At a Cocktail Party after QUEEN OF THE MIST

Who expected to be wowed by a performance in a gym? Well, the Transportation Group Theater Company brought the audience along on quite a ride in their production at The Gym at Judson on Thompson Stree in the Village of Michael John LaChiusa's Queen of the Mist based on the story of Anna Edson Taylor (played by Tony-award-winning Marie Testa) who, at 63, was the first woman to barrel down Niagra Falls in 1901.

How do you create an epic in such a long narrow space between bleachers on either side of the wall? In the Gym at Judson, I sat on the lowest tier of bleacher a pair of bleachers that faced each other. I was so close to the actors that I had to draw my legs back to not trip them. But thanks to the ingenuity of the director, John Cunningham lll ( Hello Again, See Rock City and Other Destinations, Boys in the Band) and the whole production crew, I felt every roll of the waves, every thunk of the barrel, the power of the Falls. With simple props--an old-fashioned piano that was pushed across the stage, small platforms on wheels that became boats, even a toy wooden boat, suggested everything that was needed to bring the play home to one's heart.

The actors were In the talk back after the show (before the cake and the bubbly), Michael John LaChuisa, said LaChuisa confided that if his cat throws up as he'd playing a song, he knows that he shouldn't use it. And what the cat gave a nod to is purrr-fect.

This play is about how fame can sink you and how risking death can help you live. And it's about living your dream, no matter where it leads you. Get inspired. See Queen of the Mist.

DISCOUNT CODE: $10 off with code TGMAMA

Links:
Show’s Website: http://www.transportgroup.org/
Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/100

See my Huffington Post Blog, I WAS A MIDDLE SCHOOL BULLY

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rochelle-jewel-shapiro/i-was-a-middle-school-bul_b_1011430.html

The Mountaintop

The time: April 3rd, 1968. Martin Luther King (played by Samuel Jackson) is alone in room 306 in The Lorraine Motel in Memphis a day after he made his prophetic “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech, the day before he is assassinated. We see him as his private self--using the toilet, wanting smokes, smelling the reek of his sweat when he takes his shoes off.
In comes the maid, Camae (played by Angela Bassett). The playwright, Katori Hall, really did her job of creating perfect character arcs. The maid begins nervous and reverential around King, then ends up so bold that she slips his jacket on to critique his preaching style and shows him how he should sound. And Katori’s Martin Luther King goes from the all too human man who frets about whether his mustache makes him look old, a man who needs a woman’s body next to his, never mind it isn’t Coretta’s. In the mesmerizing verbal parry between Martin Luther King and Camae, Katori Hall brings him right up to the mountaintop.
It has a supernatural element too which I don’t want to give away.
See it at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater
242 E. 45th St. (Between Broadway and 8th.)

At the party after opening night for Motherhood Our Loud

There I am with Janes Lecense who starred in Motherhood Out Loud and other off-Broadway shows. You'll probably remember him best from "Sex in the City," both the TV show and the films.

MOTHERHOOD OUT LOUD

MOTHERHOOD OUT LOUD, now playing at Primary Stages after 59 E. 59th St, makes you feel as if someone has read your mind or your mother’s or your grandmother’s because no one would dare to say outright what actors are saying on stage The twenty scenes, united by themes of mothering that span birth to death, were written by a collection of playwrights that includes Beth Henley, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Some of the stories are true, some are composites of the playwrights’ friends’ stories, and others are invented. But they all feel true, intimate, and necessary.
There is magic unfolding as you watch Saidah Arrika Ekulona (Obie award winner for Ruined) morph into a Muslim mother of a teenager who just got her period to a divorced mother whose son is sent to Afghanistan, to a teenager interviewing her grandmother . James Lecense (winner of Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award) is as believable whether he is playing the male character or the character’s mother, Elizabeth. Randy Graff (Fiddler on the Roof (2004) and winner of the Drama Desk and Tony winner) can have loud, pull-your-hear-out desperation as a sleep-deprived mother as well as quiet desperation in Queen Est4her when her plays a woman whose son wants to go to a Purim Festival as Queen Esther. Mary Bacon (The Good Wife, Law & Order) can go from the panic and joy of a new mother to a mother-in-law who needs wising up.
My prediction is that Motherhood Out Loud will be a hit wherever it goes. It’s already been warmly received in L.A. and Greenwich Connecticut. I see this show as a hit in New York and lighting up stages all over the country: Florida, Texas, Washington, and more, then on to London.
From Motherhood Out Loud, whether you’re a mother or not, you’ll get an appreciation for just how thorny the role is. You might even end up forgiving yourself for the inevitable messes you’ve made with your children or your mother has made with you. And all the while, you’ll laugh hysterically and become tear-glazed, knot-throated, what my Russian bubby used to call “farklempt.”

DISCOUNT TICKETS AVAILABLE if you call Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or visit Primarystages.org and use the promotion code MOM9161

Enter CarlIto Carvalhosa's Sum of Days at the Moma and you will see and hear just as a psychic does

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kONZ1GfYfQ

Do you see the figures through the scrim of fabric? That is just how a psychic sees. And check out the UTube of a visitor to Sum of Days. You will hear just as a psychic hears: an overlay of sounds over time. That's why when a psychic says, "I hear a name that begins with H," instead of thinking he's guessing, try to pick out specific names when you enter the exhibit. You'll see. You'll hear.

Vera Famiglia's Higher Ground

Vera Famiglia stars in the original and quirky film out now. She delves into a woman's challenge to be part of a community of faith, all the while admiring their ability to keep their faith. Amazing to see such emotional honestly!