THEATER:Jude Narita's one-woman show, Walk the Mountain, is about the hellish effects of the Vietnam War. In the wrong hands, this might make for an unbearably ponderous evening, but the Times review puts us at ease: “In dramatizing unspeakably horrific events, must an artist end up brutalizing her audience as well? [Jude Narita] reminds us that it's possible for a performer to treat both her material and her audience with respect.” For Walk the Mountain, Ms. Narita interviewed Vietnamese and Cambodian women who survived the horror and traces the country’s history of resistance back to 39 A.D., when a Chinese invasion was thwarted. L.A. Weekly called it “haunting and heroic.” - John Del Signore
Friday // 8pm // Theater for the New City [155 First Ave] // Tickets are $15 during previews
EVENT: There's gonna be a Big Game in Washington Square Park this weekend, called Payphone Warriors. The game is like PacManhattan, there will be a lot of running around the park "capturing" payphones and defending them from other teams. Check out the site if you need some clarity on all of this. Game on!
Saturday // 2pm // Check website for directions // Free
MUSIC: Quite the lineup at Irving Plaza this weekend: The Blood Brothers, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Celebration, and Brothers and Sisters. We're not the biggest Celebration fans, but we're willing to sit through them for the other three. Above is a clip of the band playing at Looney Tunes (Long Island). Interesting note: when you search for Blood Brothers in New York on YouTube...Patrick Swayze's "She's Like the Wind" comes up. Yep. So you might as well watch that one too.
Saturday and Sunday // 8pm // Irving Plaza // $20
MORE MUSIC: Bar/None is celebrating their 20th anniversary with a good 'ol fashioned party. They'll be ringing in a new decade with Freedy Johnston, Mosquitos, and They Might Be Giants. 20 is like 100 in non-indie label years, so go and help 'em celebrate.
THEATER: Dixon Place is presenting its WARNING! Not for Broadway festival of new musical theatre works all weekend. Two show descriptions caught our eye: Bar Code, a “visionary ‘true love’ story set in Earth Corp, a repressive futuristic society where a group of idealists, the Data Jammers, aim to dismantle the method - bar code tattoos - by which they are all controlled." (Friday at 7pm). And No More Waiting, in which five unemployed actor/waiters commandeer a cabaret stage, sounds cathartic. “With nothing more than the clothes on their backs and stolen props, they create a world of suppressed inner desires, romance and insanity!” - John Del Signore
All Weekend // Peruse the entire schedule at the Dixon Place website. // All performances at Roulette [20 Greene St] // Tickets are $10