Results tagged “culturalcenter”

Everything's coming up rosé on Staten Island: on the heels of the new aquarium unveiling in the ferry terminal, plans for the island’s first vineyard are coming into focus. Borough President James Molinaro (pictured, right) has pledged $2 million for the project, which will establish a 2 acre vineyard and demonstration winery at the Staten Island Botanical Garden.

For those not wanting to hit the big Halloween parade (led by today's interviewee) there are other options: Park Slope's Halloween Parade (info here), Clinton Hill's Halloween Walk (info here) Prospect Park South's Halloween Parade (info here) and Williamsburg's Witches Walk (info here).

THEATER: Breedingground Theater Company continues their three week Spring Fever Festival of work by self-producing artists. (We suggest perusing the full lineup on the company’s website, though we caution that it's quite an eyesore.) Nevertheless, one that happily caught our eye is Chess’d, about a ninja and a man in a white tux playing a game of life-sized chess. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred life-or-death struggle, which reviewer Daniel Kelly declares “hilarious from start to finish.” Another possibility is the heady Simulacra: a modern myth, which concerns “an amnesiac TV junky running a freakish temperature and channel surfing a crumbling reality on a quest to recover her identity.” (We’ve been there!) According to reviewer Mark DeFrancis, the show “takes everything from MySpace to the Greek gods and somehow manages to fuse them into a sleek, frenetic production about self-identity, materialism, and mass media.” - John Del Signore

Today, Mayor Bloomberg met with the Bronx fire victims' families and later held a press conference about the tragedy, which is the deadliest fire (aside from September 11) since 1990 . The Mayor has been under fire for leaving the city yesterday - after a Thursday press conference about the fire - for a scheduled appearance in Miami, where he made jokes about "Mayors Gone Wild" in South Beach.

Exhibit closes: May 12, 2007

THEATER: It’s Friday night, and what better way to cut loose than an evening of interactive theater – set in plague-ravaged New York City! In All Fall Down, a savage battle rages for the dwindling supplies of the vaccine, but soon a question arises: "Is the cure worse than the disease?" Theatre Recrudescence vows to explore our “post 9/11 hysteria with elements of carnival, clowning and rock and roll.” (All Fall Down is in previews, so there are no reviews; we'll have to take them on their word that the show “includes the audience, but doesn't embarrass them.”) - John Del Signore

Along with producing shows by up and coming playwrights, one of the things off-off-Broadway does best is to resurrect plays first presented ages ago that have hardly been seen or thought of since. One such is V.R. Lang’s Fire Exit: A Vaudeville For Eurydice, which is nominally a modernization of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth but in actuality, at least in this incarnation, is more an opportunity for some majorly bizarre antics by a brave, eager cast. It’s the 1950s, and Orpheus, a hotshot young composer, marries Eurydice, who comes from a family of carnival folk, only to break her heart by caring more about his career than their life together. Fortunately, Eury grew up with the good examples of some wacky “aunts” – one of them played by director Barbara Vann – and she finally learns to embrace the performer in herself and not look back.

In a city where there’s as much theater as there is here, we’re never too surprised when shows open that have a lot in common, but it’s always fun to note and wonder what was happening in the creative Zeitgeist to generate technically unrelated but similar works. This week, for instance, Rachel Shukert’s Bloody Mary opens, bringing the life of the notoriously unbalanced daughter of Henry VIII to the stage in suitably off-the-wall fashion (Mary has a guardian who just might be Jimi Hendrix; a New York lawyer somehow gets involved in the power struggles). Meanwhile, at the Pearl you can see Schiller’s dark, brooding Mary Stuart, which looks at the events surrounding the execution of Bloody Mary’s cousin, which was ordered by Elizabeth I. The Pearl always presents loving, carefully considered revivals, so the coincident dates with Shukert’s production should provide a good opportunity for comparing and contrasting visions of ye olde England.

Forget Saddam in his underwear (people, this is like seeing your uncle absent-mindedly walk around the house without his pants, only if your uncle is a murderer and despot), the truly awesome photograph that the NY Post has today is this shot of Governor Pataki and polarizing international architect Daniel Libeskind getting cozy. Photographer Josh Williams captured the moment, to which the Post writes, "What will Libby Pataki and Nina Libeskind say when they see their husbands locked in this loving embrace?" Libeskind and Pataki were together, along with other World Trade Center poobahs, to see the unveiling of the Cultural Center designs for Ground Zero. While pols say the design is "respectful," some victims families think the design is too close to the WTC Memorial. Regardless, all involved emphasized that the design met security standards.

Tickets are on sale via Ticket Web for the three weekend performances at NYU's Skirball Center. Tickets run between $22 and $32 each, which should be covered by your lucky money. Also this weekend is the Chinatown parade on Sunday.

While he's primarily known for his French language films and his surrealist collaboration with artist Salvador Dalí, the series of movies Luis Buñuel made in Mexico in Spanish from the late '40s through the '60s are also delightfully weird and perfectly wonderful.