Culture

When I was at La Mama recently, I saw a flyer that mentioned a group called THAW – Theaters Against War. I see several groups I support — and I mean through donations, not just buying tickets — on the list of members, which makes me very happy.

They’re planning an event called “Thaw out for peace” on March 2.

1. Go see The Plank Project. I saw it tonight and it was hilarious. Smart play, great cast, $15 tickets. Here is a review.
2. Go see Weimarband at Joe’s Pub on Tuesday, Feb. 4 — Kurt Weill meets Hanks Williams
3. Go buy art for $99 or less at Cynthia Broan‘s $99 Bargain Store Show — opens Feb. 1 at 10am

Matthew Callinan’s “White Angel”:

Installation view at White Columns: “Cheap” show (with other works by Matthew)

These sculptures are made only from plastic bottles and metal screws. For my readers in the Chicago area, the White Columns show is moving to Gallery 312 next.

I dropped by an opening tonight at my friend Kim’s shop Johnson tonight. She has an exhibit of photographs by Anthony Gasparro. If you’re on the LES, stop buy and buy a photo or two — they’re priced to sell — or if you’re a girl (or just girly) pick up some of Kim’s fashion stylings.

Click MORE to see the invitation image.

I’m feeling very good about the state of NYC theatre after two nights in a row of interesting work. Last night we saw Art, Life & Show Biz, by Ain Gordon, at P.S.122. It’s subtitled “a non-fiction play”, and the substance of it is the lives of Ain Gordon and three fabulous women performers: his mother Valda Setterfield (modern dance), Lola Pashalinkski (downtown theatre), and Helen Gallagher (Broadway/musicals).

I’ve seen the first two several times, but, not really being a musicals person — don’t take my homosexual membership card away — I had never seen Helen Gallagher before. It’s amazing that certain people just have “it” when you see them in person. She was a star, and you couldn’t help but feel her presence even when she was just sitting still.

I think I was most moved by Lola, since hers is the world to which I’m most connected. She was a member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. It was wonderful to hear her stories of being a teenager in the 50s and coming out, realizing that there were others like her. I saw her at one of the memorial events for my friend Paul Schmidt, but I didn’t go up and introduce myself, because it felt weird to be at such an event and run up to tell her I was a big fan. One of her stories involved the Ridiculous doing a play at Christopher’s End, a gay bar at Christopher and West Streets, in the early 70s. One night Lotte Lenya came to see it. She was in NYC starring in Cabaret at the time. She told people she loved it — that it reminded her of the old days in Berlin.

I also liked some of the stories from Helen about older days on Broadway. When she talked about Jerome Robbins, she said he was very talented, but he was very mean. He was the reason Equity rules require performers to be paid for rehearsals.

—

Tonight we saw The Ladies, by The Civilians, at HERE. It’s a look at four women who were famous (or infamous) for their relationships to dictators: Eva Peron, Imelda Marcos, Madame Mao and Elena Ceaucescu. The work was created by Anne Washburn and Anne Kauffman, and the two of them are characters in the play as well. I know Anne (Annie) Kauffman, so it was wacky to watch someone play her on stage. I talked with Jennifer Morris (the actress who played her) afterward, and she had noticed me laughing and reacting to her performance.

There is a lot of interesting material in this. James commented on one of the things that Anne K’s character mentions that is so interesting about them: they didn’t care what people thought of them — which is a very powerful thing. It’s also interesting to think about whether these women were the product of a very specific time in history: the point of the simultaneous decline of traditional monarchies/aristocracies and the rise of women’s independence and power. Will there be any more of these — to use Anne W’s phrase — “glamourpuss wives” in the future?

It runs next weekend also at HERE — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — and I really recommend going. The text itself is very smart, and the cast is brilliant. It’s fabulous to see a group of highly intelligent actors work on a script like this. I hesitate to say more, since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who will see it, but the way the play bounces off of certain 19th “heroines” like Nora in A Doll’s House and Anna Karenina is fascinating.

One last quote: The two Annes are talking at one point about how awful most of the books are about these women — that they are all either “scurrilous or froufy”.

We just came back from our second visit to see Christian Holstad’s show at Daniel Reich. See the NY Times article, plus some images from LFL Gallery. Great show! There is a lot of creative energy, with a lot of different media in a show titled “Life is a Gift”. We had seen some of his work based on erasing NY Times photos and adding drawing in the past at Daniel’s, and there are some fabulous examples of those, but there is so much more. It’s the first time in a long time that I have bought a work at an opening, and what an opening it was! Daniel’s gallery is his tiny studio apartment, and there must have been over 100 people there over the course of the evening, including a huge crowd in the building hallway, chatting, smoking and drinking beer. Christian also did the sets and costumes for a show at P.S.122 this weekend: Stable.

We went to the party afterward at Simon Watson‘s loft downtown, and ran into a lot of fabulous people, plus met some new ones. We spent a while talking with charming musician/aesthete Patrick, whom we originally met through artist Joe Ovelman. Patrick recognized Christian as the person he spotted on the L train, crocheting, on a regular basis. Joe has an opening in February at Daniel Silverstein, so watch this space, or the gallery’s web site, for more info.

We also met Alejandro Diaz. We just ended up talking to this charming artist, along with Maika from SOUTHFIRST, who was telling us about the fact that he recently had The New Yorker buy some drawings of his for use in little places within articles, when he mentioned his name. We both said, “We have a work of yours, from the White Box benefit!” We also met Eric Stormes, who has some charming little pins made from drawings on mapboard and is in Cynthia Broan’s $99 Bargain Store Show which opens February 1.

The Times article mentioned above also talks about a show at Oliver Kamm’s apartment, which is three floors above ours. If he can get away with it in our building, maybe we should start having exhibits too! I certainly know of a lot of people whose work I would like to show.

—

Last night we went to a dance performance by Allyson Green and Ben Wright at Danspace titled “Interim”. It had its moments, but I wasn’t bowled over by the dance itself. However, the lighting design, by Sarah Gilmartin, was absolutely the best lighting I have ever seen at Danspace. The sound design, by Alan Stones, based on manipulating a recording of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata performed by Paderewski, plus a performance of Bluebird of Happiness by Jan Peerce in 1945, was exquisite – one of the best things I’ve heard at a dance performance.

We spent most of the afternoon and evening in Williamsburg, going to galleries and ending the evening with Glenn at Galapagos to see John Moran and Eva Müller in “What’s Opera Doc?” The performance was great — cool sound and movement, acting that was scary and good at the same time. I got a little worried at the beginning, especially since we dragged Glenn away from his lesson plans to join us. When we walked in we could smell pot, and Ms. Müller joked in her introduction about John being “over there smoking pot”, but it all turned out alright. More than alright — fabulous! Check out the images on their site of Moran’s theatre productions.

We saw some good things in Williamsburg today. I’m feeling the need to spend most of my gallery-going time in Williamsburg rather than Chelsea these days. Recommended:

• Deborah Stratman’s video “In Order Not To Be Here” at Momenta
• Tricia McLaughlin at Star 67 — great models, drawings, and animation
• Lee Etheridge IV at Pierogi 2000 — He uses an IBM selectric to create patterns of letters and words on handmade paper, in a new phase, on photographs. I liked his previous show at the gallery, but I think this one is better and really strong.

I’m going to see John Moran and Eva Mueller at Galapagos tonight at 9pm. Any takers?

Over the last few days, I’ve “done some art”, plus seen one movie that wasn’t quite art, but was entertaining: I went to a preview screening of P.S. Your Cat is Dead from actor/co-writer/director/80s hunk Steve Guttenberg. It’s amusing, but I would probably wait to see it on video if I hadn’t seen it already. The screening was organized by The New Festival, so it was a big gay crowd there to see him in person. The highlight of the evening was getting to talk to David Drake, whom we hadn’t seen since attending his Son of Drakula at Dance Theater Workshop. People like David give me hope for homo culture and art — he’s a pretty face, but he’s a smart guy who is much more than a pretty face. Another one of those is John Cameron Mitchell.

OK. Enough celebrity worship — on to other things.

Several nights ago I saw a cool evening of music at Merkin. The first half was a collaboration of “live animation” by Pierre Hébert and music by Bob Ostertag called Between Science and Garbage. Hébert used an iBook plus web cam and a lot of objects and drawings to gradually assemble an animated film while we watched, using everything from drawings on paper to apples and Coke cans. They were selling Ostertag’s CDs in the lobby, so I bought PantyChrist, which I always knew about but had never heard. It’s wonderful — a collaboration between him and Justin Bond. How could you ask for more? I’ll put up some MP3s later.

On Friday we went to an opening for Stacy Greene at Plus Ultra in Williamsburg, then hopped back on the L to see puppet wizard Paul Zaloom at P.S. 122 featuring political puppetry and a gay Punch and Judy show, renamed “Punch and Jimmy”.

Stacy’s new work, as she has told me, is a new direction for an artist who already has worked in several media. We first encountered her at Plus Ultra’s inaugural show, titled “Skank” where we picked up a copy of her Rorschach Striptease DVD. There are 3 photographs of abandoned drive-in movie theaters, then the rest of the works consists of pieces assembled from photgraphs on individual panels to form a sort of collage. My favorite piece in the show is called “Los Zapatos de Lorraine”, in which the title comes from a pair of chintz-patterned shoes belonging to her aunt Lorraine in one of the panels.

Yesterday we went to a few Chelsea galleries. My favorite things I saw were Devorah Sperber at Caren Golden, Michael Wetzel at Clementine, and Kevin Landers at Elizabeth Dee.

Today we’re headed out to Williamsburg to see some shows.