Nights in the Museum

Did a reading at MASS MoCA (which venue, in the larger sense, I've mentioned here many, many times) a couple Thursdays ago.  The American Premiere of The Interview, by Guillaume Leblon and Thomas Boutoux, to go along with Leblon's exhibition at the museum.

Photo by James Voorhies as far as I can tell

Photo by Art Evans

The experience provided me with a crash self-taught course in contemporary art, at the very least.  I sometimes feel like I know what I'm talking about when it comes to such things, then I'll run across a script like this one and realize that I don't know shit.  It was a great experience for me working on the piece with the artist, his wife, the other actor (plus the very game film intern we roped into being part of the show), and all the amazing, fantastic people at MoCA.

As if that weren't enough, we made a weekend out of it; I visited the museum exhibitions - most of them multiple times.  They're always good, you should go.  The Izhar Patkin work in the big room was especially moving, to me.

And we got to catch the residency/work-in-progress The Colorado, (also referred to as "Water Songs: Ha Tay G'am") a film and music project exploring the heartbreaking developments in the Colorado River Basin, and by extension the environmental catastrophes facing, umm, the entire planet.  Amazing.  Murat Eyuboglo is making the films; William deBuys is consulting on the science; a number of composers (Brittelle, Adams, Prestini, Worden, possibly others when all is said and done) scoring the music performed by the brilliant Roomful of Teeth; they all worked fast to put together the show we saw last Saturday.  I'm talking fast: they all showed up on Monday to talk, look at footage, write, and edit; the musicians arrived on Thursday morning; and the presentation was Saturday night.  The project won't be finished until 2015 (I think), keep an eye out for it.

Moving on from MoCA, I just want to mention the Cynthia Hopkins show A Living Documentary that happened at New York Live Arts this past Thursday.  Cynthia's one-woman theater/music piece about creating performance and trying to make a living (or even stay alive) doing it, in a universe where all the funds seem to go to production equipment and architectural 'improvements,' while shockingly little goes to the artists (arguably because the artists continue to give it away, or sell it cheap).  Lot going on there - funny, moving, creative, upsetting, exciting, inspiring, enraging.  It only played for a few days in that incarnation, glad I was able to catch it.