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W.M. Akers

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This is essentially what my interview with Josua looked like. Photo by Kate Hess. Image courtesy Bushwick Starr.

This is essentially what my interview with Josua looked like. Photo by Kate Hess. Image courtesy Bushwick Starr.

"'Rent' Is The Nerdiest Thing That Ever Existed"

This is essentially what my interview with Josua looked like. Photo by Kate Hess. Image courtesy Bushwick Starr.

This is essentially what my interview with Josua looked like. Photo by Kate Hess. Image courtesy Bushwick Starr.

I think the best show I saw last month was The House of Von Macramé, a madcap, bloody musical currently playing at The Bushwick Starr. Today, I interviewed the playwright, Joshua Conkel.

What makes fashion such a juicy subject for a musical?
I’ve always loved fashion. I love clothes. I think of clothes as art, and I love the way that people can express themselves through what they wear. What I don’t love is materialism and label whoring and that sort of stuff. I find that really unappealing. That comes into conflict a lot in my life.
You like fashion, but not the fashion industry.
Yeah. It’s fun to make fun of. In terms of theater, theater is pretty geeky, and I for one would like theater to be cooler and hipper and more wild. So the play was an attempt at that.
The music was certainly a lot cooler than most of what you’ll hear in a musical, even a contemporary one. The synth has a lot of sex in it.
A lot of these rock musicals are not rock musicals. Rent is the nerdiest thing that ever existed, and nothing like the Bohemian 90′s sound that it’s pretending to be.

Read the rest here, sucker.

When the interview was posted, Conkel posted this on Twitter:

I sound like such a dick in this interview AND I LOVE IT. bullettmedia.com/article/playwr…

— Joshua Conkel (@JoshuaConkel) February 4, 2013

I think it's my favorite thing anyone's ever said after an interview. He's wrong, though. He doesn't sound like a dick—he sounds like a guy who's sorry that the artform he loves is too often held hostage by lameness. I think many of us can relate to that.

Posted in Theater and tagged with Clips, Bushwick Starr, Joshua Conkel, Interviews, Bullett, The House of Von Macrame.

February 4, 2013 by W.M. Akers.
  • February 4, 2013
  • W.M. Akers
  • Clips
  • Bushwick Starr
  • Joshua Conkel
  • Interviews
  • Bullett
  • The House of Von Macrame
  • Theater
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While the MTA dried out the L train, the Bushwick Starr pressed on with the show.

While the MTA dried out the L train, the Bushwick Starr pressed on with the show.

How The Bushwick Starr Kept The Blood Play Flowing

While the MTA dried out the L train, the Bushwick Starr pressed on with the show.

While the MTA dried out the L train, the Bushwick Starr pressed on with the show.

In searching for the effect that Hurricane Sandy has had on local theaters, I've concentrated on those in the path of the storm—near the coast, or in the part of Manhattan that lost power last week. But the storm had other ways of messing with us. Today I spoke to Noel Allain, co-founder and artistic director of the Bushwick Starr, which was wrapping up a critically lauded run of The Debate Society's Blood Play when Sandy came to town. Cut the L train, and Bushwick becomes an island. Did the Starr's audience bridge the gap?

How have things been at the Starr?

Things are good. The L train is back up now. We had a show Monday and Wednesday the week of the storm, and obviously cancelled the show Monday. When everyone started to see how badly the city was being affected, and that the trains were not going to be back up any time soon, we canceled the show Wednesday, and were afraid that was it for the last week of the show. We were pretty disappointed, obviously, but on Thursday we had a conversation about it and looked at the list of ticketholders and said, Hey! Most of these people live in Brooklyn!

We wrote the list, and asked everyone—if we go ahead with the show, will you come? They said they'd be there, and we had a full house. People walked from Carroll Gardens. It was very heartening, especially after everything that had happened for the past few days, to see this support, this enthusiasm, for the show, for coming to the theater. At that point, I felt, oh—this is filling a need.

When we saw that, we decided to have the show the rest of the weekend, and they were all full. Even without the train, we had a great turnout.

Is most of your audience local to Bushwick? Or do people trek in?

They trek in. We're still working on building an audience in the immediate area. The crowd here is mostly visual art, music, parties. You say, oh, come see a play, and they look at you like, oh, why would I do that? It takes time to get people to show up.

What about your cast and crew? Did they have trouble making it in without the L?

They banded together; they found creative solutions. Some people live in Inwood. Our stage manager Liz is in Long Island, and drives in, so that whole week she stayed with the director of the show in Brooklyn. Everyone was under such duress, their lives were already turned upside down, that making the show happen was a welcome challenge. 

Until recently, I lived in Williamsburg and my girlfriend lived in Bushwick, and I got used to the L train going out for whole weekends at a time. Are you used to dealing with the L train vanishing?

We're used to living in fear. Shutting it down on the weekends—there's so much weekend business on the L train, it's like, are you fucking kidding me? Knock on wood right now, they've changed things up a little bit, probably because of that public outcry, and started doing work weeknights after 11. On a weeknight, people aren't gonna be staying out all night anyway. I hope they keep that up.

Those shuttle buses were part of why I left Williamsburg.

How can they think they can replace the whole L train with one little shuttle bus? Living where I am, the shuttles actually worked, because they would be empty when you got on. But once it got to the Graham stop, to the Lorimer stop, just forget about it. I just started walking. 

Did you get nervous seeing those pictures of the L tunnels completely flooded? 

I thought, oh God. How long is this gonna take? When it started running again, God, I felt like a king! Like, the world is open to me! The last couple weeks, you got, more than ever before, a sense of the delicate ecosystem that a city like New York runs on. It was scary. Hopefully, a little bit of a wake-up call to the people who organize this city.

People organize this city?

Somebody does, right? Somebody call those people!

Posted in Theater and tagged with Bushwick Starr, Hurricane Sandy, off off broadway.

November 10, 2012 by W.M. Akers.
  • November 10, 2012
  • W.M. Akers
  • Bushwick Starr
  • Hurricane Sandy
  • off off broadway
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W.M. Akers

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Front page art courtesy Brendan Leach.