They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center by Reynold Levy
Authors: Reynold Levy
Ads: Link
the Time Warner Center. The Rose Theater is also where the festival mounted the one-man Macbeth , starring Alan Cumming and directed by John Tiffany.
Nigel Redden and his colleagues are nothing if not adventurous. In July 2010 the Lincoln Center Festival presented a Russian play, The Demons , also known as The Possessed , based on Dostoyevsky’s novel. It was staged in a spare theatrical space at Governors Island and was directed by the acclaimed Peter Stein. The running time for the play was roughly eleven hours. It was performed in Italian with English subtitles. Endurance was required, not only by the 26 European actors, but also by the 975 members of the audience in a fully sold-out, ten-day run. That day included two 45-minute breaks for meals, eaten communally and prepared by the staff of well-known chef Tom Colicchio. There were also four fifteen-minute intermissions. The audience was transported to a different time and place. And speaking of transportation, Lincoln Center provided a ferry, departing from lower Manhattan at 10 a.m. and leaving from the island for the return home at 11:30 p.m. It carried an audience that will fondly recall what transpired on the stage and how they enjoyed their theatrical marathon.
Perhaps the best illustration of real estate as theatrical destiny can be found in the Lincoln Center Festival production of Deborah Warner’s The Angel Project . In the wake of 9/11, the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, and the loss of some three thousand lives, Deborah Warner, the English director, created a site-specific set of installations spread out across a dozen locations in midtown Manhattan. In the summer of 2003, from Roosevelt Island to the top of the Chrysler Building, to an empty storefront on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, she fitted out rooms filled with carefully selected and assembled objects intended to evoke feelings of remembrance, transcendence, and commemoration. The experience was meant to be solitary. At the Lincoln Center box office, participants were handed a map with Angel Project locations noted on it and given a Metro card to use on the subway or bus to get to some of them. Departures to the sites occurred at intervals of twenty minutes, three each hour, to minimize the chances of overlap between viewers.
To secure these spaces for an art project lasting three weeks was a major undertaking. It required the cooperation of property owners and real estate developers not necessarily sympathetic to the whole idea. We tried persuasion first, then groveling. And finally the intervention of third parties. The effort paid off handsomely. No one fortunate enoughto have joined Deborah Warner on this journey will ever forget having done so.
Ben Brantley, the chief New York Times theater critic, wrote that this experience offered by the Lincoln Center Festival persuaded him, for the first time, to think of New York City as a “holy place.” Until then, such a thought had no more occurred to him than it had to me, a born and bred New Yorker.
O F COURSE, WHILE it may be illuminating to view the Lincoln Center Festival through the lens of where productions are performed, location alone offers a limited perspective. Besides the suitability and availability of the proper venue, what determines the selection of performing art presented by the sixteen-year-old Lincoln Center Festival?
A group of Lincoln Center constituent companies is largely rooted in nineteenth-century western European art forms: opera, ballet, and symphonic music. The Lincoln Center Festival is intended not only to supplement this emphasis innovatively, but also to present classical forms from different countries and different centuries. An example of the festival’s role in providing fascinating additions to standard constituent fare is its presentation of the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, performing all of Bruckner’s symphonies, juxtaposed with
Nigel Redden and his colleagues are nothing if not adventurous. In July 2010 the Lincoln Center Festival presented a Russian play, The Demons , also known as The Possessed , based on Dostoyevsky’s novel. It was staged in a spare theatrical space at Governors Island and was directed by the acclaimed Peter Stein. The running time for the play was roughly eleven hours. It was performed in Italian with English subtitles. Endurance was required, not only by the 26 European actors, but also by the 975 members of the audience in a fully sold-out, ten-day run. That day included two 45-minute breaks for meals, eaten communally and prepared by the staff of well-known chef Tom Colicchio. There were also four fifteen-minute intermissions. The audience was transported to a different time and place. And speaking of transportation, Lincoln Center provided a ferry, departing from lower Manhattan at 10 a.m. and leaving from the island for the return home at 11:30 p.m. It carried an audience that will fondly recall what transpired on the stage and how they enjoyed their theatrical marathon.
Perhaps the best illustration of real estate as theatrical destiny can be found in the Lincoln Center Festival production of Deborah Warner’s The Angel Project . In the wake of 9/11, the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, and the loss of some three thousand lives, Deborah Warner, the English director, created a site-specific set of installations spread out across a dozen locations in midtown Manhattan. In the summer of 2003, from Roosevelt Island to the top of the Chrysler Building, to an empty storefront on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, she fitted out rooms filled with carefully selected and assembled objects intended to evoke feelings of remembrance, transcendence, and commemoration. The experience was meant to be solitary. At the Lincoln Center box office, participants were handed a map with Angel Project locations noted on it and given a Metro card to use on the subway or bus to get to some of them. Departures to the sites occurred at intervals of twenty minutes, three each hour, to minimize the chances of overlap between viewers.
To secure these spaces for an art project lasting three weeks was a major undertaking. It required the cooperation of property owners and real estate developers not necessarily sympathetic to the whole idea. We tried persuasion first, then groveling. And finally the intervention of third parties. The effort paid off handsomely. No one fortunate enoughto have joined Deborah Warner on this journey will ever forget having done so.
Ben Brantley, the chief New York Times theater critic, wrote that this experience offered by the Lincoln Center Festival persuaded him, for the first time, to think of New York City as a “holy place.” Until then, such a thought had no more occurred to him than it had to me, a born and bred New Yorker.
O F COURSE, WHILE it may be illuminating to view the Lincoln Center Festival through the lens of where productions are performed, location alone offers a limited perspective. Besides the suitability and availability of the proper venue, what determines the selection of performing art presented by the sixteen-year-old Lincoln Center Festival?
A group of Lincoln Center constituent companies is largely rooted in nineteenth-century western European art forms: opera, ballet, and symphonic music. The Lincoln Center Festival is intended not only to supplement this emphasis innovatively, but also to present classical forms from different countries and different centuries. An example of the festival’s role in providing fascinating additions to standard constituent fare is its presentation of the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, performing all of Bruckner’s symphonies, juxtaposed with
Similar Books
