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Young Jean Lee: The Shipment

Part of OntheBoards.tv

Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 7pm
Post-screening Q&A with Young Jean Lee and company

Written and directed by Young Jean Lee

“…a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece by the adventurous playwright Young Jean Lee” —The New York Times

Playwright and director Young Jean Lee and a talented cast of five African-American performers create an unsettling terrain of well-trodden stereotypes that dare audiences to laugh as they consider their own preconceptions about race and culture. One of the leading and most provocative voices in American contemporary theater, Lee pushes herself to new artistic heights as she confronts her fear about creating an ethnic identity play through the lens of a “black identity politics show.”

The Shipment was filmed by On the Boards (Seattle, WA) as part of OntheBoards.tv, a website offering contemporary performances for streaming and download.

BAM Rose Cinemas
$20; $18 for BAM members

October 7 – 23

TAKE WHAT IS YOURS

Script by Erica Fae & Jill A. Samuels

Directed by Jill A. Samuels

The (too) little-known (true) story of how American women fought for and won the right to vote. Inspired by and composed in the words of Alice Paul, the National Woman’s Party, and documents of their time.

Performed by Erica Fae, Nathan Guisinger, Kiki Bowman, David Riley, and Taavo Smith

Video Design: Tal Yarden
Sound Design: Kristin Worrall
Costume Design: Alixandra Gage Englund
Lighting Design: Alison Brummer

Developed, in part, at IRT Theater, our new neighbor in the Archive Building.

http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=3558

Tickets: $18

Buy Tickets
EST/Going to the River presents

The River Crosses Rivers II
A Festival of Short Plays by Women of Color
Started in 1999, EST/Going to the River addresses the critical lack of opportunity for women playwrights of color. The goal, simply put, is to give these women the kind of exposure that is provided by EST, whose goal is to nurture individual theatre artists and to develop new American plays. The River Crosses Rivers II is a stellar lineup of playwrights whose voices add richness and texture to the American Canon.

COMIDA DE PUTA (F#@king Lousy Food) by Desi Moreno-Penson, directed by José Zayas*
Stage Managed by Kevin Clutz; with Maggie Bofill+, Gilbert Cruz+, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Susanna Guzman+
Phaedra in the Bronx. A bodega-owner’s wife, is madly in love with her husband’s son, the lunch-counter boy, even her friend, the neighborhood ‘spiritual’ woman, Rosalia, can’t save her.

LEARNING TO SWIM by France-Luce Benson*, directed by Elizabeth Van Dyke*
Stage Managed by Daniel Melnick; with Stephanie Berry*+, Lincoln Brown+, Ashley Bryant+, & Paulo Quiros
A woman grappling with loss discovers the only way to rise above her grief is to swim through it.

MODERN ROMANCE by Bridgette Wimberly*, directed by Chuck Patterson*
Stage Managed by B’Jai Pierce-Astwood; with Chike Johnson, Trish McCall+ & Harvey Gardner Moore
Tanya has been lonely for a long time. Lately she has found something exciting to do with her afternoons … but is he for real?

ONE QUARTER by Christine Jean Chambers, directed by Talvin Wilks*
Stage Managed by Jonathan McCrory; with William Jackson Harper*+& Amelia Workman+
A multi-racial woman ponders the future of her progeny— How will her child inherit a culture she’s always felt alienated from.

ONE FOR THE BROTHERS, A LOVE STORY by Pearl Cleage, directed by Woodie King, Jr.
Stage Managed by Mutiyat Ade-Salu+; with Reggie Burch, Denise Burse+, & Morocco Omari+
A love story set during the turbulent 60′s & 70′s when revolution was the norm.

POST BLACK written & directed by Regina Taylor+
Stage Managed by B’Jai Pierce-Astwood+; with Ruby Dee+, Carmen DeLavallade+, & Micki Grant+
In an airport, a 110 year-old woman encounters the post black generation, much to their surprise.

THE SETTLEMENT by Philana Omorotionmwan, directed by A. Dean Irby
Stage Managed by Chiara di Lello; with Denny Dale Bess*+, Teresa Stephenson+, & Marie Thomas+
New homeowners find their domestic bliss disrupted by the late-night arrival of a stranger who insists that the couple’s home is rightfully hers.

SKIN by Naveen Bahar Choudhury, directed by Jamie Richards*
Stage Managed by Joshua Hernandez; with Vandit Bhatt+ & Nitya Vidyasagar*+
A classic tale of Hip Hop Wannabe Boy meets Disenchanted Poet Girl.

WAKING UP by Cori Thomas*, directed by Tea Alagić
Stage Managed by Kevin Clutz; with Lynnette Freeman+ & Amy Staats*+
Two women on different continents face breast cancer. A play about what separates us and what makes us the same.

*denotes member of EST
+denotes member of Equity

Equity Approved Showcase

Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen’s film Shame.
Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give dynamite performances inShame, a terrific second feature from the British artist Steve McQueen. Fassbender is Brandon, a sex-addicted corporate drone, directing a radioactive stare at random women across the aisle on the New York subway. Mulligan plays Sissy, his sister, who sings for her supper, self-harms for kicks and is surely pointed towards disaster. “We’re not bad people,” Sissy assures her sibling. “We just come from a bad place.”

Shame
Production year: 2011
Country: USA
Directors: Steve McQueen
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Michael Fassbender
More on this film
Specifically this place is Manhattan, which McQueen depicts as a hell of sterile offices, anonymous apartments and desperate pick-up joints, though it may conceivably refer to the world at large. Outwardly charming and confident, Brandon is soon exposed as a casualty of a bull-market culture where sex has been traded so heavily, so easily and in so many exotic flavours that the consumer has gorged himself sick. Brandon, for instance, appears to score about once a day but it’s not nearly enough because he’s immediately off to masturbate in the shower. He has a vast porn stash concealed behind his blank cupboard doors and still more buried on the hard-drive at work. “Anals, double-anals,” explains his bemused boss Dave (James Badge Dale), who has been charged with overseeing the investigation. “Cream pies … I don’t even know what that is, exactly.”

Not that Dave is any kind of angel himself. Brandon’s boss cheerfully neglects his own family in order to hit on passing women and then promptly beds down with Sissy, who has recently landed at her brother’s apartment. Disgusted – and perhaps even excited – by the noise coming through the wall, Brandon escapes for a jog through the nocturnal streets. McQueen traces his huffing, puffing odyssey with one of the most mesmerising extended tracking shots since Touch of Evil.

Shame feels less formal, less rooted in the language of the art installation than McQueen’s previous film, Hunger, and is all the more satisfying for that. This is fluid, rigorous, serious cinema; the best kind of adult movie. There are glimmers of American Gigolo to its pristine sheen and echoes of Midnight Cowboy to the scratchy, mutual dependence of the damaged duo at the core. For her big showstopper at a downtown nightclub, Sissy takes the stage to croon her way through a haunting, little-girl-lost rendition of New York, New York, slowing the pace and milking the pathos. Brandon sits at the back, his jaw locked, his eyes welling. In the song’s melting, dying fall, he catches a glimpse of the lie behind the tinsel and smells the inevitable death of all her dreams, and maybe his dreams as well.

Fresh Kenyon grads founded a new theater company holding its inaugural festival of one-acts in NYC next month.  Find out more about their story and how to help out in their IndieGoGo page: The Calliope Theater Company.