Saving Tania's Privates (photo by Joe Jankovsky)

Theatre magic doesn’t happen every day or in every show. Those instances when time stops and you are transported from every day life into the world of a writer or a performer are happening right now at the FRIGID New York festival in a basement theater called Under St. Marks. The mastermind behind all this power brought to the stage is Tania Katan with Saving Tania’s Privates. A personal, witty, no-nonsense recount of a Jewish lesbian’s challenge with cancer since the age of 21.

Saving Tania's Privates featuring Tania Katan (Photo by Josiah Epstein)

The play starts with an invasive TSA airport pat down by a male security officer; Tania suggests the female security officer must be uncomfortable with the fact that she looks like a boy and has no breasts. Thus we are automatically introduced to the subject at hand and how it will be handled in the next 58min (give or take). Along the way we meet Tania’s bf gay, her colorful parents, her lump-spotting girlfriends, and the doctors and nurses who have affected her life over the course of a decade. Her  body has her living like she’s running a 10k marathon, with constant check ups,  training,  running and stopping to grasp air.  Each person in her life has given her a different perspective and obstacle as to how to live her life while always maintaining herself triumphant against a pesky body. I would hate to take away from the wonderful discoveries in this piece, so I will refrain from describing too much of what I hope you will go experience on your own.

Theatre has always welcomed stories of bravery, survival and struggle with dis-ease. There is a delicate balance between using the theatrical medium as a way of therapy while still conveying a message, and luckily Ms. Katan has created a raw personal comedy dealing with a serious subject matter with gusto and zero sentimentalism. She is here for the craft, not to replace the shrink’s couch. A lot of this success has to do with her crisp script and knack for storytelling. She has given us permission to laugh at her trials as we view before us not a cancer survivor, but a woman who has decided to grab life by the horns and ride that smelly  bull – and oh how wonderful it feels when you can stay on top even if only for small intervals. This is the magic of the play, this is the strength of Ms Katan.

Bravo Ms. Katan, bravo! If you only have a chance to see one show at the FRIGID this year, make Saving Tania’s Privates the one – you wont regret it. While you’re at it order her memoir My One-Night Stand With Cancer, I have!

~~~

FRIGID New York Festival 2011 will run February 23-March 6 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1sr Ave and Ave A). Tickets ($10-$16) may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444. All shows runs 60 minutes long or less.

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Karen Tortora-Lee and Stephen Tortora-Lee would like to announce the marriage of their Netflix Account to their Wii Console.

The bride wore a dazzling red Netflix wrapper; the groom stood wordlessly next to my TV anxiously awaiting her arrival.  From the moment they locked codes it was a divine union.

It’s only been a few weeks, but ever since Netflix gave yet another option to view their catalog instantly I have been virtually glued to my Wii (which is embarrassing, since I bought it months ago specifically for the Wii Fit, enthusiastically boxed a few rounds with a cute little animated guy the first day, threw my shoulder out of whack, and never turned it on again).

But the funniest thing is, Stephen and I are watching more Television now than we did before.  And by Television I mean actual TV Shows.  The bulk of our instant Queue is comprised of shows like The Office, Dexter, Dead Like Me, Columbo, Torchwood, Rescue Me, and Doctor Who – a mishmash of current network TV, cable shows current and completed, BBC shows, and 1970s specials.  There’s something alluring about watching a TV show on your TV – all the while knowing it’s not actual TV that you could get any other way than by creating it with your own magic Wii wand.

But wait!  There’s more!  Since I don’t have cable, shows that have eluded me are now at my finger tips for the watching.  And I can be as fickle as I want with them.  For instance – I couldn’t help but tune into a few “Jon And Kate Plus Eight”s to see if you really could see that train wreck coming way back from Season One. (You could).  But after 3 random episodes from 3 random seasons (something about pumpkin picking, something about a mega garage sale, something about going through a haystack maze) I was done.

I spent one Saturday afternoon watching all the LA Inks I could tolerate – which turned out to be too embarrassingly high a count to admit to here.   Suffice it to say, I had to work backwards and watch a few Miami Inks in order to wean myself off of the whole tattoo culture.  I later stenciled a picture onto my forearm with a sharpie just to see how it felt.

I feel like I’ve just discovered TV for the first time.  And coming from a TV junkie like me – -  that’s saying a lot.  Well done, Netflix and Wii.  May your marriage be a long one.  And may I be guilted into using my Wii Fit to work off all those Colombo episodes that are going straight to my couch potato butt.

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I’m not big on the real world.  But The Real World–well, that’s a different story.  I don’t have cable.  I don’t even have a TV.  It is therefore impossible to use innocent channel-surfing as an excuse to pause on a program of eight strangers living in a mansion having their lives taped.  No.  The steps I take to satisfy my addiction are numerous.  I turn on my computer.  I type in MTV.com and press enter.  I click on The Real World, I click on the next episode, I wait for it to load.  Occasionally, when the wireless signal in my apartment wanes, I extract myself from the comfort and comforters of my bed, go into the hallway, unplug the router, count to ten like Netgear told me, and plug the router back in.  Cancun, D.C., Brooklyn.  I satisfy my addiction come hell or no signal.  And I’m starting to have an idea why.

The Real World is like the real world in that its participants are 20-somethings often seen in their pajamas during midday, lounging around, starting fights with each other, having sex with each other, and, in the increments between these diversions, occasionally wondering what they hell they should be doing with their lives on a larger scale.  The Real World is like the real world in that there is little to no guidance or instruction.  They aren’t marooned on an island with bankers and yoga instructors, taking part in a series of orchestrated survival challenges–constructing hovels, eating bugs–after which they are assessed and evaluated.  If the participants in The Real World do something with their time in a new city, they do something.  If they don’t, they don’t.  The producers don’t seem to care either way, so long as the eight strangers get sufficiently drunk or depressed, manic or hysterical to conjure footage that could be spliced into a good show.  And after the season has been shot, the producers, with the privilege of knowing how things started and how things ended, pull out the themes which then shape the stories of the episodes and the larger stories of the season–this misanthrope who’d never had a girlfriend, found love; that right-wing born-again found a best friend in a gay guy; this dancer shifts her interest toward social activism.  The Real World isn’t the real world because the stories have been extracted from raw footage, while in the real world, it is up to the artist to do this.

The Real World is not, in any sense, high art.  However, The Real World does demonstrate a certain process that can at times lead to high art.  Every writer, artist, filmmaker, musician, etc. lived in the real world.  They went about their lives, getting drunk and depressed and manic and hysterical in private.  They observed the world on their own, without instruction, and tried to figure out how they fit into it.  Their lives accrued the raw material from which they found images, ideas, sounds and language.  From this accrued experience, they shaped themes.  From these themes, they wrote stories, composed sonatas, painted paintings.  From the messy, boring, unscripted raw material of life, they spliced something together that, even though it was artifice, expressed something more true about the real world than the real world could tell about itself.

The Real World is interesting from a writer’s perspective, as it seems to recreate a stage of the creative process when he/she reads over fragments scrawled on napkins and starts arranging them in elaborate messy structures and slack story lines, attempting to organize them, attempting splice together these vestiges human experience into some kind of more perfect and taut story line about human experience.  The Real World is far from perfect; the real world is far from perfect.  Luckily, sometimes tension accrues that can’t be cut with a serrated knife, and that seems to, somehow, keep us going.

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Cable’s “Nip/Tuck” ended Wednesday night with its 100th episode, which was filmed in Los Angeles last June.  After a 7 year successful run filled with shocking revelations, sex, drugs, and surgery-it was a well put together episode and a finale that did not disappoint.

As a devoted follower, who originally identified with the son character of Matt (who was the same age as me when the show began), I grew attached to it like an addiction. Every Thursday, and then Tuesday, and finally Wednesday became my night for my show.  A show that soon grew into an overnight phenomenon and blew itself out of the water with outrageous plot lines, and ridiculous characters. But, it was all great. I went through high school and teenage hood with Matt, and grew up into an adult-and the show never lost my interest. It became so absurd, and unbelievable but I still always felt close to the characters of Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon), Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh), Julia McNamara (Joley Richardson), and Kimber Henry (Kelly Carlson). That was the beauty of this show, which was the original idea of its mastermind creator- Ryan Murphy (aka Glee creator and producer). To take these characters and test them with subplots like murder, suicide, almost death, flashbacks, childhood trauma, insane life coaches, a knife welding “carver”, prison, Scientology, drug use, and everything in between… was always a test. Always a way to go about discussing REAL issues that we deal with daily, or within our families-and blowing it up to a huge over-the-top scenario to get our attention. To serve a point-and let it be heard.

Those of you familiar with the show, and who followed it all these years know that last night’s finale was something ‘unlike’ Nip/Tuck. It had no jaw dropping sequences, nor fairy tale endings, but it served satisfying, and several of our good guys got what they earned, and our wonderful resident bad guy – he did wind up changing in the end too-in the way he needed to. This was a great show, and I will miss weekly gatherings to discuss the absurd series that won over my heart.

If you were not a watcher, I suggest hopping onto iTunes and starting with Season 1, you won’t regret it.

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mmm-mmm!

Boy oh boy … how I love a good sandwich. I know they’re the worst things for you. I know they’re full of bleached flour, processed meats, gloppy condiments, fats, salt and nitrates. I know that. What’s your point? You are what you eat so I am a big ole sandwich. When I die you can wrap me in some wax paper, bury me in one of those little deli containers and put me on that great conveyor belt to the sky.

Stephen likes them too, but he is the King of the Dagwood Sandwich. Early on in our relationship I’d asked him what ingredients would he combine to make his favorite burger. By way of example, I created mine for him: English Muffin bun, a big juicy burger seasoned with basil, slathered in Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Frank’s Red Hot Sauce … some sauteed onions and thick cut apple smoked bacon on the top. Yum.

He responded by building his for me: bottom bun, mayonnaise, avocado and onions, honey mustard, all beef patty, cheddar cheese, ranch dressing, Doritos, sauteed lettuce and cabbage with garlic, 2nd all beef patty, Swiss cheese, ketchup, more mayonnaise, slice of lettuce and top bun.

Of course I’ve watch him eat things that make the above look tame. I’ve learned not to ask what he’s jamming between two overtaxed slices of bread. If it crunches I just assume it’s the Doritos. Or pretzel sticks. Or peanuts. Or saltines. Or granola. Or sunflower seeds. Or wasbi peas. One time it was trail mix.

A few years ago I caught a great documentary on PBS called Sandwiches That You Will Like (which is a little like calling your clothing line Dresses That You Will Wear). It does a great job of traveling across America and showing how the definition of a sandwich changes with the landscape. I love hearing people, full of conviction, talking about their city’s sandwich and why it’s the best, not like any other Blah and Blah Sandwiches from any other place in the whole US of A! It reminded me of the time my friend’s cousin came back from Italy praising the corner markets and the plethora of prosciutto and provolone sandwiches. “It’s so common … like getting a ham and cheese in America”. We laughed our butts off at that. Um, maybe because prosciutto and provolone IS ham and cheese.

Anyway, I love this show — I’ve seen it twice and I’m thinking of buying the DVD (or accepting it as a Christmas present). What makes the show so special is not that it’s a program about food … though that’s part of it. No, what makes it great is that it’s a program about people and their relationship to food; it’s about tradition, habits, customs, comfort. It’s about folks reveling in the fact that in their little corner of the world, this is how it’s done:

This is the kind of program that makes you want to grab your map, get in the car, and just drive across America seeking these places out. Luckily, I actually have been to a few of these fine establishments and when time allows, I intend to visit a few more. For now, here are the 3 I sampled:

Living in New York you can’t escape the siren song of a good Pastrami Sandwich. And what better place to get one than at Katz’s Delicatessen … a New York tradition for over a hundred years. Stephen and I just went there recently and almost died (happily) of a meat overdose. He got the Corned Beef Sandwich and I got the pastrami … between the 2 of us I think we were able to eat 2/5th … we had to take the rest home. And we both kept on eating corned beef, pastrami and rye bread for another two days! I repeat … You are what you eat!

I’ve also been lucky enough to sample authentic Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches when a friend of mine took me back to her home town. It was really cold the weekend we were there, and we spent a long time shivering on line waiting to order our sandwiches, staring across the street at the OTHER long line of people waiting to get THEIR sandwiches. The first day we went to Geno’s, the second day to Pat’s. I liked one better than the other but can’t remember which … so I guess when I go back I’ll have to do another taste test. I’ll have to go again with a local, because even though there were big signs everywhere explaining how to order, I still made my friend order for me because I was too intimidated. Yes … I. Was. Too. Intimidated. Huh.

When another friend and I were kicking around in New Orleans, I was thrilled when we stumbled upon Central Grocery …

… which I knew all about from the program. We immediately went in and purchased the most wonderful Muffuletta Sandwich I’d every had. (Truth be told, I’d only had one once before at some wannabe New Orleans bar in Manhattan where the drinks are watered down, the food is tasteless and badly fried and the Muffuletta Sandwich is lousy). But here was the real thing! We couldn’t wait to dig in! We shared one … it was that big … and even had leftovers for later. Next to the drinking-all-day-and-night-in-the-street thing and the super hot jazz and the man who tried to take my friend and me home with him to “let nature take its course” (an offer we refused, but a story we gleefully repeated), this Muffuletta Sandwich was the best part of our trip.

So, hopefully, Stephen and I will get around to Kentucky one day in order to sample a Hot Brown Sandwich … and then maybe we’ll take another trip to Maine and get a Lobster Roll from Red’s Eats. Heck, I’d even try and get to Domilise‘s for a fried oyster Po’Boy. (Hey, did you even WATCH the clip up there?) But I can tell you right now … as far as the Fried Brain Sandwich goes … I’ll let Stephen tackle that one alone.

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