Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Musings on the state of the arts, then and now: The Civilians’ RADIO DOWNTOWN and Louise Orwin’s FAMEHUNGRY

• By drediman
• February 3, 2025
• No Comments

This past weekend, I encountered a pair of Off-Broadway shows that investigate the state of the arts — both now and in the past — in fascinatingly distinct manners. As per usual, read on for my thoughts.

RADIO DOWNTOWN: RADICAL ’70S ARTISTS LIVE ON AIR
The Civilians at 59E59 Theaters
Through February 9

First there’s The Civilians’ production of Radio Downtown: Radical ’70s Artists Live on Air (RECOMMENDED) at 59E59 Theaters. The brainchild of Steve Cosson (the company’s longtime artistic director and driving force) and Jocelyn Clarke, the piece continues in The Civilians’ tradition of devising their unique brand of “docutheater”, here culling together archival interviews from the 1970s — largely from WNYC’s “Arts Forum” radio show — with experimental artists from the worlds of film, dance, theater, and literature/poetry. Receiving lines directly through headsets, the show’s skillful set of five actors channel avant-garde artists from the era (e.g., Harry Smith, Yvonne Rainer, Kenneth Anger, Babette Mangolte), even mimicking the their speech patterns and vocal cadences as they debate the nature and merits of art. The end result vacillates between poking fun at the pretentious personalities that pervaded those times and shedding light on their authentic search for truth and beauty. Although the show is technically a verbatim regurgitation of said interviews, The Civilians provide stylized visual commentary — largely in an arms-length yet lovingly parodic manner — that playfully interacts with the text, thanks largely to Cosson’s rigorous, tightly choreographed staging and some beautifully integrated projections.

FAMEHUNGRY
SoHo Playhouse
Through February 8

The debate continues downtown with a far more personal and urgent dissection of the state of the arts. This comes in the form of performance artist Louise Orwin’s Famehungry (RECOMMENDED), which can be currently seen at SoHo Playhouse. Indeed, in her occasionally outrageous solo show — which arrives in New York after having received acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — Orwin eschews The Civilians’ cool approach to theater-making in favor of a more visceral (and messy) affair. Essentially, Famehungry questions the economics and motivation for making art in a world whose attention is being increasingly monopolized by social media — and in this particular case, Tik Tok (the show is especially timely given the recent headlines garnered by the social media platform). Accompanied online live by her Tik Tok mentor Jax Valentine (at only 21 years of age, she has 80K followers), Orwin juxtaposes her own aesthetic and experience as a congenial-with-a-wild-streak performance artist with the aspirations of young Tik Tokers like Jax, drawing striking similarities between both plights. From a technical standpoint, the production is scrappy yet well-executed, particularly impressive given the logistics of having to simultaneously perform the piece live-streamed on Tik Tok and in-person in downtown New York (or wherever the show is performed). Suffice to say, the piece’s musings on the arts culminates in a sort of philosophical stalemate, where I reckon it’s always been.