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      Interview: Jen Roehrig breathes life into Mental Health

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      Mental Health and Wellbeing Awareness Day Interview (part 1)

      This interview was originally recorded as part of Runn Radio’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Awareness Day. The day consisted of interviews and talks on mental health.

      Jen Roehrig talks about her own experiences with mental health, which were as a result of a freak medical situation, but affected her life for years. Jen talks about how, with the right help, she overcame her conditions and ultimately returned to education in her 40s. We also hear about how she hopes to take her experiences onto the stage with her upcoming work.

      You can find out more about Jen and her production company here.

      You can also download this podcast by clicking on the forward arrow and selecting the download option.

      You can follow us on Spotify or Itunes (plus many other other podcast providers) for future editions of our interview series. Further information can be found on our Podcast here More

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      ‘Andy,’ Gus Van Sant’s Warhol Musical, Is a Surprise but Not a Miracle

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      The film director set himself a steep challenge in his debut stage work. At least for now, he hasn’t quite met it.LISBON — Gus Van Sant is no stranger to experimental biopics: “Last Days,” his lyrical, nearly dialogue-free meditation on the end of Kurt Cobain’s life, shunned every convention of the genre. Yet “Andy,” his Andy Warhol-inspired stage debut, which had its world premiere at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in Lisbon this week, may be Van Sant’s oddest tribute to date.For starters, it’s a musical. Warhol duets with the modernist art critic Clement Greenberg; Valerie Solanas sings, gun in hand, before opening fire inside the Factory.It’s a bold choice for a movie director making theater for the first time, and Van Sant, 69, didn’t just contribute the script. He is also listed as the stage designer and composer of “Andy.” (Paulo Furtado, a Portuguese musician who goes by The Legendary Tigerman, is credited with the “musical direction,” as well as the arrangement for most numbers.)While “Andy” is an unexpected outcome, Van Sant has had a Warhol project in mind for over three decades. In the late 1980s, he developed a screenplay for Universal Pictures with Paul Bartel, in the hope that it would star the actor River Phoenix. After Phoenix died in 1993, the project was shelved.The invitation to turn to theater came from John Romão, the artistic director of Lisbon’s Biennial of Contemporary Arts (BoCA), which runs through mid-October. While “Andy” is performed entirely in English, the cast and crew are all Portuguese. After the initial run concludes in Portugal, “Andy” will tour around Europe, stopping first in Rome and in Amsterdam.Some tweaks may yet improve “Andy,” but let’s start with the obvious: Creating musicals is a craft. It would be miraculous to produce a good one on first try. Even though the Virgin Mary pops up onstage to banter with Warhol, “Andy” is no miracle.Diogo Fernandes, as Andy Warhol.Bruno Simão/BoCA Bienal de Artes ContemporâneasWhile Van Sant has spent much of his film career circumventing the Hollywood rule book, his approach here is relatively prudent. “Andy” has a clear narrative arc, spanning the years between 1959 and 1967, and the expected musical numbers for both soloists and small ensembles. There is even an attempt at choreography in an early scene, although the group’s hip thrusts when Warhol’s homosexuality is mentioned are less than subtle.If anything, however, the relative conventionality of “Andy” exposes Van Sant’s inexperience with the syntax of live performance. Entrances and exits give him away early on. Devising believable transitions is a basic conundrum of theater, and “Andy” is choppy, with actors coming and going uneasily.Warhol is also a paradoxical subject for a musical. Songs have a way of baring a character’s soul, but Warhol’s deliberately enigmatic persona has been difficult to parse, even for scholars. His transformation onstage from the bespectacled, painfully shy Andrew Warhola, who wears a bow tie and stalks Truman Capote, into the high priest of Pop Art produces something like whiplash. Suddenly, he becomes a hollow shell, who treats his Factory collaborators — including Edie Sedgwick — with utter callousness.Van Sant’s songs shy away from exploring his inner life from that point, focusing instead on artistic debates and one-off events like Solanas’s shooting. Musically, they are fairly even and flat, lacking in tunes that might carry the action; perhaps an injection of the Velvet Underground, the band Warhol once managed, might have helped.Surprisingly, the book also gives Warhol fairly little agency in his own career. His mother is credited with the idea for his soup can series. Gerard Malanga, Warhol’s only lover to appear in the show, gives him the makeover that lets him fit in with the New York underground scene. Later, he is portrayed as hapless with the business of running the Factory.Martim Martins as Gerard Malanga, left, with Fernandes as Warhol.Bruno Simão/BoCA Bienal de Artes ContemporâneasSome scenes and lines are lifted directly from TV interviews, including an appearance by Warhol and Sedgwick on “The Merv Griffin Show.” In others, characters fall victim to Van Sant’s clunky expository dialogue. Greenberg, an authority on modernism, may have despised Pop Art, but he surely deserved better than to sing: “I’m an extraordinary man, I expect extraordinary stuff.” Van Sant opted to work with a young, mostly inexperienced cast, and acting and singing in English is clearly a tall order for many of them, although they try bravely.The strongest overall performance comes from Helena Caldeira, who captures the restless allure of Sedgwick. As Warhol, Diogo Fernandes has less vocal range, but he pulls off Warhol’s two sides. One of the strongest scenes sees him earnestly asking the Virgin Mary: “Do you think Pop Art can be unholy?” As Mary, Caroline Amaral nails silly, wonderful quips, and their exchange suggests leaning into the bizarre might have turned “Andy” into a more Warholian proposition.Another brief flash of absurdity comes at the end, as Warhol is reunited with Capote in heaven. (Capote immediately asks where the gay bars are.) There is a flamboyant, preposterous comedy lurking within “Andy.” As of now, Van Sant lacks the theatrical tools to unleash it. More

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      Oedipus Takes to the Stages in Berlin

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      Four interpretations of the Greek myth have been produced in the German capital, all with resonances for our moment.BERLIN — “The city reeks with death in her streets,” the chorus laments in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” Thebes is in the grip of a deadly plague. The king summons a prophet to divine the will of the gods, who accuses the monarch, “You are the cursed polluter of this land.”The theme of nature striking back, revolting against unnatural acts, is one that resonates 20 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and after a summer of climate-change-related extreme weather events, including flooding in Germany, deadly heat waves in Canada and fires in Greece.All that may help explain why, at the beginning of the theater season in Berlin, Sophocles’ tragic hero, the original mama’s boy, has been center stage in a quartet of new productions at some of the city’s leading companies.Arguably the most eagerly awaited was Maja Zade’s new play, “ödipus,” a contemporary reworking of the myth, which premiered at the Athens Epidaurus Festival this month and recently transferred to the Schaubühne. Michael, a young employee at a German chemical company, is dating his much older boss, Christina. Their relationship begins to fray over the handling of an investigation into a chemical spill, and Michael learns that the accident also caused the death of Christina’s first husband. Several revelations later, Michael puts two and two together and realizes that — spoiler alert — he killed his father and slept with his mother.The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production of “Œdipe” is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings.Monika RittershausAny hint of ancient Greek cosmology is scrubbed clean from Zade’s version. The most explicit reference we get to myth in Thomas Ostermeier’s sleek and sterile production is a small statue of a sphinx perched on a kitchen counter. Jan Pappelbaum’s sparse set, framed by neon lights, has a sitcom-like realism. The dialogue, dispatched by the four-person cast around the kitchen table or a backyard grill, is stiff and largely functional. The actors struggle more against a poorly made play than they do against fate.The only one who succeeds is Caroline Peters as Christina, who, even more than her young lover, is the center of Zade’s play. Peters shows her talent for transcending mediocre dramatic material just as she did in the recent Schaubühne production of Simon Stone’s “Yerma.” At the climax of the production, she explains the awful truth to Michael. Her face is projected in close-up on a screen (the only time that the intermittent video serves a purpose), allowing us to register her every twitch during the lengthy speech. She pulls off the tricky monologue like a doctor steeling herself to give a patient a terrible diagnosis, putting aside her bedside manner because there’s no way to sugarcoat a revelation this horrific.Along with the gods and fate, Zade’s play also dispenses with the chorus, a mainstay of Greek drama, who provide a collective counterpoint to the individuals at the center of the drama. Chanting in unison, they also fill in background information and comment on the action, serving as something of a conduit between the main actors and the audience.This chorus, on the other hand, assumes center stage in the Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ play directed by Ulrich Rasche. The contrast in tone and style with the down-to-earth realism of Ostermeier’s production could not be more striking.Rasche has devised an extremely precise mode of Maschinentheater, a theatrical approach that relies heavily on elaborate scenic elements and stagecraft. His industrial and dark productions derive much of their sweaty vitality from intense physical performances and droning music. His “Oedipus” is based on an 1804 translation by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, whose language is archaic and pungently lyrical. The cast, treading in place on a constantly rotating stage, enunciates the text crisply and with studied intensity.The Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” directed by Ulrich Rasche. Arno DeclairNico van Wersch’s score includes an electric bass, Moog synthesizer and microtonal keyboard. The chorus chants in unison, creating a percussive atmosphere that harmonizes with the concentric rings of color-changing fluorescent lights that tilt from the ceiling. The effect is arresting for the first hour, but then quickly turns soporific. Rasche takes his time — just shy of three hours — and the slow-moving production is maddeningly deliberate.Music played an even more prominent role in Berlin’s second pair of Oedipal productions.The British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage was a 20-something upstart in 1988 when he wrote “Greek,” which recently opened the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s season. This short, two-act opera is many things, including a scathing political and social commentary about Thatcher-era England and a self-conscious sendup of opera as an art form that, at its origin, sought to resurrect the spirit of ancient Greek drama.A spunky and potty-mouthed comic strip opera, “Greek” transposes the action from ancient Thebes to East London. Oedipus becomes Eddy, an angry young working-class man looking to better himself while fleeing a horrible fate predicted by a carnival fortune teller that has become a running gag in his family.In the Deutsche Oper’s parking lot (a corona-averse location also used last year for a reduced production of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”), four singers pranced and strutted in the young German director Pinar Karabulut’s cartoonishly campy production, wearing colorful variations on ancient Greek garb, down to orange, purple and green curly wigs and beards. There’s a fair amount of spoken text, which the members of the all-American cast dispatched with exaggerated cockney accents when they weren’t belting out the eclectic score, which careens from dance hall crudeness to poignant lyricism.Dean Murphy in the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Greek,” staged in the parking lot of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Eike WalkenhorstTurnage’s irreverent work is one of the more recent musical versions of the Oedipus myth, a list that includes Stravinsky’s 1927 “Oedipus Rex” and the Doors’ “The End.” Among the most powerful is George Enescu’s 1936 opera, “Œdipe,” an underperformed 20th-century masterpiece that recently opened the Komische Oper Berlin’s season. (In a rare coincidence, a new production of the opera also kicked off the season at the Paris Opera.)The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings. The set resembles a derelict madhouse and is frequently awash in blood, from the tragic hero’s difficult birth to his transfiguring death in Colonus. In between are graphic depictions of Laius’ disembowelment and of Oedipus putting out his own eyes.Enescu’s musical language fuses various early modernist styles with traditional Romanian melodies and harmonies, which the orchestra of the Komische Oper, under the baton of its general music director, Ainars Rubikis, performs with assurance and intensity. The lengthy title role features ample Sprechgesang, a vocal style halfway between song and speech. The British baritone Leigh Melrose’s searing performance is as much a dramatic feat as it is a musical achievement. Of all the Oedipuses haunting the German capital, his is the most affecting, tragic and believable.Enescu began writing “Œdipe” shortly after Sigmund Freud first theorized the Oedipus complex, and the composer’s Oedipus is an archetype of modern man who, despite his quest for knowledge and self-understanding, is blind to himself, incapable of outrunning destiny and the agent of his own destruction.Is it any wonder that some of today’s leading theatermakers have turned to this 2,500-year-old existential detective story as we grapple with the catastrophes affecting our bodies and our planet? Like the ancients, we get the myths we deserve, not the ones we want.From left, Renato Schuch, Caroline Peters and Christian Tschirner in “ödipus,” by Maja Zade, directed by Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne Berlin.Gianmarco Bresadolaödipus. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Schaubühne Berlin, through Sept. 26.Œdipe. Directed by Evgeny Titov. Komische Oper Berlin, through Sept. 26.Oedipus. Directed by Ulrich Rasche. Deutsches Theater Berlin, through Oct. 17. More

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      David Alan Grier on Navigating the Art World as a Black Collector

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      The Tony-nominated actor and comedian discusses his love for overalls, citrus trees and trying to sell his teenage daughter on Frank Sinatra.David Alan Grier is riveted by jack rabbits.“I saw one the other day in a grocery store parking lot,” he said in a recent phone conversation from Calgary, Canada, where he was wrapping up filming for the Spectrum TV mystery series “Joe Pickett.” “All the Canadians were like, ‘God, jack rabbits are everywhere, they’re like pigeons. But I took pictures and posted video, I was so excited — this thing was enormous!”After five months north of the border playing a larger-than-life Wyoming game warden alongside Michael Dorman, Grier was looking forward to getting back to New York for the Tony Awards this week, where he’ll be up for his fourth nomination — and, he hopes, first win — for his role as a tyrannical technical sergeant in the 2020 Broadway production of “A Soldier’s Play.”“But there’s no Barneys anymore!” said Grier, who admitted he was craving a shopping trip to the defunct department store. “I’m still adjusting.”When we spoke, he discussed how his backyard grove of citrus trees got him through the pandemic, the comforts of all day Sunday cooking and the roots of his love of Black art. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Citrus Trees During the pandemic, I planted about 14 citrus trees in my yard, and they became my obsession. I have kumquats, Valencia oranges, Ruby Red grapefruit, Cara Cara oranges that are deep red — they’re so sweet, they’re amazing. Whenever [expletive] got too crazy, I’d go water my trees. In fact, when the pomegranate one gave fruit last year, it was all split open, and I looked online and it said it was because I was overwatering the tree. My water bill was like $8,000 per month — it was like I was trying to wash Covid away.2. Vintage DenimWith my hours of free time during the pandemic, I’d go through every item of clothing on eBay and started going deeper into denim — Lee, Levi’s Deadstock, All American stuff. People were much littler in the ’50s, so to get something vintage that actually fits is such a joy. I own about 40 pairs of overalls, 27 denim jackets. My teenage daughter will be like “Oh my God, you’re wearing overalls again?”I went out to tea with my daughter in L.A. last year — she loves anime, so she was dressed as her favorite character, this Japanese fairy — and I had on these faded, vintage overalls. And this woman came up to us and goes, “I love your costumes — who are you supposed to be, a farmer?” My daughter was dying — she was like “No, that’s just what he wears.” Now I’ve weathered the tide, so I get compliments from young hipster people wherever I go. GQ called me a style god. For me, that’s bigger than a Tony.3. My Dogs I’m a lifelong dog lover, and I have two: Mr. Pickles is a Bluetick Coonhound, which is a hunting dog, and he is the loudest dog I’ve ever owned. He bays so loud — like this: [BAYS] — and does it all the time. He’s a problem child but we love him. Buttercup is a big-boned gal — body positive! — just trying to live in her truth.4. Playing the Guitar I’ve been playing — badly — since I was 12 years old. It’s a release and escape from politics, the virus, all that stuff. I wrote a list of tunes I wanted to learn — mostly blues, Rob Johnson, slide guitar. I used to write more songs, but now I mostly listen to old timey stuff — rhythm and blues, some musical theater. I used to always listen to Frank Sinatra in the car, and finally my daughter goes, “Oh, God, please don’t play that, I [expletive] hate it.” I was like, “What?” I was crushed.5. Conversations With His Late Father My father was the smartest person I knew — he went to college at 16, then went to medical school and became a psychiatrist. He’s been dead for six years, and I miss being able to use him as an intellectual and spiritual sounding board. I find myself talking, or posing questions, trying to talk to my brother about what my dad would have thought about this or that. I wish I could still get on the phone and talk to him, or just have him call me up and say “Can we vent? Can I rant?” It’s not like we had this great relationship when I was younger, but we had this détente when he got older. That’s how life goes.6. Being a Tourist in New York City I was living in an apartment in Times Square when I was doing “A Soldier’s Play,” and I can’t imagine how I’d have lived if I’d stayed in Manhattan during the pandemic. But I’m looking forward to getting back for the Tonys. I love walking around Central Park, going downtown and doing some shopping, getting dressed up and getting some fancy food. I really love the Armory Art Show and wish I could’ve been there for that. It’s all the super-touristy things I’ve been missing.7. Slow and Low Sunday Meals I’m by myself now while I’m up here working, but still, on Sundays, it’s in my veins to put on a pot, low and slow. I do a seafood soup or stew, or chicken soup from scratch — it takes all day, just kind of gurgling on the stove. It fills the house with that smell that’s just like, oh my God. My nephew, when he was really little, came over to my house for Christmas and I remember he got up early in the morning and said, “Uncle Dave, your house smells good.” [Laughs] If I were at home, it’d be short ribs, or oxtail and cheesy polenta, anything that takes all day.8. The Sermons of C.L. Franklin When Aretha Franklin came to see me on Broadway in “Porgy & Bess,” I remember telling her that I would listen to sermons that her dad gave in the 1950s. The cadence and rhythm of a Black preacher is in my bones, it’s in my soul — I love all of it. It’s just like being in church. He goes first to the announcements, like “We need this; we need that” or “We’re trying to raise more money here and there.” Then comes the sermon, the religious part. And he’d end with a story — usually a biblical story — that was perfectly crafted and choreographed so by the time he left the pulpit, it was a rock concert.9. Stetson Silverbelly Open Road Cowboy Hat That’s my favorite hat, man! The profile of this hat is an old white guy from the South in the 1960s. I never thought I’d be wearing that, but I love it. It’s an off-white, almost bone color because there’s no dye — they don’t treat the felt or the fur, so it really shows its wear, all the blemishes and sweat marks. I wear it as much as I can, and it’s broken in enough now that it feels just like an old pair of shoes.10. Collecting Black Artists I’ve been collecting for more than 20 years now. I really wanted to collect because I didn’t think I was able to — to even walk into a gallery and say, “I’m interested in that painting.” It’s like the art world does everything it can to repel you.I started collecting vintage movie posters, of all-Black cast movies, and from there I slowly moved into art — mostly emerging and midcareer Black American artists. Those were the artists I could afford, and they were the artists that represented and were painting the world in which I lived right now. I love finding new young artists. I’ve been collecting Walter Price for the past two years. When I saw his images, I immediately loved them — the crude figures, his use of color. Usually, I buy a couple of pieces, and then that person gets hot and famous, and I can’t afford them anymore. More

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      Bushwick Starr Gets New $2.2 Million Home

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      The innovative Brooklyn performing arts space is moving three L stops away, to a former dairy plant in Bushwick — and prepping for a new chapter as a neighborhood cultural hub.The Bushwick Starr, an innovative nonprofit theater in Brooklyn, got some bad news during the pandemic: Its longtime second-floor Starr Street loft was being converted to residential housing.The theater would have to move.“It was an existential moment for our organization,” said Sue Kessler, who founded the Bushwick Starr in 2007 with Noel Joseph Allain and now serves as its creative director. “But with all the hardship everyone was experiencing last fall, we didn’t want to share more bad news until we knew where, or if, we would land.”Jarring as the June 2020 move-out notice was, Kessler said it was not exactly a surprise: They’d always known the building would eventually be brought up to code under New York City’s loft law, which requires its second and third floors to become residential. She and Allain had also felt themselves outgrowing their “beautiful, darling space” at 207 Starr Street, with its steep stairs and rickety chandeliers. “We’d long wanted to move down to street level to be more accessible,” she said.They looked at about 25 spaces in and around Bushwick, always with a long-term lease in mind. But the moment they laid eyes on a former dairy plant for sale at 419 Eldert Street, just over a mile and three L stops from their current space, they knew they’d hit the jackpot.“It had everything we wanted — a single story, a ground-floor lobby, 5,000 square feet of space,” said Allain, the theater’s artistic director. “And the price was much more within our reach than some of these other crazy, $10 million buildings we’d seen.”They bought the building in May 2021 for $2.2 million and got to work planning their new home. Construction is set to begin in April, and they intend to open in fall 2022.The renovated building will include a dressing room, rehearsal space, scenic workshop, office, gallery and an outdoor area for events. A black box theater will seat 90 people, up from 72 seats in the Starr Street space.But most important to Kessler and Allain is the accessible, street-level lobby, where they’re planning artist talks, film screenings and gallery shows to showcase the work of local artists. A folding garage door facade will also allow events to spill out onto the cul-de-sac street.And though the theater will no longer be on Starr Street, the name will remain.“We lucked out on that one,” Allain said, laughing (they’re still in Bushwick, by about 30 feet). Audience members participated in a Bushwick Starr production of “Definition,” a socially distant installation experience, over the summer.Maya SharpeA permanent neighborhood presence is a logical next step for the experimental theater, puppetry and dance space that’s served as an incubator for the work of the Tony-nominated playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”), and Daniel Fish, who directed the recent Tony-winning Broadway revival of “Oklahoma!”Kessler and Allain had been renting the Starr Street loft, which they converted to a black box theater, since 2001, when it served their now-defunct experimental theater company Fovea Floods. “There was no money,” Allain told The New York Times in 2014.It “was desperate, adventurous and maybe a little naïve,” Kessler added.But the Bushwick Starr — which opened several years before the neighborhood acquired its next-big-thing status and kombucha-on-tap bars — became home. The metal front door, painted brick and wooden support columns were dingy, yet elegant — and curiously welcoming. By 2010-11, it was a bright spot on the Off Off Broadway map.Now Kessler and Allain, who began working at the theater full time around 2012, can finally afford their own space. (Though Kessler says there are a couple of things she’ll miss about the Starr Street loft: The “glorious” city views and hydroponic garden on the roof deck.)The theater, which anticipates operating with an annual budget of about $1.5 million, has announced a three-year, $10 million capital campaign to raise funds to support the acquisition and renovation of the space, as well as for expanded programming. Allain said they have $6 million already committed from the city, private foundations and individual donors, but are relying on the campaign to raise the remaining $4 million.In the meantime, Allain and Kessler have a full season of shows planned for 2021-22, including four productions, all of which will be staged at other venues while the Eldert Street space is under construction.Kessler and Allain are excited to finally have an accessible, ground-floor space open to the community.Maya SharpeBut first, a celebration. Ellpetha Tsivicos and Camilo Quiroz-Vazquez, founders of the theater company One Whale’s Tale, are hosting an outdoor, quinceañera-themed block party at the new space on Oct. 10. The free event will have music, dancing and food, and will allow community members to peek inside the Starr’s new home before construction begins.In November, the season officially starts with the world premiere of Hillary Miller’s “Preparedness,” directed by Kristjan Thor, which follows the faculty members of a moribund theater department as they are forced to undergo self-defense training in order to maintain their funding, at HERE Arts Center (Nov. 11-Dec. 11). Next is a new iteration of Agnes Borinsky’s chamber play “A Song of Songs,” which is set to be staged in partnership with the Bushwick chapter of the social-justice organization El Puente at its Williamsburg location in early 2022.In the spring, the actor and playwright Ryan J. Haddad’s newest autobiographical play, “Dark Disabled Stories,” a series of vignettes about the strangers he encounters while navigating a city not built to accommodate his walker and cerebral palsy, directed by Jordan Fein. Closing out the season is a summer production of Tsivicos and Quiroz-Vazquez’s immersive “Quince” (Tsivicos directs), which follows a queer Chicana on the eve of her 15th birthday as she grapples with her identity as a first-generation American. Venues have not yet been decided for either show. The vaccination and mask policies for the four shows may vary and also have yet to be determined, Allain said.If all goes according to plan, the ribbon-cutting for their permanent home will take place in a little over a year. In a video call from the new space last week — which still looks very much like a warehouse — Allain seemed a bit in awe of the leap the theater was taking. “It’s the biggest lift we’ve ever tried as an organization,” he said. “It’s a bit of a moment of truth. I really hope people come through.” More

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      Interview: Biting into Dracula: The Untold Story

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      Andrew Quick of Imitating The Dog on bringing a grapic novel to the stage

      Episode 4 in our podcast interview series sees us moving outside of London for the first time, to chat to Andrew Quick, Artistic Director of Imitating The Dog. The company whose stated aims are:

      we are most interested in telling stories. We create beautiful, memorable images for audiences, and the work fuses live performance with digital technology, in order to serve the story in the best possible way. The work is always fresh and often surprising. We take risks.

      The podcast features the full version of the interview. An edited version was originally broadcast on our Runn Radio show on 15 September 2021.

      You can also download this podcast by clicking on the forward arrow and selecting the download option.

      You can follow us on Spotify or Itunes (plus many other other podcast providers) for future editions of our interview series. Further information can be found on our Podcast here

      Dracula: The Untold Story tours to the following venues. Further dates are possible though, so do check Imitating The Dog’s website for updates.

      Leeds Playhouse

      25 Sept – 9 Oct at 7.45pm

      (Mat: 30 Sept & 7 Oct at 2pm and 2 & 9 Oct at 2.30pm)

      Box office: 0113 213 7700   www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk

      Tickets on sale: NOW

      Liverpool Playhouse

      12-16 Oct at 7.30pm

      (Mat: 14 at 1.30pm & 16 at 2pm)

      www.everymanplayhouse.com

      Tickets on sale: NOW

      Derby Theatre

      19-23 Oct at 7.30pm

      (Evenings at 7.30pm & Wed 20th & Sat 23rd at 2.30pm)

      www.derbytheatre.co.uk

      Box Office: 01332 593939

      Tickets on sale: 6 Aug

      Dukes Lancaster

      29 & 30 Oct at 7.30pm

      (Mat: 30 at 2.30pm)

      Box office: 01524 598500 (From 21 May)    www.dukeslancaster.org

      Tickets on sale: NOW

      Watford Palace Theatre

      2-6 Nov at 7.30pm

      (Mat: 4 & 6 at 2.30pm)

      www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

      Tickets on sale: NOW

      Mercury Theatre, Colchester

      9 & 10 Nov at 7.30pm

      (Mat: 10 at 2.30pm)

      Box office: 01206 573948   www.mercurytheatre.co.uk

      Tickets on sale: NOW More

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      Review: A Choreographer’s of-the-Moment Brand of ‘Not Knowing’

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      In Julie Mayo’s “Nerve Show” at Target Margin Theater, thwarted impulses express themselves both through movement and attempts at speech.As the grand reopening of Broadway continued this week, a smaller theatrical enterprise, far across town, was also revving up again. For the first time since March 2020, Target Margin Theater welcomed a live audience into its no-frills warehouse space in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, presenting a new work by the choreographer Julie Mayo.Mayo’s “Nerve Show,” as wacky as it is melancholic, straddles the time before the pandemic and the not-quite-after where we find ourselves now, an era of stuttering starts and stops and collectively frayed nerves. The process of creating it began in 2019, with a cast of four dancers (in addition to Mayo) that has since expanded to five: Justin Cabrillos, Ursula Eagly, Doug LeCours, Eleanor Smith and Jessie Young, all of whom are wonderfully idiosyncratic (and credited with contributing movement and sound).Mayo, who has been choreographing for more than 20 years, has described her work as “predicated on ‘not-knowing,’ ambiguity, shifting landscapes.” That describes a lot of dance, but for her, it seems, the pandemic has brought these qualities closer to the surface. At its premiere on Thursday, “Nerve Show” shared a kind of woozy uncertainty with the past year and a half, compressing into one hour the sense of not-knowing we have come to know so well.Mayo.Maria BaranovaLeCours.Maria BaranovaFrom the opening scene, an erratic solo for the alert and sensitive Mayo, thwarted impulses express themselves through both movement and attempts at speech: the body tugged in conflicting directions, or trying to shake something off; words escaping half formed, sometimes as no more than a grunt or a stuck-out tongue. Alone and together, the dancers often exude the flustered energy of trying to rein in a chaotic situation. Yet while they might look agitated to an outside eye, they also appear to know right where they are internally, a shared awareness that keeps the work from spinning out of control.Even in simpler moments, tensions run high: At one point, Smith and Young pace back and forth in unison, the meditative rhythm of their steps undercut by the worry in their darting eyes. A moment of release — everyone laughing in the dark — ends as the lights snap back on, their fluorescent buzz filling the sudden silence. (Ben Demarest designed the lighting.)Tensions running high: Eagly, Smith and Mayo.Maria BaranovaThe work’s jumbled and fragmented speech edges toward coherence. Near the end, the dancers lie on their backs and take turns speaking complete words, seemingly selected at random: “mineral,” “irksome,” “bicentennial,” “pizza.” But “Nerve Show” eludes any clear arc or resolution, and its subtle sadness deepens. As LeCours unleashes a wild, spindly solo to Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home,” the others stride and sit along the risers that function as a backdrop, casually looking on. He is going through something; they just watch it happen.If “Nerve Show” has a piecemeal structure, and moments that churn in place rather than moving forward, that might be a reflection of a creative process punctured by obstacles and interruptions. Intentionally or not, it also echoes how we don’t know where we’re going, or what will happen next — and never really have.Nerve ShowThrough Saturday at Target Margin Theater, targetmargin.org. More

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      in Theater

      Interview: Dancing to the beat of Flamenco Express

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Podcasts, Runn Radio interview

      17 September 2021

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      Jaki WIlford on the history of Flamenco Express and why dance is a vital cog to theatre

      Episode 3 in our podcast interview series features sees us step away from our usual fringe theatre and into the world of dance theatre. Jaki Wilford is the founder of Flamenco Express, and tells us all about the company’s history and what Flamenco dancing is all about. We also discuss dance’s role in theatre and how we shouldn’t be so scared of it.

      You can find out more about Flamenco Express and upcoing performances here.

      You can catch Flamenco Express next at The Landor Centre on 25 – 26 September 2021, bookings via their website here

      The podcast features the full version of the interview. An edited version was originally broadcast on our Runn Radio show on 8 September 2021.

      You can download this podcast by clicking on the forward arrow and selecting the download option. You can also follow us on Spotify for future editions of our interview series. More