Pompie’s Place Blues is Red Hot
Immersive theatre is the new buzz word for theatrical experiences that simply put, merge the audience with the show. It removes the trappings of pure voyeurism and encourages a participatory adventure that may be the future of theater.
Pompeii’s Place, the new blues show running on a special schedule at Don’t Tell Mama, has all the makings of what could be a time machine; step back to the early days of this country and find yourself immersed in the world of blues’ evening. It won’t be a smoky joint in Harlem; but a backroom in a favorite New York cabaret club, where a fun sense of the blues world is beautifully created. and where you can step on board for great time.
The host, Arthur Pomosello, who had an eighteen year stint at the Algonquin Club, looks like Kirk Douglas and delivers a patter about the singers that’s Mad Man sexism with fatherly overtones. This of course, gives the fantastic singers, a chance to prove him wrong and show how singing the blues gave the singers and all of us a healing outlet…not victimhood.
When the lights drop, out swings alto Lezlie Harrison, with a big voice, getting it all started with W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues. Next up is Brianna Thomas, a frequent performer at Dizzy’s Club and The Kennedy Center. She’s a large gal with a gorgeous sound and knows how to act as demonstrated in “I Keep My Stove in Good Condition.”
The third chanteuse, Hilary Gardner has humor and a terrific voice and style. Her Ten Cents a Dance had diners wanting to ask her to join them on the floor. She has sung with Frank Sinatra…what else is there to say?
The musicians behind, in front and sideways are great…Ehud Asherie is musical director, using everything he learned at Small’s., The inimitable Ken Peplowski is on reeds, David Wong, bass and the legendary Jackie Williams on drums.
What’s missing for me…and this is a compliment, is a longer show. I just wanted the evening to go on and on. I’d like to see people get up and dance…they’re doing it in their chairs… the music calls for it.
Given the time to ‘do’ up the space with a little design (tiny lamps on the tables instead of candles) and costumes for the waiters…Pompie’s Place could easily become the event for blues lovers.
Beck Lee is a consulting producer and he certainly knows his audience. The show runs May 11, 28 at 7pm and May 10 at 1 pm at Don’t Tell Mama’s on 46th Street. Delicious dinner is served with the show
The Dark of the Moon hits The Beacon
While making a film about John Lennon’s power to continually draw people to him, I’ve gotten the opportunity to meet a few tribute performers. I was surprised to find them uniquely to be themselves, and though they love playing at being John and spreading his sound out to the world, they are doing it as artists…it’s a great way to make a living and keeps the music alive. Plus they are free to play the great music without any of the complicated by the inner fighting of the original groups.
I’ve never seen the band Brit Floyd who will be coming to the Beacon on May 12 in their Space & Time tour, but spoke to musical director Damian Darlington. Damian has played with Brit Floyd all over the world. The productions are elaborate with the kind of stage magic one could expect of Pink Floyd. Damian said, “we give the audience a chance to experience what is was like…and they find something deep inside.”
Pink Floyd’s philosophic lyrics and psychedelic sound made them one of the most commercially successful and influential groups in music. The co-founder Syd Barrett, a brilliant artist, had to leave the group after years of mental struggle. The stories about him are legend…like walking out onstage with Brylcream and Mandrax in his hair, all of it melting under the hot stage lights, so that he looked like a candle on the wan. The other members played on in different combinations for years, despite quarrels about all the things rockers quarrel about. Through it all, though, they produced stellar albums: The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Final Cut, 1983), Wish you Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) (1975), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983).
Their music could be dark and sad, but always deep and moving. They created dreamscapes where all feelings were up for exploration.
Damian on his rare time off also has an acoustic band, Acoustic Unlimited. The other members include Rob Stringer, Ian Cattell, Bobby Harrison, Aaran Ahmun, Carl Brunsdon, Thomas Ashbrook, plus back up singers. They have all been together a long while and are tight. The show has a new set list, fifty years of Pink Floyd and an enhanced light show.
It may still be possible to catch remnants of the real Pink Floyd… there are always rumors of reuniting but the last time they all played together was 2005 and since then members have died. So it’s a very good thing indeed that Brit Floyd keeps the candle burning with what I’m expecting to be a knock out show.
w ww.britfloyd.com
Music To Soothe the Lonesome Traveler
There is nothing about feeling lonely in Lonesome Traveler, a musical playing at 59E59 Theaters that spans the history of American folk music from the dust bowl days to the present. It’s the kind of music that represented a country able to recognize its own suffering and injustice and express that recognition through song. Of course, folk music couldn’t by itself resolve the problems of unfair wages, unjust wars, and racism, but it went a long way in helping to reduce the pain. Folk music helped bolster the creation of communities, including the unions, and in rallying support against war.
The U.S. was a less populated country when singers like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Odetta brought the news to the people through song. And people were spread out… riding box cars, moving west to look for work…always hoping to better their lives. Songs helped tell their stories and help relieve the pressures of life’s challenges.
In this wonderful production, a group called the Lonesome Traveler folds and unfolds on itself, portraying the different periods of folk music and the bards who led the songs. The narrator, a brilliant Justin Flagg playing guitar, banjo and stand-up bass, portrays the music of Pete Seeger, Dave Guard, Peter Yarrow and others. This is the style of the show. Whether singing as Woody Guthrie or Joan Baez, they are all extremely accomplished performers who bring the different periods of musical history alive.
We learn a little bit about the lives of each of these singers and writers, and what inspired them to write what they did, some literally lifting old songs that were long part of musical history and updating them for the time. The audience is encouraged to join in, and This Land is Your Land started the ball rolling.
The video projections help convey the different periods, from dust bowls to mountain shacks to the March on Selma. We see how the tunes corresponded to our lives, from union busting, Talkin’ Union, to Hitler and Pete Seeger’s, Last Night I had the Strangest Dream.
Two of my favorites were represented, Judy Collins and Joan Baez, but I missed hearing “Joanie Mitchell” sing Big Yellow Taxi’s folk rock anthem to gentrification.
By the second half, tears stared to flow. Ian and Sylvia’s beautiful tune Someday Soon was like stepping into a time machine. “The Kingston Trio” sang Where Have All the Flowers Gone, so poignant after all these years of lost lives in the Middle East and other wars.
Lonesome Traveler is the kind of show that should play college campuses and music schools and certainly PBS. It is an oral history of our country…with music. As the performers are all so great, I will mention them by name: Matty Charles, Sylvie Davidson, Jamie Drake, Justin Flagg, Sam Gelfer, Anthony Manough, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Jennifer Leigh Warren and Trevor Wheetman. The show is directed by its writer, James O’Neil, with Trevor Wheetman as musical director. Mr. Wheetman’s bio sweetly gives thanks for the job which also led to meeting his now fiancé, musician Syvlie Davidson. Ah, the power of music.
Lonesome Traveler runs till April 19th @ 59E59 Theatres.
Bullies Beware: The Rebirth of the Feminine is Almost Here
There has been no shortage of shocking news during March’s Month of Madness. Despite the UN calling for a Happy Day this past Friday, it has not been happy for many. After two weeks of vigorous seminars and panels on the plight of violence against women across the globe at the Conference on the Status of Women, where all sorts of inspiring efforts are being put into action to lessen the physical and psychic damage on the feminine, Friday’s news brings yet another story of unspeakable cruelty towards an innocent.
Some of Kabul’s male citizens decided to play morality police and beat and burned alive a 27 year old woman who was accused of burning the Koran. Apparently, the victim may have had learning issues, not that that matters. It is the men who committed such barbarism who have issues…they are all completely mad.
That these men have cell phones and are leading supposed modern lives committed this atrocity in the diplomatic zone of Kabul, where so much international monies have gone to aid Afghanistan is shocking. That a religious leader defends this murder…beyond words.
As my cosmologist friends tell me, a solar eclipse is a force majeure, and if this act, on the last official day of the CSW and the eclipse, doesn’t bode for a rapid shift into another type of consciousness, then when will it ever come?
Nigerians girls abducted, women raped daily, elders tortured as witches, gay and transgender people persecuted…and our Mother Earth, trying to hold it together as she too has been decimated by the greed of capitalism and so- called progress.
We have plenty of statistics…one out of three women have experienced sexual violence and so forth.. IAWRT, The International Association of Women in Radio and Television’s brilliant reporting at the CSW on the percentages of women working in media…who’s delivering the stories that really pertain to women’s needs? The facts are presented…now let’s get on with changing the story.
The Lacanian therapist from France started her talk by describing her own burgeoning sense of herself as a youngster when her mother constantly told her early ‘she wasn’t good enough, she was a girl.’ The power of language to perpetuate myths in societies where patriarchy has gone amok.
As we come to the great Spring religious holidays, Easter, Passover, … let’s think back on traditions that predated Judaism and Christianity, taking place in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Women’s birth was revered and honored, symbolized by eggs and blood. According to the archaeomythology (https://lefthandofeminism.wordpress.com/tag/easter/), decorated goose eggs were found in graves dating back to the 4th century and Persians celebrate No-rooz with red colored eggs 3000 years ago. The pagans celebrate Ostara, the uterus, life-giving, estrus, Easter, eggs… you do the math.
So can we make this a time of re-birth, celebrate a re-awakening of the feminine in all of us, where the masculine allies itself with the feminine instead of in competition and destruction. It takes real courage to wake up from a sleep like the one our consciousness has been in for so long. It is enough suffering. Dayenu.
Danny Schecter, You Told Me So
Like the rest of Danny Schecter’s admirers, I was shocked and saddened to hear he died. It seems that my whole relationship with this mighty thinker was about unfinished business.
When my film on Abbie Hoffman, <em>My Dinner With Abbie,</em> played up in Boston, Danny the News Dissector was the MC at the theater. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the screening but heard from friends in attendance that Danny made a joke that I was too busy to be there. Well, the truth was I didn’t have the fare…not something an up and coming filmmaker likes to admit, but Danny didn’t know that, so I always thought he had a grudge against me.
Years later when he was living in New York, we reached a sort of detente. He understood that I was a softy in comparison to his political acumen and that I was mostly always broke and mostly always told the truth. I was so glad he was now on my side and introduced him to my partner Howard Katzman, who was swept up in Danny’s South Africa world… a sweep that forever changed Howard’s life for the good.
Danny and I had dinner a few times and saw a couple of films, but our tracks more recently collided when I found myself way over my head in the Fabrice Tourre computer mix up. I, by some ill luck, owned the Goldman Sachs’ brilliant prodigy and sniper’s trashed laptop and had spent over a year trying to figure out how to do DIY interpol work from my east village hovel. I was ill suited for the tension and when I finally presented the case to Danny, he wanted to run with it. He took my personal comedy tale of computer confusion and placed it inside his own storyline. It was great, but I got chicken shit, not having lawyers at my disposal and insisted on waiting before going public.
When I did, it was with the New York Times who got a front page story out of it but left me high and dry and feeling pretty stupid. Danny tried hard not to do a ” I told you so”, but he had and I hadn’t listened.
I will miss his spark on the planet and his clear eyed gaze into what’s wrong with the world. That he died near the solar eclipse is poignant… two forces of nature at a cosmic meet-up.
I promise to stay open to his communication skills pushing through the fourth wall of my dreamscape and will not only listen this time, but report the findings. RIP Danny Boy.
Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Why is that So Hard to Figure?
The Conference on the Status of Women, 20 years since Beijing, is both great and awful. It’s great because it brings strong and vital women from all corners of the globe to learn, research and share information on the status of women worldwide. It is bad because a great deal of the information is heartbreaking.
Forget the paucity of female leaders in the world… Before colonialism, there were many more female heads of community and tribe. But that all changed when patriarchy dug its boots in and as we all know, even the US still hasn’t had a female head of state.
What is more disturbing to me than the economic imbalance (which of course, ultimately affects everything else) is the continuing level of violence against women. In so called civilized world, human trafficking is a huge business…it is organized crime and women for the most part are its more constant victims. I think I know good and sane men, but there are plenty of men in the world who wouldn’t think twice about the background of a girl they hire for casual sex…what got her into the spot in the first place, who is controlling her money and her life, and what of the truth that she actually hates having sex with him. This is possibly too much for a John to consider. After all, the world has been much more his oyster than it has women’s and the imbalance of power is quite a hard thing first to face, and secondly to give up.
That there are thirteen year old girls who are being trafficked is deplorable. These young girls are so young they can’t even get a hotel room. They are everyone’s daughter, niece and sister…truths that are forgotten in the heat of sexual commerce.
On the plus side of trafficking, there are organizations like the Jewish Coalition to end Human Trafficking among others, who work diligently to help the victims and global organizations ready to prosecute the perpetrators of this form of modern slavery. And there are other aspects of the organizations like Caravan Studios that work on giving the victims a chance to heal from the trauma.
Another infuriating topic is elder abuse. This subject interested me because I once made a film about Celtic witches. It was about the state of mind of witches, both men and women when they are thinking magically and the history of witches in England. But many elders in Papua New Guinea, and Africa and India, are accused of being witches, because they are old, disabled, or without family protection. These are innocent women who are being tortured today. They are being blamed for a huge assortment of community maladies – a family without a son, bad economic times, etc. the ancient role of sacrifice has never finished. Children who are a little different are also the scapegoat for the troubles of others and are tortured in ways too offensive to describe here. These are human right issues. It is the women who are pointing them out because it’s mostly women and children who suffer.
In India, where so much violence against women has been recorded in the last year, the rate of witch calling and torturing of poor, rural women is growing daily. How much work must be done to get the police and authorities, first to care and secondly to do something?
When I leave these events, I’m exhausted. Tired from the horrific tales of global truths that are shocking –and incredibly unjust. And tired from the energy it takes to not think about them all the time. But I do try and remember that at least these truths have shown up in New York City 2015 and that the first step in eradicating the problems is recognition. And that women, despite all the travails of sexism are ultimately unbroken and more courageous than any sniper. And that there are even a few good men in attendance. Still, I won’t sleep well tonight or for a long while after.
Al Maysles…A Fond Farewell
With great sadness I just read my sister’s email that Al Maysles has died. It’s as if a spiritual father has left the cinema. Darker because of the sudden loss, but assured it will re-illuminate every time one of his powerful documentaries is shown.
I don’t make movies like Al…I’m too busy working out my neurotic wounds to be a fly on the wall, but I adore his films. Who doesn’t? They are smart, funny and like Al, very sensitive. I didn’t know his brother and partner David, but I admired their ability to work so well with each in such ground breaking films as Salesman and Gimme Shelter.
I remember being in the Hamptons in the early 70’s to hear painter Larry Rivers play sax in a small jazz club. And who was in the small audience but Edith Beale, the weird cousin of Jackie O, sitting quietly with that iconic scarf around her head. Grey Gardens had breathed fresh life into Edith and her mother, showing the world what is rarely seen, the underbelly hidden beneath the illusion of family, money and status.
When I went to see Al in the 90’s with a rough cut of my opus, Deep in The Deal, he was anything but flattering. This film, which featured my partner running around arguing with interviewees and me playing good cop to his bad, was nothing like a Maysles’ picture. Clearly, Al didn’t get what we were trying to do, but was so sweet in his critique. I am only sorry that now as I’m in post- post- post production, he will not get a chance to see the finished film.
One of my favorite moments with Al was the day I went shooting The Gates in Central Park. It was horrid weather, but I felt compelled to try and capture the feeling of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s fascinating saffron installation and the people’s reactions to it. Al was making a film on The Gates and running around in a jalopy with his camera and small team. He invited me to hop on board and so we shot together for a few hours, everyone excited to see the great Al, he friendly and open, taking it all in stride. Afterwards, I was invited up to his spacious apartment in the Dakota for tea and toast, entertained by his brilliant wife Gillian. There were such good vibes in his home…his humor and sweetness permeated the space…I never wanted to leave.
photo courtesy of Maysles Productions
People Get Ready There’s a March in March
The month of March is very busy and includes the important March for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2015.
The March for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights is being organized by UN Women in collaboration with the City of New York, NGO-CSW, the Working Group on Girls, the Man Up Campaign and the UN Women for Peace Association.
The march will take place on International Women’s Day (March 8) and commemorate the 20-year anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This event will celebrate the achievements women and girls have made around the world since 1995. It will also be an opportunity to underscore the need for political commitment to accelerate action to achieve gender equality by 2030.
We will start at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (47th street and 2nd avenue) at 2:30 pm and end at Times Square (42nd street and 7th avenue) at 5:00 p.m.
The march will be divided into three parts:
Part 1—A lively start at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. The march will be flagged off by the UN Women Executive Director following a short program of 30 minutes. Eminent celebrities, a New York indigenous women’s group, and a girls’ dance troupe are on the programme.
Part 2—A 1.5-hour march from Dag Hammarskjold to Times Square. The march will be a celebration that will include singing, marching, raising slogans, and showing solidarity for gender equality and women’s rights. At the same time, the march will help point out the existing gaps and barriers to achieving gender equality.
Part 3—An evocative closing at Times Square. The 30-minute program will consist of raising a collective torch to showcase intergenerational partnership. The program will bring together Ambassador Gertrude Mongella, the UN Women Executive Director, the First Lady of New York, the UN Secretary General (TBD) and others. The program will conclude with a song and a call to achieve gender equality by 2030.
In terms of the choreography of the march, the participants will be divided into 12 blocks representing the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing +20 Platform for Action. These 12 blocks will be led by the first block that will represent the overall theme of Beijing+20 and Planet 50-50: Step It Up for Gender Equality – March for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights.
The 12 critical areas of concern are as follows:
1. Women and the environment
2. Women in power and decision-making
3. The girl child
4. Women and the economy
5. Women and poverty
6. Violence against women
7. Human rights of women
8. Education and training of women
9. Institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women
10. Women and health
11. Women and the media
12. Women and armed conflict
We are preparing 13 banners in addition to many placards, posters, and signs calling for gender equality and women’s rights. We also encourage your organizations to bring your messages to the event and messages and materials for campaigns regarding Beijing+20, gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment
Extensive outreach and mobilization is underway with an intention to bring between 10,000 and 20,000 people to march for gender equality. The last march of this magnitude for gender equality in New York City took place in the 1970s.
Everyone is invited to join the march and to spread the word far and wide using the hashtags #Beijing20 and #genderequalitymarch. Go to @UN_Women for coverage of the march.
Equal rights for Women’s is Rights is RIGHT!
Jerry Tallmer, Adieu
Despite the frigid temperatures, everything was war
m and witty at Theater for the New City’s beautiful send off to long time theatre critic Jerry Tallmer. Crystal Field, head honcho of the theatre opened up the evening of ruminations about this talented critic , one who was first to encourage the works of the radically different playwrights like Jean Genet, Brecht, Edwar Albee, Tom Stoppard and Sam Shepherd. God, he even created the Obies.
Ed Fancher, the remaining living founder of The Village Voice, gave a detailed history of the early days of the Voice and Tallmer’s contributions not only as writer, but delivery man. When Norman Mailer’s aggressive style with the news vendors proved too rough, Tallmer was the one to step in. He was the only one who really knew how to run a paper from his Dartmouth days and so it was left to him to drop off papers and oversee production with a printer in New Jersey every week.
Fancher described a much different Village with a sensibility the newbies can only envy. When the Voice needed to postdate pay checks by a few days, a local liquor shop offered to give the staff their salaries right on Friday; the owner confident that at least some of the writers have been known to drink a little…
It was a magical New York, fresh out of the locked up fifties and bursting with energy. When Billie Holiday was asked to perform for a benefit for The Voice, it was Tallmer who drove to Philadelphia, found a pretty juiced up Holiday, struggled in traffic and brought her to the show on time.
Baby Jane Dexter and pianist Steve Ross, two performers who were given the green light from Mr. Tallmer’s pen, performed a couple of songs, Dexter’s voice deep, rich and jazzy, and Ross, giving an old lower East Sider Irving Berlin , a chance to Put on the Ritz.
Another Jerry, Stiller, regaled the crowd with adorable anecdotes about his early days in Shakespeare, screamingly funny while his daughter Amy, read one of Tallmer’s reviews of her father’s performance, memorable primarily for the great acting of his scene partner, a dog.
From his NY Post days, we heard from journalist Diana Maychick who like many of the writers suggested that Tallmer’s erudition and generosity made for a very good mentor, indeed. Austin Pendleton was thrilled when he got a decent review, but even happier when Tallmer, who had become a friend, used to talk recipes with Austin’s wife, a Greek who knew something more than moussaka. I never quite got whether Tallmer cooked or not, but he did seem to have a refined palette and palate
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Two things I learned was that Tallmer was let go from the Post when he supported one of the newspaper unions’ strike. He had sailed through the Murdoch takeover, but showed true courage to given the publishing climate. Also, he was an air witness to one of the bombings of Nagasaki; surely something like that must have affected him in the way Kurt Vonngegut’s creative life was intensified by the destruction of Dresden.
Someone read a piece Tallmer wrote about Norman Mailer’s Town Hall debate with Jill Johnston and Germaine Greer. I’ve seen the film and everyone should read the article for themselves, as it speaks so much to the time of early feminism and sixties happenings.
Many references were made to the love of his life Frances Martin. She modestly only took a bow when heckled to do so and one can understand why this aesthetic man was so devoted to the lovely, Flamenco dancer.
The last speaker Lincoln Anderson of the Villager where Tallmer spent some of his third act was bubbling with the enthusiasm of a writer who most likely should have lived in the sixties, but does his best now to keep the political beat happening at this downtown rag. Like everyone, he was gracious in his admiration.
We’ve lost three journalists just this month: Bob Simon, Dave Carr and now Jerry Tallmer. Let’s hope there are equally inspired writers, women and men, ready to step into their shoes and media worthy of their talents.
The evening’s speakers: Crystal Field, Steve Ross & Baby Jane Dexter, Ed Fancher, abbey Tallmer, Austin Pendleton, Diana Maychick, Jonathan Slaff, Mario Fratti, John Sutter, Bill Ervolino and Lincoln Anderson.
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Letters read from Tom Stoppard, Terrence McNally, Merle Debuskey and Jules Feiffer. Photo courtesy of Rena Cohen
MOMA SPEAKS OUT for FREE EXPRESSION
Sir Harold Evans helmed a panel to discuss the merits of free and uncensored art. The sold out event was put together by Glenn D. Lowry and Klaus Biesenbach of Moma and Anne Pasternak of Creative Time in little more than a week. There is apparently a great hunger to discuss and try to understand the values of free expression in our increasingly dangerous world. The panelists included artists Sharon Hayes, Kadar Attia, comedian Aasif Mandviwala, Jason Mojica, Editor-in-Chief of Vice News, and Art History Professor Simon Schama. It was organized with the help of Creative Time.
Aasif: has more to do with coming up with a newsworthy act for al qaeda .
Simon: Art’s not the issue; we have to fight the gains of the Enlightenment all over again.
Jason: Vice didn’t publish Hebdo’s cartoon of Mohammed after the shooting because it wasn’t news.
Simon: Charlie didn’t ask people to kill. When free speech leads to murder…
Kader: Injury of colonization in France is deep; radical Islamism — there are legitimate reasons they are inspired.
Sharon: there is great complexity…
It wasn’t the most coherent discussion but it was lively and important. We need to talk about these things…like why we’re still supporting a relationship with fundamentalist Saudi Arabia while bloggers get a thousand lashes and women fight for the right to drive.
I would have liked to have discussed Hustler Magazine’s 1978 cover of a woman in a meat grinder. It was shocking and ugly. Not everyone has a god, but we all have a mother… Still, I don’t think Larry Flynt was shot for that cover and perhaps he was really trying to make a point, ironic though it seems. It’s a strong image and might have made even more of a point if it had been a cartoon
Piss Christ’s Andres Serrano sat behind me; one artist who has had to deal with objections to his transgressive and beautiful work.
As Ms. Schwartz, my neighbor to the right said as we were leaving, “we let them march in Skokie. That’s freedom.”
OK, HERE I go AGAIN
notjustaboutsex 