fire Signs Present / Facebook)

Fire Signs Present: Sociable Sagittarians
Wednesday, November 29 at Artichoke Pizza, 9 pm: FREE

Artichoke Pizza is known far and wide for serving up very large, very rich, very cream-laden slices of pizza to late-night revelers and hungry lunch-searchers alike. But when they opened a Bushwick location in the old Northeast Kingdom space not too long ago, they also began hosting events and shows in their basement. One such monthly show is a woman-centric variety show helmed by Fire Signs Present, a duo (of fire signs, of course) comprised of performers Meg McDermott and Nancy Pop. Each month, they book women and femme comedians, storytellers, musicians, and anything in between, typically who belong to the astrological sign of the month, but not always. (Full disclosure: I performed at last month’s Scorpio show. Fellow Scorpio Risings…hello.) This time around, it is all about Sagittarius folk, specifically Hannah Abney, Thoughtress, Brittany Sherrod, and Aston Hollins McClanahan. Plus, there is free prosecco. More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Conspiracy Puppets, Thomas Paine, Synth Improv

By

THURSDAY

(image via Paul Pinto / Facebook)

Thomas Paine In Violence
Now through November 18 at HERE Arts Center, 8:30 pm: $25

While Paul Pinto may be known by some for his work as a performer in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, he is also a highly interesting composer in his own right. In collaboration with director Rick Burkhardt, he has whipped up an electro-acoustic opera centering around founding father Thomas Paine and a surreal, dreamlike radio station from another planet. Paine, played by vocalist Joan La Barbara, is attempting to deliver various messages on economic justice while a raucous chorus of sound unfolds around him. The show in particular concerns Paine’s 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice, considered a precursor of basic income theory and planted seeds for ideas such as Social Security and taxing those who owned land in order to provide for those who did not.

More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Demystifying Sex, Activist Storytelling, Adolescent Witchcraft

By

WEDNESDAY

(image via HERE Arts Center)

The Sex Myth: A Devised Play
August 16-20 at HERE Arts Center, 8:30 pm (Sunday at 4 pm): $35

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to state that most of America had either an awful sex ed or none at all. Sure, you can take to the internet in all its glory to learn a thing or two, but formal sex education programs are notoriously lacking. This has created a hush-hush attitude around carnal matters, which leads to shame, misinformation, sensationalism, and a whole host of other not-so-great stuff. A new devised show, The Sex Myth, uses real stories and experiences to expand conceptions of what is “normal” in bedrooms and bodies alike.

More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Performance Picks: Magicians, Flashlight Ghost Stories, and Queer Debauchery

By

WEDNESDAY

(flyer courtesy of Patrick Terry)

Wondershow
Wednesday, August 2 at House of Yes, 8 pm: $20

Ok. I know what you’re thinking. You want to see a magic show, but you don’t know where to go. Well, as it turns out there is one happening tonight. While you ooh and ahh over my magnificent mind-reading skills, Wondershow is gearing up to show you mind-bending tricks at the Bushwick venue with some of the bendiest bodies I’ve ever seen, House of Yes.

Wondershow is hosted by magician and mentalist Eric Walton. I would explain his work by relating it to someone else’s, but the event description calls him “incomparable,” and I don’t want a magic spell to be cast on me if I disobey. The show also features mind reader Eric Dittelman (of America’s Got Talent), knife-thrower The Great Throwdini, “Western variety arts” master Chris McDaniel, and ballerina/burlesque performer Aurora Black. For those ageless or nostalgic folk mourning the loss of the early 20th century burlesque and vaudeville shows that used to be so commonplace in areas like Midtown, surely you’ll be in for a treat.

More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

Bejeweled Opera, Empowering Blurred Lines, and More Performance Picks

By

WEDNESDAY

(image courtesy of Hallie Haas)

(image courtesy of Hallie Haas)

Masterpiece Classic: Women in Art
Wednesday, February 8 at UCB Chelsea, 8 pm: $7

It is generally agreed upon that art is Good. However, the art world is where things get a little more polarized. This new character-based show by comedian and actress Hallie Haas takes on the type of people who consider themselves high and mighty creators, the type of people who take themselves reeeeeeally seriously. The premise is that Laura Linney, of course, has gathered together seven of the most sophisticated and acclaimed women artists for an evening that feels a lot like a certain public access television show. Only probably a lot weirder. Especially considering Haas will be playing every character. This spoof on PBS classics feels especially timely, considering I just got an email asking me to sign an online petition so that Donald Trump doesn’t get rid of PBS Kids. Please, think of the children. And the art.

More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Arts & Culture, news No Comments

New Play The Dudleys! Is An 8-Bit Game Come To Life

By

(photo: Charles Quittner)

(photo: Charles Quittner)

When Pokémon Go became splashed across the screens of America and eager video game players of all ages roamed the streets rather than took to the couch, it caused quite a stir. While that’s died down a fair bit, others have interpreted the combination of reality and video games differently.

More →

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
1 2