Preview 2024: Staff Picks Special Editon
When I think about the nuances of my personal taste, the most undeniable factor in that development has been living in New York for nearly 20 years. I visited in January of 2004 during the winter break of my senior year in college to see some shows and discover what living in NY "is really like" from my friends who had graduated the year before and been in Brooklyn for less than a year. Retrospect renders that mission truly adorable.
I got to see the opening night of Richard Foreman's King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe and the following night see David Greenspan as Mephistopheles in Target Margin's Faust Part One. Needless to say, I moved here in the fall.
Coming from Kansas and being a self-proclaimed intellectual, I had no idea what live performance could do or be, no idea what it meant to make art in a city where venues close and collaborators die and capitalism dictates opportunity, and definitely no idea how to get from place to place.
As I shimmy my less youthful self into 2024, I am thinking a great deal about the past 20 years and the next 20 years. It is with that in mind that I want to highlight some things I am deeply fucking stoked to experience this January.
PROJECTS BY ARTISTS WHO HAVE CEMENTED THEMSELVES IN MY HEART AND MIND AS ICONIC
I love meeting new artists and seeing first/second/third experiments. OF COURSE. But, it is one of the most meaningful and deepest pleasures for me to have the honor of a journey with an artist or group. To have multiple points of reference. To have favorite shows and least favorite shows. To have full top ten lists of just their creations. Who are those gems that are presenting this January?
Banana Bag and Bodice at The Doxsee at Target Margin Theater with Hubris Always Gets You In The End - It would be pretty impossible for Banana Bag to ever fall off of my top ten companies of all time list. I honestly do not think it is possible. Even if they never made another show. But they ARE making a show. And there is nobody like them. I am screaming at the top of my lungs - DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!
The Million Underscores at We Are Here with Those Moveable Pieces - TMU are the truest artists in Brooklyn. I am being super superlative today and that is just my vibe. It is also something I have been lucky to witness for ten years, as they never stop creating, innovating, working in the actual realities of this world and their lives and through their own special sorcery, presenting their fascinating projects to us instead of languishing in development. Their Gestating Baby piece in April was unanimously dubbed the sexiest show that has ever happened at The Brick. The Passenger broke every rule. The Observatory made me sit back in full wonder. Whatever happens in January will live in the folds of my brain forever.
Yuki Kawahisa at The Brick with ten dreams of metamorphoses or me talk dirty some day - Yuki is an artist that I have seen elevate, expand and infuse multiple other peoples' projects with an impeccable ease for years. This is HER project. This is HER voice. This is HER unique approach.
PROJECTS THAT ARE A REALLY GREAT TIME AND EFFORTLESSLY WEIRD (ie probably a little gross, a little sexy, a little funny, a little virtuosic) -
This is thingNY in a nutshell. Yes, it is experimental opera and that can feel either like it was made for you OR you are not gonna get it. But this group is different. There is so much tenderness under that shell of extreme talent. There is a lot of goofiness rippling through the thematic intensity and serious practice. Natural Studies is at The Brick. If you have never felt invited into the realm of experimental music, come on in. If you think narrative theater is over, come on in. If you need to vibe out, please, come on in.
PROJECTS I AM THANKING THE STARS THAT I GET TO EXPERIENCE A SECOND TIME -
Deepe Darknesse by Lisa Fagan, Lena Engelstein and Hannah Mitchell and Open Mic Night by Julia Mounsey and Peter Mills Weiss are two shows that you could not stop me from seeing again. People are like - But Theresa, your January is so busy and you have already seen those shows... And I am like - I know what I like and I am seeing these shows again and nobody can stop me. It is one of my favorite things in the world to get a second chance.
All of these shows are in January. Look em up. Get tickets. Have an experience or two. And then let those experiences build and form relationships.
- Theresa Buchheister