Results tagged “actfrench”

In this heartily American week some of the most appealing things to see are foreign, at least in part. For a more delicate food-related experience than Thanksgiving usually turns turn out to be, consider Lao She’s Teahouse, set in a Beijing establishment over the course of some fifty years that encompass three important moments in modern Chinese history, beginning in 1898. Sixty-plus characters that embody the vast changes in China come to life via the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, in NYC for the first time. Performances are in Mandarin, but there will be both subtitles and simultaneous translation with headphones in case you’re feeling a bit rusty on the language.

THEATER: PS 122 & Act French present The Itching of the Wings (La démangeaison des ailes) as part of the series which brings new French theater to us. The play itself is an "autopsy of daydreams" and presents, among other things, a visit from a rock band dimensionalizing the polyphony of music, movement, text and image that is a history of the history of art and ideas. With music by Stockhausen, Kid Koala, Raymond Scott, Aphex Twin, John Williams and Big Yum Yum.

The great weather of the past few days has put us in mind of summer, so since we know it’s going to turn cold soon, we’ll highlight a few festivals that, while not exactly the Fringe, might still make us warm and fuzzy remembering July.

With the massive arts listings in last Sunday’s Times, the new season officially got underway, although theatre fans have for some time been able to get at least some idea about the next year on stage, and not only the brand-name productions, via the estimable nytheatre.com. Still, poring over those inky pages and getting overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of what’s about to come our way has no real substitute, and we’re now particularly looking forward to October’s Massacre (Sing to Your Children), a dark psychodrama/mystery written by Jose Rivera and being produced by the LAByrinth Theatre Company at the Public; 4.48 Psychose, Sarah Kane’s very experimental final play which will be performed by Isabelle Huppert in French (also in October, it’s part of both the Act French festival and BAM’s Next Wave festival); the latest provocation from Les Freres Corbusier, Hell House, which from the Times’ description sounds like it will be a close reproduction of fundamentalist Christians’ method of scaring people into faith, though you probably won’t have to look too hard for the satiric element; and Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed, a send-up of the pervasive celebrity gossip culture playing in December at Second Stage. We were also tickled to see that Martin McDonagh (writer of The Pillowman) and John Patrick Shanley (Doubt) will again go head-to-head with new plays next spring – Shanley’s Defiance at Manhattan Theatre Club and McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Atlantic. As the Times asks, why mess with success? The Pillowman’s imminent closing notwithstanding, both have been hits despite being singularly unsettling theatrical experiences, so maybe they offer each other mutual support, and maybe the new plays will find the same rapport. In any case, we’re excited.