Can I get you anything?
Very cool that an Oscar Micheaux (1920s director and screenwriter, including the 1925 silent Body and Soul featuring a true US hero, Paul Robeson) postage stamp was issued this summer. I spotted it at the post office today and had to buy a sheet. Now I just have to sit back, relax, and wait to need to mail something. And then — look out.
I stumbled upon some real-life street theatre in Tribeca this summer and wrote about it for the New York Press, “New York’s Bellicose Weekly Newspaper.” It’s this week’s cover story, To Kebab and Conquer, about a street fight between a scrappy halal cart vendor and a highbrow restaurateur.
*
Here’s the online version. Enjoy.
Update: New York Magazine weighs in.
by RADUL RADOVANOVIC
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town
by RADUL RADOVANOVIC
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.
Still, that was less than a tenth of the total number of Muslim men and boys executed after Serb forces overran the U.N.-protected town on July 11, 1995, during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
…Serbian President Boris Tadic was the first dignitary to arrive Sunday, saying he was coming in an “act of reconciliation.” Some in the crowd yelled “Bravo, Boris!” while others asked “Where is Mladic?” — a reference to former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who led the Serb troops into Srebrenica…Mladic and former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic were indicted with genocide for the Srebrenica massacre by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in 1995. Karadzic is now on trial at the tribunal in The Hague while Mladic is still a fugitive, presumably hiding in Serbia…CONT’D AT ABCNEWS.COM>>
[story and photo via abcnews.com]
[/caption]
Take that, commerce. I love a theatre company that practices what it preaches, and the wonderful folks at The Collective have done it again. I first became aware of this creative, inventive, smart, political, funny, driven, earnest bundle of talent a few years ago when I met member Lisa Kicielinski at Naked Angels’ tuesdays@nine reading series; since that time they’ve done two in-house
Take that, commerce. I love a theatre company that practices what it preaches, and the wonderful folks at The Collective have done it again. I first became aware of this creative, inventive, smart, political, funny, driven, earnest bundle of talent a few years ago when I met member Lisa Kicielinski at Naked Angels’ tuesdays@nine reading series; since that time they’ve done two in-house readings of my works-in-progress UFOs Over Brooklyn and The Great Age as a personal favor to help me out in my creative process, and allowed my award-winning short film Lady in a Box to ride their coattails into the Global Awareness Project’s Strand Film Festival shown on the IMAX screen in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Their stage productions usually have brief runs at this point, like bright bottle rockets going off in New York’s ocean of indie theatre while they continue to get their sea legs. If you’re having trouble navigating that vast sea, the Collective are a terrific port in the storm.
They often write and produce their own works in film and theatre, and sometimes produce modern classics by others like this Frank MGuiness play up there on the left. There will only be 12 performances of this play, scattered throughout the summer, but here’s the truly unorthodox part that brings a tear to my jaundiced eye: half of the tickets for each show will be given away.
“In a struggling economy, art is both undervalued and underfunded,” said Collective member Kevin Kane. “We want to make quality professional theater available to all. We want to have no empty seats. To the struggling student, to the theater lover who has been priced out and to the first timer who can’t afford to fall in love, we say that we would rather perform for you for free than to have one empty seat in the house.”
Playwright McGuiness has allowed the group a special arrangement to produce his play. You can take part in the campaign by
and/or
or
This is high level theater at low level prices. The play opens one week from today, next Thursday, June 17th.
Help them kick it off the right way by buying one ticket for yourself and one ticket for a stranger.