Just a reminder, tomorrow is World AIDS Day (December 1).

here’s some links:

Light to Unite
Link and Think
World AIDS Campaign
Join Red
Project Inform
visual AIDS

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THURSDAY DEC. 7
MONKEY TOWN HOLIDAY PARTY
A Benefit for Monkey Town

featuring LIVE, in his only New York appearance for 2006,MY ROBOT FRIEND…and the “crackpot genius” of DYNASTY HANDBAG plus NO ORDINARY MONKEY DJs, a Lightshow by Luke Dubois, Adam Kendall, Ray Sweeten among many others…Surprise Performance TBA…emceed by NICKLCAT

MONKEY TOWN HOLIDAY PARTY
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7
9 pm to 2 am
at EUROPA, Polish-American Discothèque in Greenpoint, Brooklyn 98-104 Meserole Ave. (corner of Manhattan Ave.) G train to Nassau
18+
Tickets, sliding scale $12-20
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EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – announces the launch of the EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission, a new commissioning program to support the creation of new works in the field of experimental dance for the screen.

Through the DANCE MOViES Commission, EMPAC is specifically targeting artists based in North America and South America to encourage the development of the genre of dance film and video. The DANCE MOViES Commission will fund several projects per year with awards in the range of $8,000 – $50,000.

The deadline to submit artist proposals is February 1, 2007, with applications available on the EMPAC website: www.empac.rpi.edu.
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Lest you think the theatre blogosphere is all highbrow discussions and heated aesthetic debates, we bring you this poll from What’s Good/What Blows, where you can vote for the worst bathrooms Off-Broadway(via The Playgoer).

The poll doesn’t include a lot of small downtown spaces, many of which have decidely nasty loos. Which raises the question: Is your theatre-going experience affected by things like dirty washrooms or filthy lobbies? Let us know.

If there’s a venue that you think rivals the recently shuttered CBGB’s in terms of stankiness, post it in the comments.

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Now that Thanksgiving is over and the magical capitalism fairies put up the winter holidy decorations in participating stores and locations overnight, here’s an early Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/et al gift from me to you:
Attention dancers! chashama is privvy to some great dance space with sprung floors. A smaller and larger space are available at $10 and $15 per hour respectively from 11AM – 4PM daily. Interested? Contact Risa Shoup at risa@chashama.org
Attention Harlem and Upper Manhattan based artists. chashama has a dedicated performance development space located at 461 W126th Street. We are eager to program through 2007, so contact us quickly! Cheap rates! Big space! Bring the whole family! Contact Risa Shoup at risa@chashama.org for more information.
And finally, I just got an email about the Gibralter Point International Artist Residency Program:
The Gibraltar Point Residency transcends political, aesthetic and geographic boundaries, welcomes diversity and provides a spawning ground for unique cultural alliances. The program is open to Canadian and international artists who are engaged in the research, development or creation of work. Emerging, mid-career and established professional artists are invited to apply. Participants in the residency program receive accommodation, a private work studio and all meals at no cost. Travel and material costs are the responsibility of participating artists. Fore more information click here.

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So I was just having dinner with a friend and the movie shortbus came up. I haven’t seen it yet but I hear it is pretty racy. Then we started talking about the history of sex onstage. Could you conceivably stage something like shortbus? In the 60′s there was the “orgy” in Hair, there are various Richard Schechner works that were reputedly pretty explicit (The Prometheus Project, Dionysus 69), there’s the performance art of Annie Sprinkle. Last year DTW presented Ann Liv Young’s brutal and graphic Michael in which one of the performers actually ejaculated onstage; there was also the notoriously graphic sex in Red Light Winter.

I’m sure a theater historian could point out dozens more examples…

I once interviewed author Bruce Benderson about his novel The Romanian, which, though about his affair with a Romanian hustler, was surprisingly demure. He said, “I thought the emotional drama was a lot more interesting than the sexual drama. And that comes back to the idea about how literary you can be when it comes to eroticism. If all you’re describing is sex then all you can do is do pornography its just like cocks and cunts and assholes…”

So is there any value to explicit sexuality onstage? Does it ever, or has it ever, worked? If it titillates you, is it still art? Maybe sex works better as comedy, implied rather than shown. After all Compulsive Sexual Behavior isn’t inherently funny, in fact it is quite the opposite, but a va-va-voom vamp or oversexed Lothario is.

What do you think?

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Tuesday night is the opening of nightlife legend Rob Roth‘s Screen Test at P.S.122, featuring Theo Kogan (formerly of Lunachicks) and her new band Theo and the Skyscrapers.

In Screen Test rock show collides with video installation. Conceived and directed by Rob Roth with Theo Kogan and her band “Theo and the Skyscrapers”, the performance blends haunting romantic imagery and modern apocalyptic paranoia with the gritty sensibility of underground NYC.

Theo and the Skyscrapers premiere a slew of original songs written specifically for this show. The music flows from melodic to assaulting while lyrically echoing themes of loneliness and longing, playing out on a 1940s Hollywood soundstage. Anger and humor combine to ask: What is artificial? What is real? and What role does fantasy play in survival?

With Text by Romy Ashby and Rob Roth, Costume Design: Todd Thomas
Music Director: Sean Pierce, Choreography: Vangeline and Dancers: Coco Koyama and Mandy Caughey.
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Check out this great preview of Theatre Couture’s Carrie in the “week ahead” section of the Times!

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Okay, so, now The Times comes in and says that the real story is that Culture Project is just moving. Um. They wouldn’t have even known about the story if we hadn’t published the buzz, probably. And secondly, I don’t buy it. I mean, CP may be moving, and sure there rent was high, but that can’t possibly be the whole story! We’ve heard too many weird rumors coming out of Culture Project over the years to think that it is just a simple question of rent.

To anybody who thinks it is, here’s another thing that’s important to know: just because it is in The New York Times doesn’t mean it is true, nor does it mean it is the whole story. Most theater people in the city have had an experience with the Times getting it wrong. Often it is small things like crediting the wrong company for a production (New Georges’ Dead City got credited to 13P) or mistakenly thinking a woman was a man (BAiT translator Jean Graham-Jones was referred to as a “he”). And usually its not a big deal – its a simple lack of fact-checking because a writer is on deadline or something, and they print a correction.

Those of us in the trenches of the NYC theater scene hear a lot of things that are difficult to verify. I once heard that a certain theater hired a bunch of homeless people to build the set for Caryl Churchill’s A Number and then didn’t pay them because the homeless don’t have bank accounts. And rumors stay rumors because everyone has to work together and play nice. That’s where the mainstream press SHOULD step up to the plate but rarely do. Because even the world of the arts is subject to influence when it comes to spin. With the right press agent, you can get anything printed in the Times, you can divert attention or minimize a story or bury it.

Anyway, we are proud of reporting what we heard about Culture Project and hope that someone does some more in depth reporting at some point. We also hope that The Times will devote some of its resources to start really looking at the business of theater in NYC. And while they’re at it, how about a really big piece about the origins of the Arts Funding structure in America and whether it is still appropriate and functional? Are non-profits still a viable model? Is it impossible to make quality commercial theater?

Can’t think. Distracted by Thanksgiving. Have a Happy Holiday!

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Culturebot recently reported a rumor that the Culture Project may be on its way out. According to The New York Timesthe 10-year-old nonprofit is just relocating, not folding.

According to Campbell Robertson:

The reason for the move — surprise, surprise — is rent.

At its current site at 45 Bleecker Street in the East Village, the Culture Project had two leases: one on the fourth-floor offices and living quarters of Allan Buchman, the project’s founder and artistic director, and another on two performance spaces, a 199-seat theater on the first floor and a 99-seater in the basement.

The company pays $50,000 a month for both theaters and office space, Mr. Buchman said. The lease for the offices was renewed in April. But for more than a year Mr. Buchman had been looking around for new theater space. The rent was just too high, he said, and under terms of the seven-year lease that was drawn up in June, it was only going to get higher.

The Culture Project will now reside at 55 Mercer Street, the home of Manhattan Ensemble Theatre.

You can read the full article here.

So as always Manhattan real estate prices affect the well-being of our cultural institutions(thanks to Off-Off Blogway for the tip).

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