INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: Futurist Gray Scott

Our Project Director Ian Daniel interviewed Gray Scott, a futurist/neuro-technology-philosopher, as part of our broad investigation into death, dying, and the afterlife in NY for an installation performance "Be The Death of Me" on June 28th and 29th at the Irondale Center in Ft. Greene Brooklyn.  Details HERE.

Gray is also the editorial director of SERIOUS WONDER.com the online futurist philosophy, technology and consciousness magazine produced by his media company SERIOUS WONDER MEDIA™ based in NYC.

Learn more about Gray's work HERE.

Check out some excerpts from Gray's interview:

Uploading your consciousness is going to happen.  Everyone is uploading every single moment of their life, like what they had for breakfast, on social networks. That's the first stage of uploading consciousness.

I do think there will be consciousness factories so that just like on your cloud server you will back up your consciousness, however, we will do it more like a brain to computer interface--like a headband you wear.  And every day you download everything that happened to you in your computer and it all just goes into this cloud, and if you’re in a car accident or die of old age, they can replicate that consciousness into a machine.  You literally just jump from body to a machine without a separation.

I think what we are going to see in the future is an organism that is part machine and part organic.  So you could take your stems cells and literally grow a brain.  And if we could learn how to upload our consciousness into the substrate of an organic brain then we have a whole other scenario--even if our physical body dies, that consciousness goes on forever as long as the machine works.  You still have to maintain the machine but if we can capture that essence of who you are, who I am, then we potentially could live forever, and we could go anywhere in the universe.  We don’t need to breathe, a machine doesn’t need to breathe.  As long as you have a power source and we can do that with solar, as long as you’re plugged into a star, we’re talking. You could choose to leave earth and go explore deep space for eternity as long as you’re close enough to a star for energy.

Isn't the drive to create artificial intelligence, isn't it a cry against death?  I don't want to die so I'm going to create an artificial representation of myself in case I do.  I mean it's a very deep psychological process.  

Personally, I'm greedy and I want to live forever. I do. Because it's heartbreaking and inefficient to only live 80 years.  It’s such a short time, I feel cheated.  All of the work that you do throughout your life, all the preparation that you do for your intelligence, for your body. Think about how many times you go to the gym or think about how many meals you've cooked for yourself and just to have that swept away in one moment.  That bothers me.

Thanks so much to Gray and Ian for sharing. To hear more of Gray's interview come to "Be The Death of Me" June 28/29.

To read other excerpts from our investigation for "Be The Death of Me" go HERE.

TIMES SQUARE: Upcoming concert performance at Joe's Pub

We're gearing up for TIMES SQUARE a concert performance at Joe's Pub on June 1st and 4th, a new musical based on the cult classic 1980 film of the same name.
Get your tickets now HERE

Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule along with her longtime collaborator Robin Eaton, Tony-nominated writer Jim Lewis and director Steve Cosson are deep in rehearsals right now. 

Check out Jill in rehearsal at Joe's Pub performing "Pretty Monster" below:

TIMES SQUARE tells the story of Nicky Marotta, a volatile street kid with dreams of becoming a musician, and Pamela Pearl, the withdrawn daughter of a wealthy City Commissioner. The two forge an unlikely bond, and through the alchemy of rock and roll, turn their lives inside out and recreate themselves as a proto-Riot Grrl punk duo called The Sleeze Sisters.  Together, they find friendship, love, and music on the rough-and-tumble streets of pre-Disney Times Square.

TIMES  SQUARE 
Concert Performance
Joe's Pub
June 1 and 4, 9:30 pm
Tickets: $20
Get your tickets now HERE

Music and Lyrics by Robin Eaton and Jill Sobule
Book by Jim Lewis
Directed by Steven Cosson

Featuring: 
Alyse Alan Louis – Pamela Pearl
Jo Lampert – Nicky Marotta
Matt Saldivar - Johnny LaGuardia
Christina Sajous – Margot, Bridget, Others
Joseph Melendez – Roberto and Others
Darren Ritchie – Richard Pearl and Others.

Chris Fenwick – Music Director

Band: 
Allison Miller – Drums
Alex Nolan – Guitar
Octavia Romano – Bass 

Check out these videos of  Aylse Alan Louis and Mike Brun  performing two songs from TIMES SQUARE as a sneak peak of the show performed at our "Let Me Ascertain You: LGBTQ All Out!" last month.

"Last Kiss" performed by Alyse Alan Louis and Mike Brun


"Barricade" performed by Alyse Alan Louis and Mike Brun

INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: Near Death Experience

One of our artistic collaborators, Rachel Lerner-Ley, recently interviewed David Bennett, a public speaker, teacher, and author, who survived two near death experiences and stage IV lung cancer. He recently published a book about his experiences, Voyage of Purpose, which you can learn more about HERE. Also be sure to check out David's personal website HERE!  This interview is part of our broad investigation into death, dying, and the afterlife in NY for an installation performance "Be The Death of Me" on June 28th and 29th at the Irondale in Ft. Greene Brooklyn.  Details HERE 

Check out a few excerpts from what David shared: 

In 1983, I was the chief engineer of the research vessel Aloha. And, uh, we were early-March off the California coast. We were two miles off the coast. We tried to beat a storm in so that we could get into the harbor. The captain decided to put a small rubber boat called a Zodiac that we used to retrieve our submarines in the water. So, I, you know, I got in the boat.  We just started heading for shore. Well, we fell off a twenty-five foot wave that a surfer would be envious of. We just fell off of this thing like within a few seconds: Boom! And it folded that Zodiac in half like a peanut butter sandwich. I was in the bow. It catapulted me into the water, and like I said, I was trained as a diver so I'm used to being in the water. But this is nighttime so there was no way of telling what was up or down. I was being tossed and tumbled like a rag doll.

And I never made it to the surface. I drowned. I found myself in this absolute darkness at first. But it was calm, and it was peaceful. And I just had come from this very violent, loud, you know, horrendous environment to this sudden calm, peace, but absolute darkness. Nothing existed. But it didn't feel like I was alone. And I was comfortable. And I was warm. The California coast: the water comes off the North. It's really cold. I wasn't cold anymore.

And then I saw this light. We've all heard about the light, you know, Hollywood's pretty good. They've overdramatized that quite a bit. I saw this light and it was millions upon millions of fragments. And they were all moving and coalescing and working together. And as I got closer, it was like this, there were waves of love that were just wrapping me, enveloping me, and transforming me, this light with love. Just pure love. They were welcoming me home. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional kind of situation. I was thrown from one family to the next to the next. So, I never had a sense of family, but these beings that were with me they were more of a family than anything I had ever experienced here in life. 

Well, as I was reviewing my life and you're experiencing your life from all these different experiences.  I saw that a lot of times with things in life that were done with loving intention were the cause of some of the greatest ripples because every time we interact with someone we create kind of like these ripples that cascade outward through the people and beyond. And I saw that whenever we did something with loving intention, it created the greatest ripples. So the things that I thought were important like becoming chief engineer had hardly any significance. But when I would do something with loving intention, it created this huge ripple. 

Thanks so much to David and Rachel for sharing. Make sure to catch "Be The Death of Me" June 28th and 29th at the Irondale!  Details HERE 

INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: The Cemetery Explorer

Our collaborator, Alex Rosenthal, recently interviewed Allison C. Meier, a young writer with a penchant for for exploring cemeteries and researching their occupants. She leads tours of New York City cemeteries through Atlas Obscura. Learn more about Allison HERE, and check out Atlas Obscura HERE!

Allison C. Meier

Check out a few excerpts from Alex's interview with Allison below:

I try to get lost, basically, when I'm exploring a cemetery. I don't know, you could have sort of a checklist of famous people when you're going through a cemetery, which I think is totally fine, but I think like getting lost and experiencing the place is what I usually try to do. Like some, you know, you come across like, for example, a tombstone in Green-Wood just says like "Grandmother" on it, it's like half shifted in the ground, and you're like "Who was Grandmother? Why didn't she have her whole name on it?" And you do a little bit of research, you find out it was the woman who had the affair with the reverend, the Quaker church of Brooklyn preacher, but then you realize, oh, she was like totally ignored in her death.

Allison leading a tour through Woodlawn Cemetery, viewed from a mausoleum.
(photograph by Ronny Preciado)

You can't really build on top of–aren't supposed to build on top of a cemetery. So sometimes they actually just move the gravestones as if that's like totally fine. Like at Green-Wood, there's a Dutch cemetery that used to be somewhere else in Brooklyn, and in theory they should have dug up all of those people and put them with their right headstones again, but as you can imagine, like digging up 200-year-old graves and trying to...it just...so, there's a lot of skeletons under the ground. Like during construction under the city it's not unusual to find skeletons. I know there's a potters field behind the New Museum, and when they were doing construction there they found some skeletons. And like Washington Square Park,  Madison Square Park, and Bryant Park all used to be Potter's fields.

One of Allison's tours in the catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetery.

If you want to be buried in New York city, you need a lot of money, or a family member who already has a plot, or you just get lucky with immediate internment, otherwise you're probably going to be buried in New Jersey. The reason we have the big cemeteries in the outer boroughs is because the ones in Manhattan filled up. I don't know if someone is going to like build a cemetery island or like underground burials or, yeah, everyone could go to space. It would be very expensive. I'm sure they would love it. The moon would be a perfect graveyard.

Thanks to Allison and Alex for sharing! Don't miss BE THE DEATH OF ME June 28th and 29th at the Irondale (details to follow soon)!

INSIDE LOOK: "Be The Death of Me" Investigation: Father Sebastiaan, Vampyre

Our Artistic Intern, Leonie Ettinger, recently interviewed Father Sebastiaan, a self-defined Vampyre, Fangsmith, and author of occult literature, on his thoughts about death and dying for our new project.  

Father Sebastiann is one of the co-founders of The Sanguinarium, a social network for the Vampyre subculture and created The Endless Night Festival, one of the largest Vampyre gatherings in the world. To learn more about him, click HERE 

Check out a few excerpts from Leonie's interview below. 

What exactly is a Vampyre?

Vampyres are energy beings. They are not a blood drinking physical entity because blood is useless for Vampyres. Instead, they need to leach life force of other human beings because they don't have a body to generate their own. The Vampyre is not about death - like a zombie or demon or death itself. The Vampyre is about life and a cure to death.

The human body is like an embryo to the Vampyre, a place where he lives within like a human in a spacesuit. Immortality must be earned, practiced and refined through mediation, energy work, validation and interaction with the Ancestors ('undead'). If successful, the Vampyre will survive death as an 'undead'. At this time, the 'undead' do not want to be known to the “mundane world”. They are in between life and death. However, when they reveal themselves to the mundane world they appear as magickal friends, angels, spirits, faeries, and more recently some say even aliens.

The grandson of an orthodontist & nephew of a dentist, he also hand-carves custom fangs. 

What do you think happens when we die?

My belief is that when you die, your energy is released into the universe and recycled. The church tells you that if your physical body dies, you die. That makes sense but what happens if that's not the case? What happens if your body dies and you avatar continues? The internet will eventually become something like the Matrix. Our bodies will be useless and our consciousness will be inside the computer. So does that make us energy? Yes. You become immortal and the technology becomes the God - not God. This is a fear and why Vampyres have been given such a bad rep throughout all the centuries.

Can we really achieve immortality?

The only thing that is going to keep the human race alive and give immortality to everybody is that we get off the planet as soon as possible and in the largest numbers possible. We need to colonize Mars or Venus, and then get out of our solar system, and spread out as far as we can into the universe. I want to collect a bunch of people, use the Vampyre as a metaphor, live an amazing life, and reject death. 

Father Sebastiaan's Fangshop established in 1995 is located in the East Village NY

Thanks Leonie and Sebastiaan for sharing! Check back here every Thursday for a look inside our investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NY. Stay tuned for details about our upcoming performance on June 28 and 29th!  

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: Crime Scene Cleanup

Our Artistic Project Manager, Meridith Friedman, recently spoke with Doug Baruchin, owner of Island Trauma Services, a New York based Crime Scene Cleanup Company. With over 25 years of experience, the staff of ITS are experts in Crime Scene and Trauma Scene Cleanup Service. You can find out more about Island Trauma Services, Inc. HERE.

"We usually know what happened. Um, we'll get a call saying, oh this was a homicide,  and sometimes I'll look on the internet to find out, ok, homicide in Queens or Brooklyn or New York City, just so I have an idea of what I'm going to see before I walk in. Because no matter how many times I do this, walking across a threshold every time is a little bit of like, you know, what am I going to see. 

I remember the first one that I did was an elderly man. He was about 78 years old, and he put a pillow in front of his face and shot himself on Easter. And I remember thinking, you know, my God this is what you hear about. Suicide rates increase around the holidays. And I remember seeing this scene, and this poor man who was alone, I don't know why he was sad, maybe he lost somebody, but it got me. That I took home with me. 

I do know that New Yorkers, especially Manhattanites, are very resilient. And very, I can handle this. I've had several people come into the scene with me in New York City. Other people, “I can't go in that room; I don't want to be reminded.” Some New Yorkers I found were very curious, even about somebody they were related to. “So this is where they died, what is this stuff?” This is a conversation I never want to have with somebody. “Oh, this is, you know, probably his blood, this is where his head was.” 

Doug with a fellow ITS technician

I look at the people in Newtown, and how they all came together and supported each other and that's just...beyond anything I've ever done. We actually did call the school to offer to go up there and help them out for free, because it's just, you know, anything you can do to help somebody like that get back together is a huge thing. One of the hardest things to do is to move past what happened while everything is still there. You'll never go into that bedroom again and look at it the same way, but until it's at the very least cleared out, you can't really move past anything."

Thanks Doug and Meridith for sharing! Check back here every Thursday for a look inside our investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NY. Stay tuned for details on a June performance date!

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: Hart Island

Our Associate Artistic Director, Ian Daniel, recently interviewed an ex-inmate from Rikers Island prison about burying coffins of unknowns, infants, and adults on Hart Island in the Bronx. The interviewee chose to remain anonymous so we will call him Tim.

The potter’s field at Hart Island is the largest cemetery in the United States. Read more about it HERE

Aerial View of Hart Island

NYC's Department of Correction manages Hart Island and uses inmates from Rikers to dig the graves. The public is not allowed on Hart Island, however, family members who can prove their relatives have been buried there can set up visits. 

Wikipedia says,"The dead are buried in trenches. Babies are placed in coffins of various sizes, and are stacked five coffins high and usually twenty coffins across. Adults are placed in larger pine boxes placed according to size and are stacked three coffins high and two coffins across. The potter's field is also used to dispose of amputated body parts, which are placed in boxes labeled 'limbs.' No individual markers are set except for the first child to die of AIDS in New York City who was buried in isolation."

Inmates in 1991 burying coffins holding babies Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Here are some excerpts from Ian’s interview with Tim: 

Ian: When were you in prison?

Tim:  In my adolescence. I was on Rikers for burglary and a stolen car. They used to use adolescents on Hart Island and I believe now they don't do that anymore, they use the adults now. We'd ferry over from there, be there all day and we'd be digging huge ditches, this was a long time ago. The caskets were plain wooden boxes, you know no names, some kinda marking on it, it wasn't that high, not very deep at all but it was long. It was a lot of caskets that went in there.

Ian:  Did you see bodies?

Tim:  Every so often you'd see one of the boxes open and you can see the body in there. I remember once a body was so gross, decomposed, just a horrible sight, scary to look at, cause then you gotta go eat lunch over there which is a little weird to do that shit over there, you know? Some of those guys would joke when we'd stick them in the hole and they'd say, “That was your father I just buried,” “This is the guy we used to get high with," crazy shit like that, and when you could see into the casket they'd say, “Oh that looks like your brother that I knew up on 125th street.”

Ian:  Who's buried there?

Tim:  Most of the time these people are found on the street or they have no money to be buried. So it’s always something like that...a lot of homeless people, people that have no identity, they have no family, or if they do, they don't want anything to do with them. If your brother dies and you don't have any money then he'd end up there.  A lot of stillborns, miscarriages, forgotten souls, that's why it's sad, it just a big lonely graveyard.

Ian:  How did seeing all of this affect you?

Tim:  When I saw all those caskets…it's funny cause my brother died but I never knew him, he died just after being born of pneumonia  and I used to always think about that especially when a baby was being buried. I was thinking about my baby brother and about my mother and father who died and that was just a little weird for me back then.  My parents said they only wanted five kids and he was the fifth but he died then a year or so later they had me so if he had lived they probably wouldn't had me. 

Infant coffins on Hart Island Photo: Stan Grossfeld  

To learn more about Hart Island we recommended that you check out The Hart Island Project, a nonprofit organization assisting families to relocate those who disappeared in the greater New York area HERE

The Department of Correction recently created a database of Hart Island burial records to help you determine whether someone has been interred on Hart Island, using basic information, such as name, date or location. Check that out HERE

Thanks for sharing, Ian. Check back here every Thursday for an inside look into our investigation in death, dying, and the afterlife for our upcoming performance. 

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: Talking About Suicide

Our Project Dramaturg, Deepali Gupta, recently interviewed journalist Cara Anna, a former foreign correspondent in China, and a suicide attempt survivor for upcoming project about death, dying and the afterlife in NY.  Cara founded the “Talking About Suicide” blog of interviews with other outspoken suicide attempt survivors and edits the new “What Happens Now?” blog for the American Association of Suicidology for those who've had thoughts or actions of suicide. Check out the "Talking about Suicide" blog  HERE, and the "What Happens Now?" blog HERE.

See below for excerpts from Deepali's interview with Cara, where she reflects on her personal experience with suicide, and what prompted her to connect to other survivors.

Cara at airport before leaving for China

"I sent out a resignation email, I went to my apartment, gave everything to the cleaning lady, packed a backpack, and then just set off. I went to the airport and I just stood there looking at the departure board for like, what seemed like an hour, and I was like, 'I don't want to go anywhere.' I love to travel, and here I am looking at like, connections from Beijing to like, everywhere in the world, and I'm like, 'Uh, I don't want to go anywhere, I'm dead.' So, yeah, I went to the hospital, got myself sleeping pills, got anti-vomiting medication, got wine, and there was an abandoned village outside Beijing that I had hiked through, and it was cold, it was February, there was still snow on the ground, and I'm like, 'I'm gonna go there.' And so I hiked up there and in China, people are everywhere and there were two people hiking, and I'm like, 'What the fuck, can I never get a place to myself?'

I was like, 'Well you have to do it before dark. You'll lose your nerve or something, so you just have to do it, just do it.' So you just sort of lay out 1, 2, 3 at that point. I took the stuff, I drank the whole bottle of wine, apparently, which is a first, um, and lay down, it was like, 'Okay, the cold will take care of the rest.' And then, even before opening my eyes, you know how you can see light through your eyelids, that was the next thing I knew, and even before opening my eyes, I'm like, 'It's dawn. Okay. Now what do I do.'

Cara's photo of a memorial to the dead after 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province at a school that collapsed

So I said, 'Well, I'm a journalist, it seems pretty natural to me to just find other people who have been through it. Is anybody talking about it?' So I started the blog, started interviewing people, found people who were out, and just talked to them—just like, the first conversation was so sweet. It was a woman, and we were so nervous talking to each other, it was like we were breaking some sort of rule. 

Cara with her nephew

It's like, should we be talking about this? Are we gonna get in trouble? And it was just a very huge relief, finding out that, wow, she sounded really human and normal and happened to have a bad, a really bad experience. Um, and I've talked to about 40 people so far, from five different countries, and nobody has been rambling, nobody has burst into tears, nobody has had to even take time to collect themselves—nobody's raving, everybody's just like, 'Yeah, this is me, this is my life, I have dogs, I have cats, I have a grad degree, I'm a psychologist, I work on a crisis line, I'm a lawyer, I'm an artist...Hi!' What is so horribly scary about us that nobody wants to talk about it?"

Thank you Cara and Deepali for sharing. Check back every Thursday for a look inside our investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NY. 

INSIDE LOOK: Death Project 2013 Investigation: New York City Ghost Bike Project

We’re doing an exciting investigation into death, dying and the afterlife in NYC for our next project this season. Our team is interviewing tons of amazing people with various spiritual, cultural, professional, and personal perspectives. We want to share our investigative process with you, so every Thursday check here for a glimpse into the worlds we’re entering and the people we're interviewing.

Our Associate Artistic Director Ian recently interviewed Jessie Singer, founding member of the New York City Ghost Bike Project, to learn more about bicyclists killed on our streets. Check out that project HERE

 

Here’s a glimpse of what Jessie had to say: 

“A woman named Brandie Bailey was killed on Houston Street and we painted this bike and locked it up on the street and we all looked at each other and said “Holy crap let's never do this again.” Then the next week after that, a block away, a young man named Andrew Ross Morgan was killed on Houston Street again so we built another bike and then we couldn't stop. It became as much a burden as it was, you know, our gift in a way. I've never had anything in my life to force me to think about strangers so much. People you would never meet. To spend so much time with their deaths and therefore their lives and their families, um, which has become a big part of the project. I think it was Brandie Bailey's sister who contacted us and said “I was able to take my parents. My parents came to the city to clean out Brandie's apartment, and I told them that this bike was there. They said before that they would never go to the crash site, that they would never go anywhere near that block ever again.” And this made them feel like they could go there and they could have a moment and put down flowers and spend time with this space where their loved one had died which otherwise would've been kind of sullied. It was dirtied before and now it was a space for them maybe...maybe it was a little reclaimed.”

"Death is something that is out there, sure, but the only thing that matters is what you do when you're living and what I do when I'm living is helping these people that have to deal with death. The process of memorializing is a process of memory but it's a process for the living. This is not a stairway to heaven. It's for the people who are still here who still have work to do, good to do, hopefully, or at least bad to correct. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable. They are caused by someone doing the wrong thing, someone is driving carelessly or irresponsibly or dangerously or drunk or on their phone. That's not an accident, that's an intentional decision that killed somebody. If anything the goal in all of this talking about death is to actually talk about, like, doing better in life...creating that new culture of respecting each other so people aren't dying like this or at the very least if they are dying then people are taking the time to remember that some terrible shit happened on that street corner."

Please donate to the Ghost Bike Project HERE

And join them for their 8th Annual Memorial Ride on April 21st. 

Photos from www.facebook.com/NYCGhostBikes

The High Line Podcast

This week's episode features the show about Robert Hammond and the High Line that we created for our Annual Spring Benefit this last spring! Robert is a co-founder of the High Line, the elevated public park in New York City built on old freight rail tracks. Interviewees performed include Robert, Robert's mom and dad, staff at Friends of the High Line, Bronson Van Wyck, 2005 NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Gifford Miller, Director of the Department of City Planning Amanda Burden, and Florent Morellet. It was written by Steve Cosson with songs by Michael Friedman, and performed at the Highline Ballroom in spring of 2012 by Associate Artists Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina, Dan Domingues, Daoud Heidami, Nina Hellman, Daniel Jenkins, Kelly McCreary, Greg McFadden, Maria Elena Ramirez, Robbie Collier Sublett, and Sam Breslin Wright.

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU PODCAST SERIES ON ITUNES, PLEASE CLICK HERE!

Is there something you still have of your ex's that he/she doesn't know about?

The first performance of You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce at the Flea Theater is on Saturday, and we can't wait for you to see it! As part of the run, we're so pleased to announce that we'll be doing a series of post-show events called You Better Sit Down Salon Nights: Your Tales Take the Stage. Every Wednesday and Saturday evening following the show, you (yes, you!) will have the chance to share in the storytelling. Civilians Associate Artists and The Bats from the Flea (plus some special guest artists that we'll be announcing soon!) will develop short scenes and songs from material contributed by audiences both in the theater and online based on questions related to personal experiences with divorce, family, relationships, and break-ups.

So this is where you come in! Your answers to the following question will directly feed what will be onstage at our future You Better Sit Down Salon Nights.

Our first question is:

Is there something you still have of your ex's that he/she doesn't know about?

Leave us a comment here, Tweet it at us, or tell us on Facebook! Or, we'd love it if you would email us a story and/or a photo to liaison@thecivilians.org! We will send your responses on to our artists and The Bats to inspire the creation of all new investigative theater.

Just in case you need more incentive, the first five responses will get a free ticket to a preview performance!

Get your tickets HERE!

How are things IN THE FOOTPRINT?

Things are moving along in the construction site at this point. HERE is a video from the Nets Daily website showing the steelworkers putting up the structure, and even more has gone up since then. 

HERE is Norman Oder's commentary on the latest construction alert that details how the plans are changing as the construction progresses.

And as things are going up down at Atlantic and Flatbush, Freddy's bar (the setting of a few scenes in IN THE FOOTPRINT) reopened last week at 627 Fifth Ave. between 17th and 18th streets in Park Slope. HERE is what Norman Oder has to say about it, and HERE are some photos from opening!

IN THE FOOTPRINT in the New York Times! Theater and Journalism?

The following correction was made to Jason Zinoman's recent New York Times Article about theater and journalism. The article asks (among many other questions): "If the company uses tools of journalism and benefits from the authority of real reporting, does it have an increased responsibility to journalistic standards?"

HERE is the correction:
"A Critic’s Notebook article on Wednesday about political theater based on real events, including the show “In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards,” misstated the circumstances under which Daniel Goldstein, an opponent of the Atlantic Yards project portrayed in the show, lost ownership of his condo in a building that needed to be emptied for ground to be broken. While he did receive $3 million in a settlement, the State of New York took the condo under eminent domain. He did not sell it."

IN THE FOOTPRINT in the New York Times! Theater and Journalism?

First of all, here is a recap of The Civilians and In the Footprint in the New York Times over the past few weeks:

Review by Charles Isherwood
Photo slide-show
Arts Beat: "Theater Talkback: Giving Thanks in a Thankless Season" by Charles Isherwood
"When News Events Are Retold on Stage" by Jason Zinoman


The last article was put online yesterday and in print today. It's about the role of journalism in theater. Take a look at the article. What do you think? Where is the line between presenting reality and shaping a drama? To what degree are theater artists responsible for facts? In the Footprint addresses in the script issues about the difficulty of arriving at one truth with so many people saying different things for various reasons. Weigh in! What do you think? 


Here are Norman Oder's thoughts about the issues - take a look! The headline is "A theater critic lectures The Civilians on journalism regarding "In the Footprint." He has a point. Maybe the Times should follow it, too."

Atlantic Yards News - IN THE FOOTPRINT

If you aren't coming to In the Footprint on Wednesday, check out the Atlantic Yards Traffic Forum, presented by our friends at the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Association. According to the PHNDA's website, it's: a forum on traffic and transit issues raised by Atlantic Yards construction and the planned opening of the Barclays Center in 2012.

* What impacts are already being felt?
* What is coming from the arena and future construction?
* What does the recent court decision mean to the community?
* What can we do now?

Join Council Member Letitia James, Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries, and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council at their Atlantic Yards traffic forum at PS9 in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

WHEN: Wednesday, December 8, 2010
7:30- 9:00PM
WHERE: PS9, 80 Underhill Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238

In other news, Norman Oder reports that the ESDC has granted a seven-year extension to build up the arena block, which is Phase 1 of the overall construction project under the EB-5 Program. Get the details at the Atlantic Yards Report HERE. The EB-5 Program allows Forest City Ratner to accept investments in exchange for greencards. Take a look at the EB-5 Memorandum that shows that this is actually legal HERE.

Additional Speakers for IN THE FOOTPRINT Talk-Back Series!

Our talk-back series has been going great! New York City Council Members Brad Lander and Stephen Levin provided some great insights into the role of the city council in the project moving forward, and Brad gave us some fascinating history about Brooklyn's development patterns and community involvement. Tonight, we've got Tom Angotti, Urban Planning Professor from Hunter College, to give us more insight into how these development decisions that literally shape our cities are made.

Also! Next Monday, December 6 we are lucky to have

Deb Howard, Pratt Area Community Council
Jo Anne Simon, District Leader, 52nd Assembly District
Gib Veconi, Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council

They will talk about the future of the Atlantic Yards development, since it's not over yet! Gothamist sums up the current situation:

"...twenty community organizations led by Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) filed a motion with New York State Supreme Court seeking to halt all construction at the project... The motion for a stay follows a November 9th decision from Justice Marcy Friedman, finding that the ESDC 'lacked a rational basis for assuming that Atlantic Yards project would be completed in ten years.'"

So make sure you come to the show and stay for the Post-Show Events. Put your questions to some of the people who have real answers for you. And if you'd like, there's an opportunity to help ensure that AY moves forward with more attention to the surrounding environment: use code FUTURE when purchasing tickets and a portion of that ticket price goes to the community organizations involved in the motion to help with their legal fees.

"They say they don't want the arena... bagel."

Our investigation of the Atlantic Yards brought The Civilians from barbershops to community forums, and one of the places in between was A.R.E.A. Bagel, located at 55 5th Avenue in Park Slope. In an interview, the owner describes a controversy that erupted when he was choosing the name:

"When I was building the store, the news pop out “Arena is coming in”. I did not know, my designer, he say you know, “Arena is coming, is a plus point, name Arena.” I say “No, I’m not sure, I just want to go with Slim’s Bagel, like in Queens.” He say, “No, no, no, go with Arena”. I said “Fine, put the name in.” But then, the people start complaining. They say they don’t want the Arena…Bagel. So in the papers, on the internet. It was about 15 to 20 running sites about this controversy. About the bagels, yes."

- From our interview and IN THE FOOTPRINT

Here's an early report saying that Park Slope residents were going to protest the A.R.E.N.A. Bagel and the owner's response: "'I can’t do anything that goes against the neighborhood because I’m a neighborhood guy. These are my customers and I can’t go against them.'"

Here's the Brooklyn Paper's reporting about when the name changed:
"The good news is that the sign-maker agreed to change the design for free. And Aggarwal says he intends to hang the absent “N” on the wall of his shop, surrounded by newspaper clippings of the controversy."

If anyone has the links to the protest sites, please forward them along!

AND NOW FOR THE LATEST, BREAKING NEWS:
Here's Park Slope reported today that the name might be CHANGING BACK to A.R.E.N.A. - there's a pic of the new sign in the post, wherein the name includes all the periods as well as the controversial "N." Will Park Slope let this happen, or will the independent business owner rule the day? Is he reclaiming the word ARENA for the people, or playing into Bruce Ratner's hand? Speak, Brooklyn, speak!

IN THE FOOTPRINT: Featured Video

"I had two ladies, one was a teacher, one was a stockbroker... they were a couple; and the both of 'em were both yellin at me, yelling and screaming, saying how could you be for this project, don't you realize if he builds a sixty story building the trees aren't going to get sunshine. You actually believe that, that the buildings are gonna - how in your right mind you gonna believe that? You can't block the sun! I can't remember how many million miles and it still somehow reaches the flowers even underwater - how you gonna block the sun with a building? Manhattan never woulda been built in with that theory. Am I right or wrong?"

Master Builder, Union Member, and Interviewee



Here is a link to Barclay's press release about the groundbreaking in March. Here's what they say about union jobs: "It is anticipated that Atlantic Yards will generate over $5 billion in new tax revenues for the State and the
City over the next 30 years and will create upwards of 17,000 union construction jobs and up to 8,000 permanent jobs when the entire project is completed."

And here is Norman Oder weighing in on the jobs issue.

Lastly, the earth is 150 million kilometers (93.2 million miles) from the sun.

IN THE FOOTPRINT: THE MOVIE

So, first of all, all y'all need to vote for The Civilians on Forbes.com as a "name you need to know in 2011." Because it IS a name that everyone will need to know in 2011. Both as a non-profit business and as a group supporting, developing, commissioning, presenting some of the most exciting and interesting theater in the country! So keep democracy alive, support the company, vote HERE. Or share on Facebook, or Tweet about it. Just make some noise, and the powers that be will listen.

The author, Larry Reibstein, brought up an interesting question in the comments section. In the movie version of In the Footprint (first Neighborhood Night tonight! $20 tickets using the code "Neighborhood" HERE or at the box office for Brooklyn residents and workers), who should the cast be? (That is, assuming that our AMAZING cast for In the Footprint all have scheduling conflicts... )

We all know Marty Markowitz would like to be played by George Clooney.

Here are some thoughts. Leave yours in the comments!
Marty Markowtiz: Brian Dennehy? Ned Beatty?
Bruce Ratner: Tom Hanks? Robert Deniro? John Doman?
Bertha Lewis: Loretta Devine?
Patti Hagan: Sissy Spacek, maybe?

IN THE FOOTPRINT First Preview Tonight!

Tonight is the first performance of IN THE FOOTPRINT! Come out to the Irondale Center in Fort Greene (85 South Oxford Street) and use the code "FOOTPRINT" for $25 tickets! Purchase online HERE!

See you tonight! And performers, break a leg!