It has been awhile since I have written anything of any substance. I can’t promise you this one will be any great shakes either, but at least it won’t be a meme or some cut and paste photo or video. Not that you care but it really is hard coming up with regular blog content when you’re brain dead at the end of a work day and the weather is starting to get nice outside again. Maybe that’s grist for a future blog.
In any event, living in New York has certain advantages not the least of which is the abundance of cultural offerings constantly available. I know I need to get out more and see something interesting, so I thought I’d pass along some of the arts events that have caught my eye.
Regrettably, I missed this one and if you are just hearing about it now, you will have as well. But the distinguished South African actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona recreated roles they first performed more than 30 years ago in a revival of Athol Fugard’s Sizwi Banzi is Dead which was in limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A tale of South Africa’s apartheid system and the hardships Black residents faced, Kani and Ntshona were once jailed for performing the play in their homeland but later won Tony Awards when it was first presented in New York. With their closing performance on April 19, it will be the last time they do the play together.
Television actor Boris Kodjoe (Soul Food) stepped into the role of Brick this past week in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, taking over for Terrence Howard through May 4. Howard left to fulfill a contractual obligation on a movie role. He’ll return May 6 and finish the show’s expected run through June 22. The play is receiving quite favorable notices and Kodjoe is delighted to have the opportunity.
On April 30, Laurence Fishburne stars in a one-man-show about the life of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in a limited engagement at the Booth Theatre. Fishburne, who has a Tony for his work in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” sees the part as a great challenge, in this interview he did with Theatermania.com.
The Broadway musical Passing Strange (which I have yet to see) recorded its cast album last week. Normally that’s an all day affair in a recording studio, but a show that tells “the coming-of-age story of a middle-class youth seeking to find ‘the real’ by embarking on a journey of escape and exploration,” couldn’t do things in the conventional manner. Instead they performed the songs from the show live in front of an audience at the Belasco Theatre. Playbill.com has pictures.
Warmer weather means festivals and there are several on the horizon.
The Tribeca Film Festival gets underway next Wednesday, April 23 and runs until May 4. Fifty-three world premieres will be screened at seven different venues. It’s usually a tough ticket to snag but they are on sale online.
The Joyce Theater—a wonderful place to watch a dance performance—holds its 123 Festival April 29-May 11. It will showcase some of the finest new dancers and most exciting dance companies in the country. Among the companies is Ailey II, the “junior” unit of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Finally, here’s an early heads up for two June festivals. The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts (for those of us who like leaving NYC in the summer) opens June 18 for a ten week run. One of my favorite companies, Garth Fagan Dance, performs during the opening week. The JVC Jazz Festival takes over New York during the last two weeks of June, with performances by some of jazz’s biggest names in the city’s concert halls, nightclubs and outdoor performance spaces.
Around 3:00 a.m. on February 17, 2005, New York City transit workers found two suspicious bags alongside the track at the Nostrand Avenue station in Brooklyn. They contained body parts of 19 year old Rashawn Brazell.
The first 72 hours of a murder investigation are the most important, police will tell you, because evidence is fresh, memories still vivid and odds are favorable that clues will result in someone’s arrest. Beyond that, the chances diminish precipitously.
It is now three years later and one of the most gruesome crimes New York City history remains unsolved. The trail is growing cold.
Someone, somewhere, knows something. Keep Rashawn’s memory alive and the hope for closure a possibility.
Two million football fans called in sick, skipped school or just disappeared for a few hours today. They showed up to line the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan to celebrate the Giants Super Bowl victory today.
My office is just blocks from where the parade began. I stopped into work first, then made my way over there around 9:45. The streets were already packed ahead of the 11:00 am start. People amused themselves by throwing rolls of toilet tissue back and forth across the street, and spontaneously starting up chants of “Boston sucks” and “Brady sucks” and “18 and 1!”
By the time the parade started, the crowd had quadrupled in size where I was standing. When I got there, it was maybe three rows deep from the curb. At parade start, it was about 12 rows deep. Still more fans were watching from office windows, construction scaffolds and even window sills.
I had my digital camera and would love to tell you I took some great shots, but unfortunately, what I have came out either blurry or from too far away. I may be able to salvage some in iPhoto but it will take awhile.
In the meantime, you can enjoy still and video images from the parade at these websites:
From the New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK
Published: April 25, 2007
They told the police that they thought it would be easy to rob the gay man. It was not easy.
The gay man ran away when they punched him, they said on videotaped statements played yesterday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. He climbed over a guardrail along the Belt Parkway, stopped a lane of traffic, waved his cellphone as if to call for help, stumbled into the next lane and was hit by a car.
They said they dragged the gay man off the road and searched his pockets for money and drugs but his pockets were empty. They went home and drank beer and the gay man died in a hospital.
The three of them were charged with murder as a hate crime, a distinction that could affect their sentences if they are convicted. Prosecutors said they chose their victim because they thought gay men were weak and afraid.
They walked into the courtroom yesterday in handcuffs, John Fox, Ilya Shurov, also known as Alex, and Anthony Fortunato, none older than 20. Their trial date has not been set; first a judge must decide whether their confessions are admissible. They sat side by side and watched their own videotaped statements to the police. On the screen, they blamed one another for the killing. In the courtroom, they did not say anything and did not look at one another much.
They were watched from the spectators area by friends and relatives of the gay man, Michael Sandy, who died on Oct. 13, five days after the attack and a day after his 29th birthday. He had been contacted through a Web site for gay men and lured to a parking area in Sheepshead Bay, prosecutors said.
In the courtroom, a video screen was lowered and the image of Mr. Fox appeared. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts and he fidgeted in a small chair before a backdrop of cinder-block walls.
At the defense table, the three young men moved their chairs so they could see the image of Mr. Fox.
On the recording, Mr. Fox used police words like proceeded and indicated. He answered some of his interrogators questions before the questions were fully formed. He said, Yes, maam.
Mr. Fox said that Mr. Fortunato had lured the victim to an area near Plumb Beach. There, Mr. Fox told the victim to drive to the beach while the others waited in ambush.
He asked what it was, and I told him it was a gay beach, Mr. Fox said. I told him the gay beach was a place where gay people have sex and stuff. At the beach, Mr. Fox said, Mr. Shurov punched Mr. Sandy and chased him into traffic.
He just was right down on the ground, Mr. Fox said, and he didnt move.
Then the image of Mr. Shurov appeared on the screen. He wore a T-shirt that said Triple 5 Soul.
At the defense table, the three men watched as Mr. Shurov gave his account. He said: John also came and hit him.
He said: I was drinking and my friends got me involved in this.
He said it was Mr. Fox and Mr. Fortunato who had used the computer to lure their victim. He admitted he had chased Mr. Sandy into the street and punched him. He demonstrated how he had pulled Mr. Sandy from the parkway and searched his pants pockets.
I apologize to his family; I know my words cant help, but Im just really sorry for what happened, he said on the recording. Later, when his interrogator had finished, Mr. Shurov asked: Is this going to be shown to his parents?
In the courtroom, the victims mother, Denise Sandy, was sitting with her sons friends. Later, she said she accepted the apology, a courthouse ritual usually reserved until after a trial. But first Ms. Sandy and her sons friends and the three men at the defense table all watched as a prosecutor on the videotape answered Mr. Shurovs question.
Right now, said the prosecutor, Timothy G. Gough, this is just for investigative purposes.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Jill Konviser-Levine today in Brooklyn denied bail to Anthony Fortunato, one of the three remaining defendants facing trial in the October 2006 hate crime murder of Michael Sandy.
Fortunato’s family had raised $1.3 million hoping to gain his release should bail be granted.
Judge Konviser-Levine received appeals arguing for and against Fortunatos release, including a letter from Clarence Patton, Executive Director of the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.
In it Patton stated, when defendants are young, facing a long sentence, and have families with relatively significant resources, there is a disincentive to stand and face trial, and the risk of flight is therefore heightened.
The letter went on to characterize Fortunatos role in Sandys death as cowardly. …by engaging Mr. Sandy on the internet, luring him to a secluded area, ganging up on him, further harming and victimizing him after hed been grievously injured, and finally fleeing the scene leaving him to suffer sends a clear message that these men acted solely in their own self interest, but also in ways that betray an unremitting desire for self-preservation, even at the highest cost to another human being.”
NY Times - Emotions Run High at Hearing in Bias Killing
Oct. 11 - Four Arrested for Luring, Attacking Gay Man in NYC
