Festivals

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares104 Views

    Global Arts Festival Taking Shape Inside Gowanus Power Station

    by

    The first Powerhouse: International will feature works from South Africa’s William Kentridge, Brazil’s Carolina Bianchi — and 10,000, $30 tickets.A new arts festival, featuring performance art from Brazil, an interactive installation from New Zealand, and a party presented by a Beyoncé dance captain, will be staged this fall inside a onetime power station along Brooklyn’s industrial Gowanus Canal.The three-month series, called Powerhouse: International and scheduled to run Sept. 25 to Dec. 13, is being curated by David Binder, a longtime performing arts producer and former artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It will take place at Powerhouse Arts, a hulking structure that since 2023 has housed fabrication studios for artists from a variety of disciplines.The festival will be the building’s first series of performing arts events, and will feature acclaimed artists like William Kentridge, from South Africa, who is presenting his multidisciplinary opera-theater work “Sibyl”; Christos Papadopoulos, from Greece, whose prizewinning dance piece “Larsen C” is about a melting ice shelf; and Carolina Bianchi, from Brazil, who will perform her “Cadela Força Trilogy,” a stage work about sexual violence, with her collective Cara de Cavalo.“We’re in this moment when there are so many barriers — cultural, physical, ideological — and this festival aims to break down those barriers,” Binder said in an interview. “What really interests me is the convergence of artists from different countries and different disciplines.”To keep the events accessible, the festival is making at least 10,000 tickets — just over half of the expected total — available for $30 each. At most configurations, the venue will have about 800 seats.Binder said he was motivated in part by a change in the types of work being presented in New York City in recent years. “There’s obviously a lot less international work in the city, a lot less art, a lot less new plays, a lot less music and dance,” he said. “I’m hoping we’re adding to the conversation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares73 Views

      in Theater

      A Retelling of the Mahabharata, Set to Modern-Day Struggles

      by

      At Lincoln Center, the Toronto-based theater company Why Not strives to balance the old and new in its production of the Sanskrit epic.The Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata has been adapted many times over in oral retellings, plays, movies, comic books and more. Consisting of over 100,000 verses, the poem has so many stories that picking which ones to tell is a statement in itself.And making that decision can pose its own challenges as Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic directors of the Toronto-based theater company Why Not, learned when they went about adapting it. Now they are bringing their expansive two-part contemporary staging, which premiered in 2023 at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada, to Lincoln Center, where it will run from Tuesday through June 29.Their adaptation is based on the poet Carole Satyamurti’s retelling of the epic, which, at its core, is the story of two warring sets of cousins — the Kauravas and the Pandavas — trying to control a kingdom. The poem is part myth, part guide to upholding moral values and duty — or dharma. Some of the epic incorporates the Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical text on Hindu morality, which is framed as a discussion between Prince Arjuna, a Pandava and a skilled archer, and Lord Krishna, a Hindu God who acts as Arjuna’s teacher.Jain, 45, began developing the piece in 2016 after receiving a $375,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, the country’s public arts funder. Fernandes, 36, joined him on the project two years later after finishing graduate school in France. Jain described an early version of the script in an interview as “feminist” and “self-referential.” But the pandemic made them rethink which stories could best drive home the point of dharma — a central tenet of the text.Meher Pavri as an opera singer in the section drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. In the background, Neil D’Souza as the Hindu god Krishna and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu as Prince Arjuna, Krishna’s pupil. David Cooper“To build a civilization, those with the most power must take care of those with the least,” Jain said, referring to the epic’s message. “In the animal kingdom, the strong eat the weak. There’s no problem with that. But humans have empathy, and we can build a civilization where we’re not just those who eat and those who are eaten, but rather those who feed and those who are fed.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Misery Loves Company? Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair Hits a Nerve.

      by

      Movies that are major downers, it turns out, are a big film festival draw. “Sometimes the world is such that you just need to wallow a little bit.”The festival Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair started three years ago as a primal scream from a little Los Angeles nonprofit organization.What has happened since says a lot about the mood in at least one corner of American culture.The American Cinematheque, a nonprofit that brings classic art films to Los Angeles theaters, was struggling to sell tickets in 2022. Older cinephiles were still spooked by the Covid pandemic; younger ones were glued to Netflix.At the same time, some Cinematheque staff members were depressed about the direction the world seemed to be heading. It was the year Russia invaded Ukraine, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a gunman killed 19 children at a Texas elementary school and Big Tech rolled out artificial intelligence bots.Out of that somber stew came a programming idea called Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair. Over seven days, the Cinematheque screened 30 feel-bad movies. It called the selections “the greatest films from around the world that explore the darkest sides of humanity.” For the inaugural festival, one centerpiece film was Béla Tarr’s “Satantango” (1994), a seven-hour-and-19-minute contemplation of decay and misery.Gabriel Byrne in Joel Coen’s 1990 film “Miller’s Crossing.”20th Century Fox, via The American Cinematheque“‘Everyone was saying, ‘You should do comedies,’” Grant Moninger, the Cinematheque’s artistic director, said. “But we thought, ‘What if you did the exact opposite?’ We’re not in this to dangle keys at a baby.” (Now might be a good moment to mention that Moninger grew up with a mother, he said, who “only rented movies on VHS in two genres: the Holocaust and slavery.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Tribeca Festival: Music and Movies Make for a Successful Mix

      by

      The festival has more than 20 music events this year — its highest number yet — including documentaries, music videos and podcasts.Metallica, Billy Idol, Miley Cyrus and Depeche Mode — they are just a few of the music acts participating in the Tribeca Festival this month. The Korean rock band the Rose, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Wizkid and Anderson .Paak are also part of the mix.These artists are either the subject of documentaries or have a hand in creating films premiering at the event, which starts Wednesday and runs through June 15. Following their screenings, some musicians, like Billy Idol and Eddie Vedder, are taking the stage to perform in intimate settings compared with their usual mass crowds. Others, including Depeche Mode and Metallica, are sitting for conversations with audiences.Music has been a part of the event since its inception, according to the festival’s director and senior vice president of programming, Cara Cusumano. In its first edition in 2002, the festival partnered with MTV for a free community concert in Battery Park City with Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows, Wyclef Jean and David Bowie. “We have always considered Tribeca a storytelling festival, so music fits in alongside the other forms of storytelling we celebrate like games, immersive, TV, podcasts and, of course, film at the center,” Cusumano said in an email interview.Much like the festival itself, the amount of music at Tribeca has only grown over the years, she said. The increased presence of musical programming is driven by its popularity with audiences. Cusumano said that the music events saw the highest number of attendees compared with the number of attendees at any other part of the festival. Tribeca is hosting more than 20 music events this year — the highest number yet — including documentaries, music videos and podcasts.“Anecdotally, we often hear audiences speak about how special the experience was since they have usually just seen a doc about the artist, which puts the show and the artist themselves in a unique context,” Cusumano saidIn 2011, Tribeca opened with “The Union,” a documentary about making the eponymous album from Leon Russell and Elton John. In his performance for audiences after the premiere, John dedicated his love ballad “Your Song” to New York. The film and John’s concert set the precedent for Tribeca opening with a music documentary whenever possible, Cusumano said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      At Tribeca Festival, ‘The Scout’ Spotlights a Low-Profile Role

      by

      Written and directed by Paula González-Nasser, who worked as a location scout for about six years, the film explores the existential quandary at the heart of this seeming dream job.It’s often said that the city a movie is set in is like a character in the story — think New York in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” or Hong Kong in Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.” But it takes a location scout to find the ordinary streets and houses that create a complete, lived-in picture of that place. This largely invisible but important role in moviemaking provides the lead character of “The Scout,” which premieres Thursday at the Tribeca Festival.Paula González-Nasser wrote and directed “The Scout” after toiling as a location scout for around six years. The filmmaker, who grew up in Colombia and Miami, got into the business after moving to New York in 2016, when a scout left the show where she was a locations production assistant. What followed were busy stints on the shows “High Maintenance,” “Search Party,” “Broad City,” and films like “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” — driving around, knocking on doors, and leaving fliers in neighborhoods in search of the perfect locations for scenes.She started keeping a diary of her appointments, if only to preserve more of the memories of all that she saw. When the idea struck her to tell a story about her job through a movie, she knew she didn’t want to show the hustle-and-bustle on set that meta movies about filmmaking often focus their energies on.“You never see the boring, drab, behind-the-scenes part of making a movie,” González-Nasser said during an interview in a cafe in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood where she had scouted locations for the HBO series “High Maintenance.”When scouting locations, González-Nasser would enter homes and take photographs to present to the filmmaking team.Paula González-Nasser“But,” she continued, “I also wanted to show a character in a job that was blending the personal and professional and pulling her in many different directions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      South by Southwest London Has Its Own Musical Touch

      by

      The festival, which has a long association with music, presents an opportunity for London acts to perform on a bigger stage.When South by Southwest first began in Austin, Texas, in 1987, the Shoreditch neighborhood in East London was still filled with empty warehouses. But it was beginning to attract a wave of artists who would help it eventually become synonymous with music and culture.Almost 40 years later, this area will be the site of South by Southwest London, the organization’s first foray into Europe. And for some of the London-born musicians who are performing, it’s a huge opportunity that also reflects the area’s reputation and artistic cachet.“It’s super exciting that it’s now finally arriving on home soil,” said Joel Bailey, an R&B and soul artist from Southwest London whose stage name is BAELY. He continued: “London’s got so many different hubs of, kind of like pockets of creative spaces and Shoreditch is definitely one of them. It’s thriving.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, was born in London and said she briefly lived in Shoreditch. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there. It’s always beating,” she said, adding that “so many people love to travel to Shoreditch for a show because it’s always a good time.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, said people flock to shows in vibrant Shoreditch, the festival’s home base. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there.”@kate.samsara.photographySouth by Southwest London, which begins on Monday and runs through June 7, will feature performances by more than 500 artists across about 30 venues as part of its music festival. It will also include a film and conference series, just like the flagship festival in Austin. An Asia-Pacific branch of the event started in Sydney in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      Dozens of Festival Plays Worth Traveling to This Summer

      by

      Across the country, you’ll find Shakespeare in amphitheaters, exciting new works on intimate stages and many regional repertories in bucolic settings.In and Around New YorkJust off Manhattan, a full-to-bursting open-air season is already underway at Little Island (through Sept. 28), a park in the Hudson River that looks from afar as if it was built atop a giant’s stash of stiletto heels. Highlights include Kate Tarker and Dan Schlosberg’s “The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter’s City” (through June 15); Sarah Gancher’s bluegrass re-envisioning of “Eugene Onegin,” directed by Rachel Chavkin (July 30-31); and “The Tune Up,” a music-filled evening of new work by Suzan-Lori Parks (July 30-Aug. 3).And at the newly renovated Delacorte Theater in Central Park, Shakespeare in the Park makes a glittery return with Saheem Ali’s production of “Twelfth Night” (Aug. 7-Sept. 14), starring Lupita Nyong’o as Viola, Sandra Oh as Olivia, Peter Dinklage as Malvolio, Daphne Rubin-Vega as Maria and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Andrew Aguecheek.Amid the hive of theater development that is Poughkeepsie in summertime, New York Stage and Film’s dozen public performances at Marist College (July 11-Aug. 3) include new works by Donja R. Love, Carly Mensch, Hansol Jung, Kirsten Greenidge and John Patrick Shanley, while a reading of Drew Gasparini and Alex Brightman’s musical “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is part of the Powerhouse Theater season (June 20-July 27) at nearby Vassar College. In Garrison, under the tent at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, “The Comedy of Errors” (June 6-Aug. 2) plays in rep with Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” (June 8-Aug. 3), followed by Dave Malloy’s chamber musical “Octet” (Aug. 11-Sept. 7).The Pennsylvania ShakespeareFestival, about an hour north of Philadelphia, takes an expansive approach to the Bard. You can see “Hamlet” (July 9-Aug. 3) and its Tom Stoppard spinoff, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (July 17-Aug. 2). Iambic pentameter not your jam? You can also catch the musical “The Producers” (June 11-29) or the Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun” (June 25-July 13). Now that’s range.Shakespeare & Company’s outdoor stage is in bucolic Lenox, Mass.Nile Scott StudiosNortheastWestern Massachusetts is a travel destination for the Berkshires’ hilly beauty and for the summer seasons of its established theaters, including Barrington Stage Company (June 3-Oct. 12), in downtown Pittsfield; Shakespeare & Company (June 19-Oct. 12), in bucolic Lenox; and Berkshire Theater Group (through Oct. 26), in both Pittsfield and Stockbridge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Willem Dafoe Returns to His Stage Roots at the Venice Theater Biennale

      by

      Willem Dafoe is returning to his roots. While his distinctive, chiseled features are instantly recognizable from over 150 movie roles, Dafoe, 69, actually got his start in experimental theater. In 1980, he co-founded the New York City-based company the Wooster Group, and performed with it for more than 20 years.Now, he is taking on the role of a curator. Last year, Dafoe was announced as the artistic director of the 2025 and 2026 editions of the Venice Theater Biennale, one of several festivals that began life as offshoots of the Art Biennale. (The theater event is actually an annual fixture.)And there will be familiar faces around Dafoe at this year’s edition, which opens Saturday and runs through June 16. Dafoe is paying tribute to some avant-garde theater companies that shaped him and were prominent 50 years ago at the 1975 edition of the festival, with productions from Denmark’s Odin Teatret and Thomas Richards, formerly of Workcenter Grotowski. The Wooster Group’s longtime director (and Dafoe’s ex-life partner), Elizabeth LeCompte, will receive the event’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.Under the tagline “Theater Is Body. Body Is Poetry,” the Theater Biennale will also welcome a mix of European directors whom Dafoe described in a recent video interview as “modern maestros” — including Romeo Castellucci, and Milo Rau — as well as emerging artists. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did this appointment come about? Did Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the president of the Venice Biennales, reach out personally?Yes. I knew him a little bit: He was a very good friend of a dear friend of mine. I knew he wanted to talk to me, and it was the simplest of phone calls. I was very happy to accept.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Opera Companies Find Savings and Gains Through Collaborations

      by

      Co-productions can help companies across the globe save money, collaborate artistically and ensure that lesser-known works are seen by more audiences.Simon McBurney’s acclaimed production of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which debuted last month at the Salzburg Easter Festival ahead of its Metropolitan Opera premiere, almost didn’t happen.McBurney’s staging, once envisioned as a co-production between the Met and the Bolshoi in Moscow, was in limbo after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response to the war, the New York company severed ties with all Russian state-run institutions.At that time, Nikolaus Bachler had recently taken over as artistic director of the Easter Festival and was looking for other companies to share productions with. One of his ambitions was to present McBurney’s “Khovanshchina” in Salzburg. The Met signed on as co-producer. “For me, it was crucial to find partners from the very beginning,” he said in an interview last month at his office in Salzburg’s picturesque Altstadt, or Old City, shortly before the second and final performance of “Khovanshchina” at the festival, on April 21.“Especially for a festival like ours, it is such a pity — they did this in the past — that you do a production for two times and then it’s over,” he said. “This is an artistic waste and economic waste.”A scene from John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met, a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.Karen Almond/Met OperaIn recent years, the Met has increasingly turned to co-producing not only to share costs, but also as a way to collaborate artistically with other companies. The final premiere of the current season, John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” a Met commission composed by Mason Bates that adapts Michael Chabon’s novel, will open the 2025-26 season and is a collaboration with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where it premiered in November. Two further premieres in the new season, “La Sonnambula” and Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” are shared among various opera companies in Europe and the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More