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Buzz
NY TIMES: Blow Up “At a 60s Flick, Mod Reigns”
2010-07-20 | Posted in Around Town • Buzz • Productions & Events | By Vance
Congrats to everyone who helped make Blow Up a huge success!
July 1, 2010, 9:31 AM
Nocturnalist | At a ’60s Flick, Mod Reigns
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
It was a mod night when Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, celebrated its New York opening at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Up a candlelight-flickered staircase, through a darkroom cobwebbed with clotheslines bearing ruby-lit pictures, past a writer’s desk strewn with photographic proofs, guests at a film screening in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, stepped into the past on Wednesday night: a Swinging ’60s photo studio where a Britpop band rocked out while a gaggle of actors with Twiggyesque doe eyes struck poses in the center of the room, vying for their moment in front of a photographer’s lens.
It was the New York opening of Future Cinema, an English company that screens films, and it was held at at the Shangri-La Studio on Sutton Street. The film was “Blow-Up,” the 1966 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, set in London and starring an Austin Powers prototype — an ennui-ridden fashion photographer named Thomas (David Hemmings).
The intent was for guests to feel as if they were models at a casting. As the line to enter stretched down the sidewalk before doors opened at 8 p.m., guests said, a vintage British car pulled up, spilling forth a live-action “Thomas” followed by a cluster of screaming girls, who would later become the mod models in the photo-shoot-turned-party. [Read more...]
NY MAG Summer Guide: “Prince of the Pines”
| Posted in Buzz • Fire Island Pines | By Vance
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From left: The Pines, 1976; The Pines, 2010.
(Photo: From left: Tom Bianchi; Ian Allen)
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Of the seventeen resort microclimates of Fire Island arranged along the picturesque, deer-overrun sandbar a short train-and-ferry commute from New York City, the Pines is easily the most fabled. Imagine, as many young men have, an entirely gay beach town full of contradictions—glamorous and skanky, bacchanalian and fussy, semi-nude and upmarket—a place where, as Andrew Holleran put it in his 1978 Gatsby-inspired gay novel Dancer From the Dance, “You may lose your heart. Or mind. Or reputation. Or contact lenses.”
Now imagine being 27 and owning the bars, restaurants, and the nightclub at the heart of it all. [Read more...]
Thank you About.com!
Vance Garrett
Meet the Black Party Director and Scenarist
By David Sokol, About.com Contributing Writer
“A shrine of pillar candles and pictures of lost revolutionaries sits in one corner of the room. The trail of roses leads the men upstairs into the big room. We discover an unfamiliar cavernous hall. Glimpses of bars, ropes, candles, and petals appear in the distance, but a scene at the very center of the room illuminates the whole space…For about one hour, we see one gorgeous, impeccably dressed man dancing the tango, alone. He uses prison bars as his partner…”
This is just one of the scenes in Vance Garrett’s remarkably thorough treatment for the Black Party. The 13-page document also describes walls plastered with revolutionary paraphernalia and ticked with the chalk marks of a prisoner tracking his cell time. And of nuns muttering a blessing to the Virgin Mary — probably begging her for forgiveness — as each Black Party attendant checks his belongings at the door.
Garrett has been working for The Saint at Large since 2005, with increasing responsibility for the look and feel of the Black Party. Today he is its director and scenarist — this year mixing Argentine culture, the political upheavals of the Infamous Decade, leather and bondage, and high camp into one coherent, stimulating, storytelling dance party. (Read more…)
Congrats to TBE’s Ben Hartley on ENRON!
2010-03-05 | Posted in Buzz | By Vance
Congratulations to THE BROADWAY EXPERIENCE’s BEN HARTLEY on being cast in ENRON!
From BroadwayWorld.com:
The upcoming Broadway production of Lucy Prebble’s critically acclaimed play ENRON, directed by Rupert Goold, is proud to welcome actors Jordan Ballard (Hairspray), Brandon J. Dirden (Prelude to a Kiss), Anthony Holds (Spamalot, Pal Joey), Ty Jones (Judgment at Nuremberg, Henry IV, Julius Caesar), Tom Nelis (The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Aida), Jeff Skowron (The Lion King, High Society), LUSIA STRUS (the upcoming untitled Gus Van Sant project), Ben Hartley (Swan Lake, The Little Mermaid) and Ellyn Marie Marsh to the company.
They join the previously announced Norbert Leo Butz, Gregory Itzin, Stephen Kunken, Marin Mazzie, Noah Weisberg, Rightor Doyle, Ian Kahn, Mary Stewart Sullivan, Madisyn Shipman, and January LaVoy.
ENRON will begin previews on Broadway on April 8, 2010 at The Broadhurst Theatre (235 W. 44th St. between 8th and Broadway), in preparation for an April 27, 2010 opening.
Tickets are currently on sale via Telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200. The Broadhurst Theatre box office will officially open March 11th. (…)
Ben Hartley was first seen on Broadway in Matthew Bourne’s Tony award winning Swan Lake followed by Fiddler on the Roof, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Disney’s The Little Mermaid & City Center Encores! staging of Follies. West End productions to include Cats, Fosse, Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella & The Carman. He was part of The Most Happy Fella & Pirates of Penzance at NYCO & Hello, Dolly at The Papermill Playhouse. He was also a member of The Met Opera Ballet and English National Ballet. Modeling work has included companies such as Ericsson, Aveda & has been featured in New Yorker Magazine and American Vogue. Ben is the founder & director of The Broadway Experience musical theater program based in NYC for aspiring triple threat performers. tbenyc.com (Read more…)
Revolutionary Cell Block Tango :: The Saint At Large Presents Rites XXXI: The Black Party
by Mark Thompson and Robert Doyle
EDGE Contributor
Sunday Feb 28, 2010
GOLPE! reads one headline. There’s anger in the air. Revolutionary fervor. Another headline reads:GOVERNMENT DEMOLISHED. NEW BLACK PARTY APPEARS.
Taken from the Spanish term “golpe de estado,” golpe means coup d’etat: the sudden overthrowing of a state government-which means that, once again, this year’s Black Party invite has caught the American zeitgeist and the revolutionary zeal in the vox populi with uncanny prescience. The Great Recession, with its discomfiting parallels to the final years of the Weimar Republic, has unleashed the demons of debauchery and decadence, with a burning desire for a totally new order-and that’s where Black Party XXXI commences.
With a twelve-page backstory narrative, this year’s Black Party celebration of the arrival of the vernal equinox reads like an amalgam of Kiss of the Spider Woman meets “Cell Block Tango” in 1932 Buenos Aires, where a militaristic regime with a penchant for roses and rough tango has seized control. Matadors and masochists commingle with sadists and Santeria. It’s the black of night and totalitarianism-and the red of blood, roses, martyrdom-and saints.
Ever since Bruce Mailman opened the original Saint in 1980, and celebrated the vernal equinox with a two-night Black Party (hence the reason for the 31st Black Party thirty years later), men from around the world have congregated in New York City to celebrate an annual rite that echoes the ancient Druids. With the enforced closing of the Saint in 1988 (due to the burgeoning AIDS crisis and city crackdowns), and the untimely passing of Mailman in 1994, the Black Party, for the past nineteen years, has been helmed by Stephen Pevner, the extraordinary visionary behind the Saint-at-Large, and his exceedingly gifted creative staff, all of whom work to explore the darker side of Dionysian, sybaritic revels. Recent incarnations of this blackest of nights have included such all-encompassing themes as Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, Lucha Libre, free wrestling, and the underside of NASCAR-as well as The Dangerous Black Party For Boys, all of them immersing patrons in theatrical environments that withstand comparison to Vegas, Cirque de Soleil, and les egouts de Paris. (Read more…)
WAR HORSE is Jumping the Pond
2010-02-19 | Posted in Buzz | By Vance
From Broadway World:
Lincoln Center to Produce WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, WAR HORSE & A FREE MAN OF COLOR
 Lincoln Center Theater (under the direction of Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, and Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer) announced three productions that it will produce during the 2010-2011 season at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and on Broadway. The first, a musical version of the Pedro Almodóvar film WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, with book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek and direction by Bartlett Sher, will begin previews Saturday, October 2 when it will reopen the newly restored Belasco Theatre (111 W. 44 Street). Opening night is Thursday, November 4.
Screen sirens Salma Hayek and Jessica Biel, along with Broadway stars Matthew Morrison and Paulo Szot starring in a private industry reading of WOMEN ON THE VERGE… back in October of 2009. There’s no word yet if any of the starry cast will appear in the production.
This will be followed at LCT’s home base at Lincoln Center with the world premiere of John Guare’s new play, A FREE MAN OF COLOR, directed by George C. Wolfe at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, with previews beginning Thursday, October 21, opening Thursday, November 18. Following A FREE MAN OF COLOR, LCT will team with the National Theatre of Great Britain, in association with Bob Boyett to present the U.S. premiere of the National Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of WAR HORSE, based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo and adapted by Nick Stafford with direction by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris.
WAR HORSE is scheduled to begin performances at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Thursday, March 17, 2011 with an opening night scheduled for Thursday, April 14, 2011. LCT’s 2010-2011 Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and LCT3 productions will be announced at a later date. (Read More…).
Spare Times
By ANNE MANCUSO
Published: October 22, 2009
CLUB PURGATORIO
Feel free to insert your own joke about the frightfulness of New York night life, but the owners of the Box, the downtown club known for its extravagant, lascivious stage shows, may have the last laugh.
For the first time, Simon Hammerstein and Randy Weiner, partners in the Box, have opened a haunted house: a 15,000-square-foot, three-story, adults-only haunted house, in the old China Club in Midtown. The idea, Mr. Weiner said on a preopening tour last week, was to amp up the traditional Halloween experience. (Read more…)
EDGE NY: Freemasons Shakedown the Island
2009-09-22 | Posted in Buzz • Productions & Events • Saint At Large | By Vance
Freemasons Shakedown the Island
by Mark Thompson and Robert Doyle
EDGE Contributor
Monday Sep 21, 2009
As yet another boatload of exuberant party boyz disembarked on Governors Island, two guys on bikes, waiting to return to Manhattan, watched in gawking amazement-until finally one turned to the other and said, “What? Did we not get the memo?”
And it was right then, as the sun set behind Jersey, that opening DJ Corey Craig broke into a remix of that contagious chestnut, Patrice Rushen’s “Haven’t You Heard?”
Maybe those two bike boys missed the memo about Saint at Large’s 30th season opener, Freemasons at Governors Island, but hundreds of other wayward party boyz got the word-and happy they were to romp carefree through the night.
First of all, the setting: think Pinocchio at Pleasure Island, a haven for incorrigible party boyz-with multi-colored neon palm trees, and smoke machines and concessionaires selling confections and intoxicating liquids. No school, no rules-nothing but sand in the shoes and summer fun.
And it was the summer anthem, “When Love Takes Over,” that really got the kidz going-and the flaggers on the floor, while onstage, Corey Craig got ready to cede the house to Freemasons-when suddenly someone grabbed the mike and yelled, “I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.”
Bouncing all over the asphalt
~
Insane! The boyz went crazy-and stayed that way! With smoke billowing and red lights flashing, Freemasons took over-and right from the start, the boyz were whooping it up and bouncing all over the asphalt, working it out, shaking it down, so that when Freemasons really hit their stride with remixes of “Love on My Mind,” “Sexual Healing,” “Déjà Vu,” “Just Can’t Get Enough,” “Lola’s Theme,” “When Doves Cry,” “Rain Down Love,” “If I Were A Boy,” and “Ring the Alarm,” the floor was filled with boyz who were dancing, really dancing-and we’re not talking about that shuffle/shuffle/back-and-forth sometimes found on packed dance floors-and sometimes mistaken for dance. No, these boyz were truly feeling the music, absorbing the beat, screaming the words, shouting out love, as if they’d been plugged directly into an electric socket, with the current shooting out from their every extremity. To look around the floor, to see these kidz hollering out happiness while they shook down the house was to recognize anew the exultancy of music and dance.
After all, dance is as old as humanity itself, with the first dance in history born around the campfires of hunters-as an expression of joy. And last night, Freemasons had a direct link to that tradition, a high-speed connection to primeval joy that reached its apex with their remix of Whitney’s new “Million Dollar Bill,” a song so vibrant and ecstatic that both arms-and feet-were in the air, simultaneously, the whole crowd over.
A love-filled summer send-off
~
Who was there? A houseful of hotties, from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Fire Island, South Beach, Brazil, and Montreal, and loads of Saint family members, including Alan (particularly ebullient) and Joey, and Armando, and Michael South Beach, and Alex B. and James C., and Jaker and Billy (and Jackson), and Marc Berkley (w/hand puppy)-and a delighted Steve Pevner, who, with his Saint at Large crew (with help from Highline Ballroom) created both a love-filled summer send-off-and a welcome to autumn.
Thirty Septembers ago, the very first Saint invite arrived in the mail, heralding the opening on September 20, 1980 of what would become the most fabulous and unsurpassable gay club of all time, the Saint-and in the ensuing thirty years, legions of Saintheads have joined an ever-expanding family connected by music and dance. Last night’s celebratory and soulful crowd was a testament to Saint founder Bruce Mailman’s groundbreaking vision-and particularly fitting for the opening of the Saint at Large’s 30th season.
RELATED LINKS
Freemasons Governor’s Island Photo-Album
THEATERMANIA: Enter PURGATORIO
2009-09-20 | Posted in Buzz • Productions & Events • Purgatorio | By Vance
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| Purgatorio |
The interactive Halloween experience Purgatorio will play the Times Square area, taking over a tri-level, 15,000 square foot nightclub space at 268 W. 47th Street, October 15-31.
Produced by Simon Hammerstein and Randy Weiner, founding partners of downtown hotspot The Box, Purgatorio will offer an adults-only immersion in a multi-level world of macabre fantasy complete with interactive variety acts and installations, all set in a dynamic environment that aims to be at once frightening, erotic, and whimsical.
The creative team will include David Korins (production/scenic design), Emilio Sosa (costume design), and Evan Morris (lighting design).
For more information, visit enterpurgatorio.com.
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