R.I.P. Stomp

Today is the last performance of Stomp. If you're not familiar with it, it's a wordless stage show of a group of performers creating music and choreography entirely acoustically, using found objects and industrial materials like garbage can lids, brooms, radiator hoses, and the like. It's been at this same location for 29 years, performing 11,472 times.

I've never seen the show, but it's still a landmark of the Lower East Side. I've walked past its distinctive marquee a million times. I did this drawing as part of Save Our Stages series. Stomp was able to re-open after pandemic restrictions were lifted, but the international tourists who made up a large part of its audience have not returned, at least to this venue. The building has a long, long history, stretching back to the early 20th century as part of the Yiddish Theater, and later home to the original Little Shop of Horrors, John Leguizamo's Mambo Mouth, and Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll. Hopefully, that tradition continues.

EV Grieve: Bang Gone: Stomp's Long Run On 2nd Avenue Concludes

Save Our Stages Interviews

My "Save Our Stages" series of drawings of performance spaces in the pandemic is complete. I was honored to be invited to talk about the project on the Urban Sketchers' USKTalks series on YouTube. It can be seen here. They'd asked me to talk about how people in the industry were faring, so I did this parallel series of sketch interviews to accompany the theater drawings. Thanks to Poe, Daisy, Maria, Christopher, Justin, Ana Mari, Eva, Kia and Janet for taking the time to speak with me.

Save Our Stages Part 2

More performance space during the pandemic. The exciting news is that I and this series will be featured on the Urban Sketchers YouTube Channel. It's goes live tomorrow, February 21, at 10 AM EST. I've heard from a lot of theater workers who are really responding to these pieces, and the interview series I've done (which will be in the next post.)

There are some small glimpses of hope on the horizon. The State of New York will be sponsoring these pop-up performance series, and the City of New York will be allowing permits for venues to have outdoor ticketed shows. The new administration has a series relief plan in the works, and of course, the vaccine is rolling out. It's still going to be a long, long road back for all these places.

Radio City Music Hall, home of the Rockettes, a 5960-seat music hall. Designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey, it opened on December 27, 1932. It was designated a New York City Landmark in 1978.

The Orpheum Theatre is a 299-seat theater that has been in the Lower East Side since the early 20th-Century. By 1904, it was the Yiddish-language Player’s Theatre, part of the “Jewish Rialto'' along 2nd Ave. In the 1920s, it became a filmhouse, but was back to live performance by 1958. Among the shows that played here were the original Little Shop of Horrors, Eric Bogosian’s Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, John Leguizamo’s Mambo Mouth, David Mamet’s Oleanna, and Sandra Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing. It has been home to Stomp since 1994, having performed over 10,000 performances before the shutdown.

The Wild Project is the smallest venue in this series with just 89 seats. The building was originally a bottle factory. When I first came to New York, there were lots of little theaters like this, where small companies and independent artists could mount a production for not a lot of money. Over the years, they’ve dwindled due to economic pressures, and during the pandemic, even more have closed.

Queens Theatre, located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. It is housed in a remnant of the 1964 World’s Fair, the former Theaterama, near the Unisphere. Behind it loom the Observation Towers and the Tent of Tomorrow. You might recognize those towers from the 1997 movie Men In Black, where they were revealed to be flying saucers in disguise. I used to do quite a bit of work out there.

HERE Arts Center was founded in 1993. I worked there for several years in the early 2000s.  I believe the building used to be a mattress factory. Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues debuted here. It presents dozens of shows each year: theater, dance, music, puppetry, and contemporary opera, and uncategorizable performance.

While on a cruise to Scotland in 1887, composer Walter and his wife Louise Damrosch asked steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to build a new home for music in NYC. Carnegie Hall opened on May 5, 1891, with Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky conducting his own music in his American debut. It quickly became one of the most prestigious venues for showcasing both classical and popular music. By the late 1950s it had fallen into disrepair and was slated for demolition. It was saved by a campaign led by violinist Issac Stern and other civic leaders. The building was purchased by the City of New York in 1960 and leased to the non-profit Carnegie Hall Corporation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and a NYC Historical Landmark in 1967. The building contains three halls, the largest of which is six stories tall with five levels of audience, seating 2,804. I just saw on the news today that for the first time in its history, Carnegie Hall has cancelled its entire season, at least until October of 2021.

Theater For The New City was founded in 1971 as an off-shoot of the Judson Poets Theatre. It was named after a speech by Mayor John Lindsay that envisioned a ‘new city’ for all. It is known for presenting radical political plays and community involvement. It moved to the former First Avenue Retail Market building in 1986. The building was built in 1938 by the Work Projects Administration as part of a project to replace informal pushcart markets. These markets were crowded, filthy, and plagued by corruption. Mayor LaGuardia pushed for reform of the markets, and used the WPA to build a series of permanent marketplaces, including the First Ave. Market, the Fulton Fish Market, the Bronx Terminal Market, and the Gansevoort Market. At the time that Theater For The New City occupied the building, it was being used as storage for the Sanitation Department.

Arlene’s Grocery is a bar and music venue in the Lower East Side. It opened 1995 in a building that had previously housed a Puerto Rican bodega and a butcher shop. The venue took its name from the bodega, the signage of which still remains. It became a main component of the local NYC music scene and an important incubator of unsigned rock bands, helping to further the careers of artists such as Lady Gaga, Jeff Buckley, Lana Del Rey, Arcade Fire, and The Strokes.

Richard Rodgers Theatre was built in 1925. It’s a 1321-seat Broadway house, named after the composer who, in partnership with Lorenzo Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, created dozens of musicals, including Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and many more. Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Chicago, and In The Heights are among the classic shows that premiered here. Hamilton was in the midst of its blockbuster run when Broadway was shuttered.

Guggenheim Bandshell in Damrosch Park, part of the Lincoln Center complex. Damrosch Park was named after a family of prominent musicians. It opened in 1969. In the summer it hosts Lincoln Center Out Of Doors and the outdoor dance party, Midsummer Night Swing. It used to be the site of the Big Apple Circus and Fashion Week.

Save Our Stages

I've had the idea to do a series of drawings of theaters for awhile. The closure of Broadway has drained Times Square of its overwhelming crowds. This has made it a great spot for urban sketching, but has also make it an especially depressing landscape. It is surreal to walk through block after block of shuttered theaters, empty of the throngs of tourists, workers, and hustlers that clog the streets in normal times.

I'd wanted to see Hadestown. I have a bad habit of procrastinating on going to see a show and then it closes. How was I to know that they would ALL close? Who knows how many of these shows will be able to re-open? Even if theaters were allowed to re-open tomorrow, they'd be subject to a limit of 25% capacity, and it is impossible for any production to operate at those numbers, even the big commercial shows.

Built in 1929, the Loew's Kings Theatre on Flatbush Ave. was one of the five flagship "Loew's Wonder Theatres." It fell into decline and was shuttered in the 1970's, lying vacant and derelict until being renovated in 2015 by the ACE Theatrical Group out of Houston. It is now shuttered again, like every other performance venue. On this day, the awning was shelter for a homeless man.

This one I drew three years ago. At the other end of the spectrum from Broadway are a number of tiny venues like this one. Their survival is tenuous in the best of times; I don't know how they will weather this situation. The commercial houses and big institutions will come back at some point, but these little theaters?

The Joyce Theater, a dance performance space on 8th Ave. On the side of the building is a quote from choreographer Twyla Tharp: "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

The Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Comedy and Tragedy, and maybe that's Dionysus in the middle? I'm not sure. These Greek theatrical masks are a reminder that live performance has survived a multitude of plagues, wars, failing governments, and disasters for millennia, and will surely survive this. The Tina Turner musical was playing here when Broadway shut down. A giant banner above the marquee reads: "I've rarely heard an audience with this mighty a roar."

Webster Hall is one of the most historically significant halls in New York City, and has been recognized as the first modern nightclub. It was designated a New York City Landmark in 2008. It was built in 1886 as a "hall for hire," hosting labor union rallies, weddings, lectures, concerts and other events, particularly focusing on the working-class and immigrant population of the Lower East Side, and gained a reputation for leftist, socialist, Anarchist and labor activity. In the 1910s and 20s, it became known for masquerade balls and soirees of the Bohemians, earning the nickname "The Devil's Playhouse." It became known as primarily a music venue in the 1950s, featuring Latin artists, such as Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez, and folk artists like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Over the next 70 years it featured just about every major musical act you can think of, from every genre, and countless more that you've never heard of. In the first half of the 20th Century, it survived at least five fires, as well as the 1918 pandemic. Will it survive the 2020 pandemic?

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is the oldest performing arts center in America, founded in 1861. Originally located in Brooklyn Heights on Montague St., that building burned down in 1903.

This building was then commissioned for Lafayette Ave. in Fort Greene, designed by architects Henry Herts and Hugh Tallant, who also designed the New Amsterdam Theater and the Lyceum Theater. It opened in 1908 with a production of Faust starring Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. It quickly became a predominant venue in the city, featuring legendary performers such as Isadora Duncan, Paul Robeson, Sarah Bernhardt, and Rudolf Nureyev, and speeches by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

In 1967, Harvey Lichtenstein was appointed executive director, and over a 32 year tenure, BAM was revitalized and became known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance, as well as film. It has featured a multitude of international artists, including Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Bill T Jones, Laurie Anderson, Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson, Mark Morris, and many more.

Exhibit: Scenes From The East Village, L.E.S., and Chinatown

A regular gig of mine is working for Clubbed Thumb's annual festival of new plays, Summerworks, and this year they are graciously presenting a show of my works in the lobby of the venue, The Wild Project. As the festival has long had its home in the Lower East Side, the show focuses on drawings from the surrounding area - The Lower East Side, the East Village, and Chinatown. On view through June 30.

Before It's Gone: 13th Street Repertory Theatre

I've been in New York City for over 20 years now, working in theater. I've worked in, or at least attended a show at, nearly every theater space in the city, especially the small ones - Off Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, waaaaaaay Off Broadway. But I've never set foot inside the 13th Street Rep. I've walked past it many times, and always asked the question: How does this place continue to exist?

The building itself dates back to the late 18th century, and was reputedly a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Repertory was founded by Edith O'Hara, who was already 50 years old when she quit her job as a kindergarten teacher in Idaho and rode to New York on the back of a motorcycle. In 1972, she saw an ad in the Village Voice: "Building For Lease. Contains Small Theater." It is one of the oldest Off-Broadway theaters still in operation in the city, but despite its longevity, it never directly produced major figures in theater. It's main claim to fame is the play "Line," which was the longest-running play in history, running over 45 years. It's now on hiatus; a hiatus that seems permanent.

The main characteristic of this theater is not the work, but the community it's built. As this New York Times article describes: "A curious group of six people lives above the theater. They are not ordinary tenants, but something like the cast of an eccentric, bohemian sitcom family. They are actors, authors and playwrights whom Ms. O'Hara offered lodging to years ago, and they never left. Mostly in their 60s and 70s now, they include a German man who smokes on the theater's steps, a woman who wrote a memoir 20 years ago that inspired a television movie, and a man who was homeless before Ms. O'Hara offered him a crawl space above the lighting booth." The homeless man became the resident costume and set designer of the theater. "These characters became part of the 13th Street's real life repertory: building props, working lights, acting in shows, painting sets, cleaning bathrooms and working the ticket booth, sometimes all in lieu of rent."

At one point, the 50-seat theater ran into financial troubles. It was saved by an "angel investor" who bought a half-interest in the property, only to later attempt to sell the property to a real estate developer. This lead to an acrimonious legal battle that became a David-And-Goliath cause célèbre in Greenwich Village. The result was an agreement of some sort that allows the theater to remain during her lifetime. The thing is, Edith O'Hara is now 100 years old. The Times reports "The past disputes were resolved for her lifetime and there is no provision for what comes next."

The residents seem resigned to what's coming. One says, "All of this is going to change drastically when Edith is gone. All this will probably end. Whether that is weeks or months or longer, we all eventually will have to move. And I will be very sad." Another, "It doesn't look like a good ending. But I'm grateful it happened. When I moved in they told me: 'Welcome to the insane asylum.'"

Reading about this place made me of high school drama club, theater camp, community theaters, and the summer stock. I don't mean that in a derogatory or condescending way. The opposite, really.

Many of us started out in a group like this, in school.  It was a home where people who didn't fit in easily could find a place to be. A place where Dunning-Kruger is in full effect, standards are both high and low, and passion is off the scale. There's a special potency to this sort of theater community. It's rare to have that sort of experience as an adult.

Now, I would never want to work at 13th Street Rep. I am certain the theater is run-down with antiquated equipment, and an environment guaranteed to drive a trained professional crazy. But when it goes away, as it assuredly will very soon, I'll be sad, because I know there are at least six people who will have lost something very real, and another unique piece of New York City character gone forever.

Spider-Man: Turn On The House Lights

Tonight one of the longest and strangest theater stories finally comes to an end ... Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is closing. The story of the making of the Broadway musical adaptation of Spider-Man was more convoluted and strange than the Clone Saga, with its massive budget and cost-overruns, rockstar composers, its famous director who was eventually fired, extravagant scenery and special effects that landed more than one performer in the hospital,  and a year+ long preview period, lawsuits, and more. The show actually was selling fairly well, but costs so much to operate that it could never make its investment back.

I saw the show - at least, a version of it, during its long preview period - I think just a few months before Julie Taymor was fired. It was terrible. I say this as a theater person and as a comics fan. It pretty much failed on all fronts. I guess my favorite scene is this big battle on top of the Chrysler Building, which should have been the climax of the show, but instead was the end of Act One. And I liked watching Patrick Page as the Green Goblin. Imagine Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker, but even hammier. The character didn't make much sense, like most of the show, but at least he was fun to watch, unlike most of the show.

One thing that struck me about this scene is that it follows the climax of the first Sam Raimi movie, changing the Manhattan Bridge to the Chrysler Building as the thing off of which the Green Goblin throws Mary Jane, and Spider-Man diving to save her. Because of that film, most people think that that is what happened in the original comic stories. But as comics fans of a certain age know, what actually happened was that the Goblin throws Peter Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy off the bridge, Spider-Man shoots a web to catch her but the sudden jolt snaps her neck. Given the multiple injuries and near-disasters in this production, that plot development might have been a little too close to home.

For those unfamiliar with Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, that blue spider-woman in the background of this drawing is Arachne, who was some sort of spider-goddess who turns Peter Parker into Spider-Man to serve as her avatar/champion. At least, I think that's what was going on. The narrative was not particularly clear on that point. The scenes with Arachne were actually pretty cool, but it was like they'd been imported from another show. It was clear that what Julie Taymor really wanted to do was a show about Arachne. Actually, that might not be a bad idea, for her to just go off and do a big spider-goddess puppet-opera somewhere. But she probably just wants to forget about all things spider-related at this point. I hope all the actors and stagehands involved in the show pick up new gigs pretty fast, though something tells me they probably won't miss working on this particular show besides the paycheck.

That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once.

I have to finish drafting a light plot for a production of Hamlet I’m designing, but the main question is: how can I procrastinate to avoid doing it? I know! I’ll post something on my sketchblog, and make it relate to Hamlet, so it sort of feels like I’m actually thinking about the play.

Here’s a drawing of a skull I did at the drawing studio. They have a couple of skeletons around, and sometimes I draw them when there’s a break or when I’m not interested in the model’s pose. Also, I often attend the weekly anatomy class, and sometimes these bones get passed around. Skulls are a lot smaller than you’d expect, as well as the skeleton in general. People are a lot smaller when you take off all the muscle, fat, skin, and organs!

In Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Jan Kott wrote that Hamlet “… is one of the few literary heroes who live apart from the text, apart from the theatre. His name means something even to those who have never seen or read Shakespeare’s play.” I think everyone recognizes the image of Hamlet with Yorick’s skull, and the famous line, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well.” Even though that’s not quite the line.

 

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. —Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.

This is a student production of Hamlet. Whenever we have our students read Shakespeare, they complain about the language. As one of my students put it last semester regarding The Tempest, “I read the play, but I don’t get it.” I know many, perhaps most, of them just read the Sparksnotes “No Fear Shakespeare” version, which ‘modernizes’ the language. I actually don’t completely object to that. I know I didn’t learn how to really read Shakespeare until I was much older, and I still struggle with it at times. Also, a lot of my students have English as a second language, and regular contemporary vernacular is challenge enough for them. But I think it’s a shame if they rely solely on the Sparksnotes. Here’s the No Fear Shakespeare modern version of that same passage:

Let me see. (he takes the skull) Oh, poor Yorick! I used to know him, Horatio—a very funny guy, and with an excellent imagination. He carried me on his back a thousand times, and now—how terrible—this is him. It makes my stomach turn. I don’t know how many times I kissed the lips that used to be right here. Where are your jokes now? Your pranks? Your songs? Your flashes of wit that used to set the whole table laughing? You don’t make anybody smile now. Are you sad about that? You need to go to my lady’s room and tell her that no matter how much makeup she slathers on, she’ll end up just like you some day. That’ll make her laugh.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think just a little bit is lost in this adaptation. “You don’t make anybody smile now. Are you sad about that?” Well, are you?