Eliana Willis

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    Theater Heads North, and in Every Direction at Once

    A psychological drama from Japan and a classic English comedy are among the high-contrast offerings in the Berkshires and Hudson Valley.Theater is confusing this summer. As the return to live, in-person performance accelerates, many productions conceived under earlier limitations are emerging in a world that looks different than expected.Last week I saw two shows that exemplify the extremes of this mixy moment. One, “The Dark Master,” a psychological drama from Japan, was supposed to be part of a live North American tour but emerged as something remarkably different, remote yet in person, with virtual-reality goggles. The other, a revival of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” was supposed to take place in a socially distanced, open-sided tent but wound up tightly packed into an indoor theater, with everyone breathing the same air, albeit through masks.That the two productions moved in opposite directions — one toward stricter precautions, one toward laxer — may be more than an accident of timing; it seems to be an example of content calling out to form. “The Dark Master” is as dour and antisocial as “Earnest” is giddy and garrulous, but both productions are intense experiences in part because the shifting terrain of coronavirus precautions has made them more themselves.I have trouble imagining how “The Dark Master,” which I saw at PS21, in Chatham, N.Y., and which continues this week at Japan Society in Manhattan, could ever have been performed live. Adapted and directed by Kuro Tanino from an indie manga, it stars Kiyobumi Kaneko as the owner and chef of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Tokyo. Over the course of the play, he forcibly turns the business over to a customer, demonstrating his best recipes and worst scowls.Kiyofumi Kaneko in “The Dark Master,” an adaptation of a manga. A live audience views the production through virtual-reality goggles.Japan Society.I say that Kaneko stars, but that’s not quite accurate. As rendered through the virtual-reality goggles, “The Dark Master” now stars you. Each audience member — there’s room for 10 pods of one or two people — in effect plays the customer dragooned into service; without actually moving at all, you become implicated in the action: cooking, eating, sleeping. Kaneko (who, like the other actors, dubbed his lines in English) doesn’t exist in real space in the show, yet he leans into you so closely that you may feel the urge, as I did, to push your chair away. At the same time the smells of the sizzling garlic and steak are urging you closer.Virtual reality is as yet a plaything in the theater, not really mature as an expressive device, and yet its use in “The Dark Master” emphasizes the isolation and interiority of the story and also of life during the pandemic. Kaneko may get in your face — and later, you may be troubled to find a prostitute you hire doing even more — but I found myself just as fascinated by my own weird hands, which of course were not really mine, as I could tell by their manicure. Food aiming for my mouth seemed to hit my sternum instead; I won’t even speak of the bathroom.Though I was not always sure who I was or what was happening, that seemed to be part of the point. Alienation and paranoia, exhausted themes of avant-garde theater, came roaring back to relevance in “The Dark Master,” in part because of Kaneko’s engagement in the material but in part because of mine. (Or yours.) The removal of all external sensation — you wear not only goggles but also headphones — has the effect of unmooring you from the pilings of your own personality.That effect is enhanced by the theater, a beautiful, reconfigurable indoor-outdoor space that appears to have landed like an exotic bird in the midst of a 100-acre former apple orchard in this tiny Hudson Valley town. It’s not the first place you would expect to encounter cutting-edge performance, yet PS21 offers little else. In “The Dark Master,” the contrast between the fragrant fields of astilbe and the pungent prison of your own perceptions makes both feel a bit more precious.The Unicorn Theater, where I saw a preview of the Berkshire Theater Group’s production of “Earnest,” could not be more different: a traditional auditorium with 122 seats near the tony Main Street gift shops and galleries of Stockbridge, Mass. If the play’s characters, Londoners with grand country homes, were contemporary Americans instead of Victorians, this is where they might summer. Wilde’s comedy, directed by the playwright David Auburn, thus seems like an evening’s entertainment in a local home, if its owners were people of exceptional wit.As Lady Bracknell, Harriet Harris makes a convincing dragon in the Oscar Wilde play.Emma K. Rothenberg-Ware.Wilde’s wit is tricky, though; it sits on bedrock of great moral heft, yet if played with any weightiness, it droops. The four lovers are enmeshed in webs of superfluousness — Gwendolyn and Cicely mostly concerned with marrying a man named Earnest; Algernon and Jack obsessed with muffins and cucumber sandwiches — but they must believe these things to be of utmost importance. And Lady Bracknell, whose faith in her own values is absolute, must dispense justice as if it were meringue.At the early preview I attended, Auburn’s well-cast company was approaching the right balance. As Bracknell, the great Harriet Harris was still applying the finishing coat of comedy to her detailed, nuanced performance, but already made a convincing dragon. Conversely, the lovers (Rebecca Brooksher, Claire Saunders, Shawn Fagan and Mitchell Winter) were as yet too focused on the comedy to achieve it fully, missing opportunities to let the repercussions of their actions sink in. When sweethearts of 1895 kissed for the first time, surely it was no joke; it was a revelation.My sense that this cast will soon completely inhabit Wilde’s wit is partly based on the way the show is already hitting its marks by Act III and partly on its completely successful design. The simple, elegant set by Bill Clarke, all black-and-white Art Nouveau swirls and sheer curtains, suggests the fineness of taste that the writing requires. Swinging far the other way, the outrageous costumes by Hunter Kaczorowski — Gwendolyn wears a three-foot hat to the country, and Algernon sports rhinestone-buckled pumps — give proper due to hilarity.The elation that comes from the intensity of such choices, whether in design or acting (or, as in “The Dark Master,” in conceptualization), is what we go to live theater for. To the extent the pandemic has denied us that elation, we can’t be rid of it too soon.But this intermediate period has its own elations. Returning to difficult material after a diet that has too often consisted of comfort food, and returning to theaters where people crowd together and feel — not just hear — one another laugh, is its own source of emotion. When the Berkshire Theater Group’s artistic director, Kate Maguire, appeared before “Earnest” to make the usual preshow announcements about emergency exits, she first broke into tears. She wasn’t the only one.The Dark MasterPerformances June 23-28 at Japan Society, Manhattan; japansociety.orgThe Importance of Being EarnestThrough July 10 at the Unicorn Theater in Stockbridge, Mass.; berkshiretheatregroup.org More

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    At a Queer Theater Festival, the Plays Are Brazenly Personal

    The Criminal Queerness Festival offers three works that address subjects including addiction, fluid identity and social change.Dima Mikhayel Matta has written about her home city before with language like “In Beirut, the streets smell of jasmine and coffee, and the morning call to prayer mingles with church bells.”Was it lyrical? Yes, Matta, a queer playwright from Lebanon, said during a recent video interview. Was it also rosy? Yes.“In the past, I was writing short stories that romanticized Beirut,” she said, “because it’s ‘poetic,’ right?”Matta’s autobiographical play, “This is not a memorized script, this is a well-rehearsed story,” is one of three making its New York premiere this week as part of the National Queer Theater’s Criminal Queerness Festival, which presents innovative new stories by L.G.B.T.Q. artists from countries that restrict L.G.B.T.Q. rights.And with that project, she made a decision: no more romanticizing.With Beirut, she wanted “to face how I feel about it, and how so many of us feel about it,” she said of the city that in the past year has endured crises including a massive explosion in its port, economic collapse, political instability and the pandemic. “Because it’s difficult to live there, and it’s becoming more difficult.”The festival runs Tuesday through Saturday outdoors at Lincoln Center and near the United Nations, and is part of Lincoln Center’s Pride programming, which also includes a concert on Friday by the multi-hyphenate artist Taylor Mac.Adam Odsess-Rubin, the National Queer Theater’s artistic director, founded the festival in 2018 with the Egyptian playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, who had recently immigrated to the United States.“There was really no space for the kinds of stories I was trying to tell,” said Elsayigh, who now serves as the festival’s co-producer. “I wanted to create a space for stories about queer people outside of the United States and outside of a Western context.”This year’s plays — which also include the Mexican playwright Victor I. Cazares’s “﹤﹤when we write with ashes﹥﹥,” and a staged reading of the Iraqi playwright Martin Yousif Zebari’s “Layalina” — address subjects including addiction, fluid identity, and global and social change.In other words, they are not, Zebari said, works that he could present in his home country, where same-sex marriage is illegal and queer people do not have any protection against discrimination.“It’s really risky for the writers to share these plays,” Odsess-Rubin said. “They might fear persecution even emailing in the script.”But in interviews, the playwrights underscored that their works, while sourced from their specific life experiences in countries that criminalize queerness, contain themes anyone can relate to.For Matta, it was her complicated relationship with Beirut — a feeling that, she said, people who have lived in the same place for most of their lives can relate to.“The people who’ve attended my rehearsals have said they feel the same way about New York,” she said.Cazares, a Tow playwright in residence at New York Theater Workshop, who uses the gender-neutral pronouns they and them, said that they had felt pressure in the past to produce work that glossed over the less idyllic aspects of life on the border.“As a queer Latinx playwright coming up in 2013, I was encountering a lot of resistance from other Latinx producers that did not want to produce work that was about drugs, guns or gangs,” Cazares said. “But that was my work, and it was also my lived experience of the border. I lived through a very violent drug war. You’re suffering through nights where you’re worried about your family.”Jose Useche, left, and Noor Hamdi rehearsing Victor I. Cazares’s play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCazares’s play, a love story set in Mexico, draws from their experiences as an addict and as someone whose family withdrew them from high school and shipped them off to a rural Illinois town to “go find Jesus Christ again” when they came out. (Cazares and their parents have since reconciled.)“It was a very personal story for me,” they said. “But it’s not something I’m reluctant to share. I want to destigmatize addiction and being H.I.V. positive. I want people who have had these lived experiences to walk away not feeling alone.”For Zebari, who is making his playwriting debut with “Layalina,” it was important to tell a nuanced story of the community he refers to as SWANA — Southwest Asian and North African.“As an actor, I never spoke up when I felt like my voice was filler,” he said. “But now, as a playwright, I can tell my story.”Odsess-Rubin and Elsayigh said that, in an ideal world, the festival would not exist because its plays would be produced elsewhere in New York. A recent study by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition found that at 18 major nonprofit theaters in the city, 81 percent of writers and directors were white.Cazares said that they have had opportunities in which “if I would’ve written the happy story, or the more marketable, let’s-all-sing-about-conchas-and-abuelita take, it would’ve been produced.”The festival’s audiences, the three playwrights acknowledged, likely will be mostly white. But they did have their dreams for who would be there on opening night. Cazares said their past self. Zebari said his father, though having him there would amount to coming out — something he hasn’t done, and isn’t ready for, with his family.Matta said, “I would take great pleasure if a homophobic, racist person ends up in the audience and is too embarrassed to leave, and has to stay for an hour of me basically sharing things that go against everything that person believes in.”“I’d find that very amusing,” she added. “My goal is not to make you comfortable. I am not here to explain why it’s OK for me to exist. I am here to transport you somewhere for an hour, and leave you with more questions than answers.”Criminal Queerness FestivalTuesday through Saturday; nationalqueertheater.org. More

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    Meet the Women Who Give ‘Central Park’ Its Sunny Sound

    The songwriters Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson say their strength lies in being themselves in a field still dominated by men.Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson were told they would need to find men if they wanted to be successful songwriters. More

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    Does the Job of Talk-Show Sidekick Even Make Sense Anymore?

    Andy Richter reinvigorated the thankless, tired role, but now that “Conan” is going off the air, it’s time to re-evaluate work that was often mired in stereotypes.Several years ago, Conan O’Brien’s talk show did a bit about Andy Richter’s forgetting how to do his sidekick job after a summer break. A woman from human resources has to remind him, “You need to make the host believe in the irrational fantasy that he is the funniest person in the world.” She instructs him, “Laugh first, think later.” More

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    Jimmy Kimmel: Trump Can’t Take a Joke

    The former president denied reports that he tried to use his office to keep late-night shows from poking fun at him. “Not only that, he wanted Guillermo to pay for the wall,” Kimmel said on Tuesday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. More

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    Control of New York’s Stages Remains in White Hands, a Study Finds

    The Asian American Performers Action Coalition is hoping for a season of change when theaters reopen.As New York’s theaters prepare to reopen following the twin crises of a pandemic and rising discontent over racial inequity, a new study which found that both power and money in the theater world have been disproportionately controlled by white people is calling for “a fundamental paradigm shift.”The study, by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, found that at the 18 major nonprofit theaters examined by the group, 100 percent of artistic directors were white, as were 88 percent of board members. On Broadway, 94 percent of producers were white, as were 100 percent of general managers.The study offers a direct challenge, not only to theater leaders, but also to those who fund the institutions, saying, “it remains to be seen whether or not the multitude of antiracist solidarity statements and pledges to diversity will result in real action and systemic change.”“Our expanded leadership stats confirm that almost every gatekeeper, employer and decision maker in the NYC theater industry is white,” the coalition declares in a letter introducing the study.They examined the 2018-19 New York theater season — the last full season before the pandemic — looking at every Broadway show, as well as the work of the nonprofits.The coalition called particular attention to a dearth of shows about Asian Americans. “Even as the industry has made small gains in diversity in recent years, particularly at the nonprofits, our work at AAPAC has shown that Asian-focused narratives remain consistently minimized and overlooked,” the report says.Among the other findings:Using publicly available tax forms, the coalition calculated the public and private contributions to nonprofit theaters, and said that $150 million went to the 18 big nonprofits in the city that it referred to as “predominantly white institutions,” compared with $12.6 million to 28 theaters of color.At the theaters studied, 59 percent of roles went to white actors, compared to 29 percent for Black actors, 6 percent for Asian American actors and 5 percent for Latinos (the coalition uses the gender-neutral term Latinx).Creative teams were less diverse, with 81 percent of writers being white, along with 81 percent of directors and 77 percent of designers.The report gave grades to individual theaters, and declared the Public Theater to be the most diverse, and the Irish Repertory Theater to be least diverse.The intense focus nationally on diversity issues has prompted an increase in research about race, gender and disability within the theater industry. A coalition of groups doing such research, called Counting Together, formed in 2019, and this month introduced the CountingTogether.org website, hosted by the Dramatists Guild and the American Theater Wing, to make the research more readily available. More

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    Special Tony Awards Go to 'American Utopia,' 'Freestyle Love Supreme'

    The Broadway Advocacy Coalition, “David Byrne’s American Utopia” and “Freestyle Love Supreme” win special Tonys.The Tony Awards, long delayed by the pandemic, announced on Tuesday the first recipients, honoring the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an organization started five years ago by a group of actors and others as a tool to work toward dismantling racism through theater and storytelling.The other recipients were “David Byrne’s American Utopia,” an intricately choreographed concert by the Talking Heads singer, and “Freestyle Love Supreme,” a mostly improvised hip-hop musical that was created, in part, by Lin-Manuel Miranda. These honors, called special Tony Awards, were presented to three recipients that the Tony administration committee thought deserving of recognition even though they did not fall into any of the competition categories, according to a news release.The recipients were announced more than one year after the ceremony had originally been expected to take place. During the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was put on indefinite hold. The awards show — a starry broadcast that will celebrate Broadway’s comeback — is now set to air on CBS in September, when Broadway shows are scheduled to return to theaters in almost full force. Most of the awards, however, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.The award for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition is indicative of how deeply the American theater industry was affected by the mass movement for racial justice set off by the police killing of George Floyd last year.In a statement, Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, and Heather A. Hitchens, the chief executive of the American Theater Wing — the two organizations that present the awards — said that the coalition has provided an “unparalleled platform for marginalized members of our theater community and tools to help us all do better as we strive for equity.”Among the organization’s projects is Theater of Change, a social justice methodology — developed with Columbia Law School — that brings together Broadway artists, legal and policy experts and people whose lives have been shaped by forces such as the criminal justice, immigration and educational systems to collaborate on storytelling as a means to advocate “just policies.”This year’s ceremony for the Tonys, formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards, will be the 74th such event and will recognize work performed on Broadway between April 26, 2019, and Feb. 19, 2020.Broadway’s 41 theaters have been closed since March 12, 2020; right now, the first planned performances are for “Springsteen on Broadway,” the rock legend’s autobiographical show, which is set to open this Saturday at the St. James Theater. As of now, the next show scheduled to open is “Pass Over,” a play about two Black men trapped on a street corner, on Aug. 4 at the August Wilson Theater.“American Utopia,” which opened on Broadway in October of 2019, is planning to restart performances on Sept. 17. “Freestyle Love Supreme,” which opened that same month, is scheduled to play again for a live audience on Oct. 7. More

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    A Complicated Collaboration for a New ‘Enemy of the People’

    Without seeing a script, Ann Dowd jumped at the chance to work with Robert Icke on his solo adaptation of the Ibsen classic. Then the debates began.You are an established stage and screen actress, an Emmy winner with pivotal roles in two of the most critically acclaimed series of the past decade. One day, a young theatermaker rings with an offer you should refuse: a drastic remix of the Henrik Ibsen play “An Enemy of the People” as a solo show in which you would play all the parts. Oh, and he hasn’t written it yet.Ann Dowd (the cult leader Patti Levin in “The Leftovers” and the brutal enforcer Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale”) did not hesitate. “I knew on that first call that I would trust him completely,” she said.That bond was evident during a recent chat with Dowd, 65, and her new collaborator, the British writer and director Robert Icke, 34, at the Park Avenue Armory, which commissioned and is presenting their show from June 22 through Aug. 8. Sitting on an overstuffed maroon couch upstairs at the Armory, the pair batted around ideas, arguing affectionately but spiritedly, and dryly teasing each other.In the original play, Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the waters feeding his town’s popular spa baths are contaminated. For the sake of public health, he wants to disclose his findings and close the baths; this pits him against his own brother, Peter, who happens to be the mayor and fears a fatal blow to the local economy.Icke (pronounced Ike) kept that mainframe, which feels prescient in the light of debates surrounding Covid-19, then changed … a lot. For starters, Thomas is now Professor Joan Stockman, the town has become Weston Springs and there are references to pizza delivery and TV. More importantly, the audience gets to influence the outcome by voting at key points of the story.“Rob rewrites classics to bring them closer to us,” said Pierre Audi, the Armory’s artistic director. “Not by trivializing them, but by going straight to the complexity of why they are great plays. He’s categorical about being able to understand why a play needs to be done, why it’s a story we want to tell now.”Icke’s only other New York credit, “1984,” received mixed reviews when it ran on Broadway in 2017 but in his native Britain he is celebrated for daring, bracing productions that strip the rust and barnacles off familiar material. Dowd — whose stage career includes a 2008 Broadway production of “The Seagull” opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard — is not shy about disagreeing about some of Icke’s aesthetic choices. But these differences appear to fuel their artistic collaboration, not hamper it. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was your starting point when you decided to rethink Ibsen’s play?ROBERT ICKE All I really had was the notion that it was interesting but maybe there was a different route through the story that might make a social-distanced environment feel natural rather than pragmatic. And it relied on me finding somebody I felt 100 percent confident I could write for.ANN DOWD Were you sure it would be a woman?ICKE Yes.DOWD How come?ICKE Good question. I don’t know. There’s just something about this show with a man that is completely uninteresting to me.Dowd in rehearsal with her director Robert Icke. They are fond collaborators — except when it comes to their respective takes on Chekhov.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAnn, how did the project reach you?DOWD My very wonderful agent and manager said, “You have an offer to do a one-person show based on ‘Enemy of the People’ with Rob Icke” — Robert Icke, I think they said. Block your ears — can’t compliment him, I mean, truly, don’t even try. I could tell from the sound of their voice that it was an extraordinary honor to be asked. I didn’t know Rob’s work — I don’t really know anything about a lot of things [stage whisper] you can just cut that part — but at any rate they educated me. Part of me was thinking, “Give me a reason to say no, please, let me avoid this walk up Everest.” I say “walk” because there’ll be no climbing. Then we spoke and I thought, “Who would ever turn this man down?”ICKE Oh, it’s happened.Were you familiar with his work?DOWD My sister is a casting director in London and said, “Rob Icke? Oh, my God, I saw his ‘Vanya,’ I was riveted and when it was finished it had been four hours.” [Actually, about three and a half.] I said, “Wait a minute — whaaaat?” She was just so in the story.ICKE Chekhov said he wants that play to feel like real life so sometimes it was just like, “I just want to watch you all live for a minute, so you just tune your guitar and you maybe look at your phone for a second and then you put it back.”DOWD Well, that irritates me: What is a phone doing in “Vanya”?ICKE We do differ about this. What is our experience of being in the country in the modern age? [He pretends to hold a cellphone up in the air.] “Have I got any bars?” So there’s that idea that wherever they are, there’s no phone signal, just a rusty landline somewhere in the house.DOWD My pushback was: “No, no, it’s called imagination.” Having played Sonya [in a 1986 production] and loving her — lo-ving her — I said, “I’ll trick you: I want to be in ‘Vanya’ and I’m going to play Sonya.” But he said he would never cast me in a role I’ve played before.ICKE But there would be something interesting in asking where Sonya is when she’s your age. Like, what happened?DOWD Yeah, write that play! But let me wear the damn clothes that I wore in Russia and don’t change my name. And don’t take out a cellphone!ICKE Unfortunately if you’re doing Chekhov with me, you’re wearing contemporary clothes. There will be no samovar, there will be no parasols.How did you approach the central character of Joan? She has become a distinct person, not just Thomas Stockmann in a dress. And she can be aggressively intransigent, bordering on zealotry.ICKE It’s both simple and incredibly complicated: the genius of this lady [pointing to Dowd] is that the characters are like real people. I came in one day with a rewrite of a section. She looked at me with a genuine hurt and said, “I just don’t think that’s fair on Joan.” Joan was now a real person who existed inside the actor.DOWD If you track her early years, I think she was probably shut down quite a bit: “Lower your voice, let your older brother” — mother taking you aside — “Joan, he’s the shy one, don’t bully him.” So just learning: “I’m not going to be listened to so might as well just yell it out. And [expletive] every one of you!” I imagine one or two women have experienced that in their lives.The play now introduces an interactive element with the audience votes: The majority’s decision has an impact on what happens in the town and in the play, and it might not be to everybody’s liking.ICKE I think the same thing is true of Trump because he was democratically elected: He won a fair and free election. Whether any of us like that or not, there’s a horrible dichotomy to wrestle with.DOWD How does that excuse —ICKE It doesn’t excuse anything. But that’s the big bind: the process that put him there is the process we all claim to like and the one we signed up to. The British equivalent of that is Brexit.Audience members at this “Enemy” will be asked to respond to plot points by voting from their seats.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesDOWD If Peter [the mayor] had said, “Look, we are going to have to close down the baths, we’re going to figure it out together. We will find a way to get help. You are not alone.” Real leadership.ICKE Isn’t real leadership to just get it done quietly: shut the baths, give a vague reason?DOWD No, people deserve to know the truth about their lives.ICKE But does it help us? Sometimes I wonder whether we’d all be happier if we knew a bit less. I sometimes think we’re all so flooded with information, it’s more than we can take in.DOWD This is slightly off topic, sorry, but you think about the people who knew what Trump knew [about Covid-19] and stayed quiet. What is that? Your job is more important than your integrity?Ann, how do you burrow into the heads of these tough characters? Of course Aunt Lydia comes to mind.DOWD I was a pre-med student for four years and the way you get through it is that you study to the point of insanity. Then I realized, You know what? Let’s go to acting school! But I applied those same rigorous studies to acting for a very long time. That’s misery because you’re not letting anything in around you. All the doors shut, except for the one you choose to go through.The other thing, and this is big: It’s playing. People ask, “How do you ever play Lydia?” I can’t get to her fast enough. It’s make believe — not to diminish the intensity — but if it wasn’t, emotionally, you’d go home, put a pillow over your head and end it all! Just chill a little bit: It’s a play, there is supposed to be fun in it.Have you reached the fun stage on this one yet?ICKE We had fun on Sunday, when you did all of it.DOWD I was in a state of shock!ICKE I’ve got the WhatsApps to prove it.DOWD [resigned] OK. The point is, that’s the goal. I’ll get there.Enemy of the PeoplePerformances June 22-Aug. 8; armoryonpark.org More