TRaC is back.

As if you didn’t know — the summer Teen Reviewers and Critics (TRaC) program is NOW recruiting for our July/August!

Think about it.  FREE access to NYC art, music, theater and dance, eleven new friends from all backgrounds and boroughs, lively debate, writing, flip-flops, subway adventures, August sunshine, pizza, mini frisbees….

Need we say more??

Sign up now for one or more of 5 special two-day workshops on a first-come, first-served basis.  Anyone in high school is eligible.  Participants will attend a Thursday night performance, write a review, and meet up the following Tuesday for a writing workshop from 4:30pm – 7:30pm in the ArtsConnection/High 5 building in Manhattan (8th Ave and 36th Street).

Just as in our Fall and Spring TRaC programs, Summer TRaC workshops will include debate and discussion about the show, writing activities, an opportunity to publish your work and whatever else participants bring to it!   (If you’ve ever wondered what the 8-week TRaC programs in the fall and spring were like, this is a great way to get a snapshot of the experience.)  Each session will be taught by one of the veteran TRaC Instructors, all of whom are working artists and critics.

For more information, dates and instructions on how to sign up follow the link…..

There are five 2-day options to choose from:

Session 1 – July 29th and August 3rd
taught by Music TRaC Instructor Andrey Henkin

Session 2 – August 5th and 10th
taught by TRaC Director Eric Ost

Session 3A – August 12th and 17th
taught by Multi TRaC Instructor Eisa Davis

Session 3B – August 12th and 17th
taught by Dance TRaC Instructor Brian McCormick

Session 4 – August 19th and 24th
taught by Dance TRaC Instructor Brian McCormick

TO SIGN UP, email the following information to Eric Ost, TRaC Program Director, at TRaC@high5tix.org:

•    session preference (1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, 4th choice)
•    your name
•    age
•    school
•    grade in Fall ’10
•    contact phone number
•    and 3-sentence statement of interest (why are you interested in doing this??)

There is LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE so email your preferences in soon!  Participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis, and notified by phone.  Session 1 participants will be contacted in the evening on Monday, July 26. Please remember to order your session preference in your email (for example: 1st choice-Session 1, 2nd choice-Session 3B, etc).  Depending on space, you may be able to attend more than one workshop so please include as many choices as you like.  We like to encourage everyone to bring an open mind to all things art so the shows we see will be a surprise!

For more information about the Teen Reviewers and Critics program please visit the TRaC homepage at www.high5tix.org/TRaC.  Any questions?   Call Eric Ost at 212.453.9485 or email at TRaC@high5tix.org.

Hope you are up for to joining us for this summer ride!

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Yisrael Campbell in "a new comedy on the cutting edge." Ouch. (photo © Carol Rosegg)

Only in New York would you find a thrice-circumcised Irish Catholic-turned-Orthodox-Jew, kvetching about everything from terrorism to hard-core drugs to Baby Gap on an off-off Broadway stage behind a deli.  That’s why, perhaps, the audience of Yisrael Campbell’s (formerly known as Christopher) one man comedy show, Circumcise Me, seems to be at least half tourists, hailing from places as far flung as Russia, Israel, and Alaska.  But regardless of where they come from, they are all invariably Jewish.

This creates a warm tribal feeling in the tiny black box theater;  there’s plenty of pre-show schmoozing, food-sharing, and offers of travel advice from the locals to the visitors.  By the time the show starts, it feels a bit like a hipster Jew convention. Only in New York.

Yisrael takes the stage and begins to tell his story, starting with his drug-addled Philly childhood with his aunt, the nun, through his time in California conning people via phone to purchase $200 copy toner, to his spiritual awakening, to his pilgrimage to Israel, to the birth of his six-month old daughter.

He is aided by a series of tongue-in-cheek slides projected onto the screen behind him, so you get to look at a photo of the clean shaven teenager drinking a beer while listening to the man in the yarmulke and the beard that he grew into.  As with all true stories of growth and transformation, it’s deeply weird, and deeply arresting.

Each episode in his life is narrated with zest and good humor, and the show is full of terrific one-liners that will have Chosen People rolling in their seats, though they might be lost on fore-skinned folk.  There is not only comedy here though;  his recollections of friends that were killed in suicide bombing incidents in Jerusalem were powerful and heartbreaking, and there’s an awareness, even during the funny bits, that behind all of his levity is a deep inner sadness that was the cause of his epic search for meaning.

I highly recommend it, if this sounds like your thing:  extremely unique, hilarious and thought provoking.  Plus, when you’re done, you can pick up a schnitzel at the deli outside.  Only in New York.

Circumcise Me, Starring Yisrael Campbell. Directed by Sam Gold. At the Bleecker Street Theatre, 45 Bleecker Street.  Extended run through May 16.

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Fans of magic and comedy will rejoice at The Quantum Eye’s hefty offering of outstanding feats and light, quick-witted humor. Renowned mentalist and star of The Quantum Eye, Sam Eaton creates an atmosphere both mysterious and relaxed, shying away from the typical authoritative magician’s image and appealing to the audience as a charming intellectual.  The tricks featured in the show range from tried-and-true card tricks to downright innovative acts involving newspapers, books, minty breath strips, and other inconspicuous items.

The Quantum Eye will leave viewers mystified at first, even if the acts become muddled and repetitive over time.  However, Eaton’s cute intermittent anecdotes and captivating stage presence are more than enough to save the show.

Check out a preview here:

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The Diary of a Teenage Girl, written by and starring Marielle Heller, is truly a masterpiece.  It is an amazing work of art that was adapted from a graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner (now on exhibit at the 3LD Art & Technology Center) about a fifteen year old girl trying to grow up in a world she was not ready to take on herself.  She began to live her life in the fast lane, doing things you would not think a normal teenager would do.  But the main character Minnie Goetz is not normal at all.

The play begins with her obsession over a man named Monroe who is nearly twice her age, who just so happens to be her mother’s boyfriend.  Talk about a shocker within the first fifteen minutes!  From the moment the play started there was never a dull moment;  my eyes were glued to the characters as though this was one of my favorite movies.

The seating arrangement of this play was unique, especially where I was sitting;  I was so close to the characters, if I wanted to stretch out my arms I could actually touch them.  To be honest, the view was perfect from whichever area you sit at because the story was told as though it was happening just as if you were peeping through one of the windows at the house.  The story line was great and the way the actors/actresses performed together made the story seem so real at that very moment.  For a minute, I forgot that this is not real life because the acting was just so believable.

Throughout  the play you were able to see how a young woman with no real direction in her life can go astray and sometimes when you notice, it might just be a little too late.  Due to Minnie’s inquisitive mind she seemed as though she is more advanced than most fifteen years old.  Minnie had more in life to learn and because there was not strong parental guidance she never quite fully developed the way she needed to be.

I loved this play, and I would recommend anyone to see this.  On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, I would rate this play an 8 because the story and the actors were great, and everything was on key.  My only negative feedback was if you did not read the book at times you might have been lost, as well as the excessive cursing seemed to get kind of old.  I would also recommend reading the graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, which was the inspiration to the play The Diary of a Teenage Girl.  I am reading this book right now.  It is so good you do not want to let go.

[High 5 has limited tickets available for Diary of a Teenage Girl through April 12!  Click this link for your $5 access.]

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The unusual layout of the room immediately catches the eye.  The theater is a black box, with two adjacent sides of the room filled with seats for the audience.  The other two sides of the theater form the “V” shaped stage, although it is not really a stage because it is not raised up; it is a performance area.  The show starts, and jokes are told, scenery is moved to frame certain parts of the stage, and accents are expertly employed by the actors.  Later, the audience is almost hypnotized for over 10 minutes with pure silence while a corpse is  moved all around the stage in what seems like a ritual.  In reality, this “ritual” is the embalming of a famous Russian leader.

Lenin’s Embalmers, a new dark comedy at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, is a historical play surrounding the rise and downfall of two men, Boris (Scott Sowers) and Vlad (Zach Grenier), who were chosen to embalm Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist politician and revolutionary leader, in 1924.  Boris and Vlad know the stakes are high (they will be killed if they don’t succeed), but are being heavily pressured by the government to complete this never-before-done task that is almost impossible; these dangerous pressures make the play exciting from the start.

But, Lenin’s Embalmers is not all dark and deadly; a series of interwoven jokes keep the play from being too dreary.  The ghost of Lenin (whose real body remains on display in Moscow, Russia) walks around from scene to scene, commenting on the ridiculous frenzy made over the preservation of his body, and telling political jokes to lighten the mood.  Another funny aspect of this play is that all the women characters are acted by the same woman, and all named Nadia, so there is a constant and funny confusion as the actress has to announce which Nadia she is in a particular scene.

“Who is the hero of this story?” is a question asked throughout the play.  The “hero” title jumps from one person to the next, changing depending on the actions of a particular character.  This motif gives the story a supportive backbone from which the plot can excel.

The ending (without giving too much away) is at first confusing, because the time frame changes drastically, but it is ultimately thoughtful, and leaves you thinking about the story and the surprisingly dramatic lives of these historical figures.

“Lenin’s Embalmers” continues through March 28 at the Ensemble Studio Theater, 549 West 52nd Street, Clinton; ensemblestudiotheatre.org.

Check out playwright Vern Thiessen talking briefly about the show:

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For some reason we doubt that's an emergency call.

Performing arts don’t only demand prodigious skill, but a willingness to expose emotions, even if the exposure only occurs through an interpretation of someone else’s work.  This is why performing artists should be commended—not just for developing ability, but for risking emotional vulnerability in front of a subjective audience.  The interactions of performer with audience are very interesting, but almost commensurate in complexity is the behavioral response of an audience during a performance.

As depicted by a scene in the movie Amelie, viewing the rapt faces of an audience in a movie theater can be more entertaining than the film itself.  Not only can audience behavior be fascinating, but it can also be excruciatingly and infuriatingly distracting from the performance itself!  Fury, rather than fascination, was what audience behavior provoked in me during the Regina Opera’s performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and at the very least, massive irritation. The Regina Opera puts on performances in a venue identical in appearance to an elementary school auditorium, and they are practically an antithesis to the very behavior oriented Met, or City Opera.  Such a relaxed environment, in which latecomers are welcomed in, rather than glared at, and in which bottles of Scotch are raffled off during intermission, is conducive to loosening the etiquette of an audience.   However, the misfortune of being a friendly and relaxed opera company is that to some people it gives the impression that it’s acceptable to do whatever the hell you want during a performance.

Oh, yes.  They did.

The couple who sat behind me came in unabashedly late during the first scene, which was already high in tension (since Don Giovanni is accused of rape by Don Anna, and then proceeds to kill her father).  The man, who sat directly behind me began, as soon as he was fully seated, to kick my chair.  He then proceeded to bounce his leg rapidly, shaking my entire metal folding chair.  This was both uncomfortable and audible.  He also whispered wetly to the woman next to him.  She was not just an accomplice however, but his equal in crime.  The woman of the duo, who had arrogant and beady eyes, began with a rather stupendously cliche offense:  her phone began to ring, tinkling tunefully.   (So, not only were they late, but their phones were on, and they had noisy ringtones!)  Then, to truly mark her territory in the world of concert offenders, she didn’t even apologetically turn her phone off in a rushed manner.  She stared ahead, determined to not admit her wrongdoing, until I turned and gave her a foul look, after which she turned her phone off.

Oh, no, she wouldn't. (Oh, yes, she did.)

Then, crescendoing in her virtuosic performance of defiant rudeness, she began to chew gum.  This wouldn’t have been so bad if she had chewed gum like a normal person.  That is, silently!  Instead she actually cracked and popped and sucked on her gum like some sort of  beatboxer, which, I’ll say, didn’t really add anything to Don Giovanni.

Resigning myself to the role of the haughty audience glarer, I repeatedly turned around and  indicated with a frown that she quiet her salivating din, and repeatedly she would obediently stop and then, within a minute, begin cracking and popping again!  Ordinarily I would have dismissed this as an obnoxious pair, and wondered briefly “Why the hell did they come to the opera if they would rather kick, jiggle, and suck?”  But then during intermission, they truly imprinted themselves in my memory forever by actually having the gall to make friends with me as though I had not given them dirty looks during the whole first act, and made it intensely clear that I disliked them enormously.  As they asked me inane questions like “Are you an opera buff?” and “What do you think of teenagers and classical music?”, I  barely restrained myself from demanding, “Are you completely oblivious to social convention AND deaf to the amount of noise that you make???” and “What do you think of men who whisper and bounce their legs on other people’s chairs???”

They tell musicians who are playing the accompaniment “If you can’t hear the soloist you are too loud.”  If YOU, in the audience, can’t hear the soloist, you are certainly too loud.  If the audience members around you can’t hear the soloist, you are Obnoxious.  I don’t care how informal the venue is:  Don’t be rude.  Don’t giggle, bounce, suck and whisper.

So easy!

And that’s my rant.  Thank you, kindly. 

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500 Days of Summer (2009) is as warm and tantalizing as the season that it takes its name from.  And just like the finest season, you’ll treasure it as a rose-palette recollection.  The flick mixes rapture and melancholy with a light heart. 

500 Days of Summer, directed by Marc Webb, features Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recounting his five-hundred-day relationship with the wonderfully whimsical Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel).  The film opens with a narrator’s voice-over:  “This is a story of boy meets girl.  But you should know upfront, this is not a love story.”  No, Tom and Summer are not dating.  They do everything that couples do, but a couple they are not.  Their conflict is a matter of perception – and Webb’s movie is about perception.  Men and women simply see the same things differently.  At first, this truth means wild happiness for Tom.  Later, it blindsides him.  The difference between Tom and Summer’s perception of their relationship becomes an unhappy dichotomy.  The former is wholly smitten; the latter wants to “keep it casual.”  Tom remembers the days of his Summer love just as we all remember human relationships: in a nonlinear haze filtered by emotion.

Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel

Even with those emotions flying about, 500 Days is therapeutically refreshing.  It’s refreshing as a romance flick, it’s refreshing as a comedy, it’s refreshing as a study on gender contrasts.  The film hinges on the performances of Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.  They deliver.  Levitt possesses tremendous charisma.  He embodies the affable, love-struck young guy.  He knows that life might disappoint.  Summer just makes it so sweet that he forgets.  And Deschanel is simply inimitable.  The nuances of her acting set the character apart.  She makes Summer what women of Hollywood love yarns are not: alluring in ways genuine, whole, and mysterious.  It’s no wonder that Tom fell hard.

And Webb has a knack for uniting disparate film elements.  500 Days has a song-and-dance here, a documentary-style session there, droll pop-culture humor in between.  The soundtrack, the dialog, and the cinematography work so well because they unite.  The union has an exceptionally distinctive tone.  Each feature comes together with rare finesse.  Webb’s movie is a movie with a soul.  Like Tom and Summer’s relationship, that cinema-soul is offbeat and singularly engaging.

This is a lovely little film.  500 Days of Summer is honest, clever, and riotously comical.  It has spirit.  It has unflustered personality.  It has an inexplicably magnetic draw – just like love.

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I ventured into Manhattan on February 7th, through the cold and windy city streets, in an effort to make it to the Imperial Theatre to see Billy Elliot the Musical.  I had great expectations for this, just like any other show I go to see.

I bought these tickets a few months ago and since it was Kids Night on Broadway it was buy one adult ticket and a young person (ages 6 – 18) goes free.  I just started working and was proud to say I purchased my first full price ticket.   (I usually do not need to with the much appreciated and thanked efforts of High 5 Tickets to the Arts and TDF).  I was constantly saying that it better be good, but this was in a joking manner as I knew it had been loved by critics and audiences alike.

The show was not what I expected. 

It’s music was minimal and an afterthought, which came as a shock to me as Elton John had composed it, and he is such an amzing singer/songwriter.  The ballet aspect was amazing, but that is really all I can say for it.  While they could carry a tune, the actors’ voices were not strong and it seemed as though they were forcing the songs through their lips.  The set design was drab and dull.  It was just the same pieces used over and over again, ever so slightly changed around.  The story revolved too much around the miners’ strike and not enough about Billy.

When I go to a show, regardless of the genre, I almost always cry at the end.  At this show I did not.  There was some emotional aspect missing.  I did not feel for Billy nor did I for anyone else.

They hype this show up so much and it really is disappointing.  I honestly believe that Next to Normal should have won the Tony for Best Musical.  N2N did not put on airs about being amazing; it just is.  And so my friends, next time you venture into the city on a cold winter night, I hope your trip will be worth it, for mine was not.

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Enclosed within 59E59 Theaters is Theater B, unpretentious and intimate in design.  Walking in you find foreign writings across the wall, an intricate device flowing on a mildly moving set.  Less than a hundred were there between Madison and Park Avenue to witness a history come alive.  We were all subjected to a magnificent true story behind a 1486 Spanish Inquisition file, which was almost stolen from the Spanish National Archives.  The interrogation of the detained Israeli professor opens up the forbidden desires awakened by the binding of eyes, the tragic love between a Spanish Priest, Andrés González, and his Jewish  wife, Isabel.  Andres’s confession of a double life reveals a testing of his conviction amid overwhelming intolerance and persecution.

The cast of Conviction is comprised of three actors, Ami Dayan (Professor Tal,  Andrés González), Kevin Hart  (Director of The National Archives in Spain, Juan de Salamanca), and Catharine Pilafas (Isabel).  Dayan’s and Pilafas’s approach to the ill-fated story was simply extraordinary, as if they held no memory at all of the previous night’s performance.  The “sinful” lust looming over their heads escalated in gravidity as Andres recalled to Juan de Salamanca, a longtime friend and priest, a whirlwind romance of the ages.  The consequences documented in a file among others.  Other fatal stories.

Hart’s performance as a interrogator proved to be my personal favorite because he provided another perspective to Conviction.  He was the only one without a link to the century’s old story, just like the audience.  I had no knowledge about what we were to see in the intricate historical account.  Does this mean that not being well informed about the Spanish Inquisition takes away from your views of Conviction?  In my opinion, no.  I felt alien to the speech and content in the beginning, although I had some idea of the show’s nature.  However, over the course of the play I grew to understand every aspect of it through marvelous acting and striking emotion.  I would recommend Conviction to all enamoured with forbidden love — and to those who wouldn’t mind a little history lesson, too.

Conviction, directed by Jeremy Cole, is running from February 16 to March 21 at 59E59 Theaters.  High $5 Tickets are available through March 14  here!

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