Break the Walls

6/6

The Wall

So what can I do? is a question artists often ask themselves related to the difficult social issues of our time. Especially with a seemingly intractable issue like the Israel-Palestine conflict, or more appropriately, the struggle of the Palestinian people for justice. Last night at the Lark Theatre Center in New York, the Break the Wall Theatre Project provided one valuable answer to that question. 

Inspired by the controversy around Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Jewish_Children), and Churchill’s making the play available for free for performance by anyone (you can read the whole text here: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/feb/26/caryl-churchill-seven-jewish-children-play-gaza), Ismail Khalidi and David Zellnik have conceived and produced their own project, Break the Wall.

Conceptually, BTW refers both to the wall of separation built by Israel but also the fourth wall between stage and audience. BTW  intends to break through these walls. 

It’s first stage, celebrated by the launch, invited a variety of playwrights to write short plays on the struggle. All the resulting plays will be made available in an online archive for any who would like to perform them. The goal is to gather 50 plays within a year.

The plays presented Monday night were illustrative of the values that drive the project. There were common threads that run through all the plays. Among these is  the importance of approaching the issue through interpersonal relationships. Each play  (with one exception, Yussef El Guindi’s the Monologuist), is essentially a painful conversation about the issue between people who care about each other. The plays suggest that it is in the intensity of these conversations, as opposed to dialectical debate, that some understanding might come. 

That of course, is another recurring theme. The ongoing struggle of Palestinians to even be heard, let alone understood, even by people who are emotionally involved with each other at one level or another flowed through the plays.

Perhaps most importantly, the plays demand that we give up a balanced view. That in a situation with such an overwhelming imbalance of power …military, economic and political….a balanced view is morally untenable. It is to the credit of these artists that this point is made through the art, not through didactic moralism. You understand by being drawn into the relationships. 

While all the plays are of comparable quality, I went because of a long relationship with playwright Stan Richardson (co-founder of the Representatives .. http://therepresentatives.org/). Several of Stan’s plays have been produced at West Park, including the recent Edinburgh Fringe festival bound production of Private Manning goes to Washington.) Stan’s contribution, the Montagues, uses his typical command of relational conversation and the connections and gaps between us ending in his two characters’ passionate plea for help. In other words, exactly where we are. And  he doesn’t tell us what help means. We’ve got to figure that out. 

(It was also good to see longtime West Park friend Lynne Marie Rosenberg in several plays. She was a key cast member of the Woodshed Collective’s ground breaking immersive production of the Tenant that helped reopen West Park. http://www.woodshedcollective.com/the-tenant/)

Thanks to BTW for this demonstration of what artists can do in the struggle for justice while staying true to their art. The plays are there to read…and perform…in the theatre, in homes, in church, in the street…

For information about Break the Wall...and scripts...go to http://www.breakthewallproject.org/

....and still embraced by grace....

7/24

Martin and I sit down for a long conversation. He has time for a breath before tonight’s  Antigona  performance. It’s been quite a few weeks. Now that the reviews are in, tickets are starting to fly. We think back to our first meeting 3 ½ years ago when he was first relocating from Spain. Looking for a home for his company. The ups and downs and times of being close to making it and when we thought the doors would close but we kept on anyways. We both remember Teddy (Mapes) and how he would have loved this. Martin more than anybody understood the vision of what this place was supposed to be. He tells me that Antigona is here because of that vision. We both take pride in the New York Times reference to downtown vibe. It’s been that way since Woodshed walked in here in 2011 (http://www.playbill.com/multimedia/video/a-walking-tour-of-the-tenants-haunted-apartment-building-223658?r=n ) But we're still just under the radar.  That was our first Times review… http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/theater/woodshed-collectives-tenant-at-west-park-presbyterian.html?_r=1 )

The question is of course, how do we keep the momentum going? To have the quality of event and programming that keeps the vision alive and fertile while still paying the bills? Explain how it’s the interaction of space, performer and artist here that produces what gets created here…And how difficult it is for me to explain sometimes how this is ministry, in the meta sense, and that this is not space rental but relationship and out of that relationship magic can happen that has intersection with spiritual and political realms. Which is what art does. Which is, in the end, sacred.

Martin paid me a compliment when he said that after meeting me, Carlos, who plays Oedipus, said El pastor Bob es Tiresias….el ve todo…I appreciate that.

We will see.

A special guest pianist for ETHEL is rehearsing in the sanctuary on the Beckstein before their performance tonight at the Met. Alex F is in the chapel preparing for her gig. Later Mr. Martin  arrives as out of thin air to tune the chapel pianos. Like the work crew arrived unannounced to repair the Mc Alpin Hall floor. So David and Dion are now telling me that there will be no open mic tonight because of the fumes from the glue. I print up signs for RL that say OPEN MIC CLOSED TONIGHT DUE TO CONSTRUCTION…..                                                                                                   

As I’m dealing with that, my guest for the night Junia, from the Brazilian consulate, arrives. We’ll have time for dinner and a chance to catch up before the performance. She goes back to the days before closing when my associate Regi was still here and we had an afternoon multicultural service, Enlace de gracia….(And she's a flutist who played in our Shakespeare Sonnets event which she hopes we can do agin next year.

There will be other guests, clergy friends, others from my writing group…

We still are embraced by grace…

And here's what the New Yorker said....

7/22

All week long, Geoffrey has been sitting out front in a  sombrero and African skirt with a cup, shaking it as people pass by. He doesn’t usually do that. But then he doesn’t normally wear a sombrero either. The two sisters are camping out on the steps every day until the doors open for Antigona. I went with Pat and Steve B to play a show at a youth hostel in Queens. Got back in time for the last half of Antigona and to meet my son Nate and his friend. Nate is amazed at how the show has grown since he saw them at the Joyce. This is something else, for sure.

Last night, Elise recalled Woodshed’s The Tenant at West-Park (.http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Tenant) And Carman recalled the residency of Bread and Puppet theatre.(http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/11/paper-mache-religion.html )There have been some amazing things here at West-Park. I loved what the New York Times said about a downtown vibe. We’ve had that for years. Maybe now it will be seen by more….

Here is what the New Yorker had to say:




CREDITILLUSTRATION BY DADU SHIN

The grand scale of Greek tragedy suits the passionate flamenco of Soledad Barrio.
For many years, Spaniards have been agitating for the mass graves left over from the Spanish Civil War to be opened up and DNA tests done, in the hope that people who disappeared during those years—the poet Federico García Lorca is only the most famous case—might be identified and properly buried. In 2008, Baltasar Garzón, one of the country’s most prominent investigating magistrates, ordered the exhumations. A month later, the case was removed from Garzón’s jurisdiction, with some saying that, whatever the crimes involved, they were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. Two years later, Garzón was suspended from judicial activity in Spain—a great victory for the country’s right wing.
“I read that in the paper,” Martín Santangelo, the artistic director of New York’s Noche Flamenca, says, “and I thought, It’s ‘Antigone’—demagogues not just killing people but leaving them in the dirt, dishonoring them.” And that, he says, was the genesis of his “Antigona,” a flamenco version of Sophocles’ play, which opens at the West Park Presbyterian Church on July 21, and will play through August 8. It has eight dancers (a hip-hop specialist as well as flamencos), four musicians, and song lyrics adapted from Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of “Antigone.” In the role of Creon, the king of Thebes, is the singer Manuel Gago, suitably self-important, in big black boots. Creon’s niece Antigone, whom he tries to prevent from burying her brother Polyneices, because Polyneices warred against him, is played by New York’s greatest flamenco dancer—indeed, one of the city’s greatest theatre artists—Soledad Barrio. Barrio is also Santangelo’s wife. He built Noche Flamenca around her.
Greek tragedy and flamenco, it turns out, are well matched, both dealing with grief and defiance on an unashamedly grand scale. And flamenco, with its music and dance, supplies the ritual element that we are told was essential to Greek tragedy but which is often absent from modern productions of it. Never, until I saw Santangelo’s ensemble, their heels stamping, their arms cutting through the air, had I seen a chorus whose physical force could support the fate-heavy songs that Sophocles wrote for his plays. As for Barrio, though she spoke rarely, dancing seemed better than words: no rhetoric, no explanations, but just passion, majesty, absorption. At the end, Antigone, sealed up in a cave by Creon—she did manage to bury her brother—performs a long, nearly demented solo, as she tries to muster the courage to hang herself. She succeeds. Then her fiancé, Creon’s son, finds her and kills himself over her body. His mother, Creon’s wife, enters and, drawing a knife, tops off the pile. “There is no happiness where there is no wisdom,” the blind prophet Tiresias says. Poor Creon falls to the floor. ♦

Russian Christmas: weighing on my mind

1/7

Russian Christmas.

Stephen and Teddy B of Woodshed are in.( http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/search?q=the+new+york+times+writes+about+the+tenant) We need to plan to get their stuff out of storage. Empty the room. Settle some financial issues. Get our 1911 journal back from their installation. And they are looking for office space. Let’s see what we can work out. Would be great to have them back in the house. 

Jeremy and Priska are in. She’s got a show coming up in Switzerland and needs space to work. They cover every inch of the building, all the nooks and crannies, looking  for the right space. Finally, they decide that the room where Teddy M and Chris lived, (Chrisamodo’s place, per RL) is the right place. Sunlit. Just right. Let’s see what we can work out. Happy to see spaces being used. Filling up. Now for a business plan.

Mitchell is hard at work on plans for Noche’s next performances, in Connecticut. It’s comforting having them back in the house.

Nancy arrives. My dream apartment has fallen through. They found someone with a higher income. Even though we got there first. Hard to take. I already saw myself there. Enjoying morning coffee and the Times in the backyard. Not to be. Kept us waiting days. Been there before on that. Depressing. Now it’s an all out push to find an alternative. Real estate marathon. On another bitter cold day. Fingers freezing, even on a short walk. Thankful for my Midnight Run watch cap pulled down over my ears.

No sign of Joe and his woman all day. Or Rachel. Where is she? Weighing on my mind….

Well, maybe two and a half

12/5

The Center Board has gathered. It’s the last night of Hannukah. Asya  has brought chocolate gelt and poppers (like mini-pinatas) and Dunkin’ Donuts version of sufganiot, ie, jelly donuts…We’re looking for where the needed bridge money is going to come from….and we put our team together to meet next week with Friends from the neighboring condos and coops…Ted, Asya, Mim, Katherine, John…they’ve been there since the beginning…like oil that doesn’t burn out….

12/7

Anna comes in for a visit. With new candles. She brings light too.

Not enough time to do everything. Go see Cara at Roosevelt Hospital. Then hustle downtown for Woodshed’s winter showing, a preview of things  to come. Installations. Videos. And a performance. Get nostalgiac seeing videos from the Tenant. And seeing  reviews I hadn’t seen before, like from the New Yorker. But wait, in this installation, what do I see? The carefully written in exquisite cursive handwriting records of the first year of West-Park’s existence. Well, all right, that’s got to come back. That’s not hip art, it’s our history. The old school metal sign board letters, well, they can keep.

Wayne brought the gospel

Make it back for Open Mic. A new singer, Wayne, blows us away with his original gospel. When it’s my turn, I’m determined to follow Joe’s admonition to have 3 songs. I finish with the Lennon-Mc Cartney When I’m 64…(slightly rewritten in honor of my birthday…)

When I'm Sixty Four

When I get older losing my hair

Many years from now

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I'd been out till quarter to three…

I’m probably with RL…Joe….Pat…

Would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four?

Oh….You're all older too

And if you say the word

I would stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse (shaking my head no way…)

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday mornings go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds

Who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four?

In the summer we can rent a cottage on Hampton Bay

And take the Jitney there

We shall scrimp and save

Grandchildren on your knee

Whitney, Ashley, Madison, Colin, Dylan…..

& even Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line

Stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form

Yours  for evermore

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

                                                                 Hey….I’m 64!

Later at the Gate, I asked Joe if I had three songs.

Well, maybe two and a half, he says.

And then they were gone

11/25

Loading the bus

Get to the church early so that I can be there for the Bread & Puppet load out. Outside, the bus is open and a reverse VW clown show is in process, giant puppet after giant puppet making their way in. One has lost his head and will remain behind. Katherine has described to me the ritual burning of decommissioned puppets that takes place in Vermont. But this crew will be making their way to Boston for their January residency there.

I stand with Peter on the sidewalk, exchange a hug. We will be looking forward to their return. Peter and the van take off first.

The van

Finally, all is loaded and I say my goodbyes to Michael and Clare and Katherine. And the bus pulls out with her at the wheel. 

It is somehow fitting that before the van has left the island, someone discovers that a sousaphone has been left and a contingent of course ventures back for it. Like a coda. And then they are gone.

I look around the church. Except for a few  things in different places, it’s as if they were never here. I miss the giant looming puppets, the smell of their daily cooking, the buzz of people, the daily rehearsals with Peter’s latest changes.

A part of me would have very happily jumped on the bus and run away to join the Bread & Puppet life. 

The bus pulls out

Now Bread & Puppet has become part of the spirit of West-Park.

                               * * * *

Returning from a visit to Cara at the hospital when I get a call from Emily of Woodshed. They need to get some things out of the 4^th floor storage space. For their upcoming fundraiser night. No one has been in that room for years. And the outer window’s been damaged. Hoping no pigeons have broken in.

I’m on my way. RL’s been wanting to help us get that Woodshed space emptied out. When I get there, he immediately reports activity on the 4^th floor. And I tell him it’s Emily and Woodshed. I ask him to be gentle, since she’s not in charge of clearing out the space. I shouldn’t have worried. Before  the night is over, Emily and her assistant have been introduced to the Lost Episodes and initiated into the Dusty Withers Fan Club, badges and all.

I will later fill RL in on the amazing story of how Woodshed had transformed the church into an immersive exploration of Polanski’s The Tenant. Our first extended residency.

A nice arc, from Woodshed to Bread & Puppet…..

Looking back...http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/search?q=new+york+times+tenant