What a Weekend!

I really need to remember to NOT get tickets for things on the weekends; my apartment is a disaster area and I'm really tired.  So if I'm not home on the weekends, I feel as if I don't have time to reset.  But then I think back at the amazing stuff I saw over last weekend (and Monday night) and I remember that I'm fortunate to be living in a city where I can see all this wonderful, thought-provoking art any time I want.  Well, when I can afford it...

Saturday night, I went to a benefit performance at TOSOS, which is one of my very favorite theater companies, as you may remember.  Take a look at their website - they need and deserve your support!  Their current production, now at The Flea, is Leaving the Blues, by Jewelle Gomez.  TOSOS produced the first play in a proposed trilogy about African-American artists in the 20th century, Waiting for Giovanni, about two years ago (you can read my thoughts on a preview performance HERE).  Both of these plays are about fascinating artists who had fascinating stories about which I knew nothing.  Shame on me.  The first play was about James Baldwin and Leaving the Blues is about the great blues singer/songwriter Alberta Hunter.  

It's embarrassing to admit that I didn't know anything about Alberta Hunter before seeing the show and now I'm dying to know more.  Hunter was immensely popular in the U.S. and Europe before WWII, then fell out of favor when the music industry changed.  She actually became a nurse, then after she was forced to retire from nursing, she went back to performing.  IN HER 80s.  I can barely get out of bed some days and this amazing woman was performing well into her ninth decade.  The majority of the play, however, deals with Alberta Hunter's desire to keep her lesbian life a secret, much to the extreme unhappiness of her longtime partner, Lettie.  

photo credit: mikiodo

There is terrific singing and dancing in Leaving the Blues, along with scenes of brutal drama and sadness.  The production is expertly acted, designed, and directed and is a wonderful reminder of Alberta Hunter's great talent.  If I occasionally wished that the play stopped 'telling' me things and maybe 'showed' me some of the conflicts discussed, I might've enjoyed that, too.  But it's a quibble about storytelling, not story.  The story is one that needs to be shared, so I highly recommend your seeing Leaving the Blues.  It closes this weekend and is most likely sold out, but if you're interested, go to the Flea and get on the wait list.  You won't regret it.  You'll learn something new, I'm sure, just like I did.  Oh, and I forgot to mention, I was at a benefit performance to kick off Black History Month and was treated to a wonderful panel discussion and special performances by members of the cast.  These are the kinds of amazing things TOSOS does, so please check them out.

After that terrific Saturday night, I was happy to head out again Sunday afternoon to catch a matinee performance (with my IHBB) of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake.  We had seen it together maybe 20 years ago and were so excited when City Center announced it would be returning.  It was SO worth the wait.

The way Matthew Bourne has adapted the story is simply genius.  The prince is now a love-starved young man, denied by his mother and hardly noticed in his kingdom, when one night, he thinks about suicide by a dark lake, and suddenly swans appear.  Played by men.  Instead of ballerinas in white tutus, we see strong, beautiful male dancers wearing white feathers.  So the sad love story inherent in Swan Lake also has a rather tortured quality to it now, and a tragedy even larger than in a traditional telling.  The prince reaches for love everywhere and is never allowed to have it; it's heartbreaking.

photo credit: Craig Schwartz

There are so many wonderful touches to this production, from all the comic business to the expert synchronization of the swans (even their breathing is synchronized and it becomes another part of characterization after a while), to the ingenious choreography.  I just loved loved loved seeing the show again.  It's thrilling, it's funny, it's sad, it's fantastic.  There's fear, there's joy, there's abandon, there's regret; I could just wax rhapsodic all night.  I will admit I didn't remember the vehemence in the last scene, so I was taken aback all over again.  I had a wonderful time (and the special cocktail served at City Center was also delightful!) seeing this version of Swan Lake and hope I can see it again soon.

Monday night, I was thrilled to travel to Brooklyn to catch a reading of a play from the 1960s, Wedding Band, by the great Alice Childress.  Alice Childress is a playwright everyone should know - her plays were ahead of their time and dealt with subject matter that producers were afraid of.  She was set to be the first African-American woman playwright produced on Broadway, but the producers demanded so many changes, she withdrew her play, Trouble in Mind.  That takes some serious guts.  As a writer's advocate, I also know of her because she actually went to court to protect her copyright; you can read more about her HERE on the Dramatists Guild's website.  

Childress' plays aren't done that often, which is crazy, but when I got an email inviting me to a reading of her play Wedding Band, I jumped at the chance, as did my handsome co-worker.  Childress wrote this play in 1962 from her female black protagonist's perspective, and again, when producers asked her to make the play's center the white male character, she withdrew the production from an anticipated Broadway run.  It was finally produced Off-Broadway ten years later.

Wedding Band takes place in South Carolina in 1918, but is scarily relevant to today.  Julia, a young African-American seamstress, has moved from a remote rural community into a housing development.  She says she has come for quiet, but she has really come for community.  The houses surround a common yard where many of the occupants are found throughout the play.  We come to discover that Julia's been in a relationship for ten years with a white man, a baker, and their relationship and its ramifications on her new community and his family is what drives the play.  It's illegal for them to have a relationship in South Carolina in 1918, and so there's danger at nearly every turn for everyone on stage.  There's also rage and pain and love.  Even some forgiveness.

Each character is beautifully drawn and wonderfully specific; you get a real sense of the connection these people feel to one another.  Except for Herman's family, who are horrifyingly racist.  Some of the dialogue is terrifyingly ugly, both in its context in the scene and its broader implication of the world we live in today.  I can imagine hearing people across the country (especially people who currently live in the White House) saying these horrible things and it just breaks my heart and terrifies me all at the same time.  The actors are to be commended for going full out, because this play can't be done in a tepid manner.  Now is the time for a revival of this show - point out white supremacy, point out we're all in this together, point out that art can save us.  I know I sound like a broken record, but I truly believe it.  Please put out energy into the world that we can hear more voices like Alice Childress' be raised up now, when we need it most.