Engineer's Daughter

input september 2020

Books

People of the City - Cyprian Ekwensi

The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder - Brian Doyle

The Yellow House: A Memoir - Sarah M. Broom

 

Movies

Holes - Andrew Davis

20 Feet From Stardom - Morgan Neville

If Beale Street Could Talk - Barry Jenkins

Inception - Christopher Nolan

The Bling Ring - Sofia Coppola

The Host - Bong Joon Ho

Inside Llewyn Davis - Joel and Ethan Coen

Gregory Go Boom - Janicza Bravo

Pauline Alone - Janicza Bravo

Woman in Deep - Janicza Bravo

Man Rots from the Head - Janicza Bravo

The Shawshank Redemption - Frank Darabont

La Ciénaga - Lucrecia Martel

The Headless Woman - Lucrecia Martel

Zama - Lucrecia Martel

13TH - Ava DuVernay

Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt

The One and Only Ivan - Thea Sharrock

Thank You and Good Night - Jan Oxenberg

 

Streaming

Better Call Saul

Muppets Now

Cobra Kai

Kim Possible

Seven Seconds

Schoolhouse Rock

 

Virtual Theater

Caesar Maximus at We Players

Black Voices Past and Present podcast by Steven Anthony Jones

the keep going song

Bay Area audiences might already be familiar with the Bengsons after Z Space produced the world premiere of their musical memoir Hundred Days several years back, and Abigail and Shaun's talent for creating transcendence out of the little details of life is on full display in their current production The Keep Going Song. Streaming for pay-what-you-can until October 8th as part of the Actors Theatre of Louisville's current season, The Keep Going Song is a progression of linked tunes performed and recorded during quarantine at Shaun's parents' house in Ohio, incorporating issues of faith, grief, and resilience. The intimacy of the virtual concert is particularly effective for the subject matter here, and this atheist Buddhist was tremendously moved and ultimately quite uplifted by the viewing experience. We're all getting through this as best we can.

See also:

• The Keep Going Song
• Hundred Days

one room

"We need people to help us do the things we need to do alone." Alfre Woodard delivers that beautiful line in the short play by Will Eno that opens the omnibus One Room, a series of pandemic one-acts commissioned by Vermont's Weston Playhouse. The works include the slyly humorous and the deadly serious, and even when the material occasionally falters the strength of the actors' performances elevates the viewing experience. Of course solo performances feel particularly relevant right now as we continue to isolate, and there were many moments where I felt strong resonances with my own life over the past months. Pieces like these will be such fascinating time capsules to look back on when we're finally through this.

See also:

• Weston Playhouse
• Watch the plays one at a time
• Or as a compilation

the 7th voyage of egon tichy

 

As theater continues to evolve quickly in quarantine, Joshua William Gelb is making innovative productions right in his closet. Last week he performed a mind-bending piece called The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, based on a Stanislaw Lem story adapted by Josh Luxenberg and directed by Jonathan Levin, in which Gelb interacted live with many many pre-recorded versions of himself. I was mesmerized by the results, alternately laughing at the slapstick moments and then trying to figure out the technical aspects of the production. This is just the latest in a series of works Gelb is calling "Theater in Quarantine" using a donation-based model. Check out his YouTube channel for the archive, and future performances include short dance pieces and a Borges adaptation.

See also:

• Theater in Quarantine
• Building the quarantine theater
• The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

input august 2020

Books

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847 -1947 - Norman Lebrecht

Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language - David Shariatmadari

1919: Poems - Eve L. Ewing

Recollections of My Nonexistence - Rebecca Solnit

 

Movies

Da 5 Bloods - Spike Lee

Parasite - Bong Joon Ho

Fast Color - Julia Hart

My Twentieth Century - Ildikó Enyedi

Iron Man - Jon Favreau

The Witches - Nicolas Roeg

Palm Springs - Max Barbakow

The Farewell - Lulu Wang

Starstruck - Gillian Armstrong

Moana - Ron Clements, John Musker, Don Hall, Chris Williams

Roma - Alfonso Cuarón

Father of My Children - Mia Hansen-Løve

Goodbye First Love - Mia Hansen-Løve

Things to Come - Mia Hansen-Løve

Booksmart - Olivia Wilde

First Reformed - Paul Schrader

Ratatouille - Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava

Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy

The Salesman - Asghar Farhadi

Rifiki - Wanuri Kahiu

Black Is King - Beyoncé, Jenn Nkiru, Blitz the Ambassador, Jake Nava

Pan's Labyrinth - Guillermo Del Toro

The Dead Zone - David Cronenberg

Sun Don't Shine - Amy Seimetz

 

Streaming

The Baby-Sitters Club

The Last Dance

Hannibal

One Day at a Time

Atlanta

Bob's Burgers

Fauda

 

Virtual Theater

One Room at Weston Playhouse

The Keep Going Song at Actors Theatre of Louisville

The Jacksonian at The New Group

richard ii

 

 

Now streaming on the Public Theater website or wherever you get your podcasts, WNYC and the Public's co-production of Richard II transforms the summer tradition of Shakespeare in the park into a fantastic bit of radio theater. Not necessarily the most accessible of the history plays, Richard II is here buoyed by an electric performance by André Holland in the title role, as well as by brilliant direction by Saheem Ali and sound design so good that I could have sworn the entire cast stood on the same stage together. Each of the four episodes is book-ended with interviews conducted by the great Vinson Cunningham that further enrich the listening experience, as he discusses topics like Shakespeare's language and color-conscious casting with scholars and the creative team. And I could listen to the whole thing from the comfort of my couch, with nary a mosquito in sight.

See also:

• Free Shakespeare on the Radio: Richard II

the line

Now playing through August 4 on the Public Theater YouTube channel, The Line (written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen, and directed by Blank) makes the near past of the height of NYC's coronavirus pandemic frighteningly immediate. Actors re-enact interviews with front-line healthcare workers word-for-word, speaking directly to Zoom camera, and each story had my heart twisted in knots. The speakers address the failures of our government and our healthcare system, and the only detail I found jarring is when they referred to the crisis in the past tense, thanks to my hyper-awareness of the current spike in cases. I also have to emphasize that if you watch this play and still think it's OK to walk around without a mask, then you are an asshole.

See also:

• The Line at the Public Theater
• The Pandemic Experts Are Not OK

hamilton

I have very little to add to the very smart online discourse surrounding Thomas Kail's live capture of Hamilton currently streaming on Disney+, but will ramble for a moment anyway. I had seen it live in San Francisco last April (and I won the ticket lottery so was in the damn orchestra!) with a fantastic cast, and I definitely preferred our Hamilton Julius Thomas III's singing voice to Lin-Manuel Miranda's, as charming as Miranda is onscreen. But what pleasure to see that insanely talented Broadway cast up close and personal, with Daveed Diggs in particular absolutely running away with every scene he appears in. Like the rest of the country I am thinking way more critically than even a year ago about how the white enslavers are portrayed in the musical, and Miranda himself this week described criticisms of how he handled slavery as valid. The optismism palpable in the onscreen production (filmed in June 2016) is almost physically painful too, given all that has transpired since then. However, one of Hamilton's greatest achievements is its reclaiming and remixing of history, and now with it readily accessible to anyone who can afford Disney+, not just those who could pony up $$$ for a ticket, the narrative is further democratized. And I will forever love Miranda for giving Eliza the last gasp.

See also:

• Debating 'Hamilton' as It Shifts From Stage to Screen
• 'Hamilton' faces fresh criticism as film arrives at time of racial reckoning

les blancs

Of the pre-recorded theater options online, filmed back in that time when we could sit in an audience together, the plays that London's National Theatre have offered (for free, for a week at a time) on their YouTube channel have been seriously top-notch. This week's selection is particularly gripping: their 2016 staging of Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs, her last play and one that was never produced in her too-short lifetime. Hansberry makes the scourge of colonialism deeply personal by setting the action in an unspecified African country struggling to find its way to independence, at a mission run by white people who are not keen on examining their own racism and complicity. When Tshembe arrives home for a visit he finds himself in the middle of the maelstrom, and he is forced to confront the repercussions of centuries of imperialism as they resonate in his own family. The National Theatre's breathtaking production was directed by South African director and playwright Yaël Farber, and she makes powerful use of music and movement within the action of the play while simultaneously speaking to the very-present moment. I gave the cast a standing ovation in my living room.

See also:

• National Theatre at Home: Les Blancs

input july 2020

Books

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

I Don't Want to Die Poor - Michael Arceneaux

A Black Women's History of the United States - Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

Feed - Tommy Pico

Tiny Love: The Complete Stories - Larry Brown

 

Movies

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Joel and Ethan Coen

Tangerine - Sean Baker

The Vast of Night - Andrew Patterson

Between the Lines - Joan Micklin Silver

Hamilton - Thomas Kail

Frida - Julie Taymor

You Are Not I - Sara Driver

Sleepwalk - Sara Driver

When Pigs Fly - Sara Driver

The Bowery - Sara Driver

Zodiac - David Fincher

The Social Network - David Fincher

The American President - Rob Reiner

Me and You and Everyone We Know - Miranda July

The Future - Miranda July

Chi-Raq - Spike Lee

WALL-E - Andrew Stanton

The Old Guard - Gina Prince-Bythewood

The Report - Scott Z. Burns

Born in Flames - Lizzie Borden

Inside Out - Pete Docter

 

Streaming

Never Have I Ever

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Fargo

Phineas and Ferb

Russian Doll

She's Gotta Have It

Veronica Mars

 

Virtual Theater

Lungs at the Old Vic

Les Blancs at the National Theatre

The Line at the Public Theater

Richard II at the Public Theater

The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at Theater in Quarantine