Our Friends in the New Haven Theater Company

New Haven Theater Company is hosting its first annual benefit Saturday, Feb. 5 at 8 p.m. the High Lane Club, located at 40 High Lane, North Haven. The event, called “Fall in Love with NHTC” will features songs and sketches with your favorite NHTC actors, comedy performed by the The Funny Stages, the group’s improv troupe, decadent desserts, and the musical stylings of the Keith and Mazer Trio. Tickets are $25. To purchase tickets, go to www.newhaventheatercompany.com.

The company is entering an exciting period of transition. T. Paul Lowry had set the NHTC’s direction for several years, creating children’s theatre, improv comedy and culturally relevant plays since 2005. However, Lowry moved out of state to pursue a job opportunity in the entertainment industry and the remaining company members were forced to make a decision: should the company fold or should it reconstitute and think of a slightly different way to move forward?

United by friendship, mutual respect and a common artistic ethos, a group of NHTC actors decided to soldier on. To fill Lowry’s role, the group voted to form a board comprised of Megan Keith Chenot (president), Hilary Brown (vice-president), Hallie Martenson (secretary) and Erich Greene (treasurer) to provide guidance and leadership. “It's thrilling to be working with people who all feel such joy at the prospect of creating theater together. We all share a love of storytelling as well as a love for the city of New Haven. There's a palpable sense that we are building something together that we can be proud to share with our city,” Megan Chenot said.

In addition to the board, the company is comprised of Ian Alderman, Rachel Shapiro Alderman, Peter Chenot, Jeremy Funke, George Kulp, Steve Scarpa, Jenny Schuck, Christian Shaboo, J. Kevin Smith, and Mike Smith. All of the company members have significant experience in a variety of capacities with NHTC, primarily in the company’s critically acclaimed productions of Glengarry Glen Ross, A Civil War Christmas and Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.

New Haven Theater Company’s current mission is to celebrate the power of storytelling by providing New Haven with awesome theater experiences that are relevant and accessible to all members of our community. “We're excited to be working together to bring the city a fresh take on community theater,” Megan Chenot said.

The group is committed to continuing many of Lowry’s initiatives, including the Funny Stages improv comedy, the Listen Here short story reading series and Reel New Haven, the company’s yearly film festival. In addition, the company is currently in the midst of selecting its first play of 2011. An announcement will be made soon.

For more information about New Haven Theater Company, contact Megan Chenot via e-mail at NHTCpress@gmail.com.

Have a Happy New (Haven Review) Year

And here's what we're cookin' up for this year... New Haven Review is back for another year of merry. Our book publishing venture has so far garnered all sorts of fab publicity, like this here, and there have been successful parties in New Haven and New York. We have upcoming appearances at the New Haven Public Library (all of our authors, 6pm, Jan. 26), the Faith Middleton Show (Feb. 18, 3pm, Charles Douthat and Mark Oppenheimer), and Labyrinth Books (same crew, the next day, Feb. 19, at 4pm).

And our radio show, Paper Trails, featuring Mark Oppenheimer, Brian Slattery, Gregory Feeley, Binnie Klein, and others talking about books, debuts Feb. 13 on WNPR. Stay tuned for more on that.

Issue #7 is on the web here. (Have you subscribed? Are you a library or someone else with an expense account? Are you somebody who likes to support the arts? And likes to read good stuff? Will you please subscribe?)

Meanwhile, Susan Holahan's poems in issue #5 got honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize volume.

But best of all? Thanks to a generous donation, we can now pay our authors. So agents, publishers, authors--get the word out. Issue #8 is nearly full, but we are now accepting submissions for issue #9 and beyond. For more information, write to editor@newhavenreview.com

Winter Alert

Yeah, I know, everyone’s having a collective snowgasm in the snowpocalypse, but, should you decide to put your head outside your cave, there are some theatrical events happening this weekend that should make the snowjob of digging out worth your while. First of all, Thursday night, Jan. 13th, the Yale Cabaret, led by Andrew Kelsey and Tara Kayton, resumes its 2010-11 season with a play entitled Erebus and Terror, directed by Devin Brain, last year’s co-artistic director of the Cab.  Brain’s anticipated return to the Cab also marks a return to a work, conceived by Yale School of Drama acting major Alexandra Henrikson and written and created by the cast, that was originally scheduled to end the Cab’s 2009-10 season.  The wait was worth it, we suspect, especially as the play dramatizes events in the Arctic.  The current conditions in New Haven couldn’t be more propitious.  The title refers to the names of the steamships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, commanded by Sir John Franklin on his doomed search for the Northwest Passage in 1845.  Among the 2,3999 books aboard ship was a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare—a fact that may be significant for how the play dramatizes the snowbound experience of the 128 men on the expedition.  The play, the Cab website tells us, “is a journey north in search of songs and stories frozen in ice”—but you need only journey through the wintery wastes to 217 Park Street in New Haven to hear them.  Shows at 8 p.m, Thurs., Fri., Sat., late shows Fri. and Sat. at 11 p.m. Call: 203-432-1566; www.yalecabaret.org

And on Sunday, Jan. 16th, a special event takes place at the Long Wharf Stage II.  A dramatic reading of an adaptation of Torture Team by Philippe Sands, directed by Gordon Edelstein, and featuring the star power of Vanessa Redgrave, Lili Taylor, Jeff McCarthy, Jay O. Sanders, and Harris Yulin.  Taking attorney Sands’ book Torture Team, described as “an All the President’s Men for the 21st century,” as its starting point, the play investigates the degree of complicity on the part of the Bush administration in the tortures of Guantámo Bay, using a variety of media—clips of Judgment at Nuremberg, presidential statements, interviews, Murat Kumaz’s memoir of his incarceration at the U.S. detention facility—to dramatize the events and their context.  Sands’ book has been praised as a formidable work of investigative journalism that lays the basis for a charge of war crimes against the Bush administration.  Redgrave, known almost as well for her activism as for her acting, and Sands will both participate in discussion of the controversial claims of the work after the performance. 7 p.m. For information: www.longwharf.org

Charles Douthat at the Poetry Institute

We, at New Haven Review, like the Poetry Institute, which holds an open mike reading every third Thursday at the Institute Library in downtown New Haven at 847 Chapel Street. This Thursday, December 16, at 6:30 p.m., they are featuring our personal favorite—because he’s one of our authors-- New Haven’s own Charles Douthat.

From the website:

New Haven celebrates the publication of Charles Douthat’s first collection, Blue for Oceans forthcoming from NHR Books.

Born in California, Charles graduated from Stanford University, raised a son and daughter in New Haven, Connecticut where he practices law. Charles began to read and write poetry during a long mid-life illness and today writes about the usual predicaments: family, love, time and memory.  Since then, his poems have been published in many journals and magazines.  A few have won prizes.  We’ve enjoyed his work at our open mic; Please join us to support Charles’ new venture: www.charlesdouthat.com.

About the potluck: Please feel free to bring an a small [room temperature] appetizer or dessert snack to share!

Art in Westville: Frank Bruckmann and Susan Clinard

Hey, we owe these guys!  Kehler Liddell Gallery was more than kind enough to play host to our book party on Tuesday, December 7.  At the party, attendees were actually privy to the art exhibit mentioned below prior to its official opening by about five days.  (See, there really are benefits to subscribing!) We're happy to return the favor!  Come see the show and get some of that culture thingey that Sarah Palin is sooo lacking in.

Bruckmann and Susan Clinard

December 9 – January 16, 2010

Kehler Liddell Gallery 873 Whalley Avenue New Haven, CT 06515 tel: (203) 389.9555 www.kehlerliddell.com

Gallery Hours: Thursday, 11-8pm; Friday, 11-4pm; Saturday and Sunday, 10-4pm; or by appointment.

Kehler Liddell Gallery is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of new paintings by Frank Bruckmann and new sculpture by Susan Clinard that revel in the spirit of antitechnology art to communicate emotion and allegory.

Before moving to New Haven, Frank Bruckmann studied at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he spent nearly a decade in France and Spain coping the masters in the great museums and painting landscapes in the cities and countryside. These years of intense study inform his rich palette and humanist depictions of contemporary America, which provide him with endless sources of inspiration. Both a plein air and studio painter, Bruckmann paints that which surrounds him. Past series depict local merchants in their shops, cityscapes of downtown New Haven, sublime views of West Rock, and landscapes of Monhegan Island, Maine, where he frequently travels.

For this show, Bruckmann will present new small and medium sized paintings of the volcanic Gabbro rocks in Monhegan that are more detailed and abstract than anything he has done before. The paintings investigate the mysterious surfaces and orifices of the purple-black rocks, delicately cut by white lines (quartz) and speckled with orange clusters (fungi). The paintings investigate new textures, shadows, colors, and reveal secret biological world that fights to live in places the human eye cannot see.

Susan Clinard is one of those rare artists who can work in wood, clay, bronze, stone and metal. Real people, experiences, and stories inspire and inform her work, which confront issues of inequality, fear, compassion and courage. Since giving birth to her first son in 2004, motherhood and life cycles have become major semi-autobiographical themes.

For this show, Clinard has treaded on radical new ground, and will present a series of mixed media wunderkammers, (“cabinets of curiosities”). Wunderkammers were popular toys of nobles in the late 1500ʼs, before the advent of public museums. These cabinets, ranging from small boxes to library-sized rooms included collections of oddities that belonged to a specific natural history—precious minerals, strange organisms, indigenous crafts, collected from civilizations and placed in a microcosmic memory theatre. Clinardʼs wunderkammers incorporate this idea of the biological unknown, and organize the various found elements in compartments that suggest an internal, psychological narrative. Each cabinet shelters its own landscapes, precious moments, and measurements of darkness and clarity.

Clinard will also present a new major installation titled “Procession,” which incorporates figurative elements that she is known for. Unlike her traditional clay busts, the line of male figures is roughly cut, minimal and distorted. Positioned on a wheeled platform, the men move in a unified direction with a clear purpose, lending to a strong compositional impact. The work responds to the ceremonial weight and cultural significance of processions in contemporary and ancient history-- their association with life, death and strength in unity.

We Like Parties...and So Do Our Writers

From the New Haven Independent:

Westville’s Kehler Liddell Gallery has long established itself as a place to view masterful paintings, prints and sculptures, but its use as a space for a variety of cultural and community events continues to evolve. Tuesday night the gallery was host to a book launch party by New Haven Review Books—“the world’s latest small press for high-quality fiction, nonfiction, and poetry” according to Review co-founder Mark Oppenheimer.

...The press celebrated Tuesday night the release of its first three trade paperbacks, featuring the work of Brooklyn-based novelist Rudolph Delson, New Haven area poet Charles Douthat, and Hamden novella master Gregory Feeley. Douthat and Feeley were on hand to sign their books, read selections and mingle with well-wishers, as guitar and fiddle musicians Craig Edwards and New Haven Review co-founder Brian Slattery (of The Root Farmers), provided musical accompaniment.

Platters of exotic cookies dotted the gallery space, comfortable among new artworks of painter Frank Bruckmann and sculptor Susan Clinard, whose opening reception will be held Sunday, Dec.12 from 3 to 6 p.m. The powerful two and three-dimensional works created a haunting synergy while the authors read from the pages of their newly published books.

And there's more.  Read the whole article here.

Oh, and thanks to David Sepulveda, journalist extraordinaire.

Community

In the past week, the New Haven Review celebrated the launch of its three books with two parties: one in Brooklyn, for Rudolph Delson's How to Win Her Love, and one here in New Haven, at the Kehler Liddell Gallery, for Charles Douthat's Blue for Oceans and Gregory Feeley's Kentauros. Sadly, I couldn't go to the Brooklyn party, but I did go to our party last night. The first reason to throw book parties, obviously, is to sell books. There's also the opportunity to involve the press (thank you, New Haven Independent!) and to generate the only thing that really sells books anyway: word of mouth. But that's just what it looks like on paper. When I was at the party last night, what struck me was none of the above, but that grand and elusive thing that parties, whether for books or not, are supposed to be about: community. From where I was sitting—playing for the event with fellow musician Craig Edwards—I watched as people came in groups of two or three, or by themselves. There is much to absorb the lone person at Kehler Liddell these days (you really should check out their current exhibition), but soon enough, those lone people and small groups turned into bigger groups, combining and recombining as people introduced themselves and their acquaintances, seemingly to people they'd just met. When Feeley and Douthat read from their work, we all turned off our cell phones (thanks to the amplification system not abiding such things) and listened. And when they were done, we got back to meeting each other.

Was it a good party? Yeah, we sold books. But it's more important that everyone came together to celebrate—not just the books, and not just the wonderful people who wrote them, but the fact that we've started something here that we're all a part of.

Thanks, everyone.

Isobelle Carmody at the Yale Cabaret

This Sunday, December 5, award-winning author Isobelle Carmody will be visiting New Haven. Carmody is an Australian writer of science fiction, fantasy, children's and juvenile literature. She began work on her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles when she was just fourteen years old. Since then, she has written many award-winning short stories and books for young people, including Alyzon Whitestarr, The Gathering, and The Legend of Little Fur. Alyzon Whitestarr received both the Golden Aurealis Award for best novel and an award for best young adult novel. The Gathering was a joint winner of the 1993 CBC Book of the Year Award and the 1994 Children's Literature Peace Prize. Overall, she has written more than twenty books. Her most recent book for mid-level readers, Billy Thunder and the Night Gate, was shortlisted for the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature in the 2001 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. What brings this outstanding international writer to our local neighborhood? This past July, the Yale Summer Cabaret produced a play called The Phoenix, which was an adaptation of one of Carmody's early short stories. When the staff at the Summer Cabaret was having trouble getting the rights to adapt Carmody's work, they went to the internet and were shocked when it was very easy to contact the author herself on Facebook.

Since that initial online exchange, Isobelle has been very supportive of the Summer Cabaret, and she was very pleased when she received a DVD of the production at her home in Australia. So pleased, in fact, that Carmody has come to New Haven this weekend to meet the audiences and the creative team from The Phoenix. A discussion with Isobelle Carmody and Devin Brain, director of the Summer Cabaret production, will be hosted at the Cabaret at 217 Park Street at 2 PM in the afternoon on Sunday December 5. All are invited to join for this unique opportunity to talk with Carmody in person. We hope to see you there!

NHR Books: First Shipment

Pictured above, with seasonal vegetables, is the first shipment of preorders for our new line of books. All three titles—How to Win Her Love, by Rudolph Delson, Blue for Oceans, by Charles Douthat, and Kentauros, by Gregory Feeley—are represented; the books are being shipped everywhere from just down the street to one of the farther corners of the British Commonwealth. Those of you who ordered more than one book, live abroad, or, God help you, both, will receive your books in the delightfully puffy packaging that appears at the top of the stack. Those who ordered one book and live in the continental United States will receive your books in the sleek manila envelopes that appear at the bottom of the stack, reinforced with state-of-the-art mailing tape. Those of you who have not ordered books and are feeling entirely left out of the fun—no puffy packaging or sleek manila envelopes for you!—may rectify the situation by ordering at our store. And really, can you wait even one more minute? My dear reader, you cannot.

Thank you again to everyone—the printers, the designers, but especially the writers and now you, the readers—who made this happen.

Fear's a Man's Best Friend

Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance first appeared in 1966.   It’s now playing at the Yale Rep, directed by James Bundy. Going in, the main question on my mind was whether or not the play – which says it’s taking place NOW – would feel adequate to today or would seem as though it still had a foot in the pre-Nixon era of its origins. Some references – topless bathing suits, a marijuana cache busted nearby – certainly harken to the old days, but not necessarily. The marijuana reference, at least, has become timely again with a new movement afoot to legalize it. But the aspects of the play that do feel a bit dated are perhaps deceptively so. One is when Julia, daughter of Tobias and Agnes, well-to-do bourgeois of the type that immediately bring to mind the grand tradition of Ibsen and Chekhov, describes the (fourth) husband she has left as someone who is simply opposed to everything. We hear Albee’s lines describing a nascent radical of the Left, back in the day when the young were rife with such.  But, today, could he not be a radical of the Right more easily?

At one point Tobias, newspapers in hand, disparages the Republicans for being as brutal as ever.  It’s a line Albee updated in 1996 to reference Gingrich et al. (the plays seems to be produced only when Democrats are in office).  Tobias and Agnes are clearly meant to be “liberals,” and much of the play’s drama consists of them trying to decide what to do about another couple – their oldest friends, Harry and Edna – who simply turn up one night, claim they became frightened in their own home, and proceed to move in with Tobias and Agnes, while at the same time Julia, often shrill and sulky across the generation gap, has returned home as well.  It’s Julia (played with the requisite petulance by Keira Naughton) who claims her father’s “house is not in order,” and while we know that the Great Society was getting shaky in 1966, with the effort to accommodate everyone’s demands a strain on civility, how much more is that the case in 2010, as new movements attempt not only to undo Clinton and Johnson, but FDR as well?

I’ve mentioned all this at such length because it seems to me that Albee’s play, in Bundy’s recreation of it, has triumphantly entered the 21st century with its nimble allegory intact – “as we get older we become allegorical,” Agnes tells her husband, at times seeming to speak for her author.  In our times, it’s easy enough to imagine the “terror” or “plague,” as Agnes calls it, sweeping over Harry and Edna as tied to seismic economic change instead of to the alterations in mores of the Sixties. Certainly the couple's fear could be existential, but Claire, who seems in many ways the most savvy – “the walking wounded” are often “the least susceptible” to “the plague,” Agnes allows – jibes “I was wondering when it would begin, when it would start.” The statement comes from a perspective balanced precariously above a deluge to come.

All of which is to say the delights of this play tend to be thoughtful ones. Though it’s not a light night of theater, Bundy’s direction does find the surprised laughs, the quick wit, the rueful chuckles in the material, perhaps intruding a bit too much comedy into Edna’s initial annoucement of the couple’s fear. For a second we might think that Edna (Kathleen Butler) is simply immensely silly, but that’s not right. Edna, who is elsewhere rather flinty, has sense enough to deliver at least one of the morals of the story: that social life is always a testing of boundaries, of what is permitted, of what may be requested.

Most of the laughs come by way of Ellen McLaughlin’s Claire – wry, spirited, often performing for her sister and brother-in-law to provoke them from their rather formidable settledness. Stretching out on the floor, upending orange juice on the carpet, tootling an accordian, yodeling, recounting her grim days as a “willful drunk,” sniping at Agnes, who sees her as a knowing observer, Claire first appears in a sort of retro-punk ensemble, with spikey Laurie Anderson-like hair, but later cleans up nicely in a designer outfit. She’s nothing if not mercurial and McLaughlin makes the most of this plum role.

Kathleen Chalfant’s Agnes is much drier in her humor, just as pointed in exchanges, but much more self-reflexive in her speechifying. She has immense dignity and character. Not really likeable, most of the time, her statement of her wifely position in Act Three humanizes her to a surprising degree, allowing her to assert her role as the one on whom nothing can be lost, so that we understand why she opens and closes the play wondering, in very reasonable tones, if she may one day go mad. Her least “liberal” moment is her statement that Harry and Edna’s fear is an infectious disease that may infect them all. Has it already, we wonder.

The great asset of this production is Edward Herrmann as Tobias. Tall, broad-shouldered, with fluent hair and a graying beard, he mutters, constantly makes drinks, and drifts around his well-appointed livingroom, a wonderful Yale-ish space with dark wood and cathedral-like verticality by Chien-Yu Peng. Whereas Agnes says she is the fulcrum upon which all balances, Tobias is the one for whom she balances things. The women of his life are a context of incessant voices but to Tobias are given two of the most memorable speeches, the one about a cat he killed because she no longer liked him, and the other an “aria” or passionate outburst to Harry on the question of whether or not he wants his friend and his wife to stay. Herrmann, so bulkily patrician (he has played FDR, after all), has a great knack for delivering Tobias’ lines so that we can hear Tobias listening to himself, considering the impression his own words make on him, and in the outburst we hear Tobias desperately trying to sound and be sincere, to demand of himself sacrifice, to say that, yes, there is room for all, even if he has to dredge up caring from some forgotten cupboard in his soul.

In the film of this play, directed by Tony Richardson in 1973 for American Film Theater, the two leads are played by Paul Scofield and Katherine Hepburn and, great as those actors are, neither felt quite right to me, Scofield too tragic, Hepburn too tremulous. I found Chalfant’s Elaine Stritch-like clarity much more effective, and, great as Scofield is, think that Herrmann’s Tobias, a tower crumbing, will be the one I remember whenever I read this play.

Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance; directed by James Bundy; Yale Repertory Theatre

October 22 to November 13, 2010

En Français, s’il vout plaît

Treason.  Poems by Hédi Kaddour.  Translated by Marilyn Hacker.  Yale University Press, 168 pp. 2010. Hédi Kaddour writes a verse with clear antecedents in the meditative, ironical poems of Baudelaire and Verlaine.  If that dates him a bit, so be it.   Kaddour’s poems enchant with their ability to retain an intonation we immediately associate with Romanticism and Symbolism, hardly “state of the art” these days, combined with a wry sense of how a poet of that tendency inhabits uneasily, or maybe at times breezily, our much less “poetic” world.  The flâneur of today must live in a world where “a man declares / That buying books will soon become a clear / Sign of derangement, yes, insanity” (l’homme affirme / Que l’achat de livres sera bientôt un signe / De très forte aliénation mentale).

The world Kaddour’s poems partake of is a world where that possibility has always been the case inasmuch as “the Poet” has always been a figure of “très forte aliénation mentale” – a view that became commonplace after Romanticism, and, one suspects, Kaddour finds no reason to relinquish it.  He wears that outlook, we might say, as a mask over the features of his more persistent strain of polite skepticism about the Poet’s grand sense of outsider status, the inspired “folie” that makes poetry possible in that tradition.  “‘Save your tears,’ his mother told him early on, / ‘For more serious things.’ Poetry, / Grief contained by meter.” (“Garde tes larmes, disait très tôt la mère, / Pour des choses plus graves.” Poésie, le chagrin contenu par le mètre.)

Can this interplay with familiar territory in French verse come across in English?  I have my doubts, but those are doubts of long-standing since French is simply too flexible to suffer transformation into English, so that translations tend to seem hamfisted in comparison.  Take for instance a poem on the rather phallic bust of Verlaine in Jardin du Luxembourg:  “Verlaine?  He stands erect there on the grass, / Lyre and palm tree behind him, a bronze bust / Of Verlaine atop three good yards / Of cement prick around which writhe three / Unlikely Muses …” (Verlaine?  Il est dressé sur l’herbe / Lyre et palme dans le dos, Verlaine, / En buste, au sommet de trois bons / Mètres de pine granitique où se tordent / D’improbables muses…).  Kaddour’s “lyre et palme” references symbols for Apollo, but "palme" can simply mean the leaf, generally a symbol of success, the way we use the term "laurels," whereas "palm tree behind him" causes us to imagine an actual palm tree behind the statue which is a bit surprising, given that "dan le dos" suggests "on his back" as much as "behind him".  And we lose that repetition of the great man’s name that Kaddour uses with a shrug as if to say “eh, Verlaine, as a bust” (with all the attendant irony at the spectacle) that “a bronze bust of Verlaine” cannot convey, simply a flat declaration of the object of the poem.

Which is to say that I’m very pleased that this edition contains the French on facing pages.  Reading Hacker’s Kaddour without the French tended to leave me with very little impression of the tone of the poem.  She renders faithfully enough the words of the poem, but even there I have my cavils, as for instance here in “The Double,” one of the denser poems.  Kaddour says: C’est presque aussi la même folie de poussière / dans le même rayon de soleil; Hacker says: “It’s almost the same dusty madness / in the same sunbeam.”  Literally the phrase is: madness of dust, not very felicitous but closer to what Kaddour wants: the image of dust motes in their “mad” dance in the sunbeam, a figure that I can’t find in “dusty madness” – which reminds me more of my unvacuumed desk.

Ultimately, all I’m pointing out is how hard it is to render the effect of verse like Kaddour’s in English.  In French such effects may seem a bit staid, but I’m enough of a classicist in things French to appreciate the effort of these poems, most of which begin with lines that are rhetorically quite graceful.  And every now and then there’s a jab of that Gallic spleen we expect from the French:

Knothead wears jeans knothead Wears blue he writes to be A writer writes that he is a writer And gets his pals to write That no one could be more a writer His photo says it all it’s the face Of a writer with a flair for writing.

Hédi Kaddour reads his poetry (in English) at the Whitney Humanities Center, Room 208, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, Wednesday, October 27th, 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Sound Hall This Monday

I'm flattered to have been asked to take part in an extremely interesting new series called Sound Hall. Rather than attempting to describe it (poorly) myself, I'll just steal from the effort's website, which reads:

Sound Hall is a curated speaker and performance series, presented by Championsound, cosponsored by the Public Humanities Initiative at Yale University, and Detritus Project.

The Sound Hall series gathers diverse audiences together in various public spaces throughout New Haven, with the aim of creating meaningful spaces for collective listening. Our speakers are fascinating figures in the worlds of music, film, journalism, literature, and beyond. As part of Sound Hall, they are given a stage to perform and discuss the music and sounds that have mattered most in their personal, intellectual, and professional lives. We believe music and sound collectors are also historians and that, to different degrees, we are all archivists. We collect music and sound in the forms of records, tapes, CDs, but also in different forms of personal memory and history. When we listen to a song, or a certain collection of sounds, we build particular stories around what we hear—about our pasts, our presents, and our futures. Sound Hall is where we will gather to think through and listen to some of those stories.

Sound Hall's first event features none other than Ian Svenonius, who, among several other things, has fronted several well-known D.C. bands, including Nation of Ulysses and Weird War. Apparently he's going to spin records—of what? I do not know—and talk about them, with me moderating the discussion between him and the audience, and possibly peppering him with questions myself. Like I said, I'm flattered. And psyched.

To prepare, I've been reading Svenonius's 2006 collection of essays, The Psychic Soviet. I plan to write more about this book when I'm done, but right now, suffice to say that its adorable exterior (it's so little! And hot pink! Yes, nod to the Little Red Book caught, thanks)—belies the hilarious, excoriating, brilliant/zany arguments lodged within.

I'm excited. And you should be, too. Come on down.

Ian Svenonius speaks at the first Sound Hall at Detritus, 71 Orange Street, New Haven, CT.

6 p.m. Free.

Getting Through the Door

The Yale Cabaret keeps you guessing.  When you enter the downstairs space at 217 Park Street, you never know what to expect.  Last week was no exception, and the show I saw was sold out.  There’s nothing quite like experiencing odd theater with a full house.  It means reactions are everywhere, a situation the Cab thrives on. The feature was a series of one acts given the collective title Future Oprah Lovesong, but consisting of three plays written by Justin Taylor: “The Future, Gone Out of Business,” directed by Ethan Heard, featured a young boy and his doting dad, dismayed to learn that the portal to the future is closed because it’s “out of business”; “Oprah-Ganesh,” directed by Jack Tamburri, in which a young woman wants to pass through a different portal (this time a door decorated with a huge replica of a human vagina), only to discover that she first has to get in touch with her inner Oprah, or maybe her inner Ganesh (the Indian elephant-headed god) – masks/wigs provided – to do so; and “Lovesong,” directed by Heard, a two-person play in which the same lines are delivered in a variety of contexts – lovers in love, lovers fighting, mother and son, and, my favorite, woman and her dog.

The main fun of a night at the Cab – not knowing where it’s going – was entertainingly sustained by the production.  The first play seemed like it might be a bittersweet coming-of-age comedy/drama – especially with the child’s (Martha Jane Kaufman) tricycle, balloon, cap and gleeful expletives, and the father’s bond with his child, both amusing and touching.  But when the father (Will Cobbs) ends up dead for refusing to cease and desist in his insistence that the future be opened back up, and the child takes matters into his own hands, the play has suddenly veered into areas more unsettling.

And that’s where we stayed, with “Oprah-Ganesh.”  Though played for laughs, a play in which a burly Mask Technician (Ryan Hales) sports at his crotch a phallic squirt bottle that dispenses a milky fluid – which the Playwright (Hannah Rae Montgomery) is encouraged, by prompts to the audience, to drink – is bound to be a bit off-putting to some.  Or maybe not.  Certainly the need to get through the portal became more allegorical as we went – initiation into sex, birth canal, recognition of feminine power as Oprah herself might encourage?  Perhaps a vagina sculpture can be all things to all people.  Seeing Montgomery, a small white woman, imitate, in Ganesh mask and Oprah wig, Oprah’s gushy manner was certainly amusing, and the trio of uncredited participants, called upon to interact lasciviously with the pudendal portal, was also diverting.

In “Lovesong,” the portal remained, sans its distinctive decoration, and allowed one or the other of the duo (Miriam Hyman and Will Cobbs) to come and go, each time setting off a new riff on the interchange, involving words of apology, desire, forgiveness and love, that, come to think of it, are pretty much the standard tropes of any love song you’d care to name.  This inventive piece, with immense talent displayed by Hyman and Cobbs, got the biggest hand of the night.

As sometimes happens with theater that pushes in various directions at once, the star of the evening could be said to be the audience that gathered to help the Cab do its thing.

Next up, a re-invention of Chekhov’s one-act The Wedding Reception, transposed to an Eastern European disco of the 1980s.

Future Oprah Lovesong; written by Justin A. Taylor; directed by Ethan Heard and Jack Tamburri; October 14-15, 2010

Yale Cabaret, 217 Park Street, New Haven.  203.432.1566. www.yalecabaret.org

Starting Thursday at 8 p.m.: The Wedding Reception; written by Anton Chekhov; translated by Paul Schmidt; directed by Alex Mihail; October 21-23.

Poetry a la Yale UP

We don't write often about Yale University Press.  Hey, it has its own publicity department so it doesn't really need our help. But then again when a personal request comes our way and the event is local, we do now and again feel the obligation.

The occasion for this obligation is a reading by acclaimed French writer, Hédi Kaddour, whose poetry collection Treason, translated by Marilyn Hacker, was issued by Yale University Press in spring 2010.

Ah, but you ask: who is this Monsieur Kaddour? We quote the omniscient Wikipedia:

Il est né d'un père tunisien et d'une mère française. Agrégé de lettres modernes, il est traducteur de l'anglais, l'allemand et l'arabe. Il a enseigné la littérature française et la dramaturgie à l'École normale supérieure de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud/Lyon et l'écriture journalistique au Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ). Il est aujourd'hui professeur de littérature française à la New York University in France et à l'Ecole des métiers de l'information (EMI-CFD) où il est responsable de l'atelier d'écriture.

What?  You don't read French.  OK, we'll take a feeble stab at it.

Born of a Tunisian father and French mother.  An editor of contemporary literature, he is a translator of English, German and Arabic.  He has taught French literature and drama at the Ecole Normale Superieure (etc.) and journalism at the Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ). He is presently a professor of French literature at NYU in France and at l'Ecole des métiers de l'information (EMI-CFD) where he is responsible for the writing workshop.

Mr. Kaddour will be reading (in English) at the Whitney Humanities Center here at Yale, located at 53 Wall Street, New Haven, on Wednesday, October 27th from from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.  Check it out.

Who Thought Murder in Westville Could Be So Much Fun?

EXTRA! EXTRA! A BROKEN UMBRELLA THEATRE PRESENTS THE ALMOST ENTIRELY TRUE STORY OF A  WESTVILLE MURDER!

(New Haven, CT – October 5, 2010) Cops and criminals. Headlines and handcuffs. Villains and vaudeville. Extra! Extra! From the team that transformed the tunnel in Edgewood Park into a pirate’s lair with their sold out 2009 spectacle Thunderbolt, comes A Broken Umbrella Theatre’s newest creation VaudeVillain. This fall, the line between fact and fiction thins to a blur when the audience is lead on a “who done it?” psychological, Halloween adventure traveling through every room in Lyric Hall Antiques & Conservation, 827 Whalley Avenue, on October 23, 24, 30 and 31.

Ripped from the actual New Haven newspaper headlines of 1913, mystery and mayhem abound as we follow the trail of a suspected murderer, William Allen, from song to scene to sensational dream. The past meets the present during a surreal finale in the beautifully restored and ghostly West Rock Vaudeville Theatre, newly renamed The Showroom at Lyric Hall. An eerie and festive Halloween experience awaits you!

Performances of VaudeVillain will be on Saturday, October 23 at 7pm and 9pm and Sunday, October 24 at 2pm and 6pm. During Halloween Weekend, performances will be on Saturday, October 30 and Sunday, October 31 at 2pm, 6pm and 8pm. Limited reservations are available for $15 per ticket at www.facebook.com/brokenumbrella, on sale starting Friday, October 8. Day-of-show ticket distribution is available one hour prior to the start of each performance on a first come, first serve basis at the box office located at Lyric Hall Antiques & Conservation, 827 Whalley Avenue, New Haven. Day-of-show tickets are Pay-What-You-Can. Not recommended for ages 10 and below. On street parking is available in the Westville neighborhood of New Haven as well as the lot in Edgewood Park off of West Rock Avenue. For more information about additional Halloween activities for all ages in the vibrant Westville neighborhood, please visit www.westvillect.org.

Conceived and developed by A Broken Umbrella Theatre, VaudeVillain features a cast and crew of local New Haven artists as well as additional professionals hailing from New York, New Jersey and Hawaii.  Words: Ken Baldino. Script: The Ensemble. Music and Lyrics: Rob Shapiro. Direction: Ian Alderman. Historian: Colin Caplan. Production Team: Jes Mack, Brandon Fuller, Jen McClure, Denise Santisteban, Ryan Gardner, Jason Wells, Ian Alderman, Rachel Alderman and John Caveliere. Choreography: Robin Levine. Musical Director: Dana Astmann. Graphic design by Vaxa Creative. A Broken Umbrella Theatre is supported by a Mayor’s Arts Grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of New Haven.

A Broken Umbrella Theatre aspires to enhance the vitality of our community through compelling storytelling, mined from history, with a commitment to aesthetic rigor. For more information please visit www.facebook.com/brokenumbrella

For more information on VaudeVillain or to learn more about A Broken Umbrella Theatre contact:

Rachel Alderman at rachel @ abrokenumbrella.org

Which Side Are You On?

For the second feature in the Yale Cabaret’s 2010-11 Season, Artistic Director Andrew Kelsey, project initiator Louisa Proske, director Flordelino Lagundino, and producer Jennifer Newman offer a truly surprising and striking work, Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000), a vision of dystopia whose full horror sneaks up on you, a horror perfectly etched with inspired absurdist control. Churchill’s plays typically explore themes of social and political dysfunction, but unlike some of her work, Far Away does not reference any overtly topical themes.  Instead, Far Away maintains a grasp on the political realm by suggesting how “regularized” or “normative” the most appalling circumstances can become.  The totalitarian state functioning beyond the scenes we see portrayed can only be inferred, and that is what makes the play so lethal: the way references to the status quo always presuppose the logic – and an acceptance – of the situation, whatever it may be.  As we gradually get up to speed – in three scenes taking place over an indeterminate span of years – we find that the world of the play has either gone entirely mad, or is literally comprised of endless war efforts, not only international, but interspecies in scope.

The great strength of this play is how good the dialogue is.  In the first scene, a woman named Harper (Alexandra Henrikson) tries to command her niece Joan (Laura Gragtmans) to return to bed, only to uncover gradually that the niece has witnessed her uncle involved in an act of brutality, an act that Harper denies, then reinterprets for Joan’s benefit so that it seems a benign act, all for the best, though one that must be kept secret.  What we don’t know, for a fact, is whether or not this couple is trafficking in abducted children or is actually helping them escape while brutally punishing traitors, but in either case, the slow burn by which the step-by-step discussion takes place establishes a world where normality is a thin veneer over inhuman acts, whether desperate or depraved.

The second scene is a workplace, a hat-making shop.  But the oddities of the headgear being prepared by Joan (now young adult) and her senior co-worker Todd (Chris Henry) add an element of humor to what soon becomes another appalling situation.  In the midst of their amiable workplace flirtation are little dropped facts like watching televised trials late into the night, or arbitrary problems with the workers’ job security.  We learn that the hats are for parades, and shortly after we witness an example, as limping, zombie-like figures cross the stage, drably attired but for fantastical hats.  It was a stunning moment of theater, implying both a complete loss of human dignity as well as gesturing to what we might think of as totalitarian aesthetics, adding a touch of the circus on the way to the gallows (a tip of the hat to Costume Designer Ana Milosevic for the entertaining chapeaus atop figures from a gulag).

In the final scene, the world is at war, as we learn strictly from the dialogue between Harper and Todd, waiting in Harper’s bland living room for Joan to return, and debating which animals and other creatures have joined forces with which nations.  Churchill pushes the idea that “everything is political” to its logical, absurd conclusion: even the animal kingdom is political.

The revelation for me in this production was Henrikson’s performance – in the first scene she was young and maternal, a bit steely perhaps, but we are not sure at once who is the problem: her or her niece.  As the dialogue unfolds we remain uncertain: is Harper completely duplicitous, making up things to explain away Joan’s fears, or uncertainly initiating the girl into the harsh realities of their world?  And it is that uncertainty about Harper’s character that makes her so intriguing.  In the final scene, Henrikson conjures an older Harper, not bitter so much as run ragged by maintaining a grasp of the world that necessitates knowing, for instance, which side the deer are on.  As she berates Todd for his slips in the party line, her hectoring tone – despite the absurdly wild things she is saying – never slips into comic histrionics.  We see a woman who actually lives in the world she describes, thus making it vivid and real to us as well, and unforgettable.

Far Away has two more performances: tonight, Sat. 25th, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Far Away, written by Caryl Churchill; directed by Flordelino Lagundino

Yale Cabaret, 217 Park Street, New Haven; 203.432.1566; www.yalecabaret.org

So we beat on . . .

muse, the final show of the Yale Summer Cabaret 2010 season, is an original dance-theater piece, a two-character drama that presents the story of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald from the point of view of the afterlife. Brenna Palughi conceived the idea, scripted it in collaboration with her production team, Danny Binstock, Walter Chon, and Adina Verson, directs and choreographed the show, and stars as Zelda.  She finds in the story of these literary icons the kind of vivid fascination that, these days, attaches to the likes of Brangelina.  Scott and Zelda lived lives that were not only passionate and artistic, but were also emblems of their era, the Roaring Twenties, forever associated with them, both because of Scott's works, such as The Great Gatsby (1925), and the couple's lifestyle.

To present the reality of the couple, Palughi's script uses only the duo's actual words -- mainly from their considerably articulate correspondence.  But rather than try to recreate the events of the couple's life, Palughi cannily creates a retrospective fantasy, a kind of Satrean "no exit" space where the couple have to face eternity by trying to make sense of what they were to each other and why it went so wrong.

One of the most unforgettable moments, as a glimpse into the abyss the public couple tried to skirt, derives from a transcript of a session at the Fitzgeralds' home with a  psychologist (voice of Joby Earle) in attendance to act as arbitrator.  Zelda, who had wanted to be a dancer, published a novel, thus treading on her husband's territory.  Worse, she was now working on a novel based on events Scott was trying for years to draft as material for what would eventually become Tender is the Night (1934).  To hear Scott baldly declare the conditions under which his wife must live, in order to continue being his wife, is rather appalling to anyone who expects something closer to mutuality in marriage.  On the other hand, the position Scott speaks from is not really one of bullying strength, no matter how his words sound.  He is in need of Zelda, hence the title of the piece: muse.  Without Zelda's participation in his life, Scott seems to fear a loss of his bearings, but at the same time, any act she might take in her own interest would be considered a complete betrayal.

As Scott, Binstock enacts vividly Scott's nature via dance and dialogue.  He displays graceful self-control in a lengthy dance piece with Palughi that narrates the couple's entire story with considerable economy and aplomb, but we see the pressures he faces take actual physical toll on his movements.  And in his spoken protests and pleas Binstock shows us a Scott verging on a loss of control that, if it were to occur, might have been a saving grace.  Instead, we always feel Scott's grasp of himself, so thoroughly buttoned up in his lovely suits, no less tenacious for being tentative and vulnerable.  Only when he dances do we see some of the "light fantastic" that makes the prose so golden, so self-assured.

In a segment where word and movement are particularly well matched and powerful, Zelda kneels on the stage reading a letter from Scott comprised of nothing but hurtful, insistent, resentful, relentless questions while behind her Scott performs a marionette's series of jerks, slaps, and contortions.  Here we see the perfect visual realization of something almost inhumanly mechanical -- the way his concept of himself as a writer controlled Scott just as fiercely as his need to control Zelda.

As Zelda, Palughi's dancing is able to express an openness and abandon that seems, from all accounts, to have been part of Zelda's fascination.  But it's also fascinating to hear how lucid she could be, even when threatened with an asylum.  Palughi's voice at times gets strident but never veers into the kind of hysteria we might expect.  Her Zelda is verbally in control, even if her expression at times becomes a doll-like fixity, the mournful gaze of a spirit trapped forever in her husband's vision of her.

For all the tensions and darkness of this marriage, Palughi's sense of the material highlights its romantic potential.  Elizabeth Groth's costumes are lovely; her set is a world literally papered with words; the music -- Gershwin for instance -- breathes with rapture and jaunty melancholy; Sarah Lasley's newsreel-like projections add the necessary touch of the mediated reality that encroached on these lives, making them famous and a part of our nation's permanent record.

In the afterlife, "hell is other people," but if the people were truly a couple -- overriding even "til death do us part" -- it may be possible to see that the feeling "to be young then was very heaven" might also override all-too-human failings with the heady thrill of being "beautiful and damned" for all time.

muse;  conceived and directed by Brenna Palughi

July 29-August 14, 8 p.m.; August 7, 2 p.m.

Yale Summer Cabaret: 203.432.1567; SummerCabaret.org

Strange Love in NYC

When it debuted in Yale Cabaret's 2009/10 Season, Janyia Antrum's campy sci-fi musical Strange Love in Outer Space was the success story of The Dwight/Edgewood Project (see my review here).  Now its success continues with the play's debut in New York in the eclectic and exciting New York Fringe Festival, Aug. 14, 17, 19, 21, and 23, including a mention in the New York Times. The Dwight/Edgewood Project is held every July under the auspices of Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theater.  It's a four week program that introduces New Haven area kids to the elements of theater, from playwrighting and design to acting and directing, with classes staffed by Yale School of Drama students.  For the last two years, August Lewis Troup Middle School and Wexler-Grant Community School have been partners in the project.

Janyia wrote the first part of Strange Love in summer 2009, at the age of twelve.  When she got home after the project ended, she felt the urge to continue the story and wrote a second part.  The Yale Cabaret commissioned a third act and then produced the play.  Jorge Rodriguez, who has worked with Janyia as a producer from the beginning, comments: Janyia "wrote a play that was incredibly well structured, with outstanding character development and incredibly funny."  The play impressed her fellow students at D/EP and the staff "was stunned by her sense of comedic timing.  The zany, campy humor that distinguishes this play were of her own creation and a result, as she often joked about, of years of watching TV sitcoms like The Nanny."

Christopher Mirto, who directed the D/EP production and the Yale Cab production, is at the helm again for the Fringe production.  He also plays the memorable role of Mr. Grumis, a fish-like alien who courts the statuesque Splontusia.  For Mirto, the play works for a lot of reasons:

"Janyia's story is actually really moving and has a strong leading female character. It's campy fun but very serious and imaginative and comes from such a genuine place. It's surprisingly smart, has great comic timing, [and] the songs move the plot forward; the characters are crazy, but have very clear desires. The Fringe is a good fit because it's an unusual show in style, form, characters, design. It doesn't have a big or complicated design, so it's easy to transfer. Kind of like Pixar films, it appeals to adults and children."

The Fringe version features some of the same cast as the Cabaret version -- Mirto, and his longtime associate Brian Valencia, who also mentored Janyia in D/EP, as the dastardly Dr. Tuscanunin -- but also presents some changes, with Caitlin Clouthier, from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, in the central role of multi-eyed Splontusia, and recent YSD graduate Aja Naomi King as B'Quisha Star Jones, the dog/pirate queen.  The new production also boasts a new song.

The Fringe is a huge, sprawling drama festival that Mirto calls "a total crapshoot."  The sublime and the ridiculous rub shoulders and you go in not quite knowing what you're going to get.  Strange Love has already proven itself capable of mixing it up with the challenging and off-the-wall offerings of the Cab, and now it will run side-by-side with the off-off-Broadway shows of the West Village.

Mirto's excited by the challenge and comments, "There is this really nice non-jaded aspect of Janyia that is refreshing for me: she reminds me that it should be fun, it should entertain, and it should be simple; and that imagination goes a long way!"

It's an imagination that has created a play that's out of this world, a play that has already gone a long way from an afterschool project to a New York city debut.

Strange Love in Outer Space, A Musical Traumedy

Book and Lyrics by Janyia Antrum; Music by Nick Morgan; Directed by Christopher Mirto

The Cherry Pit (venue #14), 155 Bank Street, New York, NY (West & Washington Street)

Sat. Aug. 14, 2:15 p.m.; Tues. Aug. 17, 10:30 p.m.; Thurs. Aug. 19, 8 p.m.; Sat. Aug. 21, 5:30 p.m.; Mon. Aug. 23, 4 p.m; Tickets $15-$18; for tickets: www.FringeNYC.org

Presented by The New York International Fringe Festival; A Production of The Present Company

True, too True

Dino Buzzati once began a story: “A strange thing has just happened to me – an extraordinary thing – I haven’t decided whether or not to tell my editor.” That’s a chilling but accurate glimpse into the soul of the freelance writer. For the better part of the last twenty years, whenever anything strange or extraordinary has happened to me, I’ve immediately wondered whether to tell it to Alison True, the editor of the Chicago Reader. I got lost on the way to the airport – a perfect little anecdote for the Reader. I contracted a rare eye disease – during the treatment, I was taking notes for the eventual feature story in the Reader. A man sitting next to me on the subway dropped dead of a heart attack – and I began musing, “Write this up for Alison, collect a couple of hundred bucks … hey, this is turning out to be a pretty good day.” The Reader is one of the most successful and longest-lived alt-weeklies in America. Alison started there in 1984, just out of college – her first job was in the mail room – and she was named editor in 1995. She’s spent her entire career staying out of the limelight. If you Google her – or anyway if you did up until a couple of weeks ago – the only hits are in generic articles called things like “Fifty Women in Chicago Publishing.” No controversial interviews, no grand pronouncements on the future of journalism. Her byline has rarely appeared in the Reader itself; in most issues, the only place her name turns up is on the masthead. But the paper has been, week after week, a continual demonstration of her skill and taste as an editor. Many people who’ve worked there over the years have thought of it as Alison’s high-pressure boot camp in old-school journalism.

Mostly the Reader has specialized in local affairs – which given that the locality is Chicago has meant a certain preoccupation with the corrupt and the bizarrely violent, the sorts of hot-button issues that the local mainstream papers are too complacent to touch (there were two decades of stories about police torturing confessions from suspects – the ringleader was recently convicted in a federal court). But Alison has also encouraged writers to wander and experiment. I spent many years, with Alison’s encouragement, pushing at the boundaries of long-form journalism. 30,000 words about American memories of World War 2. 35,000 words about my father-in-law, a Russian émigré who grew up in China. 45,000 words about the history of my family house in small-town Illinois. Each time I’d tell Alison that I’d finally come up with an idea for a story she’d never be able to use. “Try it anyway,” she’d say. “I love a challenge.”

Alison has also put her pervasive but unobtrusive stamp on the Reader’s internal culture. Its original crew of editors practiced a management style I’d call “hippie machismo.” They weren’t a touchy-feely crowd, those guys (and they were all guys). I told one of them that I’d been writing for the Reader for years and still had no idea whether they even liked my work, because they’d never said a word to me about it. “We publish you,” he answered. “That ought to be praise enough.” Alison changed all that. She’s regularly complimented people on good work (the first time she did it with me, I thought she was being sarcastic). The Reader’s copy editors became unfailingly nice, even when they were persecuting your first draft with mosquito-swarms of nitpicks. Alison got to be an adept at the dark art of coaxing writers into revisions. One time when I was dawdling over a story, she called me near midnight and said she couldn’t go home until I turned in the revised copy. I parried by suggesting that we both get some sleep and I’d send it to her first thing in the morning. She sighed. “That’s okay, I understand,” she said. “You get some sleep. I’ll just stay here and catch up on my paperwork.”

I knew she was bluffing. But I capitulated anyway – because I also knew (and she knew I knew) that she was eight and a half months pregnant.

Alison cajoled, and nagged, and bribed, and badgered; she put up with all kinds of tantrums (my wife says she once passed by my study and heard me yelling into the phone, “I am speechless with rage!”); I ultimately wrote around a quarter of a million words for her – and I wasn’t even one of the Reader’s most prolific contributors. Some of it is among the best writing I ever expect to do. But the highest compliment I can pay to Alison as an editor is that I think the Reader got better after I stopped writing for it.

The Reader was a comfortably profitable business for three decades, and then almost overnight began hemorrhaging money (the advent of Craig's List wiped out its gigantic weekly section of classified ads). Since then, there’s been wave after wave of budget cuts, staff firings and layoffs, and the inexorable shrinking of editorial space down to almost nothing. My long-form stories were among the first casualties. There were no hard feelings (I’ve gone on to an even longer form known as “books”) and Alison has still tried to get in a couple of little pieces of mine into the paper every year or so. But meanwhile, with a ghost-town office and a skeleton staff, she’s rallied and been printing some of the finest journalism in the Reader’s history. The Reader has been running stories about Chicago’s hidden world of financial chicanery that in a just world would have earned a Pulitzer. But then, if there really was any justice, people would be talking about Alison’s run at the Reader as the alt-weekly equivalent of William Shawn’s glory days at The New Yorker.

In the last few weeks, as the news spread that Alison was suddenly gone from the Reader, I’ve been getting emails from some of the old crew asking me how she’s doing and what the real story of her departure is. I love gossip as much as anybody, but the answers are disappointing. She’s not bad, considering; and there isn’t much of a real story. The Reader’s newest owners have a new business plan (it involves “pushing at” the firewall between editorial and advertising) and Alison doesn’t fit in. Nothing personal. There’s just for a lot of us around town the soundless gut-punch awareness of her absence. It’s a strange, even extraordinary feeling. I keep thinking I should write it up for her. It’ll take me a while to get used to the idea that I can’t.

Lee Sandlin is the author of Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild, to be published in October by Pantheon.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Director Devin Brain and the cast of the current Yale Summer Cabaret show, The Phoenix, have given themselves quite a task: to render a situation that could be either fantasy or reality, when either is potentially alienating.  Based on a haunting story by best-selling Australian author Isobelle Carmody, the play has been derived by the cast via an improvisational process of discovery, which means that the presentation is not scripted so much as agreed upon through trial and error during a long period of gestation.

If that sounds daunting, it should.  But it also may be the best way to approach a story like this which relies so much on shared fantasy among its characters.  The logic seems to be: if the actors are making things up together to make the play exist in the first place, they'll be all the more convincing as the fantasizing characters they portray.

William (Ben Horner), we're told, is the "local feral child" -- an amusing appellation, but one that means his character will be hard to read.  He addresses Ragnar (Shannon Sullivan) as a princess -- and not figuratively.  He actually seems to believe they are foundlings from another world, left to wander a beach deserted but for a wounded gull Ragnar names Greedy.  In addition to using a bird puppet, the play fleshes out the bird via William Demeritt, complete with feathers at his temples, a brace, and a crutch, appearing at times like a guardian spirit fallen on hard times as he manipulates dolls that emulate the scenes the actors play out.

Though the dark backstories of Ragnar and William are a bit sketchily thrown at us before we have much idea of what's going on, Horner and Sullivan fascinate us with the strange mix of desperation, denial, and happy inspirations that unite the duo.  One device I particularly liked was Sullivan showing us, mutely, a series of photographs while looking at us with facial expressions that telegraphed exactly how Ragnar felt about each image and how we should read them.  That didn't mean we necessarily grasped the narrative, but the effort to communicate it was palpable.

But when Torvald (Joby Earle), a charismatic boy from a different class and school, enters the scene, things really begin to click.  Before that we're just trying to follow the logic of a folie à deux that seems harmless if unsettling; once the third character is introduced we have a conflict.  Will he enter -- as he seems to -- the rather grand, Dungeons and Dragons-like world the other two mentally inhabit, or repudiate it?  And if he does enter it, is he sincere or after something?

At this point in the story, the three principals act out their interactions via the dolls, and suddenly a feeling of truly being transported to those fabled lands of childhood playtime comes to life.  And once Brain and company has us entertaining how wonderfully trusting and expressive and vulnerable that world of shared make believe can be, they've got us primed for where they want to take us.  It becomes an uncompromising and tragic play about the unwritten laws we intuit and then either respect or betray when entering into private, personal bonds with one another.

As ever at the Cabaret, it's the unexpected touches that impress us as theater: the song William makes up, seemingly on the spot; Ragnar's bike helmet; Torvald's inspired use of an overhead projector; moody musical tones, particularly an expressive acoustic guitar part, that surrounds the action, provided by musical director Nathan Roberts; and, finally, that frail craft -- a boat upon a boat -- that gives us poetry as closure.

The Phoenix, from the story by Isobelle Carmody; adapted by Devin Brain and the cast; directed by Devin Brain

July 1-17, 8 p.m.; additional 2 p.m. show on the 10th; Yale Summer Cabaret, 203.432.1567