Ubi caritas

9/2

Forgot to mention. Last night of Bazarov. We’re all outside talking. Guy comes up. Notices the beers. Starts going off about this is a church...should know better...all that etc. Matt says it’s just a play. Others talk about the wedding at Cana. Jesus turning water into wine. Martin Luther’s affection for good German beer. Guy looks at us. Says some more things about God. About Jesus, about what a church ought to be. Then looks at Matt.  Fuck you you fucking faggot, he says. God bless you too, says Matt.

Later we wonder whether he was one of the ones who did the break in vandalism. Anyways, Christian moral pronouncements and fuck you you fucking faggot.

Ubi caritas....

(...et amor. Ubi caritas, deus ibi est....)

Ubi caritas...

Bazarov finale

8/24

Matt, Bob and Stan

Make it back to he church just in time for the last act of Bazarov. What amazes me, as we near the play's conclusion, are the  number of people in my row who are sobbing, crying. Matt’s final soliloquy  leads to, well,  actual weeping. 

As to my question about dramatic decisions,  I get my answer from conversations with Stan and Ben. At the point in the last act  where it moves into a readers’s theatre style ...ok,  typical  Brechtian alienation... it's like neon lights  that say , this is is a play!!!.It turns out that this was not not Stan’s wrIting  but   Ben’s directorial choice. Both pragmatic and dramatically aesthetic. 

a champagne toast

A champagne toast is lifted for everyone who has been part of this month of residency. There is  a sense of accomplishment, of success. Following the toast there is a gift to me for our involvement. The Represntatives  have truly become part of our house. 

 The party continues. As do the conversations. This is exactly what is supposed to happen here. Thanks to the Representatives for joining our family. 

By the way, I think I finally got the meaning of The Represntatives. In the hip hop sense of represent, Stan and Matt represent us, at least their generation of New York us. Keep watching to see where this will lead....

West-Park: mixing and sampling

8/23

Last night, after the screening, Marc puts on first a video of the erstwhile journeyman guitarist Carl Perkins with Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton sitting in. Followed by a Roy Orbison Austin City Limits performance. Roy of course with that aching romantic operatic voice.  Somewhere I have a picture  of h9m singing at the 1983 New Orleans jazz festival. All in black. Barely moving. And that voice. Soaring.

Out on the steps. Oh no. Edward and Charlotte. Stephen is with me. Edward, you have to go. 

Alright, alright I’m goin.

Charlotte breaks in, No,no you fuckin go. Go the fuck away.

Edward says, Hush, hush now. 

And then Charlotte starts coughing uncontrollably. Gasping for breath.

Do I need to call you an ambulance?

She got the asthma attack says Edward.

Don’t need no fucking doctor. Doctor give me this motherfucker, and she waves he inhaler. 

Stephen tells me, that's the wrong medication.

Edward says, You don’t need to be lookin at me. I’m a fuckin 55 year old man. Dob’t need no father. You quit lookin at me. Hope cone you let these other motherfuckers stay here? 

That’s nighttime, Edward.

But they bad motherfuckrs. 

It’s not about them, it’s about you, I say.

Charlotte says, Alright then. We goin then. They gather stuff up. And as they begin to leave, she looks over  her shoulder and leaves me with an emphatic fuck you.

Stephen and I watching  as they set up across Amsterdam at the CVS. He challenges my theology of hope. I tell Stephen.  He’s been through every rehab program. Knows how they work backwards and forwards. Says he gave his life to Jesus three times  and nothing works. Kills me. We look t gem across the treet. And the thing is, strange as it is, what you see there is love,..

AS neighbor from next door comes in to talk about Marc’s continued concert last night. We talk. All ends up well.

Nancy stops i just t see how things are going. 

R and his attorney Michael, a decent singer/payer in his own rite, fe in to work together to preserve a future for RL here no matter what else happens.  While we’re talking, the man who wants ot kno what its to be holy drops in again. I point that i”m buy. he’ll have to come back later. her smiles and ambles off.

A German couple comes in. Asking about a play. The had been here to see the Tenant two summers ago. What’s going on now? i tel them about the Representatives. And talk about my s who lives in Berlin.

Two representatives of the Gottbaum campaign come in. Just to leave literature. Originally he was to have an event here, but it git cancelled. Even though he presents himself as the farthest left of the candidates,  wan to see where he stands on West-Park and unfulfilled promises as an issue. 

Late in the day, an old man  walks in. Clearly educated. Turns out he’s a retired professor. From Ethiopia. He shows us his campus ID. We google him. My God, you’ve written books, I say. And articles...expert on the horn of Africa...A divorce bankrupt him. He’s lost his green card. Has been sleeping in the subways. Something terribly wrong here. I use the Intefaith Assembly street sheets and give him the number and location of a safe haven as a last resort. Direct him to WSSFSH. He’s a perfect candidate. And Goddard -Riverside. Give him my card to carry with him. Stephen says it breaks his heart. Word.  Just not right.

Berik's painting

Berik and Leila setting up for tonght’s art opening in Mc Alpin.

I meet Katherine at Popovers for dinner. Just back rm Sri Lanka. She’s brought me a small creche and figures. She’s seeing Bazaorv with me tonight. But jet lag brings her down at intermission. Stephen and Cara watching tonight as well.

At intermission, after saying good night to Katherine, and seing her out  I check in on the Open Mic. Glen and Kim and Damarius have been working with RL all day. Damrius tending bar in a shirt and tie looks very classy.RL tells Damarius he’s glad he’s made parole. Damarius cocks an eye and laughs.  He  has a story with the punchline, will the defendant please rise, but we’ll let it go at that. 

I decide to stick with the open mic. Leila and Berik have  come in too. I do two emotional songs. things ar ebreaking up.

Berik

Stephen, Cara and I stand a longtime fetafter talking with Roger about the whole story of West-Park, especially the #OWS days. The craziness and richness of those days. Other listeners want all the details.

It’s been one of those times that                                                                                                           makes sampling me happy we’re here. Open Mic downstairs. Art show in Mc Alpin. Good play in the gym. Crowds moving back and forth through the building, Mixing and sampling in addition to who they came for.  Teddy loved these nights. He understood whawhat theythey mean to me. It's why we are here.

checking out the exhibit

The Representatives' BAZAROV

8/11

Sunday night. Bazarov. The Representatives take on Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. In the West-Park fourth floor gym.

Stan Richardson and Matt Steiner have mastered their own genre in their ongoing series of  apartment plays. Nobody, repeat nobody, I’m aware of in  theatre has been able to express the reality of late twenties-early thirties no longer feeling  invincible just beginning to be aware of mortality Frances Ha New York like Stan Richardson. His easy flowing natural dialogue; tight and intelligent narrative, well-defined context and ever present socio-political subtext set you up for a dramatic knock out punch that always comes as a surprise. But when you look back, never unearned.You feel like you’ve walked in on your young neighbors’ lives in media res.  Still, to move from compact 50 minute drama to sprawling mid 19th century Russian epic is a stretch. One that Stan is equal to.

For me it was like one of Matt’s Representatives’ characters wandered out of an apartment and into mid 19th century Russia. Matt’s everyman character, always open and transparent, knows less about himself than  the audience does. (I’d love to talk with someone for whom this is their first Representatives performance.) He is our guide into this world. 

Along with, of course, his friend, the title character, Bazarov, enacted by Roger Lirtsman. I first saw Roger as the enigmatic Michel in Woodshed’s the Tenant, here two summers ago. I later saw him in an earlier apartment play. As an actor he always comes across as centered and self-contained. But as Bazarov, he  allows us to see through the cracks into the angst and passion that lie beneath the surface. More than  a few audience members come away not liking Bazarov. But I can’t help but like him. Roger lets the humanity show through, especially in the duel scene with Pavel. Besides, he’s just out of college!

And I knew Bazarov. He’d been away  on a somewhat mysterious year abroad when I first arrived at college. But was legend. A philosopher, a poet, with an athletic ease and beauty. When he returned, an intense circle of people gathered around him. There was a spiritual practice. And he had somehow collected all the schematic drawings of the college’s heating system, boilers, pipes and all because it might prove valuable. When he realized that those in the circle would do anything he asked, anything, he vanished. He was also on the run from the draft. One Christmas he showed up at my home and asked if he could hang out for a few days. My liberal parents were a bit challenged trying to deal with harboring a fugitive. A small circle of his close friends appeared at our house. And then he was gone. He later surfaced and finished his college at a state school in New Jersey. On a basketball scholarship.

(Now why did I go there?)

It will take another viewing to resolve some of my questions regarding dramatic choices. But I suspect those have more to do with Stan’s script than the direction. Ben Vershbow was faced with a radical restaging due to a last minute change in venue. The three different seating configurations, one for each act, worked. Especially with the craft cocktails served at the first break. For me, I like a full immersive, wandering around choose your adventure experience like Woodshed or simply being able to sit and watch. I find so-called panoramic theatre more annoying than engaging. This three perspective staging was just right for an over two and a half hour play.

Stan’s attraction to Turgenev is easy to get. The connection between the nihilists of that day and the euro autonomes and the so-called black block  Occupy anarchists is easy to see. ( In the #OWS universe, divided into work groups, there was actually a work group called the Blocking Group dedicated to blocking anything that would be proposed at Spokescouncils or General Assemblies.)

And the liberals of that time, confused and frustrated by being left behind are directly related to today’s liberals. When I was invited to Yale last fall to speak about Occupy and religion, I said that liberals were the real problem. The hurt feelings and non-comprehension ran  deep. But that’s another story...

The conversation about the difference between those nihilists and today’s anarchists is best held over post-performance cold  Brooklyns. (That and a quick audience check tells me the Brooklyn-West-Park pipeline opened by Woodshed remains...)Most obviously, the role of art is understood in a different way today. And any discussion of nihilism in a post 9-11 world is problematic.

The Representatives give us straight, accessible drama without a hint of the ever ubiquitous (around here) Grotowski. You do get a  touch of Brecht’s breaking through the fourth wall but without estrangement. Stan clearly sees in Turgenev a fellow traveler, one who went down the road  before. Turgenev’s realism, and critical social analysis arguably transformed Russian literature. This Bazarov takes us into that world  and back out again causing us to reflect more critically on our own time. 

That is theatre. And that is good.

I am glad they wound up here.

(for more information see http://therepresentatives.org/ )

Been there

8/10

Another work day Saturday. Danielle in to help get ready for tomorrow. And to try and tackle the mountain of things that need to get done before she leaves fro vacation.

As we’re working, Jessie walks in again. Things are going better. But she still needs a place just to stop in and pray.

Stan and Matt arrive early to get ready for tobight’s performance of Bazarov.

Long conversation with RL about his plans for some roof. Danielle’s natural anxiety, liability concerns come out. Usually a good counter balance to my more laissez faire approach. RL is leaning heavy on the stitch in time principle.  And at least two of his long time colleagues have told me that RL never attempts anything he knows he can’t do. Which pretty much matches my experience.

We have done a  thorough search of the new Presbyterian constitution and know we can now safely cease our journey through the historic files. But it has been a journey. Maybe important, now that we may be on the verge of a solution, to remember the past. 

I come back late. In time to catch the after-party for Bazarov. Brooklyn beer. Craft cocktails. New Brooklyn cuisine hoes d'oevres.  I look at the crowd. The Brooklyn pipeline to West-Park back again. Talk with some guests who are so fascinated by the place. One says to me, We’ve been walking all around here. This would make a great place for one of those site specific, immersive theatre experiences. Stan and I look at each other and laugh. Uh, been there...and I go through the history of Woodshed, Alivewire, the wolf pack new moon ritual experience and Movement Research. Yes, been there. 

Earlier, I’d seen Keith on the steps. Not good. Shouldn't be here. He’s just out of the hospital. As I leave, he’s not there. But waking up Amsterdam, I see him walking with a decidedly angry pace down the street with all his things on his back. I know where he's headed. Not  good at all.

Counting Cars

8/6

Milica Paranosic

The day begins with a visit from Milica and her partner Dan from the Composers Concordance.  The connection to Milica (say milichcia,she says, easier to say if you nod your head while you say it...) from Zoran. Fresh back from Shangahi.  She has a similar passion for life. And art. Knows the Ethel folk and also Carman Moore and the Sky Orchestra. She’s looking for a place for the final night of her festival in December. I’m hoping this will be the perfect place. (composerconcordance.com) (milicaparanosic.com)

RL, David and crew continue clearing out junk, making the chapel a usable space. 

Outside, there are two people on the steps. A youngish white guy, laid out reading his e-mail on an iPhone. When I speak to him, all he does is look at me, eventually raise his thumb. As he still doesn’t move, later I’ll send Danielle out to talk with him.

And then a man is asleep the south doorway. I rouse him. Tell him he can’t sleep here during the day. He looks at me intently. Why? 

We need to keep the steps open. 

Sanctuary? Church? That’s what this is? He reaches inside his shirt. I wear a St. Joseph scapula, I was an altar boy...

I’m sorry. His looks, his distinctive accent, I’m thinking northern New Mexico. His thin angularity. Color. Tied back hair. Headband.

He gets up. Walks a few steps down the street, turns throws a penny at me. Here’s a donation for your church, he says.

And as he’s gone, I wonder. Think I should have invited him inside to sleep on the pews. Asked his name. Realize I’m getting very worn. Losing my equilibrium. He haunts me.

Stephen is in for a conference call continuing our negotiations. Maybe this time we make it... Cara has come along. Takes her turn sweeping again. And playing the piano.

Anna has com In with questions about Keith. He’s back from treatment in Rochester. With an uncerain future. 

A man in an orange vest has been sitting in the south doorway all day long, a strange keyboard device in his lap. I ask him what he’s doing. Counting cars he says and keeps pushing keys.

Late in the day representatives of another new Jewish congregation come by for a visit. Taken aback by all that needs to be done. I get it. Three years ago, I liked the romance. The Berlin/Brooklyn/Havana vibe. Now, I’m tired of it. Not cool anymore. Fix it.

Glen and Evan and Jean and others involved with Glen’s upcoming night of new readings are in for a walk through, check out of the space and putting up posters outside. 

The Representatives like things  just the way they are. I’ve loved their  plays for years. They’ve completely captured the apartment play genre. Happy as I am for the plays they’ve prepared here, I’m excited that they’re finally doing a performance here. Their adaptation of Turgenev’s Fathers  and Sons  opens  this weekend. Of all the theater groups we work with, Stan and Matt are completely professional and rational and easy to work with. The confine the dama to their productions. I love seeing  their cast, hanging out in front of the 86th street door. Just hanging. I'm remembering the Tenant summer. Good.(http://brooklynbrewery.com/blog/event/bazarov-west-park-church/)