I don’t like blackouts.
Most often, they’re unnecessary, time-consuming, and not actually black. They’re usually bluish, and feature the moving about of set pieces in less than theatrical ways for long enough that I can come up with a number of much more compelling ways the director might have transitioned from one scene to the next. In my own work as a playwright, I’ll allow myself one blackout per ninety minutes, and it better come at a crucial moment: the death of a major character, or a significant shift in plot or theme.
There is a moment n Theatre 167’s new show You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase when the stage goes well and truly dark. And when the lights come up again, the audience is treated to one of the most delightful surprises I have ever experienced in a theater.
It’s just one of many magical moments in the play directed by Ari Laura Kreith and written by Mando Alvarado, Jenny Lyn Bader, Barbara Cassidy, Les Hunter, Joy Tomasko, Gary Winter and Stefanie Zadravec. The playwrights’ pieces are inspired by locally told folktales originating from around the world and intertwined in a single play with overlapping storylines. Very cool.
"If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors." - Bertholt Brecht
You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase (or YANTOOTS) takes place in the enchanted land of Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC. It is in many ways an old fashioned fairy tale, even as it makes mention of the most contemporary of objects and issues, including the very building in which the show is performed. Magic takes public transportation. It arrives in suitcases, sits on park benches, and dwells quite literally in cell phones. Early on, there’s a speech by an electronics store owner (Rajesh Bose) who gives a hilariously over-the-top hard sell of a mobile device. His phones will actually transport you to any nation on earth and enable you to converse in its native tongue. To a cynical New Yorker, it seems at first a send-up of storefront shysters hawking overpriced, sub-par products with outrageous claims. It’s not.
YANTOOTS is creatively mounted in the cafeteria of PS 69. Being assembled in the lunchroom of an elementary school put me and my friends in a playful mood (even if the tiny urinals in the restroom made us feel a little funny). The ripped storybook pages and twinkling lights of the set evoke a decidedly urban fairyland backing into ‘wings’ of upended cafeteria tables. Staging a devised piece in this space speaks to the mission of Theatre 167 to create and promote art for and about the local community. The audience surrounds the action of the play, and actors enter through the impromptu ‘house’ created by sectioned seating. The whole set-up seems microcosmic of the neighborhood around it.
The play is a wild pastiche of styles, sometimes naturalistic, in other moments quite avant-garde. Subtly nuanced performances give over to charmingly garish puppetry. Many scenes combine simple contemporary vernacular with heightened, even poetic dialogue. The fourth wall comes and goes. Somehow, it’s all done with great precision, ease, and speed. The whole thing is remarkably dynamic. I don’t think there’s a moment of stillness in either act.
What makes it all work is a group of highly skilled and absolutely committed actors who seem to really love what they’re doing. Saying of a show that it ‘has heart’ is often code for ‘good-try-A-for-effort’. But in this case, the company’s skill and talent is matched only by it’s passion for the material. Every member of the cast seems completely given to creating something magical and meaningful. They also happen to have some real chops. Don’t think for a second that all the great acting happens in Manhattan. (Aside from blackouts, the other thing I find boring onstage is watching people talk on the phone. But John P. Keller made a truly moving moment of it.)
If you go see YANTOOTS, give yourself enough time to have dinner first. There’s all manner of great food in Jackson Heights. We went with Indian at a neighborhood classic, The Jackson Diner. Don’t let the name fool you, they do a delicious and authentic curry. (At 6:30 there was plenty of room but by the time we left for the show, the place was nearly packed.) I have a thing for Indian sweets so I stopped off at a shop for burfi and patisa and chamchams. Pink coconut chamchams are the perfect intermission snack for this show.
It didn’t occur to me until the train ride home that the one thing you don’t really see depicted on the multicultural platform that is Theatre 167’s stage is racial tension. Yes there are villains in YANTOOTS (Ross DeGraw’s Hector is pretty vile) but racism doesn’t seem to factor into their agendas. Characters of every color, from every continent - yes, even Antarctica - seem to get along just fine here. Of course, it is a fairy tale…
Or is it? The audience at last night’s show was the most diverse crowd I have ever seen at a play. Not a huge crowd, but a very happily mixed one. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, old, young. From where I was seated, I could see two families enjoying the show together. One family was Caucasian, the other Indian, and both included kids no older than eight. All were delighted by a work of art that is decidedly optimistic, refreshingly so in our cynical times.
“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Bertholt Brecht
Brecht felt that artists must pay close attention to the possibilities their work promises. He said that the greatest thing that theatre could do was to provide the pleasure of knowing the world could be remade. While the title of Theatre 167’s latest play refers to a mysterious note discovered in a lost valise, ‘You are now the owner of this suitcase’ is actually a very loaded statement. To me, it’s a reminder that we have a responsibility, as both artists and citizens, to shape the world in which we live. Putting something onstage conjures up a potential reality. Audiences may even replicate in the real world what the encounter in art. In YANTOOTS, a Roumanian bruja (it is Jackson Heights) played by Kim Carlson advises recent Equadorian émigré Patricia Becker to take seriously her charge of a lost piece of luggage. To think carefully about how she’ll fill it. It turns out that our baggage touches the lives of others in ways we can hardly imagine.
If YANTOOTS reflects the community that inspires it, it also reminds its residents of the magic that makes urban geography meaningful for its inhabitants. It urges us to cherish our interesting differences even as seek to create a unified whole. Of course we can all get along. Why in the world wouldn’t we want to?
My friends and I walked out into the twinkle and color of bustling Jackson Heights with smiles on our faces. It was one of those great evenings that inspires you to look at New York City with a fresh perspective. And one of my favorite things about YANTOOTS? Kreith and company take us from one part of Jackson Heights to the next by simply whisking in a table, a window, or a couple of chairs, playing the scene even as they set and strike its elements. No blackouts!
Like the neighborhood around it, You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase is a work of constantly shifting light, always moving, transforming, reinventing itself. Absolutely delightful.
YANTOOTS has been extended through April 3. Get your tix here.
Most often, they’re unnecessary, time-consuming, and not actually black. They’re usually bluish, and feature the moving about of set pieces in less than theatrical ways for long enough that I can come up with a number of much more compelling ways the director might have transitioned from one scene to the next. In my own work as a playwright, I’ll allow myself one blackout per ninety minutes, and it better come at a crucial moment: the death of a major character, or a significant shift in plot or theme.
There is a moment n Theatre 167’s new show You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase when the stage goes well and truly dark. And when the lights come up again, the audience is treated to one of the most delightful surprises I have ever experienced in a theater.
It’s just one of many magical moments in the play directed by Ari Laura Kreith and written by Mando Alvarado, Jenny Lyn Bader, Barbara Cassidy, Les Hunter, Joy Tomasko, Gary Winter and Stefanie Zadravec. The playwrights’ pieces are inspired by locally told folktales originating from around the world and intertwined in a single play with overlapping storylines. Very cool.
"If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors." - Bertholt Brecht
You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase (or YANTOOTS) takes place in the enchanted land of Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC. It is in many ways an old fashioned fairy tale, even as it makes mention of the most contemporary of objects and issues, including the very building in which the show is performed. Magic takes public transportation. It arrives in suitcases, sits on park benches, and dwells quite literally in cell phones. Early on, there’s a speech by an electronics store owner (Rajesh Bose) who gives a hilariously over-the-top hard sell of a mobile device. His phones will actually transport you to any nation on earth and enable you to converse in its native tongue. To a cynical New Yorker, it seems at first a send-up of storefront shysters hawking overpriced, sub-par products with outrageous claims. It’s not.
YANTOOTS is creatively mounted in the cafeteria of PS 69. Being assembled in the lunchroom of an elementary school put me and my friends in a playful mood (even if the tiny urinals in the restroom made us feel a little funny). The ripped storybook pages and twinkling lights of the set evoke a decidedly urban fairyland backing into ‘wings’ of upended cafeteria tables. Staging a devised piece in this space speaks to the mission of Theatre 167 to create and promote art for and about the local community. The audience surrounds the action of the play, and actors enter through the impromptu ‘house’ created by sectioned seating. The whole set-up seems microcosmic of the neighborhood around it.
The play is a wild pastiche of styles, sometimes naturalistic, in other moments quite avant-garde. Subtly nuanced performances give over to charmingly garish puppetry. Many scenes combine simple contemporary vernacular with heightened, even poetic dialogue. The fourth wall comes and goes. Somehow, it’s all done with great precision, ease, and speed. The whole thing is remarkably dynamic. I don’t think there’s a moment of stillness in either act.
What makes it all work is a group of highly skilled and absolutely committed actors who seem to really love what they’re doing. Saying of a show that it ‘has heart’ is often code for ‘good-try-A-for-effort’. But in this case, the company’s skill and talent is matched only by it’s passion for the material. Every member of the cast seems completely given to creating something magical and meaningful. They also happen to have some real chops. Don’t think for a second that all the great acting happens in Manhattan. (Aside from blackouts, the other thing I find boring onstage is watching people talk on the phone. But John P. Keller made a truly moving moment of it.)
If you go see YANTOOTS, give yourself enough time to have dinner first. There’s all manner of great food in Jackson Heights. We went with Indian at a neighborhood classic, The Jackson Diner. Don’t let the name fool you, they do a delicious and authentic curry. (At 6:30 there was plenty of room but by the time we left for the show, the place was nearly packed.) I have a thing for Indian sweets so I stopped off at a shop for burfi and patisa and chamchams. Pink coconut chamchams are the perfect intermission snack for this show.
It didn’t occur to me until the train ride home that the one thing you don’t really see depicted on the multicultural platform that is Theatre 167’s stage is racial tension. Yes there are villains in YANTOOTS (Ross DeGraw’s Hector is pretty vile) but racism doesn’t seem to factor into their agendas. Characters of every color, from every continent - yes, even Antarctica - seem to get along just fine here. Of course, it is a fairy tale…
Or is it? The audience at last night’s show was the most diverse crowd I have ever seen at a play. Not a huge crowd, but a very happily mixed one. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, old, young. From where I was seated, I could see two families enjoying the show together. One family was Caucasian, the other Indian, and both included kids no older than eight. All were delighted by a work of art that is decidedly optimistic, refreshingly so in our cynical times.
“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Bertholt Brecht
Brecht felt that artists must pay close attention to the possibilities their work promises. He said that the greatest thing that theatre could do was to provide the pleasure of knowing the world could be remade. While the title of Theatre 167’s latest play refers to a mysterious note discovered in a lost valise, ‘You are now the owner of this suitcase’ is actually a very loaded statement. To me, it’s a reminder that we have a responsibility, as both artists and citizens, to shape the world in which we live. Putting something onstage conjures up a potential reality. Audiences may even replicate in the real world what the encounter in art. In YANTOOTS, a Roumanian bruja (it is Jackson Heights) played by Kim Carlson advises recent Equadorian émigré Patricia Becker to take seriously her charge of a lost piece of luggage. To think carefully about how she’ll fill it. It turns out that our baggage touches the lives of others in ways we can hardly imagine.
If YANTOOTS reflects the community that inspires it, it also reminds its residents of the magic that makes urban geography meaningful for its inhabitants. It urges us to cherish our interesting differences even as seek to create a unified whole. Of course we can all get along. Why in the world wouldn’t we want to?
My friends and I walked out into the twinkle and color of bustling Jackson Heights with smiles on our faces. It was one of those great evenings that inspires you to look at New York City with a fresh perspective. And one of my favorite things about YANTOOTS? Kreith and company take us from one part of Jackson Heights to the next by simply whisking in a table, a window, or a couple of chairs, playing the scene even as they set and strike its elements. No blackouts!
Like the neighborhood around it, You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase is a work of constantly shifting light, always moving, transforming, reinventing itself. Absolutely delightful.
YANTOOTS has been extended through April 3. Get your tix here.
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