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Theater. Like, plays. And stuff. 6
Cat.: art, artist, audio, Brooklyn, event, events, local, NYC, theater, todoMy cousin is coming to town and she wants to go to a play. Fair enough: I live in New York City. I ought to be able to hook that up. Only, I don’t go to plays and the people I know who do fall into difficult categories. Either they love Broadway (I don’t) or they are so immersed in theater that they don’t have a good answer. They don’t know what to recommend because they don’t know what to suggest. No one knows how to say “Well, I’ve been wanting to see …” There’s no Good Reads for theater, where I can skim my friends favorites. Which is part of why I can count on one hand the number of staged performances of anything that I’ve seen in the last decade. Actually, that is totally not true. I see more live performing arts than that.
It is too easy to say “gahh, not Broadway” but what I really mean is that I don’t want sparkly musicals. When I was 10 I loved Cats. I also loved Les Miserables. I probably would have loved anything other big bang musicals at that age. It was like the circus, only better. People like what they like and there’s nothing wrong with that (she says with a snicker) but it won’t make me happy to go see Cats today.
Broadway is more complex than that. I saw Angels in America with May and Kiffy. I don’t actually know if it was the Broadway cast but it was a short run in San Francisco. It was great and I’d see it all over again. On Broadway if that is where it was playing.
I loved the Berkeley Rep production of Bright Room Called Day. I do like more than just Kushner, honest. If someone were to stage a production of The terrible but unfinished story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia I would probably faint. I would certainly go. I came across it ten (sneeze. really? yes. ten.) years ago when Jason and I tried to write a play about Cambodia that got as far as Henry Kissenger before we discovered that we weren’t very good collaborators just as our respective lives were intervening to flummox the project anyway. He went on to become a famous playwright. Me, not so much. Pipe Bomb Sonata was excellent, though I never saw it staged, just read it. If I were a more dutiful friend I would have more to say about the rest of his resume but … oh nevermind.
I would have loved to go see Tanque on stage. I don’t actually know why I didn’t. Ganso bought tickets. A whole posse went. We’ll get back to that, later, my inability to just plug in when I know I’d have a good time.
To entertain my cousin I have to look forward, not back. It doesn’t have to be straight theater. Performance art is cool. I’d gladly take Gabriela to see the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea sail down the Hudson, but the flotilla’s nearly mothballed by now. Once upon a time, I went to some spaghetti dinners at PS 122, where I first saw Coco Rosie. They made me weak in the knees. Great Small Works last updated their schedule in 2003, so I’m guessing there are no spaghetti dinners coming up. Everyone else might be over her, but I still think that Laurie Anderson is a genius. Moby Dick was genius. Actually, it wasn’t. It was just good, but I loved it.
On the other hand, family friends took us to see Love, Janis in the West Village whenever it was that it was plastered all over busses and playing in the West Village. It was painful. I might have loved to read her letters home, but seeing them staged all sugar coated was just weird. Also, no one sings like Janis Joplin. Staging a performance based entirely around covers of Janis Joplin is bound to be agonizing. I don’t think better singers or better acting would have improved it. I still think about it a lot. I have it filed away with The Cockettes in my personal history of the San Francisco my mother lived in when she was my age. Except she wasn’t my age yet. She was a lot younger. She’s going to call me up and tell me that actually her life wasn’t nearly as tragic or arty or drug addled as Janis Joplin or Sweet Pam, but I still like to imagine that San Francisco swirling around her. What I’m trying to say is that I got a lot out of Love, Janis, but I would come up with about eight excuses to avoid seeing it again.
Glengary Glen Ross, which we really did see on Broadway, was excellent. But I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have because we saw it on Broadway and I wasn’t in the mood for the neighborhood and the whole sensibility of going out for proper theater. Plus there isn’t anyplace that I’d want to eat anywhere near 42nd Street. It isn’t a scene that works for me. It wasn’t for me, though. It is N’s favorite play and the tickets were his birthday present. So I shouldn’t be whining. Plus, on account of it being his favorite play, we own the DVD and I’ve watched it a hundred times and it isn’t my favorite play so the 101th viewing was just that.
I know that atmosphere matters to me. So does location. I don’t want to be treated like royalty, I don’t want to feel like I’m dressed all wrong or everyone around me is going to drive back to Connecticut later. I’d like to be able to see the stage. I’d rather not be way the hell up town. Brooklyn would be great. Some of these things are contradictory, I realize. There’s as much society at the Soho Rep as anywhere on 42nd Street, but it is a society I feel a lot more comfortable with. Or a little more comfortable with. Walking distance from home trumps everything else. BAM or a smallish downtown theater, is what I’m saying.
Facebook reports that Jason is planning to go see Oh What War, and Tanque has tickets for A Kite Cut Loose in the Middle of the Sky which is damn useful information to have. Jason’s blog is useful, too, he posted about Blasted at the Soho Rep. Only Oh What War is an option for 9/26.
Creative Time has a whole festival in progress coming up. Some talks about art and politics, which isn’t exactly theater but it is something to do. Good luck figuring out when anything is happening, their website is to sexy for a schedule.
Eyebeam (also too avant garde to offer a usable website. Though they do have a decent calendar.) has some interesting work up but they’re art, so their openings are on Thursdays. Lucky for Gabriela, they won’t be hacking Linux onto PDAs until later in October. I’d ditch her for that. I want a mood tracking database on my Treo.
Between the Lines is back at BAM. Let me know if you want to come: Oct 16, Nov 6, Dec 18.
Other places I sometimes go but haven’t in a while, most of which don’t have anything on tap for the 26th:
Galapagos,
Free103point9, Not an Alternative (okay, NaA is different but I can’t take a cousin to Jelly. BAM
Seriously, though: back to theater. Where do you look? Are there plays or other staged performances you’ve been wanting to see? Thinking of seeing?