Richard Maxwell’s style can be off-putting or self-defeating, yet its virtues are manifest in this piece.
Paul David Young
Paul David Young is a Contributing Editor for PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press). His book newARTtheatre: Evolutions of the Performance Aesthetic, about visual artists appropriating theatre, was issued by PAJ in 2014. His 2017 Trump satire, Faust 3: The Turd Coming, or The Fart of the Deal at Judson Church, was featured in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, Village Voice ("Voice Choice"), The Wall Street Journal, Hyperallergic, StageBuddy, FrontRowCenter and TheaterIsEasy. www.pauldavidyoung.com
Body in Mind: Live Performance in Prototype, Under the Radar, and American Realness
While this year some pieces isolated participants through technology, others relished their theatricality and fed off the physical presence of live performers.
Theater of Machines: Rimini Protokoll and CVRTAIN
Two of this year’s performance offerings, perhaps inadvertently, highlighted the sometimes awkward and asocial embrace of technology.
Conceptual Dance Lite: Jérôme Bel’s Elemental Choreography
For more than twenty years, the French choreographer has pioneered a kind of dance that highlights the biography and particularity of the performer.
Home Alone, With a Few Pills: Franz Xaver Kroetz’s ‘Request Concert’
With its task-based script, Request Concert may remind some of Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, tightly shot inside a small apartment. The pairing of everyday housework with suicide might also call to mind Marsha Norman’s 1983 play ‘Night Mother.
Downtown Tyrant: Romeo Castellucci’s Julius Caesar in New York
Long a darling of the European festival circuit, Romeo Castellucci and his Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio have since the 1980s presented a visually driven, philosophical theater, often with classical references and the provocative presence of animals and the animality of humans.
Jill Kroesen’s Comeback: ‘Collecting Injustices, Unnecessary Suffering’ at the Whitney
Thirty years is a long time to step away. Jill Kroesen was deeply enmeshed in the downtown performance scene of the 1970s before she disappeared.
Camera Obscura: Jackie Sibblies Drury’s ‘Really’
Really by Jackie Sibblies Drury had its world premiere at Abrons Arts Center on March 18.
Into the Heart of Darkness: Final Week of the Annual APAP Performance Festivals in New York
The whirlwind of performances accompanying the annual convention of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters in New York has come to a close, with PS122’s COIL, the Public Theater’s Under the Radar, HERE’s Prototype, Abrons Arts Center’s American Realness and other festivals wrapping up last Sunday.
Foucault Dancing and Future Tragedy: The APAP Performance Festivals in New York
APAP/NYC, the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, has hit town. PS122’s COIL, the Public Theater’s Under the Radar, HERE’s Prototype, Abrons Arts Center’s American Realness and other festivals all over the city aim to lure bookings for shows by presenting work around the time of the conference.
Performa 15: Rewarding Musical Turns, and Unused Real Estate
In the final phase of Performa 15, which ended on November 22, a couple of performances turned profitably to music, creating synergies with standardized hand gestures in one case and the dynamics of theater lighting in the other.
Performa 15: Diversity, Latex Fetish Wear, and Puppets (Plus the Renaissance)
Performa 15, the New York performance biennial, in this edition looks to the Renaissance as its “historical research anchor,” as the festival’s promotional materials put it, though in practice, the historical tie is often so vague as to be meaningless.