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

Occupy #S17 Occupies the Night

A special thanks to all of our participating artists, both in New York and across the country, as well as everyone who was able to come out and see the show!

Monday night, we packed Joe’s Pub for Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy #S17- a night of monologues, punk rock, and democracy in honor of the Occupy Movement’s one year anniversary.

_{Jill Sobule, one of our musical guests, takes the stage to perform “We Want Our America Back”.}

The show was a lively and moving part of our Occupy Your Mind program, which seeks to archive the living history of the Occupy Movement. It tells the story of Occupy (thus far) through monologues derived from interviews with activists, occupiers, and many other people who have found themselves amid the Occupy Movement for one reason or another.  

But Monday night wasn’t just about our performance for #S17 - numerous other theatres and performers joined in the festivities in their own homages to the one year anniversary. Using the transcripts of interviews that we compiled, as well as their own original pieces, theatre groups and schools staged their own readings. 

Our participants were:

Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, TX
THE-TREE Institute in Portland, OR
HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT
Theatre4 in New Haven, CT
Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, CT
Bated Breath Theatre Company in Hartford, CT
ARTFARM in Middletown, CT
Capital Classics Theatre Company in Hartford, CT
Jacques Lamarre in Hartford, CT
University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH
Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY
Emerson College in Boston, MA
Company One/Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, MA

Here are some pics from their performances:

University of Cincinnati students Garrett, Roderick and Trey read the parts of Will, Ian and Cliff in an original piece about three peers who got arrested the previous fall during Occupy Cincinnati.

Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, TX performing Maddy

From the event in Hartford, CT 
Tweeted by @lnlbee

The event flier for the Occupy #S17 festivities and performances in Hartford Connecticut.

Not only were shows happening all over the country, but we also had a live Twitter stream going during the event. Here are some of the awesome Tweets that were going out, which included descriptions of the events, plus quotes from the monologues:

From @Kitchen_Dog in Dallas, TX:

Not just monologues - photos by Dylan Hollingsworth will be on display tonight. Sneak peek here: http://ow.ly/dMwCP #S17Civs @Civilians

From @DannyBryck: 

.@Civilians #NoRoomForWishing contains >30 voices from Boston & NY- "Dennis"asks "Is this a movement about reform...or revolution?" #S17Civs

and  
"but you can't have free speech over there because you're gonna wreck the petunias!" #S17Civs @Civilians @company_one @centsqtheater

From @OccupyPdxAction (Tweeting for the TREE-Institute in Portland):

"A VOTAR LATINO TE ESTOY LLAMANDO" #s17civs #opdx #occupyportland #ows http://opdxlive.org

From @OccupyDallasCOS (Tweeting for Kitchen Dog):
"Capitalism is a game. You have to buy your way out of it. You have to buy your freedom." #s17civs

From ‏@CCMDrama:

@Civilians "A corporation is not a person. A corporation can't bleed, but if it could it would bleed money" #S17Civs

and

@Civilians "It was a thrill to be in the safety of the movement itself" #S17Civs

From @FireZia (Tweeting for Kitchen Dog):

"The most precious comodity we have as a country is our children's minds." @Kitchen_Dog #s17civs

From @hiiimeg (Tweeting for University of Cincinnati):

@Civilians #S17Civs "the political climate in this country was 100% changed by Oct. 16 from where it was Sept. 16" pic.twitter.com/j6Ht7oxg

From @culturecreate (Tweeting from the Hartford event):

"you're telling me that I can't occupy the park that you are occupying" #S17Civs

From ‏@hiiimeg (Tweeting for University of Cincinnati):

@civilians Had an audience member ask us to perform our pieces at Piatt Park: the park of Occupy Cincinnati!                   

Plus LOTS more!

But what really made the night a success wasn’t just the awesome performers, or the killer bands- it was the sense of community and empowerment that the night created for all who were involved. We were so glad that people came together across the country to bring attention to the many issues that the Occupy Movement is all about.

_{All of our performers hit the stage for one last song- Neil Diamond’s classic, “America”- and encouraged the audience to join in and rock out with them.}

CCM Drama tweeted at the end of the night, “What an amazing evening it was to be a part of #S17civs @civilians and share stories that effect and inform. #occupy.”

And if you’re bummed that you miss the show- not to worry! It will be up on The Civilians’ free podcast series Let Me Ascertain You on iTunes. 

Sneak-Peek of Occupy #S17

Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy #S17 is right around the corner! We have a really incredible lineup of performers and musicians for you (which you can see HERE). Our street team of interviewers has been hard at work talking to lots of new folks, and we can't wait to share their stories with you on Monday. Click HERE to get your tickets! And here is a sneak-peek of some of the interviews we'll be showcasing:

Brazilian theatre activist:

“On January 17th we started a campaign called Glamarchy. Which is Glamourous Anarchy. We, we love acronyms. And the whole idea was to experiment with, um, glitter bombing oppression… Glitter bombing is the art and science of (laughs) having a bunch of glitter in your hand or in a bag and when you see oppression, personal or impersonal, you just aim it and you glitter bomb.”

British former diplomat:

“When I went down to Zuccotti park I could almost feel the bankers looking down on us, laughing, thinking, you know, these guys are just, just, you know, they’re never going to change the way things are really done. So I always felt that Occupy needed to be about actually, practically, building better systems to replace what are very bad systems.”

Man from Shelter System:

“And I would see like, 5 million dollars in some sort of stock transfer and it just astounded me to think that I’m carrying all this money in my, you know, in this satchel and I was getting paid maybe $8.75 a hour to do it. ‘Why am I carrying this 5 million dollars and I’m, you know starving.’”

We have all our interviews available for you HERE (and we added a few more yesterday) if you want to read more! Plus, we have satellite shows of Occupy interviews happening across the country. Here's our list of incredible participants:

Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, TX
THE-TREE Institute in Portland, OR
HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT
Theatre4 in New Haven, CT
Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, CT
Bated Breath Theatre Company in Hartford, CT
ARTFARM in Middletown, CT
Capital Classics Theatre Company in Hartford, CT
Jacques Lamarre in Hartford, CT
University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH
Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY
Emerson College in Boston, MA

Follow #S17Civs for updates and conversation that day!

Lastly, this cabaret is launching what we're calling our Autumn of Revolution, which also includes Paris Commune at ArtsEmerson and BAM. We want to know:

If you could change one thing in our country, what would it be? 

Share your responses in the comments!

A Glimpse Behind the Prison Wall

In a recent Let Me Ascertain You event, Jeanine Serralles gave an astonishing performance as a woman currently serving time in El Buen Pastor, the national women's prison in Bogota, Colombia.  This brilliant retelling is just a taste of what will be divulged tomorrow night, June 13th at 7:30pm at 92YTribeca.  Prepare for quite the comedic/dramatic ride...  

 

The upcoming event of which this clip is a taste is Let Me Ascertain You: Bogota.  It features never before seen material crafted by Civilians artists from interviews that were conducted on-site at the prison.  The evening will focus on the annual beauty pageant that takes place in El Buen Pastor.  Members conducted these interviews with paramilitary, guerrilla fighters, drug smugglers, and more.  The pageant itself is a relatively new development in the prison system and is comprised of everything from folk dancing, to floats built from recycled material, to an evening gown competition.  It is truly indicative of a shift in public policy towards better support and rehabilitation for the incarcerated.  The stories you will hear at this event are candid glimpses inside the walls of a woman's prison along with personal accounts of the political struggles and warfare that continue to threaten Colombia.  

We're all very excited to see what tomorrow evening brings!  If you're interested in getting a first-hand account of this prison beauty pageant and all that it entails, HERE is all the information you'll need to know.  Hope to see you there!

    

What is your favorite song about death?

We're coming up on our next Let Me Ascertain You cabaret at Joe's Pub, and this one is focused on the surprising, macabre, and unexpectedly funny stories related to perspectives on and experiences with death and the death industry. We've talked to funeral directors, morticians, a Yogi, and lots more - we hope you'll join us to hear their incredible stories and thoughts!

Last week, we got some great responses about your favorite death scenes in movies. This week, we want to know:

What is your favorite song about death?

And be sure to join us on Friday for the show - it's going to be great!

Get tickets HERE!


And here's what we've come up with:

Via a comment below: "Hades" from The Frogs


Via comments below:  "Erlkonig" by Franz Schubert (requested twice!)

Via a comment below: Johnny Cash's cover of Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat"

Via a comment below: "My Death" by Jacques Brel, covered by David Bowie

 Via Facebook: "An Artist's Song" by Ari Picker for his band Lost in the Trees

 Via Facebook: Nick Cave's Murder Ballads (This is the first part of the album)

Via a comment below: "Saint James Infirmary" - Lily Tomlin/All Nurse Orchestra Version
 

Via a comment below: "Red River Valley" sung by Marty Robbins

Via a comment below: "Poor Jud is Dead" from Oklahoma
 

 Via a comment below: Verdi's Requiem

YOU BETTER SIT DOWN: Question 4

As we move into the last week of performances of You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce, we have one final question for you!

What songs or music were you listening to during your divorce or break-up?

These responses feed our Salon Nights, where artists create all new monologues, songs, and scenes from both online and live audience answers to our questions. 

Join us for one of our remaining Salon Nights:

4/28: The Bats
5/5: The Civilians' Associate Artists

And the deals continue:
4/26 and 5/2: Code TWOFER for 2 for 1 tickets
Next Tuesday: Pay What You Can
Saturday Matinees: All Tickets $10

Plus, with this week's question, we'll put together a special Divorce playlist!

YOU BETTER SIT DOWN: Question 3

For the past two weeks, we've been asking questions about your divorce or break-up in connection with You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce. We've been getting fantastic responses HERE and HERE, so check those out! This week's question is:

Was there a habit you picked up while going through or after your divorce or break-up?

Beverly, one of the characters in the show, says that she started going to the movies a lot. Did you start jogging? - start eating something unusual? - start collecting something? Let us know in the comments! All contributors will be entered to win a FREE ticket to the show!

Your responses will be integrated into a You Better Sit Down Salon Night, where an artist or group of artists will be creating some all-new material that will be performed after the show on a Wednesday or Saturday night! Upcoming writers include Jason Grote (staff writer for Smash), Jon Kern (staff writer for The Simpsons), and Michael Schulman (writer for The New Yorker). Here's a clip from this past Wednesday's Salon Night, where the Flea's resident acting company, The Bats, crafted this using material generated THAT NIGHT from the live audience!



So leave us a comment and get entered to win a FREE ticket! Plus, next Wednesday, April 25 has a 2 for 1 deal with code TWOFER (that you can also use next Thursday, April 26) or come for a Pay-What-You-Can Tuesday show or a $10 Saturday matinee!

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE! 

Occupy Your Mind - The American Spring

A lot has been going on behind the scenes with the Occupy Movement the past couple of months, and more recently the same has been true of The Civilians' Occupy Your Mind project. After the Low Lives 4: Occupy! event in early March, the Street Team went back to work. We got a whole new round of interviews with people intimately involved with the movement. They continue to work on Occupy day in and day out, despite not having an overnight presence in Zuccotti Park.

If you missed the livestream of the Low Lives event in March, you can catch The Civilians' performances, along with all of the other Occupy themed performances from that event here.

Since then, artists and activists nationwide have been participating in the Occupy Your Mind project, that is recorded online on our Tumblr. Click here to check out some all new videos posted from an Occupy Your Mind event in New  Haven earlier this month.

As for the new interviews collected by the Street Team, The Civilians is hosting our own Occupy Your Mind event just in time for Occupy's big day of action May Day. On April 26th at 8 PM in the Judson Church Choir Loft, Civilian artists are teaming up with storytelling performers from Art Diaspora and Judson to present stories from the movement about what's going on right now. What is the American Spring? What are the stories behind major Occupy actions like the 99% bat signal? What challenges have the activists faced since being evicted from Zuccotti?

As the movement continues to go from "leaderless" to "leaderfull", The Civilians are on the ground, talking to the folks involved and recording the story in our unique way.

Want to get involved? Visit Occupy Your Mind on the Civilians website and do your own OYM performance!

YOU BETTER SIT DOWN: Question #2

For the run of You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce at The Flea Theater (our show in which four of our artists asked their parents about their parents' divorces, and play their parents in the verbatim conversations), we are asking a question every week, and your responses will inspire what we do in our post-show Salon Nights. The first post-show event is this Saturday, April 14. Last week's questions got some amazing responses  - see them HERE.

This week's question is:

Where were you when you told the kids about the split and what was their reaction? 

For those who aren't divorced, let us know where and how you told your close friends about a break-up!

This was a question that the artists in the show asked their parents. Here's a clip of the answers they got:



Get your tickets to the show 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!

Occupy Your Mind - DIY Investigative Theater

This post is by Jay Stull, who participated in The Civilians' new Occupy Your Mind project, in which we are encouraging YOU to conduct your own interviews about the Occupy movement and create a performance from them. You then send us a video and we broadcast it to the world! Click HERE to view Jay's performance!

Last week I wanted to test a few premises of the Occupy Your Mind Project here at The Civilians. The Project sounds awesome: artists and non-artists alike, in conversation with people involved in the global Occupy movement, perform stories culled from those conversations and post videos of those performances on our website to share. People around the world grow increasingly interested; our idea goes "viral"; millions of interview-based performances are recorded and submitted; our website crashes, is rebuilt; Google blanches in fear; the world is united by art and tolerance. So yeah, it sounds really cool on paper. But I still had some secretly held misgivings about the viability of this work in all the different and varied performance spaces throughout the land. I mean, at The Civilians, the performances are great. Professional in every sense of the word. Great lighting and sound. Amazing artistic talent. Awesome venues. I began to wonder how much value was added by a strong production, value that we assumed wouldn't be necessary for (and knew may not be available to) everyone to do the work we envisioned. So I set out to see how these Occupy Your Mind monologues stood up in a room with only a handful of people, no theatrical lighting, and no mics; just folks connecting with a given material and an audience willing to listen to them speak.

Luckily, I had a ready-made group of willing, talented artists in the Winter Ensemble Class I'm taking at the LAByrinth theater. We'd been tasked with creating an ensemble-based work of theater of at least 20 minutes and for an audience of at least 20 people to be completed within the week. I knew that the Occupy Your Mind project contemplated the re-use of monologues already performed by artists and posted on the website, and I seized on this as a potential source text. I chose five monologues for six different cast members and we all divided up the duties of directing. With less than a week's notice, our only available space was a large recreation room in the apartment building of one member of the ensemble. We arrived two hours before the performance to run through the evening (which we had estimated would be roughly 60 minutes) for the first and last time. At that point, honestly, things looked grim. The room was darker than I had hoped. Our collective mechanical engineering skills failed for a time to figure out how to fully elevate the two music stands we had procured from friends of friends. The defunct sound system in the rec room was a barely audible conduit for the music we had intended to play interstitially throughout. Another tenant of the apartment, cradling a bowl of fruit salad and clutching a copy of The Lion King, made a competing bid for the room; management was called; a tense conversation took place just out of earshot. Meanwhile, a debaucherous 21st birthday party in the room next door threatened to drown out our mic-less performance with the thumping bass of a Britney Spears album (I kid you not, they were playing Britney Spears, who I had erroneously assumed died years ago). But we dispatched charismatic young actors to quell the thumping hysteria next door. We re-imagined the dark room as ready made for theater. We figured out the music stands, did away with our playlist, and maintained our hold on the room with an iron fist. We hoped - because it was all we could do at that point - that the monologues themselves and the work the actors had done to perform them would be sufficient to constitute an evening of theater. So the dust settled, the audience arrived, and we began to share these stories.

Here's the thing about these monologues: they have the peculiar ring of truth about them. And because they are at once both odd and specific, they are, to an audience, good theater. Without mics, music, lighting, or even a stage; without being off-book; without equity status, these monologues captivate. They are lived-in stories and, because they were told to us variously at protests, after a raid, after an arrest, they have in their very fiber the urgency and meaning of a good monologue. They take us somewhere and help us to connect to people we may suspect are strange or may have been taught are dangerous. But their stories reveal something else: that there is reason behind action and urgency behind reason. There was also, at least to me, a theatrical echo of the consensus method used in Zuccotti and elsewhere in the Occupy Movement, the "human mic" - a way of giving physical voice to the ideas of another. What is theater, I thought, if not a formalized, ancient tradition of the human microphone? We long to hear each others stories and, in this instance, the stories are most definitely, by themselves, enough. By way of experiment, I can say to you now: go interview, go edit a monologue and, without a penny to your name, find two listeners to perform. It hardly takes a "production", traditionally defined. What it does take is a willingness to listen, a curiosity about someone different from yourself, and the courage to become that person for at least four to seven minutes. And this, I can assure you from depths of a midtown apartment complex rec room, will most certainly be enough.

Jay Stull is currently the artistic intern at The Civilians. Clips from the Occupy Your Mind performance described above can be found on Tumblr, and if you an interest in getting involved in the project itself, please visit our website at http://www.thecivilians.org/programs/occupy_your_mind.html.

The Revolution Will Not be Televised

This last semester, our fabulous Associate Artists Emily Ackerman and Michael Friedman were teaching artists in the drama class at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts. The students spent their semester conducting their own investigation with Emily and Michael's guidance. They focused on the topic of the sixties, and they interviewed local Brooklynites about what it was like back then and asked particular questions about some of the major events of the decade. They worked with a social studies class at the school to research the history that they were examining, and crafted a play from the interview material that they collected.

We've got video clips of the performance! Students at the school painted the art work that you see on stage, plus there is a video at the beginning that features some of the interviewees, auditions, and other behind-the-scenes glimpses. We couldn't be prouder of all the great work these students did last semester!

Check out the monologue, drumming, and dancing in this clip!


This clip focuses on the Civil Rights Movement. These students did not shy away from heavy or difficult material. Don't miss the monologue at the end of the clip - it's an amazing story about racism in the sixties that the students did a great job with!


Here's a clip with their interviews about Vietnam.


Plus, they cover music in the sixties, the space race, and more!
For all of the videos, visit our YouTube channel HERE, and congratulations again to this incredible group of high schoolers!

Occupy Broadway

Our artists, including Michael Friedman, Matt Dellapina, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine, along with Greg Hildreth and Celia Keenan-Bolger, performed yesterday at the very beginning of Occupy Broadway, which is "a 24-hour performance occupation" a few blocks north of Time Square. It's still going on, so if you're around, be sure to check out all of the great stuff packed into the remaining hours!

Here are some photos of Matt Dellapina singing to the crowd:

And here is the finale of The Civilians' performance: Michael Friedman leading the crowd in a sing-along of "Dump the Bosses Off Your Back," a song of discontent and protest from 1911. The lyrics below so you can sing along at home!

Are you poor, forlorn and hungry?
Are there lots of things you lack?
Is your life made up of misery?
Then dump the bosses off your back.

Are your clothes all patched and tattered?
Are you living in a shack?
Would you have your troubles scattered?
Then dump the bosses off your back.

Are you almost split asunder?
Loaded like a long-eared jack?
Boob - why don't you buck like thunder,
And dump the bosses off your back?

All the agonies you suffer
You can end with one good whack;
Stiffen up, you orn'ry duffer
And dump the bosses off your back.

Watch the Occupy Wall Street Cabaret!

The Civilians' Let Me Ascertain You: Occupy Wall Street Cabaret was last Friday, and it went great! We couldn't be prouder of our fantastic artists for pulling together to create such a wonderful show (and so quickly - interviews began just a few weeks ago)!

We got a great write-up from The Faster Times, who said that "The 80-minute show was the most moving work of theater I have seen all season." Read the whole article here!

We are so happy to announce that the entire show is available! Watch the videos posted here, or check out a snapshot from an interview posted below!

Watch live streaming video from joespub at livestream.com

Watch live streaming video from joespub at livestream.com

Watch live streaming video from joespub at livestream.com

Fate is a 19 year old in youthful, punkish clothing. She tells us what brings her to OWS and what it's like living there:

“I came out here with my boyfriend and my friends? But um…all I really love about this is …we’re making a point. We’re standing up for what we believe in and at the end of the day, you know, we still have our heads up…we still have hope. Hopefully none of these freaking PIGS (gestures to police) mess it up.

Well, being here my day is…is peaceful. Yeah, it is hard to sleep …early...but you know, everyone’s like, “Yeah come on,” everyone’s like rowdy, like “Yeah protestors” and it’s like, you gotta be up. We clean up, we put the blankets back so other people can use them. We eat. Uh. Our spots change all the time. There are people that are coming in from different states and different countries, so we have to make a little bit more room for them. And. That’s basically like…it’s like guests, coming into our home. This is our home. And we’re trying to make it look suitable…to people.”

The Civilians Occupy Wall Street

Over the past few weeks, Civilians' artists have been downtown talking to the 99% about the current demonstrations, our government, the economy, and the future. The company's next cabaret evening in its Let Me Ascertain You series will take this interview material and reveal the thought-provoking and unexpected, the infuriating and hilarious, the communal and the personal stories of the large and ongoing display of discontent that is Occupy Wall Street. Don't miss this one-night-only performance of monologues and songs by Michael Friedman crafted from interviews in The Civilians' unique style, giving voice to the people and examining the current exercise of democracy that will leave its mark our nation's history.

The cabaret is on October 28 at 7:30PM at Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette Street in Manhattan). To purchase tickets, click HERE!

Here are some excerpts from the interviews we've done so far:

FORMER INVESTMENT BANKER ON WHY HE'S THERE:

"We, the 99%, that’s who, you know everyone who isn’t putting in these policies and – and benefitting from them... the federal reserve for instance [is a] privatized bank which we’re not allowed, uh, even to audit, you know, our government, yet they print our money. But they have no resources and they’re not federal, they’re privatized, and we have to borrow that money from them on loan when section – Article 1, Section 8 of The Constitution, uh, prohibits anyone else from coining money except for Congress, so, you know in that way the wealth would stay with the nation, but what happens is the wealth gets siphoned out of the nation and all the resources get siphoned out of the relation and a few bankers are – are pocketing that money." 

A YOUNG MAN ON HOW TO GET THERE:
"I hitchhiked here all the way from California to get out here for this protest...Um, so what you do, is a lot of people use a cardboard sign, uh white cardboard if you can get it, because it stands out more, but my friend got me a wonderful gift years ago, which was a white, a white – like a dry erase board so that way I could express myself at any given moment or if I wanted to take a new route, I could change it or I could just like write funny shit on there and try to get a laugh out of people . Um, and I – I used that, I have a backpacking backpack that I loaded up with all of my gear, and I carried with me a lawn gnome on the back, which is an unnecessary 10 pounds, but my friend gave it to me and was like take this with you on your journey this time and we named him “Gnome Chomsky” and currently he’s sleeping over there on my bed..."

VIETNAM VET ON THE MEDIA:

"I said I would've been arrested, I would've done it just just to a say wait a second this is what democracy's supposed to be about you know we're supposed to do this, that's what brought this country together, you know, and then you got people, that's what I'm saying, the news people really disappoint.  I even heard O'Reilly, I haven't heard O'Reilly say What are we going to do about these people, you know, I thought O'Reilly at least was going to say Hey, this is what America is all about, but he's a punk, he keeps talking telling everybody how tough he is, you know?  I'm Bill O'Reilly and I'm a I'm a tough guy. No he's not.  He's a sissy. He ran away from Vietnam, too. Tell him that if you ever see him."

  

SEND AN OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTER TO THE THEATER!

Donate $15 to send one demonstrator to the show! 

Please click the link below to make a donation of $15 or more and we’ll invite actively protesting members of the 99% to witness their stories being told. 

LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU: BEST OF...!

Last weekend, The Civilians took over The Living Room in the Lower East Side for an afternoon of performances of some of the best interviews from our archives. Much like Disney, we cracked open our vaults and brought some great monologues to the stage. We had some great characters, including a Remote Viewer, a facialist, an Evangelical Christian in the air force, and the founder of Hot Nude Yoga, If you missed it, don't worry - all of these will be released on our podcast series (launching this fall). Here are couple of choice quotes from the event:

"...the pendulum swings, we talk about the pendulum at the academy, and just swingin’ from y’know too strict to too loose and that kinda thing,. I think the pendulum swung way the other way, to where it’s just getting ridiculous, you got cases where, uh, the protes – or the uh Inner-Faith council, you’ve got people complaining on the inner-faith council cause there were Easter Bunnies, on the tables on Easter, and saying well, Christian’s are tryin’ to evangelize, everybody’s getting an Easter bunny, well Christians, don’t like the Easter bunny. Y’know, we don’t like Santa Claus." - an Evangelical Christian

"Don’t get me started on Bush. And people say he’ll get re-elected. He can’t get re-elected, he was never elected in the first place. The Supreme Court handed him the presidency. Iraq, that war was fought for Halliburton. Don’t get me started on that. It’s a fact. It’s been all over the place. It’s a fact. Cheney worked for them years ago, and now he says he doesn’t – then why is he getting paid one million dollars a year by them? They have a contract to reconstruct Iraq." - A facialist 

And lastly, here is a photo of Emily Ackerman playing a 70 year-old lady who Emily interviewed for This Beautiful City, who said:

"And then I started picketing at Planned Parenthood.  And there were women who would come down there and have their children in strollers, and we would hold signs, but nothing really active... It’s just that killing those babies is just killing babies.  For no reason.  And they think there’s a reason.  And I dug that thing out, the thing I wrote, a few years ago, and I said Jeepers!  I wrote that?  I did a pretty good job on that!  It was the first thing I had done on my own, that I had written, and I could pick my own subject.  I’ve just been an activist from that time."

 

TALES FROM MY PARENTS' DIVORCE at Williamstown

TALES FROM MY PARENTS' DIVORCE has officially opened at Williamstown Theatre Festival, and we still have a weekend of performances to go! The actors, who all interviewed their own parents and in fact play their own parents, do a fantastic job of, dare I say, becoming their parents and telling the stories of building and dividing their families. Writer and actor Robbie Collier Sublett brought up another layer that the show offers during a talk-back after Tuesday's performance - which is that these actors witnessed a lot of these events as kids, and in fact, the stories that they're now telling had a major impact on shaping their childhoods. So it's all the more cathartic to be able to look at these events with the distance (all of the parents are over 20 years divorced at this point) that their parents' have been able to get over time.

The Boston Globe liked it, too, saying it's an "engrossing production" and applauding the actors' "impressive skill." Click HERE for the whole review!

And here are some wonderful program notes written by our most fabulous former Literary Associate, Rachel Lerner-Lay! The notes take a look at some of the statistics (with some great info-graphics) to accompany our stories of one of the wide-spread social phenomena in America today (click on it to enlarge).

And here's a photo of the theater....

And here's a photo of the set! (Note the dishwasher in the back - it really works!)

Congrats to all the cast and crew - break a leg this weekend, and we can't wait for the show to go up to ArtsEmerson in October!

GONE MISSING at Barrow Street on 8/08!

We would like to give a big thank you to everyone who came out to the Barrow Street Theatre last Monday for the concert version of GONE MISSING! It was such a treat sharing the show with members of the original audiences as well as introducing it to some fresh new faces. Everyone had a blast, but we all seemed hyperconscious of forgetting something upon exiting the theatre…  Keys? Check! Rings? Check! Phone? Check! The nostalgic event brought back many great memories (though as we learned from the show- the word nostalgia comes from the Greek roots “algia” meaning pain and “nostos” meaning homecoming).  I found myself reflecting on things that I have lost in my own life along the way. The investigation might be completed for now, but we still want to hear from you- Do you sometimes feel like your mind is an etch sketch? Is your apartment the equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle? Share your own stories of lost and found in a comment below!

And here are some photos from rehearsal for you to enjoy!

 L-R: Emily Ackerman, Colleen Werthmann, Brian Sgambati, Stephen Punkett, 

Lexy Fridell, and Matt Dellapina

 Down in front! Just kidding, that's Steve.

And this one is from the production at Barrow Street in 2007!

GONE MISSING - Blast from the Past!

In celebration of the Gone Missing concert this Monday, August 8th at Barrow Street Theatre, we have been checking out some videos of past productions of Gone Missing on the web. Professional and community theatres as well as universities and high schools have been putting up productions all over the country. These talent-filled, heart warming, and sometimes hilarious performances have brought back lots of great memories.

Check out this video of Everett High School's Drama Club rehearsing for their performance of the show. Don't miss the 2:10 mark- you will fall for this actress' spin on our work!

And let us not forget this incredible animation done by Rita Sá for School of Visual Arts:

Can't get enough? Be sure to pick up tickets, put on your Gucci pumps (if you can find them), and join us next Monday. So if you saw the show at Barrow Street and have missed it, or missed it during its last run, don't miss Gone Missing on August 8 at 8pm!

Tickets can be purchased at Barrow Street's website:

http://www.barrowstreettheatre.com/whats-on/gonemissing_onenight.asp

See you all next week!

Jeff Daniels or Jeff Bridges?

Here's a video from LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU: CANARD, CANARD, GOOSE?, a concert version of our very first show ever that we recreated at Joe's Pub last Friday! Watch as The Civilians try to retell the plot of Fly Away Home (whose actual plot - and cast - can be found here!)