by Karen Tortora-Lee on January 21, 2012
“There is failure and there is success. What better way to measure this than the piano?”
If you were the child who spent your afternoons inside practicing the piano (or another musical instrument) while you could hear other children running around in the sunshine you no doubt have an ache in your heart when now, as an adult, you hear other people discussing their memories of playing in the streets, or even watching endless hours of after-school cartoons. Sure, you may have agile fingers which allow you to type an error-free 75 WPM but aside from that, are you really any better off? Was it worth it?
Let’s take it one step further. Imagine you are Mei (Lynn Craig), grown daughter of Lily (Satomi Hofmann), who monitors her daughter Kim’s practicing from the other room. Distractedly tapping away on her blackberry she suddenly hears the words of her mother boom from her own lips as Kim prepares for recital day: “You will practice that piece until you can play it 20 times perfectly!” Stunned, Mei realized she has stepped up and taken on the Legacy of the Tiger Mother.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on January 16, 2012
There’s a great independent festival kicking off tonight – right in the heart of the theatre district at the Roy Arias Studios & Theaters. What makes The Times Square International Theater Festival special is two things – one, it’s an international festival which means there will be a great range of talents from all over reflecting cultures from around the world. The second thing is that The Happiest Medium is the proud sponsor of this festival! In the coming week we’ll bring you Q&As with each of the production teams to get you excited about the shows, and we’ll review as many as we can get to! In the mean time, check out the full schedule here:
SEASONS
Two Classy Broads
Writer: Katie Hammond and Elaine Pechacek | Director: Danny Williams
Spanning the course of one year, SEASONS is a story about love. This original musical delves into the lives of two couples Poignant and touching, this story explores the characters with humor and realism, and will leave the audience wanting more.
This will be the first time the full musical has been staged.
Run time: 90 min | Country: USA | Genre: Musical
Website: www.pechacekhammond.com
Venue: Stage IV, Roy Arias Studios and Theaters
Time: Mon 16@9:30pm Thurs 19th@8:00pm Sat 21st@5:30pm
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on January 9, 2012
“History is written by the victors” said Winston Churchill and while that may be true, history is certainly interpreted by the artists. History of The World, written by Judith Malina currently being performed at The Living Theatre not only illustrates this, but exemplifies it. Filled with dramatic scenes of artists, philosophers, thinkers, and game-changers this interactive staging takes the audience through a journey where the goal is not so much to witness history as to experience it, explore it vicerally, and (ultimately) to know it in a way that the history books could never emulate.
The Living Theatre, founded by Malina (and Julian Beck) in 1947, is the oldest experimental NYC theatre still in existence. This latest conceptual play is the perfect cocktail of experimental theatre with long roots: it simultaneously reflects the freshness of understanding the subtle nuances of contemporary themes, original ideas and developing concepts; while still being richly imbued with many years of development in the experimental milieu. The result is an evening of everything New York underground experimental theatre should be – stirring, moving, a little unpredictable — at times a little uncomfortable. If you give yourself over to the process, History of the World will allow you to experience moments of true fear, actual deeply moving pain, and (ultimately) invite you to raise yourself to a higher emotional plane – all in 90 minutes.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 22, 2011
Of all the things to be tempted with this holiday season, nothing is so tantalizing as Company XIV’s production of Snow White which lures audiences to 303 Bond Street with all the seduction of an evil queen extending a shiny, beautiful, apple in order to cast a magical spell. One thing is certain – there is definitely something bewitching the spectators who walk in innocently and emerge 90 minutes later – filled to overflowing with images of exquisiteness and spectacle. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
The lights are hung, // The wires strung, // The sets are all painted and built
The make-up’s applied // And I’ll say it outright: // The gold you will see is just gilt.
The kingdom and forest is plastic and steel // But the dancing feet are real.
And so begins the narrator’s speech as Jeff Takacs (who, as with all of the Company XIV productions, is responsible for the adaptation of the work, and has written the script) welcomes the audience to Snow White, conceived, choreographed and directed by Austin McCormick. It’s the perfect way to begin a fairytale: with the truth — that all the dazzling bells and whistles which make this show shine are remarkable, but take it all away and you’d still have the amazing dancers, executing the superb steps created by McCormick. However, between the whirling and the witchery is where the wonder lives.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 20, 2011
Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like naked people running around. (At least not where I come from. Your experience may vary.) If you like naked people (and who doesn’t?) and you like jokes about Santa, Hanukkah, Rudolph, Elves, and wrestlers (not necessarily in that order) then End Time Productions Naked Holidays is the show for you. Not only will you get skits, musical production numbers, wry commentary on the holidays and parodies of old favorites but you’ll get full frontal nudity that is both essential to the plot as well as completely gratuitous. It’s enough to jingle anyone’s bells, and then some.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 16, 2011
If Christmas in New York could be found on the map I think most people would agree that its address would be Rockefeller Center, filled as it is with the tree and the giant decorations, and the fabled City of Radio … where Rockettes dress up as reindeer and dance their little hearts out, doling out Christmas Miracles to the tourists one high kick at a time.
I’d seen the Radio City Christmas Spectacular a number of times as a child but it was never a family tradition, so therefore it wasn’t something that got scheduled into the season as much as, say, hanging the stocking by the chimney with care or riding in a one-horse open sleigh (oh what fun!). So it wasn’t till around 25 years later, when some out-of-town visitors were staying in NYC for the first 2 weeks of December (“Nothing like shopping on 5th Avenue for Christmas presents!” they cried, credit cards extended), that my family decided it was about time to get ourselves back to the show. After all, it can’t all be Coach wallets and Tiffany trinkets … you’ve gotta have a LITTLE good ole fashioned NYC theater in there somewhere. And, say what you want, WICKED is a fine, fine show, but nothing says Christmas like the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. (It’s in the ACTUAL NAME). Since that day around 5 years ago, I actually found myself back in that audience a number of times, always finding some reason to be there. It adds a little touch of holiday magic to the otherwise pushy, shove-y, where-the-heck-did-I-drop-my-glove-y midtown area.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 14, 2011
Three heavy hitters have teamed up on Broadway to give audiences an evening of kinship wrapped in contention with Relatively Speaking: three one-act comedies which cover various forms of familial remedy, rivalry and racket. Four-time Oscar winner Ethan Coen, two-time Oscar nominee Elaine May and multiple award winner Woody Allen each offer up their views on the subject, resulting in short plays which each bear the distinct mark of their unique brand of writing; all delivered under the deft direction of John Turturro.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 2, 2011
I was one of the lucky ones: a woman who actually got married at an age when I was more likely to be struck by lightening (twice!) than take that trip down the aisle … or so the annoying statistic goes. As I watched my 30s rapidly skedaddling in my rear-view mirror I looked around at the landscape of men and – like main character Layla of The Show Goes On Productions How To Marry A Divorced Man – saw a lot of prospects before me who were either gay, already married, or came with a whole lot of baggage. So, what’s a great single gal to do?
And what if you do find that perfect guy? Chances are if he’s in his 30s he’s probably been married, has kids and has been through the ringer — the kind of guy who should come with his own instruction manual. Which is why Leslie Fram’s book of the same name is such perfect fodder for a musical comedy. Using her book How To Marry A Divorced Man as a guide, the story practically writes itself. The show is currently in development and I attended a Rock Musical Reading which gave a delightful work-shopping of a production filled with catchy songs (by Bryan D. Leys and Clare Cooper), fun characters, identifiable situations and an all-around good time at the theatre.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on November 29, 2011
– How can you listen to music when your country is falling apart?
- Because music is what keeps us together
– Ghost Dancer
Playwright Robert L. Hecker’s new politically-driven play, Ghost Dancer, unfolds in a hypothetical world set on a fictional Caribbean island. So, in this way, it is both everywhere and nowhere at once. In not being beholden to the history of any one oppressed people, it allows itself to speak for all oppressed people everywhere who rise up against persecution and iniquity. But the revolutionaries you will meet on this island, and specifically in the Romero household, are not peaceful protesters who sit mutely, arms locked in silent demonstration. The people of Ghost Dancer are the splinter groups who blow things up, who sacrifice for the cause … who put the needs of the many before the needs of the one. Some are born to this world, some are called to it; some have the spirit of revolution in their blood, some must suffer before they are brought to action. What Ghost Dancer shows is that these roles are not always pre-ordained.
Ghost Dancer‘s first moments explode with life – movements of exquisite celebration; Francisco (Luis Salgado) and Rosaria (Rosie Lani Fiedelman) dance around their friends’ apartment in a whirl of passion, fire, joy and heat — even as they are being told to bring more intensity to their dance. Several hours later, Ghost Dancer ends with a violent, driven, brutal dance set to pounding tribal beats which invoke the warrior spirits as Lakota (Lilia Vassileva) and Tony (Arturo Castro) are staring down death. Theirs is a dance of a completely different sort, but there is no doubt that it spills over with a profusion of their existence.
What plays out between the initial dance of life and the ultimate dance of death is a complicated journey for a family who will be tested by the bonds of loyalty, the need for justice, the cry for vengeance, the darkness of obsession and the anguish of bloodshed.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on November 23, 2011
The concept of adapting La Strada (the 1954 film by masterful auteur Federico Fellini) for the stage is a daring one. And not just daring, but ambitious as well. It’s not easy to take a pre-existing work and re-envision it — on the one hand you’ve got to make sure that you keep the familiar bones of the piece in tact, while at the same time you must recognize and realize the opportunity for innovation.
La Strada Company, a New York based Spanish company, has done a lot of things well in their adaption and – even more – directors Rene Buch and Jorge Merced conceived a lot of things brilliantly. Yet in their excitement to present a unique piece of theatre which deviates from the film they make a few pacing choices which make this interpretation feel like two separate shows rather than a cohesive whole. There is a difference between exploring a theme and giving it a predominant vein versus letting it completely take over and run away with the first part of your production. La Strada is masterful, brilliant, beautiful, stirring, touching and wonderful — but not until about a third into the show.
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“There is failure and there is success. What better way to measure this than the piano?”
