31.10.2009

aqp in nyc

Of course you know it’s all about the food. (And the culture, and the idiom, and the shopping.) Especially in production week, when we are working frantically to get our production of A Quarreling Pair ready for its New York debut. And let me tell you we have eaten very, very well. I mean we are staying in the East Village (4th St. between 2nd and Bowery)…the perfect place to eat well. So, on the first night our hosts here from the New York La MaMa, Denise and Federico, took us to a fabulous restaurant called The Organic Grill on First Avenue, between 5th and 6th. I had this grilled tofu sandwich thing, which was delicious. It had been pouring with rain since the moment we’d got off the plane, but that didn’t deter us…in fact it was probably a perfect antidote to the stale air we had been breathing for the previous thirty hours in transit. (Although I must just add here that we flew Qantas and were MIRACULOUSLY upgraded to Premium Economy seats on the Sydney/Los Angeles leg of the flight…the thirteen hour bit…and it made a huge difference and was so comfortable and amazing!)

The next day was Sunday, which was a recovery day so we went to the Wholefoods market on East Houston and bought lots of supplies ready for breakfasts and lunches for the week ahead when we would be spending pretty much all day in the theatre. We wandered through a gorgeous neighbourhood garden which has been lovingly constructed on a narrow site perched on East Houston. But once you’re inside you’d never know it was on a busy road…it was magic. Then Denise and Federico met us and took us to have coffee at Think Coffee on Bowery, just around the corner from the theatre. The coffee was great and it is a lovely place. (I went back there early one morning and took shelter while I waited for the day to warm up and wake up. I had risen early to call home and when I returned to my building found the front door blocked by a bike, some gear and two bodies wrapped tightly and cosily in their blankets…I had used another door to get out but couldn’t get back in that way…it was early and cold and I really couldn’t bear to disturb them so took myself round the corner to Think Coffee. I had a toasted raisin bagel and an excellent latte which the barista drew a Halloween pumpkin face on…pretty cool!)

That afternoon we saw the puppet show which preceded us at La MaMa in this mini festival of puppetry we are part of. It was an interpretation of Women of Troy, which had been intertwined with stories of inspiring contemporary women activists. I found it quite problematic, mainly because I didn’t really understand why they had chosen to tell this story with puppets and not with actors, and then also because I didn’t feel the interweaving of the stories was very skilful or did any of the stories much justice…even though they remained very interesting stories in themselves. Nonetheless is was great to get a sense of La MaMa and the context in which we were going to be working. That night we ate minestrone which I cooked on one hot plate upstairs in our little kitchen, then went to see a band play in Brooklyn at a cool space with pools of water called Galapagos.

On Monday we started work in our theatre, which is the first floor theatre at La MaMa. I’m pretty sure it is the original theatre although they now have a number of other spaces. We met Jack, our tech and lighting operator, and Mark, who is the head technician, and started work putting up lights, patching them and doing a rough focus.

The set of A Quarreling Pair consists of a dressing table with a mirror and side mirrors, a stool, and a bramble which hovers over everything like a cloud of twisted thoughts. Jacob Williams, who is the partner of Sarah Kriegler, the other performer in the play, has done an utterly amazing job of reconstructing the set, exactly like the original, except in a form that can be totally dismantled and packed into a suitcase. I know!! We carried the whole set and the props with us in our luggage! The bramble, however, does not fit into a suitcase…and could have presented difficulties with customs, so we had a frame for the bramble, but not the actual bramble. So while the lights were being rigged Cynthia Troup, one of the writers of A Quarreling Pair, and Margaret Cameron, the director, went on a hunt for materials to make a bramble…and after a lot of effort and a run-in with a New York cabbie who threatened Cynthia with the police, discovered the flower district and a lovely wholesale florist and some willow and this twisty stuff called walking stick which Sarah then made into a beautiful bramble. I can’t really remember what I did but I’m sure I was useful.

That evening David Young, the Artistic Director of Aphids (the company producing the show) arrived from Melbourne, and so we met up with some other friends and supporters of Aphids who happen to be in New York, Eugene Schlusser and Margaret Leggatt, and Ian Britain, and we all went off to John’s Restaurant on East 12th St. and had a fabulous old school Italian meal. The waiter was wonderful and so was the food. I ate a kind of home-made cannelloni-type dish filled with the softest, most delicate ricotta in the world, and topped with sweet mozzarella and napoli…oh it was heavenly. After that we all needed to walk, so even though it was after 11pm we set off looking for gelati, but the shop was closed so we ended up at Café Gitane in Mott St. and had a bottle of Sauternes and some Lillet. Quote of the day from the waiter at John’s who wasn't able to remember something, “I’m spacing the name of it.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday we continued to plot lights and sound and started to run the play. (All this still suffering from jet lag…please see previous post for an example of my state of mind.) Amongst this we managed another visit to The Organic Grill, a couple of samplings of pierogi (the East Village has a Polish thing going on...as well as everything else), a fantastic vegan meal at Angelika on East 12th and, at 7pm, a very interesting and thought-provoking piece of theatre entitled Idiot Savant, directed by Richard Foreman of the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre Company, and featuring Willem Defoe in the title role. I’ll probably write more about Idiot Savant later. It was the first piece of Richard Foreman’s I have seen and I really enjoyed it, unlike some other members of the audience. Quote of the day from another woman in the audience, “Well I was having a great night until 7 o’clock.”

Then came Thursday, yesterday, the day A Quarreling Pair made its debut in New York City. It went really well…but the full story will have to wait…