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    Leaping ‘Into the Next Unknown’: Robert Lyons on the End of New Ohio Theater

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    The handwriting on the company’s wall, in chalk, was traced by a closing night crowd sharing memories of more than 30 years of landmarks and larks.The last performance of the last show at the 74-seat New Ohio Theater, on Christopher Street in Manhattan’s West Village, was “Ultra Left Violence,” a poetical, political, work-in-progress play by the company’s artistic director, Robert Lyons. Wrapping up the New Ohio’s final Ice Factory festival on Aug. 12, it was thrillingly, even touchingly, weird.Mid-show, members of the convivial audience were given chalk — a motif in the production design — to cover the black-painted walls with their memories of the New Ohio and its predecessor, the Ohio Theater, on Wooster Street in SoHo. After the spectators returned to their seats, the performance continued with the frenzied, prolonged smashing of a watermelon, which sent chunks and juice flying. (Tarps and rain ponchos were provided.)Experimental work was the soul of the New Ohio, a producer and presenter that closed for good on Aug. 31. The publicity line has been that the shutdown is the end of 30 years, but that’s a give-or-take number. It rounds up the life span of Ice Factory, the festival of new works that Lyons founded in 1994, and rounds down his tenure, which started at the Ohio Theater in 1988, when the owner of that space, Bill Hahn, hired Lyons, then 28, to run it. He served as the building’s super, too, and got a rent-free loft in exchange.“My wife says it wasn’t a job, it was a lifestyle choice,” Lyons said. “We lived upstairs. My daughter was raised there.”In 2011, after the Wooster Street building was sold, the Ohio was reincarnated as the New Ohio. Cumulatively, the two stages saw a jaw-dropping profusion of downtown artists (Taylor Mac, Mimi Lien, Knud Adams, Sam Gold, Lee Sunday Evans, James Ortiz) and companies (the Mad Ones, Half Straddle, Target Margin, New Georges, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Rude Mechanicals, Clubbed Thumb, Ping Chong and Company, Elevator Repair Service, Vampire Cowboys, the Talking Band).The shows Lyons remembers most fondly include “Surrender,” by International WOW; “Boozy,” from Alex Timbers; and “Particularly in the Heartland,” by Rachel Chavkin and the TEAM. Back in 1988, Lyons recalled, Anne Bogart’s “No Plays No Poetry” put the Ohio Theater on the map.As for the rented space that was home to the New Ohio, it will remain a theater, renamed 154 and run by the nonprofit ChaShaMa. In the coming season, 154 will host the company Out of the Box Theatrics, which focuses on marginalized communities.Three days after the final performance of “Ultra Left Violence,” Lyons arranged two chairs on the New Ohio’s immaculate empty stage and sat down for an interview. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.What’s your own favorite memory of those 30 years?Definitely one of them was when we did the Vaclav Havel festival, and he came to the [Ohio Theater] two or three nights in a row. Edward Einhorn did the festival. I directed one of the shows, and Havel came and saw it. Then he just hung out, and I bought him a beer at the concessions, and he was telling me about this play he was working on.That seems to epitomize what theater is to you: art and politics and hanging out.Exactly right, yeah. The thing I love the most about these 30 years is the community of people that I’ve got to know and bond with.What grabbed you about the old Wooster Street space?It was spectacular. It was 5,000 square feet of raw space with the old creaky floors, the columns, the barn doors that opened out onto the street. It was falling down around us. It had no air conditioning. It was famously hot during the summer, and it didn’t matter. People were willing to suffer for their art — to consume it and to perform it. It was a different time. I don’t think you could get away with that now.The other night here, what were you thinking as you watched the final show?It was very emotional, of course. I was trying to hold it together. [laughs] But I was just surrounded by so many of my friends. So it was a very warm, safe room to be in. It was a crazy show, and I was very happy to finish on that note. Like, let’s just do a bonkers intellectual circus, and see if it works.Why go out with a work in progress?I was consciously trying to make a statement to myself and maybe to everybody that I’m going to continue to do theater past this date. I’m going to stop running a theater, but I’m not done making theater. Now we’re spring-boarding into the next unknown.I’ve been getting a very steady flow of people telling me how sorry they are that we’re closing. But it was the right time. I’m 64, you know. For me, it’s not so much of a sad thing, but —Is it really not a sad thing?Talk to me in a month. [laughs] I’m still sitting here. I’ve had a key to a theater for 35 years in New York. I could always open up the door to a theater and go in. And Sept. 1, I won’t. The reality of that is going to hit.But it’s the right time?I was kind of done with the day to day of keeping a machine going. There was a point where I said, OK, we have the funding to get through this year. Then next year is a complete catastrophe. Because that’s where the field is, and all that PPP money and Covid money is ending. I would rather go out and [be able to] meet all my obligations and enjoy it instead of do one more year and be chasing money the whole time and worrying about “Can I keep it open?” and then maybe closing in the middle of the season.Your audience stuck around, but the funding got scarcer and —And the cost of making the work and the cost of staffing. That’s the combination.Is there still room for the truly experimental?Here [a downtown producer and presenter] is very good at it. Their work is very strange. They’re also paying people living wages. But I do think it’s harder. We’re always on the margin of a marginal form. I don’t know if we’ve ever been more than that, really.But you seed the wider theater.I agree. This is where everyone gets their chops. This is where everybody learns what they have to say and how to say it and what their aesthetic is. That translates throughout the regional theater system and uptown in the larger spaces. All of those have gotten more adventurous over the 30 years, because people are bringing their aesthetic — maybe not as wild, but still carrying it with them.In your final show, so much was drawn and written in chalk, meant to be wiped away — ephemeral, like theater.It’s very fleeting. Part of the magic of it is you do all the labor that goes into making a piece — the design team, the cast, the stage management team, the writers. Putting all that effort and creativity and thought and commitment into this, and we did it for four performances. You just think, who does that? And it’s theater people. That’s who.What makes it worth it?What do I want the fabric of my life to be? If it’s playing with other people as though it’s the most serious, important thing in the world, that’s a pretty good way to spend your time. More

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      New Ohio Theater Announces It Will Close After Three Decades

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      Robert Lyons, the founding artistic director, said it was time for a new generation to take over the West Village stage.At a time when theaters are struggling to reach prepandemic audience levels, the New Ohio Theater, a staple for artists and independent theater companies for 30 years, announced it would present its final Manhattan performance in August.The shifting theater landscape and increased financial pressures led to the decision, said the founding artistic director, Robert Lyons, who is also a playwright and director. “It’s just a good time to step aside and pass the baton,” he added, explaining that he envisioned a new generation taking on the space.The closing will end programs like the Ice Factory, Now in Process, Theater for Young Minds, New Ohio Presents and New Ohio Hosts. The Archive Residency program will conclude in the spring of 2024.The theater, originally known as the Ohio Theater and located off Wooster Street in SoHo, was founded as a nonprofit in 1993, and before that provided a shared space for independent companies and artists to brainstorm and perform. In 2011, the company moved to 154 Christopher Street in the West Village as the New Ohio Theater, and continued to operate as a hub for independent theater. Over time, New Ohio oversaw a renovation project at the theater that included the installation of a new sprung stage, new risers, an HVAC system and a bathroom in the dressing room.For 16 years, Edward Einhorn, the artistic director of the Untitled Theater Company No. 61, has collaborated with the theater; he plans to present his absurdist dark comedy “The Shylock and the Shakespeareans” there in June. Einhorn said theaters like the New Ohio have been essential to the development of indie performance works since the late ’90s.“I’m slowly losing my homes,” Einhorn said. “There are a few left, but it’s a hard time still, hard to get audiences, hard to know what to do next.”The “Moulin Rouge!” director Alex Timbers and the “Hadestown” director Rachel Chavkin are among those who worked at the theater early in their careers.Kristin Marting, the founding artistic director of HERE Arts Center, who was part of a company that booked a season at the theater when she was 21, said it was the first theater she worked in. Marting said it greenlighted less conventional works, like an immersive “Alice in Wonderland” she directed in the late ’80s, and served as a sanctuary for generations of emerging theater makers.The plan is to reserve the 74-seat space for use by nonprofit companies. The building’s landlord, Rockrose Development, will accept proposals from theater companies looking for a home beginning Wednesday.Marting said the New Ohio would be sorely missed.“I hope that the new entity that comes in embraces the same level of experimentation and inclusion and invites a broad spectrum of the community to make work,” she said. More

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      ‘Complicity’ Review: A Muddled #MeToo Drama

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      A new play by Diane Davis at the New Ohio Theater addresses the topic head-on, but clumsily, our critic writes.It has been about five years since the rise of the #MeToo movement. Debate remains on the cultural shifts it has wrought and whether these shifts will last.More laws are on the books now, more men have been jailed or fined. Others have been swiftly canceled. And then uncanceled almost as quickly. But what of the people who enabled these men?This is the subject of “Complicity,” a new play by Diane Davis at the New Ohio Theater in Greenwich Village, which addresses the topic head-on, but very clumsily, as in mismatched heels. The drama concerns, though never shows, Harry Wickstone, a legendary producer, and the hold he maintains over the women and men unlucky enough to orbit him. Two of them are Tig (Katie Broad), a naïve ingénue, and Lilia (Christian Paxton), her more seasoned co-star. Five terrible minutes in a luxury hotel room send these two women on radically different paths before the play forces them back together and then tragically apart.This brief description renders “Complicity” as a more coherent work than it truly is. Its story arcs need smoothing, its characters clarifying, even in their basic details. Tig has a sister, Sima (Nadia Sepsenwol), equally inexperienced, who somehow acts as her agent. What official role does Nigel (Zach Wegner), Harry’s fixer, play at the studio and what does he want of Lilia? (Tonia E. Anderson plays a television host: Christian Prins Coen and Ben Faigus appear in several small roles.) Davis struggles to illustrate how Hollywood works, how people work. But it’s less of a struggle than a slap fight, without clear winners.Katie Broad, left, and Nadia Sepsenwol, as sisters. The play is less of a struggle than a slap fight, without clear winners.Ashley Garrett PhotographyUnder Illana Stein’s direction, little gels. Some scenes, like a talk show sequence, are played for realism. Some, like the women’s various breakdowns, are played with an embarrassing expressionist bent. Rarely do these scenes convince. Overacting is rampant, presumably with Stein’s encouragement. Even when the actors aren’t speaking, they cycle through various expressions. At times the actors seem to be in entirely different productions — one playing a scene sincerely, one archly.It is an unhappy irony that in a play about collusion they could not collude on a house style. The design is more coherent, but only in the slapdash sense that the producers seem to have skimped on budget and time. Scenes are underlit, projections of time and place appear and disappear before they can be read. The cheap costumes are a puzzle with few satisfying solutions, the sets wincingly flimsy.Here is one more irony. Five years on, amid the noisy and bad-faith hand-wringing of whether the movement has gone too far or not far enough, the producer Harvey Weinstein’s case stands firm. So many women came forward and their stories were presented with such lucidity and compassion by journalists — New York Times journalists among them — that his guilt was substantiated, despite his great power.Women, finally, were believed. Punishment was meted out. As stories like these go, this stands as the surest, plainest, least ambiguous story imaginable. And even so, “Complicity” blunders so much in its telling.ComplicityThrough Oct. 15 at the New Ohio Theater, Manhattan; newohiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      A Welcome Gust of Weird, and Adventures in Shadow Puppetry

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      “My Onliness” is voluptuous and frenetic, while “This and That” is a slip of a show. Both are pleasingly peculiar.Some theaters dim the lights momentarily to signal that the performance is about to begin. Others sound a delicate three-note chime.At the New Ohio Theater, in Greenwich Village, audience members crowded into the lobby waiting to see the madcap new play “My Onliness” are alerted to curtain time by the sudden blast of a conch shell and the arrival of a human with a unicorn head, who leads a procession into the house.Don’t mind the man in swim goggles showering onstage under a thin stream of water, wearing a sign that says “WRITER” and a tall foil hat that looks like the progeny of a Hershey’s Kiss and a bishop’s miter. Just take in the voluptuous strangeness of it all. For theater lovers ravenous for the downtown-peculiar, “My Onliness” is savory sustenance.The cast of characters includes a ginormous lobster, who is warm of heart and terribly charming. But first in this dark, frenetic fable by Robert Lyons, with music by Kamala Sankaram, there is the Mad King.Dressed in sequined red, his face sparkly with glitter, the Mad King (Daniel Irizarry, who directed the show) occupies a throne that is quite literally a high chair — the perfect perch for a childish narcissist extraordinaire, who considers himself “a great genius of living.”“Listen up!” he barks at the audience arrayed around him on three sides. “I told you that in my presence you are all equal. It’s true! You are equally nothing.”A danger to the Writer (Rhys Tivey), whom he considers a threat, and an enemy to Morbidita (Cynthia LaCruz), a subject who dares to approach him with a petition, the Mad King nonetheless has a sneaky charisma, and he’s well-mannered when it suits him.If he wants to lie across spectators’ laps, or recruit someone to drag him around the stage, he asks nicely and does take no for an answer. Ditto when he goes seat to seat, offering generous slugs of rum to each of us. Who says consent protocols can’t be fun?Presented with One-Eighth Theater and IRT Theater, “My Onliness” is sprinkled with songs and performed in English and American Sign Language, with two graceful, glamorous Court Mediums (Malik Paris, who also plays the lobster, and Dickie Hearts) signing the show. (Artistic sign language direction is by Alexandria Wailes and Kailyn Aaron-Lozano.) The musicians, Joanie Brittingham and Drew Fleming, are comparatively subtle presences onstage — until the show turns operatic and Brittingham unleashes her lovely soprano.Lyons calls his play “an homage to Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,” the early 20th-century, anti-totalitarian avant-gardist who was a visual artist as well as a playwright. With a crimson, alley-style set by Jungah Han, vivid lighting by Christina Tang and phantasmagorical costumes by James Terrell and Brittani Beresford, this show is saturated with color and tinged with the absurd. Occasionally delicate, it’s more often chaotic, and gleefully so.And while it’s a political play — “You have to wonder why someone doesn’t just kill him,” the Writer says of the Mad King — it’s less about plot than about a near onslaught of sensation, some of which is lost to poor sight lines.“My Onliness” is the kind of show that in its muchness may leave you slightly mystified. But there’s an unhinged jollity to it, too. It is a welcome gust of weird.“This and That” at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens uses shadow puppets and projections to create a plotless landscape of music and morphing shapes.Maya SharpeAt the Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City, Queens, the Institute of Useless Activity’s “This and That” is also experimental, but it occupies the other end of the overload spectrum. Its medium is light and shadow.Created by Steven Wendt and Phil Soltanoff, and performed by Wendt, one of the Blue Men of Blue Man Group, it is a slip of a show — no plot or dialogue, just projections, shadow puppetry, music.Presented with the Bushwick Starr and directed by Soltanoff, it’s soothing stuff. The first section gets gently psychedelic, with kaleidoscopic colors and morphing shapes, and lots of following an emerald-green light. If you have a favorite edible, I imagine that preshow would be a fine time to indulge.Later Wendt makes shadow puppets, which are variously impressive — such as the form of an adult and a child, sweetly rocking — and perplexing. There was one that I never did figure out.A grain of salt: At the performance I saw, someone in the front row was shooting cellphone video for the Chocolate Factory’s archives. In a show about light and darkness, a brightly glowing phone screen is as loud as a shout, and as disruptive. I might have been able to lose myself more to the experience without that.It is a playful production, though, with a spirit of inquiry. In just under an hour, it doesn’t add up to much, but, then again, the clue is in the name. “This and That” is a sampling — curated odds and ends.My OnlinessThrough Sept. 24 at the New Ohio Theater, Manhattan; newohiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes.This and ThatThrough Sept. 24 at the Chocolate Factory Theater, Queens; thebushwickstarr.org. Running time: 55 minutes. More

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      Review: In ‘Jane Anger,’ Michael Urie Shines as Shakespeare

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      Talene Monahon aims to give Shakespeare his comeuppance in this comedy at the New Ohio Theater.In “Jane Anger,” a new comedy by Talene Monahon, everyone is fed up with the endless waves of sickness and quarantine. The year is 1606, and we are in England, which is enduring another outbreak of the plague. But for one man, a late-career William Shakespeare, there are graver concerns: writer’s block.Portrayed as a vain, out-of-touch celebrity by Michael Urie, Shakespeare struts and frets about the dozens of plays his rivals must be writing, angrily tossing the contents of his chamber pot out his window and onto the street below. In an effort to revitalize his career, he settles on adapting “King Leir,” claiming his version — with a slightly different spelling — will be “naturally superior because of the language and the dialogue and the general vibes.”Another (fictional) obstacle to his livelihood lurks outside, one that this uneven play, which opened on Monday night at the New Ohio Theater, clumsily tries to imagine could be his legacy’s true downfall: Jane Anger, a former lover seeking to strike a bargain with him in order to have her proto-feminist pamphlet published.This one-act work — whose full title is “The Lamentable Comedie of Jane Anger, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard” — creates a tidy blend of the past and present. Social and comedic sensibilities converge to highlight the pervasiveness of misogyny and the differing chances of survival across class lines in times of disease. Billed as a “feminist revenge comedy,” this workshop production, first developed online last October, succeeds at creating smart, lightly absurdist humor, but misses the mark in its attempt at a revisionist redemption.It doesn’t help that the play is mostly dedicated to its two male characters: Shakespeare and his servant, Francis (a show-stealing Ryan Spahn). Described as having “the off-putting air of an aged eunuch,” Francis is an unkempt, overeager fan of the writer and his occasional sexual overtures read less as genuine pining and more like a fan’s willingness to ingratiate. Urie (at the top of his game) and Spahn are a longtime couple, and their chemistry lends their characters’ farcical setups an easy, endlessly watchable flow.Amelia Workman as the title character in the play.Valerie TerranovaThough their dynamic is appealing, it takes up most of the play’s run time, practically swallowing the production whole, and leaving little room for the play’s women to make much of an impact.In creating Jane, Monahon (“How to Load a Musket”) has some fun compounding fact and fiction. Jane Anger is the, most likely pseudonymous, name of the author of the first English-language essay to defend womanhood, released in 1589. Here, she is revealed to be the “Dark Lady” about whom Shakespeare wrote a couple dozen sonnets, now working as a cunning woman, a type of medieval folk healer who also developed spells to counter witchcraft.As Jane, Amelia Workman plays up the double meaning of this cunning woman by delivering an arched eyebrow that rivals Joan Crawford’s. But in trying to explode the Western canon through her own feminist intervention, suggested in the first of Jane’s many fourth-wall breaks, Monahon ultimately fails to give Workman much to chew on other than audience-pandering quips. (She’s aided by Joey Mendoza’s set, a medieval apartment with a central window through which she must hoist herself, and Nic Vincent’s lighting, which brightens to involve those present in Jane’s queries.)We know Shakespeare’s behavior is sexist, so why didn’t Monahon address her critiques directly to the men onstage, in true, anachronistic fashion?Not all is lost, however. Monahon is clearly a gifted comedy writer, and a sweet stage presence, too. She shows up, late in the play, as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s neglected wife. Monahon giddily mines comparisons between her character’s earnestness and her modern namesake, and her sharp writing blends Shakespearean lowbrow humor with contemporary concerns. Under the direction of Jess Chayes, the production has a liveliness that the exceptional cast runs away with, delivering Monahon’s mile-a-minute gags with zest.Jane AngerThrough March 26 at the New Ohio Theater, Manhattan; newohiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Theater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape Rooms

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape RoomsThe past year has made us rethink the boundaries between theater and film. Many of these shows are a little bit of both.From left, Vicki Lee Taylor, Tom Bales, Marc Pickering, Ryan Pidgen and Kayleigh Thadani in a musical adaptation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the Southwark Playhouse in London.Credit…Geraint LewisMarch 3, 2021It used to be easy to tell theater from film from streaming. The first was live, physical and by appointment; the others were not. But this past year has made us rethink definitions: Theater is not necessarily live or physical anymore, and film might be a little bit of both.Qui Nguyen, who is taking part in the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival. Credit…Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesIf anybody knows how to straddle the physical and virtual, it’s the playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen. On March 10, Nguyen, the author of the hit show “She Kills Monsters,” will participate in a Q. and A. for the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival — which will present over 30 pieces by theatermakers exploring new mediums. March 10-14; newohiotheatre.orgThe Young Vic in London inadvertently anticipated this change a few years ago by beginning to make digital companions to some of its shows, with crackerjack casts. Happily, they’re online for free. Directed by and starring Gillian Anderson, “The Departure” imagines Blanche DuBois in the few days before her fateful visit to Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Juliet Stevenson appears in “Mayday,” a postscript to Beckett’s “Happy Days”; while Hattie Morahan gives us a contemporary “Nora” in Carrie Cracknell and Nick Payne’s update of “A Doll’s House.” If you like Peter Brook jokes — and you well might if you are reading a column about theater — click on the dryly funny “The Roof,” whose cast includes Natalie Dormer, Noma Dumezweni, Jude Law and Ian McKellen as fans of the illustrious director. youngvic.org‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’During the past year, the Southwark Playhouse in London has emerged as a dynamic force in British theater, not letting lockdowns get in the way of new shows. After its well-received production of Philip Ridley’s “The Poltergeist,” Southwark is presenting the premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s gender-flipped — and very, very loose — musical adaptation of the Goethe poem about a young inventor (now a girl, played by Mary Moore) who gets lost in magic. Through March 14; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘To the Moon’It’s unfortunate that Kathryn Grody has a lower professional profile than her husband, Mandy Patinkin, because she is a very fine actress in her own right. Here is a chance to watch her in action through the Creede Repertory Theater, a Colorado-based company with which Grody and Patinkin have a long history. She is slated to appear in Beth Kander’s docu-play about survivors of domestic violence. Live on March 5 and 6, then on demand March 15 through April 11; creederep.orgKathleen Chalfant, the star of “The Year of Magical Thinking.”Credit…Marc Deliz‘The Year of Magical Thinking’The pandemic has seen a surge in solo shows, for obvious reasons. Joan Didion’s adaptation of her memoir was a Broadway hit in 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Now, Kathleen Chalfant tackles this haunting evocation of grief in a fund-raiser for the Keen Company. March 13-17; keencompany.orgFrom left, Saffron Coomber, Clare Perkins and Adelle Leonce in “Emilia.”Credit…Helen Murray‘Emilia’A recording of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s “chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio-play,” as The New York Times put it last year, is available again. The Olivier Award-winning comedy is set in the Elizabethan theater scene, where men played women — except here women play the men playing the women, opening up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Through March 31; emilialive.comMax Chernin, center, in “Passing Through.”Credit…Diane Sobolewski‘Passing Through’Goodspeed, a company in Connecticut, is among the greatest champions of American musicals old and new, and it has finally set up an on-demand arm to offer archival recordings of its past productions. The first is this capture of the 2019 developmental production of Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa’s show about a young man (Max Chernin) who walks from Pennsylvania to California. March 15 through April 4; goodspeed.orgTwo Playwrights Go CampingFood for Thought Productions continues its run at Theater 80 St. Marks with a double bill that should be catnip to connoisseurs of theatrical camp. The program includes the Tennessee Williams one-act comedy “Lifeboat Drill,” set on the Queen Elizabeth II, and Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” a wicked parody of “The Glass Menagerie” in which Laura becomes Lawrence, who collects glass swizzle sticks. Durang and the actress Carroll Baker are expected to turn up for a post-show Q. and A. March 8 and 13-14; foodforthoughtproductions.comPhoebe Hyder in “Dream.”Credit…Stuart Martin, via RSCInteractive ExperiencesAfter its concert of the 1930s Broadway flop “Swingin’ the Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company is involved in another experiment inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A multimedia, choose-your-own-narrative, high-concept show — in other words, it’s unclear how this will look — “Dream” is led by Puck and the Sprites and involves motion-capture technology, as well as a score including the Gestrument, an app that allows for composition through movement. March 12-20; dream.onlineThe New York-based playwright Aya Ogawa’s 2015 play “Ludic Proxy” dealt with virtual reality and incorporated polling. And now Ogawa has adapted part of it for the new “Ludic Proxy: Fukushima,” presented by the Japan Society and PlayCo, with the audience polling conducted online. Live on March 6, 7 and 11, then on-demand March 12-26; japansociety.orgBathsheba Piepe in “Plymouth Point.”Credit…Matt HassThe London Stone TrilogySwamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones (of Punchdrunk, the immersive-theater company behind “Sleep No More”) have created a tripartite project that is not so much theater as theatrical experience — think virtual escape room, but with actor Dominic Monaghan. In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media. (Full disclosure: My bumbling team put on a display of pitiful detective skills. Who would have thought watching hundreds of hours of cop shows could be so useless?) The next installments, “The Mermaid’s Tongue” and “The Kindling Hour,” will be available in the United States soon. You can already do the British versions; but they are live, so just keep the time difference in mind. plymouthpoint.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Two Tales of Disconnection, With One Cicada Cameo

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookTwo Tales of Disconnection, With One Cicada CameoRecorded on a Houston stage, “The Book of Magdalene” is theatrically intimate, while “Hotel Good Luck” gets caught up in digital trickery.From left: Jennifer Wang as Len and Mariam Albishah as Ru in “The Book of Magdalene.”Credit…via Main Street TheaterPublished More

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      5 Things to Do This New Year’s Weekend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This New Year’s WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETDanceMaking the Old NewKenneth Shirley of Indigenous Enterprise in a scene from a short film that is streaming on the Joyce Theater’s website until Sunday.Credit…Danny UpshawSince September, the Joyce Theater has been offering a free virtual fall season that is as good as some of its best in-person ones. The secret has been surprise and an avoidance of the usual suspects. If that is a little less true of the latest batch of videos — available through Sunday at joyce.org/joycestream — the variety still provides plenty of spice.The connecting theme might be “tradition reimagined.” Indigenous Enterprise captures the beauty of Native American dances in urban settings. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo revives parts of the 19th-century ballet “Paquita” with an all-male cast. Streb Extreme Action does daredevil stunts with huge machines; it’s like a carnival side show performed by cool astronauts.Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s. And Rennie Harris Puremovement shows once again how hip-hop can convey both can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it flash and hard-to-watch grief.BRIAN SEIBERTKidsBon Voyage to BoredomA scene from “Journey Around My Bedroom,” an interactive production that will livestream on Zoom through Jan. 10.Credit…New Ohio TheaterA room can be a refuge, but without an easy exit, it can also feel like a jail. For the Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, it was both: While under house arrest in 1790, he wrote “Voyage Around My Room,” a tribute to the creativity his imprisonment unleashed.Now de Maistre’s work has inspired New Ohio Theater for Young Minds’ first virtual presentation, “Journey Around My Bedroom.” Written by Dianne Nora and directed by Jaclyn Biskup, with songs by Hyeyoung Kim, this whimsical 35-minute play emulates Victorian toy theater, in which puppeteers manipulated cutouts on a tiny stage. (Myra G Reavis did the inventive design, assisted by Ana Maria Aburto.) Traveling in a failing dirigible, de Maistre visits Xavi, a contemporary girl who discovers that her own room offers hidden adventure.The production, which livestreams on Zoom Fridays to Sundays through Jan. 10, includes audience participation and a post-show discussion. Children can also follow the journey, though less interactively, in an on-demand video Jan. 11-Feb. 11. Tickets to gain access to these performances are pay-what-you-wish and available at newohiotheatre.org.LAUREL GRAEBERArtTime to Ponder Time ItselfClodion’s “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock” will be the topic of discussion on Friday during the Frick Collection’s “Cocktails With a Curator.”Credit…Claude Michel and JeanBaptiste Lepaute; via Frick Collection; Michael BodycombWhen the Frick Collection introduced its virtual series, “Cocktails With a Curator,” its deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp chief curator, Xavier F. Salomon, described the program as a way to show how the museum’s pieces are “relevant to issues we’re facing today.” That’s especially true for the artwork featured in the next episode: “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock,” by the 18th-century sculptor Clodion with the clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Lepaute. Looking back on 2020, the passage of time has never felt so complicated.There’s also nothing simple about “The Dance of Time.” The three terra-cotta nymphs holding up a globe-encased clock are either witnessing the passage of time or represent it themselves. To find out more, make a metropolitan (or the mocktail alternative, a ginger ale hot toddy; both recipes are on the Frick’s website), and tune in to the museum’s YouTube channel on Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time to hear Salomon discuss the timelessness of this unique timepiece.MELISSA SMITHPop & RockSummerStage Is Just a Screen AwaySoccer Mommy and her band performed for SummerStage Anywhere in November. The show is available to watch on YouTube.Credit…via City Parks FoundationWhile its recently renovated stage in Central Park sat idle this past season, SummerStage — the nonprofit organization that typically floods the five boroughs with live outdoor music — sprouted roots in virtual space. Its season of free online programming, SummerStage Anywhere, is now complete, but is archived on their YouTube channel for latecomers to enjoy.Offerings are wide-ranging, crossing disciplines, genres and generations. Soccer Mommy, an indie-rock darling, performed her first and, so far, only full-band show in support of her latest album, “Color Theory.” ASAP Ferg joined Fab 5 Freddy, one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen, for a conversation about creativity in the face of racial injustice. Gloria Gaynor and her band revisited hits from her disco heyday (including, of course, “I Will Survive,” a song that has special resonance these days). For those of us yearning for a time when we can once again spread our blankets and take in the sounds at Rumsey Playfield, this series provides a nice stopgap.OLIVIA HORNClassical MusicCatch Up With ‘Density 2036’Claire Chase recently released four full-length CDs for her ongoing “Density 2036” project.Credit…Karen ChesterPreviously, listeners curious about “Density 2036” — the ambitious, 23-year commissioning project that the flutist Claire Chase started in 2013 — have needed to stake out her concerts. (While Chase recorded her interpretations of a couple of the earliest works at the beginning of the project, studio renditions seemed to have taken a back seat to live dates in recent years.)Now four new full-length CDs, released by Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, allow a global audience to catch up with the first half-decade of Chase’s initiative. (They’re also available digitally on Bandcamp.) Highlights abound in each set, thanks to a range of composers that includes Marcos Balter, George Lewis and Pauline Oliveros. And one particularly striking stretch on “Part IV” features a version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Bertha’s Lair” (with the composer heard on percussion alongside Chase). That fancifully vigorous piece is directly followed by a distinct yet similarly percussive work: “Five Empty Chambers” by Vijay Iyer.SETH COLTER WALLSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More