(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings February 15–21, 2019
CINEMA
Fuzzy focus
The cat’s out of the bag and on the screen!
The internet’s best cat videos will purr into
Alamo Drafthouse this month! CatVideoFest, at
the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on Feb. 23 and
24, combines some of the cutest kitty videos
into a 70-minute feline
feature film. The flick’s
115 clips of cats were personally
selected by the
organizer of the festival,
who combs through thousands
of submissions and
edits them into a masterpiece
of the internet’s finest
fuzzy export.
“Part of the appeal of CatVideoFest is that it’s
kind of homespun,” said Will Braden.
The traveling film also offers a purr-fect opportunity
to help cats in need, because a portion
of ticket sales from the Brooklyn screenings will
go to Animal Care Centers of New York. But
you should purr-chase tickets quickly — the
first screening has already sold out!
Braden and his team from Seattle distribute the
feline-focused film to theaters around the globe
to raise money for cats, and to provide a “joyous
communal experience” for people, he said.
“There are very few things nowadays that
you can enjoy with your 6-year-old daughter and
60-year-old father at the same time,” Braden said.
“And this event is a place for everyone.”
CatVideoFest at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
445 Albee Sq. West, fourth floor, between Willoughby
and Fulton streets Downtown, (718)
513–2547, www.catvideofest.com. Feb. 23 at
5:45 pm; Feb. 24 at 3:30 pm. $15.
— Natallie Rocha
DINING
The mac is back!
Amateur chefs from across the borough will
take their best mac-and-cheese recipes out of the
kitchen and into the arena of public opinion on
Feb. 17, when they will battle for everlasting glory
— and top-of-the-line home-cooking appliances
— at a beloved Kings County cook-off!
“These people are brilliant cooks, but usually
the only people they get
to impress is their family
and friends,” said Matt
Timms, creator and host
of the Takedown cooking
competition series.
“They have this incredible
creativity, but no one
to show it to, so they’re
definitely bringing their
A game.”
Timm’s cheese-based
Takedown event, now in its 15th year, gives ticket
holders the opportunity to taste some of the best
home cooking Brooklyn has to offer — and then
judge it mercilessly — ensuring that only the most
delicious dishes will rise to the top.
“It’s going to be really tasty,” said Timms.
And it might get weird, because there is only
one rule in Mac ‘n’ Cheeze Takedown: there are
no rules. Contestants have taken the event right
off the rails, with delicacies only vaguely related
to the dairy-based soul food, Timms said.
“I remember somebody made mac-and-cheese
ice cream,” he said. “They can get highly experimental.”
Judge mac and cheese at Lot 45 411 Troutman
St. between Wyckoff and St. Nicholas
avenues in Bushwick, (347) 505–9155, www.lot-
45bushwick.com. Feb. 17 at 2 pm. $25.
— Colin Mixson
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
This show has deep roots.
A mother and daughter will act out
their sometimes strained cross-cultural
relationship while portraying characters
in a new bilingual nightmare play, “Suicide
Forest,” debuting at the Bushwick
Starr on Feb. 27, according to its Japanese
American playwright.
“The play kind of takes a sharp turn
where it really becomes this revelation
of a mother-daughter relationship,” said
Kristine Haruna Lee, who lives in Sunset
Park. “I use the space of the play to
talk about a mother-daughter relationship
that’s had a lot of obstacles and language
barriers, culture barriers, and what
it means for us to be carrying this intergenerational
pain.”
Lee and her mother, who is a traditional
Japanese Butoh dancer, explored
their language barrier in the 2016 dance
piece “Communing with You.” In the new
90-minute play, they join a cast of seven
to tell the story of two people trying to
navigate a nightmarish world.
The show takes place in Suicide Forest,
an actual forest at the foot of Ft. Fuji
that is famous as a spot where people go
to kill themselves. Lee plays a high-school
THEATER
girl trying to escape a strictly conformist
society, who travels into the woods and
meets a supernatural woman, played by
her mother, who invites people to their
deaths.
“In my play, we meet these goats who are
living there and there’s also a woman who
is hurting these goats and she is a kind of
goddess that ushers people towards their
death, called the shinigami,” said Lee.
Lee said that she was inspired to explore
her own background and identity
on stage by the 1964 Adrienne Kennedy
play “Funnyhouse of a Negro.”
“I was really struck by Kennedy’s ability
to write a play from her kind of dark
psychic landscape, the very inner vulnerable
space, so I set out to write a place with
that same intention,” she said. “I would
say the nightmare is really pointing to
this dark psychic space, the play itself is
digging into my Japanese and Japanese-
American identity.”
Big cheese!
BEER
Beer-ded ladies
Get hopping, ladies!
A Ditmas Park beer bar will host a competition
for the best suds brewed by a woman on
March 30 — but the deadline to enter is this
coming weekend!
The owner of Sycamore dreamed up the Brooklyn
Women Homebrew Competition as a way
to recognize local ladies during the month of
March.
“It’s during Women’s History, or Herstory,
Month, and I wanted to do something to celebrate
women,” said Kathie Lee, who lives in
Flatbush.
Her bar has a long history
of celebrating amateur
brewers, she said, so
it made sense to continue
that tradition.
“Sycamore was one
of the first bars to have
a homebrew competition,
Brooklyn Wort in 2010 .
It’s part of the history of
the bar,” she said.
Those who want to apply for the female fermentation
festival must do so by Sunday, Feb.
17. There is no fee to enter, but each contestant
must brew at least 2.5 gallons of beer, so she can
serve samples to the roughly 70 people that Lee
expects to show up for the competition.
Details for that event are still being worked
out, said Lee, but the contest will definitely have
two prizes: a people’s choice, decided by popular
vote, and a judge’s prize, determined by two
professional brewers: Katarina Martinez (pictured),
the co-owner of Brooklyn’s Lineup Brewing,
and Mary Izett, from Fifth Hammer Brewing
in Queens.
Entered beers can be any style, and Lee said
that the only judging criteria will be “Does it
taste good?”
“We’re being very casual about it,” she said.
“It’s based on taste, but it’s really quite open.”
Brooklyn Women Homebrew Competition at
Sycamore Bar and Flowershop 1118 Cortelyou
Rd. between Stratford and Westminster roads
in Ditmas Park, (347) 240–5850, www.sycamorebrooklyn.
com/brooklynwomenhomebrew.
Sign up by Feb. 17. Free. — Bill Roundy
Dance
with
death
New play steps
into dark woods
Family matters: A mother and daughter will act out their cross-cultural relationship
while portraying characters in a new bilingual nightmare play, “Suicide Forest,” debuting
at the Bushwick Starr on Feb. 27.
Sasha Arutyunova
“Suicide Forest” at the Bushwick
Starr (207 Starr St. between Irving and
Wyckoff avenues in Bushwick, www.
thebushwickstarr.org). Feb. 27–March
16, Wed–Sat at 8 pm. $25.
By Julianne McShane
Brooklyn Paper
The building only has three floors,
but it has thousands of stories!
The country’s only organization
devoted to fiction will open
its doors in Fort Greene on Feb. 19.
The Center for Fiction’s new chapter,
moving from the distant isle of
Manhattan to Brooklyn, will give
the borough’s many scribes and bibliophiles
a chance to come together
in a new and modern space, said its
executive director.
“So much of our encounters with
others happen in virtual spaces now,
and for us it’s really important to have
a place that people can walk into and
talk with one another face-to-face in
— about books, about cultural experiences
they’re having, but also to help
one another process what’s going on
in the world,” said Noreen Tomassi.
Beowulf Sheehan
“Brooklyn’s crawling with writers,
and there are so many readers here.
It’s such a literary place.”
The space features state-of-theart
facilities, including a 140-seat
auditorium equipped to livestream
events, and a studio where bookish
bigwigs can record the center’s podcast,
“Fiction Talks.” The upgrades
will help expand the center’s mission
BOOKS
to explore the role of fiction across
television, films, podcasts, and video
games, said Tomassi.
“Because of our technical capabilities
here, we’re much more able
to expand our notion of fiction beyond
just fiction in books to the way
people tell stories and hear stories
in various media,” she said.
But readers can still indulge their
love for a good old-fashioned book
at the center’s bookstore, which offers
classic and bestselling fiction,
along with a selection of poetry, kids’
books, graphic novels, and nonfiction.
Those who shell out the $150
annual membership fee can also access
a sleek reading room, the adjacent
garden terrace, and a library of
more than 70,000 books, including
rare 19th-century tomes and more
than 16,000 crime-fiction titles.
The Center will launch its new
space with an already-sold-out gala
event on Feb. 19, which will be followed
by a regular series of readings,
talks with authors, and writing
workshops, all of which will be
open to the public.
The executive director said she
hopes that visitors will feel comfortable
in the new space, and will use it
to connect with each other.
“We want to create a forum for
ideas and interchangements, and
make people feel like they have a
home here,” she said.
Photo by Trey Pentecost
Book heaven: The Center for
Fiction’s bookstore offers classic
and bestselling fiction, along
with a selection of poetry, kids’
books, graphic novels, and
nonfiction. Executive Director
Noreen Tomassi (above) hopes
Brooklyn readers will use the
space to form connections.
A novel undertaking
Center for Fiction opens new headquarters
The Center for Fiction (15 Lafayette
Ave. at Ashland Place in
Fort Greene, www.centerforfi ction.
org). Opening Feb. 19. $150
annual membership ($275 for
couples; $325 for households of
three or more).
CatVideo Fest
Matt Timms
File photo by Stefano Giovannini
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