(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings February 22–28, 2019
MUSIC
Prince of party
This horn player is blowing up!
A Williamsburg pop artist will host an extravaganza
of live performances, including dancing,
drag, a brass band, and other acts at Freehold
on Feb. 22, as part of his quest to reinvent
the traditional music concert and throw the ultimate
party.
“To be frank, I’ve been pretty bored with the
live music experience, which is this routine everybody
already knows,” said Spencer Ludwig.
“Instead of saying ‘Come see my band,’ I’m saying,
‘Come to my party.’ ”
The Los Angeles–born horn player, who
trumpeted for indie rock band Capital Cities
before going solo in 2015, expressed disdain
for the standard concert format — the opening
act you’ve never heard of, the uneventful
wait for the headliner to start — scorning the
steady procession of bands as a “dry, mundane
experience.”
But Ludwig has a remedy he calls “Le Trumpet,”
a four-hour bonanza of live acts the artist
curated around the impulse to have people let
their hair down and paint the town red.
“All of this reflects the energy and message
of my music, and the feel of my music is straight
up party time,” Ludwig boasted.
The trumpeter promises drag queens from
California, a contortionist on the bar, and a New
Orleans–style brass band amongst acts that will
spring up suddenly from the crowd, and then
vanish into the revelry as another performance
takes shape on the other side of the venue.
“Every performance leads into the next one,”
said Ludwig. “After my performance, you think
it’s over, the DJ starts spinning, and out of nowhere
the drag queens start performing!”
This Friday’s show is part of his five-month
residency at Williamsburg’s Freehold restaurant,
where he throws a party on the last Friday
of every month until May, after which he
hopes to take the curated party concept he developed
in Brooklyn and share it with the rest
of the country.
“The idea is to take this concept on the road,
I would love to be able to curate a tour experience,
so that it’s not just, ‘I’m playing in Atlanta,
this band’s opening, you know the drill,’ ” said
Ludwig. “I want it to be a party.”
“Le Trumpet” at Freehold Brooklyn 45 S.
Third St. between Kent and Wythe avenues in
Williamsburg, (718) 388–7591, www.freeholdbrooklyn.
Doc’s holiday BOOKS
Burlesque host launches new just-for-fun sci-fi web series
com. Feb. 22 at 9 pm. Free.
— Colin Mixson
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
He’s having a blast-off!
A new intergalactic web series filled
with alien babes and goofy monsters
will touch down at the Way Station in Prospect
Heights for its launch party on Feb. 27.
The creator and star of “Outer Space with
Doc Wasabassco,” who started working
on the silly sci-fi variety show last summer,
says it has been a joy to bring life to
a project that is close to his heart.
“This is made entirely of all of the things
I love, that friends I love have in common,”
said the Park Slope performer. “This is really
a labor of love project — things that
crack us up and things that amuse us, which
PARTY
is very freeing.”
Wasabassco is best known for the elaborate
, themed burlesque shows that he produced
through his company Wasabassco
Burlesque, but said that after 15 years of
being a nightlife impresario, it was time to
move on to a more rewarding project.
“It’s harder and harder to get younger
demographics spending money to come
out. It was no longer as viable to run the
kind of shows I was running and this project
is more of a joyful thing, just for fun,”
he said.
Wasabassco and his team have already
filmed five episodes of “Outer Space,” two
of which are now available on Youtube .
The show is set aboard a go-go powered
spaceship called the Dorothy Fontana —
named for a writer on the original “Star
Trek” series — and has a retro vibe that
evokes that series without trying to copy
it, said Wasabassco.
“The aesthetic is 1960s, ’70s, so it’s
sort of that aesthetic meets science fiction.
We’re not pretending to be Star Trek,”
he said.
The launch party will feature videos
from the web series, themed cocktails,
go-go dancers, a space dating booth, and
a chance to interact with Wasabassco’s
character “Captain Doc,” he said.
“We’ll have a video dating booth reality
shows, where people go in and create
dating profiles in character, and we will
do a question and answer, which I will do
in character,” Wasabassco said.
The Way Station, known to science-fiction
fans as “the Dr. Who bar” because of
its decorative time machine, is the perfect
place to celebrate the show, which features
a recurring segment about an ever-changing
character named “Professor Whom,”
said Wasabassco.
“The Way Station has a huge sciencefiction
following,” he said.
Reading picks
Word’s picks: “How
Democracies Die,”
by Steven Levitsky
As someone who is
both a political science
and sociology major, I
can’t help but look around
the United States and
wonder, “How did we get
here?” Steven Levitsky’s
“How Democracies Die”
gives an in-depth look as
to what appears to be a
common thread appearing across dying democracies
worldwide, as fascism seems to take hold.
But there is hope — we have recognized the
symptoms, we have identified the sickness, and
now we can plan how best to heal our dying democracies
before we lose our rights.
— Yadira Aguiar, Word 126 Franklin St. at
Milton Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096,
www.wordbookstores.com .
Greenlight
Bookstore’s pick:
“The New Me,” by
Halle Butler
This paperback original
is bleak, neurotic, and
misanthropic, in a similar
vein as “My Year of
Rest and Relaxation,”
by Ottessa Moshfegh.
It diligently transcribes
the main character’s anxieties
and captures office
politics and tensions in a very mundane but funny
way. I never knew paper shredding could generate
so much drama.
— Matt Stowe, Greenlight Bookstore 686
Fulton St. between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland
Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246–0200,
www.greenlightbookstore.com .
Community
Bookstore’s pick:
“Figuring,” by Maria
Popova
From the creator
of the incredible website
brainpickings.org
comes an extended riff
on love, inter-connectedness,
and our collective
search for meaning.
“Figuring” weaves
together capsule biographies
of luminaries like Johannes Kepler and
Rachel Carson with lyrical ruminations on the
nature of being.
— Samuel Partal, Community Bookstore 43
Seventh Ave. between Carroll Street and Garfield
Place in Park Slope, (718) 783–3075, www.
commu nityb ookst ore.net .
Welcome aboard: A new intergalactic web series set aboard a go-go powered spaceship will land at the Way Station in Prospect Heights on Feb. 27.
Doc Wasabassco
“Outer Space” launch party at the Way
Station 683 Washington Ave. between
Prospect and St. Marks places in Prospect
Heights, (347) 627–4949, www.thewaystationbk.
com. Feb. 27 at 7 pm. Free.
Citizen Kane Wayne
By Julianne McShane
Brooklyn Paper
This is a “Mattress” that stays
woke.
A Park Slope theater company
is putting a 21st-century twist
on a classic fairy tale musical. “Once
Upon a Mattress,” opening at Gallery
Players on Feb. 22, offers a feminist,
queer interpretation that makes the
story accessible to all audience members,
regardless of race, gender, sexual
orientation, or neurodiversity, according
to its director.
“By having all different types of couples
on stage and having strong women
at the center of the story, it gives the opportunity
to tell this fairy tale in a way
that levels the playing field and doesn’t
privilege one kind of love or one gender
over another,” said Barrie Gelles,
who lives in Carroll Gardens.
The musical comedy, which debuted
off-Broadway in 1959, was already progressive
for its time, telling a version of
“The Princess and the Pea” in which a
THEATER
rough-and-tumble Princess Winnifred
comes to the rescue of sensitive Prince
Dauntless. The citizens of the kingdom
are forbidden to marry until Dauntless
does — but Winnifred must first win
the approval of the prince’s overbearing
mother, Queen Aggravain, and nonverbal
father, King Sextimus.
In the original portrayal, the king’s
verbal disability makes him a laughable
figure. But in the Gallery Players’
production, he uses modified sign
language and a photo-based communication
system frequently used by
children with autism — changes that
Gelles said were made to de-stigmatize
nonverbal people.
“So much of the humor is supposed
to come from him pantomiming and
gesticulating wildly, but our king is not
ridiculous in his inability to speak —
he’s simply a nonverbal individual,”
she said.
Without changing the script, the playmakers
also reformed an element that
could be problematic in the #metoo
era — Sextimus’s relentless pursuit of
women. In this version, said Gelles,
the women passing through the castle
carry tasty desserts, and the king
chases after the sweet dishes rather than
the women themselves.
“It was a very simple switch without
changing any text, to be more respectful
of how women are framed within
the show,” she said.
Gelles’s production — led by an allfemale
or transgender creative team —
also upends some of the play’s more
traditional gender roles, introducing a
pair of female knights, several samesex
couples among the eager-to-marry
courtiers, and a female jester.
“We stopped making vocation dependent
on gender, and there are all
sorts of couples on stage,” she said.
The updated production more accurately
reflects the modern world,
said Gelles.
“As our civilizations and communities
grow, our fairy tales need
to change,” she said. “With our own
lens and framing, we can take it the
next step so that it becomes a fairy
tale that matches what we need in our
world right now.”
Royal romp: In “Once Upon a Mattress,” Luisa Boyaggi, Alyson
Leigh Rosenfeld, and Gerardo Vallejo star as Queen Aggravain,
Princess Winnifred, and Prince Dauntless, respectively. Michelle Danahy
Welcome Mat
Players make a musical
fairy tale more inclusive
“Once Upon a Mattress” at Gallery
Players (199 14th St. between
Fourth and Fifth avenues in Park
Slope, (718) 595–0547, www.galleryplayers.
com). Feb. 22–March
17; Fri at 7:30 pm; Sat at 2 pm and
7:30 pm; Sun at 3 pm. $25 ($20 seniors
and kids).
/www.thewaysta-tionbk.com
/www.freehold-brooklyn.Doc’s
/www.freehold-brooklyn.Doc’s
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/www.commu
/www.commu
/www.thewaysta-tionbk.com
/www.freehold-brooklyn.Doc’s
/www.thewaysta-tionbk.com
/www.gal-leryplayers.com
/www.gal-leryplayers.com
/www.gal-leryplayers.com
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/brainpickings.org
/ore.net