Scenes from a Marriage at New York Theater Workshop

I was in New York over the weekend and saw a very interesting production of Scenes from a Marriage done by the New York Theater Workshop. Based on a 1973 Swedish television series written by Ingmar Bergman, the adaptation was fascinating. Not 100% successful but it certainly had me interested.

The premise is relatively simple: a couple at three crisis points in their marriage decide whether it's worth
continuing or not, a younger couple, a middle-aged couple and an older couple. The innovation in Ivo van Hove's version (the Flemish director who staged this NYTW version; the adaptation was written by Emily Mann) was that all three scenes were going on at the same time: though on three different stages with three different audiences. So the audience was divided up into three groups and each group saw a different scene first.

That's unusual enough but the way the set was done allowed each audience to see the other scenes going on at the same time. We couldn't necessarily hear them (only the loud parts where characters were shouting) but we could see the actors both on-stage and off-stage (in fact, the "off-stage" area was part of the set so we could even see the actors off-stage in between). This approach was fascinating and innovative. (Though I could see what they were doing by allowing the sound from other scenes to echo into whatever scene we were currently watching, often this was intrusive and distracting.)

The part that didn't work for me was that the interaction between each couple (played by different actors, so six main actors in total) was vastly different. The presence of each character varied radically depending on the actor portraying them: the young man had a vastly different persona than the middle-aged man, etc., and this naturally affected the way we reacted to each couple's interaction. Perhaps this was intentional but what I was left with was the sensation that each scene was really the iteration of a different couple's crisis, not the same couple at different points in their lives. Not the same crises, in other words. But that's kind of key to the Bergman story: crises evolve, shift, but at the core, they are the same crises and we repeat the same patterns over and over in a couple.

Scenes from a Marriage

The film series has been highly influential (and many, in fact, suggest that the popularity of the series caused Sweden's divorce rate to tick up in the early to mid 70s) so it's daring to take on something this important and well-known (despite this being some of Bergman's lesser known work). This version is available at Criterion.

So the first act is all three scenes going on at the same time and then after each scene, the audience moves to a different part of the room and sees the next scene and the actors all do it again. Then once more: so by the end of the first act, we've seen all three scenes but not all the audience has seen the scenes in the same order (and the actors repeat each scene three times).

Where I felt unsure was the second act: all six actors come out on to the stage and they act out a scene together: all six of them saying their lines. So the women will speak (all three of them) with the men responding (all three of them). It was confusing and complicated and a bit overwrought emotionally, I thought. Hard to follow and hard to crack the notion that we were right in the middle of a production. The artifice was very apparent, in other words (one thing I love about good theatre is that ability to just forget that you're seeing a theatre piece). That said, it made me think about how vital the actor is in portraying a role. Whereas in the first act, the different actors meant a different kind of relationship each time, in the second act, you could really see how each actor put their own individual stamp on the part in a really immediate way (the way each one performed the lines, right after one another). It was also here that I felt that it was becoming overly long (the entire piece is 3 1/2 hours long!).

It's the first production I've seen at NYTW though I've heard other friends talk about this company before. I'd definitely recommend them to anyone who happens to be in New York for a few days. The acting was superb. I'm not a huge fan of Broadway, to be honest, and when I'm in New York, I am often struck with how bland and mainstream most of the crap is that Broadway. I don't care about famous actors: I just want to see a well-written show with good acting that's interesting. So I generally avoid Broadway and try to visit productions at these smaller off-Broadway companies (with varying quality). It's also the first work I've seen by stage director Van Hove.

Now I really want to revisit the Swedish television series while it's fresh in my mind. But with all the books I have to read, no time right now...

Four Excellent Movies Set in New York City

Yes, there are lots of great movies set in New York but when I daydream about taking a weekend away, it's always a New York movie I want to see. Here are four of my favorite films set in New York:

Manhattan
Of course, Woody Allen's masterpiece, shot in black and white and starring Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep and others. This is a movie I know long sections of almost by heart: that opening scene with the saxophone playing and Woody Allen's voiceover trying to get it right, the repartee with his ex-wife (who leaves him for another woman) and the amazing acting of a very young Hemingway who is uber-convincing as a highly intelligent yet still emotionally her age woman in love with the Allen character. Some gorgeous B&W shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and the streets of NYC.

Moonstruck
I haven't seen this movie in a long time but I love the images it still conjures up: Cher walking home in the early morning (what people of my generation called The Walk of Shame), her father sitting in his easy chair always listening to Vicki Carr, Olympia Dukakis as the mother. Great film.

After Hours
This was one of my favorite movies when I was in my 20s. Griffin Dunne (why did he never become a star) just trying to get home through the (rough) streets of New York. He tries to romance Roseanne Arquette (who lives with a sculptor though her entire life and character are just bizarre) but soon he realizes that's going nowhere and leaves. Through a series of misadventures, he loses all his money and is forced to make his way home on foot. Along the way he meets Teri Garr (who's hilarious as a waitress who hates her job) and is mistaken for a burglar and almost done in by a crazed mob. It's a hilarious film directed by Martin Scorsese.

Rear Window
Though there is nothing uniquely New York about it in some ways (you can tell it was filmed completely in a studio), the hardscrabble life of Nicky's neighbors and the glamour of Lisa (Grace Kelley) do seem uniquely New York.

Also: Dog Day Afternoon, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Tootsie, Do the Right Thing....

Humans of New York

This site, Humans of New York, amazes me. It's simple, very simple: just a collection of snaps of people taken in and around New York City with a short text accompanying each. Sometimes the text is a little history of the interaction, sometimes it's a quotation, sometimes it's a response to a question the photographer asks.

But they are almost all interesting and also moving, funny, tragic, odd, annoying and surprising. Some are little gems of wisdom, like this woman:

"My town in Colombia is very beautiful. I don't travel because I want to leave my home. I travel because I need to know why I'm staying."

Though it shouldn't, it makes me feel optimistic about people when, in fact, my natural tendency is to be on the misanthropic side at times. But it reminds me that everyone has their own story, their own limitations, their own experiences, their own prejudices and what we all want out of life is strikingly similar.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Read this memoir last night and this morning on the plane flying back from NYC (though it's only a short flight, I managed to get through almost all of it).

It's lovely: moving, funny, and containing all kinds of fascinating literary allusions and references to Fitzgerald, Proust, Hemingway, and Wallace Stevens, to name just a few.

What emerges is a highly complex man (Bruce Bechdel, Alison's father) who is loving, stern, distant, manipulative, and conflicted. I have rarely felt that I understood a long-dead character from a book as I do now about him. His death at 44 seems doubly tragic in the consequences it has on a young girl, a traumatized family, and a man who never had the chance to live his life the way he needed to.

And as Bechdel herself noted at her performance Saturday at The New Yorker Festival, the book is as much a book about gender non-conformity as it is about twin tales a man who never has the chance to come out of the closet and a young girl's acceptance of her own lesbianism.

I highly recommend this book: even for those who don't think you enjoy graphic novels, there is a real insight here that the form allows Bechdel to delve into in a very unique way. Not only is her internal life presented here but "archival" evidence from her past, recreated here in graphic novel form: diaries, letters, police reports, telegrams, old photos. It's highly readable and immensely moving.

OK off to Thanksgiving dinner now. Happy holidays, everyone.

Alison Bechdel and Judith Thurman

As I noted a few posts ago, I am a big fan of comics (or graphic novels; I have such a hard time with which term to use). This afternoon I had the great opportunity to see two personalities I admire in conversation.

I came to Dykes to Watch Out For late in life: far after it had been syndicated across the country and just before its run ended in the late 2000s. I never read it regularly but I did end up finding an anthology a few years after its run that I quite enjoyed. It`s got a soap opera quality to it: like Will & Grace and Queer as Folk and R Crumb all rolled into one. It`s got a normalcy that easy to relate to yet for me it contains a distance that makes it compelling and exotic.

Are you my mother

Bechdel`s two post-Dykes memoirs are tales of her family: Fun Home about her father and the latest, Are You My Mother, about her relationship with her mother. Bechdel really pushes the limits of what graphic novels can and should do. As she noted in her discussion this afternoon, she is interested in how comics can represent the internal lives of characters (as they have so long been focused on action or external lives). And her works do what good movies do: tell stories in a way that you forget the form or the attractiveness of the medium and just let the story overtake you.

Thurman is an amazing writer though I wonder how well-suited she was to Alison Bechdel`s on stage personality. Bechdel leans toward being an introvert, it seems to me, and Thurman likes the cerebral idiom frequently: lots of questions that seemed to be to esoteric and far too psychological for the subject herself to address (questions of `the other`etc etc don`t seem to be very instructive when discussing comics with the artist. That`s not to suggest that Bechdel isn`t amazingly charming and bright but there is a highly pragmatic aspect to her approach as an interview subject).

Excellent questions from the audience: about color choices, about comics a form geared at a society becoming less (traditionally) literate, about the presence of Dykes in today`s queer culture.

Great show overall and I definitely have Bechdel`s two memoirs at the top of my reading list for the fall.

from Dykes to Watch Out For

New Yorker Festival: Friday

I`m an idiot. But sometimes being an idiot can have certain benefits.

I had a ticket to Marilynne Robinson and Nathan Englander`s show on FAITH as part of the New Yorker Festival. I got into the right lane for theatre two (I was a bit late though the show hadn`t started), rushed into the nearly packed theatre and found a seat. Five minutes later the show began. All men entered and walked up on stage, five men. I had gone into the wrong theatre but there was no way I was going to get up and cause a major spectacle in order to get out and into the right theatre. So I shrugged and leaned into my seat.

Aleksandar Hemon, Orhan Pamuk, Hisham Matar and Colum McCann. Hey, not bad.

Three of these writers have work I know very well. One less so though I`ve heard his name. So suddenly I felt it was synchronicity.

(Sidebar: I had tried to get tickets to this show initially while in Berlin but was told it was oversold and there were no tickets available. I sure hope I didn`t cause anyone to miss out!)

Great conversation: about the city as character, about the importance of cities in modern fiction (and journalism), about city life vs. pastoral life (particularly in a modern text since, as Willing Davidson, the moderator, suggested, there are few examples of modern pastoral novels from the last 30-40 years.

The biggest surprise was running into someone I wasn`t expecting to in the theatre later and getting confirmation that they are coming to our Festival in 2013! Someone I`ve been working on for a while who formally told me that they are in! Yes! Can`t say who it is and won`t be releasing any names until March, 2013, but it`s a good one, I promise...

Aleksandar Hemon: militantly urban

So much to be said on this topic of cities, particularly since I have been thinking a lot about The City lately in terms of Berlin. A man stood up, in fact, and referenced Joseph Roth, a writer I`ve been writing and thinking a lot about the last several weeks.

It`s a shame I missed Marilynne Robinson and Nathan Englander! Damn! I was looking forward to hearing them. But, hey, good show anyway.

And on that note, I`m out of this hotel room now: it`s Friday night in New York City, baby. Time to get wicked!

New Yorker Festival

So I am off to New York this weekend for a few meetings and to catch a few events at the New Yorker Festival. They do some very interesting shows and, naturally, being in New York, get some of the best writers in the world.

I am looking forward to Faith: a conversation with Nathan Englander, Marilynne Robinson and Chris Adrian. I'm a big fan of Nathan Englander and I love his book The Ministry of Special Cases. And Marilynne Robinson's work is always raved about though I've only read Gilead. Home has been on my list for a few years now but I've still not managed to read it. There was such an interesting conversation going around about her work when Home was published: about faith today, about being an older female writer with a best-seller today, about being a literary writer in today's climate. At any rate, the three of them in conversation about Faith today.

Also looking forward to seeing Alison Bechdel and Judith Therman. Bechdel was all over the literosphere in the summer for her new memoir, Are You My Mother. She lives just across the border in Vermont (or has a place there, at any rate) and has been on our radar for a few years now. As noted in my last post, I'm a big fan of the comic/graphic novel, but I fear Alison Bechdel is a tough writer to land at this point in her career.

For those wondering why we don't always have writers like Bechdel and Robinson and Englander (though we try), as usual, it's a matter of $$. Writers who are currently being buzzed about are highly in demand and can get upwards of 60 invitations a week! A friend of mine (a well-known writer) says that after a while, one starts to feel a bit depressed and overwhelmed at so much attention so raising prices of speaking fees is the only way to determine which invitation is priority. I guess I get that...then agents get involved...it isn't pretty!

Unfortunately, what it means for a Festival like ours is that inviting big name writers with buzz in the literosphere can be pricey! Every year we try to bring at least a few if we can...

There are a few more shows on my list for the next few days and a few I wanted to see but couldn't make work because of other things going on in New York this weekend. But glad to have the chance to hang out in one of most favorite cities in the world for a few days.