DEC 2016
2016 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Ellen Carey, Dings and Shadows, 2012
Published by: Season Sponsor: 2016 BAM Next Wave Festival #50SongMemoir
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board
William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board
Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board
Katy Clark, President
Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer The Magnetic Fields: 50 Song Memoir
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House Dec 2 & 3 at 7:30pm
Running time: approx. one hour & 40 minutes, including intermission
Written and arranged by Stephin Merritt Produced by the Magnetic Fields in association with Nick Schwartz-Hall Directed by José Zayas
Set designer Arnulfo Maldonado Projections designer Alex Basco Koch Lighting designer Mark O’Maley Sound designer Dan Bora
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS Stephin Merritt voice, etc. Sam Davol cellos, etc. Christopher Ewen keyboards, etc. Anthony Kaczynski guitars, etc. Season Sponsor: Quince Marcum percussion, etc. Shirley Simms bouzouki, etc. Pinky Weitzman violas, etc. Support for the Signature Artist Series provided by Howard Gilman Foundation. 50 Song Memoir
PROGRAM ONE—Dec 2 PROGRAM TWO—Dec 3
1. Wonder Where I’m From 26. The Day I Finally... 2. Come Back as a Cockroach 27. Weird Diseases 3. A Cat Called Dionysus 28. Me and Fred and Dave and Ted 4. Judy Garland 29. Haven’t Got a Penny 5. They’re Killing Children Over There 30. A Serious Mistake 6. I Think I’ll Make Another World 31. I’m Sad! 7. Eye Contact 32. Eurodisco Trio 8. It Could Have Been Paradise 33. Lovers’ Lies 9. No 34. Fathers in the Clouds 10. My Mama Ain’t 35. Ghosts of the Marathon Dancers 11. Hustle 76 36. Have You Seen It in the Snow? 12. Life Ain’t All Bad 37. Be True to Your Bar 13. The Blizzard of ’78 38. The Ex and I 14. Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Ruin Your Life 39. Cold-Blooded Man 15. London by Jetpack 40. Never Again 16. How to Play the Synthesizer 41. “Quotes” 17. Happy Beeping 42. In the Snow White Cottages 18. Foxx and I 43. Surfin’ 19. Danceteria! 44. Till You Come Back To Me 20. Why I Am Not a Teenager 45. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 21. How I Failed Ethics 46. Stupid Tears 22. At the Pyramid 47. You Can Never Go Back to New York 23. Ethan Frome 48. Big Enough for Both of Us 24. The 1989 Musical Marching Zoo 49. I Wish I Had Pictures 25. Dreaming in Tetris 50. Somebody’s Fetish
ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION CREDITS Assistant projection designer John Erickson Projection illustrators Roger Miller, Jocelyn O'Shea, Alexander Petrowsky Projection editors Stephanie Beattie, Ryan Powell Projection animators John Erickson, Alex Petrowsky Assistant scenic designer Anshuman Bhatia Monitor engineer Mike Amacio Tour manager Jason Thompson Management Claudia Gonson
Produced with commissioning support from: BAM; Barbican Theatre, UK; Center for the Art of Performance, UCLA; Edinburgh International Festival; Melbourne Festival
Developmental residency support provided by MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA.
Rehearsals for 50 Song Memoir provided by ArtsEmerson, Boston, MA.
The Magnetic Fields wish to thank Claudia Gonson, Robert Hurwitz, and Erik Selz. Top left photo by Stephin Merritt. All others by Sam Davol. 50 Song Memoir—Notes
STEPHIN MERRITT ON 50 SONG MEMOIR
On Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at 1:45pm, at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, Nonesuch President Robert Hurwitz told me he had a swell idea for a new album by the Magnetic Fields: an album marking my 50th birthday with 50 autobiographical songs. I had just completed a rigorously fact- based mini-musical for the radio show This American Life, and it seemed like an idea I could take further, with myself as subject.
So I started recording at my 50th birthday party—which I forgot to put on the album—and meant to finish in a year; I was seven months late. Most of the recording I did at home, as usual, with the plan to use 50 instruments, but I ended up playing twice that, and involving 13 other performers (who played 40 other instruments). The record also expanded into the past as I incorporated recordings from 30 years ago, and fragments of songs I wrote as a teenager.
For the concert version I am working with some musicians I have known for decades (I met Shirley Simms when she was nine and I was 12) and some not (Quince Marcum I met a month ago; I don’t even know where he lives). But I expect us all to reunite for 100 Song Memoir, half a century from tonight. Possibly on Mars.
—Stephin Merritt
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The first image that came to my mind when I started thinking about a framework for the concert was Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. I imagined Stephin singing into a tape recorder in an enclosed space, traveling backwards and forwards through time and calmly moving from reel to reel. I thought of it as a memory archive. But what would a Stephin Merritt memory archive look like?
His house of course. An environment full of musical instruments, books, toys, unusual portraits, tiki bars, space ships, robots, geegaws, tchotchkes, and dollhouses. Stephin collects tin dollhouses. And that’s the space you find him in. He is inside one of his dollhouses as if transported there by a science experiment gone awry, surrounded by 50 years of ornaments and gadgets. Outside the dollhouse are the six musicians who play 50 assorted instruments and accompany him on the magical mystery tour through his past.
The things on the set are all from his home. Above him is a picture frame. And inside this frame you will see a shifting landscape of images and text—think of it as a speech balloon in a comic, some of the things you will see are true and some will be less true but they will all tell the story, in fragments, of Stephin Merritt’s life.
—José Zayas Who’s Who
STEPHIN MERRITT (composer, musician) is the Back. Merritt has composed incidental music for writer-singer-producer of the Magnetic Fields, the the HarperCollins audio books of A Series of Un- 6ths, and the Gothic Archies. He also has the fortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and for Neil group Future Bible Heroes, in collaboration with Gaiman’s Coraline, and subsequently released Christopher Ewen. To date, he has written, pro- an album Songs from a Series of Unfortunate duced, and recorded 11 albums with the Mag- Events. In 2014, Merritt released 101 Two Letter netic Fields. Their 1999 album, 69 Love Songs, Words, a book of poems about the tiniest words garnered widespread acclaim, including “best of” in the Scrabble dictionary, illustrated by Roz year-end lists in Spin, Rolling Stone, The New Chast. houseoftomorrow.com. York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wash- ington Post, and many other major publications. SAM DAVOL (musician) has recorded, per- The Magnetic Fields have performed as part of formed, and toured as a member of the Magnetic Lincoln Center’s American Songwriters series Fields for almost 30 years. He and his wife Leslie and at BAM’s Next Wave of Song in the Next co-founded and run a nonprofit called the Uni Wave Festival. Merritt has composed original Project, which creates programming for public music and lyrics for three music theater pieces space in NYC. They live with their two children directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, and mounted an in lower Manhattan. off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. He composed the score for the Acad- CHRISTOPHER EWEN (musician) is a Cam- emy Award-nominated film Pieces of April (dir. bridge (MA) based electronic musician and Peter Hedges) and for the independent film Eban DJ. Formerly a member of 80s/90s alternative and Charley, and released soundtrack albums for rock band Figures on a Beach, he is now the each. His song The Book of Love was performed composer and main instrumentalist for Future by Peter Gabriel on his 2010 album Scratch My Bible Heroes, his ongoing electro-pop collabora- Photo: Sam Davol Photo: Sam Davol
Photo: Yannick Grandmont
Photos: Sam Davol Who’s Who Photo: Sam Davol
tion with Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson. a Boop-Boop.” An accomplished songwriter, He appeared on the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Simms has fronted several bands, including Lazy Songs, and collaborated on a song with Tanya Susan, a group with long-time Magnetic Fields Donelly for her recent Swan Song Series. Ewen member Claudia Gonson, whom she met in high DJs at several club nights in Cambridge, Boston, school. She provided vocals for an early version and Provincetown. He is currently recording his of the first Magnetic Fields album, Distant Plastic first solo album. Trees, in 1988. She reappeared with the band in 1999 as a vocalist on 69 Love Songs, providing ANTHONY KACZYNSKI (musician) is a singer- lead vocals for six songs. In 2008, she formally songwriter-guitarist/multi-instrumentalist. He joined the Magnetic Fields, singing roughly half currently leads the rock band Fireking, and was the songs on its subsequent three albums and a founding member of 1980’s synth-pop band touring around the US and Europe, providing Figures on a Beach. In 2013, he performed live lead and harmony vocals and playing ukulele alongside former FOAB member Christopher and autoharp. In 2013, Simms also toured with Ewen in one of Stephin Merritt’s other projects, one of Merritt’s other bands, Future Bible Heroes, Future Bible Heroes. Kaczynski lives in Boston with along with Gonson and current TMF members his partner and the world’s largest chihuahua. Chris Ewen and Anthony Kaczyinski.
QUINCE MARCUM (musician) has performed PINKY WEITZMAN (musician), one of NYC’s with Greek Judas, The Hungry March Band, and few but proud rock violists, has performed with Metal Flake Mother, among others. He has lived Belle and Sebastian, Moby, Crash Test Dum- in North Carolina and Brooklyn. mies, and the Hold Steady. She toured with Tony Award-winning rock musical Spring Awakening SHIRLEY SIMMS (musician) met Stephin Merritt and has played theater runs including Natasha, the week before her 10th birthday. Soon after, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and Araby. they composed their only song together, “Beach She sings and plays viola, Stroh violin, musical Who’s Who
saw, and bass in various bands, and gleefully Center Director’s Lab, Soho Rep W/D Lab, and fronts the junkyard quartet Not Waving the 2009—11 NEA/TCG Career Development But Drowning. Program for Directors. He received a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from Carnegie JOSÉ ZAYAS (director) has directed more than Mellon University. 90 productions in New York, regionally, and internationally. Credits include: Aunt Julia and ARNULFO MALDONADO (scenic designer) the Scriptwriter, Burundanga, The House of is a New York City-based set and costume the Spirits, Your Name Will Follow You Home, designer. Recent credits include: Kingdom Come Barcelo con Hielo, La Nena Se Casa, Love in the (Roundabout), Caught (Play Co), Men on Boats Time of Cholera, In the Time of the Butterflies, (Playwrights Horizons), Hillary and Clinton Madre (el drama padre), Besame Mucho, (Philadelphia Theatre Company), Macbeth (Old Nowhere on the Border, Letters to a Mother Globe), As You Like It (Center Stage), Iphigenia (Repertorio Español); Cancun, Chronicle of a in Aulis (CSC), and Iowa (Playwrights Horizons). Death Foretold (Gala Theatre); Pinkolandia (IN- Maldonado is a Clubbed Thumb Affiliated Artist, TAR and Two River Theatre); Father of Lies and a recipient of a Princess Grace Fabergé Theater Vengeance Can Wait (PS122); PS Jones and the Award, and the resident scenic designer at the Frozen City, Feeder: A Love Story (TerraNOVA National Playwrights Conference. He earned an Collective); Okay and Mrs. Jones and the Man MFA at NYU Tisch. arnulfomaldonado.com From Dixieland (EST); The Idea of Me (Cherry Lane Mentor Project); La Isla de Los Hombres ALEX BASCO KOCH (projections designer) Solos (Teatro Espressivo, Costa Rica); and designs projections for theater, live events, and Corazon Eterno (Mixed Blood). He is a Drama film. Notable designs include Irena’s Vow on League Fellow, and has been part of Lincoln Broadway; Marley, a world-premiere musical Photo: Sam Davol Who’s Who Photo: Sam Davol
directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah; Goodbar at The albums, film scores, and live sound, has worked Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival; and with Marina Abramović, Antony, Philip Glass, the world premiere stage adaptation of Ralph Howard Shore, Nico Muhly, and many others. Ellison’s Invisible Man with openings in Chicago, His credits include Academy Award-winning Fog Boston, and Washington, DC. Koch’s works of War, the Academy Award-nominated The Il- as a film producer and editor have been lusionist, as well as the revival of Robert Wilson’s seen at the Tribeca Film Festival among others. Einstein on the Beach, and The Life and Death alexbascokoch.com of Marina Abramović. Bora’s live work has been praised as “deft,” “provocative and even MARK O’MALEY (lighting designer) is an insti- poignant…” (The New York Times). gator of space, bodies, and ideas. He wears his heart on his sleeve and the sky on his arm while NICK SCHWARTZ-HALL (associate producer) working predominantly in lighting design for has produced music projects for BAM including dance. His work has been produced throughout Nonesuch Records 50th Anniversary Celebra- the US, Europe, and South America, includ- tion; Paul Simon’s residency; Dr. John’s resi- ing off-Broadway and London’s West End, for dency, Questlove’s Shuffle Culture and Electro- such folks as Yvonne Rainer, Jessica Lang, New nium; Red Hot + Rio, Red Hot + New Orleans, Paradise Laboratories, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Red Hot + Cuba, and Red Hot + Arthur Russell Michelle Ellsworth, and Rennie Harris. O’Maley concerts; Marisa Monte’s Samba Noise with Seu received his MFA-IA from Goddard College. Jorge, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Arto Lindsay; Si Cuba! markomaley.com Festival; Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas festival; Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (year two); and Shelter DAN BORA (sound designer, audio engineer), and Lost Objects with Bang on a Can. as producer, engineer, and sound designer of ©2015 Viacom Inc. All rights reserved. rights All Inc. ©2015 Viacom
Final Size: 5.25" x 8.375" • Ratio: 1' = 1' • Resolution: 300 DPI • Color: CMYK 24781 BAM Salute Ad 4C Viacom_2015 A cropped photographA cropped of Merce photographA croppedCunningham’s of Merce photograph Cunningham’s How Toof How MercePass, To Pass, Kick, Cunningham’s Kick, Fall Fall and Run Run How To Pass, Kick, Fall and Run omitting John Cage omittingsitting John stage Cageomitting left. sitting Merce Johnstage left.CunninghamCage Merce sitting Cunningham stageDance Dance left. Company Company Merce 1970 Cunningham1970 Dance Company 1970 Photo: JamesPhoto: Klosty, James courtesy Klosty, courtesy Photo:BAM BAM Hamm James Hamm Archives Klosty, courtesy BAM Hamm Archives A cropped photograph of Merce Cunningham’s How To Pass, Kick, Fall and Run omitting John Cage sitting stage left. Merce Cunningham Dance Company 1970 Photo: James Klosty, courtesy BAM Hamm Archives
A cropped photograph of Merce Cunningham’s How To Pass, Kick, Fall and Run omitting John Cage sitting stage left. Merce Cunningham Dance Company 1970 Photo: James Klosty, courtesy BAM Hamm Archives Dec 2016
Contents
Savage Beauty Batsheva at BAM
Marie Mullen. Photo: Stephen Cummiskey The Last Work. Photo: Gadi Dagon
Druid’s production of Martin McDonagh’s Beauty A look at the some of the stunning productions that Queen of Leenane arrives at the Harvey. Batsheva has brought to BAM. by Brian Scott Lipton
Hope, Enduring
Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Hsieh
BAMbill Cover
Ellen Carey is the 2016 Next Wave Festival BAMbill Cover Artist, part of BAM’s tradition of visual art on the cover of BAMbill. Since 1983, dozens of artists have participated, including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Rosemarie Trockel. The works are for sale; proceeds benefit BAM’s artistic programming. For more information, contact BAM’s visual art department at [email protected] or 718.636.4101.
Ellen Carey (b. 1952 USA) is an educator, independent scholar, guest curator, photographer, and lens-based artist whose unique experimental work spans several decades. Four works from Carey’s ongoing series Dings & Shadows—photograms created by the artist through a performa- tive process in the dark room—are featured on the BAMbill and are on view in the Dorothy Levitt Lobby of the Peter Jay Sharp Building. Carey describes these works as “fresh interpretations partnered with freewheel- ing experiments untethered by rules, formal structures, or conventional procedures.” Carey received an MFA from SUNY Buffalo, and has had solo exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT), Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (OH), International Center for Photography (NYC), Ellen Carey and has been included in numerous group exhibitions including MIT, the Dings and Shadows, 2012 Smithsonian (DC), and the Albright Knox (Buffalo). Her work was shown Color photogram, 40” x 30” in The Unbearable Lightness, a spring 2016 group exhibition at the Courtesy of the artist and JHB Gallery Centre Pompidou in Paris. She is represented by JHB Gallery in New York, and M+B Gallery in Los Angeles. @BAM_Brooklyn #BeautyQueenofLeenane Savage Beauty Photo: Aaron Monaghan Photo: Aaron Monaghan by Brian Scott Lipton Marty Rea and Aisling O’Sullivan. Marty Rea
I was recently in a restaurant where a baby More recently, we’ve witnessed Tracy Letts’ shower was taking place, the young mother-to- devastating August Osage County, during which be beaming at the center of a table festooned eldest daughter Barbara finally loses her patience with balloons proclaiming “It’s a Girl.” after one of her drug-addicted mother Violet’s I was tempted to ask her if she’d ever gone to nastiest outbursts, tackling her to the ground the theater. and loudly announcing what she erroneously believes is a now-permanent shift in their power Obviously, many mothers and daughters have dynamic. (“You don’t get it: I’m in charge now!”) long and happy relationships. It’s just that you don’t see them that often on the stage. In fact, And then there’s perhaps the most toxic of all many of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights mother-daughter relationships—the one between have shone their spotlight all too brightly on this elderly Mag Folan and her 40-year-old spinster most complex and difficult of familial situations. daughter Maureen in Martin McDonagh’s The Take Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, Beauty Queen of Leenane, a Druid production where the self-sufficient Amanda Wingfield gets at the BAM Harvey Theater from January 11 to repeatedly frustrated with her handicapped, February 5. painfully shy daughter Laura (“Oh! I felt so weak I could barely keep on my feet! I had to These lonely ladies spar from practically the sit down while they got me a glass of water! second the play opens, as Maureen reenters the Fifty dollars’ tuition, all of our plans—my hopes small Irish cottage in which the pair uneasily and ambitions for you—just gone up the spout, cohabitate and Mag tries to guilt her daughter just gone up the spout like that.”) to Marsha into making her tea and porridge. But that’s just Norman’s devastating “’Night Mother,” where one small section of this ghastly pas de deux mom Thelma faces, not always effectively or (well, more accurately, pas de quatre) in which politely, the possibility of depressed daughter each woman subtly (and not subtly) attempts to Jessie committing suicide. intimidate and manipulate the other through fear, guilt, and deceit. cont. #BeautyQueenofLeenane Jan 11—Feb 5
Indeed, in Leenane, that cup of tea (Complam) But bickering and sniping are just part of is eventually served with a heaping tablespoon of McDonagh’s arsenal. In this darkest of comedies, anger and stirrer full of bitterness. “Drink ahead, words soon beget almost unimaginable actions I said! You had room enough to be spouting your and cruelties (though, in McDonagh’s clever lies about Ray Dooley had no message! Did I not hands, basically foreshadowed), seemingly meet him on the road beyond as he was going? unforgivable—and yet in their own way, sadly The lies of you. The whole of that Complan you’ll understandable. These two women are trapped, drink now, and suck the lumps down too, and not just in a small house, but by their own whatever’s left you haven’t drank, it is over your disappointments in life and each other with only head I will be emptying it, and you know well the slimmest (and possibly grimmest) chances enough I mean it!” shouts Maureen after learning of escape, and the desire to use any weapon to about one of Mag’s “omissions.” break down the barricades.
If Mag, who obviously fears being abandoned For many theatergoers, the thrust-and-parry of and does whatever she can to keep Maureen Beauty Queen may remind them of adolescence, home, initially seems the more loathsome of the a time when the mother-daughter tango can feel two women, McDonagh makes sure the scales like a dance of death. For others, the play is truly are balanced. In one vile exchange, Maureen foreign—both to their actual homeland and their threatens to put her mother in a nursing home experience. And for a select few, sadly, it’s simply after Mag complains about not hearing the radio a case of art imitating life. (and one wouldn’t be surprised to see a final scene set in such a place.) So to that woman in the restaurant—I hope your balloon never bursts! “It’s a home for deaf people I’ll have to be putting you in soon. (Pause.) And it isn’t cod in butter Brian Scott Lipton is a noted entertainment sauce you’ll be getting in there. No. Not by a writer in New York City whose work has appeared long chalk. Oul beans on toast or something is all recently in Forbes, IN New York, and WHERE. you’ll be getting in there. If you’re lucky. And then if you don’t eat it, they’ll give you a good kick, or maybe a punch.” Marie Mullen. Photo: Stephen Cummiskey WORKING IN CONCERT KAUFMAN ELLIOTT PHOTO: IS WHAT WE DO. Fly toward something better with the help of 80,000 Delta employees who do everything they can to help you explore what’s possible. @BAM_Brooklyn #MLKinBK New York Fellowship Mass Choir, 2016. Photo: Elena Olivo Mass Choir, Fellowship New York
by David Hsieh Hope, unwavering There are years of triumphs and years of became clear that it needed a larger venue to setbacks. There are years of prosperity and years accommodate all the people who wanted to of reckoning. There are years when the country attend, so it moved to BAM in 1990 and has is at war. There are years when the country been held here ever since; Medgar Evers College seems lost. joined as co-presenter in 2001. As one of the biggest auditoriums in Brooklyn, BAM had a But throughout the years, people have come to long tradition of holding civic gatherings. In the BAM to pay respect to a person who embodied pre-television era, many presidential candidates integrity, perseverance, and an unwavering moral spoke at BAM. So a community gathering to compass. They come to give thanks to a person pay tribute to a great leader of the Civil Rights who symbolized the stigmata they have borne Movement was a natural fit. and the spirit to rise above the worst human impulse. They come because they all share this The format of the tribute has been consistent: man’s dream that freedom will one day ring in remarks by public figures, uplifting all the land. They come to pay tribute to Martin entertainment, and a keynote speaker who Luther King, Jr. was either at the front line of the Civil Rights Movement or is now carrying the torch. And over They come with their multigenerational families, the years, many great figures have been invited with their friends, with their colleagues, with to speak on the theme of equality and freedom. people they met here in previous years. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke in 1991. Paul Brooklyn Borough Hall held its first Martin Robeson Jr. came in 1994. A congressman Luther King, Jr. Day Tribute in 1987, the year and the only living “Big Six” of the Civil Rights after it became a Federal holiday. But it quickly Movements, John Lewis, was here in 1999; LEAVE YOUR LEGACY TO PIONEERING ART.