(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings March 1–7, 2019
PODCAST
Year to ear
They’re keeping safe and sounds.
A trio of local audio aficionados will discuss
their efforts to preserve the voices of Kings
County during this weekend’s On Air Fest at the
Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg.
The panelists
of “Saving the
Sounds of Brooklyn”
on March 2 hope that
their projects will help
Brooklynites to understand
their neighbors,
said one oral historian.
“We like to say we
are not giving voice
to the voiceless, we’re
giving ears to the earless,”
said Zaheer Ali,
of the Brooklyn Historical
Society.
Ali will review “ Muslims in Brooklyn ,” the
society’s newest oral-history project featuring
50 Muslims from 18 different Brooklyn neighborhoods.
That project preserves the sounds of
local people who hail from countries around the
world, Ali said.
“All of those accents are there, we have different
languages represented … you get a sense
of the oral diversity that exists,” he said.
He will join audio producer Molly Schwartz
of “Preserve This Podcast,” which focuses on
helping podcasters protect their work for future
generations, and Virginia Marshall (pictured),
producer of the Brooklyn Public Library’s upcoming
podcast “Borrowed,” debuting March
12. The forthcoming audio show will focus on
local stories, as told through the lens of the library,
said Marshall.
“What we’re trying to do is capture patrons’
stories, librarians’ stories, tell a little bit of the
library’s history, but also really center the Brooklyn
community,” she said.
Ali said all of the participants are passionate
about making their oral histories available
to as many Brooklynites as possible.
“Part of our understanding of the work of
collecting and preserving sound is making it
accessible,” he said. “We’re hoping to give opportunities
for people to listen and to be listened
to.”
The panel is part of a three-day “audio-culture
festival” featuring talks and workshops for
podcast creators, and behind-the-scenes talks
with popular podcasters. Highlights include an
interview of author Roxanne Gay, a talk between
former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown and actress
Amber Tamblyn, and a reading by United
States Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.
ARCADE Twice upon a time
The Butcher visits two fairy tale musicals seeking enchantment
“Saving the Sounds of Brooklyn” at On Air
Fest at the Wythe Hotel (80 Wythe Ave. at N.
11th Street in Williamsburg, www.onairfest.
com). March 2 at 11 am. Fest lasts March 2–4.
$79 per day ($199 all three days).
— Julianne McShane
The Butcher of THEATER
Flatbush Ave.
Extension
We’re a city of two tales!
Two different fairy tales musicals
flitted into the County of Kings
last weekend. In Park Slope, the Gallery
Players presented “Once Upon a Mattress,”
while in Brooklyn Heights, Theater 2020
performed “Into the Woods.” Both shows
run through March 17 — but which is the
most magical show?
“Once Upon a Mattress” is a downy bit
of fluff. Based on “The Princess and the
Pea,” it offers a bright and charming story
about a gung-ho princess who rescues a
prince with the power of spunk and indefatigable
dancing.
This production makes the kingdom a
primary-colored playground, with gay and
straight couples among the court color-coordinated
for convenience, and the big dance
scene of “the Spanish Panic,” which uses every
character — and every popular dance
move of the last 40 years — is terrifically
fun. In the role of Princess Winnifred, Alyson
Leigh Rosenfeld has enormous appeal,
and she can belt out a tune with the best when
she needs too — but in too many songs, I
strained to hear the lyrics.
This production tries to update the frankly
dicey gender politics of the script, which
dates from 1959, but there’s only so far it
can go, and remnants of the lascivious original
— like the king “groping his way in
the dark” are left to flounder. And a few
scenes felt unmotivated, and slowed down
the fun, like the five minutes of quiet stomping
at the top of the second act, and a soft
shoe that comes from nowhere.
In contrast, “Into the Woods,” the Stephen
Sondheim mash-up of Little Red Riding
Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and a
half-dozen other Grimm fairy tales, is decidedly
darker and more intimate, with a
much smaller cast and just a piano to provide
the music.
Producer and director David Fuller sets
the play in a refugee camp “somewhere in
the world,” which, honestly, does not make
even a little bit of sense. These refugees
are living in the house the Baker’s father
made? And they’re going to fancy dance
parties? But the t-shirts and the wire fences
fall away once the music starts. The characters
fill the room, and the actors find the
humor and the pathos of the show.
Especially funny are Alexander Coopersmith
and John Jeffords, who double
as the blowhard Princes and as Cinderella’s
evil stepsisters, sometimes switching
parts multiple times in the course of a
line. The Witch (Julia Goretsky) wrings every
bit of humor out of harrying the Baker
and his Wife (Rudy Martinez and Elizabeth
Knesek) who both ground the play
with real emotion. And as the Wolf (and
a half-dozen other animals) Torian Brackett
steals every scene.
Of the two, I think you can sleep on
“Mattress,” and direct your steps “Into
the Woods.”
Game show
Talk about a coming attraction!
The cinephiles behind Downtown dine-in
movie house Alamo Drafthouse Cinema are planning
a major expansion of their movie house,
which will more than double its space to sling
burgers, serve beer, and screen blockbusters.
“If I have one regret about the current Brooklyn
theater, it is that we just don’t have enough
screens to support all the movies we love,” said
Alamo Drafthouse founder and head honcho
Tim League. “I can’t wait to share the new expansion
and so many more films with the neighborhood!”
The theater’s hefty expansion, set to occupy
a space the size of an Olympic hockey rink on
the third floor of Downtown shopping center
City Point, will result in 400 new seats and nine
additional screens above its existing seven cinemas
currently on the mall’s fourth floor. Two
of those new theaters will be equipped with 3D
projectors, and one with a 35mm reel-to-reel
machine, when the job — which is set to kick
off this fall — wraps as soon as next year.
And Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will continue
to operate during construction, according
to its spokesman Brad Johnson.
The screening rooms are not the theater’s
only new additions, however — the movie house
also recently installed a vintage 1993 NBA
Jam arcade game, donated by a big-hearted
Williamsburger.
The classic arcade cabinet, which in good
condition can retail online for up to $4,000,
took up too much space in former owner Weston
Green’s apartment. So he sought a new home
for his beloved video game by scrolling through
the Brooklyn page of popular online forum
Reddit, where he turned down a couple of “finance
bros” before a rep for Alamo Drafthouse
reached out, and he realized the theater was
the perfect place to share his old-school entertainment
with local gamers.
“I immediately knew that would be the place,”
Green said. “I love the Alamo and am excited to
know the game has found its home there.”
News of the cinema’s expansion comes amid
other additions to the massive City point residential
and retail complex, including the opening
of a new concert venue within the building’s
sprawling subterranean food hall, and the
planned debut of a second borough outpost of
independent book retailer McNally Jackson ,
which is set to open this fall.
— Colin Mixson
Witch way to go?: (Left) In the Theater 2020 production of “Into the Woods,” the Baker’s Wife (Elizabeth Kensek), the Baker (Rudy Martinez), and the Witch (Julia Goretsky)
square off. (Right) Gerardo Vallejo, as Prince Dauntless, and Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, as Princess Winnifred, dance the Spanish Panic in the Gallery Players production of
“Once Upon a Mattress,” playing through March 17.
John Robert Hoffman
Steven Pisano
“Once Upon a Mattress” at Gallery
Players (199 14th St. between Fourth
and Fifth avenues in Park Slope, (718)
595–0547, www.galleryplayers.com).
Through March 17; Fri at 7:30 pm; Sat at
2 pm and 7:30 pm; Sun at 3 pm. $25 ($20
seniors and kids).
“Into The Woods” at Founders Hall at St.
Francis College (180 Remsen St. between
Court and Clinton streets in Brooklyn
Heights, www.theater2020.com).
Through March 17; Thu–Sun at various
times. $40 ($30 students and seniors).
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
We’ll have a gay old time!
A Brooklyn author will offer
bi-curious locals a glimpse
into the halcyon days of Kings County’s
queer culture at Brooklyn Historical
Society’s Pierrepont Street headquarters
beginning on March 5, where
he will launch his new book “When
Brooklyn was Queer,” and unveil an
exhibit of 19th-century relics from
some of the borough’s first known
gay and lesbian communities.
The new show “On the (Queer)
Waterfront: the Factories, Freaks,
Sailors, and Sex Workers of Brooklyn,”
explores the lives of Victorianera
queer individuals through period
art, photographs, fliers, lurid truecrime
tales, and extraordinary personal
documents, including a neverbefore
exhibited scrapbook revealing
the life of a gay woman living through
19th-century Brooklyn, said the show’s
co-curator.
“She was a lesbian from Brooklyn,
and a prodigious scrapbooker,” said
Hugh Ryan. “It’s an incredible document,
the likes of which I’ve never
seen before.”
Ryan began his history of Kings
County’s queer culture with famed
Brooklyn Historical Society
Brooklyn bard Walt Whitman, whose
poem “Leaves of Grass,” published in
1855, exposed an otherwise undocumented
interest in same-sex relationships
brewing along the borough’s
waterfront.
“Even though we only have records
of Whitman, because he kept these records
of other men, we know there was
a community there, of white, workingclass
men on the waterfront, who were
into the idea of sexual relationships
with other men,” said Ryan.
The Brooklyn Historical Society
bills as new exhibit as the first to ever
look at the borough’s gay history. It focuses
on the industrial milieu of Kings
County’s coastal communities, and
on five professions that, for various
reasons, drew the interest and talent
of blue-collar queers, according to
Ryan: artist, entertainer, sex worker,
sailor, and factory worker.
Some gay Brooklynites were attracted
to the migratory nature of jobs
like shipping and entertaining, which
took them to distant ports or on crosscountry
tours, which allowed them
to have their same-sex dalliances in
distant locales while avoiding notoriety
at home.
“Part of the reason actors were more
appealing is that you traveled,” said
Ryan. “People couldn’t keep a close
watch on you.”
During the early 20th century, the
relatively high pay of factory jobs offered
women a level of independence
from male breadwinners, empowering
the women in that profession to
fend for themselves — and for their
lovers.
“They made more money than
women in traditionally feminine jobs,”
said Ryan. “It’s about the opportunity
to live a life of one’s one.”
“On the (Queer) Waterfront” at
the Brooklyn Historical Society (128
Pierrepont St. between Clinton and
Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights,
Brooklyn Historical Society
www.brooklynhistory.org). Opening
reception March 5; 6:30–8:30 pm.
Free. Exhibit open through July 7,
Wed–Sun; noon–5 pm. $10 suggested
donation ($6 seniors, students
free).
The coast is ... queer
Exhibit looks at Brooklyn’s gay waterfront
Strip tease: Rumored lesbian Madam Tirza was a burlesque dancer
who performed in Coney Island from 1940 to 1953.
King of kings: Nineteenth-century
“male impersonator” Ella
Wes ner was one of the Brooklyn
vaudeville scene’s hottest performers.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
Photo by Trey Pentecost
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