Night of the Living Daed

Who doesn’t love free fun? Bwog’s Wednesday feature, Where Art Thou?, surely does. Do you supply the Columbia community with free fun? Expensive fun? Moderately priced fun? Let us know at events@bwog.com.

• La Ronde, 8pm at Riverside Theatre. Through Saturday. New work featuring MFA acting students. A Turn of the Century Sex Romp: whores, soldiers, parlor maids, death! Witness the men and women of Arthur Schnitzler’s Vienna spin through the pleasures of life and relationships while embracing their inevitable mortality. Visit the TIC for more info.
• #CONTROLTOPPROBLEMS, 9pm – 10pm in Held Auditorium, 304 Barnard Hall. Control Top is Columbia’s only all-female, long-form improv group. Stop by Control Top’s first show of the semester and see special guest Fruit Paunch. Free.
• Daedalus Quartet: The Night of the Living Daed, 10pm – midnight in 301 Philosophy. Classical musical and free food. Who needs anything else?
  

Thoreau, not in jail

Last night, Peter Sterne, Bwog’s resident expert on theatrical representations of philosophical imprisonment, visited the Glicker-Milstein blackbox theatre for the the Columbia University Players production of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.

The CU Players production of “The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail” (written by Edward Lee and Jerome Lawrence, directed by Cody Haefner, CC ’12, and produced by Hannah Kloepfer, CC ’13) is done in the round, with audience members on all sides, rather than on a traditional stage, as the play is usually performed. In addition, the stage is very minimalist, with only a long box and chair on a small wheeled stage in the middle of it. The music, light piano with a splash of flute and bells, is composed by Ben Weiner, CC ’11, and played by Yonatan Gebeyehu, CC ’11.

The play began not with Thoreau in a jail as one would expect from the title, but with a series of quick scenes that served as Thoreau’s memories. They comprised the bulk of the play, with the actual night that Thoreau spent in jail serving mainly as a framing narrative. These scenes quickly established Thoreau, played by Brian LaPerche, CC ’12, as a socially awkward but philosopical and passionate soul. LaPerche adopts a physical stiffness and halting speech patterns that reveal Thoreau’s internal struggle to communicate his enthusiasm for transcendentalist ideas.
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Liz, left, and Colette performing their two-women show.

Last night, Bwog’s theatre aficionado Megan McGregor clicked her heels together three times and soon found herself in the Lerner Black Box theatre watching Operation: Ease on Down the Road.

Friday night at 8 and 11 pm, Lerner Black Box experienced something unlike it has ever experienced—racist jokes, cultural references, and Barnard women galore. Wait, that sounds like LateNite. Colette McIntyre and Liz Watson (LateNite veterans themselves) truly did present an extremely unique hour of comedy, dance, and music quite unlike anything Lerner Black Box (or should I say Lerner African-American Box?) or Columbia University have ever seen—Operation: Ease on Down the Road.

Colette and Liz, both BC ’12, advertised their two women show (quite well, I must add, as the turnout was impressive) as a two (white) women show retelling The Wiz in sixty minutes. The Wiz, a “super soul musical,” is itself a 1970s retelling of The Wizard of Oz in the context of urban African-American culture. Most audience members entered Lerner Friday evening not knowing what exactly to expect, except most likely an hour of masturbatory jokes and self-indulgence. However, Operation: Ease on Down the Road was much more than that. Sure, here and there it did feel more like the Colette and Liz Show than The Wiz, but that’s because in reality, it was their show, and it was hilarious.

The play fluctuated between the actual story of The Wiz and the story of Liz and Colette’s journey producing their play. Operation: Ease on Down the Road wisely used these dual plots to never let the audience grow old of either story line—the first of which the audience already knew (The Wizard of Oz), and the second ridden with occasionally tiring jokes about and references to African-American culture and quarrels between the two women. Liz and Colette surprised the audience by occasionally having their pianist, Solomon Hoffman, CC ’14, who indeed is as cute as they suggested, and their producer, Will Hughes, CC ’13, participate in their show as characters. These moments were some of the funniest.

Overall, I was impressed with the hysterical show the two women came up with, despite its tiring aspects—the African-American jokes, the sex jokes, and the overemphasis on their friendship. Operation: Ease on Down the Road also featured awesome lighting by Will Brown, SEAS ’12. Liz and Colette ended their show on a feel-good note, letting the audience participate in their song and dance.

Columbia Festival of Winds?

Bwog’s kind-of-new Wednesday feature, Where Art Thou?, is here to keep you posted on what’s going on in the A&E department in Morningside Heights and beyond (basically all the cool events your friends are in/on/at). If you would like your whatever-event-we-just-want-to-have-a-VIP-option posted on Bwog, now you can! E-mail us at events@bwog.com.

Thursday

• CU Records Lounge Night + Women in Music, from 7 to 9 pm in Liz’s Place, featuring campus’ acoustic talent, Free.
• Cahoot’s MacBeth, starting Thursday at 8 pm and running through Saturday in Minor Latham Playhouse at Barnard. Part of the Senior Thesis Festival. Free.
• MaMa Project 2011: Embers, starting Thursday at 8 pm and running though Saturday in Lerner Black Box. $5 with CUID, $10 without.
• The Saint Plays, starting Thursday at 9 pm and running through Saturday in Minor Latham Playhouse at Barnard. Part of the Senior Thesis Festival. Free.

Friday

• Composer Portrait: Mario Davidosky, Friday at 8 pm in Miller Theatre. $15 CUID, $25 without.
• Casino Night 2011, Friday at 8 pm in Roone. Get your gamble on! $4 with or without CUID.
• The Rock N Roll Jamboree, Friday at 8 pm in the VagBox. Student music! $4 with or without CUID.
• Postcrypt Art Gallery: Shelf Life, opening reception Friday at 8 pm in the basement of St. Paul’s. Free.
• Tones^2! Metrotones Study Break: Ft. the Haverford Humtones, Friday at 9 pm in Furnald Lounge. Free.
• Lemme NAK It Giiirl: Notes and Keys’ Mid-Semester Concert, Friday at 9:30 pm in C555 Lerner. Free.

Saturday

• Columbia Classical Performers In Concert, Saturday at 4 pm in Lerner C555. Free.
• Lunar Gala 2011: Pulse, Saturday at 6 pm in the Low Library Rotunda. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at door.
• Hope Is Viral: 30 Years in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS, Saturday at 8 pm in Roone. Benefit show. $5 CUID, $7 without.

Sunday

• The 3rd Annual Columbia Festival of Winds, Sunday at 2 pm in Roone. $ 5 CUID, $15 without, $40 VIP package.

Bwog’s new thursday feature, Where Art Thou?, is here to keep you posted on what’s going on in the A&E department in Morningside Heights. If you’d like your vegan performance installation listed, email us as events@bwog.com.

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, hosted by Columbia’s School of the Arts at the Riverside Theatre. Tonight at 8 p.m. with talkback, showing through Saturday. Reserve tickets through email: pr@columbiastages.org. Free.
• WBAR’s Spring Campus Showcase, tonight at 8 p.m. in the Diana Black Box. Free.
• Quatro’s Third Annual S&M Night, a reading of submissions for the Creative Writing Dept’s litmag, tonight at 8:30 p.m. in 501 Dodge. Free.
• CU Dance Marathon 2011, tomorrow at 1 p.m. in Lerner Party Space.
• BTE’s The Colored Museum, beginning tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the Lerner Black Box and running until Saturday evening. $5 CUID, $6 Without.
• Jake Snider Band opens for Chiddy Bang, Saturday at 8 pm, Irving Plaza.

Be sure to be on the lookout for upcoming auditions for theatre and dance groups, arts lovers! Bon weekend!

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Last night, NOMADS held their customary first-show gala for their newest student piece: Portrait and a Dream. Bwog’s Katheryn Thayer now reports.

We know finals are coming up, but what better way to de-stress than to watch someone else worry about the end of the world, death, and losing everything important? Student writer Jacob Rice, CC ’12, quips, “People keep asking me what the play is about, and so far, the only answer I’ve been happy with is: ‘It’s about an hour and forty five minutes.’”

The concept began as four hundred Post-its on Rice’s wall and undoubtedly turned out much better than the four hundred Post-it notes crammed into your textbooks will. Its short scenes were artfully strung together into a thought-provoking work through the collaboration of writer, director, and actors. Student theater groups differ from repertory theaters in that the creative process includes collaboration; as actors familiarized with their characters, they offered suggestions for new scenes and changes. Rice made changes as he saw the show performed, and the director, Alex Brinkman-Young, could share Rice’s plans for the look and feel of the play. Rice enjoys “experimenting with a huge amount of power,” and recognizes how lucky he was to have the patience of the cast and crew: “I change things up a lot. I feel bad—the actors were incredible! They had to memorize their lines and then re-memorize and re-memorize as I rewrote.” Read more…

Last night, Bwog’s Theater-Goer Extraordinaire Gabby Beans sat in on the opening night of CUP’s “‘night, Mother.”

The Glicker-Milstein Theater in the Diana Center could not have housed a more beautiful and devastating production this season. The CU Players’ production of Marsha Norman’s “‘night, Mother” is a challenging piece in every conceivable sense.

The story unfolds slowly. The audience is privy to a private and almost uncomfortably intimate glimpse into one hour in the life of Thelma, a lively older woman with an insatiable sweet-tooth (played by Morgaine Gooding-Silverwood, CC ‘14), and her middle-aged, epileptic daughter Jessie (played by Kate Eberstadt CC ’13). Just as soon as you are lulled into a sense of comfort in the naturalness of the domestic scene, a startling revelation is uncovered, sending the piece into an inexorable spiral where both characters grapple with some of the most basic and frightening aspects of the human condition.

The premise of the piece lends itself to an immediate and pointed emotional response, but the skill and honesty of the actors paired with the clarity of the direction is what makes the piece truly effective. Eberstadt’s Jessie is simultaneously decisive and vulnerable, and her defeated carriage clearly transmits the futility of her plight. Gooding-Silverwood plays a miraculously convincing 60+-year-old woman, and her groundedness and remarkable comedic timing provide an essential respite from the play’s more oppressive themes. However, it is the mother-daughter relationship between these two actors that is the chief triumph of the production. Their emotional struggle is both compelling and tragic, steeped in a skillful adherence to reality while maintaining the sense of foreboding appropriate to the play’s morbid subject matter.

In short, “’night, Mother”, directed by Louisa Levy CC ’12, is a remarkably gripping piece performed by talented, honest actors and directed with the clearest of intentions. If you’re looking for a cathartic experience, this is the play to see.

“’night, Mother” is running through Saturday.

Othello is not by any means an easy play to perform. The lines are long, the characters change dramatically over the course of the play, and the bloodiness is abundant. King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe’s attempt at it was therefore definitely something to rave about, especially considering the tightness of the group’s budget. The audience laughed, gasped, and watched transfixed as Othello transformed from brave soldier to raving mad husband in this past Thursday’s sold-out performance.

KCST’s Othello marked Kendale Winbush’s troupe debut, and he definitely delivered with his leading performance. Winbush portrayed the confident Othello with style, and perfectly executed the character’s ultimate grief and horror. Brian LaPerche was equally remarkable as Cassio, whose drunken scenes left the audience shaking with laughter. LaPerche’s fight scene with Breanne Lucy, who played Montano, was truly one of the highlights of the play.

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Every play ever produced has been showing this weekend and last. Bwog’s Anish Bramhandkar checks out the latest offering from the CU Players, Dirty Hands.

There’s no way around it. Dirty Hands, Jean-Paul Sartre’s post-war political drama, is very long. At the end of the two-and-a-half hour play, you’ve enjoyed yourself but find yourself wishing that translator Lionel Abel had the foresight to write an abbreviated version.

In a fictional country allied with Nazi Germany, Hugo (Sam Johnson, CC ’11), a young Communist, is reluctantly chosen by the party to assassinate a political leader, Hoederer (Arron Seams, CC ’13), whose actions make him a “class traitor.” Hugo and his wife, Jessica (Jenny Vallancourt, BC ’11), move in with Hoederer so that Hugo may work as his secretary and kill him. As an educated man of ideals and principles, Hugo finds it difficult to follow through, though he is egged on by his wife, who treats the entire affair as if it were merely a role-playing game.

Sam Johnson, Jenny Vallancourt, & Arron Seams

And it was this notion of a game that kept the audience’s attention. Jenny Vallancourt’s lively, uninhibited character enraptured the audience from her first appearance. Unlike her fellow actors, Vallancourt’s character was completely at ease in this dark world. Every phrase she uttered resonated with delicious, conflicting layers of meaning. It was the women of this play that held scenes together. Jenny’s delightful fickleness contrasted so beautifully with Olga’s (Madalena Provo, BC ’12) somber concern and Louis’ (Anya Whelan-Smith, BC ’13) swaggering bravado that scenes without either of them floated, unfocused and disconnected.

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To see if he could still feel (and to check out the neighborhood north of 120th Street), Emotional Correspondent Dan Flicker took a walk last night to see Columbia Stages’ production of Phoenician Women. Here is his story.

The Phoenician Women prance into their namesake play as a colorful, if occasionally irritating bunch. Giggling and gossiping, these six young women have been making their merry way to the temple at Delphi, excited by the prospect of a religious life, when they inadvertently pass through the city of Thebes. They expect a warm welcome, a room for the night, and perhaps some directions; instead they find themselves in the midst of a war that threatens city, family, and morality alike.

Such is the premise of Phoenician Women, Euripides’ lesser-known rendition of the Oedipus Cycle. The play is fast and sometimes even fragmented: as Oedipus and Iocasta’s genetically confused sons fight mercilessly over the rightful kingship of Thebes, many different characters find themselves facing undue hardship—including the Phoenician Women themselves, who take the role of the Chorus—and Euripides turns his focus towards each in turn at a blistering pace. Given the difficulty of the work, director Karin Coonrod may very well have embarked on the task of adapting it for the Columbia MFA Class of 2010 with some trepidation. But between the efforts of the production team and the dynamic of the cast, the production is more than merely watchable: it is a masterpiece. Read more…

Feeling emotionally burdened, Bwog’s Catharsis Bureau Chief, Claire Sabel, sought release last night in CU Players’ production of Sophokles’ Elektra.  And according to her review, the trip was more than worthwhile.

It is one thing to read the great works of Greek drama in Lit Hum, and quite another to bring them to life on stage – but CU Players’ production of Elektra, directed by Brian Bené, is a truly brave attempt at tackling Sophocles’ very difficult tragedy.  Lasting a tightly packed 90 minutes with no intermission, the performance can at times be laborious, but is ultimately extremely rewarding.

As Bené points out, the central themes of Elektra - suffering, loss, revenge, and the desire for justice – are all very modern ones which make the play both extremely accessible and uncomfortably relevant.  Thus, after having read virtually all of its modern translations, CU Players decided to adopt one of the most contemporary versions available – that of Anne Carson, published in 2001. Carson’s Elektra is so desperate and trapped by the fate of her family that the only course of action left to her is to lash out and ‘make noise’; a notable and distinctive feature of this version, as explained in the preface to the play which is helpfully included in the program, is Carson’s decision to transliterate the lamenting shouts of the characters, so that the audience hears “Oimoi!” instead of the expected “Alas!” Read more…

NOTE: Since publishing, it has come to Bwog’s attention that this review only covered the first half of the play. Bwog sincerely regrets the error.

Bwog’s Shakespeare Under the Stars Expert Julia Mix Barrington turned out last night for King’s Crown Theatre Troupe’s production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and returns this report.  Caesar‘s final performance is tonight at 8 PM.

If you’re facing the dilemma of whether or not to show up at Low Steps for KCST’s production of Julius Caesar, the answer is clear:  go.  The show’s deftly-executed concept creates a more-than-memorable experience and makes up for bombastic acting from all sides—for an hour or so, at least.

Until the play begins to flag, it’s truly glorious.  The director, Dan Blank, has a genius for mise en scène; first the milling crowd finds itself mildly captivated by the show’s Plebeian ensemble—a marketplace—milling and seething in front to Low only to be taken by surprise as Caesar, his entire retinue, some witches, and a small marching band stride in from behind to shouts of “make way!”  Blank writes that he “wanted the audience to realize the relevance for themselves,” but I’d argue that what’s actually effected is a time-machine-perfect transformation of the audience of 150-odd Columbians into a true and volatile turba worthy of any of the Seven Hills of Rome.  Read more…

If you’re looking for a traditional, all-American musical, Tommy is not for you.  That doesn’t mean it’s not worth seeing- it’s a musical of a different formula, resembling Mamma Mia more than Aida.

Tommy is a musical by Pete Townshend (yes, that Pete Townshend) based on a concept album by The Who in 1969 of the same name.  Tommy is a young boy, rendered deaf, mute, and blind by a tragedy from his past, who rises to fame for his skill at pinball (no other way to fit “Pinball Wizard” in the score, Bwog presumes).  Like Rent, this is a “rock opera,” and according to Wikipedia, Townshend wants it to be a giant metaphor for…something. Read more…

Bwog has noticed that over the next week or so there will be a smorgasbord of learning opportunities for those who are not going home to spend their magnificent four days of fall break.  Whether you are interested in theater, bioethics or academic freedom, there’s something going on that’s right up your alley.

Human Genetic Complexity: What We Know–Legal, Historical, and Evolutionary Perspectives

October 29th at 8 pm

417 IAB

This talk features philosophy professor Phillip Kitcher, biology professor Robert Pollack and NYU law professor and Nation columnist Patricia Williams (who is no stranger to this campus).  While the discussion  supposedly will center around themes from the Core, expect philosophy more contemporary than CC and science more general than Frontiers.

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Reports of KCST’s (apparently successful!) advertising methodology have been numerous. According to a Bwog tipster embedded in Butler, around 11 PM “some guy just walked into a reading room on the third floor to stump about KCST’s one acts in a booming voice. He carried on for about a minute, students looked confused, rolled their eyes. He stopped, people went back to work.”

Later, men wearing what Bwog informant Emily Wilson characterized as “uncomfortably sheer tights” wandered into tonight’s ESC meeting, also for advertising purposes.

Photo by Emily Wilson