INSIDE
Eat prey, love
Dystopian play shows the gory extremes of bad romance
By Kevin Duggan It’s a dog-eat-dog world.
A bizarre new play will use a terrifying
landscape of cannibals and flesheating
canines to examine the selfishness of
human relationships. “The Dog, The Night,
and The Knife,” written by the German
playwright Marius van Mayenburg, and
translated into English by Maja Zade,
will have its United States premiere at the
Irondale in Fort Greene on March 15. It
tells the story of “M,” a woman who finds
herself pursued through a brutal dystopia
where time is stuck in the middle of the
night, according to its director.
“The play is her journey through the
night where she’s being hunted and chased
by blood-thirsty creatures and trying to survive
and trying not to become one of them,”
said Yuri Kordonsky, who also teaches
directing at Yale.
The main character must fight her way
through a world of people infected by what
the playwright calls “the hunger,” who are
driving to hunt and consume their loved
ones, reflecting the selfish nature of reallife
human relationships, said Kordonsky.
“The inhabitants of the world are hungry,
which manifests in the desire to eat
the person you love. It’s about relationships
and how selfish and possessive and consuming
they might be,” he said. “Almost
everything we can love has an element of
possession and consuming, and the pure
act of generous love is an extremely rare
thing in this world.”
M’s journey seems hopeless until she
meets the character “Younger Sister,” and
the two break the rules of the play’s bleak
universe by falling in love in a selfless way,
the director said.
“They discover that relationships can
be something else, giving rather than taking,”
he said.
The play’s nightmarish landscape is also
occupied by ravenous stray dogs, played by
human actors. Rather than make the thespians
crawl on all fours and bark, Kordonsky
and his team bridged the gap between man
and beast more subtly.
“We work on movements that might
be reminiscent of dogs in their movement,
some vocal techniques the actors use that
remind you of howling and barking,”
Kordonsky said.
The play is violent, but the director said
his rendition will not be gory. Instead, the
violence is portrayed in a more abstract
way, which could be even more unsettling
to the audience.
“There’s knives and multiple stabbings
going on, bleeding wounds, we take this
rather metaphorically, nothing that we put on
Gone to the dogs: The world is a dystopia
filled with vicious cannibals in the abstract
play “The Dog, The Night, and The Knife,”
opening at Irondale in Fort Greene on
March 15. Photo by Caroline Ourso
stage is graphic or gory,” he said. “It’s a story
that unsettles you and should disturb.”
Kordonsky and his partners from the
production company Just Toys were captured
by the play’s visceral power, he said,
even though it was difficult to decipher. The
piece’s abstract nature became an appealing
challenge to the team, he said.
“There was a combination of a sense
of very strong and attractive mystery, the
gut visceral feeling that it’s good, and the
challenge to understand it on an intellectual
level,” he said. “But this is exactly when you
know that you have to do a play. When you
know exactly from the beginning how to do
a play, there’s no point in doing it.”
“The Dog, The Night, and The Knife,”
at Irondale 85 S. Oxford St. at Lafayette
Avenue in Fort Greene, www.irondale.org,
(718) 488–9233. March 15–April 6; Mon,
Wed–Sat at 7:30 pm. $30.
Your entertainment
guide Page 75
Police Blotter ..........................8
Letters ....................................30
Op-Ed ...................................... 32
The Right View .................... 32
Standing O ............................34
Dine in Bouroughs .............. 37
NYC Works .............................55
Elder Care .............................. 61
HOW TO REACH US
COURIER L 2 IFE, MARCH 15–21, 2019 G
Very sad
scene
Park Slope residents and other
passersby on March 5 laid mementos
at a memorial near
the Fifth Avenue intersection
where a driver hit and killed
two kids as they crossed the
street one year ago to that
day. Pint-sized mourner Neftali
(left), who goes to school in the
neighborhood, struggled to
comprehend the deadly collision
that killed 1-year-old Joshua
Lew and 4-year-old Abigail
Blumenstein as he stopped to
leave a note at the Ninth Street
shrine. “I just can’t get over the
fact that they’re dead,” he said.
Photo by Natallie Rocha
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It’s a feast fi t for Kings!
Beep: Dine the Boroughs event offers local fl avor in Bklyn and outer boros
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
It’s a taste of Brooklyn — and
beyond!
Restaurants across Kings
County and other outer-borough
eateries will serve up
budget-friendly, three-course
meals to customers as part of a
unique dining campaign kicking
off on March 18.
The Dine the Boroughs event
will feature Brooklyn, Queens,
and Bronx restaurateurs plating
a variety of unique cuisines,
giving locals an affordable
opportunity to step outside
their neighborhood — and their
culinary comfort zone, according
to the beep.
“If you are used to Caribbean
meals, then go inside an
Italian restaurant, or an Asian
restaurant. That’s what we’re
really encouraging,” Borough
President Adams said at
a March 12 press conference
ahead of the event. “It’s great
for business, and it’s great to
learn something new.”
All of the roughly 200 participating
restaurants in
Brooklyn, Queens, and the
Bronx will offer special prixfi
xe menus priced at $28 per
person throughout the event,
which concludes on March 29.
The eateries’ prix fi xe menus
will include three courses,
with most allowing patrons
to choose an appetizer, an entree,
and a dessert.
The number of participating
restaurants is a reminder
that some of the city’s most
mouth-watering food is served
outside the confi nes of the distant
isle of Manhattan, where
all but a few eateries in the annual
New York City Restaurant
Week are located, according
to Adams.
“Good food doesn’t stop at
the Manhattan Bridge,” the
beep said.
One restaurateur whose
Sheepshead Bay eatery is
among the Brooklyn spots participating
in Dine the Boroughs
praised the event as a way to
introduce his establishment to
new customers from his neighborhood
and further afi eld.
“This is our fi rst time doing
an event like this. I think
it will defi nitely help get our
name out there, and get the
word out,” said John Chen,
whose Flaming Grill and Modern
Buffet at 3841 Nostrand
Ave. serves up sushi and other
cuisines. “It will defi nitely
help us serve the community a
little better.”
For a full list of participating
restaurants, see the special
Dine the Boroughs section
in this issue.
Join the Dine the Boroughs
experience, presented by the
Whitmore Group and co-sponsored
by Schneps Media, by
following along on social media
using the event’s hashtag
#dinetheboros.
GOOD EATS: Flaming Grill and Modern Buffet co-owner John Chen served
lunch to the beep following the announcement. Photo by Trey Pentecost
/www.irondale.org
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