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Best Of theatre

Best Of 2021 – Theater/Opera/Dance

God, it felt good to be back in a room with people sharing the vibration of other humans on a stage, the feedback loop of energy and – dangerous as it sometimes felt – sharing breath. Starting literally two weeks after my second shot, I was lucky to see 30 shows and miracle of miracles, none of them were bad.

Every company that’s returned, making work, is bringing it right now – playing to their core strengths and stretching their muscles. Beyond what made this list? I saw crisp, vibrant shows from Evolution and Gallery. Otterbein and Short North Stage’s sister/adjunct company Columbus Immersive crafted productions that fully turned me around on shows I actively didn’t like previously. All four of the Actors’ shows and all four Red Herring productions left me talking about them into the night if not for weeks. MadLab and CATCO revealed the fruits of the energy and enthusiasm of new artistic directors (in the latter case after a year’s preview of fascinating streaming work). Imagine returned with a brand new, original musical with 19 cast members.

This town rang with the echoes of gauntlets dropping and examples of exactly what keeps me going out night after night. I enjoyed every minute of that energy and enthusiasm being back, even when the finished piece didn’t work for me. But the 10 here would have blown me away in any circumstances and it was a hard call whittling down to them.

Back to NYC for Under the Radar and sundry in January, great stuff on the books for the Wexner Center in Spring, fingers crossed we get closer to “back” with every month.

That NYC trip in January includes the reopened revival of Company we originally had tickets to for my 40th birthday in 2020 – there will be more in my year end music playlists, but I can’t imagine my cultural life without the shining influence of Stephen Sondheim who passed away the day before I started assembling this. I grew up steeped in musicals – the heavy influence of my mom and my grandmother – including some of his, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story and Gypsy. But when I discovered his mature work – starting with my massive love of Sweeney Todd and Assassins, it felt like I found musical theater pitched directly at me – this also gives me a chance to acknowledge and publicly express gratitude for the friends who opened that door: Doug Smith, Sean Klein (who we also lost this year, barely a week after we texted about getting the old gang together), Matt Porreca, and Robin Seabaugh; nothing would have fallen into place without each of you.

That said, I want to acknowledge the stellar online work that helped get me through the months beforehand, that gave me a taste, a little hint of the electricity that kept me going. Everything here is in chronological order and everything in person is in Columbus (except otherwise noted doesn’t apply this time, but I’m thirsty for when it does).

Online

Alicia Hall Moran, from her website

Online 

  • Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran by Javaad Alipoor (The Javaad Alipoor Company, presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar) 
  • The Motown Project by Alicia Hall Moran (Presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar) 
  • Fragments, Lists, and Lacunae by Alexandra Chasin and Zishan Ugurlu (Presented by New York Live Arts) 
  • Blue Ridge by Abby Rosebrock (Presented by Play Per View) 
  • Revenge Porn by Carla Ching (Presented by Play Per View) 
  • Hymn by Lolita Chakrabati (Presented by Almeida Theatre) 
  • A Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terrence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons (Met LiveinHD) 

In Person 

Don Giovanni, photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte (Opera Columbus), directed by Eve Summer – I’m not sure I could have picked a better return to live theater than this super-charged, intense reading of one of the very first operas I loved by a revitalized Opera Columbus. The safety measures had a fascinating thematic thrust and the performances, especially Jorell Williams in the title role and Amber Monroe’s Donna Elvira, singed my eyebrows off. I said “They amplify the deep loneliness of the libertine and his victims and the teeth-gnashing frustration of attempts at revenge and forgiveness… Having been 14 months since I’d been inside a theater, the longest stretch since I was 16, it was probably not unlikely I’d cry anyway. But it’s hard for me to imagine a better return to live performance than this dazzling Don Giovanni,” in my review for Columbus Underground. 
  • Carrie, book by Lawrence D. Cohen, music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, after the novel by Stephen King, directed by Edward Carignan (Columbus Immersive Theater/Short North Stage) – Growing up in awe of Stephen King’s debut novel, setting the tone for his character-focused horror novels to come, and simultaneously steeped in the lore of this musical adaptation, this came with the deck stacked against it. But Carignan and company not only hit every mark, they crushed those expectations. I took my mom as my plus-one, the reason I read Stephen King in the first place, and she was as dazzled as I was. In my Columbus Underground review, I said, “Carignan, Williams, and the cast never lose sight of the deep sadness at the heart of Carrie and the lesson that we can all be monsters with less of a nudge than we want to admit. And they make that uncomfortable identification into a riotous, quick-witted, wild carnival ride of an entertainment. It’s an alternately sticky-hot and brilliantly cold look at humanity perfect for the depths of summer.” 
  • Various Artists, Columbus Black Theater Festival (Mine4God Productions, presented by Abbey Theatre of Dublin) – One of my favorite events of the Columbus calendar returned in a slightly streamlined version, and resulted in one of my favorite conversations, with artistic director Julie Whitney Scott (I didn’t capture it as well as I would have liked in the article, a reminder to keep trying harder). After writing a preview, I paid to see this on my own dime. And while I didn’t see it all – I didn’t quite allow myself enough time for the rich marathon – the two hours I was in the Abbey sent me back into the night reeling and bending the ear of Anne and whoever else would listen. 
  • Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Beth Josephsen (Actors Theatre of Columbus) – The classic Orpheus and Eurydice story was heavy in the zeitgeist this year and Sarah Ruhl has long been one of my favorite playwrights (her memoir Smile is on the bedstand as I write this). In the strongest Actors’ Theatre season in recent memory – I was also blown away by a Much Ado About Nothing, The African Company Presents Richard III, and a childhood favorite of mine The Secret Garden – this lovely, incisive meditation on memory kept rippling in my mind for weeks.  For Columbus Underground, I commented, “The modifications to the climax land with the thud of inevitability and surprised the audience enough at the performance I attended I heard gasps spring up around me. Josephsen and her cast balance the abstract and accessible elements of this modern take on one of the western world’s classic tragic love stories in a way that feels fresh, exciting, and powerful.” 
The Children, photo by Jerri Shafer
  • The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, directed by Michael Herring (Red Herring) – This locked-room drama, balancing intimate, personal apocalypses with a shadow growing over the world, featured blistering performances by Harold Yarborough, Nancy Skaggs, and Josie Merkel, and stood out in a season where I didn’t see anything weak from Red Herring. I said, “At every level, the characters face snowballing consequences of thoughtless choices, wounds never disinfected, from the contaminated water flowing in the power plant to old slights among each other, and have to deal with what they owe the next generation up to and including their use as sacrificial lambs,” for Columbus Underground. 
  • Let’s Hope You Feel Better by Samantha Oty (MadLab), directed by Sarah Vargo – MadLab came out on fire this year, taking some interesting chances. And this bitterly funny, whiplash-inducing sex farce was one of the best things I saw all year. Boasting killer – *rimshot* – performances by McLane Nagy and Tom Murdock at the center of a stellar cast, this crackled with reminders of the crucial energy MadLab brings to our theater scene. I commented in Columbus Underground: “The serious themes here – does a person have a right to die with dignity, what are the limits on the Hippocratic Oath’s “do no harm,” what do we owe the people in our lives – get a strong, thoughtful workout in Let’s Hope You Feel Better but nothing gets in the way of the play as a sharp, molten-hot, and sub-zero cold, often at the same time, entertainment.” 
  • Life Alert by Chris Sherman, directed by Michelle Batt (eMBer Womens Theater) – eMBer Womens Theater returned with a lovely series of shorts, Muses, and then this dazzling, delayed world premiere boasting a stellar cast with particularly strong performances by Melissa Bair and Josie Merkel. I said in Columbus Underground, “Sherman’s play is deeply concerned with who society considers disposable, whose work matters and whose doesn’t, and how demoralizing that gets. How deeply baked into so many of our consciouses those biases are, how they feel like pollution in the air we breathe and how a woman saying ‘Am I expected to sacrifice my life’ for others’ needs, putting it in the world out loud, is still a radical and necessary act. The ending gets a little more obvious and underlined than anything else but it’s a minor blip after two hours – with one intermission – that rang so true.” 
Mr. Burns, photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn with music by Michael Friedman, directed by Leda Hoffmann (CATCO) – More than anything else this year, this was the experience I missed so badly.  A play I’ve wanted to see since the Off-Broadway run but never made happen, and the first in-person taste of new CATCO artistic director Hoffmann’s work, this slapped me around in all the best ways. Crystallizing thoughts I’d had about storytelling, the strange era of the 20th century where we build art upon allusion on top of allusion, exploding the metaphor at the heart of all history and language. A tribute to the community of our actors, with standout performances by Scott Douglas Wilson, Jonathan Putnam, Acacia Duncan, and Shauna Davis leading a terrific cast. The production’s also – using the three spaces effectively – a reminder of the symbiosis of audience and performers. Anne and I spent the next two hours, right up until an excellent Chuck Prophet show you’ll be hearing about on my live music list, going over this in delighted detail. For Columbus Underground, I commented: “Like the best Simpsons episodes, Mr. Burns bulges with references and easter eggs but in the best sense: I felt a frisson of delight whenever I caught one – as I write this, the example jumping to my mind is Wilson delivering the play’s Sweeney Todd nod “Life has been kind to you” – but it didn’t bog me down looking for them. More, nothing felt tacked on or inessential. Everything adds to a piece I wish I could find the time to see again.” 
  • The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse, directed by Mark Mann (Red Herring) – Red Herring closed 2021 with a wild, ribald farce that reminded my how good their ear is for plays that have achieved some acclaim but might never have made it to Columbus otherwise. Fasthorse’s play made me laugh until my sides hurt, with a cast full of wild energy, especially Todd Covert and Elizabeth Harelik Falter. As I said in Columbus Underground, “Fasthorse’s play finds the perfect tenor for it, without getting too meta or cerebral, grounding the comedy in the ambitions and insecurities of a classic group of misfits, and it’s hard to imagine this getting a better production than Mann and Red Herring provide.” 
  • Hadestown by Anais Mitchell, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Broadway in Columbus) – I’ve been a fan of Anais Mitchell for many years, her song “Cosmic American” lighting the fire, and I loved the original Hadestown concept album when it came out. I hadn’t managed to catch this expansion on Broadway but my return to Broadway in Columbus with the touring production – featuring Audrey Ochoa who you’ll see on my playlists – reminded me how great, and how specific, that kind of big stage theater can be. How marvelous it is to see something in a packed house. So beautiful Anne and I had conversations about it with different people in different bars for the next two weeks, the only other play I kept wanting to dig into to that extent was Mr. Burns. For Columbus Underground: “Chavkin’s expansion of Mitchell’s song cycle takes one of the quintessential stories of both the transformative power of art and its limitations, its ability to change – and not change – the world and the hearts of both audience and creator, and imbues what could be a heavy slog, with all the fun of a carnival ride or a night at a wild party. As Marable sings while leading the cast in the curtain call, ‘We raise our cups to them.’” 
Hadestown, photo by T Charles Erickson

As always, thank you – to everyone who helped make these shows happen, who joined me for them, who talked with me about them after, and who reads this. Thank you so much.

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Best Of Playlist

Best of 2020 Playlist – Spaces

This encompasses freer-form work. I once set up two basic “things” I’m looking for in music, all credit to mentor and friend Rich Dansky for helping me get to this: either a shot of emotion, a story; or a landscape I want to come back to and explore again and again. These are some examples of the latter category I loved in the darkness of 2020.

Continue reading for notes on each piece, basically post-show cocktail talk because you’d never hear me playing 90% of these on a jukebox.

Where to buy what’s available on Bandcamp, courtesy of Hype Machine’s merch table: https://hypem.com/merch-table/1LcoH1YHihwDfw0XxlFvBD

Continue reading “Best of 2020 Playlist – Spaces”
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Best Of Playlist

Best of 2020 Playlist – Parting Gifts

Every year I try to put together something for the artists who’ve died – frequently the last Pink Elephant, or the between Christmas and New Year’s Party we’ve thrown the last couple years, has a wide swath of these tributes. But this year felt like such a tidal wave of death it demanded a separate playlist.

The tidal wave of death didn’t spare me – two dear friends from long ago I hadn’t talked to much in years – but while I acknowledged that, it’s impossible to not also acknowledge how lucky I’ve been and hurt for my friends who’ve taken it much closer to them. Coupled with the continued out-in-the-open murderous criminality of the police and the increased (in volume, unabashedness and obviousness) indifference and vacuity of the minority rule party, it’s hard not to despair.

I believe things are going to get better because I have to believe that. I want to try harder to be part of the better. And a tiny sliver of that is paying tribute to the people we’ve lost. The person who passed away is listed in parentheses after the song.

Continue reading for notes on each piece.

Where to find what’s available on Bandcamp thanks to Hype Machien’s Merch Table Feature: https://hypem.com/merch-table/79cIhJlv1WNJNgrmafPU7x

Continue reading “Best of 2020 Playlist – Parting Gifts”
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Best Of Playlist record reviews

2020 Best Of Playlist – Songs

I tried to break out this year’s playlist into a few zones to make them a little less unwieldy. What’s fun about this is it lets me make room for songs I played constantly, even if I didn’t love the whole record. Also putting these in different posts so it’s not too much to bite off.

Songs features tunes that lean a little more pop-oriented, usually with lyrics or dance beats. 

Spaces deals in compositions and improvisations that are a little more abstract and usually instrumental. 

Obviously, more than a few things could have fit on either.

Parting Gifts features people who’ve passed this year – heavier on jazz because it feels like COVID took a bigger bite out of living legends in that category, but obviously loss doesn’t miss any of us.

Here’s the first batch, mostly “songs.” For notes, basically, what I’d blather at you when I queued it up on a jukebox, continue reading below.

Merch Table Link courtesy Hype Machine: https://hypem.com/merch-table/3ENpeOuJ31RoF6c6CKkdjm

Continue reading “2020 Best Of Playlist – Songs”
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Best Of record reviews

Best of 2020 – Recorded Music

2020 Best Of – Recorded Music (And Playlist)

Music was the single biggest balm for me in this fucked-up time. I tried to take advantage of the additional time at home to dig into records with a fervor I’m sorry to admit I’d let slip away from me for a few years. 

I heard a couple hundred new records in full and it was hard winnowing down to 40ish, even harder getting to these 20 but these felt like they glowed together when I started looking at the track I kept. I’d be surprised if I’m not still taking these out and talking fondly in a few years.

I’ll also have a couple playlist posts last week of the month with songs from each of these and other songs I loved throughout the year.

  • Lilly Hiatt, Walking Proof
  • Don Bryant, You Make Me Feel
  • Jerry David DeCicca, The Unlikely Optimist and His Domestic Adventures
  • Kassa Overall, I Think I’m Good
  • Angel bat Dawid, LIVE
  • Todd May, Let’s Go Get Lost (couldn’t find a Bandcamp link, hit me up with one)
  • Nicole Atkins, Italian Ice
  • Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings E&F Sides
  • Jaime Wyatt, Neon Cross
  • Mourning [A] BLKstar, The Cycle
  • Ingrid Laubrock, Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt
  • Brandy Clark, Your Life is a Record (couldn’t find a bandcamp link)
  • Sa-Roc, The Sharecropper’s Daughter
  • Dave Douglas, Marching Music
  • Nubya Garcia, Source
  • Resistance Revival Chorus, This Joy
  • Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Goblin Alert
  • William Basinski, Lamentations
  • Busta Rhymes, ELE2: The Wrath of God (couldn’t find bandcamp link)
  • Joel Ross, Who Are You? (couldn’t find bandcamp link)
Categories
Best Of live music

Best of 2020 – Live Music, Sometimes Virtual

In this fucked-up year, I was lucky enough to see 35 things before it shut down in early March, in four cities. So I was trying to make good on my promise of excitement! And I still tried, even when it felt like just sitting around my house.

Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons, Sultan Room

Live:

  • Brett Burleson Quartet (01/04/2020, Dick’s Den) – It’s not always the first show of the year but Burleson’s annual birthday show is a burst of heat early in January that feels like a starting pistol and an invocation to call forth the spirit of a good damn year. This one in particular, at the end of a marathon also celebrating my friend Crystal’s birthday in the little suburb I grew up, and saying goodbye to college standby The Library with some of Anne’s best friends (including the owner Cricket who was selling it), the two sets I caught here were exactly what I needed. Seeing Burleson with a second guitar player is always a rare treat, and his duets with Josh Hindmarsh over a sizzling rhythm section were some of the most beautiful Jim Hall-style melodic guitar fireworks I could have hoped for.
  • Ryan Truesdell’s Tribute to Bob Brookmeyer (01/08/2020, Jazz Standard, NYC) – I wrote about this at some length earlier but this tribute/memorial birthday party to one of the great arrangers (and teachers, my friend Mike still talks about Brookmeyer with massive fondness) summed up the kind of warm feeling of being at an honest-to-god hang. A feeling I’ve gotten more at NYC jazz clubs than anywhere else in the world, and especially at the (RIP) Jazz Standard, a club that always tried harder than it had to and delivered in spades.
From left: Cochemea at Secret Planet Showcase, Drom; Makaya Mccraven at Webster Hall; Millenial Territory Orchestra featuring Catherine Russell at Le Poisson Rouge
  • Winter Jazzfest (01/10/2020 and 01/11/2020, Various Venues, NYC) – For over a decade, WJF has lived up to its promise of giving out of town bookers (here for APAP) and adventurous locals a concentrated look at one of the greatest, most vibrant scenes in the world. It’s expanded to bring in Chicago and London and Brussels and hit all the major genres without feeling like it’s pandering or diluting. Catherine Russell raising her eyebrow at Steven Bernstein on the Le Poisson Rouge stage. Philip Cohran’s sons in Hypnotic Brass Ensemble tearing SOBs apart. Two old friends hugging each other in front of me during Makaya McCraven’s set and the musicians on stage in awe of their bandmates. A marathon for poet Steve Dalachinsky (one of my inspirations, reminding me how often I’d see him around shows). Every time I go, about every other year, I want to go every year.
  • Secret Planet Showcase (01/11/2020, Drom, NYC) – A punky, world music party in one of my favorite clubs (co-thrown by another of my favorite bars, Barbes). I always leave this sore and sweaty. This year was exceptional, with Daptone horn meister Cochemea leading a frenzied band of almost all percussionists, Sunny Jain from Red Baraat’s rippling spaghetti western tuba funk, the lilting melodies and beguiling rhythm of Alba and The Lions. Magic front to back.
Rock Potluck, Ace of Cups
  • Sarah Hennies and Mara Baldwin (01/12/2020, National Sawdust, NYC) – Sarah Hennies, long one of my favorite percussionists and composers, had a hell of a year with a couple of her finest records and what felt like new performances every time I turned around. This collaboration with Mara Baldwin, a violin quartet led by Anna Roberts-Gevalt, with sculptures inspired by Shaker furniture transported me and made a deep impression in a long day of magic that just kept getting better (I’d already seen the Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith dance piece, the Rachel Harrison retro at the Whitney, and Simon Stone’s Medea with only a break for dinner at St Anselm, and that was all Sunday). 
  • Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons (01/12/2020, Sultan Room, NYC) – Pianist Kris Davis is a recurring presence on these lists. She gets better and better. This live production of one of my favorite records of last year was a kaleidoscopic explosion with one of the tightest, most surprising bands I’ve ever seen – including Val Jeanty on turntables and electronics, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, Tony Malaby on tenor – in my first trip to the tight, sweaty back room of this Middle Eastern restaurant. I got to end this trip on the highest of high notes, with grooves and crackling melody dancing around my head all the way through a nightcap and a fitful sleep before the next morning’s flight.
  • Final Rock Potluck (01/18/2020, Ace of Cups) – Bobby Miller’s given me a lot of my favorite moments in Columbus music – 4th and 4th Fest, Megacity Music Marathon, the last few years of Ace of Cups booking – but maybe his most enduring impact on this town we both love is (with Shane Sweeney in the first couple years) the importing and localizing of the great Dallas tradition as the Rock Potluck. One night only conglomerations of musicians making sparks fly unlike what we’d expect from their own bands. I was still fighting fatigue- and the kind of wet, shitty day January specializes in –  but Anne and I dragged ourselves down for the last few sets of this…and Oh My God. There was so much burbling joy in this room. Bob Starker took a sax solo behind Marcy Mays on a take on the Fleetwood Mac-via-Judas Priest chestnut “The Green Manalishi,” one of the women from Snarls launching into Blink 182’s “All The Small Things” and watching new songs come out of almost thin air. We all left with some of the best memories of this tradition that will be sorely missed.
Raphael Saadiq, Old Forester’s Parishtown Hall
  • Chuck Prophet (01/28/2020, Natalie’s Grandview) – Any of us who love touring music have at least a couple of stories of artists who got pushed back more than once. Alec Wightman booked Prophet’s full band, The Mission Express, in the hopes we’d get our shit together and had to cancel twice as COVID raged. But we were lucky to get the rare solo acoustic version. Classics like “You Could Make a Doubter Out of Jesus” and “Would You Love Me”, newer songs like “High as Johnny Thunders” and “Bad Year For Rock and Roll” co-existed in a set that felt like a journey. And the memory that stuck most with me is the first time I heard the song that most deeply imprinted this year for me, off Prophet’s new record, still a few months out, “Willie and Nill.” A perfect example of the kind of empathic, hard luck stories Prophet writes better than anyone, “Nilli said, ‘I had a body once, Willie you have no idea. I could make a grown man bark all night – anytime, anywhere.’ Willie said, ‘I had a lion’s mane. Now I sing at the top of my lungs till the neighbors get their broomsticks out and the cops all sing along.’”
  • Physical Boys (02/15/2020, Kaiju, Louisville) – The centerpiece of this Valentine’s Day weekend trip to Louisville – that had me miss the Theatre roundtable awards back home – didn’t disappoint but there’s a special joy getting to see something completely new. One of my favorite music rooms, Kaiju, hosted a newish Louisville band Physical Boys who played a beautiful, intoxicating mix of Stiff Records’ sharp jangle and Afghan Whigs operatic sleaze.
  • Raphael Saadiq with Jamila Woods (02/17/2020, Old Forester’s Parishtown Hall, Louisville) – Raphael Saadiq followed his darkest, most personal album with a stripped-down, muscular tour that was unlike any other time I’d ever seen him. Great venue, killer sightlines, fantastic sound. My only regret was missing most of the excellent (from what I caught) Jamila Woods set.
Bria Skonberg and Byron Stripling with Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Southern Theater
  • Bearthoven (02/18/2020, Short North Stage) – The Johnstone Fund has brought more new music (contemporary classical, whatever you want to call it) in the last few years than any earlier time I remember, filling a gap I sorely missed in our musical scene. This return visit from NYC trio – piano, bass, drums – Bearthoven paired a phenomenal new Sarah Hennies (see above) composition with the bright propulsion of a Michael Gordon premiere.
  • Radioactivity with Vacation and Good Shade (02/19/2020, Ace of Cups) – It had been too long since I caught Radioactivity’s spiky brand of angular Texas punk and this three-band bill reaffirmed my faith in catchy, sweaty rock and roll.
  • Columbus Jazz Orchestra featuring Bria Skonberg (02/23/2020, Southern Theater) – I don’t keep up with the CJO as much as I should but this unseasonably sunny Sunday matinee was a shot of pure light in my veins with the group having a ball alongside guest singer and trumpeter Skonberg on great rep including Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” and Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me.”
From left: Amy Lavere, Will Sexton (both at Natalie’s), Reigning Sound (Beachland Ballroom)
  • Reigning Sound with Venus Flytraps, Bloodshot Bill, and Alarm Clocks (03/06/2020, Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland) – The last trip out of town for some culture before this all went south (well, “as,” the weekend we were up there the first confirmed Ohio cases of COVID were diagnosed in Cleveland. A reunion tour of the original Reigning Sound lineup celebrating both my favorite rock club in the country and one of my favorite record labels, Norton, was everything I want in rock and roll.
  • Amy Lavere and Will Sexton (03/10/2020, Natalie’s Coal-Fired Pizza) – The last local show before everything went to hell  – one of my favorite songwriters, Lavere, backed by her longtime partner (whose songs are coming into their own on his terrific new record this year). Their tour was shortly canceled, but I was thankful for this last glimpse before locking down.

Online:

It was never like being in a room with sweaty strangers, but the proliferation of livestreams and creative pivoting made me feel a little more connected and a little less alone. Favorites of the couple hundred shows I checked in with.

For the first few months of lockdown, Living Music With Nadia Sirota was a balm. One of my favorite violists and a key locus in the new music scene hosted a delightful show once or twice a week, bringing three or more of her pals together – from Claire Chase to Missy Mazzoli, Shilpa Ray to Nathalie Joachim, Judd Greenstein to Ted Hearne – for a taste of what they were doing and a taste of camaraderie I needed even from a remove.

Goner Records simultaneously made me miss Memphis more than ever but gave me a dose of their freewheeling spirit and impeccable taste. Their online translation of Gonerfest was the best streaming version of a festival this year, simultaneously recognizing the international spirit that makes the festival so successful and making us feel like we’re surrounded by our best friends.

Another dose of Memphis came from a weekly shot of John Paul Keith, turning the same skills he uses to keep audiences spellbound as a fine singer, a great guitarist and songwriter, and a charming raconteur toward the camera instead of a barroom. Keith’s jukebox-like memory for songs and artists leads him through delightful anecdotes and a real friendship with people logging in week after week. There was more than one exhausting Monday where hearing JPK say “Hey, Lydia,” brightened me right up – and I don’t even know Lydia.

The north flip-side of those great JPK shows came with Jesse Malin’s Fine Art of Self Distancing, alternately playing solo and his band, from his bars Berlin and Bowery Electric. Malin also ran – with Diane Gentile and others – translations of his fun tribute shows (to Johnny Thunders and The Cramps). Beyond his solid songs, just like Sirota and Keith, he understood and demonstrated what we needed most was fellowship.

Locally, Natalie’s led the way in outdoor shows and now streams, keeping up with their high standards for sound and sight. One of my favorite rooms in town that I dearly hope makes it through this. Ace of Cups got a late start, but I felt very safe on their patio with the precautions they’ve taken and the first of their streams I caught sounded great. 

Jazz clubs in New York have already noted one fallen (Jazz Standard) and are pivoting with great alacrity. Small’s Live and Jazz Gallery are both crushing it with regular, killing performances and Jazz Gallery adds conversations, happy hours, and dance parties. The legendary Village Vanguard is also putting out great sounding, great looking shows by the kind of giants who’d normally be playing to packed houses.

There are still more great performances than I can fit in and more to love than I have time for. I just hope most of these rooms I love make it to the other side and some assistance is forthcoming.

Categories
Best Of theatre

Best of 2020 – Theatre/Opera/Dance

“Are you even here? You’re a relic of a dying empire. The ghost of a glorious future that never came.” 

-Sarah Gancher, Russian Troll Farm

Salt given me at Under The Radar’s Salt

Live:

I was lucky to see about 15 shows – almost all outstanding – before doors started slamming shut. These 8 grabbed me hard and wouldn’t let go. Their memories are still burned into my brain this many months later. Photos are taken from press either given directly to me or on the company/creator’s official website.

  • Salt by Selina Thompson, directed by Dawn Walton (01/11/2020 – Public Theatre, Under the Radar, NYC) – Sometimes – and this might be my favorite part of seeing theatre and especially my favorite part of Under the Radar, I see work by a playwright who’s new to me and the voice alone burns a layer of skin off me and makes me feel both more and differently. Selina Thompson’s personal-historical-poetic dive into the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Salt, masterfully acted by Rochelle Rose, did that to me this year. I walked out babbling and as hungry for more of her work as any writing of the last decade.
  • Body Comes Apart by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith (01/12/2020 – New York Live Arts, NYC) – This vivisection of expectations, trauma, and freedom balanced an unsparing dedication to truth with a supernova love for the world. Body Comes Apart was a physical hour of dance, and acting was a whirlwind from which I couldn’t look away. It avoided platitudes and simplification but burned with a clarity that made its unanswered questions cut even deeper. I could have seen this three times and still tried to grasp it. 
  • Medea by Simon Stone after Euripides, directed by Simon Stone (01/12/2020 – BAM, NYC) – I’m a sucker for the Greeks and I’d never seen Bobby Cannavale on stage. Something felt very fitting about seeing Stone’s ferocious, knives-out take on Euripides here in the same theatre I saw my favorite Hedda Gabler. The adaptations to the play were interesting, aided by vibrant video. My brain pinballed between the remarkable acting – Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Dylan Baker – and the wrenching image of ash falling on that pristine white stage, both stuck with me well after the next day’s flight home.
The Motherfucker With the Hat, photo by Nick Lingnofski
  • Or by Liz Duffy Adams, directed by Rowan Winterwood (01/17/2020 – Actors Theatre) – Actors Theatre’s relationship with MadLab for smaller-scale indoor plays continued to bear fruit this year, even as they had to cancel what looked like an exciting outdoor season. Or was a delightful drawing room sex romp around the fascinating historical character Aphra Behn (played brilliantly by Michelle Weiser) with crackling support from Andy Woodmansee and McLane Nagy as the other legs of the triangle. Winterwood’s sizzling direction made this a hot, funny winter diversion when I needed it most.
  • The Motherfucker With the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Chari Arespacochaga (01/23/2020 – Short North Stage) – Short North Stage doesn’t always get enough credit for their dark, low-to-the-ground plays in the Green Room. Their Motherfucker With the Hat was another triumph in that lane. Arespacochaga directed it with the right mix of Greek tragedy and cage match, a stellar cast orbited around a volcanic Raphael Ellenberg.
  • The Bridge Called My Ass by Miguel Gutierrez (01/25/2020 – presented by the Wexner Center) – Gutierrez’s bilingual piece mixed puns, everyday action, and flights of fancy into something I’d never seen before. I didn’t always understand it but I was always enraptured.
The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes, photo by Jeff Busby
  • A Doll’s House Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, directed by Michael Garrett Herring (01/30/2020 – Red Herring Theater) – There have been a few times I’ve seen a Columbus production I felt improved on New York, and this was the most recent example. Herring stripped away the ba-dum-bum sitcom rhythm that sank the Broadway version of this for me the night I saw it and made Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen glow like a bruise. All stellar performances, especially Sonda Staley’s for-the-ages take on Nora.
  • The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes by Back to Back Theater (02/13/2020 – presented by the Wexner Center) – One of my favorite previews I’ve ever written. I was so glad I held off, skipping this at Under The Radar so I could go into it cold when it played my town. A more complicated bit of metatheatre than the first work of theirs I loved, Ganesh Vs The Third Reich, but brillant and arresting. A look at how much “acting” we all do in making our voices heard and how much marginalized people have to work past just to get their voices heard, to not be seen as a monolithic interest. If this was the last live performance I saw, I went out high.

Online:

We Need Your Listening, screenshot from stream and edited

Theatre feels like a circuit between the stage and the audience, even more than music, to me. But for me, this immediate, physical art reaped the greatest rewards as companies tried to find ways to make work that still felt like theater while wholly embracing the new media. I deeply hope many of us can find ways to continue to make things accessible after we can all gather in a room again. 

It would be a true shame for these opportunities for people with disabilities or other reasons not to be part of the physical exchange of energy, to finally get a wider range of options and then have them taken away.

Things that moved and inspired me with virtual theatre:

Zoom readings run by local stalwarts Krista Lively Stauffer and Tim Browning with their Virtual Theatre Project gave me the chance to catch Douglas Whaley’s phenomenal The Turkey Men (I missed its premiere run when I was in Italy last year), revisit the terrific Red Herring two-hander Thicker Than Water, and dip into remarkable work from our astounding pool of talent.

Established companies pivoted with aplomb and grace: 

Abbey Theatre’s The Sissy Chronicles, photo provided by Joe Bishara
  • Short North Stage revisited shows they’d loved and couldn’t find space for in their schedule previously like the moving early Andrew Lippa John & Jen and the delightfully raunchy Off-Broadway hit by Howard Crabtree and Mark Waldrop When Pigs Fly. They also used their connections to get new material for these revivals while also building new work like Quarantine With the Clauses. 
  • New CATCO Artistic Director Leda Hoffmann met the challenge of her first season in town coinciding with the pandemic and excelled with marvelous Idris Goodwin shorts, Plays For an Antiracist Tomorrow, bringing in legacy CATCO artists as well as fresh blood, then acclaimed Julienna Gonzalez adapted her Detroit Christmas Carol into a Columbus version under Hoffmann’s direction.
  • Joe Bishara came into his own with Dublin’s Abbey Theatre giving life to exciting pieces from artists like Mark Schwamberger and Nikki Davis.
  • Red Herring provided astounding social dramas and made steps toward a hybrid experience.

The plethora of archival work was an embarrassment of riches, from American Conservatory Theatre’s take on Lydia Diamond’s Toni Stone to the Goodman’s hilarious and heartbreaking Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls or The African Mean Girls Play.

The Elaborate Entry of Chad Deity, screenshot taken from stream and edited

The New Group, Play-Per-View, and more presented riveting reunion readings, giving new life to great plays from past seasons. I especially loved Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian, Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entry of Chad Deity, and Suzan-Lori Parks’ Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.

I was in awe of groups that created new work from tools not intended for this purpose. Magic came from relatively straightforward narrative work like Mona Mansour’s The Beginning Days of True Jubilation, Theatre of War’s Antigone in Ferguson, and Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm. to more ephemeral work like We Need Your Listening by Velani Dibba, Ilana Khanin, Elizagrace Madrone, Stephen Charles Smith, Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane’s Come Together Revisited, and Theatre Mitu’s </remnant>.

Antigone in Ferguson, screenshot taken from stream and edited

Even in the dark times, there was still joy if you looked, and I am as grateful as ever people took on these burdens to bring it to us.

Categories
Best Of visual art

2020 Best Of – Visual Art

Vija Celmins, Met Breuer

This year was a reminder not to wait to do things – tell people you care about them, start on that project, go to that exhibit. With the other three categories I’ve used on these memory exercises for the last 20ish years, there were digital workarounds that gave me a taste of what I was missing, tiding me over. Visual Art didn’t work that way for me.

I sampled, and I’m thrilled so many galleries and museums transitioned to or enhanced their existing online presence, with exciting work from David Zwirner, the Frieze fair, all manner of things in Europe. Still, I had a hard time connecting with it. It was like flipping through Artforum to me, good to know what’s going on that I can’t see, but I never felt like I experienced the pieces.

The impetus of the Available Light motto “don’t wait” came to light. When things shut down, I was glad in ways I can barely articulate that I spent the time and money on a New York trip for APAP and trips to Cleveland and Louisville (neither of which were primarily for visual art but I worked some in) all before March. At the same time, I hesitated a month for the new Wexner exhibits, and the window slammed shut when I wasn’t expecting (and they were things I desperately wanted to see). So, as usual, whenever things open again, don’t wait. Find what you’re interested in and lunge at it.

Everything is in Columbus unless otherwise noted. Photos were taken by me unless otherwise noted.

Selections from Art After Stonewall, Columbus Museum of Art
  • Various Artists, Art After Stonewall (Columbus Museum of Art) – This tracing of the aftershocks of the Stonewall Riot, through early Gay Liberation and the darkest, most enveloping days of the AIDS crisis was a monumental undertaking and the finest use yet of the CMA’s new wing. For me, one of the highlights was the prominent placement of Columbus’s role in the gay art movements being documented here, including a lump-in-my-throat wall of Corbett Reynolds, his busts, and ephemera from his nightclub and his Red parties.
  • Vija Celmins, To Fix The Image in Memory (Met Breuer, NYC) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rental and repurposing of the previous Whitney Museum never quite found its footing but presented some spectacular exhibitions. Maybe my favorite was the last time I’ll ever get to visit – they announced in June the satellite building will not reopen after lockdown – this jaw-dropping retrospective of Vija Celmins. To Fix The Image in Memory took us through luminous renderings of household objects, as though lit from within, to intricate studies of the night sky. Whispered words of apocalypse and hymns to understanding, reminding me again and again of Mary Oliver’s maxim that “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
  • Expanded Museum of Modern Art (NYC)- I’m always skeptical when something I love – even when it has problems I’ve grumblingly come to live with – changes. But my heart sang when that skepticism burned off scant minutes after walking into the reconfigured MoMA. The flow between the collection crackles and sparks conversation in ways it seemed to restrict or calcify before. The various rooms assembled by artists sizzled with panopticon energy (on my visit I especially loved the Amy Sillman). I want to get back to my favorite city for at least 100 reasons but the biggest one is to luxuriate in the new MoMA some more. 
Rachel Feinstein, Jewish Museum
  • LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze (Wexner Center for the Arts) – LaToya Ruby Frazier is a shining, fascinating example of how an artist can pay witness, how empathy and a willingness to take a community seriously, always pays off. This look at the Lordstown, Ohio, GM plant and its workers dazzled me. I was touched watching some of the workers documented here walking through the exhibit and thought about how art institutions can serve multiple functions at the same time.
  • Margaret Kilgallen, that’s where the beauty is (MOCA, Cleveland) – My last trip to another city before lockdown found Cleveland as enriching as ever – you’ll also see it on the Live Music list – and this Kilgallen retro exploded her celebration of niche scenes and an endangered love of what’s hand-crafted and unique. A wild party and a thoughtful call to introspection.
  • Rachel Feinstein, Maiden Mother Crone (Jewish Museum, NYC) – This Feinstein survey dug deep into myth, desire, and narrative in ways that repelled easy answers and snap judgments. Huge sculptures and sparkling installations, bouncing their energy off each other and absorbing what the observes walking through the Jewish Museum had to give, then throwing it back at us, reshaped and a little more alive.
Rashid Johnson, Hauser & Wirth
  • Rashid Johnson, The Hikers (Hauser & Wirth, NYC) – Hauser & Wirth rarely disappoints me – even more so with their excellent new cafe and bookshop – and when I entered on a sunny January day for the (very good) Mike Kelley pieces, I was knocked sideways by my first real exposure to Rashid Johnson. These massive tile mosaics and collages, which reminded me a little of Jack Whitten, captured a dread and anxiety in a way I found moving but also somehow uplifting. 
  • Felix Valloton, The Painter of Disquiet (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC) – Valloton struck me as a cross between Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec and it was fitting seeing this look at his work in the same room where I really got Bonnard for the first time. Rich, narrative work, unsparing in its judgment of its characters and their desires but enraptured by them at the same time. I spent most of my time at Bemelmans after walking through this writing about it and trying to make sense of how deeply it spoke to me.
  • Burt Hurley, Loose Nuts: Burt Hurley’s West End Story (Speed Museum, Louisville) – I’m an incredible sucker for genre work before the genre is supposed to have existed. Hurley’s satire of urban Louisville assumed later comic book styles we take for granted and found its own solution to those same storytelling problems in ways I’ve never seen before.
Rachel Harrison, Whitney Museum
  • Rachel Harrison, Life Hack (Whitney, NYC) – I’m ashamed to admit I knew very little of Harrison’s work when I walked into the Whitney trying to squeeze the most into this last day of the trip but these vibrant, brutal surreal pop explosions shook me and reverberated against everything else I saw that Sunday (it makes appearances on both the theatre and music lists).
  • Various Artists, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art (Jewish Museum, NYC) – No exaggeration: I cried four or five times doing this. This kind of tracing movements through one or more focal points is a unique speciality of the Jewish museum and this look at how a collector and gallerist can be a focal point in making people sit up and care and a linchpin of a community that didn’t really exist until she stood up and made it exist was a reminder I deeply needed at the moment. And a reminder I always need.
  • Sadie Benning, Pain Thing (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Sadie Benning’s previous exhibit at the Wex is one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen in 25 years of regular patronage and these tiny images, implying film at one minute and suggesting the twists of a kaleidoscope, resisting any simplisticy reduction, beguiled and baffled me. I wished I could have seen this another dozen times.
Selections from The Eastside Canon: Smoky Brown and Friends, Streetlight Guild
  • Various Artists, Songs in the Dark (Tanya Bonakdar, NYC) – Tanya Bonakdar is a gallery I make a point to hit every trip if something’s up and this group show reaffirmed everything I love about its stable of artists and its curatorial practice. A look at the current fraught moment and its complicating factors without – in accordance with Brecht who it references in the title – ever making the viewer despair. Work by artists I already loved like Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Olafur Eliasson bumped up against new to me art by Hannah Starkey and Mehschach Gaba.
  • Jessica Segall, 100 Years, All New People (SPACES, Cleveland) – This look at immigration, composed of elements Segall collected at the borders, was a tomb and a monuument to human ingenuity, our ability to rise above anytthing that would hold us down or keep us still, but also an installation drenched in stillness and the terrible price these systems would exact from us.
  • Smoky Brown and Friends, The Eastside Canon (Streetlight Guild) – Streetlight Guild, under the guidance of Scott Woods, has been the most exciting single Columbus art development in the last few years. The gallery exhibits are always worthwhile but this was special. One of the great guiding lights of local art, Smoky Brown, given a museum-quality show of work that was new even to someone like me who grew up here and thought I’d seen a lot of his work. Coupled with a selection of work from his collection. A lesson in valuing what’s around you and appreciating your friends and community.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Wexner Center

Categories
Best Of theatre

Central Ohio Theatre Critics Circle Citations

I was out of town in Louisville so unable to present but my fellow critics – Paul Batterson from Broadwayworld, Margaret Quamme and Michael Grossberg from the Columbus Dispatch, and Jay Weitz from Columbus Jewish News – and I agreed on two citations for 2019 work and a Roy Bowen Lifetime Achievement Award. Press release below:

The Central Ohio Theatre Critics Circle, representing critics who write in print and online for area publications, presented its 26th annual citations Sunday Feb. 16 at the Northland Performing Arts Center, as part of the Central Ohio Theatre Roundtable’s 20th annual Theater Awards Night.

Rather than focusing on competitive annual “best” categories, the circle annually honors local individuals or groups whose work “promotes the higher values of theater” or “expands the possibilities of theater.” Reflecting excellence in 2019, the critics circle approved three citations unanimously:

Short North Stage and Columbus Children’s Theatre – West Side Story

To Short North Stage and Columbus Children’s Theatre, for their fruitful first collaboration in 2019 on “West Side Story,” which intensified the heartbreaking tragedy with a greater focus on the reckless impulses and idealistic hopes of youth, reinforced by the youth-oriented casting of the rival street gangs.

Red Herring Theatre Company – Waiting to Be Invited

To Red Herring Theatre Company, which has moved in 2020 to a new performing space, for taking risks and offering provocative works in its third and final year at the Franklinton Playhouse with an ambitious 10 productions of Broadway, off-Broadway and locally written works, including the impressive area premiere of the Tony-winning play “The Humans.” 

A Roy Bowen Award for Lifetime Achievement to T.J. Gerckens, chair and Producing Artistic Director of Otterbein University’s theater and dance department, whose burnished lighting helped energize Otterbein’s fall revival of “Chicago,” for decades of outstanding work as an acclaimed lighting designer and local theater leader, including 17 years in production and executive management at CATCO; 26 years on the design team of the Tony-winning theater/opera director Mary Zimmerman; and for acclaimed and/or award-winning work on Broadway, at the Metropolitan  Opera, in Australia, China and Europe.

Categories
Best Of visual art

Best of 2019 – Visual Art

Henry Taylor, Venice Biennale

“If you notice anything,
It leads you to notice
more
and more.”
– Mary Oliver, “The Moths”

In this year – by turns more magnificent than I could hope and immeasurably shitty – visual art continued to be a balm, a lifeline, and a reminder to wake up and try harder. I was lucky enough to catch 75 exhibits over 9 cities in two countries. I left this one ranked – unlike the two performance lists which I put in (mostly) chronological order – we’ll see if I stay comfortable with that.

Everything below is in Columbus unless otherwise noted. All photos have been taken by me for reference for discussion with no claim on the original work, unless otherwise noted.

Natalia Goncharova, Palazzo Strozzi
  1. Various Artists, 2019 Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times (various locations, Venice) – It’s hard to compete with new – my memories of the first Whitney Biennial I was lucky enough to visit are stronger than my memories of this year’s (for more reasons than one) – so it’s not surprising I was so dazzled by my first Venice Biennale. That said, my eyes almost popped out of my head, from the main exhibit curated by Ralph Rugoff with the best overview of artists grappling with the current shifting, chaotic moment, to the various national pavilions haunting and inspiring, to the satellite exhibitions (a storefront dedicated to Sierra Leone knocked me over), this took me back to the best parts of that childlike state where everything’s new and I’m hungry for all of it.
  2. Barbara Hammer, In This Body (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Barbara Hammer’s work has always fascinated me and the Wex – led by its curator, Film/Video Studio Program Curator Jennifer Lange – outdid themselves with this exhibit put together up to Hammer’s death this year. The kind of grappling with mortality that doesn’t come easy, a fusing of rigor with the sensuality her work reminded us can never been separated from politics and society. I spent hours in the main installation, walking through X-Ray negatives bathed in a haunting film, I even went the day after my stepsister’s funeral, and it comforted and challenged me every time.
  3. Natalia Goncharova, Natalia Goncharova (Palazzo Strozzi, Florence) – This was a happy surprise for my first trip to Florence and a source of immense chagrin that the only thing I know of Goncharova previously was her costumes for Dhagliev. A cornucopia of classic high modernism practiced at a level almost no one could match. Masterpieces in dialogue with all the better known names of her time – Picasso, Chagall – while never feeling like she was trying on techniques. A time that felt like the end of the world mapped out and sung in a voice I couldn’t forget.
Joan Mitchell, David Zwirner
  1. Suzanne Lacy, We Are Here (SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco) – Suzanne Lacy’s a brilliant example of an artist who works directly with society, never content to only let her work be uplifting. This retrospective, spread across downtown San Francisco’s two main institutions, reminded me how vital her work still is and how inspiring her mission).
  2. Joan Mitchell, I Carry My Landscapes Around With Me (David Zwirner, NYC) – Joan Mitchell’s been one of my favorite painters since I first saw her work; some days, she’s easily my favorite of the Abstract Expressionists. This retrospective of her large-scale paintings at David Zwirner was earth-shattering for me; taking that fusion of abstraction and landscape many of us associate with Kandinsky and exploding it into other worlds. A crystallized moment of the 20th century and a reverberation through the foreseeable future.
  3. Jason Moran, Jason Moran (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Moran’s one of my heroes since I first heard Black Stars when I was in college. His appearance with the Bandwagon is one of my all-time top five concert experiences at the Wexner Center. This look at his – often collaborative – visual art was stunning. The detail-rich replicas of key spots from jazz history loom in the middle, heavy with history as tombs but also vibrating to be reactivated. His video work with Carrie Mae Weems and Stan Douglas hinted at secret histories. I had some issues with the selection of the live performance aspects – would have liked more things like the opening Ogun Meji – but I kept visiting and unpacking this.
Jason Moran, Wexner Center
  1. Various Artists, Everything is Rhythm: Mid-Century Music and Art (Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo) – 40s-60s contemporary art and music are obsessions of mine, still, and this multimedia presentation in the always excellent Toledo Museum was the best, most approachable tying-together of those threads I’ve ever seen.
  2. Lorna Simpson, Darkening (Hauser and Wirth, NYC) – I knew Lorna Simpson’s photography work a little but this selection of layered, gripping paintings felt revelatory. The light growing dim so you have to lean in and then the cold opens you up.
  3. Various Artists, Detroit Collects: Selections of African American Art from Private Collections (Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit) – Private collectors in museum contexts are problematic but everything about this warmed me up, members of Detroit’s black community talking about collecting black art and fascinating examples of what draws them to it and keeps them going. A deep dive into the best parts of collection and curation – paying tribute, keeping voices alive, giving you something to pass onto your children.
Anselm Kiefer, German Abstraction After 1950, SFMOMA
  1. Various Artists, Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything (Jewish Museum, NYC) – Various artists taking on Leonard Cohen, one of the most imagistic lyricists of the 20th century made this lifelong Cohen fan’s heart grow three sizes. The variety of work, from an amateur men’s choir doing “I’m Your Man” in multichannel video to an organ that played a word with each key to an installation where “Famous Blue Raincoat” synchronizes with a flood of iconography, there was so much to love here.
  2. Various Artists, Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection (Guggenheim, NYC) – Celebrating an anniversary, the Guggenheim turned to artists to contextualize the parts of the massive modern art collection and it’s the best use of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building and the best use of a giant collection of holdings I’ve seen in years.
  3. Various Artists, German Abstraction After 1950 (SFMOMA, San Francisco) – This era – Kiefer, Richter, et al – is a personal favorite of mine and this was an embarassment of riches I couldn’t believe I was seeing all in one place.
Nancy Spero, MoMA PS1
  1. Peter Hujar, The Speed of Life (Wexner Center for the Arts) – I loved the John Waters piece that ran in parallel with Hujar, and I loved seeing the two dialogue with one another but the Hujar wrecked me every damn time. A reminder how potent portraiture can be in letting us see and a reminder to be grateful for our networks and the love around all of us.
  2. Simone Fattal, Works and Days (MoMA PS1, NYC) – An artist I knew nothing about before this trip to PS1 knocked me sidewise. Sculptures and watercolors working through the consequences of archaeology and imperialism, knowledge and the stories we tell ourselves. I needed far more hours than I had to properly appreciate this but it’s still with me.
  3. Walid Raad, Walid Raad (Paula Cooper, NYC) – Walid Raad’s alternate history work reminds us all how science fiction tropes can illuminate real world pain and challenge. His puzzles dare you to tease out the facts from the greater truth and complicate your own feelings as you work through them.
  4. Nancy Spero, Paper Mirror (MoMA PS1, NYC) – Spero’s work benefited from the volume and the jumble of this perfect PS1 show, words coming at the viewer like daggers but so many you can’t focus on any one, you have to give into the flood.
Huma Bhabha, Gagosian Rome
  1. Gordon Parks, The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland) – Gordon Parks’ social realist photography is always a wake up call to being alive and this tight, well-curated collection in Cleveland was exactly what I needed in a summer of too much feeling sorry for myself.
  2. Sondra Perry, A Terrible Thing (MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland) – Perry’s video work dug deep into infrastructure and invisible labor in a biting, potent critique that sung.
  3. Various Artists, arms ache avid aeon (CCAD’s Beeler Gallery) – Jo-ey Tang’s work with the Beeler Gallery is coming into its own; I love his specialty of slow exhibitions that evolve over periods of time and this look back on the fierce pussy collective, capped by a symposium that was the most energized I felt all year, was a dazzling, meditative explosion.
  4. Huma Bhabha, The Company (Gagosian, Rome) – In a trip spent gorging ourselves on old masters and antiquity, Bhabha’s sardonic looks at the modern age was the perfect palate cleanser.