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arts & entertainment
January 24, 2014 Page 33
John Drew Theater Lab is Born in East Hampton By lee meyer
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to network. The chance to have people networking, using their resources...it’s really healthy to do out here [on the East End],” he says. “I think we’re really onto something here. I think that some of the choices we’ve got programmed are very interesting. There are some younger, emerging artists who are building their strengths [through JDTLab]. I like to see artists in their 20s, 30s; we also have veterans, of course. We’re lucky in that having done a number of plays
uild Hall has announced the John Drew Theater Lab (JDTLab), a new workshop series designed to give East End performing artists an opportunity to develop their work in an exploratory, developmental environment. Featuring theater, dance, music and more, works developed by JDTLab will be performed on select Tuesdays through May at the John Drew Theater. The series began on January 21 with a staged reading of Turing Test, a new play by Dominick DeGaetano. Guild Hall artistic director Josh Gladstone is very excited about this unique initiative and can’t wait to see what develops. “The John Drew Theater Lab is an extension of our mission, which is to provide our community with opportunities [in the arts],” Gladstone says. “We’ve done play readings and series, but we wanted to give a little more to the artists than we have in the past.” Although Guild Hall does have opportunities for performers throughout the year, JDTLab is providing artists with an open platform that allows them to work on projects that are special to them. Local actor Sawyer Avery, for instance, is making his directorial debut with JDTLab. “It goes back to the artist getting an opportunity to extend [their skills]. Sawyer has never directed before, and was jonesing to direct,” Gladstone says. “He’s directing Guild Hall, home of the John Drew Theater Lab a staged reading of Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. He’s working with an experience co-director on the here, we have actors and directors we know.” While Gladstone notes that these workshop project.” Gladstone also points out that Avery chose the play he wanted to direct, and that they’re not productions are not guaranteed to develop into anything more, he doesn’t rule out the possibility limited to new or original works. Gladstone hopes that JDTLab will help performing of a successful lab getting a full-fledged Guild Hall artists advance their careers. “One of things I’m production. “It’s absolutely conceivable that we really excited about is that they’re going to be able could mount a full production,” Gladstone says. But
if a lab doesn’t turn out to be successful or live up to its potential, that’s okay too. Gladstone believes that the whole purpose of a lab is to experiment, and experiments sometimes include failures. “You can create something wonderful, or it could explode in your face.” The opening season of JDTLab is filled with interesting, unique programming. Turing Test is centered around a mysterious experiment that an unemployed teacher agrees to participate in involving tutoring a student in poetry. On the other end of the spectrum is Biloxi Blues, a classic Neil Simon comedy, which will perform on Tuesday, February 4. On Tuesday, February 18, Joe Brando and Susan Vecsey direct an improv workshop featuring actors enrolled in Manhattan’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade. On Tuesday, April 29, the NeoPolitical Cowgirls take the stage for a performance of Kate Mueth’s latest dance/theater piece Voyeur. On May 6, a new band featuring Lynn Blumenfeld, Randolph Hudson, Kylph Black, Mick Hargreaves and Jim Lawler perform an informal evening of original acoustic songs. There’s no formal process for artists who are interested in getting involved or proposing a JDTLab project. “It’s pretty informal,” Gladstone notes. “They should send me an email (joshgladstone@ guildhall.org) at Guild Hall. The slots between now and May are almost all filled, but I’ll be lining these up for the year to come. I think it’s a series that has legs and will establish itself as the go-to place to see work in development.” For more information on the John Drew Theater Lab and a complete lineup of performances, go to guildhall.org. Performances are open to the public and free of charge.
Twofer: Gay Times in Venice and Hooker Satire By Joan baum
Although lit-crit folks will recognize the allusion to Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice in Vinton Rafe McCabe’s disturbing, but compelling, and poetic novel, Death in Venice, California (The Permanent Press), it’s T.S. Eliot’s sadly ironic poem Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock that sets the situation and tone (and provides quotations throughout). Let it be said at once, however, that the story—about the degeneration and degradation of a well-off 50s-something famous poet fleeing cold New York to vacation in Southern California, where he comes to acknowledge, act on and invite homosexuality, not to mention indulging in drugs, tattoos and plastic surgery—may not be for everyone (some may even find it pornographic). Let it also be said that the author diverges from Mann’s story, where the acclaimed aging writer Gustav von Aschenbach goes on holiday, becomes obsessed with Tadzio, a 14-year-old golden boy he sees, but never touches or even speaks to, and dies, from cholera—a moving story of imagined Dionysian surfeit and erotic and Platonic love set amid the gorgeous decay of Venice. In McCabe’s capable hands, Jameson Frame’s growing manic fixation on Chase, the most beautiful young man he’s ever seen, a skateboarding male model, hustler and beach bum, becomes, as the author says, a story of “the burning concept of yearning,” jammed “into the craw of a staid, entitled, central character…set “loose unmoored in the modern world.” That world also includes older
women and men, gay and straight, who hang around hotels and beach looking to connect themselves to someone or something. McCabe impressively captures that scene, but especially Frame by way of a slightly stilted style (“The perfection of the man…the golden nature of him”) and long sentences rich in exacting sensuous detail: “He inhaled deeply, the scent of ocean, salt, sweat, filth, and marijuana all mixed in the air and he raised his arms up over his head in a gesture, an exclamation of joy.” It’s the physical world McCabe describes, however, that proves most memorable—the looks, sounds and scents of artificial high life and seductive low life in Venice that still attract lost souls from God knows where to do God knows what, most of whom get sucked into the rhythms of the place. *** Satire, it’s been said, is driven by three Rs— risibility, recognition, reform: through laughter, targets are identified and hoped-for improvement is implied. It’s a difficult genre to bring off well. Some satires overtly savage hypocrisy and destructive behavior; others deliver a more subtle societal critique; and some, like Gulliver’s Travels, seem an odd mix of obvious and arcane (Book III is rarely discussed and the misogyny of Book IV does not seem to evolve from earlier sections). Then there are movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street whose overthe-top take on already extremist behavior offends and whose protagonist, while serving as the portal through which offensive, amoral and criminal acts
are viewed (generating risibility and recognition), ends as unrepentant and corrupt as he began—a cynical conclusion that precludes reform. Saving The Hooker (The Permanent Press) by Michael Adelberg exhibits other problems that can diminish wellintentioned satire—too many targets. These include “misogyny, academic dishonesty, political correctness, drugs, prostitution, sexual abuse,” not to mention talk shows and odd father-son relationships that don’t seem necessary to the plot or theme. Moreover, the narrator, Matthew Hristahalois (why this name?), a likeable character, becomes unsavory as the narrative develops. A post doc at a NYC university he’s watched Pretty Woman too many times and is finally prompted to pursue research that explores the discrepancy between “Hooker with a Heart of Gold” who is saved by a male—a frequent myth he sees in American literature and film—and the real-life conditions of most prostitutes. But once he meets a beautiful, clever hooker who calls herself Julia Roberts, he succumbs to the myth, then exploits it, a game the author himself gets into when he has “Saving the Hooker” be the title and content of a book Matthew writes about his experience. The whole is flawed but fun, with an inviting irreverent tone, on show from the beginning when Matthew introduces himself as on unpaid sabbatical, room and board free, courtesy of the Otisville Correctional Facility named by Forbes as “one of the 10 best places in the United States to go to prison.” Probably true.