Venue Changes for TNC Tour

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company is perfroming its 34th annual tour with "Gone Fission, or Alternative Power," an Operatta for the Street.  The rip-roaring production is touring City streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs through September 12. The production, free to all New Yorkers, has book, lyrics and direction by Crystal Field and musical score composed by Joseph Vernon Banks.  
 

TNC's award-winning Street Theater always contains an elaborate assemblage of trap doors, giant puppets, smoke machines, masks, original choreography and a huge (9' x 12') running screen or "cranky" providing continuous movement behind the actors.  The company of  over twoscore actors, over a dozen crew members, two assistant directors and five live musicians shares the challenge of performing outside and holding a large, non-captive audience.  The music varies in style from Bossa Nova to Broadway to Gilbert & Sullivan.  Complex social issues are often presented through children's allegories, with children as the heroes, making these free productions a popular form of family entertainment.

When an out-of-work Account Executive takes a survival job as a Census Taker, he visits a fish restaurant.  A hurricane transforms the place to a Louisiana Bayou, where Father Neptune is conducting a summit with the creatures of the sea.  Our hero's job is to count, but he also listens.  He learns that animals are people, too; they are just like the gay couple in 3E, the single mom in 5D, the gang member in 6A, the illlegal immigrant family in 4B and Lady Gaga in the Lobby.     He sees that the human race is an important part of the Animal Kingdom and learns "dissenting" notions he would have considered fishy, like offshore drilling is disgraceful and that you shouldn't dig for coal by lopping off the top of a mountain.  He even learns there are alternative lifestyles to world domination and empire building.  The operetta features a La Vegas style Can-Can number called "Investors' Russian Roulette" and a Sea Creatures Anthem, "We Are The Animals." 
 
The Census Taker takes his neighbors so seriously that he realizes that grassroots organizing is the way to go.  When he goes to an angry Community Board meeting with a chorus of shrimp, fish, dolphins, a pelican, and a polar bear, led by Father Neptune, to plead the case for Alternative Power, the meeting elects him as a public member. He considers a run for City Council. As Father Neptune says, "You've gotta start somewhere!"
 
The sea creatures are played by actors in gigantic fish costumes made by Hollywood special effects maven David "Zen" Mansley.  The mountain plays itself. There are seven production numbers, a live five-piece band and a company of 50.
 
Author/director/lyricist Crystal Field began writing street theater in 1968 as a member of Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia.  She wrote and performed her own outdoor theater pieces against the Vietnam War and also curated and performed many poetry programs for the Philadelphia Public Schools.  There she found tremendous enthusiasm and comprehension on the part of poor and minority students for both modern and classical poetry when presented in a context of relevancy to current issues.  She realized that for poetry to find its true audience, the bonds of authoritarian criticism must and can be transcended.  Her earliest New York street productions were playlets written in Philadelphia and performed on the flatbed truck of Bread and Puppet Theater in Central Park.  Peter Schumann, director of that troupe, was her first NY artistic supporter.
 
In 1971, Ms. Field became a protégé of Robert Nichols, founder of the Judson Poets Theater in Manhattan.  It is an interesting historic note that ""The Expressway" by Robert Nichols, directed by Crystal Field (a Street theater satire about Robert Moses' plan for a throughway to run across Little Italy from the West Side Highway to the FDR Drive).  It was actually the first production of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival.  Nichols wrote street theater plays for TNC in its early years, but as time went on, wrote scenarios and only the first lines of songs, leaving Field to "fill in the blanks."  When Nichols announced his retirement to Vermont in 1975, he urged Field to "write your own."  The undertaking, while stressful at first, became the impetus for her to express her own topical political philosophy and to immerse her plays in that special brand of humor referred to often as "that brainy slapstick."  Her first complete work was "Mama Liberty's Bicentennial Party" (1976), in honor of the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution.
 
Composer Joseph-Vernon Banks has written original music for the TNC street Theater Productions "Tap Dance," "State Of The Union," "The Patients Are Running The Asylum," "Bio-Tech," "Code Orange: on the M15," "Social Insecurity" and "Buckle My Shoe," all with book and lyrics by Crystal Field.  His other TNC productions include music and lyrics for "Life's Too Short To Cry" by Michael Vazquez.  His awards include a Meet The Composer Grant, the ASCAP Special Awards Program, and a fellowship from the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU.  His musical "Girlfriends!" premiered at The Goodspeed Opera House.  He has been a composer-in-residence in The Tribeca Performing Arts Center Work and Show Series and is a member of The Dramatists Guild.
               
Sat, August 21st  - 2PM - Brooklyn - Prospect Park Concert Grove
Sun, August 22nd  - 2PM - Queens - Travers Park, 34th Ave between 77th & 78th Streets
Sat, August 28th  - 2PM - Manhattan - Wise Towers at W. 90th St bet. - Columbus & Amsterdam
Sun, August 29th - 2PM - Manhattan - Washington Square Park
Sat, September 11th  - 2PM - Staten Island - CHANGED TO: Stapleton Playground, Tompkins Ave. & Broad St.
Sun, September 12th  - 2PM - Manhattan - St. Marks Church, E. 10th St at 2nd Ave