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Theater
Ever Larger, The Fringe Fest 2010
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Monday, 26 July 2010 05:49
- Written by Brad Balfour
Featuring Orson Welles, Sarah Palin, Jay Leno, Marilyn Monroe,Harvey Milk and Bruce Vilanch, the largest multi-arts festival in North America, The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), will present the 14th Annual one from August 13th - 29th, 2010.
This year, the festival will offer programming by 197 of the world's best emerging theatre troupes and dance companies in 20 venues in Lower Manhattan. Attendance at last 
year’s festival topped 75,000 people, making it New York’s fifth largest cultural event (just behind New York International Auto Show, Tribeca Film Festival, New York City Marathon, and New York Comic Con).
Some of the more unusual FringeNYC 2010 titles include:
- Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical
- Vinnie Vidicici
- T-O-T-A-L-L-Y!
- Pope! An Epic Musical
- Heterosexuals
- Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island
- The Battle of Spanktown
- Eternity in an Hour
- AK-47 Sing-Along
- Love in the Time of Swine Flu
One noteworthy “trend” among the 197 productions could be labeled as “Muslim tales.”
From India, the festival offers A Personal War: Stories of the Mumbai Terror Attacks, a documentary drama based on interviews of people who experienced this monumental event.
Norway’s controversial Muslim comedienne Shabana Rehman (best described as a combination of Margaret Cho and Karen Finley) premieres her tale of immigration For Kingdom and Fatherland.
Other titles include Headscarf and The Angry Bitch, Driving the Saudis, Abraham’s Daughters, Flesh-Light Stories, and Shaheed: The Dream and Death of Benazir Bhutto.
Shakespeare also makes a strong showing with numerous productions of and inspired by the Bard. These include:
- MacChin: The Lamentable Tragedie of Jay Leno (the Scottish play with a late-night TV twist)
- Hamlet Shut Up (a silent re-telling)
- Getting Even with Shakespeare (five of the Bard’s tragic heroes meet in a bar)
- Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar: The Death of a Dictator
- Hamlettes Richard 3 (set in a punk post-nuclear wasteland)
- As You Like It
In addition to the previously mentioned appearance of Jay Leno, several other noteworthy public personalities also show up on the stages of FringeNYC 2010 -- in spirit only, of course. These include:
- Sarah Palin (Picking Palin)
- Morrissey (William and the Tradesmen)
- Harvey Milk (Dear Harvey)
- Joe DiMaggio (Marilyn Monroe: Wouldn’t It Be Fascinating)
- Katherine Hepburn (Just in Time - The Judy Holliday Story)
Other titles include
- Friends of Dorothy: An Oz Cabaret
- Jen and Liz in Love
- Open Heart
- Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown
Additional highlights of the festival include:
- Shine: A Burlesque Musical, a musical about an infamous downtown burlesque theatre and the misfits who try to save it from demolition... or worse, respectability.
- Stripes: The Mystery Circus, a comedy about an audition that goes comically awry.
- Cookie and A Matter Of Choice, full productions of two new plays by hot up-and-coming indie playwright Chad Beckim.
- Platinum, a revival of a 1978 Broadway musical by Bruce Vilanch, Will Holt and Gary William Friedman.
- Ruby Wilder, a hit Chicago drama that tells the story of a murder from 3 different pints of view including that of the victim and the murderer..
- Trick Boxing, in this international hit from Minnesota, a 1930’s apple seller is fooled into becoming a prize fighter.
- South Pathetic, Jim David’s solo comedy about a ramshackle community theater.
- In Loco Parentis, a drama about the relationship that blossoms between a teacher and a student grieving the death of her mother.
- Evan O’Television in Double Negatives, an absurdist video-ventriloquism comedy.
- The Swearing Jar, a comedy about lies between married people.
In November 2007, FringeNYC was honored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the Mayor's Award for Arts & Culture “for its phenomenal leadership in showcasing the best and boldest theater and performance by both established and emerging artists.
The New York International Fringe Festival is renowned for presenting work that reflects the excitement and energy of the contemporary theater world - locally, nationally and abroad.” Previous recipients of the award include Woody Allen, Celia Cruz, Stephen Sondheim, Wynton Marsalis, The Tribeca Film Festival, Mark Morris, The Public Theater, Chita Rivera, and Edward Albee.
In 2010, many of New York City's most prominent downtown performance venues will host productions from around the globe as part of FringeNYC. Past participant venues, ranging in size from 50 to 700 seats, include Lucille Lortel Theater, SoHo Playhouse, Players Theater, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Cherry Lane Theatre, Actors Playhouse, Barrow Street Theater, Minetta Lane Theater, P.S. 122, and The Village Theater. FringeNYC is a production of The Present Company, under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy.
In 1997, New York City became the seventh US city to host a fringe festival, joining Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Houston, Orlando and San Francisco.
In its first 13 years FringeNYC has presented over 2100 performing groups from the U.K., Canada, Poland, Ireland, Japan, China, Singapore, Germany, the Czech Republic and across the U.S., prompting Switzerland's national daily, The New Zurich Zeitung, to declare FringeNYC as “the premiere meeting ground for alternative artists.”
The festival has also been the launching pad for movies (WTC View) and even a TV show (‘da Kink in My Hair) as well as numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway transfers, long-running downtown hits, and regional theater productions including
- Urinetown
- Never Swim Alone
- Debbie Does Dallas
- Dog Sees God
- 21 Dog Years
- Krapp 39
- Dixie’s Tupperware Party
- Silence! The Musical
- Matt & Ben
- The Irish Curse
- 666
- Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party
FringeNYC shows run 2pm - midnight weekdays and noon - midnight on weekends.
Tickets are $15 in advance beginning July 23 by calling 866-468-7619 or at www.FringeNYC.org; $18 at the door, subject to availability.
Discount passes for multiple shows ($70 for a Fiver Pass, $120 for a Flex Pass good for 10 shows, and $500 for an all-you-can-see Lunatic Pass) are also available.
For more information visit: www.FringeNYC.org
FringeNYC
The Present Company
520 Eighth Avenue, Ste. 311
New York, NY 10018
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
212-279-4488
212-279-4466
undergroundzero: a festival of theater artists
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Friday, 23 July 2010 20:27
- Written by Bree Rubin
Now in its fourth year, undergroundzero: festival of theater artists, is a three-week event running from July 6th to 25th, 2010, that showcases innovative talent in experimental theater. Presented by East River Commedia at PS122 (150 1st Avenue at 9th Steet), the artists invited to be in the festival are asked to present a piece of thei
r own choosing, creating a unique experience "where risk-taking is encouraged and expected."
The festival was created to weave a "flying repertory" of highly creative and fearless theatrical experimentation. Artists both local and international are given free-reign to shape each affair to the limits of their inspiration.
This year's artists include several of the festival's past favorites, as well as many new faces. Doris Mirescu's trilogy ode to German director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder --From Dawn til Night (The Earth is Uninhabitable like the Moon) -- is the multimedia final chapter. The second part won the 2009 undergroundzero Best Production Award.Local director Anna Brenner -- winner of the 2009 festival's Audience Choice Award -- presents Are We Here Yet?, which establishes five characters struggling to make connections with people and with their own distinct Americanness.
There is a wealth of talent coming from abroad to the festival, as well. The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer is a musical, one-man micro-epic puppet show about love and a pending apocalypse performed by its Australian creator Tim Watts. Actor John Wesley Zielmann channels quintessential pop artist Andy Warhol in the German piece Forever Art, directed by Johanna Zielinski.
In addition to many full productions, the festival invites spectators to participate in in-progress works and discussions with artists as well as conversational mixers with all involved. Each Tuesday brings a "meta-theatrical talk show" called commonground, and every Friday heralds a late-night dance party hosted at the P.S.122 venue.
Tickets ($20) can be purchased by visiting PS122.org or by calling (212) 352-3101. The special "PS122 Passport" allows purchasers to see five shows for $55, and holders enjoy various discounts and benefits at East Village area community partners and businesses.
for festival performance schedules and more information go to: www.ps122.org/performances/undergroundzero_2010.html
undergroundzero:a festival of theater artists
July 6-25, 2010
PS122 - 150 1st Avenue at 9th
Divinamente NY Int'l Spirituality Fest
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Thursday, 08 April 2010 13:15
- Written by FFTraveler Staff
The international festival on spirituality, Divinamente New York, comes here from Rome, Italy, April 22 to 26, 2010, for 
the second consecutive year. A five-night festival, it celebrates spirituality and artistic exploration through a range of events including musical and theatrical performances and round-table discussions.
This year's theme, "The Fear of God," traces the feelings of fear and trepidation as they evolve into comfort, acceptance, and peace -- will be addressed in six different theatrical, artistic, and musical productions, and will be held in several NYC venues including the Rubin Museum of Art, Symphony Space, and the Italian Cultural Institute.
Divinamente New York is an offshoot of the Festival Divinamente Roma, founded in 2008 by Italian actress, director, and cultural icon Pamela Villoresi, who has appeared in over 100 plays, 11 films and 12 television productions. She has worked with such famed Italian actors as Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, and directors as Marco Bellocchio, the Taviani brothers, Ettore Scola and Giorgio Strehler.
The Festival opens at the Italian Cultural Institute with a round table discussion on the theme led by Villoresi with readings taken from "Noah’s Arch" by Michele di Martino, Dante's Inferno and The Bacchae by Euripides. To be held on Thursday, April 22, it will be followed by "The Path of the Soul," an original concert featuring Russian duo clarinetist Anton Dressler and pianist Uri Brener performing the music of various composers in a variety of styles.
On Friday, April 23, at Symphony Space, Napolitana vocalist Teresa De Sio’s secular prayer will invoke Paradise on earth through popular music.
The Rubin Museum will host the third night of the festival, Saturday, April 24, and is a great setting for the story of the love between Galileo Galilei and his illegitimate daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, played by actress Federica Bern.
At St. Mark’s Church, on Sunday, April 25, Vanessa Gravina will perform the courage of Francesca, the Saint of Immigrants live on stage.
On Monday, April 26 at the Italian Cultural Institute, the closing event will feature the captivating voice of Evelina Meghnagi as she relives the exodus of the Sephardic Jews through Africa and Europe to the Roman community.
Divinamente New York is sponsored by MIBAC, ARCUS, The Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and ARMUSER Association.
For more info about the Divinamente New York Festival, visit: www.divinamente.info
Divinamente New York
April 22nd-April 26th, 2010
sponsored by
The Italian Cultural Institute
Silvia Giampaola
Attachè for Cultural Affairs
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel. 212 879 4242 ext.333
"In the Words of Duras" Marguerite Duras Festival
- Details
- Parent Category: Other Festivals
- Category: Theater
- Published on Monday, 01 March 2010 05:00
- Written by L E Shannon
France’s well-known author, playwright and film director, during a multidisciplinary festival in New York City from February 18 to March 18, 2010 at Anthology Film Archives, the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF). Known for her evocative and experimental free-flowing style, Marguerite Duras revolutionized the form of the twentieth century novel, and her innovations also carried to the screen and stage.
At the initiative of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the festival showcases Duras’s wide range of talents, from her award-winning literary works to her ground-breaking movies and plays. A unique photo exhibit at the French Cultural Services also gives the public a rare glimpse of her personal life.
The festival includes performances based on Duras’s writings by several female directors
. The Baryshnikov Arts Center will stage Christine Letailleur’s theatrical version of Hiroshima mon amour, the celebrated New Wave movie by Alain Resnais, whose screenplay was written by Duras.
The French Institute Alliance Française will present two performances:
Diptych: The Lover and La Musica Deuxième, directed by Astrid Bas, a unique theatrical event pairing a staged and set-to-music adaptation of Duras’s prize-winning autobiographical novel The Lover (1984) with her play La Musica Deuxième (1985).
La Vie matérielle by Irina Brook is inspired by Duras’s collection of free-ranging essays La Vie matérielle and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Taken together, they shed light on femininity and women’s roles in society.
Many readings and lectures are being presented during this tribute.
A month-long photography exhibit at the French Cultural Services’ Payne Whitney Mansion will reveal a more intimate side of Marguerite Duras. Photographer Hélène Bamberger, who works for such well-known publications as Time, Elle, Le Figaro, and Der Spiegel, chronicled her summers with Marguerite Duras in Trouville, Normandy, from 1980 to 1994. The pictures, depicting the author’s haunts, her worktable, her room, her lover Yann Andréa, and Marguerite Duras herself, offer a poignant glimpse into her private life.
The month-long festival concludes with a series at Anthology Film Archives, Marguerite
Duras on Film (March 12-18). As well as having her work repeatedly adapted for the screen by others, Duras wrote original scripts for various filmmakers (most notably Alain Resnais and Georges Franju), before embarking on her own directorial career in 1967. Over the next seventeen years, she directed 14 feature films of her own (as well as numerous shorts), including masterpieces such as Nathalie Granger and India Song. Exploring the nature and limits of the medium with the same fiercely intelligent, radically experimental approach that made her writings so singular and important, Duras’s cinema is a crucial component of her life’s work.For more information, go to www.fiaf.org.
In the Words of Duras: Marguerite Duras Festival
February 18-March 12, 2010
French Institute Alliance Française
22 East 60th Street, NYC
212-355-6100
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Avenue, NYC
212-505-5181
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street, Suite 501
New York City
646-731-3200
