All the World's a Stage
The joy of independent theatre and local culture
In fourth grade, my class went on a field trip to see Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts in downtown Vancouver. Afterwards, I became obsessed with the show and my obliging parents borrowed the soundtrack CD from the library and recorded it onto a cassette tape for me. For the next several weeks, maybe even months, every time our family went for a drive, I’d force everyone to listen to it.
I wouldn’t exactly call myself a theatre buff, especially since there are big gaps in my knowledge. For instance, I’ve never seen Hamlet (either on stage or film). Once in college, a classmate talked about a play by Eugene Ionesco and I asked him if Eugene was an upperclassman. More recently, a friend said she’d seen A Doll’s House and I thought she was talking about that Eliza Dushku TV show.
Nevertheless, certain plays and musicals exist vividly in my memory. Towards the end of eighth grade, when I was about to make the scary transition from public co-ed to private all-boys education, our class went to see Twelfth Night, which, because of that fun yet bittersweet period (the best kind), remains my favourite Shakespeare play. In senior year of high school, we put on a joint production of Little Shop of Horrors with our sister school. I couldn’t sing, so I eagerly signed up to be crew, mainly to meet girls. My university memories are coloured by Merrily We Roll Along (which I watched on a quasi-date), Wanda’s Visit (one of my few acting credits), Working and Into The Woods (both of which I played piano for). My pit career continued into law school with Rent and Urinetown. In Working and Rent, I both fell for my conductors (Lydia Tar would’ve eaten me alive).
I don’t go see Broadway productions that often, though I will see Yellow Face with a couple of friends soon. I’m much more drawn to independent DIY theatre. I’ve written before how I dabbled in playwriting in college because it seemed like the most social form of creative writing.1 What could be better than having your work brought to life by your friends who were under your command? The art form also felt as though time had passed it by, but that just meant only those who truly loved it—not the fame seekers, money coveters, zeitgeist chasers, etc.—would be involved.
Last Friday night, I went to the opening night of
’s newest play, Denmark (directed by Tom Meglio), at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research (the show will continue to run throughout October and likely beyond2). It’s a play about a family that can’t trust each other and how that plague is contagious from parents to their children.I’ve seen quite a few plays at BCTR now (almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about one of those plays, Zoomers3) and Denmark has been my most enjoyable experience there so far. The two parent characters in particular, Paul (played by Gil Cole) and Elaine (played by Meg MacCary), invigorate the narrative with a funny, horrifying, and ultimately, sad power that stories about attractive young people and their problems—as artistically legitimate and entertaining as those can be—usually cannot match. With young people, we can hope they will have ample time to make amends for their mistakes; with older people, we have to accept that they’re permanently scarred, even crippled, by theirs. But the young characters are compelling too, especially since the twisted sibling relationship between Harper (played by Sophia Englesberg) and Ryan (played by Max Richards) makes for crackling dark comedy.
It's both comedic and tragic to watch Paul and Elaine bombard each other with accusations and taunts about each other’s marital infidelities (in full view of their children), only for them to then have to try to assert some moral authority when they learn that Harper, now a college student, has been in a relationship with her married high school English teacher, Mason (played by Ross Alden), since she was 17.
When Paul, a professor who has a history of having affairs with his grad students, explodes in rage at Mason, you’re left wondering what he’s truly mad about. Is it because a 17-year old high schooler is too young, as opposed to a 20-something grad student, in terms of getting romantically involved with a teacher/professor? Is it out of fatherly heterosexual jealousy? Tellingly, Paul is indifferent to, even disappointed in, Ryan’s homosexuality.
Elaine, who herself once was Paul’s grad student, experiences the double ignominy of not only Paul cheating on her with someone she once was, but also seeing her daughter follow somewhat in her own footsteps. Is Elaine a victim or a perpetrator who’s now shifted roles since it’s implied she now has affairs with younger men?
Together, what moral credibility do Paul and Elaine have in the eyes of their children? What credibility do they ought to have? Is parental respect earned or given? Is their crime that they have flaws? Or that they didn’t hide them well enough? The ending, which I felt came a bit too abruptly, suggests parents don’t have the luxury to dwell too much on such abstract questions.
After the performance as we were all hanging out on the roof (soon enough, it’ll be too cold to enjoy the beautiful view of Manhattan from there), I received confirmation that, yes, the title is an allusion to Hamlet. I really should watch it sometime, finally.
The next week, on a wretchedly humid Thursday night, I trekked up to the Upper West Side to the Center at West Park for Sarah Norcross’4 Ulysses Missa. “Missa” is the Latin word for (Catholic) mass and the play is a tongue-in-cheek religious ceremony in which Ulysses functions as the Bible for modernism. Appropriately, it was performed in the West Park Presbyterian Church, which we were told had saved from the brink of demolition thanks to the Mark Ruffalo and Kenneth Lonergan.
In preparation for this play, I’d boldly posted in a Substack note that I’d try to read Ulysses within the 3-week time window I had. I thought that saying it publicly would instill some sense of heightened accountability in me. It was a miserable failure. I made it to about 10 pages. In my defense, I had a lot of other reading to do. So while I caught very few of the references in the play, I still enjoyed watching and listening to Stephen Dedalus (played by Chris Marth), Leopold Bloom (played by Ongama Mhlontlo), Molly Bloom (played by Avery Pedell), Miss Kennedy (played by Aiyana Greene), Blazes Boylan (played by Matt Greer), and Getty McDowell (played by Sarah herself) sing some beautifully eclectic songs that were not only reminiscent of Catholic hymns, but also Philip Glass and Frank Zappa.
Following the performance, I ran into a couple of people I’d met at Faustine, another one of Sarah’s plays. That had been back in January, on one of the coldest nights of the year. I remember waiting in a small crowd out on the sidewalk of a quiet block in Bushwick, all of us eager for the townhouse basement doors to open so we could stop shivering. That was an excellent show too, a demonic one-woman musical in which the wickedly ambitious Faustine (played by Lydia Brinkman) climbs the academia hierarchy by committing murders here and there. I sat in the front row, where we were advised to put on plastic coverings because we’d be in the blast radius of an exploding tomato.
I like going to both movies and plays alone (I went to Denmark with a friend and to Ulysses Missa solo), but there’s a distinct difference between the two. With movies, it’s easy to feel as if you’re there for a private event as the darkness erases everyone around you. At a play, it’s hard to forget that you’re part of an audience. And not just the audience, but the venue itself—whether it’s a fabled old playhouse, a living room, a warehouse, etc.—becomes part of the experience. Plays are a great way to meet new friends, too. It’s kind of weird to chat up strangers after a movie. But after a live show, there’s a communal spirit in the air that lends itself to conversations with strangers.
And I love talking to theatre people because I’ve always admired their dedication to their craft. Writing fiction and essays is no cinch, but it’s a more intensely private affair that, at worst, engenders timidity. But there’s nowhere to hide in theatre. It demands an uncontrollable openness that I simultaneously think is something to personally aspire to and also stay far away from.
Someone recently left a comment on one of my London travel pieces, asking what life in NYC was like. So I’m thinking of writing more about local cultural things I go to. The Saturday before I went to see Denmark, I went to an event put on by ProjectIII5—a movement-based interdisciplinary arts organization—called Embodied Earth: Garden of Voices, which took place in the Frank White Memorial Garden in Harlem. Kasey Broekema, the founder of ProjectIII, is someone whom I met rather randomly this past summer a movement-based interdisciplinary arts organization. The event sought to promote urban farming, so I got to watch composting demonstrations and nature-inspired dance performances. It was certainly a memorable way to spend a weekend night.
And this past Friday, I went to another edition of
’s TENSE reading series. At one point, Beckett chided us in the younger generations for being so lame and drained of our libidos because of our phones, whereas he’d lost his virginity at 14. I thought about what I was doing at 14. That was the age when I went to see Twelfth Night!Readings are essentially theatre, except you spend much more time drinking and chatting than being in an audience. Everytime I go to these things, I always wonder how many people treat these types of events like parties. Nothing wrong with them if they do since I sort of do as well, though the actual readings can be enjoyable sometimes too. It makes more sense to socialize at these things than at some club where you can’t hear anyone. Much thanks to the good souls who puts these things together.
Funnily enough, though, I did go to a club with friends after the TENSE reading. Back in that strange but memorable COVID’s-over-but-not-really summer of 2021, a friend had wanted to take my non-clubbing self to Bossa Nova Civic Club. But then we dawdled and his move-away date came, and off he went to California. I miss him. He was a friend I’d made in NYC and we lived just a few blocks away, but it wasn’t until he told me he was moving away that we started hanging out regularly. He was generous enough to give me his Falcon chair. I guess we’ll always have that summer. Anyway, Bossa Nova then literally blew up and I thought it was gone forever and I didn’t think much about it. So I’m glad I finally went, though they did make me empty out my not-yet-empty flask. But at least they were nice about it.
I love taking empty subways home during those hours you don’t know whether to call night or morning. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. There’s a 24/7 French bistro, L’Express, that’s sort of near where I live. The place is on Park Avenue, deep in Gramercy Park. Hardly a neighbourhood with bustling nightlife. Who goes to that restaurant in the dead of morning? I’ve always wanted find out by stumbling in at 4 am, all wasted and exhausted, preferably with a small cadre of fellow wasted and exhausted beings. Hopefully, it will happen. That night, between transferring from the subway to the bus, I had to make do with picking up 20 McNuggets (deal of the day!), which I wolfed down on the M9. Princely decadence.
lmao, that segment about trying to read Ulysses in three weeks cracked me up. That is one of those books that takes as long to read as it did to write.
Oh, I'm so excited for your future opinion of Yellow Face. (Someone asked me if it was a musical - LOL - based on the RF Kuang book - ROFLMAO.) How on-your-radar is David Henry Hwang? I think he's one of the great living American playwrights (great guy, too), but his work doesn't get staged all that often here. Even at the college level - especially at the college level! Your average theater BFA program doesn't have enough East Asian kids for you to even cast a play like Chinglish or FOB.