Hamilton: In a Re-imagined World

SZ @ New York

“Hey, Yo, I’m just like my country. I’m young, scrappy and hungry, and I’m not throwing away my shot.” (quote from Hamilton)

By 6:30pm in front of the Richard Rodgers theatre, there were already two lines: one for ticket holders, the other for hopeful Hamilton goers waiting for last-minute tickets. At the end of the lines, two tickets brokers, male, middle-aged, whispered to everyone passing by the crowded narrow sidewalk,

“Extra tickets for sale?”

I was waiting for my friend M with a long skinny box covered with Chinese embroider, a gift from a Chinese school visiting New York the very afternoon. Long skinny boxes are probably not a very good idea for Hamilton: the doorman was suspicious, taking extra time for examination.

The show started.

Here was Hamilton. Played by Lin-Manuel Marianda, the creator of the entire show himself, Hamilton stood right there, singing and dancing with his historical friends and enemies (not too many, mostly just a jealous Aaron Burr, who took Hamilton’s life in a duel).

A genius with plural talents! As a recipient of the 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Award (still can’t wrap my mind around the name of this award, prestigious as it is, apparently!), Marianda certainly is forever labeled as a Genius. Indeed, the feeling in the theatre was real. The audience started applauding enthusiastically when Hamilton first appeared on the stage.

The stage was turning swiftly; the hip-hop music was vibrant; the dancing was energetic and naturally embedded with the story (like, dancing and getting dressed on the stage). And you have a black Marquis de Lafayette played by Daveed Diggs (also played Thomas Jefferson) rapping 6.3 words per second (the fastest in the history of the genre); you got a George Washington played by Christopher Jackson who looks nothing like the white guy with a fake wig in history books; you got Schuyler sisters played by Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Alysha Deslorieus, an apparent ethnically mixed group, so natural together and no one was asking for a fact check: WAIT, how come they were all in different colors, back in 18th century? King George III remained to be white, though an absolutely refreshed image with his ridiculously funny Britpop. After the first act, he would actually trigger laughter just by appearing on the stage, before he even uttered a word.

Creativity can’t be forced. It just flows, with the pace of the heartbeat of the audience.

So you laughed, giggled, sighed, and perhaps, like me, teared up when the Hamilton’s lost their only son.

Our seats were in the front, on the side, but good enough to see the entire stage close up. The theatre was fully packed, giving absolutely no hope for anyone waiting outside in the last-minute ticket line. Miraculously, two more-centered seats next to us were empty. There was some happy seat-swift in the end.

Drinks were expensive at the bar, $11 for a red wine. The perk was you also got a spilt - proof cup with a Hamilton logo so you could take it inside. It’s presumably attractive if you plan to drink through the show. Also you could get asked about Hamilton the next day when you used it for water, or coffee.

OH, YES, it’s THAT good.

January 31, 2016

New York

Petrouchka. A Warehouse in Brooklyn & A Mighty Mighty Experience

SZ @ New York

Petrouchka by Groupmuse on March 26, 2016.

I honestly don’t know who, or rather, what, “Petrouchka” is until about a month ago I got an e-vite from Groupmuse, promoting “Petrouchka and His Mighty Mighty Massivemuse at the Circus” at $25 for online tickets. Two keys words were new to me. “Petrouchka”? Never heard of. According to Wikipedia, drawing from Russian folk stories, it’s a ballet burlesque (should I google this word too? …Nah…) about the love and jealousies among three puppets: Petrouchka, a Ballerina, and a Moor, all brought to life by Charlatan, the magician. Petrouchka loves the Ballerina, who instead prefers the Moor. Fights inevitably occur between the jealous Petrouchka and the Moor, who kills Petrouchka. “Massivemuse” sounds creative and fun, a bit messy too, but I have never experienced one. I did, enjoy one Groupmuse event about a year ago. It was a chamber music concert at someone’s home in mid-town east side New York. The young man who lived in his parents’ large apartment (NYC standards) signed up to host a Groupmuse chamber music concert, which subsequently attracted about twenty participants, each bringing their own bottle and donating whatever cash to Groupmuse at the end of the event. It was a rather enjoyable experience. The young man’s parents, presumably having given permissions for hosting the event, were conveniently out of town. While delightful, the event was quite the opposite of “massive”.

So, around 7:20 pm on March 26, 2016, I found myself sitting in a car next to my friend M.J., who’s driving on Irving Avenue in Brooklyn and complaining about Siri’s misleading guidance. We finally turned onto Moffat Street, lined up with seemingly deserted warehouses, walls with graffiti, and a few cars lonely parked here and there.

At 7:20 pm, the sun went down behind the warehouses. It was a rather chilly spring evening.

“It doesn’t look like a place for Petrouchka.” I almost uttered these words to M.J. when suddenly a small line with more than a dozen people in front of a tiny door appeared.

“Ah, it looks like we are at the right place!” I exhaled with relief, and added, “I honestly don’t know what it is like. My first time.”

“I’m curious too.” M.J., with a quite light spirit, seemed not to be bothered at all, and forgot about his frustration with Siri already.

We didn’t wait for too long to get in. Walking into the warehouse was an instant transformation. One, it’s much warmer inside, which made me very happy; Two, and perhaps more importantly, the warehouse felt like a circus. In the center of a huge space that could easily accommodate hundreds of people, a couple of ballerinas were elegantly swirling, twisting, dancing and stretching on a hanging circus ring and sling. The music came from a small band with one old man playing a giant triangle 3-string instrument (WHAT IS IT, SIRI! Oh, you can’t see…) and another old guy singing in a language incomprehensible to me (maybe Russian?); A young man with a basket was constantly chasing a skinny short-haired girl who randomly stopped in front of people to juggle 3 Easter Eggs……There was already a crowd sitting in front of a simple white curtain, separating the orchestra from the crowd. Some event veterans even brought their beach chairs! Nevertheless, I felt quite at ease, as the majority seemed to be at loss as I was. People aimlessly walked around, looked around, and occasionally applauded for the ballerinas. It felt new, different, and strange.

Right after I got two bottles of room-temperature Brooklyn Larger, “Petrouchka” started.

Literally everyone standing in front of M.J. and me suddenly sat down on the floor. We accidentally were sitting on an elevated bench and had a great view of the stage, as well as almost 2/3 of the entire space, which, by this time, has packed more than 600 people. James Blachly, the “master mind”of the event, started by asking people to imagine being transported to early twentieth century Russia, and to participate as “audience”.

People giggled. And the show officially began.

The music, composed by Igor Stravinski, rose from behind the white curtain. The same group of ballerinas went on stage and danced lively. Quite lovely, but nothing surprisingly good yet. Suddenly, the music paused, and a wrinkled face flashed on top of the curtain. Charlatan, in a gold robe with a swirling red dragon, emerged on stilts (tall sticks as I would call) from behind the curtain. Almost without any signal, the curtain went down silently, three puppets, each hanging on a ring in the air, appeared on the stage, with the entire orchestra as the backdrop.

It was a quite astonishing moment. The warehouse, now a Petrouchka theatre house with 600+ people, completed a feeling of awe and intimacy between the audience and the performance, the dance, the music and the space itself. To me, starting from that moment, it indeed felt like we all were together on something extraordinarily beautiful, in this rather ugly building in the remote area. There was a shared sense of secretiveness too, as all of this took place right here inside the poorly maintained warehouse, not in a beautiful theatre house, not in an acoustically professional concert hall, not on a specially built ballet stage. It was part of the unexpected. It was anti-establishment. It transformed everyone back to the time when a theatre could be just at the corner of a street, or a village square. It bridges the distance between the stage and the audience, or rather, participants. It bridges time.

The next day the Groupmuse page was flooded with compliments from the participants. While I still felt the residual excitement from the event, I was also most happy to discover James Blachly, the event’s music director who’s young (born in 1980), handsome,and absolutely talented. On his blog, he says,

“I want the audience to be involved. I want this music to speak directly to them.”

The text is bold with large font, so I sense he is quite serious about what he has to say. At the very least, he has absolutely achieved this goal through the mighty mighty experience I had on this chilly spring Saturday evening of 2016.

3/28/2016 Astoria, NY