Friday Night in Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill: Henry Ray with Les Kurtz and Downtown Nate Brown at Tsion Cafe

(Videos courtesy Henry Ray)


(More videos here)

Tuesday Evening in Hamilton Heights: City College Men's Volleyball Team Hosts York College at the Nat Holman Gymnasium

(Videos courtesy Omar Munoz)

Thursday Evening in Hamilton Heights: CUNY Students and Community Supporters Demonstrate Against the Seizure of the Guillermo Morales-Assata Shakur Student & Community Center Outside the North Academic Center at CCNY and March through Harlem

(Photos courtesy The Campus)

Almost two months after CCNY administrators seized the Guillermo Morales-Assata Shakur Student and Community Center, CUNY students and community supporters held an open mic outside the NAC (North Academic Center, where we had our office when we taught Cold War Literature three years ago) this evening, before marching through Harlem to spread their message.

(Video courtesy hannington16)

Early Saturday Afternoon in Sugar Hill: Dance Theater of Harlem Street Festival on West 152nd Street between Amsterdam and St. Nicholas

(Video courtesy KatsFavs1)

Monday Night in Harlem: Pulse Ensemble Theatre's 8th Annual Harlem Summer Shakespeare presents "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Riverbank State Park

Tonight we enjoyed the first preview performance of a deliciously audacious production of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by Pulse Ensemble Theatre in the gorgeous surroundings of Harlem's Riverbank State Park.

Directed by Pulse Ensemble Theatre's artistic director Alexa Kelly and featuring an adventurous cast including the wonderful Brian Richardson as Bottom, this Midsummer Night's Dream is not afraid to be outrageous and over the top, and that made the performance a whole lot of fun, even in an initial preview where they're probably still trying to work out the kinks a bit.

Still, you wouldn't have been disappointed, and we weren't, although we'd really enjoyed the last two productions in what's now the Eighth Annual Harlem Summer Shakespeare experience: we were lucky to see Macbeth in 2010 and As You Like It last year, and this comedy -- probably the one most closely associated with summer open-air Shakespeare -- seemed just as vibrant to us.

The last two years we went to the Harlem Summer Shakespeare shows at the park's gorgeous amphitheater setting in mid-August, around Harlem Week. This August, however, the company will be in Scotland, not to perform "the Scottish play" of Shakespeare's again, but because they've been selected for the famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where they'll be performing A Man for All Times: W. E. B. DuBois (we've taught DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk several times, having appreciated him and his work since we first came across it in Prof. Dan Mayers' Afro-American Literature I class back in Brooklyn College in 1973).

A Man For All Times: W. E. B. DuBois from Brian Richardson on Vimeo.

So obviously Alexa Kelly, Brian Richardson, and others will be elsewhere in August. We were happy that Pulse brought Shakespeare to Harlem early this summer, and this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream will be playing previews tomorrow and Thursday and then Wednesdays through Sundays from July 6-22 at 8 p.m. The amphitheater is comfortable, but you might want to bring a pillow and tonight we wish we'd had some insect repellant, as not only the onstage fairies were flying around.

This Dream's Athenians exist in contemporary times, and you know that right away by their dress and the Lord & Taylor shopping bags carried by the noble, stylish lesbian couple, Thesius (Kelsey Arendt) and Hippolyta (Maria Franklin), about to celebrate their state (and state-approved) wedding. (Nnoema Nkuku is hilarious as Philostrate, their mistress of revels, sending up the stock movie role of the harried servant confidante).

Some productions have the actors playing the royal Theseus and Hippolyte double as the king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, but here the fairy monarchs are both men, flamboyant in their powers and sexualized costumes, with Steven J. West (Oberon) and Karim Sekou standouts as unforgettable as the best vogue dancers you'll see outside the legendary "houses" of uptown gay ballrooms.

Thia Stephan is splendid playing Puck as a delectable drag queen, with Mariah Franklin, Kerianne Furgerson, and Denise M. Whalen as outrageous fairies with outré outfits and neon hair offer wonderful support to her and to Oberon.

The spectacle of the play will appeal to anyone, especially kids, and Bob Miller deserves special credit for the wonderfully imaginative costumes.

The two groups of human characters -- the four young lovers and Hermia's father Egeus, and the rude mechanicals putting on the play -- are also well-cast, with the very talented Elliott Mayer, who we said last year played two As You Like It characters "with startling difference and sublime bits of business" does the same thing here as a cranky, lame Egeus and a blue collar, outer borough Peter Quince.

The laborers here definitely are New York City union types -- "What do we want? A job! When do we want it? Now!" they chant as they bear their protest signs. They view the play they're putting on for the wedding, Pyramus and Thisbe, as first and foremost a job and a paycheck, and all of them adopt Noo Yawk accents and mannerisms, and they are adept at physical comedy.

In some productions of Dream, you can get a little restless during the play-within-a-play, but this one is very funnily played and fast-moving. Kudos to (again) Nneoma Nkuku (Snug), Greg Nussen (Flute), John L. Payne (Snout) and Brian Richardson (Bottom), whose scenes with Karim Sekou as a potion-besotted Titania are not only funny but touching -- with the interesting frisson and added resonance of both Bottom and Titania being played by black men. We've now seen Brian Richardson interpret Bottom, Jaques, and Macbeth, and we're really impressed.

The actors playing the four young lovers chase their mixed-up midsummer passions through the magical forest also excel at physical comedy, and there are some wonderful bits of business in their interactions. There's a buoyancy to the way they portray Helena (Jacklyn Collier), Hermia (Sharone Halevy), Lysander (Blaine Smith) and Demetrius (a very fussy Geoffrey Hillback, but the essential sweetness in their characters is never lost.

The lighting design by Steve O'Shea was effective, more so than we've seen before at Riverside Park, though at this time of year, night descended a bit later. The sound problems we've noticed before are minimized, but at times were slightly disconcerting.

However, that hardly mattered. We very much liked Alexa Kelly's conception of A Midsummer Night's Dream, last produced by Pulse Ensemble Theatre several years ago and obviously totally reconceived to good effect.

To be able to sit in the Riverbank State Park amphitheater and be surrounded by the waters of the Hudson, the towers of New Jersey and the George Washington Bridge in the distance, ships and boats slowly going past: it made going to see the quintessential summer Shakespeare comedy that much more special. We're grateful we got to see this performance.

Wednesday Night in Harlem: Pulse Ensemble Theatre presents "As You Like It" at Riverbank State Park

It was another great night in Harlem as we took in the Pulse Ensemble Theatre's winningly charming production of As You Like It, directed by Alexa Kelly, and staged in a perfect venue for Arden Forest, the gorgeous amphitheater of Riverbank State Park, with the Hudson River as a backdrop. We enjoyed it every bit as much as we did their excellent Macbeth here last summer.

As we wrote last year when we saw a staged reading of As You Like It, it's derided by some critics as shallower than Shakespeare's more profound comedies, but has always seemed to us in some ways his most capacious work apart from the major tragedies. It's got many contrasts in it, between youth and age, the life of the court and the forest, the sunny, optimistic idealism of Rosalind that finds its overwhelmed opposite in the gloomy, "realist" pessimism of Jaques, same-sex and opposite-sex passion, and the turn-on-a-dime ability of humans to change, as seen by the sudden conversion of the play's two villains into noble and generous characters.

The Pulse Ensemble Theatre production highlighted all those contrasts, and did it a highly entertaining way, with tons of laughs and physical hijinks, but also the profound but witty sadness in the wonderful "seven ages of man" speech of Jaques and the ambiguity (is it bitterly sarcastic or stoically comforting?) of Duke Senior's "sweet are the uses of adversity" lines.

We loved the way the play was updated to the America of the last thirty or so years, with the usurper Duke Frederick played as a kind of cross between Hugh Hefner, World Wrestling Entertainment's Vince McMahon and Tony Soprano and his overthrown brother, Duke Senior (both played with startling difference and sublime bits of business by Elliott Mayer) and his followers are reminiscent of '60s hippies and the hare krishna devotees we used to encounter at UF in Gainesville.

Stella Kammel was utterly delightful and plucky as Rosalind and her rustic-boy-in-disguise form of Ganymede. Gamin-like and playful, she was matched by Iris McQuillan-Grace as her good-hearted cousin Celia, who from the word go is clearly less of a style-obsessed airhead than she makes herself out to be. They have great chemistry, especially in their scenes with the clown Touchstone, played with athletic and sly shenanigans by Joe Raik.

As the noble but somewhat nerdy Orlando, perhaps Shakespeare's most mooning male romantic lead, Josh Odsess-Rubin was a good match for the witty Rosalind, especially in her own male form. We liked the way the two passionate seeming male-on-male kisses were handled, and as Orlando's scheming, evil brother Oliver, Vincent Bagnall as a harried yuppie-on-the-make makes his quick transition from envious creep to likable lover credible.

Brian Richardson, an accomplished actor who blew us away last year with his portrayal of Macbeth, did wonders as Jaques, brilliantly turning him into some supple, foppish, mordant mix of André Leon Talley and Bill T. Jones.

The Arden Forest rustics were played as if they were an eclectic mix of backwoods wiseguys, sullen neighborhood lowlifes, dopey jocks or trailer-trash comics. They were all wonderful: Stuart Rudin (Corin), Michael Gilpin (Sylvius), Cherish Monique Duke (Phebe), and Emily McGowan (Audrey), who did stuff with bubble gum and hot pants that we had thought impossible.

The other actors, many in multiple roles, were also fine -- especially Shawn Williams as the wrestler Charles (another nice bit of business was when Duke Frederick's lords/henchmen/"associates" came to the audience and took our bets on the Charles/Orlando pro wrestling match), Jacob Heimer as LeBeau and Amiens in court and country, and Bill Galarno, as the selfless but somewhat ornery old servant Adam. The costume designer, Bob Miller, created memorable clothes for every character.

The amphitheater at Riverbank State Park never seemed more magical. This is the 22nd year Pulse Ensemble Theatre has been around, and their eighth season of Harlem Summer Shakespeare under the direction of Alexa Kelly and her wonderful associates, who are to be congratulated on the consistent quality of their theatrical work.

As a real reviewer -- which we are not -- Ron Cohen in Backstage summed it up, "It all adds up to a show that's fun to watch, even on a hot, humid night relieved only now and then by a breeze off the river." And on a non-humid, non-rainy night like tonight, it felt perfect. We are very grateful we got to see their As You Like It tonight.

Friday Night in Harlem: Pulse Ensemble Theatre presents "Macbeth" at Riverbank State Park

Tonight we were at Riverbank State Park in Harlem to see an extraordinarily innovative and entertaining Macbeth, set in Afghanistan and directed by Alexa Kelly, a presentation of the company's sixth annual Pulse Ensemble Theatre’s Harlem Summer Shakespeare program and a featured part of Harlem Week.

This is the Pulse Ensemble Theatre's twentieth anniversary, and the company did a spectactular job in putting this production together, first as a site-specific performance on Governor's Island (the professional-looking photos here are publicity stills from that; the blurry cellphone pics are our own), and now at the beautiful amphitheater on the Hudson River.

It was a cool August evening that turned into a gorgeous night under the crescent Ramadan moon and the occasional droning of airplanes above, which, along with the resonant sound effects such as bombs falling and the muezzin's call for prayer, made the Afghan war setting come alive.

Despite working nearby in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem at City College, we'd never before been to Riverbank State Park.

It's hard to believe that this beautiful park with incredible facilities is built on top of a massive sewage treatment plant, but then so is Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane.

We arrived early, with only a few people coming before us.

Tonight was actually the second preview, and the Harlem Macbeth officially opens tomorrow night and will be playing Wednesday-Sunday for the next couple of weekends before ending on Saturday, August 28.

Director Alexa Kelly's setting Macbeth in Afghanistan, with the Macbeths and others serving in the military and wearing camouflauge outfits most of the time, and with King Duncan, his sons, and others (the scary masked murderers Macbeth enlists seem to be Taliban) in traditional Afghan dress, and with the witches in weird-sister burqas, was a stroke of genius.

It highlights, for one thing, some of the crucial issues of the play and of wars in countries like Afghanistan: the contrasts between autocratic but wise kingship as represented by Duncan and tyranny and anarchy of equally autocratic "strongmen"; the relationship of wanton cruelty (although many of the killings are offstage, there's blood everywhere here) and the manly military ethic (not limited by gender, since Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, Angus, Mentieth and others are female warriors; and the legitimacy of governance in a state overshadowed by perpetual war.

The sound system and body mics had a few glitches but they didn't detract from the action; Adam Jonas Segaller, giving a fine performance as the stolid Banquo, discarded his screeching mic at one point and was perfectly clear without amplifaction. The lighting, the wonderful costumes, and the use of the semicircular space in front of the stage to convey the hectic chaos of war as troops, terrorists and hysterical civilians ran back and forth, were all very effective.

Making the witches Afghan war widows, possibly won over to the terrorist side (which is what, we're never sure, since the line between the "sides" seems fluid, as it is in the real Afghanistan), but definitely out for revenge. Their chants sometimes take on the lilting cadence of liturgical prayer, and they have supernatural powers. Wendy Snow, Erica Chamblee and Regina Gibson offer up spectacular performances with their bodies - they whirl like Sufi dervishes at one heart-stopping point in the action - as well as their voices.

The mostly Equity cast was superb. As the American troops/Scottish nobles, Kara Addington, Mia Anderson, Mathew J, Harris and Shawn Williams are subtle and believable; they seem to be everywhere and always more restive than they let on.

Jeff Burchfield as Duncan is a wise and tolerant ruler, a bit too trusting and easy to fool; we'd be lucky to have him instead of Hamid Karzai, but in a country like his, an Afghan Duncan probably would meet the same fate as Shakespeare's does, done in by treacherous subordinates.

As his sons, Akeem Folkes in his brief appearance presents an understandably frightened Donalbain, and Paul Pontrelli as Malcolm gives an electric performance as medieval terror turns him from a sweet, slightly effeminate boy into a forceful and dynamic leader who's both unsentimental (in his stirring speech to Macduff) and compassionate (at the death in battle of his uncle's son).

Danny Makali’I Mittermeyer's Macduff is a gruff professional soldier who can compartmentalize his life in a way that other warlords in the play cannot, yet he evinces an integrity that would lead him today be a whistleblower of atrocities on his own side. Like Banquo, he has ambition but the moral sense (and maybe even common sense) that the power couple the Macbeths are lacking.

As Lady Macduff, Leigh Ellen Caudill (along with her blanket-swathed infant son) is a terrified victim of one of the play's numerous violent atrocities; we feel her helplessness, and as Hecate behind her black burqa and mask, she whips up the witches into a (religious?) frenzy of cruel retribution. Gregory Wool makes Fleance a playful, boyish fellow soldier to his father, Banquo (as we said, Adam Jonas Segaller was very strong in that role, and he also made a reproachful silent ghost); when he disappears, you wonder if his just-in-time escape from assassination along with Banquo will leave him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of course, the success of the Scottish play turns on the actors playing the leads, and here Brian Richardson as Macbeth and Reneé Flemings are spellbinding. American military couples are not that unique today, and so their partnership in ambition and the savagery that is its result seems natural, especially when their intense sexual bond is so evident.

Ultimately it's clear that they're both suffering from PTSD, fueling their hallucinations and obsessions and instinctive use of violence to solve every problem. Their trauma manifests itself in different ways, and here it's clear that Lady Macbeth probably understands that even in an environment of nominal sexual equality, it's simply her gender that's prevented her from reaching the leadership position her husband has from the play's beginning. Richardson's mellifluous Caribbean accent seems to inform his chafing in the role of a honored but subordinate noble, and when he, like Flemings, becomes undone and more than a little hysterical, it's all the more poignant for their only somewhat successful efforts to reign in their demons.

Both Richardson and Flemings give line readings to their dialogue and monologues that suggests they're somewhat distracted by inner torments that they cannot quite get their fingers on. Their scenes together work perfectly, their machinations seemingly just a deadly extension of mutually self-destructive patterns that have played out during their entire marriage and the interminable war.

Director Kelly and the actors seem to us to have gotten to the core of the tragedy of the Macbeths and that of the chaos that is the real king of their country. Just as it's hard to determine exactly what's gone on in Afghanistan and what lies ahead for that graveyard of empires, it's hard to believe that it will end with the neat hopes of the victorious Macduff and the new king Malcolm have at the end of Macbeth.

The Pulse Ensemble Theatre's production seems a worthy successor to Orson Welles's legendary 1936 Harlem "voodoo Macbeth" set in Haiti. We're really grateful to have had the chance to see it.