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      New Work by Suzan-Lori Parks to Be Part of Public Theater Season

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      “The Visitor” and “cullud wattah,” two shows postponed by the pandemic, will get their premieres alongside works by James Ijames, Shaina Taub and Lloyd Suh.The Public Theater’s 2021-22 season will feature a mix of projects postponed because of the pandemic and new works, including “Plays for the Plague Year” by Suzan-Lori Parks.Behind the scenes, the Off Broadway nonprofit — responding to renewed calls for racial equity in the theater industry — said it will include over 50 percent representation by people of color in artistic leadership roles, from the directors and writers to the choreographers and the designers.“This last year and a half, in addition to Covid, has been about a call for racial justice and equity that we take profoundly seriously,” Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, said in an interview. “The Public obviously has always been, we felt, progressive on racial issues. And what became clear to us is we weren’t progressive enough.”The season begins with a musical that was about to have its world premiere in March 2020, before theaters were shuttered because of the pandemic: “The Visitor,” by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Directed by Daniel Sullivan and based on the film about a college professor and two undocumented immigrants, it will feature David Hyde Pierce and Ari’el Stachel, both Tony Award winners. Performances will begin Oct. 7.The pandemic also led to the postponement of the debut of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s play, “cullud wattah.” In the interim, she received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, which honors work by women and nonbinary playwrights. The play is about the effects of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., on three generations of women. Candis C. Jones will direct the play, which begins performances in November.Another delayed work, Mona Mansour’s “The Vagrant Trilogy,” about Palestinians’ displacement, will be directed by Mark Wing-Davey and will now open in April 2022.And Shaina Taub’s anticipated musical about the American women’s suffrage movement will take the stage in March 2022. “Suffs,” described as an epic show about some of the unsung heroines of the movement, will be directed by Leigh Silverman and feature the choreography of Raja Feather Kelly.In addition to Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright wrote a play a day since the beginning of the pandemic, the season will also include “Out of Time,” a collection of monologues by five award-winning Asian American playwrights; “The Chinese Lady,” Lloyd Suh’s portrait of the first Chinese woman to step foot in America in 1834; and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s “hilarious yet profound new ‘Hamlet’-inspired play” set at a Southern barbecue, Jesse Green wrote in his review of a streaming production. (Some of these are co-productions with Barrington Stage Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, NAATCO and National Black Theater.)The theater artist Daniel Alexander Jones’ digital album, “Altar No. 1 — Aten,” will unfold through a series of weekly installments beginning Sept. 22. And Joe’s Pub will be back, too: The performance space tucked inside the Public will have live music starting Oct. 5.The lineup of shows reflects the current moment well, Eustis said, for a few reasons. There’s the representation of artists of color and the partnerships with theater companies hit harder by the past year than the Public. And then there’s what he called Parks’s “astonishing” new work, “Plays for the Plague Year.”“They give a sort of map,” Eustis said, “and a day by day examination of what this year has been, like no other work of art I’ve seen. I think it’s an incredibly important and powerful work.”Parks began writing “Plays for the Plague Year” on March 12, 2020, and it covers at least a year. Among the snapshots she captured were those “almost like a small domestic adjustment drama,” Eustis said, in April, and the murder of George Floyd in May, as well as the racial reckoning that followed.The past year has sparked dialogue and rocked foundations, and the theater is no exception. Much of the conversation at the Public has been in the gap between “we need to be more thoughtful” and “the show must go on,” Eustis said.“Because the show must go on; it really must,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to be more thoughtful about how we work, and more mindful about and contemplative about the ways we treat each other while the show goes on.” More

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      Velvet, Organza and Vipers: Stage Costumes Dazzle

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      Here is what you can’t see from the rear mezzanine of a theater: the flocked velvet, the ruby-like rhinestones, the layered fabrics that shape a lush rosette atop each dance pump. This is the Red Death costume from the “Masquerade” number in “The Phantom of the Opera.” A carnival of flocked velvet and gold braid, it integrates art and craft, glamour and kitsch, fantasy and hand-sewn reality.Red Death awaits you on the lower level of “Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and Screen,” a pop-up exhibition to benefit the recently formed Costume Industry Coalition, an alliance of over 50 New York City-based small businesses and independent artisans.A costume from “Wicked” that involves hundreds of yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOn Broadway, even in the best seats, an orchestra pit separates you from the finery. At “Showstoppers!,” which runs through Sept. 26 in a former Modell’s branch in Times Square, you can stand close enough to make out individual threads.When theaters went dark last year because of the pandemic, costume fabricators had to close up shop, too. Designers are the visible faces of this industry — they’re the ones who collect the Tony Awards, though not during the broadcast portions of the ceremony. But while they dream up the costumes, it is the fabricators — the tailors and seamstresses and embroiderers and weavers and beaders and pleaters and painters and milliners and glovers and cobblers — who actually build them.This gown from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus” features 3-D printed vipers.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“We create the three-dimensional moving piece of art,” Brian Blythe, one of the exhibition’s organizers, said. Many of the pieces are couture items, built on the bodies of individual performers and retired when those actors leave a show.“Showstoppers!” displays 100-odd costumes, as well as a handful of the tools used to make them, like millinery blocks and a 19th-century crewel machine from the embroiderers Penn & Fletcher.Even the boots in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” were designed to sparkle.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe exhibition was put together in three and a half months, and its lighting, sound and design (from Thinc Design) were provided at cost or gratis. So it feels inevitably ad hoc. The Broadway and opera displays put their custom-shod feet forward; the film, television, theme park and dance portions hang back. The selection reflects less a dedication vision, and more what could be begged, borrowed or briskly replicated.But what’s more theatrical than a let’s-put-on-a-show ethos?Replica costumes from the musical “Six,” which was set to open on the day Broadway shut down last year.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe Red Death costume, center, from “The Phantom of the Opera.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesNot every garment benefits from close study. Some need the alchemy of star power and stage lighting to shine. Still, each testifies to the men and women (mostly women), who have patiently attached every ribbon and rhinestone. A handful of these craftspeople will be on site, plying their spangled trades during opening hours. Here are 10 highlights from the show.‘The Cher Show’“The Cher Show” apportioned its heroine’s life among three actresses, referred to in the biomusical as Babe, Star and Lady. The exhibition includes the costumes for all three of them in the number “If I Could Turn Back Time,” a slinky triptych of velvet, rhinestones and boots. When Cher came to see the Broadway show, she reminded the designer Bob Mackie that she hadn’t actually worn the glamorous bat wings that crown the display. “You would have if I’d drawn them,” he told her.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Six’A few steps away huddle replicas of the outfits for “Six,” a pop musical about the six wives of Henry VIII that was originally set to open the day Broadway shut down. The Tudor-inspired minidresses are built from plastics, vinyl and the occasional Swarovski crystal. They gesture to the 16th-century — the lattice patterning, the corsetry — but also the likes of contemporary stars such as Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande. Thousands of metal studs, some so sharp they could cut you, adorn the outfits. Each boasts a personalized mic holster.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Aladdin’One of the exhibition’s displays pays tribute to Disney’s Broadway dominance. (“Frozen” announced its closure during the pandemic, but “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” will soon reopen.) Up close, the “Aladdin” costumes offer astonishing intricacies, like the beaded birds and flowering vines that meander up and down Aladdin’s turquoise robe. The delicate embroidery on Jasmine’s pink skirts may be difficult to discern without a close-up look, but see how it contrasts with the unapologetic opulence of her top.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘The Lion King’Perhaps the most memorable element of “The Lion King” is its life-size animal heads, designed by the director Julie Taymor and the mask and puppet designer Michael Curry. (The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has acquired two of them for its theater and performance collection.) But “Showstopper!” shows the complexity of subtler costumes. Take the grasslands corset: Strands of rope form a skirt below. Above, cloth blades are loomed, by hand, into more rope to create a bodice at once enduring and delicate.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesAn Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’Diamonds are forever. Ostrich feather boas are not. In the Sparkling Diamond look from “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the courtesan Satine perches in a swing in a strapless gown, a top hat, high-heeled boots and a necklace that could strain the cervical vertebrae. There are diamanté rhinestones in a firework pattern on the heart-shaped bodice, individual gems sewn to the stockings. Even the boots’ heels sparkle. In a nod to Satine’s vulnerability, the skirt — made of ostrich feathers and mylar tinsel — softens her look’s diamond hardness.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Wicked’During the “One Short Day” number from “Wicked,” the school-age witches Glinda and Elphaba arrive in the Emerald City, off to see the wizard. The verdant costume for just one townswoman involves 900 yards of ombré-dyed organza ribbon. (It gives the effect of an ordinary day dress overrun with lettuce.) The dress’s skirt has a kick pleat, and if you glance beneath it, you’ll find five layers of underskirt, three of them meticulously embroidered, just in case the performer lifts her dancing shoe.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Hamilton’When Paul Tazewell was designing the costumes for “Hamilton,” the musical’s creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, told him that Hamilton’s suit ought to be green. Not just any green, but the color of money. (Pity the costume assistant who had to visit the city’s fabric stores, clutching a 10-dollar bill.) The final outfit is ultimately more lush than cash, and it yields other surprises, too: like the feminine lace at each cuff, and the waterfall ruff that encircles the neck.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWing + Weft GlovesSome of the gloves from Wing + Weft, the last glove-maker in the garment district, have built-in claws. Others are sequined, feathered, fringed, beaded, buttoned, ruched and pearled. The studio designs for theater, film and television, and (along with its immediate predecessor, Lacrasia Gloves) have also gloved a dozen first ladies. But many of the most splendid creations seen here are for drag and burlesque — gloves designed to be worn and then, finger by finger, flirtatiously removed.An Rong Xu for The New York Times‘Phantom of the Opera’The Phantom’s Red Death outfit is so top-heavy, it’s surprising that it hasn’t caused actors to fall down the stairs in “Masquerade.” There’s the feather-bedecked cavalier hat, the skull mask, the beads, rubies, buttons, trim and sofa’s worth of tassels that pull together the stomacher, a Renaissance-era decorated panel. Turn your back on that outfits, and you will find designs from another archetypical scene — Christine’s white nightgown and the Phantom’s black cape from “The Music of the Night.”‘Dragus Maximus’An Rong Xu for The New York TimesTake one look at Medusa, and you’ll turn to stone. That won’t happen at “Showstoppers!,” but when you see this mannequin dressed in the Medusa costume from Heartbeat Opera’s “Dragus Maximus,” a queer take on the Homeric myths, you might stop cold. The gown is wreathed in vipers, each of them 3-D printed at the behest of the designer Miodrag Guberinic. Compared with the other looks on view, it’s has a less artisanal approach, but it’s no less intricate or exciting. And it hints at fabrication’s future.Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and ScreenThrough Sept. 26 at 234 West 42nd Street; showstoppersnyc.com. More

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      Finding a New Theater Audience, Far From France’s Cities

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      In rural gardens, forests and public squares, young stage artists fed up with the country’s rigid scene are striving for diversity and spontaneity.MAURENS, France — The village of Maurens, 300 miles south of Paris, has a population of around 1,000. It has a church; a single bakery; and, since 2013, a summer theater festival, the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.One recent evening, the scale of the event’s ambition was obvious. On an open-air wooden stage, a cast of 12 put impressive energy into “Fanny, Me and the Others,” a four-hour adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol trilogy. Even when a drizzle started, the members of audience, sitting on chairs and haystacks, opened their umbrellas and stayed put.The Roi de Coeur isn’t alone in bringing large-scale theater to rural backyards. It is one of 17 founding members of France’s Federation of Local Festivals and Theaters, which got underway last month at the Avignon Festival. Its members, dotted around the country in areas with few playhouses, have come together to show that rural theater can compete with bigger city stages, and to push for greater recognition of their contribution to France’s cultural ecosystem.Behind the initiative is a group of millennials, who graduated from top drama schools and found themselves frustrated with the rigid structure of France’s theater world. While the performing arts in the country receive generous public funding, a significant portion goes to state-backed playhouses in large cities. Competition to get independent projects off the ground is fierce; young artists have complained for years about the cost of attending the crowded Avignon Fringe, for instance.Pélagie Papillon, left, and Martin Jaspar in “Fanny, Me and the Others.” Sébastien AngladaChloé de Broca, who started the Roi de Coeur with Félix Beaupérin, said they were warned as students about the profession’s harsh reality. “We knew very quickly that big productions with a large cast were reserved to an elite of sorts,” she said.Unaware of one another at first, the federation’s members carved an alternative path, turning to “spaces not originally meant for theater,” as their official charter puts it. These include gardens, forests, private residences and public squares. The Roi de Coeur’s two stages are installed every year on the property of de Broca’s sister-in-law. Other festivals tour small cities and villages. La Luzège, which is based just east of the Roi de Coeur, stages productions in different venues every night from mid-July to mid-August. Theater doesn’t get much more adaptable than that. Last week, because of the rain, La Luzège moved “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” a show inspired by Victor Hugo’s writings, from a garden to a nearby community center with five minutes’ notice.With its focus on underserved rural communities, the federation is finding new audiences. The first wave of cultural decentralization in France, initiated by postwar governments, aimed to break Paris’s stranglehold on artistic life and redirected funding to midsize cities — but often stopped there. “This is a new decentralization. We’re reaching people where they are,” said Romane Ponty-Bésanger, one of La Luzège’s co-directors.Fabrice Henry, left, and Ambroise Daulhac in “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” directed by Victor Calcine and Romane Ponty-Bésanger at La Luzège en Corrèze.Victor CalcineSome locals are delighted. Séverine Bonnier, who co-owns a bed-and-breakfast, Ô Vents d’Anges, in Maurens, saw all four of the Roi de Coeur’s productions this year; they were the first performances she’d seen since moving to the area a few years ago, she said. “It’s a matter of time, between work and two children at home,” she added. Some festivals in the federation focus on classic, family-friendly titles, while others stage contemporary plays. One common feature, however, is the absence of a single artistic director: Most operate as collectives. There are four co-directors at La Luzège, and de Broca and Beaupérin make decisions with six others at the Roi de Coeur. Roles are fluid, too. Actors might direct, or help with sets, costumes and other tasks, like tending bar. Nicolas Grosrichard (César in “Fanny, Me and the Others”) wrote a witty short play for children this year, “Anne the Pirate.” They also work fast. While the traditional funding model for independent French theatermakers allows for one creation every other year, most of the federation’s members put together between three and six productions every 12 months. Rehearsal time is limited, and finesse sometimes sacrificed. In the case of “Fanny, Marius and the Others,” conflicts between characters turned into shouting matches, without the nuance more preparation might have afforded.“We’re looking for diversity and spontaneity,” de Broca said. “It’s almost unfinished theater, but it makes it even more alive. The artists are sharing their research with the audience, and people really respond to that.”The Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, founded in the Loire village of Fontaine-Guérin in 2009 and run by an 18-member collective, has become the blueprint for this new generation of local festivals. (The Roi de Coeur was modeled on it, de Broca said.) Matthieu Kassimo, left, and Dorothée Le Troadec in “Anne the Pirate,” directed by Nicolas Grosrichard at the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.Sébastien MazetIt began when the grandmother of an actor, Lazare Herson-Macarel, allowed the organizers to take over her backyard. After her death in 2012, a crowdfunding campaign raised 70,000 euros, about $82,000, to keep the festival going on her property, and the local authorities opted to buy it and lease it without charge to the collective.The festival’s audience has kept growing, and in 2019, before the pandemic, it attracted around 10,000 visitors. Last month, it achieved a different milestone when the Avignon Festival, the most prestigious event in French theater, featured one of its productions, “The Sky, the Night and the Party,” a six-hour trilogy of Molière plays. The three plays will alternate this month in Fontaine-Guérin.The theater establishment may be waking up to the vitality of rural festivals, but there is still a long way to go, the federation’s members say. Economically, festivals remain fragile, especially during the pandemic, and they often fall outside the criteria for local and regional funding. “Performances in rural settings aren’t recognized as ‘real’ performances, because they don’t take place in identified venues,” Pauline Bolcatto, a member of the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire and one of the federation’s architects, said in a phone interview.This summer, the federation’s members exchanged tips and information, Bolcatto said, and discussed how best to implement France’s new health pass, a government policy that requires businesses and event organizers to check proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test before admitting patrons.The noise generated by daily outdoor performances hasn’t been to everyone’s taste in quiet countryside spots. In 2019, the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire had to fight a lawsuit initiated by a neighbor; rulings so far have been in the troupe’s favor. The Roi du Coeur also faced complaints, and found a compromise: The festival will continue in its current form until the tenth edition, in 2023, and will then move to a yet-to-be-decided location.“The Sky, the Night and the Party — Psyché,” directed by Julien Romelard at Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, part of the Avignon Festival.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon FestivalStill, a chance visit may open unexpected doors. Étienne Fraday, who played the leading role of Césario in “Fanny, Me and the Others,” was working as a boilermaker when he fell in love with the Roi de Coeur in 2016. After being a volunteer for two years, he decided to retrain as an actor, and is currently studying at the prestigious Court Florent in Paris. “This adventure has changed some lives,” de Broca said. More

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      Interview: A walk through Esmond Street (Productions)

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews

      11 August 2021

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      Maria MaKenna and Erica Martin talk about The Bacchae

      This four part interview originally aired on Runn Radio on 11 August 2021.

      The Bacchae

      Dionysus is the God of drugs, debauchery and ritual madness and will stop at nothing to prove her divine heritage to the dissenters of Thebes. Set deep in the underground club scene where debauchery rules and idolatry reigns, The Bacchae run the show. Every. Night. Can the rule of law compete with the chaos and euphoria of Dionysus?

      [embedded content]

      The Bacchae plays at Hen and Chickens Theatre as part of Camden Fringe 2021 from 20 – 25 August. Booking via the below link. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

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      Interview: A walk through Esmond Road (Productions)

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews

      11 August 2021

      10 Views

      Maria MaKenna and Erica Martin talk about The Bacchae

      This four part interview originally aired on Runn Radio on 11 August 2021.

      The Bacchae

      Dionysus is the God of drugs, debauchery and ritual madness and will stop at nothing to prove her divine heritage to the dissenters of Thebes. Set deep in the underground club scene where debauchery rules and idolatry reigns, The Bacchae run the show. Every. Night. Can the rule of law compete with the chaos and euphoria of Dionysus?

      [embedded content]

      The Bacchae plays at Hen and Chickens Theatre as part of Camden Fringe 2021 from 20 – 25 August. Booking via the below link. More

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      Interview: Shining a light on A Thousand Sons

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      Runn Radio Interview with Jamie Sefton

      This four part interview was recorded and broadcast for Runn Radio on 11 August 2021.

      The BNTVA charity helped in the research for this play. You can read more about the charity’s work here

      A Thousand Sons

      Bertie has witnessed the power of Nuclear weapons. He has seen the horrors first hand, and felt the fallout on a very personal level.

      A THOUSAND SONS is a one-person show about Bertie; a British veteran who witnessed four nuclear test detonations in the 1950’s.

      We follow him through his life: from witnessing the detonation of the first bomb, to the subsequent effects it had on him and his family in later life, and finally to present day as he struggles for justice and recognition from those in power.

      Bertie is a fictional character, however all events are based on the true testimonies of British service personnel, explored through action, poetry and verbatim testimony.

      A Thousand Sons uses a pivotal and terrifying event in history to explore themes of family, trust, betrayal and power. It uses a unique blend of techniques to tell a captivating and deeply emotional story.

      A Thousand Sons plays as part of Camden Fringe 2021 at Etcetera Theatre on 18 August (9.30pm) and 25 – 27 August (11.30am). More information and booking at the below link. More

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      A Puppet Festival Returns to New York, All Grown Up

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      After more than a year of pandemic-related crises, Manuel Antonio Morán wanted to give a gift to New York. He envisioned something lighthearted and uplifting, but also thought-provoking and as varied as the city itself. The answer? Puppets.But there’s nothing here to prompt sneers or eye rolling. The International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which arrives this week with over 50 shows and events, more than a dozen short films and five accompanying exhibitions, including “Puppets of New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, is far from a kiddie celebration.“The wrong perception in the United States is that puppetry is just for children or to be used for education,” Morán, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the programming’s Lower East Side hub. “That’s something I’m fighting every single day.”The works on display in the “Puppets of New York” exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York include Bruce Cannon’s marionette Lady Love Power (inspired by Diana Ross).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRolando, a puppet by Agrippino Manteo whose family immigrated to New York a century ago. They specialized in making complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAlan Semok’s Howdy Doody marionette (recostumed by Richard Liljeblad).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRick Lyon’s hand puppet Trekkie Monster from “Avenue Q” and others in the exhibition, which opens Aug. 13, highlight puppetry traditions.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThis festival, which is offering 60 percent of its performances free (tickets to the rest are $15 each), may help convince the doubters. Although Morán founded Puppet Fringe NYC as a biennial in 2018 — Covid-19 prevented its 2020 edition — this version is almost twice the size of the original and essentially a rebirth. Beginning on Wednesday with the first Puppet Week NYC, which comprises five days of live events, the festival continues through Aug. 31, mostly in virtual form, with shows from countries including India, Israel, Argentina, Spain, South Korea and the Ivory Coast.It “represents the whole immigrant ethos of the Lower East Side, channeled through the lens of these other citizens that are puppets,” said Libertad O. Guerra, the executive director of the Clemente. The center is producing Puppet Fringe NYC with Teatro SEA, the downtown Latino theater Morán started in 1985, and Morán’s own agency, Grupo Morán.This year’s festival will also have workshops in puppet construction, four of them for adults. And for those whose tastes run to the politically barbed or the comically risqué, two grown-ups-only puppet evenings are planned, one of them called the “Bawdy, Naughty Puppet Cabaret/Puppet Slam.”“They’re including elements of burlesque,” Morán said of the slam, to be presented on Saturday by the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York. “There might be a little bit of skin,” he added with a laugh.Herbert and Lulu, the hobo bugs, by Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher, as they are installed at the Museum of the City of New York.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesInstallation view of Shari Lewis and James Patrick Brymer’s hand puppet Lamb Chop, with costumes by Pat Brymer Creations. On Wednesday, Lewis’s daughter Mallory and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut perhaps this festival’s most novel element is its partnership with the Museum of the City of New York, which will open its 2,500-square-foot exhibition with a sold-out celebration on Thursday evening. “Puppets of New York,” which runs until early April at the uptown Manhattan museum, features photographs, videos, films and sets, as well as more than 60 puppets. They range from cardboard finger models designed by Penny Jones to José A. López Alemán’s 12-foot-tall Titanya, the fairy queen from “Sueño,” Teatro SEA’s Afro-Caribbean version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”“The main argument of the show uptown is that the history of puppetry in New York City mirrors the demographics of the city,” said Monxo López, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow who curated “Puppets of New York.” And, he noted, “many different puppeteers that reflect that diversity have not been as visible as others. It was important to tell that story of diversity, of visibility, of inclusiveness, in a way that also showed joy and possibility.”Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane’s puppet (called a man whose name is never known) from their 2020 production “Fly Away.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo that end, the exhibition includes not only designs by famous masters like Jim Henson and Ralph Lee, but also work by artists like the Manteo family, who brought complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes when they immigrated to New York a century ago, and Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane, whose 2020 puppet production, “Fly Away,” featured a nameless young Black man.“My strategy was that each object had to tell as many stories as possible,” said López, who also collaborated with the author and curator Leslee Asch to organize “Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente,” a complementary exhibition on view through Sept. 30. It joins three other art shows that will be there through August: “Teatro SEA’s International Collaborations”; “Murals of Puppetry Around the World,” featuring Alfredo Hernández’s paintings; and “Vince Anthony’s Legacy,” which celebrates the retired founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, to whom the festival is dedicated.The exhibitions reveal a synergy with the festival’s live performances, which will mostly be presented outdoors. (All in-person events require registration and face masks.) Chinese Theater Works, which will deliver puppet dragons and the Chinese judge of the dead to the Clemente’s plaza over four nights in “The Triple Zhongkui Pageant,” will be represented by shadow puppets at the Museum of the City of New York. Also at both those locations will be Lamb Chop, perhaps the most memorable — and feistiest — sock puppet of all time, who appeared on children’s television for 40 years with her ventriloquist co-star, Shari Lewis.“She’s the Velveteen Rabbit of puppets,” said Lewis’s daughter, Mallory Lewis, referring to Margery Williams’s children’s classic about a stuffed animal that becomes real. On Wednesday evening, Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show,” an interactive production featuring a new, pandemic-related ending. “It’s a tribute to the first responders,” she said in a phone interview.The City Parks Foundation’s production of “Little Red’s Hood” will be performed in both English and Spanish.via Museum of the City of New York Other family-friendly performances will take place all weekend. Bruce Cannon, artistic director of the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park, contributes his talents to the City Parks Foundation’s jazzy production of “Little Red’s Hood,” to be performed in both English (Saturday) and Spanish (Sunday).Besides this fairy tale, in which the Wolf stalks Little Red through Manhattan, Cannon will present his own “Harlem River Drive,” a one-man homage, on Sunday.“It explores how Harlem became Harlem,” he said in a phone interview. While touching on serious topics like racism and the Depression, it also offers joyful music and multiple kinds of puppets, all operated by Cannon. They usually include a marionette inspired by Diana Ross — absent from the festival performance because it’s in “Puppets of New York” — and two of Michael Jackson. (When was the last time you saw a moonwalking marionette?)The festival will host three performances of Deborah Hunt’s “La Macanuda.” Here, an image from a 2019 performance at the National Puppetry Festival in Minneapolis.Richard TermineDeborah Hunt, a New Zealander living in Puerto Rico, will also examine a community’s evolution in three performances of “La Macanuda,” whose title, she said in a phone conversation, means “a large, friendly being.” Hunt, whose work appears in the Teatro SEA exhibition, portrays the character in a puppet that encases her entire body. Accompanied by cutouts, scrolls and a smaller puppet, she enacts a wordless tale — essentially a statement supporting immigrants — in which La Macanuda rescues the victims of a city-destroying ogre. “She’s a kindly departure for me,” said Hunt, whose work often tends toward the macabre.The Clemente’s own neighborhood stars in nightly performances of “Los Grises/The Gray Ones,” Morán’s music-filled show about the community’s elders, and Saturday and Sunday in “Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side,” which the center commissioned from the Junktown Duende collective, a troupe that creates puppets from recycled materials.Its production is “centered around a tenement where waves of immigrants settled,” said Adam Ende, a member of Junktown Duende. And it’s “specifically about the history of immigrant puppetry.”While the show deals with gentrification and police brutality, it also illustrates the transformation of a blighted space into a community garden. And like Puppet Fringe NYC, it’s a testament to strength amid hard times. “The struggle continues,” Ende said. “And we’re celebrating together, endlessly.” More

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      Taylor Mac’s ‘Joy and Pandemic’ Is Postponed as Covid Cases Surge

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      The play, which had been set to have its world premiere in September at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, takes place during the 1918 flu pandemic.Taylor Mac’s “Joy and Pandemic,” a play set during the 1918 flu pandemic, was a bright spot on the horizon at the Magic Theater in San Francisco: a world-premiere production, to open in September for what would have been the theater’s first live audience in 18 months.But now, in a further life-meets-art-meets-life twist, the production, which was announced in March, has been postponed indefinitely because of the Delta-variant-driven surge in Covid cases.“Timing is everything,” Mac said in a statement. “With the rise of infections, this is not the time to engage wholeheartedly with the themes in this work. Our hope is that time will come soon.”Mac is best known for “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” a marathon 24-hour performance piece that takes in all of American history through song, refracted through a radical queer lens (and involving some exuberant audience participation). “Joy and Pandemic,” to be directed by Loretta Greco, was partly inspired by some of Mac’s research for that show and had been commissioned by the Magic, a 144-seat nonprofit theater with which Mac has a long association, before the Covid-19 pandemic.The play (in which Mac will not appear) is set in Philadelphia in September 1918, near the end of World War I — on the day of the Fourth Liberty Loan Parade, which became an infamous superspreader event — and also flashes forward to 1951. It is set in a children’s art school and deals in part with Christian Science, in which Mac was raised.In an email on Wednesday, Mac called “Joy and Pandemic” a work “with a lot of humor,” and wrote that the realization that the Delta variant can infect even vaccinated people “would alter the way the audience is able to listen.”But “‘Joy and Pandemic’ isn’t really about a pandemic (just set during one),” Mac said. “It’s more about how belief, hope and faith collide with reality. So our pandemic’s progress, and the way Americans have politicized it, has only deepened the major theme of the play.”The postponement came as some live theater has begun an uncertain return in the San Francisco Bay Area. On Tuesday, “Hamilton” reopened at the Orpheum Theater, where the audience of roughly 2,000 were required to submit proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test. And on Wednesday, the Berkeley Repertory Theater pushed back its season opening from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, and will now open with Charles Mee’s “Wintertime.”Sean San José, the Magic’s recently appointed artistic director, vowed that Mac’s show will, ultimately, go on.“This is, as Taylor Mac has reminded me, a time for ‘radical empathy,’” San José said in a statement. “This piece WILL be premiering at Magic, but with the uncertainty around variant strains, we cannot fully embrace the resonance in the work. We need proper reflection time for this piece to be rightfully presented.” More