Playwrights Horizons

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      In ‘What to Send Up,’ I See You, Black American Theater

      by

      Our critic reflects on the significance of Aleshea Harris’s play, at BAM Fisher, for Black audiences.We didn’t know what to do about this piece.Whether I, a Black critic, should review Aleshea Harris’s breathtaking “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” even though my former colleague Ben Brantley, a white critic, already reviewed and raved about the show’s initial run in 2018. Whether I should be in conversation with a white critic or another Black critic.This is the piece I came up with: I’m reporting on a moment in time when I, a Black critic and a Black woman in America, felt the safest and most embraced by my Blackness in a theater.On a gloomy Friday evening, I went to BAM Fisher for the play, being presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Playwrights Horizons in association with the Movement Theater Company. I headed to the downstairs lobby, which featured portraits of Black men and women killed by the police. The room was full of Black people.If you can’t imagine the comfort of being with people who look like you in a space where art is being made, it’s something like sipping from a steaming cup in the dead of winter: the warmth is precious, immediate and shocking all at once.Harris, a veritable poet of a playwright who also wrote “Is God Is,” describes the play as “a space in the theater that is unrepentantly for and about Black people” — “a space for affirming, and reflecting.” She calls it “an anger spittoon” and “a dance party.” It’s true that “What to Send Up” feels less like a play than it does a series of cathartic experiences — which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful theater, because it is still very much that.Early on in the show, directed by Whitney White, in a kind of intimate workshop, one performer (Kalyne Coleman, who is stunning as both a performer and the host) asks the audience members, who are all standing in a large semicircle, to step forward if they’d ever witnessed a race-based act of police brutality or if they’d ever been a victim of a racially motivated act of police brutality. Most people stepped forward after the former. About a dozen people, of the 50 or so in attendance, stepped forward in response to the latter, including a 30-something Black couple.Then a series of skits charts all the horrific ways Black people are stereotyped and generally misrepresented in art and in real life. There are biting parodies of troubling Black tropes in entertainment, like the supplicant servant figures in “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Help.” And there are surreal monologues (one woman recounts how she snatched the mouth off a white man and how it flopped like a fish) alongside stepping, choral songs and spoken word.This was a show that validated my fear and sorrow as a Black citizen of this country and yet still alerted me to the privilege of having had a sheltered suburban upbringing. I thought about the first time someone directly called me the N-word, casually slinging it to the side of my face while I was walking through Midtown Manhattan one weeknight. I thought of all the times I’ve felt uncomfortable as a Black person in a space — in my career, in academia, in social settings. I thought about my growing discomfort around police officers, especially in the last several years.It’s rare for a play to allow me access to both that validation and that awareness of my privilege — because so rarely is Blackness shown onstage and so pointedly aimed toward a Black audience with all the nuances and variations that come within the experiences of their lives.Denise Manning, left, and Kalyne Coleman in “What to Send Up When It Goes Down.”Donna WardAt one point in the show, there is a symbolic Black death, tender though devastating, followed by an extended moment of silence. At another point, we were invited to write messages to Black Americans — they would join the scores of postcards with messages from other audience members that adorn the walls of the theater. Later we were asked to let out a collective, soul-cleansing scream — something I, an introvert, would usually pass on. But the mighty wall of sound led by Black voices — a great sound of exaltation and frustration and defiance all at once — invited me in, and my own voice, unsteady and hesitant, joined. It was like stretching a muscle I never realized existed; the feeling was overwhelming in its depth and release.But, I wondered, can any such space truly and wholly be for a Black audience, especially when there are white audience members there, too? Some part of me was quietly policing the white people in the theater — how they responded to certain scenes and questions, if and when they laughed at certain jokes, if they seemed to hold themselves accountable, if they were taking up too much space.As a critic and a reporter, part of what I do is read the room — how and why audiences react to the happenings onstage, and what that says about the work. But here, I didn’t want to care. In the show’s final minutes, non-Black audience members were invited to leave the theater and gather in the lobby. When I recounted this to a friend afterward, she asked what the white audiences saw, if anything, but I don’t know and — I know this is shameful to admit — I don’t care.I am concerned only with how Harris’s play made me and the other Black people in that room feel. I noted how the couple from earlier clutched each other through most of the show. At some point, the woman left and returned wet-eyed with a handful of tissues. Her partner lovingly rubbed her back.I also ended the show in tears, which I hadn’t expected — but among Black performers and audience members, I felt newly seen and safe. I had a fresh moment of realization, considering my duty as a Black critic. And as a Black poet, I had a moment of inspiration: I want more art like this.Affirmations, exclamations of joy, moments of commemoration: I’ll skip the particulars of those last few holy minutes that were exclusive to the Black audience. I want to honor and extend the loving, communal Black space Harris creates in an art form that has so few of them. And I want to keep it for myself — and for that couple and for the Black woman who, earlier in the show, had said she wished for a future version of this country where she could feel more “human.”I took a slow tour of the theater after the show, and read the messages others had left. “When you breathe, the universe sings,” one notecard read. Any other day in any other place in America, I’d probably find that sentiment too hokey. When have I ever heard singing when inhaling the air of this supposedly great free nation?But at BAM Fisher on that Friday night, I believed in a song of community, of strength and beauty and Black life despite whatever funereal tune is forced upon the lives of Black Americans. Of course I believe in theater for everyone, but I also believe in theater for Black people, and Black people alone.Leaving the venue, I thought of what a pleasure and privilege it was to receive theater gift-wrapped especially for me. And what a pleasure and privilege it is for me to laud it. But the greater pleasure? To tell you something special happened among the Black people in a theater with a qualifier: This play, non-Black theater lover, is not for or about you, and that’s perfectly fine.What to Send Up When It All Goes DownThrough July 11 at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      Raja Feather Kelly and 'The Kill One Race': TV and Theater

      by

      Raja Feather Kelly’s “The Kill One Race” and “This American Wife” exist in a realm between, changing our relationship with what we witness.There’s reality and there’s fiction: an easy distinction to make, right? Well things aren’t always so cut and dried, especially when we consider the performances we undertake in our real lives and the fictional stories that borrow from reality — the boundaries between what’s true and what’s false often get blurred.In Playwrights Horizons’ new series, “The Kill One Race,” reality TV meets theater for an examination of the ways we shape our values, form relationships and bounce between the realms of reality and fiction in both our entertainment and our daily lives. This streaming production, and another recent digital theater hybrid, “This American Wife,” reflects how the peculiar combination of theater and reality TV may complicate the viewers’ contract with the art form and their understanding of what is artifice and what is truth.“The Kill One Race,” conceived by the choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and his company Feath3r Theory, brings us to a dystopia where 24-year-olds become contestants in a reality competition full of social experiments. The most ethical person in the group is granted the honor of dying and ascending to the Empire, a vague Xanadu of eternal comfort and righteousness.Seven characters compete over seven days that are rife with challenges and schemes and manipulations. You may be thinking of “The Hunger Games” or any of the countless other dystopian works of fiction that involve monitored competitions. Despite the proliferation of these stories, I was still surprised by the variation theater brought to the theme. Filmed at Playwrights Horizons and released over the course of eight overly lengthy episodes, “The Kill One Race” so closely mimics the style of “Big Brother,” “The Real World” and other classic reality series that “theater” feels like a terribly insufficient way to describe it.Kelly, who also directs, borrows the filming conventions of the genre, with many split screens, confessionals and voyeuristic close-ups. He uses the techniques so well, in fact, that the naturalism is jarring — confusing, even. The performances of the cast, too, are so exact and understated, with each actor having such a clear understanding of his or her character’s disposition and way of thinking that the ethical discussions feel uncannily real.Jamen Nanthakumar, left, and Raja Feather Kelly, who created and performs in the production. Kate EnmanThis is what tripped me up (other than the production’s long run time and the fascinating though similarly overlong Ethics 101 discussions): Was I actually watching some kind of social experiment, featuring real people responding in real ways within the scaffolding of a fictional world?It reminded me of the discomfort I felt watching “This American Wife,” with its meta play on the Bravo “Real Housewives” franchise that reproduced actual scenes and dialogue from the shows alongside scripted and improvised material. In my review I wondered what was improvised, what was borrowed from the franchise and what was real.My problem has to do with the question of artifice and honesty — fitting for a show about ethics. I avoid watching reality TV dramas because the performances of these supposedly “real-life” scenarios are too transparent. They feel disingenuous, parodies of reality despite the shows’ claims to the contrary. And this extends beyond the frames of the TV screen — the carefully curated fiction of characters’ stories and their relationships with one another become part of those individuals’ celebrity. It’s profitable.Though theater isn’t an art form of total honesty either, it is its own kind of artifice; the difference is in the presentation of that fiction. In theater there is the expectation of fantasy — we sit in an audience and wait for the curtains to open. When we step into a theater we agree to suspend our disbelief for the duration of a show. Reality TV, however, depicts lives that continue without intermissions and characters who actually exist in the world.When these two realms collide, then, as they do in “The Kill One Race” and “This American Wife,” it warrants a renegotiation of terms between the theatrical production and the audience — a redefinition of the art form and what is generally known and expected of it in its most traditional forms.I’ve stated my unease with this collision between reality TV and the “honest” fiction of theater, but that’s not to say that this is an aberration — or even an error — that productions ought to avoid. In fact, such contortions and hybridizations of theater and other media allow art to confront audiences with their preconceived notions about which stories should be told in which ways. In the end, perhaps the truest sentiments lie somewhere in the space between reality and theater.The KILL ONE RaceThrough July 4; thekillonerace.com More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      New York Theaters Are Dark, but These Windows Light Up With Art

      by

      The Irish Repertory Theater is streaming poetry readings, and Playwrights Horizons and St. Ann’s Warehouse are showcasing art dealing with race and injustice.Like many cultural organizations, the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan has streamed pandemic programming on its website.But a few days ago, the theater added a new sort of broadcast to its repertoire, setting up two 60-inch screens in windows that face the sidewalk, installing speakers high up on the building facade and airing a collection of films that show people reading poems in Ireland, London and New York.On a recent morning, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Rep’s producing director, stood by the theater on West 22nd Street, gazing at the screens as they displayed Joseph Aldous, an actor in Britain, reading “An Advancement of Learning,” a narrative poem by Seamus Heaney describing a brief standoff with a rat along a river bank.“These are not dark windows,” O’Reilly said. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”In the past year, theaters and other performing arts institutions in New York have turned to creative means to bring works to the public, sometimes also injecting a bit of life into otherwise shuttered facades. Those arrangements continue, even as the State of New York has announced that arts venues can reopen in April at one-third capacity and some outdoor performances, like Shakespeare in the Park, are scheduled to resume.The panes of glass, though, have provided a safe space. Late last year, for instance, the artists Christopher Williams, Holly Bass and Raja Feather Kelly performed at different times in the lobby or in a smaller vestibule-like part of the building in Chelsea occupied by New York Live Arts. All were visible through glass to those outside.Three more performances by Kelly of “Hysteria,” in which he assumes the role of a pink-hued extraterrestrial and explores what Live Arts’ website calls “pop culture and its displacement of queer Black subjectivity,” are scheduled for April 8-10.The Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day’s photographs of sculptures are on display at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother street-level performance took place behind glass last December in Downtown Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Ballet staged nine 20-minute shows of select dances from its “Nutcracker.”The ballet turned its studio into what its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, called a “jewel box” theater; chose dances that kept masked ballerinas socially distanced; and used barricades on the sidewalk to limit audiences.“It was a way to bring some people back to something they love that they enjoyed that they might be forgetting about,” Parkerson said in an interview. “It did feel like a real performance.”She said that live performances were planned for April and would include ballet members in “Pas de Deux,” set to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles,” with live music by the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.Pop-up concerts have been arranged by the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side, in a storefront — the address is not given but is described on the center’s website as “not hard to find” — north of Columbus Circle.Those performances, running through late April, are announced at the storefront the same day, to limit crowd sizes and encourage social distancing. Participants have included the violinist Gil Shaham, the mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, the Gabrielle Stravelli Trio and JACK Quartet.St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is displaying Julian Alexander and Khadijat Oseni’s “Supremacy Project,” public art that addresses the nature of injustice in American society.The word “supremacy” is superimposed on a photograph of police officers in riot gear, and there are images by Michael T. Boyd of Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain and Emmett Till.And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, the Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day is placing photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases, encouraging viewers to reckon with definitions of beauty and race. Those displays are part of rotating public art series organized by the artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein and the set and costume designer David Zinn.The aim, Finkelstein said in January when the series was announced, was to display work that “makes constructive use of dormant facades to create a transient street museum” and to “remind the city of its buoyancy and originality.”O’Reilly, at the Irish Rep, said the theater heard last year from Amy Holmes, the executive director of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, who thought the theater might provide a good venue to air some of the short films the organization had commissioned to make poetry part of an immersive experience.The series being shown at the theater, called “Poetic Reflections: Words Upon the Window Pane,” comprises 21 short pieces by the Irish filmmaker Matthew Thompson.“These are not dark windows,” said Ciaran O’Reilly of the Irish Repertory Theater. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThey show contemporary poets reading their own works as well as poets and actors reading works by others, including William Butler Yeats and J.M. Synge, and were produced in collaboration with Poetry Ireland in Dublin, Druid Theater in Galway, the 92nd Street Y in New York and Poet in the City in London.“I think there is something special about encountering the arts in an unexpected way in the city, especially an art form like poetry,” Holmes said.The readers in the films include people who were born in Ireland, immigrants to Ireland, people who live in Britain and a few from the United States, like Denice Frohman, who was born and raised in New York City.Frohman was on the theater’s screens on Tuesday night, reading lines like “the beaches are gated & no one knows the names of the dead” from her poem “Puertopia,” when Erin Madorsky and Dorian Baker stopped to listen.Baker said he saw the films playing in the window as symbolizing a “revitalization of poetic energy.”Madorsky had regularly attended theatrical performances before the pandemic but now missed that connection, she said, and was gratified to happen upon a dramatic reading while walking home.She added that the sound of the verses being read stood in contrast to what she called the city’s “standard” backdrop of blaring horns, sirens and rumbling garbage trucks.“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s something so soothing about her voice, it just pulled me in.” More