TRUTH HAS CHANGED UNDER THE RADAR AT PUBLIC THEATER

TRUTH HAS CHANGED
PART OF UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL
AT PUBLIC THEATER

TRUTH HAS CHANGED is a solo piece written and performed by Josh Fox.  Josh Fox is a documentary film maker and an activist.  His film won an award at the Sundance film festival.
Documentary is called "GASLAND"

Truth has changed is about the misinformation and the propaganda spread by the media, corporations,
politicians and advertisers. Josh Fox focuses on Face book and  Cambridge Analytica and doesn't have any thing nice to say about them. He presents a short film in which Mark Zuckerberg avoids
questions asked by the Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez.

Truth has changed is extremely dense show.  It starts when the actor was part of a protest against fracking
at the Delaware river when a young student asked a question, "How do we know the truth?"
I guess the student's question was really profound because there are always so many conflicting stories and opinions about all kind of news which eventually become exhausting and one just
gives up.  Mr. Fox's show also has far too much information in it about so many topics such as
fracking, oil spills, 9/11, Iraq war, climate change and 2016 election.

After a while one can't absorb all the disturbing information which we are already familiar with.
It also has racism, corporate greed and a big section is about the digital technology and because
of that all the people in the world are part of a data and no one has any sense of privacy left.

Mr. Fox is a passionate performer but for this show which is more about journalism than real drama
 his passion seems a bit much. There is a long sequence when Mr. Fox starts to dance under an
Umbrella making believe it's raining, like Gene Kelly and it seems over-dramatic.
His intentions are really sincere and its admirable to inform the public about misinformation of all kind but most of us are already suspicious of the information we get about the most serious events happening in the world but perhaps its a good idea to be reminded again even if its very difficult to
handle.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
facebook.com

ANDARES AT THE PUBLIC THEATER:UNDER THE RADAR

ANDARES: PART OF UNDER THE RADAR THEATER FESTIVAL AT THE PUBLIC THEATER

ANDARES is an exploration of the mythic past and difficult present of Indigenous people of Mexico,
created by Makuyeika Collective Teatral and conceived and directed by Hector Flores Komatsu.

ANDARES is performed in a very sensitive and tender manner with song and dance on a bare stage with a very few props such as a few masks, and beautifully colorful ribbons in the shape of a hat/mask. The minimalistic approach to this mythical and ancient fable is very effective.

One by one the performers narrates in a moving manner about their cultural beauty being threatened by the modern contemporary forces of destruction.  There are ancient stories about how gods of fire created peace, calm and beauty which turned into nasty and destructive forces called human beings.

There is a narration about a stag's eyes full of tears and weeping about the memory of the beautiful forest in which he roamed freely  and was his dwelling which is now no more.  That bit was the best part of the show taking us back into the calmness of nature which is turned into cement and steel in
the modern times and even its memory is weeping.  Imagine! how sad the image of that haunting memory can be?

The whole show is spoken in Spanish with very clear super-titles which really helps .
There are tales of parents, grandfathers and animals.  The Mayan culture has as much respect for animals as for the humans and that is very touching. There is also the confusion of a young man
about the power and control of patriarchal society and his recollection of being a male who dresses as female by his deep desire and inclination.

The actors, Jesue Maychi, Domingo Mitangos, Lupe-de-La-Cruz and Guitarist- Raymundo Pavon-Lozano are very effective. The best thing about them is that they are extremely calm and natural
and that makes the whole experience very moving.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
Facebook.com

BARBER SHOP CHRONICLES AT BAM'S NEW WAVE FESTIVAL

                         BARBER SHOP CHRONICLES AT BAM'S NEW WAVE FESTIVAL

Barber shops in many parts of the world especially in Asia and Africa are the regular meeting places

for men.  They can't wait to get there and beside having their hair cut enjoy an amazingly relaxed,

intimate and fun atmosphere where they express themselves freely about all kinds of things dear to

them.

In Inua Ellams's incredibly vibrant production of Barber Shop Chronicles' from London's National

Theater, a big hit which has been traveling in Britain and now in United States is a testimony of the

real barber shops and what takes place there.

This production has the incredible energy of a fast moving traveller without a pause.  The set is vast and fluid, the actors are on  cocaine high energy, they dance, they sing, they laugh, they entertain, they cut hair, they move their barber shop moveable chairs fast and furious to make the play move to
a different location without any other change of scenery and make it absolutely effective.

When the show hasn't begun yet, they actually begin entertaining, welcoming audience members to be part of their play.  They invite them onto the set, they take selfies, they make them sit on their chairs and mime cutting their hair.  A very welcoming and comforting gesture and we the audience members are instantly involved.

The whole company is totally relaxed and are a great fun even when they express many episodes of pain which can give any body a pause but everything is handled with great poetry, song  and movement.

When the show opens, they are in Lagos, Nigeria and its 6am.  A customers knocks and knocks
and wake up the barber and kind of order/request for the finest haircut like a car speeding in a race.
When it comes to pay, he says, "I am short of cash." He gets chased and then let go...

The scene moves to  other locations, like London, and five other cities in Africa.  There is
a clock on the wall which informs us of different time zones and every time the scene changes there
descend a sculpture made of wire and beautifully lit in magenta blue depicting a different part of the globe and the actors move with great energy and thrill with the hip-hop music in the back ground.

The play is not only a dance and the movement piece taking place all over Africa. It's a very deep and complex tale of culture, language, relationships and tradition of the people who live there, who migrated to the West, people who came back, people who never came back but never escaped their past, never forgot their language, never stopped missing their culture and their language.

The amazing thing about the Barber Shop Chronicles' is how easily the customers and their barbers
discuss the intimate stories of their lives.  Them traveling to the foreign countries, their love and lack of love from their fathers, their ambitions and dreams, their unending pain with such humor, with such gossipy feel, with such ease that it's so fluidly and smoothly gets into our consciousness and we feel for them and want to sing and dance with them as well.

The ensemble seems like they are all travelers and where ever they go they take their stories with them and are looking for an audience and the Barber Shop becomes their audience.  It's that intimacy of the same culture and language and customs which make them open up and talk about any thing and everything.

They discuss politics, a must, their leaders, Mandela, a father figure in the culture of missing fathers, they make fun of their language as well as are very proud of it, they talk about going abroad, making a dream come true, escaping their past and realize at the same time that they can never escape anything inherent in their genes.

It seems a heavy play but it's not at all.  That's the beauty of it all.  Incredibly important topics are being talked about, gossiped about, migration is discussed, the difficulties of leaving home, coming back, never coming back, all is being talked about but we never feel the heaviness of all that.  It
never seems like a serious tragic loss.  The greatest success of this play is that with the serious depth of its complexity it's the most fun, fast and furious play in its entirety.

There is a very funny sequence about how in the West the importance of time has been valued, how every bit of time has its own schedule but in Africa when one is supposed to arrive at 1pm, it's normal to arrive at 3pm.  How true that is in South East Asia as well. People are surprised when anything starts on time.

Barber shop is superbly directed byBijan Sheibani and the movement director, Aline David has done
a great job. A wire model of earth lit in a blue light and suspended from above is by genius, Rae Smith.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF

artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
.www.facebook.com

THE GREAT TAMER: A DANCE/PERFORMANCE PIECE AT BAM, PART OF NEW WAVE FESTIVAL

THE GREAT TAMER:  A DANCE/PERFORMANCE ART PIECE AT BAM.

THE GREAT TAMER
CONCEIVED and DIRECTED
by
DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU

To Describe The Great Tamer in one sentence or two or even in a paragraph would be extremely

difficult because its such a complex, multilayered performance encompassing life and death and all

that happens in-between.  It's about mythology, mortality, physicality, spirituality and the fragility

of life.

On a vast slanting steel grey stage made of removable black and white sheets, this complex art/dance/

performance piece unfolds.

A man dressed in black walks on stage and slowly starts to take his clothes off. Then he lies down as

if he is on the roof of his house to get some sun.

Another man again dressed in black comes on stage and covers him

with a very lightweight white sheet.  Then the third man comes and picks up one of those removable

panels and with great ability shake it a bit and then let it drop.  That makes the sheet covering the

naked man floats away.  This activity is repeated a few times and is brilliantly done and is

mesmerizing to watch.

Many more realistic, surrealistic and metaphorical sequences occur.  The brilliant cast of dancers,

acrobats, gymnasts and performance artists keep going tirelessly with such agility that one marvels at

the excellence and the amazing power of human body in all it's forms, in it's suffering, in it's joy and

the spirit of adventure and surprise.  Most of the time the men and women are nude without a hint

of self consciousness.

The do the most difficult movements in extremely vulnerable positions takes a lot of expertise.

They open the panels and dig underneath as if they are preparing for a burial.

They open another panel and discover water, in which they bathe. They even find body parts, an arm

sticking out, or part of a leg and now and then our concept of their location changes.

Are they in a an ancient grave yard?  Are they in a field where soon vegetation will appear in the

form of sticky darts representing a corn field?  or flora of brilliant yellow colors representing spring

time when everything blooms and love of life smiles on everything.

The Great Tamer is very philosophical and that makes sense.  After all it's being created by a

brilliant Greek who also has incredible sense of humor and child like attitude and a sense of

innocence. Sometimes one feels as if grown up children are playing games and having fun.

Sometime it seems like as if the creator and the performers are making fun of everything serious

in life which bogs us down,  depicting the delicate moments of un-predictable and unbalanced life.

At one point a performer tries to balance himself on a world glob soon to be crashed on the floor

with other performers.

Performers built and then destroy everything and pick up the pieces and put them in the garbage bags

and throw them away. Everything seems meaningless and immensely serious and ominous at the

same exact moment.

The performers, men and women don't seem human in their physical power and agility but

superhuman and then they lose balance and fall apart right in-front of our eyes.

The whole show is an unending enjoyable metaphor.    Things are visible as well as hidden.

Meanings are obvious and complex beyond our comprehension.

The whole show is accompanied by Johann Strauss's stunningly beautiful, "Blue Danube"  waltz

on the sound track.

There are impressions of classic European art.    Chorus of actors add white collars and instantly

become doctors dissecting a nude human body, thus the representation of Rembrandt's, " Anatomy

lesson."  Then they feast on human intestine which they have pulled out during the dissection.

The show doesn't have one straight story line but it's rich with many images which excites

our imagination and we create our own stories and how many shows can make you so creative,

so imaginative and so aware of the fragility of life which has the promise of destruction and renewal

at the same time.  The last moment in the show has total disintegration of a skeleton mounted

on another panel reminding us of the delicacy of life and we should just be happy and thankful

of breathing.  This show makes us aware of, "Breath." The last breath,  before we are no more.

Not to be gloomy but this awareness is essential.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
www. facebook.com

BACCHAE: PRELUDE TO A PURGE AT BAM

BACCHAE: PRELUDE TO A PURGE AT BAM AS PART OF NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL

Marlene Monteiro Freitas -Bacchae is a fun ensemble of trumpet players who also dance and dancers who dance, sing and speak. The performers are intense and have expressions of madness, wearing mask like make up to make them look even more grotesque but do not come much closer to Euripides' tragedy.  Having said that what they are doing here, abstract themes, abstract expressions and incredibly moving movements in their own way are superb.
Its any artist's right to take on classical works and make their own interpretations and incorporate their
own take into it and that way it's fascinating to have some themes and ideas still breathing in their new work.  There are some hints of Euripides Bacchae which still exits in this wonderful dance piece, such as a blind man being led and in a video where a woman give birth which evokes the birth of Dionysus, and the Percussions
and the trumpets have the effects of mayhem and madness and a feeling of revenge.
I loved the music and the way the performers moved and flowed effortlessly with it.

In this Bacchae all rules are broken.  It's free flowing fun and lack of inhibition.  This atmosphere
must be a lot of fun for children as it was proven with a constant laughter of some children in the audience.  The atmosphere is of a festive group of people who can manipulate any one for their own pleasure and creative energy and this troupe has enormous vitality to carry it through.  They run around, up and down, dance, sing and do enormously difficult twists and turns for two hours without an intermission.

For a long while I waited for some more moments of relevance to Euripides's Bacchae but then I gave up and started to enjoy what was presented to me in a twisted but in a joyful way and with that
justification I began to get involved fully like the performers were in this very innovative
and pleasurable dance piece.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
binashariff@gmail.com
www.facebook.com

MAKE BELIEVE ON BROADWAY 2019

MAKE BELIEVE on BROADWAY 2019
    
ONLY MAKE BELIEVE is a non profit organization that creates and performs interactive
theatre for children in hospital, care facilities and special education programs throughout New York and Washington. Dena Hammerstein started it in the memory of her late husband James Hammerstein.

Dena started this program in 1999.  On November 4 the organization celebrated the 20th year at a gala award ceremony on Broadway with star studded  participants, actors such as Sir Ian Mckellen,
David G. Leitch, Allan Cumming, Ambassador theatre Group and many many other talented musicians, acrobats and singers from Broadway shows.

 Beside the event's entertainment value this event was the most Important evening on Broadway I have ever attended.  To be honest I had no Idea of Only make believe program and boy am I ashamed and thrilled as well to be part of one of the most moving and human event which has been helping children with chronic illnesses and disabilities and introducing them to theater where actors and singers come to them and help them to experience joy and happiness beside their misfortune.  I think Dena Hammerstein deserves all the awards and thanks for doing such an essential
deed and many other people who are in charge of all the units in those facilities which takes care of those lovely children all over the city and in Washington.

There were so many wonderful speeches, uplifting comments and songs from different Broadway shows, such as, book of Mormon and the band was amazing.  But the most moving  for me was the documentary of children in a hospital unit enjoying the various acts performed by the actors.
What a great concept to bring theater to the sick children and children are not analytical and  theater critics, they are just innocent children who cherish those moments of fun, excitement and costumes and the colors and the music.  All that makes them dream of a better morning, I am sure of that.
So in this short life the ones who are able and fortunate enough to help the sick and disabled are blessed as well.  Just to have an image how to help the children in a hospital unit where the sick might at times lose hope, to bring hope of another beautiful day in their lives.  I am so impressed and thankful to Dena and every one else involved to create this organization and to be invited.

Besides many other high lights of the evening, to see Sir Ian Mckellen in person was just a moment of great thrill.  He is one of the most incredible actor alive.  I try to see everything he does but it's not possible but whatever I have seen, I have never been able to take it out of my mind and my heart.
Wild Honey by Chekhov,  at the National Theater of London, No man's land by Pinter, Waiting for Godot by Beckett, on Broadway to name a very few. But he has done thousands of shows in his long lasting career and he was going to perform his one man show which he cancelled in London for one night at the Hudson Theater in NY and donating the money to Only Make Believe.  Amazing generosity of spirit.  Another high light was the two acrobats, one of them disabled perform with
perfection and energy and spirit.  Amazing performers as well.

I ma so thrilled to be Introduced to this incredibly Important event and I wish not to miss any  in the future

On a very personal note, this evening brought back lots of memories for me especially about children.
I have to confess that I am also an MD from Pakistan and I did my one year residency in Pediatric
hospital in Lahore Pakistan. I loved those children and would spend hours upon hours with them
in the hospital ward even when I was off duty. When I saw the film of those children enjoying
the theater which was brought to them it made me sad and happy at the same time.  Sad because I didn't practice medicine in America but happy that I am involved in all aspects of creative theater. At times I have felt guilty in the past for abandoning those children but the night of Nov 4 at the Schoenfeld Theatre I felt as if I was contributing to Only Make Believe myself by being in the theater and one day maybe I will go to those hospitals and tell the children some joyful stories.

WRITTEN
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
email: binashariff@gmail.com
www.facebook.com

"INOAH" . DANCE: AT BAM, PART OF NEW WAVE FESTIVAL

"INOAH" A DANCE PIECE AT BAM, PART OF NEW WAVE FESTIVAL

"I*NOAH" at BAM
 Grupo de Rua's  had its debut at Bam on Thursday

The choreographer of this dance performance is Bruno Beltrao and the lighting designer is Renato
Machado. When the show opens on this vast stage it's so darkly lit that it's hard to concentrate on two figures clad in black highlighting the blackness and darkness of this piece.

There is nice little focussed light on these two dancers who stand still for a while and then starts to move.  They twist and turn their arms and their bodies in a mesmerizing way. They don't seem like dancing but moving in space while still standing still. If they were little less darkly lit it would be
easier to watch them but our eyes take a long moment to adjust to the darkness which surrounds the whole stage.

But I guess the bleakness of the atmosphere is relevant to the piece.  It seems like the story of street
 dance mixed with the hip-hop in urban atmosphere.  The dancers have incredible ability to slide on
, suddenly stopping and  going off stage as if they are gliding effortlessly on ice.  They are  all men and  their bodies are very taught and muscular evoking man power.  The background sounds, the sounding score is a kind of monotonous rumble.  The score is by Felipe Storino. The movements of this dance are very hip-hop style, sliding and tumbling, suddenly stopping and leaving and other performers entering sliding on heads, twist and turn and then suddenly come to a halt, performers frozen in strange positions.  Some time they stay like that for a very long time.  This show is brilliant,
created by a great talent but needs a lot of dedication on the part of the audience to watch. The movements of  dancers are so varied and seem painful as if they are suffering from some torturous regime.  It does capture fully the urban atmosphere and culture where there is always an immediate danger of a fight breaking up amongst the inhabitants.  This show represents amazing talent though the show is confusing at times.  More of a movement and performance piece than a regular dance with a coherent story.  I did enjoy the power of dancers over their bodies and their incredible skill and energy.

REVIEWED
BY
BINA SHARIF
artsinternational.blogspot.com
binashariff@gmail.com
Cell: 212-260-6207
www.facebook.com