Go ahead; pour one out for your shorty.This week is the week of the little people, the stepped on, looked over, the downtrodden. Hopefully by now the bailout package has passed and golden ducats have started to trickle down from Washington to the empty hands of the forgotten man. But even if they haven’t, there’s plenty of opportunity to recognize the unheralded among us. On tap this week: an all-midget play, homage to lesser-known activists, a party for young collectors and a screening of Oscar-nominated shorts.
Winter Wickedness Party
Feb. 12, The Chelsea Art Museum, 556 W. 22nd St. (at 11th Ave.), 212-255-0719; 8, $20 The Chelsea Art Museum, quite young itself, hosts an all night party for its Young Associates because nothing beats going to a museum—except going to a museum after hours to drink absinthe and dance among the artwork. Also because in this economic environment, all museums and cultural institutions are desperate for new blood. It’s like Let the Right One In but for art! There will be live art projections on the wall; cute, cultured young things and an open bar. Bottom Line: Support the arts! Support your right to drink with the artists!
Jefferson Friedman’s ‘On in Love’
Feb. 13, (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (betw. Thompson and Sullivan Sts.), 212-505-3474; 8, $15 After Sid Vicious’ nihilistic brand of punk came the smarter art-punk of the Talking Heads, Arto Lindsay and others. One aesthetic persists today in those homeless white kids with a puppy and a cardboard sign, but the other is alive and well in composers like Jefferson Friedman, a young Rome Award–winning composer whose opus On in Love will be performed at (Le) Poisson Rouge as part of the Wordless Music series.Yet the series’ title is not entirely accurate since the song cycle relies on the operatic voice of Craig Wedren of the posthardcore band Shudder to Think. Bottom Line: Friedman’s work is chaotic but with an intelligent framework apparent under the chaos, or vice versa.
The People Speak
Feb. 11, Modern Museum of Art, 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-708-9400; 7, $10 God bless curmudgeonly historian Howard Zinn whose A People’s History of the United States and more recentVoices of a People’s History of the United States serve as a corrective against the top-down great men historical narrative so often pushed. The People Speak, a documentary by Tony Sacco, is a dramatic re-enactment of some of these known unknowns starring various lefty Hollywood heads.The usual suspects (Josh Brolin,Viggo Mortensen, Sean Penn, Marisa Tomei) are all in the film. For this, the premiere, Zinn, co-author Anthony Arnove and Tomei will be on hand to discuss the voices from the film. Bottom Line: Never has Zinn’s shtick of shedding light on unknown chapters of American history seemed more appropriate as now, when a new chapter is being written. Never has Marisa Tomei looked as good as she does in The Wrestler.
Mabou Mines’ ‘DollHouse’
Feb. 12, St. Ann’s Warehouse, 38 Water St. (at New Dock St.), Brooklyn, 718-834-8794; 8, $35 After five years of circumambulating the globe, the Mabou Mines, an experimental theatre group, brings its DollHouse back to St. Ann’s Warehouse, where the show premiered in 2004.The “gimmick” of the production is the petite stature of its male actors: All of them are between 40 and 53 inches. But the real draw is the smart adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, an oftenaccurate if exceedingly pessimistic depiction of matrimony wherein an intellectually larger woman must be subservient to a stubbornly smaller man. Bottom Line: A brilliant physical rendering of Ibsen’s themes. If you missed this five years ago—maybe you were single and thought it didn’t apply; maybe you didn’t know about it—go see it now.
Oscar Shorts
Feb. 14, Lighthouse International, 111 E. 59th St. (betw. Lexington and Park Aves.), 212-821-9200; 4, $5 Am I the only one that thought Benjamin Button was one long, brown, coiling turd and Slumdog Millionaire was miserably affected? Thankfully the Oscars award more than just nice-looking sentimental pap smears.The animated and live-action short category is one of the most enjoyable categories. Sadly it’s also the one most rarely seen by the public.This very cheap and very rare screening of the 10 nominees, strangely at a center for the blind, is your chance to have a little guy to root for come Oscar night. Bottom Line: Ten movies, five bucks, two chances. Do the math! Do the do!
