On the heels of Iron Man the movie starring Robert Downey Jr., this exhibition features approximately 60 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero such as Iron Man serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.

Designers in the exhibition include Atair, Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Dolce & Gabbana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Eiko Ishioka, Alexander McQueen, Julien Macdonald, Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Nike, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Speedo, Spyder, As Four, Walter van Beirendonck, Versace, and Bernhard Willhelm.

Objects are organized thematically around specific superheroes, whose movie costumes and superpowers are catalysts for discussion of key concepts of superheroism and their expression in fashion. Superman and Spider-Man costumes address the subject of The Graphic Body, relating Superman's 'S' chevron to designer logos and branding.

The Flash – a character who possesses superhuman speed - addresses the Aerodynamic Body as manifest in high-tech sportswear including Speedo's "Fastskin LZR Racer" designed by Rei Kawakubo for Michael Phelps and the 2008 United States Olympic swim team, Nike's "Swift Suit" for running, and Descente's "Muscle Suit" for speed skating. Batman and Iron Man represent The Armored Body, and examine avant-garde fashion that merges flesh and metal, skin and chromium. The Mutant Body, denoted by the X-Men, highlights clothing that morphs men into beasts. Ghost Rider (the biker-demon with flaming skull) and The Punisher (the vigilante who sports a giant death-skull emblem on his T-shirt) symbolize The Postmodern Body that suggests an anti-hero identity through the eclectic mixing of street styles.

In Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976, over fifty key works by 32 artists – among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko – are viewed from the perspectives of influential, rival art critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, the artists, and popular culture.

Context rooms in the exhibition feature documents – including personal correspondence, magazines and newspapers, film and television clips, and photographs – that shed light on the cultural and social climate of the 1940s to the 1970s. The works in the exhibition, arranged in thematic sections, are grouped to evoke the rivalry of Rosenberg (he promoted action – his idea of the creative, physical act of making art) and Greenberg’s (belief in abstraction and the formal purity of the art object).

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, the first comprehensive survey in the United States to explore the highly experimental work of Olafur Eliasson, whose large-scale immersive environments and installations elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Iceland. In his work, Eliasson recontextualizes elements such as light, water, ice, fog, stone, and moss to create unique situations that shift the viewer’s perception of place and self. By transforming the galleries into hybrid spaces of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intensive engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life.

The exhibition’s 38 works include 14 of those featured in the originating exhibition first presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as 24 additional works, six of which were uniquely designed for this exhibition.

Probing the cognitive aspects of what it means to see, Eliasson creates complex optical phenomena using simple, makeshift technical devices: Colored bulbs bathe a room in yellow light, turning everything inside monochrome; strobes illuminate a thin curtain of falling water, causing the eye to “freeze” the droplets in midair; kaleidoscopes produce colorful prismatic effects; mirrors reflect spotlight beams, revealing an artificial dimension. By making visible the mechanics of his works and laying bare the artifice of the illusion, Eliasson points to the elliptical relationship between reality, perception, and representation.

Inspired by the meteorology and terrain of his native Scandinavia, Eliasson often recontextualizes natural phenomena, as exemplified by his wall of reindeer moss at MoMA and indoor rainbow and upward-flowing waterfall at P.S.1. In his works these sights appear natural, yet invariably they are artificially induced. Even as his work fosters wonder, it also emphasizes the ways in which cultural institutions mediate our perception of natural phenomena.

The monumental new installation Take your time (2008), one of the six new works Eliasson created for the New York presentation, takes its name from the exhibition's title. A circular mirror, 40 feet in diameter and weighing 600 pounds, is mounted to the ceiling of P.S.1’s largest gallery at an angle and rotates at one revolution per minute, destabilizing viewers’ perception of space as they pass underneath it.

Guinea Pig, the first solo exhibition of Italian artist Stefano Cagol in New York, focuses on toxic additives that pervade both toys and food by interpreting them as a symbol of our human fragility and exposing how they influence, compel and deceive us. Cagol exploits two very basic activities – that of eating and playing - to prove that we are all unwitting Guinea Pigs of a globally extended lab that is constantly experimenting with our lives.

Stefano Cagol: Rat Game
Poisoned sweets: black and white chocolate, rat poison
Variable Dimensions
2008
Photo courtesy of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

Stefano Cagol was born in 1969 in Italy and raised in Switzerland. He currently lives and works in Italy. He holds a BA in Fine Art from the Brera Academy in Milan and was recipient of a post-doctoral video art fellowship from Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2007, Cagol was the subject of several solo exhibitions including a project at NADiff (the New Art Diffusion exhibition space in Tokyo) and Head Flu in Venice.

Seen earlier this season at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, this large-scale retrospective devoted to Takashi Murakami includes key selections that span the early 1990s to the present. More than 90 works in various media: painting, sculpture, installation, and film on view in more than 18,500 square feet of gallery space.

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Murakami is one of the most influential and acclaimed artists to have emerged from Asia in the late twentieth century, creating a wide-ranging body of work that consciously bridges fine art, design, animation, fashion, and popular culture. He received a Ph.D. from the prestigious Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he was trained in the school of traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga, a nineteenth-century mixture of Western and Eastern styles. However, the prevailing popularity of anime (animation) and manga (comic books) directed his interest toward the art of animation because, as he has said, “it was more representative of modern day Japanese life.” American popular culture in the form of animation, comics, and fashion are among the influences his work, which includes painting, sculpture, installation, and animation, as well as a wide range of collectibles, multiples, and commercial products.

Navigating between Japanese and American culture, Takashi Murakami blends the bright palette of pop, the flatness of anime, and the ominous dreams of surrealism.

Like that of Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons, Murakami’s canon, as well as his life, is referential of pop culture. His firm Kaikai Kiki, a name taken from the Japanese words for “bizarre” and “elegant”, is based in Tokyo, Saitama, and New York. It has evolved into a highly complex corporation that assists in the production of Murakami’s work, represents a stable of young artists, sponsors a Tokyo art fair, produces and promotes merchandise ranging from soccer balls to sticker sets, and develops collaborative projects.

The exhibition ©MURAKAMI explores the self-reflexive nature of Murakami’s oeuvre by focusing on earlier work produced between 1992 and 2000 in which the artist attempts to explore his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity, as well as through self-portraiture created since 2000.

In 1993, in a continuing project to brand his own identity, Murakami created an alter ego named DOB, whose name was taken from a line made famous by the late Japanese comedian Yuri Toru that asked the existential question: Dobojite dobojite?, (Why? Why?) As the complexities of Murakami’s examination of his own identity evolved, so did DOB, in painting and inflatable form, morphing from a strand of DNA to a balloon-like form with innocent eyes. The contrast of opposites is a recurring theme throughout Murakami’s work: good and evil, sweetness and perversion, humor and darkness. Often work that seems bright and playful reveals a darker side upon close examination: the seemingly cheerful mushroom shapes that are ubiquitous in his work, for example, may be read as a reference to the mushroom clouds of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Among the works included in this large-scale survey tracing the trajectory of Murakami’s artistic development are many of his acclaimed sculpture figures including the 23-foot-high Tongari-kun (2003-4); Miss Ko2 (1997), a long-legged waitress who has become one of the artist’s signature characters; Hiropon (1997), a Japanese girl jumping a rope created by milk spurting from her gargantuan breasts; DOB in the Strange Forest, in which a benign and innocent DOB figure encounters a group of menacing mushrooms; and Second Mission Project Ko2 (2007), reprising the Miss Ko2 character, now transformed into a jet airplane. Among the paintings on view will be Tan Tan Bo (2001), as well as Tan Tan Bo Puking—a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002), in which DOB has evolved into a gigantic, sharp-toothed monster, with unknown substances oozing from his mouth; Flower ball (3D) (2002), a decorative work comprising dozens of Murakami’s famous flowers; and Superflat Jellyfish Eyes 1 and 2 (2003).

Since its founding in 1932, the Biennial has evolved into the Whitney’s signature exhibition as well as the most important and sometimes controversial survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States today.

Eighty-one artists are participating in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, which opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition, installations and performances organized by the Whitney and Art Production Fund, will also be presented in association with Park Avenue Armory (67th Street) from March 6-23.

The exhibition occupies the entire Museum, with the exception of the fifth floor, which is devoted to the permanent collection.

The 2008 Biennial is curated by Henriette Huldisch, Assistant Curator at the Whitney, and Shamim M. Momin, Associate Curator at the Whitney.

The Latino show Arte no es vida surveys a vast array of performative actions created over the last half century by Latino artists in the United States and by artists working in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America. Through a rich and lively presentation of photographs, video, texts, ephemera, props, and artworks that reference canonical works, the exhibition represents a landmark within the documentation of action art. Arte ≠ Vida expands standard descriptions of “performance art,” revealing how work created by Caribbean, Latino and Latin American artists is often not only dramatized but politicized.

Many of the works included in Arte ≠ Vida have subtle or overt political contexts and content: military dictatorships, civil wars, disappearances, invasions, brutality, censorship, civil rights struggles, immigration issues, discrimination, and economic woes have troubled the artists’ homelands continuously over the past four decades and therefore have infiltrated their consciousness.

Over 75 artists and collectives are represented in Arte ≠ Vida, including ASCO, Tania Bruguera, CADA, Lygia Clark, Papo Colo, Juan Downey, Rafael Ferrer, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Alberto Greco, Alfredo Jaar, Tony Labat, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujin, Raphael Montañez-Ortiz, Hélio Oiticica, Tunga and contemporary practitioners including Francis Alÿs, Coco Fusco, Regina José Galindo, Teresa Margolles and Santiago Sierra.

A national hands-on exhibition for children ages 6 and older.

Budding archaeologists can visit the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and assist in the reconstruction of a 3-D temple, learn about column construction, sculptures, and the giant statue of Zeus (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World).

The tour guides are the great gods Zeus, Poseidon and Athena who reminisce about their powers and responsibilities. Visitors can also climb inside a 12½ foot tall Trojan Horse before stepping into Homer’s great epic poem, The Odyssey. Plus, visitors explore actual examples of ancient Greek artifacts: painted pottery, coins, votives, drinking cups, loom weights, arrowheads and sling bullets.

Carnegie Hall
57th Street & 7th Avenue
New York, NY

Guiseppi Verdi: Macbeth
Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave

Sung in Italian with Met Titles in English, German and Spanish

Cast:
Lady Macbeth: Hasmik Papian
Macduff: Joseph Calleja
Macbeth: Carlos Alvarez
Banquo: René Pape

Met Opera Orchestra
James Levine, conductor

Production: Adrian Noble
Set & Costume Designer: Mark Thompson
Lighting Designer: Jean Kalman
Choreographer: Sue Lefton

Lincoln Center
New York, New York  10023

Gaetano Donizetti: La Fille du Régiment  
Librettists: Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint Georges, Jean-Francois-Alfred Bayard

Sung in French with Met Titles in English, German and Spanish.

Cast
Marie: Natalie Dessay
Marquise of Berkenfeld: Felicity Palmer
Tonio: Juan Diego Flórez
Sulpice: Alessandro Corbelli
Duchess of Krakenthorp: Marian Seldes

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Marco Armiliato, conductor

Production: Laurent Pelly
Set Designer: Chantal Thomas
Costume Designer: Laurent Pelly
Lighting Designer: Joël Adam
Choreographer: Laura Scozzi

La Fille du Régiment is a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and the Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna.

An environmental epic, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä (1984) is the second feature by Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle ). Set a thousand years after a nuclear war destroys civilization and most of Earth’s original ecosystems, this animated film tells the story of a young princess Nausicaä who inspires the people in her isolated village to rise up to resist warring factions seeking to control a deadly biological weapon. 

After its release in Japan , the film was later issued in the United States in a severely shortened version as Warriors of the Wind. This Green Screens event will feature the original, uncut Japanese version. After the screening, local environmental organizations will be on hand to show what kids can do to help.  

The Film Society’s Green Screens program addresses through film the vital environmental concerns of global warming, the safety of our food supply, sustainable living, and more. The program caters to children and families.

Opening with comedy auteur Ernst Lubitsch’s late masterpiece Cluny Brown and including a new 35mm restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Gone to Earth, the series presents 14 classic films starring the award-winning 1940s and ’50s actor. Several special guests will introduce selected films, including critics Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris, historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, Academy Award-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, producer Daniel Selznick and Jennifer Jones biographer Edward Z. Epstein.

Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Isley in Tulsa, Okla., in 1919, taking the experiences of her childhood in a show business family to New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Though she met and married her first husband, actor Robert Walker, in New York in 1939, her attempts at breaking onto the stage were short-lived: Jones appeared in her first Hollywood film, New Frontier, a B-movie Western starring John Wayne, the same year as her wedding. Soon discovered by mogul David O. Selznick, she rocketed to stardom in The Song of Bernadette.

She soon displayed a gift for comedy starring alongside Charles Boyer in 1946’s Cluny Brown (also showing as part of the upcoming Film Society series Charles Boyer and The Art of Seduction, May 23-27), as well as a remarkable talent for melodrama, captivating audiences with her depictions of psychological turmoil and vulnerability in such films as Madame Bovary (1949), Gone to Earth (1950) and Carrie (1952).

Henry Koster’s Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955) attracted Jones’s most remarkable advocate, author Henry Miller, who praised the “other-worldly world” in which Jones lived onscreen. “A world not unknown to tigers, llamas, unicorns and the like. Thank God I have not yet seen all the films in which Jennifer Jones starred...To me she is like a coin fresh from the mint, whether playing the angel, the minx or just her thousand year old self.”

Yet, the public interest in Jones’s relationship with Selznick often outpaced her reputation as talented and distinctive actress. The pair married in 1949, while Jones appeared in such Selznick-produced projects as Since You Went Away (1944), the boldly sexual Duel in the Sun (1946) and Portrait of Jennie (1948). She earned four additional Oscar nominations, the last coming in 1956 for Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Jones and Selznick remained married until Selznick’s death in 1965.

By the late ’60s, Jones had virtually retired from Hollywood acting. She married millionaire art collector Norton Simon in 1971, three years before her final onscreen appearance in The Towering Inferno. She remains active advocating for the rights of the mentally ill and as a director of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street close to Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY

The five-week event, produced by Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, presents professional Off-Broadway productions of new works by Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) authors or spotlighting gay issues. Five fully-staged professional productions featuring Actors’ Equity Association casts, talk-backs with the authors of the Festival plays, appearances by  members of the LGBT community, in addition to other events.

This year’s Main Stage selections, from submissions worldwide, are Edward the King by David Brendan Hopes, directed by Sidney J. Burgoyne, Spill the Wine by Brian Dykstra, directed by Margarett Perry and Jumping Blind by Philip Gerson, director TBA. Two additional plays will be produced in the Studio Theatre: The Wrath of Aphrodite by Tim O’Leary, directed by Martin Casella and Steve Hayes’ Hollywood Reunion, written by and starring Steve Hayes.

A GayFest press release included the following plot summaries for the 2008 GayFest selection: 

EDWARD THE KING by David Brendan Hopes (World Premiere) – May 14-24

Beset by the duties of his birth and dominated by a heroic father, Edward looks forward to a life of apparent conformity and desperate subterfuge, until he meets Piers Gaveston in a dirty alley. It is love and rebellion at first sight. From then on, Edward steers a perilous course between desire and safety, which does not entirely end even when he becomes king, and faces not only the usual enemies of unconventional love, but his queen and her lover as well. Edward the King neatly straddles the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries, which manage to appear almost equally violent and inhospitable to love.

David Brendan Hopes is Professor of Literature and Language at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and director of Black Swan Theater.

SPILL THE WINE by Brian Dykstra (World Premiere) – May 27- June 1

The compelling story of a woman forced to confront her own identity. After being diagnosed with a fatal disease, Emma makes a decision to spare her husband the pain of watching her die. She leaves him and, to her surprise, discovers that she is attracted to a woman, then faces the possibility that perhaps she left her marriage less to spare her husband, than to make the discovery about her own sexuality.

Brian Dykstra has been seen on stage and screen throughout the US and UK. His play, Clean Alternatives, won the coveted Fringe First Award at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

JUMPING BLIND by Philip Gerson (World Premiere) – June 4-14

What if you had to choose between country and love? During World War II, an English resistance fighter and a wounded German soldier fall in love in occupied France.  During the final fight of the resistance, they are drawn into a furtive, passionate affair and on the eve of D-Day both are forced to make choices that will haunt them the rest of their lives.  Jumping Blind is inspired by a true story of unique heroism, sacrifice and lifelong love. 

Philip Gerson writes for theatre, television and film. His work for theatre includes the play Night (NY International Fringe Festival 2007); the book for the musical, The Last Metro, based on Francois Truffaut’s film.

THE WRATH OF APHRODITE (World Premiere) – May 23-25, May 30-June 1

Sex, love, jealousy, betrayal and violence pave the way for the final showdown in this radical re-imaging of the Greek tragedy. A handsome prince and his gang of friends have pledged celibacy but their devotion to chastity becomes much more difficult when the young prince realizes that his best friend is in love with him. Then things really get out of hand when his stepmother falls under the spell of Aphrodite and grows mad with lust towards him.  Which love will survive the wrath of Aphrodite?

Tim O’Leary grew up in New Jersey, and started acting at the age of 11 in the children’s chorus of a Paper Mill Playhouse production of Jesus Christ, Superstar.

STEVE HAYES’ HOLLYWOOD REUNION (World Premiere) – June 6-8, 13-15

An autobiographical comedy about the author's Christmas visit to Hollywood to cheer up an old friend. Obsessed with old movies all his life, Steve convinces his friend to forsake a traditional Christmas celebration for what he calls a "Hollywood Babylon Homosexual Holiday." In the hope of connecting to a world that his fantasies have thrived on, he drags his friend to an assortment of landmarks, cemeteries and meetings with some living legends who were part of Hollywood's “Golden Age.” In doing so, he comes to realize the role that the world of the movies has played in shaping his life as a gay man, not only in terms of what it has given him, but what it may have cost him as well.

Steve Hayes is an actor, comedian and playwright who has performed in one-man, two-person and musical comedies throughout the country. He was the recipient of the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival Award as Outstanding Actor for his role in The Penguin Tango by Stephen Svoboda. Steve Hayes has taught comedy at The University of Miami, The Actor's Conservatory Of Manhattan, Helen Baldassare's Cabaret Symposium in New York and at The Cabaret Conservatory at Yale University.

Profits of GAYFEST NYC's fundraising efforts are used to provide scholarships and after school programs for students of Harvey Milk High School in New York City. Founded in 1985 in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education, Harvey Milk High School is a fully-accredited, inclusive, voluntary public high school focusing on the educational needs of children who are in crisis or at risk of physical violence and/or emotional harm.

The exhibition features approximately 60 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.

Designers in the exhibition include Atair, Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Dolce & Gabbana, Jean Paul Gaultier, Eiko Ishioka, Alexander McQueen, Julien Macdonald, Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Nike, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Speedo, Spyder, As Four, Walter van Beirendonck, Versace, and Bernhard Willhelm.

Objects are organized thematically around specific superheroes, whose movie costumes and superpowers are catalysts for discussion of key concepts of superheroism and their expression in fashion. Superman and Spider-Man costumes address the subject of The Graphic Body, relating Superman's 'S' chevron to designer logos and branding.

The Flash – a character who possesses superhuman speed - addresses the Aerodynamic Body as manifest in high-tech sportswear including Speedo's "Fastskin LZR Racer" designed by Rei Kawakubo for Michael Phelps and the 2008 United States Olympic swim team, Nike's "Swift Suit" for running, and Descente's "Muscle Suit" for speed skating. Batman and Iron Man represent The Armored Body, and examine avant-garde fashion that merges flesh and metal, skin and chromium. The Mutant Body, denoted by the X-Men, highlights clothing that morphs men into beasts. Ghost Rider (the biker-demon with flaming skull) and The Punisher (the vigilante who sports a giant death-skull emblem on his T-shirt) symbolize The Postmodern Body that suggests an anti-hero identity through the eclectic mixing of street styles.

Clifford Odets: The Country Girl

The Country Girl is a play about an alcoholic actor attempting a comeback. Morgan Freeman stars as the down-on-his-luck performer, Frank Elgin, while Frances McDormand play his wife, Georgie. Peter Gallagher plays the role of the hotshot director, Bernie Dodd who offers Frank the chance to make a comeback.

Mike Nichols, director

Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman last appeared on Broadway in The Gospel at Colonus in 1988, and Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand last appeared on Broadway the same season in A Streetcar Named Desire. Peter Gallagher was last seen on Broadway in Noises Off in 2001 and was nominated for a Tony award for Long Day's Journey into Night.

Directed by Andrei Belgrader, master of comic and absurdist stagecraft, this BAM production provides a rare opportunity to see one of Beckett's most poignant and comical works.

Cast:

Elaine Stritch (Elaine Stritch at Liberty, Company), Alvin Epstein (Waiting for Godot, Tuesdays with Morrie), Max Casella (The Sopranos, The Lion King), John Turturro (The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink)

Now in its first Broadway revival, South Pacific features  Kelli O'Hara (The Light in the Piazza) and baritone Paulo Szot in the leading roles with direction by Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza and Awake and Sing).

Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Author, Tales of the South Pacific
James Michener

Cast:

Kelli O'Hara , Paulo Szot
Matthew Morrison , Danny Burstein , Loretta Ables Sayre , Sean Cullen , Victor Hawks , Luka Kain , Li Jun Li , Laurissa Romain , Skipp Sudduth , Noah Weisberg, Becca Ayers , Wendi Bergamini , Genson Blimline , Grady McLeod Bowman , Charlie Brady , Matt Caplan , Christian Carter , Helmar Augustus Cooper , Jeremy Davis , Margot De La Barre , Christian Delcroix , Laura Marie Duncan , Mike Evariste , Laura Griffith , Lisa Howard , Maryann Hu , Zachary James , Robert Lenzi , Garrett Long , Nick Mayo , George Merrick , William Michals , Kimber Monroe , Emily Morales , Darius Nichols , George Psomas , Andrew Samonsky , Jerold E. Solomon

This new rock musical is a dark, biting, tragicomic peek at the criminally insane and the justice system that abuses them. The musical's form is reminiscent of The Who's "Tommy," in  that it is staged entirely as a rock concert.

The piece is also a cry from the conscience of a lawyer who made a  living representing the rights of the criminally insane. Playwright/lyricist Denis Woychuk is a former attorney who represented the rights of  mental patients for more than ten years in the '80s and '90s, working out of Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a maximum security hospital in New York.  The musical is actually a dark, symbolic treatment of his 1996 autobiographical book, Attorney for the Damned (The Free Press), in  which he confessed, "I live with the painful knowledge that I am somehow complicit in the horrible acts some of my clients commit after I ease their legal constraints and help them get released."

CAST:  Allison Johnson, Ray Fisher, Denny Blake, Brian Ferrari, Vadim  Newquist, Maria Dalbotten, Teddy Williams and Juliana Smith.  The chorus  includes Norma Gomez, Amanda Ochoa and Boksim Jeon. 

Production design  is by Gwendolyn E. Witkin.  Technical director Lance Harkins.  Costume  design is by Jeaho Lee. 

Kraine Theater
85 East  4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues9
New York, NY 10009

Fight Night Fights originated in the basement space of the Church Street Boxing Gym in lower Manhattan. The limited seating capacity and ever growing demand prompted Fight Night Fights to move to a larger venue, the basement of St. Paul the Apostle's Church behind Columbus Circle. This old school fight club has become popular with everybody from blue collar toughs to Wall Street investment bankers to New York style editors and hipsters.

The Friday Night Fights NYC Series features a variety of fighting styles. Muay Thai Boxing, Amateur Boxing and White Collar Boxing are just some of the types of fights that are featured at fight nights.

The new musical Spring Awakening arrives on Broadway following a sold-out run at the Atlantic Theater. The show features music by Grammy Award nominee Duncan Sheik, book and lyrics by Steven Sater, choreography by Bill T. Jones, and direction by Tony Award nominee Michael Mayer.

Based on Frank Wedekind's The Awakening of Spring, Spring Awakening is the contemporary musical adaptation of one of literature's most controversial plays.

It’s Germany, 1891.  A world where the grown-ups hold all the cards.  The beautiful young Wendla explores the mysteries of her body, and wonders aloud where babies come from, till Mama tells her to shut it, and put on a proper dress.

Elsewhere, the brilliant and fearless young Melchior interrupts a mind-numbing Latin drill to defend his buddy Moritz – a boy so traumatized by puberty he can’t concentrate on anything.  Not that the Headmaster cares.  He strikes them both and tells them to turn in their lesson.

One afternoon – in a private place in the woods – Melchior and Wendla meet by accident, and soon find within themselves a desire unlike anything they’ve ever felt.

Spring Awakening

As they fumble their way into one another’s arms, Moritz flounders and soon fails out of school.  When even his one adult friend, Melchior’s mother, ignores his plea for help, he is left so distraught he can’t hear the promise of life offered by his outcast friend Ilse.

Naturally, the Headmasters waste no time in pinning the “crime” of Moritz’s suicide on Melchior and expel him.  And soon Mama learns her little Wendla is pregnant.  Now the young lovers must struggle against all odds to build a world together for their child.