In keeping with the Halloween spirit Culturebot went to see Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe by Edmonton, Canada’s Catalyst Theatre, now playing at the New Victory Theater.

At first glance the life of Edgar Allan Poe wouldn’t seem like great fodder for a musical. Orphaned at an early age, taken in by a doting adoptive mother (who would soon die) and indifferent stepfather, living a life that was largely lovelorn, bereft, poverty-stricken and alcoholic and dying of mysterious circumstances in the street, the story of Mr. Poe is not the satisfying kind of narrative one expects in a musical. But the Catalyst Theatre takes on the material with a decidedly gothic bent and makes a dark fairy tale that resonates with young people. Focusing the entire first half of the two-hour show on Poe’s childhood, he is portrayed as a sensitive young man, early beset by troubles. The young Poe is portrayed as innocent and wide-eyed, with an overactive imagination, constantly clutching an oversized book and quill, pushed and pulled this way and that, always at the mercy of elements beyond his control. Sounds like a typical childhood to me.

The costumes and set are dark, macabre and stylish, the music is moody, bordering on operatic – especially since most of the story is told in exposition, there’s very little dialogue per se. With the exception of young Poe, played by one actor throughout with a naivete reminiscent of Edward Scissorhands, the very talented cast play many different characters including some creepy crawly Raven puppets that lurk ominously in the background. They actors are deft at handling the outsize characters making them both human and cartoonish.

Culturebot doesn’t see a lot of theater made for young people and fortunately NEVERMORE doesn’t pander. There is plenty to enjoy for adult audiences and young audiences alike. The New Victory has done a great job in presenting the work, to the extent of having a dramaturgical exhibit in the downstairs lobby that recounts the highlights of Poe’s life and his work as a writer. While it is geared for younger audiences, the exhibit clarifies some of the things that happen in the play, and is a thoughtful companion component, making the entire theatrical experience richer.

NEVERMORE is smart, fun, engaging theater for young audiences. It goes to show that you don’t have to pander when presenting work to young people – that you can make work that is both entertaining and educational, with extraordinary stagecraft and high standards, and still reach audiences in this always-on, twitter-ified entertainment multiverse.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Keely Garfield is in the midst of her latest “eruption” (as Claudia LaRocco calls it) at Duo Multicultural Arts Center (DMAC) this weekend. “Twin Pines” runs tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. For those wary of modern-day hallucinogens, Keely serves up a good, chemical-free, inducement of altered states.

I remember doing a 10-day Vipassana meditation many years ago and actually had the entire treatment for a violent HK style action movie done in my head half way through my time there. So what was it about the jackhammer in your mind during your retreat that prompted this latest investigation? Hmm…um…well…where was I? Er…god.  Here.  Ok.  And then, the dropping into the space between my ears, between I hate him and I love her.  Between long, long ago and the very far away distant distance.  What would it look like to make a dance that looked like the contents of my head?  The stage suddenly overcrowded with rundown runamuck random riots and then belligerently boring bits. A gestalt and a quietude.  What would happen if I met the buddha on this road? Would I kill her?  And then it was irresistible.  I had to know what an actual moving meditation would look like, feel like, sound like and where it would take me that was different from where I had been before.  Wake up!

I recall seeing you on 4^th St. soon after reading a FB post about you hauling a tree stump up many stairs this past June. How did working at DMAC impact the work you made? Twin Pines happens on all three floors of DMAC.  To be clear.  “Stump” is performed in the third floor studio and “Flesh” occurs on stage. In between, “Mulch Milch,” a film created by myself and Brandin Steffensen after the tornado that brought trees down outside our house in Brooklyn blocking the front door, plays on the second floor at intermission.  During my extended residency at DMAC, there was construction going on.  Jackhammers, literally, accompanied our every move.  Dust rained through the cracks in the ceiling.  One day I thought it would be wonderful to have a tree in the piece. When I went down into the street they were piling up stumps of a tree that was being cut down and hauled out of the marble cemetery.  One by one, I carried 7 of those stumps up five flights of stairs.  All the time chanting to myself, ” I have no body, I have no mind, I am just the breath of life…”  My heart nearly burst through my chest and then I realized that even though I now had my tree, I had no guarantee that they would make the piece any better.  Today, when I went to buy cat food – there is a phantom cat in the work given voice to eventually as part of the soundtrack by Sasha the resident DMAC cat – the guy asked me if I wanted a free box of tissues and he handed me a box with a picture of twin pine trees on it. DMAC is a channel, a place in between worlds; It’s very special.

You’ve got a great crew with you once again. What does collaboration mean to you? Choreography is an inherently collaborative art, collective act.  Choreography is simply a vehicle for dancing.  Omagbitse, Brandin, Anthony and I dance together.  Matthew sings his dance.  We are all alive at the same moment.  In many ancient mythologies the “whole man” consisted of: a natural body.. a spiritual body.. a heart…. a double… a soul… a shadow.. an intangible ethereal casing or spirit, a form and a name. Now, that’s collaboration!

What is yoga to you? Listening. Compassion in action.  The pause at the bottom of the breath out, and the miracle of the breath in. Barely there and beautiful. Also, I work as an integrative yoga therapist with people dealing with cancer and witnessing people drop into themselves through this practice is inspiring and makes making dances for me more valiant, more real, more imperative.

How have you changed as an artist in the past 10 years? 20? You’re kidding right?  Well…I used to be very interested in choreography with a capital C. You know, making things with a beginning, middle and end, space and time etc.  Now I am much more interested in dancing with a capital D and I like things that are too long, lopsided, heavy handed and barely there.  I used to spend a lot of time thinking about dances, now I want more time to read…

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is closing weekend of Ivy Baldwin‘s Here Rests Peggy at the Chocolate Factory (tickets $15), so take the opportunity tonight or tomorrow to go see it. Culturebot had an interview with Baldwin and Chocolate Factory artistic director Brian Rogers last week, but I caught the show too and wanted to add my two cents, because there’s a lot good to be said about Baldwin’s work.

The Peggy of the title (or so I understand) refers to none other than Peggy Guggenheim, the wealthy heiress and art patron who spent years cavorting around Europe and America with a string of writers and painters, from Samuel Beckett to Jackson Pollock. What Baldwin offers up in response to Guggenheim’s larger-than-life legacy is a dynamic piece of choreography for four dancers that skips merrily from a vaguely jazz influenced homage to a youth of wealth and privelege to a shockingly personal expressionist piece to finally a triumph of visceral abstraction, an hour-long performance that more or less rivets its audiences and carries them through the hairpin turns Baldwin lays out connecting a complex and disparate set of references and sources.

From the show’s opening, with its elegant full bodied movement (accentuated by Walter Dunderville’s lovely cocktail dress costumes), the piece moves away from formalism to a more evocative vocabulary. Baldwin (who performs in the piece along with dancers Katie Workum, Eleanor Smith and Lawrence Casella) repeats a phrase that leaves her on the ground, Casella kneeling with one knee on her chest, crushing the air out of her until she begs him, “Get off!”

I don’t want to be too prescriptive, but the piece struck me as following a biographical trajectory on Guggenheim’s life, influenced by the art she was associated with. The Expressionism of this sequence (which directly links Guggenheim’s personal life to the sturm and drang of the artistic milieu of the interwar period) gives you way to a violent phase emphasizing the complete loss of form, a sort of stand in for the chaos of the Second World War, and then moving on to the triumph of American Abstract Expression in the post-war period, as the dancers cycle through a series of ecstatic movements which have them throwing themselves up against the back wall–painted Abstract Expressionist-style by Anna Schuleit–like Jackson Pollock enthusiastically hurling paint at a canvas. The slow evisceration of the company as the dancers collapse into a heap on the floor evokes the passage of time and the loss of the people with whom Guggenheim was so closely associated (Pollock among them).

Or more likely this all a desperate attempt to fix a narrative on a work that doesn’t need one. Even if you go in not knowing the putative subject (I certainly didn’t; I read it late in Deborah Jowitt’s review), Baldwin’s rich, senstiive, and thoughtful choreography and mise-en-scene will keep you more than interested and–probably better–eagerly grasping at tendrils of recognition that strafe off her lovely piece, leaving you in a rapt state of fascination and curiosity for the duration of the show.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In 2006, the Phantom Limb Company made a splash with The Fortune Teller when it debuted as part of the Dream Music Puppetry Program at HERE Arts Center. Now it returns for a special engagement starting on Halloween – and you don’t want to miss it!

This delightfully macabre marionette play in miniature is created and directed by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff (Phantom Limb Company), and features original music by Danny Elfman and Erik Sanko with narration by Gavin Friday.

The story is a simple one – a lawyer gets invited to a mysterious mansion to oversee the reading and execution of an enigmatic millionaire’s will. Gathered at the mansion are seven townspeople – each one representing, I think, one of the Seven Deadly Sins – who believe they are there to receive an inheritance. A Fortune Teller has also been invited and it is he who shall determine what each guest is to receive. Little do they know that they are all implicated in the millionaire’s death and over the course of the evening the Fortune Teller recounts how each of them will meet their demise.

The puppetry is imaginative and delightful, the story is charming, providing clever twists to oft-told tales. The set – with its surprise doors and hidden portals – is a triumph of economical design. The music  is fun and creepy and Gavin Friday’s narration is a pleasure. It is a simple show and it runs barely an hour but it shows the company off to good effect.

This spooky spectacle brings to mind gothic masters like Edward Gorey and Tim Burton in its playful, sinister fairy tale logic. Equally compelling for children and grown-ups alike, The Fortune Teller draws you into its world and never lets you go.  A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

The Fortune Teller plays at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue) from October 28 – December 4.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Kathryn O’Shields is the documentarian for the 2010 Steampunk Haunted House and has contributed this essay to Culturebot.

Photo by Chad Heird

It began with a horrified scream.

In front of us, a woman thrashed furiously in a bed, trying to wake up from a nightmare. But instead of opening her eyes, she sank into—and literally through—the middle of the bed. As soon as she disappeared, the bed flipped up vertically and the dreamer walked out of it. And we had to follow her.

Suddenly, I found myself alone, in a different room. Silvery music-box chimes were playing “Beautiful Dreamer” in the darkness around me. There was a small lantern in my hand. I was in a room with a display of dolls’ heads and carnations in a case. As I passed my lantern’s light across the floor, I saw that it was littered with fabric and paper. I felt lost, disoriented. Then people began to float past me—anachronistic ghosts in a trance, whispering, humming, dancing, and struggling with each other. They sped past me as if I weren’t there, but I instinctively backed away, until I heard a close voice in my ear. “Be careful what you covet.” I gasped and turned to see a young Victorian man, who began to hum and lilt away.

I then saw a few others with lanterns like mine and remembered that we could roam freely around the house. I stumbled into the theatre, where zombie-like creatures were crawling over the seats. In the stage was a hole, out of which a bluish-white light pierced upward into the haze of the room. Someone sat above it, slowly operating a pulley that fed a rope into the hole. I crept closer toward it, avoiding the man with a gas mask and bobby’s stick. Looking down inside, I saw the rope disappear into a bright light. Only later, at the end, would I see what was really there. It was the engine of the dream: the three Furies themselves, weaving the dream like the Fates with their thread.

After we emerged from this dream world, I spoke with some fellow audience members. They mentioned the great attention to detail: “I loved the little secrets, like when you go up the stairs and see a little display, when you thought nothing was there.” Another said he liked the fact that the haunt “wasn’t linear; you could just explore it on your own.” And another person said she loved the Steampunk elements: “Artistically it was fabulous!”

What is truly scary? There are unconscious, deep fears we all share, like darkness, being alone, irrationality, and incongruity. These are the things that haunt us in our dreams. The Steampunk Haunted House harnesses the power of these primal elements. It doesn’t just cause fear; it creates it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

OurGoods.org, the new barter network for creative people, is live and ready to go. It is basically a cool new system to help creative people exchange goods and services in new ways. Anyone is welcome to set up a profile and start getting help with their projects in a network of mutual trust and respect. They’re also offering four live barter network events in November. Each event starts with an optional workshop, and continues with a live barter network where they’ll help you organize your NEEDS and HAVES, offer tips for bartering, and match you with potential barter partners.

The events are free but RSVP is required! RSVP to: RSVP@ourgoods.org.

Sat Nov 6
Dance Theater Workshop
219 W 19th St

Co-sponsored by:
The Field
Dance/NYC
Movement Research
DTW

3pm: Barter: a Budget Supplement (workshop)
4pm: Live Barter Network

Sun Nov 7
WOW Café Theater
59 E 4th St

Co-sponsored by:
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Dixon Place
HERE Arts Center
Fourth Arts Block

Noon: Self-Producing 101 (workshop)
1pm: Live Barter Network

Sat Nov 13
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor

Co-sponsored by:
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
Exit Art
Smack Mellon Studios
F.E.A.S.T
LES Printshop

3pm: Barter: Idea Party (workshop)
4pm: Live Barter Network

Sun Nov 14
Brooklyn Arts Exchange
421 5th Ave, Brooklyn

Noon: Self-Producing 101 (workshop)
1pm: Live Barter Network

Popularity: 1% [?]

Wednesday evening Culturebot saw Empty moves (parts I & II) by Ballet Preljocaj at BAM. We enjoyed it immensely. The dancers were extraordinary – beautiful, precise, athletic, focused and fluid. The choreography was both serious and playful, continually unfolding with one phrase evolving gently into the next, at once languid and rigorous. It was a pleasure to watch these dancers interact with each other and inhabit the space with such quiet confidence.

The piece is set to a recording of John Cage’s Empty Words from Milan in 1977. Empty Words is a solo vocal work based on the writing of Henry David Thoreau. Using reduction and abstraction of the text, he turns the text into pure vocal sound and stretches the monologue over three hours. We hear the crowd grow restless and annoyed – practically to the point of protesting the performance. They get so crazy they start freaking out – shouting and chanting and clapping. The effect is amazing. As we listen to John Cage’s sonorous voice read/perform amidst the chaos breaking out around him, we are simultaneously watching four exquisite dancers move with precision and grace and focus. They seem to mirror Cage’s focus and in some ways they even seem to reference his deliberate phrasing and rhythm.

The silly part of me kept thinking, “How do they remember all that choreography?” with no music cues, no clear reference points. I was amazed not only with the dancers technical virtuosity but with the movement vocabulary which constantly brought the performers together in new and surprising ways. There was one repetition that I noticed – a reprise of the opening quartet towards the end of the piece – but beyond that it seemed like the dance was always ongoing – that the dancers just kind of checked in with the movement, flowed with it for about an hour and then walked away – but the dance is always there. I guess that sounds kinda New Age-y but whatever. The overall effect was hynpotic and transporting. I found myself transfixed and entirely captivated.

Apparently Part 1 was presented at the Joyce in 2006, but these performances at BAM are the first NY performances of the entire work. Go check it out!

Empty moves (parts I & II)
Ballet Preljocaj

Music by John Cage
Choreography by Angelin Preljocaj

Oct 27, 29 & 30, 2010, 7:30pm

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
63min, no intermission
Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 55

Empty moves (parts I & II), 2007 creation
Coproduction Festival Montpellier Danse 2007

Empty moves (part I), 2004 creation
Commission and co-production Biennale nationale de danse du Val-de-Marne
2006 Restage, co-production The Joyce Theater’s Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work

Popularity: 1% [?]

Patricia Hoffbauer is at Danspace Project this week on a shared program with The Adventure, in the culminating event of Trajal Harrell’s Platform “certain difficulties, certain joy.”

What prompted this latest piece?

I wanted to go back to the studio and make work. I hadn’t done that for a while!

What kind of environments did you need to establish to develop this work?

I really wanted time to work and research ideas and texts, visual and written, that dealt with the idea of “paradise is elsewhere.”  I started out working with this idea of the “ethnographic other” so prevalent in early representations of the Americas. I wanted to see how I could develop another perspective than the one George and I created with The Architecture of Seeing. I was teaching at Princeton last year and was able to get research funds to do exactly that.

Is there a specific take on academia that you employed?

I have always lived vicariously through academic friends discussing ideas that somehow applied to making dances and then years ago when I started developing this course “bodies in cultural landscape” that I have adapted to the seminar course I teach at Hunter.  I realized that I was engaged by teaching in a similar way to how I am engaged when I perform. But the idea of “lecturing” was always a kind of complicated question for me. As a dancer we are usually not educated in the dialectics of ideas, at least not in dance departments, as a lot of the time is dedicated to the accomplishment of technical control and physical virtuosity. But when I realized I could actually have lots of discussing and have that be the main drive informing the students’ work, I was sold. The physical practice became more intertwined with the philosophical kinesthetics of the mind…and this is all without becoming overly theoretical.  The movement is clearly coming out of each student’s experience. Clearly the work is for the classroom for now, not the street, the gallery or the stage, but I have learned so much in the last 10 years with my teaching of these more theoretical texts. So yes, long answer short- I took this idea of a performative lecture that is at the center of this piece from my years of teaching.

Is there something about cultural difference that excites you or challenges you?

I don’t even know exactly what that is anymore.Yes, I have mostly made work about difference, being different, existing in a different environment than the one I grew up in but the funny thing is the more I deal with difference the more it becomes the same.  I like to learn about my bias with sameness and challenge that too. But now, for example, the thought of moving to a place where most people would have similar origin’s to mine, is just nauseating.  I miss NY when I am away, the way in which my life here covers so many different territories, from teaching movement in a pre-k class with my little one to preparing my classes to being a dancer with Yvonne to making work with my co-horts to taking the kids to watch a silly animation movie on a Friday evening…

What do you think about passion?

That is so funny you ask. Yvonne Rainer does this most brilliant lecture about “Passion” now when we go on tour.  It’s called “Where is the Passion?” and no one is better than her to talk about what’s up with PASSION….but I would always bring it up to her because when I show Trio A, at Hunter and elsewhere, some students ask me “Where is the passion???” They get totally freaked out that Trio A expresses passion differently than say, Ailey’s “Cry, ” not that they only understand that kind of “passion” but that they are mostly only exposed to a very specific kind of “Passion.” But I was so happy last semester when at Hunter one student said that the passion in Trio A was clearly expressed in the fact that this dancer on the tape (Rainer herself) was constantly shifting focal points and that to him expressed a kind of insecure confidence in a passionate pursuit… Yes…passion, maybe that is now what Trajal is calling “certain joys” in his curatorial title for the Platform Series that Para-dice is a part of.  Joy is passionate, I am invested in finding joy as in laughter and irony..a deeper kind of joy..It would be great if the idea of  “passion” was stretched to include more than only certain prescribed states of mind and body.

What is the value of collaboration?

I cannot create anything in isolation. The basics of everything I do is collaboration. I collaborated with Peggy Gould to create this duet in Para-dice for her and I during a year plus. I might have some clear idea about something but I always need to know if its working with the other people too and how else we could do that same idea. I just made a piece for the NYU 2nd Ave Dance Company and I had a great time collaborating with the dancers. I remember when I was in that company during my senior year at NYU more than 2 decades ago and the choreographers that came to work with us were very clear that we were not worth a dialogue, an exchange with, and they “set” some piece “on” us.  I learned nothing from that experience…just a kind of strange humiliation.  But this time at NYU I really was so into working with the dancers and getting to know who they were. I could only do that if I was interested in collaborating with them.

What is different about you as an artist now versus 10 years ago? 20?<

I am much much older..hahahahh! I have worked through every injury and I know my body better now. I know how to be more economical and I am not as provoked by things around me…although i can still work on that for the rest of my life.  I can concentrate quicker, I know how I feel quicker and I can better articulate what is going on around and inside of me quicker. I am still interested in similar projects, I am still wondering how to mold different languages into a convoluted whole.  I remember when I auditioned for Fresh Tracks in 1986 and David White left this message on my machine saying how messy and disorganized the work was and that yes, the panel was taking the piece but only if I was willing to clean it up…yes, I am still interested in creating chaotic work that doesn’t feel artificial and superficial.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tuesday night found Culturebot at BAM for the Ridge Theater’s production of Persephone, a multimedia musical extrav-o-rama featuring Julia Stiles as Persephone and Mimi Goese as Demeter. This lushly designed song cycle tells two stories intertwined. The first story is that of Persephone, abducted by Hades and forced to live in Hell for part of the years. The second story is that of the 19th century Excelsior Theater Company, helmed by tyrannical artistic director Jules (Sean Haberle), who is trying to stage a multimedia extrav-o-rama about the myth of Persephone. On the night of the performance Thomas Edison himself is in the house as Jules deals with the malfunctioning film and projector setup that is the cutting-edge technology of the day. Not only that but Jules has a coke habit and has to deal with rebellious actresses – Clara/Persephone and Grace/Demeter – who chafe under his direction. The equipment keeps breaking down, powerplays by the women abound and Jules’ chief technician Nicholas (Michael Anthony Williams) eventually switches sides, seduced by Clara, leaving Jules no choice but to accede to the women’s demands. This plot line mirrors the plot of Demeter/Hades/Persephone and unfolds episodically throughout the evening. The plot is a bit thin – mostly it is a vehicle to frame the music – the entire piece feels a little like Moulin Rouge with a soundtrack by Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance.

Ultimately that’s what I came away with – it was a lovely piece but altogether bland. The production elements are beautiful – Jim Findlay’s set is imaginative and playful, Bill Morrison’s films and Laurie Olinder’s projections combine to create a visually stunning, surreal landscape. The piece is staged with significant chunks performed by Mimi Goese in the balconies – reaching out to and above the audience. But despite all the theatrical tricks and self-referential jokes, the technological hocus-pocus and impressive stagecraft, the whole enterprise feels a bit empty. I guess I had been expecting something more abstract and less logical/linear. As it was the basic plot elements were very conventional and predictable, there was no suspense or surprise. And since everyone already knows the legend of Persephone, that wasn’t a big surprise either. I came away wanting more. I enjoyed relaxing and watching it unfold, like a music video, but it didn’t compel me to sit on the edge of my seat and pay attention.

There’s something exciting about seeing music-theater at this level of production; it was definitely an enjoyable and pleasant evening. But it made me wonder about the limitations of “90 Minutes, no intermission” as a structure. Did they feel like they couldn’t go deeper into characterization because of time limits? Did they feel like they had to cover certain things and let others slide? Ultimately I’d love to talk to the artists about the decisions they made, what they set out to make, and how they ended up where they did. It seems like it could have gone in any number of more substantial directions and they ended up with a compromise that fit the length and content requirements but somehow fell short of a totally electrifying experience.

What did you think?

PERSEPHONE
Oct 26—30, 2010, 7:30pm

BAM Harvey Theater
90min, no intermission
Tickets: $25, 45, 60, 70

Music by Ben Neill & Mimi Goese
Lyrics by Mimi Goese
Book by Warren Leight
Films by Bill Morrison
Projections by Laurie Olinder
Sets by Jim Findlay
Dramaturgy by Daniel Zippi & Karl Precoda
Choreography by Dan Safer
Lights by John Ambrosone
Costumes by Jane Alois Stein
Sound design by Jamie McElhinney
Directed by Bob McGrath

Co-commissioned by Virginia Tech for the Department of Theatre and Cinema at Virginia Tech and by BAM for the 2010 Next Wave Festival.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Rubber Repertory's "Biography of Physical Sensation." Photo by Jessica Alpern.

Blorg! I should have known when I came up with this idea for a weekly column about what your intrepid Culturbots will be seeing and doing that it was going to take some real effort to put it together, but damn.

Andy’s mission this fall, if he’s never said it outright, is to hit basically the entire run of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, which this week includes both Ballet Preljocaj‘s Empty moves (parts 1 and 2) (tickets) and the Ridge Theatre‘s Persephone (tickets). French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj is one of those people with an amazing reputation, but I have to admit (based on little besides seeing some video) that Preljocaj, like the other French choreographers I’ve seen recently (including Christian Rizzo, David Wampach, and Francois Chaignaud) seems a little too in love with pure formalism and abstraction for my taste. But I reserve judgment till I see it tomorrow (ah, the joys of being a plus-one!).

Sadly, I will not be seeing Persephone, which really does make me sad, because I’ve had a crush on Julia Stiles since 10 Things I Hate About You. So, um, yeah, even uber-artsy people get to have their Hollywood crushes, right? Anyway, the realization of the Persephone myth as a fin de siècle Nineteenth Century spectacle does sound pretty cool. I’m sure Andy will be weighing in tomorrow seeing as how that’s where he is tonight.

The show that seems to have more than a couple people in the Culturebot newsroom buzzing is The Fortune Teller at HERE Arts Center (tickets $25/$50), where apparently both Andy and Julia can be found this week. And come on, marionettes are sort of creepy in their own right, but make it a story about seven strangers coming to unnatural ends in the creepy mansion of a deceased millionaire, and you’ve got some excellent Halloween fare.

Aaron, for his part, will be hitting three shows: the inimitable Justin Bond for the closing weekend of Re:Galli Blond (A Sissy Fix) at the Kitchen (tickets $15), and then off to the Incubator Arts Project, née the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, for Little Lord‘s (oh my god I am so) THIRST(y) (tickets $14/$18), and finally Them at PS 122 (tickets $15/$20), which both Andy and I have previously gushed over.

Little Lord is a company that mashes up and adapts classic theatre texts to their own low-tech, homemade ends, presenting oddball spectacles like their version of Babes in Toyland, which played at the Ohio’s Ice Factory series last year. THIRSTY(y) is based on a play by Eugene O’Neill, and may or may not have something to do with race. And as for Justin Bond, well…it’s Justin Bond. Seriously. We have an interview with him about the show you should read, but it’s going to kick ass.

Alyssa’s going to be at Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at the City Center (tickets $24-$110), but she really wants to call everyone’s attention to Enda Walsh’s Penelope at St. Ann’s Warehouse (tickets $35-$55), which she saw last week along with Maura H. A visiting production from the Druid Theatre Company, it’s a modern twist on the end of the Odyssey. And it looks quite cool.

Maura, for her part, will be writing up Penelope for us this week, as well as taking herself to Second Stage Theatre for the revival of Arthur Kopit’s Wings, starring Jan Maxwell and gushed all over by Ben Brantley in the Times.

As for our intrepid Austin correspondent, Timothy Braun, he’ll be filing reports this week on the Rubber Rep‘s Biography of Physical Sensation (tickets $15-$25). It’s a fascinating show that looks to re-define audience participation by inviting its 40 spectators each night to experience someone else’s life through the five senses, an experience carefully crafted by the ambitious company.

And as for me? I have some half-formed plans to catch Patricia Hoffbauer’s new multi-part work showing at Danspace, which Maura D. promises to cover in depth, as well as Jane Comfort’s Faith Healing at the Joyce Soho.

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