Inside: Your Future, Explicit Kerrey Votes Confidence Oysters Under Explained Illsmatic in Self the ‘Scope Arts & Culture...................7 Reviews.......8 Opinions............................................10 News......................5 NEW SCHOOLFREE PRESS Issue 12, March 30, 2009-April 12, 2009 ALL THE NEWS YOU NEED TODAY, EVERY OTHER WEEK Copyright © 2009 Off-Off Broadway Theater Nearly Offed Plans ERIC KILLELEA STAFF WRITER ner,” said Cecilia Rubino, the coordinator of the Lang the- ater program. “Students who Keep The 13th Street Reper- are leaders of the Theater tory Company is nestled in Collective now were able to NSIE a Greenwich Village brown- re-forge a connection and it’s stone just off Sixth Avenue, been a wonderful neighbor- directly across from Arnhold hood theater space for Lang Occupied Hall. A red awning and green students for the last two years.” brick entrance mark the AIDAN GARDINER OPINIONS DEPUTY spot, and Edith O’Hara pro- “We have a good working vides a personal welcome. relationship with the 13th Street Theater,” said Lang She is the charming 92-year- On March 29, members of student Sean Hempill, a old founder and artistic di- The New School in Exile and member of the Lang Theater rector of the off-off Broad- Radical Student Union met Collective, who was part of way theater, which has been at the 6th Street Community the One Act Performance around since 1972—and may Center. During the two and a Festival that performed not be around much longer. half hour meeting, they final- I met O’Hara on a Friday at the theater in the fall of ized plans for shutting down afternoon; she provided me 2008. The Festival “got to the university on April 1 if with a ticket to see Conversa- the heart of what the LTC is New School President Bob tion with a Kleagle. Written about—students running all Kerrey and Executive Vice by Rudy Gray and directed aspects of the theater.” The President Jim Murtha do by Kevin B. Ploth, the play LTC’s next performance ran not resign. The groups’ April is based on the life of civil by their Improv Troupe, will 1 plans will include, but are rights leader and acclaimed be shown at the theater on not limited to, various pub- writer Walter Francis White. April 7. lic events including roving In the late 1920s, with lynch- When I later met with rallies starting in front of 66 ing widespread in the south, O’Hara, she was chatting W. 12 St. at 2 p.m. and mov- White, a light- skinned, with visitors. She sat in her ing around to all the Village black man who could pass recliner, with crossed-legs, campuses. However, it’s not for white, interviewed a re- and adoring blue-green eyes. clear if the school will be shut cruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. She said that the brown- down. A subset of the meet- An enthusiastic audience stone that she lives in—di- ing discussed another oc- nearly filled the 70 house rectly upstairs from the the- cupation that they are plan- seats. But after the play, ater—could possibly be one ning. when the lights went up, of the oldest in the Village “People kept suggesting the catharsis was cut short. (Backstage Magazine wrote that an occupation was going O’Hara came on stage, that it is over 220 years old). to happen,” said Suzanne Ex- thanked us all, and then be- O’Hara claimed that it was posito, a Lang student who gan to expand on a passage part of the Underground attended the meeting. “No written in the play’s pro- Railroad. “There is a trap one specified the time and gram. “An alarming amount door in the dressing room,” place of the occupation. “ GARRET HURLEY of small New York City the- Edith O’Hara, the 92-year-old founder of the 13th Street Repertory Company she said. “Maybe only a handful of aters closed in 2006, 2007, “We have sent a request to people were filled in on an and 2008, wiping out a part past five years, the theater available space. Two years the theater is “dedicated to the Landmarks Preservation occupation,” she added. of the culture and heritage has spent almost $200,000 earlier, she had come to New helping playwrights develop Commission urging that “Whether or not we’ll see an of New York City. And now, in legal fees in an ongoing York to produce a musical new plays and to helping they consider the building occupation of 65 [5th Ave.], 13th Street Repertory Com- battle to ensure its future. named Touch, which she had theatre artists develop their for landmark designation,” the President’s office, or some pany is engaged in a struggle As she said this, a plastic jar helped develop in a summer craft in a caring, professional wrote Andrew Berman, other place—maybe,” Chris Crews, NSSR student and for its very survival against was passed around to each theater program in Warren, environment.” It now hosts Executive Director of the NSIE participant, said last real estate developers who member of the audience, and Pennsylvania. A mother of five to seven hours weekly. Greenwich Village Society week. want to tear down the his- people kindly chipped in. three, O’Hara had also run And on weekend afternoons, for Historic Preservation in NSIE has no apparatus to toric building that houses The 13th Street Repertory a Pennsylvanian children’s the theater also produces e-mail. Berman said that the prohibit or approve the plans the 13th Street Theater.” Company was founded in theater. original plays for children. Society has also “tried to help of its participants because O’Hara said that in the 1972, when O’Hara saw an According to her group’s “It’s a wonderful historic ad in the Village Voice for website (13thstreetrep.org), theater right around the cor- CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 the organization is non-hier- archical. “It’s certainly not my place to tell people what to do or Riot Grrrl Nation not to do,” said Scott Ritner, NSSR student and NSIE par- Kathleen Hanna talks girlhood in America ticipant, before the meeting. Discussion between NSIE KEVIN DUGAN NEWS EDITOR graduate and youth coordi- Simone de Beauvoir’s Sec- students leading up to April nator Cleopatra LeMothe, ond Sex and album covers of 1 has often centered around Feministing.com contribu- Hanna’s former band, Julie the group’s use of radical tac- tor Courtney Martin, author Ruin. tics. Some wanted April 1 to Rebel Girl, don’t you know Kathleen Sweeney, and Lang Hanna reflected on her be a day of aggressive direct you’re the queen of my professor Ken Wark. While work in Bikini Kill, and how action while others were con- world? the panelists focused on rep- her upbringing affected her cerned that such behavior That was at least part of resentations of women and outlook. In particular, she would alienate the student the audience refrain from girlhood, they focused on brought up the semantic constituency NSIE hopes to a March 26 panel called topics as disparate as real- battles to reclaim words serve. “Girls Girls Girls: Girlhood ity television and transgen- like “bitch” that were tradi- “Some people think that in America,” a discussion dered youth of color. tionally meant to degrade we should be doing more in Wollman Hall put on by “What kind of girlhood women. militant action,” said Crews. “Other people are not nec- The New School’s Gender in America do we ignore?” “One word that was con- essarily sympathetic to the Studies program. Among LeMothe said. “Real girls are sistent was the word ‘slut,’” KEVIN DUGAN dean and provost positions, its guest speakers, the most disappearing in the midst of Hanna said, referring to her Hanna signed records and books for members of the packed audience but at least willing to ac- prominent was former Bi- the myths being told about verbally abusive childhood. knowledge that, yeah, they kini Kill singer, Riot Grrrl, them.” She then showed a black use. its impact. “Now that I look need more time if they want and activist Kathleen Han- “A lot of what I wanted to But many in the audience and white picture of her in back, I don’t know how suc- institutional change.” do with the band was to be a na. Nearly 200 attendees were clearly focused on the ‘90s during her time in cessful it was,” she said. “If “But that shouldn’t be an ex- showed up for the discus- Hanna. During an intermis- Bikini Kill with that word hero of my own childhood,” you’re worried about getting cuse for us to just sit on our sion. sion, students formed long written across her stomach. she said. punched, do you sit in your laurels and do nothing,” he The other speakers includ- lines to talk to her. Many She said that, at the time, But Hanna, now 40, waxed room and punch yourself in ed the poet Felice Bell, Lang asked her to sign books like she was trying to reclaim its reflective on the photo and the face?” CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 2 New School Free Press EDITORIAL March 30, 2009 NEW SCHOOL FREE PRESS State Law Hampers MTA Published by the On March 25, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted to Queens, but he was also running for Public Advocate—perhaps more Eugene Lang College Literary 12 to 1 to both increase fares by as much as 23 percent and substantially interested in votes than in actual change.