Friday, December 28, 2012

Monthly Media Roundup December, 2012

Happy New Year! We hope you've had a great holiday season. Our office has been closed starting December 21, and will reopen January 2. We wanted to still keep you in the loop about what has been happening for us online this month, so here's the December Media Roundup. See you in 2013!

Blog:
R&D Group Post by Matt Dellapina about his R&D project

Podcast:
Occupy #S17, Part I featuring a performance by Tony Award-nominee Kathleen Chalfant, a monologue by our Associate Artist Colleen Werthmann, and a song by Jill Sobule

Subscribe on iTunes HERE!

Press:
Mr. Burns is the Washington Post's Best Show of the Year
Paris Commune in L Magazine's Best Shows of the Year
You Better Sit Down as a New York Times Best Unscripted Moment of the Year

Video:
Occupy #S17 Clip of Kathleen Chalfant performing at Joe's Pub
And we've got a bunch of video clips from our Education Program at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts, where students conducted interviews and created their own show about voting, civic responsibility, and voting. Here they are:
Why Do You Vote?
Voting is for Bigger People
Who's Bush?
Does Race Matter?

And here is video of the kids performing a song that Michael Friedman wrote, which they sang as part of the show!

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Oh Jesus: A Story Of Barabbas

This post was written by our 2012-13 R&D Group Artist and Associate Artist, Matt Dellapina! Click HERE for info about the Group and Matt. Here's the description of his project from the site: "Barabbas was the criminal spared for Jesus in a violent public vote. This faithless man walked away from the pages of history to live a life racked with the personal cost of his freedom. Here's what might have happened, with songs." And now... here's Matt!

To look into the character of Barabbas is to look at a B story in society. Noted throughout the gospel as a “notable prisoner” and a “bandit”, he comes up from the ink due to his random, yet auspicious seating next to the title character in The Jesus Story. In keeping with a Passover tradition, each were wheeled out before a bloodlusting crowd where one would be granted a public pardon and set free. The other would stay the course towards execution. We know how this turned out. But the what-if of what happened to the other guy has always intrigued me and seemed ripe for drama. How could you live with the guilt of being at the hinge of the modern Western world?

Barabbas’ tale is told in the shadows of a hero legend. Like every supporting character arc, whether or not one’s journey is a success, the heart of every man self-narrates a hero’s journey. If told by Barabbas himself, his footnote would swell to a triumphant tale of padding through the muck to climb out and walk tall once more. Wiser, and with the bruises to prove it.

But whatever the wisdom received by the received wisdom, the refracted angle of a minor player’s part in a larger story feels an ideal subject for a mix of what-if imaginings and historical digging. This kind of social discussion is what drew me to this R & D Group. And in the first series of presentations and discussion (including my own), I’ve been awestruck to the degree with which each of the artists in the room has provided insight that could’ve spawned it’s own evening unto itself. It’s a satisfying thing to see the postmodern streak of Barabbas mirrored in such real-time lens-shifting among fresh eyes and generous trust.

And to reflect my own storytelling leanings, song provides a real opportunity to embody Barabbas’ itch to tell his side of things. He’s a downtrodden folk singer, weaving the folk tale of his own life. Upon approaching such an emotional story, there is for me always a tendency to send the thing up & satirize the pain involved. It’s a tendency of our age to wink through tales so ripe with pitfalls of potential bombast. My last solo show was essentially a one-hour exercise in self-effacement. And it was good fun. But out of both a personal need to challenge myself and to explore the possibilities in a stripped-down (maybe even solo) musical, I had to attack this story straight from the pain of a man who’s trying to set the record straight.

When the germ of the idea first hit, the songs were what came earliest and easiest. The challenge now is to chip at the body of the piece. My first thought was that it’d be just one man, one guitar, a soundscape, and nothing else. All well and good, but still not a true framework. Namely, where the hell is he? Is he speaking, in fact, from hell? Some kind of purgatory? A jail cell? A circus? A busking tour along the streets of the world, stubbornly crooning his story to anyone who’ll listen? Maybe not that, but something like that?

In chatting with a couple of theologians and historians on the topic, it seems like Barabbas was first and foremost a kind of insurgent. And in digging at the socio-political history of Rome and Jerusalem around the time of Christ, he was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, who took a more aggressive, even violent stance against the occupation and infringement of Rome onto their land. Sound familiar? In my fictionalized vision, Barabbas is on the spiritual quest of an atheist. And as a counterpoint to Jesus, he constantly doubts the religious ceiling of his contemporaries and realizes that change can only come from clenched fists and inflaming the hearts and minds of a public already enraged towards an empire. Pacifism is not his way. His is the way of action.

Perhaps the most haunting spark for me comes down to the simplest thing - his name. When translated from Hebrew, bar means “son” and Abba means “father”, making Barabbas the “son of the father”. Now what kind of name is that? Isn’t every man a “son of the father”? It’s a bit like calling him Everyman, or John Doe. Other manuscripts even translate it to Jesus Barabbas, essentially naming him “Jesus, Son of the Father”. Sound familiar? With each of their lives inextricably linked as outcasts of Rome, each prisoners awaiting execution for rebellious activities, each with a hearty following, is it that absurd to think that Jesus Barabbas and Jesus of Nazareth may be the same person? Perhaps the other side of the story is simply the dark side of the man.

Thanks to Matt for writing this for us!


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Occupy #S17, The Podcast, Part I

For the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, which was on September 17, we put together a really special cabaret of interviews with Occupy protesters focused on how the movement had transformed from its early days and what it's future might look like. This week's episode features Colleen Werthmann as Andrea, a protester; Tony-nominee Kathleen Chalfant as an actress and demonstrator; and Brad Heberlee as an anti-war activist, environmentalist, and participant in the movement; and we close out with Jill Sobule, Alex Nolan, Amanda Ruzza and Liz Kelly performing Jill's song "We Want our America Back." Interviews were conducted by Dan Domingues, Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Rachel Jablin. The evening was directed by Mia Rovegno. Thanks for listening - subscribe, rate, and review us!

Click HERE to watch videos from the event!


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