Staff Picks No. 97
THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE : Alva Rogers, Ashley Winkfield
HERE Arts Center
May 21st-June 1st 2025
Ah, yes, Reuven recommends puppetry, wow shocker soap opera gasp! But hear me out - kicking off HERE’s Puppetopia festival with ALVA Puppet Theater, we’ve got a tale of dolls seeking to protect their creator from the outside world and all its terrors! You should check out ALL of Puppetopia, but I will most certainly be at this one. Fun fact: I actually have a legitimate fear of dolls (google “pediophobia”) but I am willing to brave it to see what’s going on at HERE and live to tell the tale.
Staffer: Reuven Glezer
Double Bill : Lia Kohl, Shane Parish
Roulette
Tuesday May 20th 2025
On Lia Kohl’s gorgeous 2024 album “Normal Sounds”, she crafts a series of kind-of duets, composing cello lines in conversation with field recordings of commonplace technologies (a car alarm, a buzzing streetlamp, an airplane overhead). The result ranges from strange and otherworldly to meditative and lovely to lyrical and totally down-to-earth. I’m stoked to get to see this stuff live! Kohl shares the bill with wide-ranging, curious guitarist Shane Parish. Such a great night of sound. Come through!
PS - If perhaps you’re in Chicago this week, on May 15th Kohl is premiering new work live during rush hour at Chicago’s acoustically bonkers main train hub Union Station. Get there!
Staffer: Joshua Dumas
Wedding Dress : Julia Burnier
Playhouse46
May 16th-18th 2025
Dream theater is always a fun experiment to take a peek at, as it embraces the challenge of making the mystic and mental into a physical experience
Staffer: kanishk pandey
New Ear : Angie Pittman, Nami Yamamoto
169 Bowery
Friday May 16th 2025
How lovely to learn about a new collective supporting experimental performance. After the success of its eponymous festival, New Ear became a non-profit last year and supports the stuff we love: wonky, rigorous, interdisciplinary live arts expressions. Their new show offers a look at two works in development: one a soulful dance celebrating the artist's mother who turned 90, and one a written and performance project, centering the divinity of dark movements of resistance.
Staffer: Billy McEntee