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    ‘Bathhouse.pptx’ Review: A Fever Dream, Both Poetic and Mystifying

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    Jesús I. Valles’s prizewinning play gets a stage at the Flea, but the ambitious work about queer history proves too difficult to wrangle.In “Bathhouse.pptx,” Jesús I. Valles investigates the fading history of gay bathhouses, bringing to life both the marginalized people who reveled in them and the forgotten people who cleaned them. The play — selected as the winner of the 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize by Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”) — laces historical fantasy with melodic prose, loosely stringing together Valles’s ramblings like an epic fever dream. But if, like most such dreams, it’s far more captivating to the storyteller than to the audience, the work offers enough lyrical beauty to keep viewers listening, if not fully understanding, and yearning for more.The story begins with an anxious 10th-grader whom Valles has called “Presenter” (Sam Gonzalez), a queer Latino student who is delivering a PowerPoint lecture (hence the title’s “.pptx”) about the history of bathing. Cleanliness, we are told, has dirty beginnings: It didn’t take long for humans to weaponize filth as a tool of shame against the poor and foreign. Presenter then tries to connect this to the topic he actually cares about: the commercialized bathhouse.To do so, he elicits help from fellow students, but their presentation is derailed by unlikely apparitions: a conquistador, a small child, Laura Linney. To manage this unruliness in the play’s first half, the director, Chay Yew, over-relies on the same gimmick: Interlopers scurry out from the right or left side of the audience in a continuous loop. The act mirrors Valles’s spiraling language, but it’s repeated so often that we begin to anticipate the disruptions, rendering them less impactful.Still, certain characters manage to stand out, including Chela (Claudia Acosta), an overworked cleaner at the North Hollywood spa that is the play’s other primary setting. Here, Chela has witnessed enemas, orgies and more — some of which we also witness. (The play acknowledges its theatricality by having the actors confess they aren’t teenagers performing these acts, but adults of consenting age.) But for Valles, Chela is more than just the help; she’s the winner in a daily “war of dirt and bleach and sickness and steam,” a paradox of service and control.Like the rest of the dexterous six-person ensemble, Acosta plays several roles. But as Chela, she finds the tiny pockets of vulnerability, longing and humor that poke through this woman’s calloused personality. While the male strangers in the spa stumble into one another, sharing brief stories, desires and memories, Chela stands out as a fully realized character, embodying a depth that resonates beyond the surface. That Valles chose to honor the fullness of a Latina sanitation worker in a play so focused on Latino gay men does not seem incidental, but rather like a nod to those that even queer history overlooks.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

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      ‘Emilie’ Review: Defending, and Defining, a Life

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      In her new play, Lauren Gunderson explores the legacy of the 18th-century French mathematician and philosophe Emilie du Châtelet.“Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight” starts with a death adjourned. Emilie (Amy Michelle), a mathematician and philosophe, has slipped through a loophole in the space-time continuum and now lingers in an uncanny valley between life and death. She has been allotted limited time to determine whether her legacy amounts to one of “loving” or “knowing.”The words “love” and “philosophy” are inscribed on an upstage wall and throughout this play, by Lauren Gunderson, Emilie returns to that makeshift chalkboard to tally up her life’s deeds. As a dramaturgical device, it’s more prosaic than piquant, yet not entirely off brand for a woman whose mind was a perpetual motion machine.The play’s protagonist is based on the real-life du Châtelet, famed in 18th-century France for her translation of and commentary on Newton’s “Principia” and for a treatise she wrote on the nature and propagation of fire. Such an accomplished woman hardly needs defending, but defining a life is another matter. That is the real brief for “Emilie.”In her state of limbo, the marquise discovers that she can’t intervene in past events. Any kind of physical contact will immediately set off a blackout, as if someone has shaken a cosmic Etch A Sketch. As a workaround, Erika Vetter plays a younger version of the marquise, enacting a telescoped version of her life. Where Michelle’s marquise is ruled by an Apollonian temperament, Vetter puts a heavy thumb on the “love” scale. “Are you jealous that I’m sharing orbits with another man?” she teases Voltaire, du Châtelet’s lover in real life.Under Kathy Gail MacGowan’s direction, many of the actors play multiple roles, underscoring the similarities between certain characters. Bonnie Black delivers compelling performances as both the marquise’s mother, a woman of mean understanding, and the meddlesome Madam Graffigny, a not entirely welcome guest at the marquise’s family estate.Unlike those two women, bound by corsets, Emilie wears a simple nightgown, which allows her to move freely from her chaise longue to her desk on Sarah White’s handsome set. Her mind moves just as nimbly from an appraisal of Gottfried Leibniz to a discussion of “living force,” a scientific concept for kinetic energy first developed by Leibniz and later elaborated upon by Emilie.For all the talk of life forces, however, there’s a lack of kinetic energy between the elder marquise and Voltaire, who is reduced to a concupiscent kibitzer with a string of chronic ailments. The first act is also dragged down by exposition. “Did I mention I was married? We’re skipping ahead.” “Did I mention I had children? Three. Fascinating creatures,” the marquise maunders on. Such palavering is wasted time for a woman facing a literal deadline.Gunderson, whose other work includes plays about pioneering women like Marie Curie, does more than pay hagiographic tribute to her subjects. There are angles of regret in her portrait of the marquise, who ultimately feels that she failed to provide enough opportunities for her daughter. Even as the lights dim, she is preoccupied with “love and so many questions,” and it becomes impossible to tell where loving leaves off and knowing begins.Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life TonightThrough April 30 at the Flea Theater, Manhattan; theflea.org. Running time: 2 hours.This review is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds. More

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      Review: In ‘Hang Time,’ Lynched Men Tell Finely Tuned Tales

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      Zora Howard’s new play at the Flea catches three men during a few moments of their breathless eternity.Walking into the Flea for Zora Howard’s “Hang Time” is like stepping into a horror film. Darkness pervades the black box theater, and cicadas carry on conversations in some unseen woods. A large obstruction — perhaps a statue? or installation? — interrupts the space. Then it becomes clear: Three Black men seemingly hanging from invisible ropes above an elevated round platform. Lights faintly illuminate their slumped heads and shoulders; their shadows are cast on the right wall, evoking Kara Walker’s silhouettes. You have to pass by them to get to your seat.Howard, who wrote and directed this production, certainly knows how to make an impression.In this hourlong premiere, produced by the Flea and WACO (Where Art Can Occur) Theater Center in Los Angeles in partnership with Butler Electronics, the three lynched men, named Bird (Dion Graham), Slim (Akron Watson) and Blood (Cecil Blutcher), have conversations about women, work, fatherhood and loss. The space is bare, and the play stops as suddenly as it starts — as if we’re catching just a few moments in a breathless eternity.Even though there are no visible signs of the men’s restraints, occasionally we hear the sound of ropes tightening, and the men jerk backward and stiffen into their signature pose. The limp lolls of their heads, the surfacing veins of an extended neck, even the synchronized eye movements: This dance of rigor mortis is a master work of small intricacies, even if it grows more gratuitous and less poignant with every reoccurrence.Bird, Blood and Slim are like three chapters in the life of a Black American man: Blood (as in “Young Blood”) is still coming into his own. Slim is the clown, who sings, jokes and brags about his machismo. Bird, the eldest, is the sanctimonious curmudgeon, who preaches a gospel of God, firm morals and hard work, but also has his own losses that have hardened him. Each of the perfectly cast actors manages to straddle the line between realism and the metaphorical space where “Hang Time” exists.Howard draws out every subtlety of her already fine-tuned dialogue, which renders innocuous expressions into brutal double entendres about the men’s hanging bodies (“Look at him getting all red in the face,” Slim jokes at Blood’s expense). But the men don’t just communicate with words; they also grunt, snort and chortle, and at times the wordless exclamations form their own harmony.To accentuate the emotional shifts, Megan Culley’s sound design — which brings the outside world into the space, from rustling leaves to the bellowing of a train — works in tandem with the portentous lighting (by Reza Behjat) and the script’s varied pacing and silences. And the jeans, sneakers and plaid button-down shirts (by Dominique Fawn Hill) worn by the men are discreetly shabby and tattered, so you may not notice the bullet holes and bloody tears until late.There are purposely unanswered questions, including how these men ended up here. Bird, Blood and Slim never mention their deaths; they seem only vaguely aware of their predicament. They repeat exchanges, never seem to grasp the time, and talk about the weather and their plans as if the future were someplace they could actually confront.In both this work and her captivating 2020 play “Stew,” a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, Howard writes her characters into a Möbius strip of trauma and injustice that is Black American history.And while “Hang Time” offers a work of theater that’s undoubtedly moving, it’s also too static to leave a more lasting impression. Even the absurdist purgatories and in-between spaces of Beckett, whose language has the same kind of circuitousness, take us someplace, even if we ultimately end up back where we started.“Hang Time” begins with a visual declaration of horror but, amid its chitter and chatter, never seems to finish the conversation.Hang TimeThrough April 3 at the Flea Theater, Manhattan; theflea.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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      The Flea Theater, Experimenting Again, Walks a New Tightrope

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      Back from the brink of extinction, the Off Off Broadway fixture is testing a new structure that gives artists the autonomy they demanded.Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the Flea Theater has positioned itself as a haven for experimentation, an unpretentious home for risk-taking and for young actors eager to get their start.But for years, discontent simmered beneath the surface.Actors were frustrated by the fact that the theater asked for lots of work with no pay; Black artists felt mistreated even while working on shows meant to center Black experiences; artists felt exploited, intimidated, voiceless.In 2020, the bad feelings bubbled over when an actress who had performed at the Flea, Bryn Carter, published a letter detailing her experiences, pointing out what she described as elitist, racist and soul-crushing encounters and attitudes.When the reckoning at the organization collided with the pandemic shutdown, the survival of the Flea became uncertain.“What we’re doing is driven by our mission,” said the Flea’s artistic director, Niegel Smith, right, with Hao Bai, the show’s lighting, projection and sound designer.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesBut now, the Off Off Broadway nonprofit theater is fighting to come back — this time with a new hybrid structure built to give complete artistic autonomy to a group of writers, directors and actors that has spoken out against the old Flea. That group, now known as the Fled Collective, is being given funding by the Flea to stage its own programming in the theater’s TriBeCa space. In addition, the Flea will produce shows of its own, but now all actors will be paid and there will be a focus on work by “Black, brown and queer artists.”The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” took the stage last month and just extended its run.But major challenges, chiefly financial, remain. When the organization’s longtime producing director, Carol Ostrow — a target of much of the criticism — retired following calls for her ouster, about half of the Flea’s board members followed her out the door. The departures resulted in a loss of trustee donations and fund-raising that depleted the organization’s $1.5 million budget by about a third, said Niegel Smith, the organization’s artistic director.Dolores Avery Pereira, a leader of the Fled Collective, which is trying to build a new future within the reconfigured Flea, said she is not discouraged.“I believe that the money will come,” she said. “I choose my artistic freedom every time.”When the Flea was born in 1996, the founders, who included the theater couple Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver, viewed it as a passionately edgy alternative to the commercial imperatives of Broadway.From its beginnings, the Flea was seen by aspiring actors as a place they could exercise their talents without needing to present a long résumé or a fancy degree at the door.“If you didn’t go to Juilliard or Yale or Brown, this was a place you could start,” said Adam Coy, a Fled leader who joined the Bats, the Flea’s resident acting company, in 2017.The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” during rehearsals in January.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe new iteration of the Flea pushes the parameters of that kind of experiment a good bit further in its effort to dismantle traditional hierarchies — think autocratic impresarios — that have long ruled over theater spaces. In its push to democratize the production of works, the Flea is echoing the sorts of demands heard in theater communities across the country over the past two years as the pandemic’s threats to the industry and urgent calls for racial equity have spurred collective organizing among artists.But to pull it off under new financial constraints, the Flea’s leaders have had to reckon with the reality that its output may not match what it had been in the past, especially now that all actors will be paid. (In March 2020, for example, the Flea had 13 employees; it currently has two.)“We do a whole lot less now, and we’ll probably do a whole lot less for a long time,” said Smith, who is one of few Black artistic directors at New York City theaters. “But at least what we’re doing is driven by our mission.”The issue of pay for actors had been kicking around the Flea for years. Some recalled receiving no payment except a single stipend of $25 or $75 after spending weeks in rehearsals, on top of a requirement to spend several hours a month doing unpaid labor around the theater.The issue became particularly frustrating to actors when the Flea opened a new three-theater performing arts complex in TriBeCa which cost an estimated $25 million in 2017. As the Flea was transitioning to the new building, the phrase “pay the Bats” appeared written on the walls of its old theater, said Jack Horton Gilbert, who had been a member of the Bats for about five years. Beyond the question of surviving in New York, the lack of pay focused attention, critics said, on the demographics of who could afford to work for free.Leaders of the Flea have said that, going forward, they intend to employ a more democratic vision of artistic creation that gives actors, writers and other creatives greater voice in productions. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“By not paying actors, the diversity of the company suffers because the people who can actually be around and invest are privileged,” Carter, who had been part of the Bats troupe, wrote in her June 2020 letter. “Many actors of color have not felt welcome or safe in your doors.”Much of Carter’s criticism was directed at Ostrow, who she said had mistreated her, generally was patronizing toward Black creatives and did “not know how to speak to Black people.” Once, she said, Ostrow had touched her hair without permission. Another time, she said, Ostrow had mixed up a Black lead actor and her understudy.Flea leaders apologized. Ostrow wrote Carter in June 2020 to say that she was “accountable for the behavior that you describe” and was “deeply sorry.”Later that month, a group of artists with the Flea posted a letter on social media condemning the theater for, among other things, creating a culture of “intimidation and fear.” The letter cited a case in which Black artists who took issue with a “trauma-centered” season of works about race were told, the critics said, that they could be replaced; it also repeated the concerns about expecting actors to work for free.“We have seen these same artists paid to cater your events and galas, rather than for their creative work,” the letter said.Members of the Fled Collective met in the Flea Theater in TriBeCa to plan their first season.Christopher Garofalo In response, the Flea’s leadership declared it would pay all artists for their work and said the theater needed to “reckon with the intersection of racism, sexism and pay inequity.”Later that year, the artists’ collective delivered demands to the Flea’s board, which included involving artists of color in planning the season, making sure there was board representation from their ranks and getting rid of Ostrow.In November 2020, Ostrow, who had been working without a salary for years, announced her retirement. Soon after that, five members of the board resigned, Smith said, resulting in a loss of about $475,000 in annual contributions. (Ostrow and her husband, the board member Michael Graff, had been major funders: the couple was listed as having donated more than $500,000 to the Flea’s new building.)Neither Ostrow nor her husband responded to requests for comment.Relations only soured further when the board, in what it said was a cost-saving measure, decided to dissolve its resident artist programs, including the Bats, infuriating the artists’ collective that had worked for months to try to shape an organization that they would be willing to return to.In a statement posted to social media, the artist group, now operating as the Fled, made a bold appeal to the Flea to “hand over the keys.” In a statement to New York Magazine days later, Simpson and Weaver threw their support behind the idea.Later on, Smith shocked Pereira when he told her that he and the board would be willing to explore actually transferring the property in TriBeCa to the Fled.Artwork by Carrie Mae Weems, one of the creators of “Arden,” in the rehearsal space. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe agreement that was actually struck was more modest, but still extraordinary. The Flea, which continues on as a nonprofit, will still own the building. But the Fled, which is made up of about 100 artists, will operate there under a three-year residency, whose costs will be underwritten in part by the Flea. The theater will also provide production and marketing support.Separately, the Flea is producing its own content, like “Arden,” which was funded by a collection of grants. “Arden” includes sculpture and video by the visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, music by the multi-hyphenate artist Diana Oh, as well as improvisational song by the choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili and the designer and director Peter Born.Smith’s own segment of the show addresses the Flea’s recent turmoil head on, something he felt was necessary to do in the first work under the Flea’s new mandate.Wearing a white robe and no shirt, Smith walks around the stage of the small black-box theater in a ritualistic trance, muttering — and eventually shouting — the phrase “this place is fraught.”“This place has held oppressive structures fueled by coercion and ambition,” he says in the show.Some artists say they are still skeptical that an organization with the same artistic director can truly start anew. Others are simply uninterested in performing, or even sitting in the audience, at the Flea again after their personal experiences there.“I just moved on from wanting to be involved in any way in that space,” Carter said, noting that she nonetheless supports the Fled’s work.The leaders of the Fled, which plans to host its first developmental workshop at the Flea in May for a play by Liz Morgan, are unsure whether it will go beyond the three-year contract. The goal right now is to hold the Flea to the promises it has made and to create a model for an effective artist-led theater collective, said Raz Golden, one of the Fled’s leaders.“It hasn’t been easy,” Pereira said. “But it’s a relief to be at the art-making part.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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      The Flea Announces New Resident Company and a Focus on Black and Queer Artists

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      The Off Off Broadway theater, which ended programs for emerging artists in December, will return next year with a model that centers the work of underrepresented artists.The Flea, a notable Off Off Broadway company that discontinued its most prominent programs for emerging artists in December, effectively eliminating dozens of positions and provoking the ire of resident artists, announced a new model for its future and a new show. That model, unveiled on Thursday, focuses on supporting the work of underrepresented artists via self-contained, self-programming resident companies.“I’m really excited about it,” said Niegel Smith, the Flea’s artistic director since 2015 and one of the few Black artistic directors at a prominent New York theater. “The artists have total autonomy in making their work, and we’re making a long-term investment in a group of artists we care deeply about.”The first resident company will be the newly formed Fled Collective, composed of many of the members of the Flea’s former nonunion acting company, the Bats. It will have a three-year residency that comes with an unrestricted $10,000 cash grant and $50,000 in space rental credits each year, as well as production and marketing support and resources to develop new work. The company will have complete control over its artistic output and will focus on the work of artists of color and queer people.“Almost all the things we asked for, the Flea added into this partnership,” Dolores Pereira, a leader of the Fled Collective and a former member of the Bats, said in an interview. “It’s been a very collaborative process.”The theater will also begin a multiyear residency program for itinerant artistic companies. The first participant will be Emerge 125, a Black woman-led modern dance troupe that will receive creative, technical and producing support, discounted rental space, and access to office space for at least three years. The theater hopes to eventually support multiple companies in the program each year, Smith said.Pereira said the Fled Collective aims to be able to pay all its artists and plans to rely on the annual $10,000 cash grant and additional fund-raising to do so. The company has no cap on members and currently has at least 50, she said.The theater also restructured its board, with at least one seat now allotted to an artist from a resident company (board members remain volunteers, Smith said). He said the Flea, which has three paid staff members, aims to raise at least $850,000 to support programming and operations in the coming year.Since 2017, the Flea has operated out of a new, three-theater building in TriBeCa whose largest performing space holds about 100 seats. In the last few years, it has staged plays focusing on police brutality, gun violence and other timely issues: “The Fre,” a play by Taylor Mac that is partly a queer love story, was in previews when the pandemic forced it to close.The Flea also faced pushback for its reliance on unpaid artists, which boiled over in June 2020 when a number of the unpaid workers wrote a letter accusing the theater of “racism, sexism, gaslighting, disrespect and abuse.” The Flea then committed to begin paying all of its artists. But in December, it dissolved its programs for emerging artists, citing the financial effects of the pandemic.Through months of having meetings almost weekly, then holding a healing circle, and with the help of a Black woman-led consulting group, CJAM Consulting, the Flea and its artists set out repairing their relationships, Smith said. The theater’s staff also completed anti-oppression and antiracism training.“There definitely was a lot of hurt,” Pereira said. “But now it feels like a new relationship.”The first show of the new season (which is being produced by the Flea, not a resident company) will be “Arden: A Ritual for Love and Liberation,” slated for early 2022. That work was conceived by five artists including Carrie Mae Weems and Diana Oh and draws inspiration from the Forest of Arden from “As You Like It” — reimagined as a place where “queers, feminists and intellectuals dare to create the world that centers their desires.” It will be followed in June by four Juneteenth public art commissions that meld artists’ reflections on the holiday with work that honors Black culture. Additional productions will be announced at a later date, the theater said.Pereira hopes that organizations like the Fled Collective — which focus on empowering underrepresented artists — can serve as a blueprint for other companies, and help artists “reclaim their power.”“The harm done at the Flea is not unique to the Flea, but showcased throughout the theater community,” she said. More

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      Flea Theater to Shut Down Programs for Emerging Artists

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFlea Theater to Shut Down Programs for Emerging ArtistsActors, directors and playwrights who fought for changes at the Flea say they feel betrayed. The theater said it is eliminating their roles, but is promising future residencies that pay.In-person shows are on hold at the Flea Theater’s TriBeCa home, which includes three performance spaces.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesBy More