AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Known for their anarchic energy and madcap theatrical mashups, the Brooklyn-based collective Radiohole will present the US premiere of ANGER/NATION at The Kitchen from September 11 through 27. The piece explores the contradictory puritanical and hedonistic underpinnings of the American psyche by colliding the psychedelic aesthetic of occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger with the histrionic escapades of the self-proclaimed "America's Loving Home Defender," Carrie A. Nation -- a remarkable 19th century, hatchet-wielding temperance crusader.

Using a diverse array of materials including miniature floating video monitors, post-it notes, and licorice, Radiohole conjures a "pleasuredome" populated by an unpredictable mélange of questionable characters ranging from random Roman centurions to male cherubs that force Carrie A. Nation to wield her hatchet against sin and degradation -- only to then find herself in the grips of a voluptuous spiritual transformation of her own.

Co-commissioned by the Kitchen, the donaufestival, and the Noorderzon Festival, ANGER/NATION is created by Radiohole and performed in the tradional style by company members Eric Dyer, Scott Halvorsen Gillette, and Maggie Hoffman with special guest star Iver Findlay. Video design for the production is by Iver Findlay, So Yong Kim and Radiohole.

Performances of ANGER/NATION will be September 11 through 27 at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street). Tickets are $12-$15 and can be purchased by visiting www.ticketweb.com or by calling the Box Office at The Kitchen 212-255-5793. Further information is available online at www.thekitchen.org.

Dancers Over 40 (DO40) begins the second season of its series of panels and performances with “Jack Cole, Still Alive and Kicking” on Monday, October 13 at The Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space.

Cole is the man who gave Broadway, film and television a vocabulary and style of movement that is still imitated today. Protégés Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Carol Haney and Bob Fosse have passed down his legacy, and his influence can still be seen; even in videos that air on MTV.

This panel will be the first for DO40 to include multi-media, since Cole was a master on film and television as well as Theater. There will be clips of Cole’s television and film work, with special guests Marge Champion (an incredible clip/number from a Cole-choreographed movie, Three for the Show, 1955), Harvey Evans, and choreographer Alan Johnson.

Also slated to appear on the panel is Norma Doggett Beswick, who was picked by Cole at 17 to perform in Magdalena (1948), and she will talk about her experience flying out to Los Angeles to audition for him. Additionally, Gemze deLappe, who assisted Cole in his revival of Kismet, Stuart Hodes, a performer in this revival, documentary filmmaker and member Annette Macdonald and Cole biographer Svetlana Grody are scheduled to be featured.

Along with honoring directors, choreographers and dancers, DO40’s mission is also to assist dancers in need, and they have found a soul-mate in The Actors Fund. Beginning this fall, Dancers Over 40 will be donating a portion of their resources to Bebe Neuwirth’s new initiative at the Actors Fund, The Dancers’ Resource. It was created to assist dancers in all aspects of their lives and career. DO40 is not only promoting their own history and legacy, but will now help by donating yearly to this important fund to help dancers enrich their lives and continue their artistic journey. DO40 is also a Resource, and to continue our Legacy by donating video from these events to the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts and by working closely with the Actors Fund and The Dancers’ Resource to ensure that the lives we live can be enriched and the legacy we leave will not be forgotten.

Tickets are only $15.00 for DO40 members, $35.00 for non-members and are available by calling Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at 95th Street) at 212-864-5400 or going to their website, www.symphonyspace.org. For more information on DO40 events please go to the website: www.dancersover40.org

New York Times

Works Well With Paper, Has Trouble With Life
Rajiv Joseph’s “Animals Out of Paper” is alternately wrenching and funny.

New York Daily News

Gotta know when to fold 'em in 'Paper'
Aside from possible paper cuts, origami isn't an obviously dramatic subject. But in his engaging play "Animals Out of Paper," Rajiv Joseph uses the ancient Japanese art form to explore how messy life can get as it unfolds.

New York Sun

Animal House
If one's sole companionship in the space of two months is the Chinese takeout guy and the treasurer of American Origami, a few changes may be in order. The depressive master folder Ilana Andrews (Kellie Overbey) finds herself in this situation in…

Variety

Review: Animals Out of Paper
...begins with a quirky comedy about origami experts and deftly transforms it into a melancholy reminder that close friends make the worst messes. His journey from one extreme to the other -- beautifully wrought by Second Stage's production -- is surprising and specific, pulling honest insights out of unusual situations.

TheaterMania

Review: Animals Out of Paper
Rajiv Joseph's exhilarating play examines the tough subjects of loss, pain, and the balm of creativity.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Animals Out of Paper
What, you've never heard of instinctive origami? No matter. Even if you were under the impression that the art of Japanese paper folding is a learned skill rather than a natural gift, you'll find plenty to educate and charm you in Rajiv Joseph's delicately explosive new play Animals Out of Paper, playing at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre as part of the Second Stage Theatre Uptown series. .

Recipient of National Heritage Fellowship for the Arts, Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company will present the 8th Annual Spectacular 2008 Peking Opera Festival and the Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company with Women Generals of the Yang Family for two performances only, September 21 and October 5.

Women Generals of the Yang Family is a rarely seen full-length Peking Opera classic that tells an 800-year-old story about Chinese heroines. A spectacular evening of music, song, mime, glorious costumes, amazing martial arts, and acrobatics, with a cast of 50 plus actors offering an unforgettable glimpse of ancient China. The performances will be in Chinese with English subtitles.

The first performance of the 2008 Peking Opera Festival is Sunday, September 21st at 3PM at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, tickets are priced at $36-100. To purchase tickets, call The Kaye Playhouse Box Office at 212-772-4448. The second performance is Sunday, October 5th at 3PM at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, NYU (part of the World Stage Series), tickets are priced at $36. To purchase tickets, call the Skirball Center Box Office at 212-352-3101 or visit www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu. For more information, please visit www.qishufang.com.

The STAGE International Script Competition, now in its third year, has announced this year’s winner for the best new play about science and technology. Photograph 51, by New York playwright Anna Ziegler. The play was chosen by a panel of judges which includes Pulitzer Prize and Tony-Award winning playwright David Auburn; Tony, Olivier, and Obie Award-winning playwright John Guare; Nobel Laureate in physics and KBE Sir Anthony Leggett; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire; and Nobel Laureate in physics Dr. Douglas Osheroff.

STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – will award Ziegler a $10,000 cash prize and an opportunity to further develop her play.

STAGE is a unique collaboration between the Professional Artists Lab (the Lab), a dynamic artistic laboratory, and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), an esteemed science institute, both housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Along with the announcement of Ziegler’s win, the Lab and CNSI are simultaneously embarking on the next round of the Competition – their fourth – as well as an expanded partnership between theatre and science with the newly-launched STAGE Project.

Photograph 51 asks, “What does a woman have to do to succeed in the world of science?” Set largely in 1953, the play concerns Dr. Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant and passionate scientist who pours herself into her studies of DNA. But when fellow scientists Watson and Crick find out about her groundbreaking discoveries, her work is suddenly not her own – and shortly thereafter they claim credit for a major breakthrough. A compelling drama about a woman's life in a man's world, Photograph 51 asks how we become who we become, and whether we have the power to change.

Ziegler’s winning script was chosen from nearly 150 entries hailing from a dozen countries. Each year, plays are received from all over the world and written by a wide range of authors. Entrants have included established and prominent playwrights and screenwriters, an unknown playwright living in a remote part of Nigeria, highly-regarded scientists, and even a Nobel Laureate.

Ziegler is a published and produced playwright whose work has been developed by the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Old Vic New Voices program, Primary Stages, Geva Theatre Center, McCarter Theatre, New Georges (where she is an Affiliate Artist), the Hampstead Theatre in London, Birmingham Rep, and Company B at the Belvoir St. Theatre in Sydney, Australia, among others. Her play Dov and Ali just completed a run at Theatre 503 in London. Ziegler also teaches at the prominent St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, which she attended herself before going on to Yale and then receiving her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

STAGE grew out of efforts to catalyze the development of theatre that depicts the technological age in which we live and to foster new and imaginative voices and methods of storytelling, as well as to promote understanding of the sciences in the public arena. Nancy Kawalek, the founder and director of the Professional Artists Lab, approached the California NanoSystems Institute a few years ago with the idea of collaborating on these mutual interests.

Based on the extraordinary success of the STAGE Competition, Kawalek is taking the work to the next level with the STAGE Project. Under this umbrella, STAGE will collaborate internationally with professional artists to create and develop multi-media theatre pieces in which science and technology play prominent roles in content and/or form. This October, work will begin on the first of these theatrical creations: The Brain Project, a multi-media theatre piece about the brain.

To allow for the growing number of submissions, as well as to encourage even more, the STAGE International Script Competition will now become a biennial versus an annual competition. The next deadline for entries is December 15, 2009. For this round of the competition, submissions will be accepted only after June 15, 2009.

Along with Ziegler, three other playwrights were singled out in this year’s Competition as finalists. These are Oscar-winning and Tony-nominated writer and director Eric Simonson, for his play Fake; award-winning playwright Jennifer Maisel, for There or Here; and newcomer Charlotte Rahn-Lee, for Double Helix to Heaven.

Further information about the awards is available at: www.cnsi.ucsb.edu/stage.