New York Neo-FuturistsDesiree Burch, Cara Francis & Erica Livingston serve up a cure for what ails you in this Neo-Medicine show, performing in and around a giant pot of self-made soup. Bottling this soup, as well as a series of elixirs, potions, tonics and products, they heal and reveal the female experience live, honest and in the flesh.
Incorporating ingredients from interviews, living newspaper, personal stories, circus acts and freak shows, the women of The Soup Show ultimately feed their audiences with a question “How far has the women’s movement moved us?” The fierce trio honor the 30th Anniversary of Women’s History Month, and show you why the readers of the Village Voice named The New York Neo-Futurists “The 2009 Best Performance Artists in New York.”
ADVISORY: adult language and nudity.
One lucky grand prize winner will receive:
A pair of tickets to The Soup Show at HERE Arts Center, for Sunday, March 7th at 7:00 pm
To enter, correctly answer the following question:
The Ohio Theatre, a pillar of New York’s downtown theatre scene for 29 years, will close on August 31, 2010. The new landlord has issued official notice and no further negotiations are scheduled.
Located at 66 Wooster Street, The Ohio Theatre was one of Soho’s pioneering performance spaces and is now one of the last remaining. The not-for-profit theatre company Soho Think Tank runs the space under the direction of Artistic Director Robert Lyons. Lyons says, “It’s where Tony Kushner produced his first play out of college, where Philip Seymour Hoffman made his professional acting debut, where Eve Ensler performed Dicks in the Desert, a decade before writing The Vagina Monologues. The Ohio Theatre has been an incubator and platform for New York’s most exciting and innovative theatre artists for almost 30 years. Its closing emphatically punctuates the end of an era in Soho, and stands as a high profile casualty in the relentless decimation of the lower Manhattan theatre landscape.”
Master collagist Charles Mee celebrates love, sex and the joie de vivre in Fetes de la Nuit, this time presented by WeildWorks at The Ohio Theater. Mee is no stranger to plays about relationships and how culture molds the different ways we approach love, loving, and being loved. For example, in his play Big Love, fifty brides flee their grooms and seek refuge in an Italian villa, mixing pop culture with tradition and texts from different classics. In Fetes de la Nuithe reinvents and updates a style that used to serve as entertainment for Louis VIX at Versailles, into a modern day somewhat stereotypical look into Paris, romance and a lot of sex.
Name: Erica Marshall Occupation: Student Age: 20 Zodiac: Scorpio Favorite Restaurant: Shake Shack Upper West Side. Longs for: new android phone. Fears: her roommates boyfriend’s boxers on the bathroom floor. Beliefs: John Mayer should be left alone, he’s a truly nice guy. Where is she going: 7:55pm showing of “Dear John” at AMC Loews Lincoln Square.
The Wo(Man) In The Window is a fictional non-factional profile.
Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental.
In the event of a coincidence then you are fabulous.
We should meet for cocktails.
“Bad shit in life makes for good art. Things that challenge us emotionally, politically and socially propel us to create. Having this terrible thing in my life has motivated me in a way. I have sort of resolved to not only not let it get me down but use it as a way to improve myself. And don’t get me wrong, I have very dark days. I have days where I sit around and mope ‘why me’ and wish I could travel back in time and change things. But ya know, that only gets you so far. So yeah, the old adage ‘what doesn’t kill you…’“
This is how being HIV positive has changed Dan Horrigan’s life as an artist, and has propelled him to debut as a solo performer with his show MY AiDS now playing at Urban Stages. “What started out as an exercise in trying to put together a sort of comedy act really evolved,” says Horrigan.”I decided that I would accept the encouragement of those around me who think I’m funny and try to create a sort of comedy act but I thought it would be a greater challenge to wrap all of my humor around something that is really difficult for me… which is being HIV positive.”
Dzul Dance is an ensemble troupe that has amalgamated dance with aerial arts in their new show Danzonat Baruch Performing Arts Center. InDanzonwe are submerged in Mayan rituals, offerings, the supernatural world, and a love triangle between a man and two women, while showcasing the music of different Latin American artists the likes of Control Machete and Chavela Vargas. Sounds like a lot of elements, yet Dzul Dance has incorporated all of them successfully for most of the program.
Dan Via has all the ingredients for an excellent comedy about two best friends entering middle-age and facing life altering changes. Instead DADDY tries to be a dark drama of Greek proportions. How much can you bend a plot without it breaking? That depends on the eye of the beholder.
Name: Jessica Heart Occupation: Accountant Age: 24 Zodiac: Capricorn Favorite Restaurant: Ayza Wine & Chocolate Bar, Midtown Manhattan, NYC. Longs for: finding love in the right places. Fears: roaches, freaks out every time she sees one. Beliefs: “There’s no place like a happy hour.” Where is she going: ladies night with her college friends that are also New Yorkers… It’s still cool to try and pretend you belong in Sex and the City right?
The Wo(Man) In The Window is a fictional non-factional profile.
Any resemblance to real people is completely coincidental.
In the event of a coincidence then you are fabulous.
We should meet for cocktails.
The final bow for The 2010 National NewBorn Festival was Sunday, and it was anything but uneventful. After reservations soared, the last two days of the festival were hosted in a different venue, giving the staff including myself extra work to schlep everything from one place to the other. The recipient of The Audience Favorite Award that received a second reading on Sunday was Carol Carpenter’s Good Lonely People. For those of you that don’t know about “NewBorn” it is the flagship program of the Off-Off Broadway theatre company MTWorks, showcasing new plays taking place and/or inspired by other regions of the US. I was honored to perform and be under the direction of The Happiest Medium collaborator Diánna Martin in A Home Across the Ocean, by Louisiana playwright Cody Daigle.
I have to admit, it has been hard for me to wrap around the idea of posting The Wo(Man) In The Window after the earthquake that hit Haiti. I was thinking of using the column to inform on ways on how to donate and help – but you can check out the extremely helpful Washington Post article. A lot of Arts organizations around NYC are also donating part of their proceeds to help the Haiti relief. Right here on The Happiest Medium there is information on The Improvolution’s LoveFest, donating their proceeds.
