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B4C Joins OWS Tonight!
Today Built4Collapse is heading to Occupy Wall Street. We are meeting at the The Cube @ Astor Place at 5pm to brainstorm a communal performance. Dress in your nicest or your most revolutionary.
We will head down to Liberty Square at 6:30pm for the General Assembly which starts at 7pm.
Meet us at Astor Place if you can! Meet us at Liberty Square for sure!
Let’s support action!
Questions? Ideas?
Call or text us at 415-987-4210
Spread the Word.
How to get to Liberty Square:
ARS NOVA Interview
NUCLEAR LOVE AFFAIR
“An extraordinary tale of victory, hypocrisy and ignorance.” -NYTheatre.com
November 4th, 2011 @ 8PM
ARS NOVA
511 West 54th Street
www.arsnovanyc.com
In this highly visual carnival of performance, American icons are juxtaposed against the backdrop of war and persecution to create “a daringly experimental, multimedia pastiche about the rise and fall of America in the Atomic Age.” Both harsh and funny, this vision of a world gone wrong is an “amazing theatrical experience.”
NUCLEAR LOVE AFFAIR PHOTO GALLERY
Built for Collapse Will Join Occupy Wall Street this Monday
The 99% stand in solidarity with the honest workers of:
- AFL-CIO (AFSCME)
- United NY
- Strong Economy for All Coalition
- Working Families Party
- TWU Local 100
- SEIU 1199
- CWA 1109
- RWDSU
- Communications Workers of America
- CWA Local 1180
- United Auto Workers
- United Federation of Teachers
- Professional Staff Congress – CUNY
- National Nurses United
- Writers Guild East
And:
- VOCAL-NY
- Community Voices Heard
- Alliance for Quality Education
- New York Communities for Change
- Coalition for the Homeless
- Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
- The Job Party
- NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
- The Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center
- The New Deal for New York Campaign
- National People’s Action
- ALIGN
- Human Services Council
- Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State
- Citizen Action of NY
- MoveOn.org
- Common Cause NY
- New Bottom Line
- 350.org
- Tenants & Neighbors
- Democracy for NYC
- Resource Generation
- Tenants PAC
- Teachers Unite
Together we will voice our belief that the American dream will live again, that the American way is to help one another succeed. Our voice, our values, will be heard.
For more information check out the Occupy Wall Street website at: http://occupywallst.org/
Where will YOU be 11/4 @ 8pm
A Night Out with Marilyn
Fresh Photos
Brand New Review: “deserves to be seen”
Nuclear Love Affair
theasy.com
by Joshua Bombino on 8.22.11
Vincent Santvoord as Charlie Chaplin. Photo by Valena David Photography.
Nuclear Love Affair
BOTTOM LINE: A daringly experimental, multimedia pastiche about the rise and fall of America in the Atomic Age, easily well worth the price of admission.
The bloom is off the rose in our relationship with the Atomic Age in Nuclear Love Affair. In this highly visual and experimental performance, American icons are juxtaposed against the backdrop of war and persecution that is the legacy of the atomic age. It’s this contrast that gives the play its weight. Beloved icons are mutated by the ravages of atomic radiation. A cross dressing Marilyn Monroe teaches the audience to duck and cover, Elvis becomes a traumatized soldier raping Vietnamese villagers. Lucille Ball becomes an electrified Ethel Rosenberg, the Weather Underground lays siege to Washington D.C. There are many comedic moments, but they only serves to highlight some of America’s darkest hours.
Nuclear Love Affair opens with one part Julia Childs, one part 50’s era product spokeswoman delivering instructions on how to bake an Atomic Victory Cake. From there the play spins out into a series a vignettes that are revisited as disconnected story lines. Borrowing the play’s central metaphor, Nuclear Love Affair is akin to beating cake batter with an electric hand mixer. There is a violent energy that keeps threatening to lose control, sending characters, timeline, and plot flying as gobs of batter. If you are looking for a traditional, straightforward story, you will not find it here. At times it can be a little disorienting as vignettes spin past you. There is something appropriate about it though, because the turbulence of these decades between 1940 and 1969, surely feel out of control looking back. It would help the audience to know something of the history of this period. Scenes fly by quickly sometimes and there is little overt reference to some of history’s intricacies and antecedents. However the multimedia production makes excellent use of old film and television reels and audio clips.
There is not much in the way of a set, except for two projection screens that balance the space in a dynamic way. The rest of the stage is bare to allow the actors to physically own the space. Nuclear Love Affair’s production makes use of an ensemble cast, with minimal dialogue. There are announcer-like voiceovers, which frees the cast to dance and tumble with some very compelling choreography. The play is at its best in this experimental form, when speech is a little too didactic to be realistic. Having said that, one of the most powerful scenes is highly dialogue-driven and illuminates some of the weakness of other dialogue through the play. In it, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg recreate a scene from the I Love Lucy Show, which is projected onto the screen earlier in the production. Ethel struggles to deliver her last letter before she is executed for treason to chilling effect.
From the classic Duck and Cover public service announcements, Nuclear Love Affair jumps to a boxing match between the USA and USSR to win the affection of Cuba. It flings itself at Vietnam, as napalm sends fireworks in the background to music and hip gyrations of Elvis. Charlie Chaplin’s face melts under the searing heat of Hiroshima. Kitsch, Americana, and haunting moments of stagecraft fill the production. The play finishes its argument with the tragic suicide of Marilyn Monroe, the blond bombshell and icon of America’s failed innocence and a touching final plea.
Nuclear Love Affair traces the journey of the American Dream as it becomes tarnished by the Nuclear Age. It is not a new argument and I feel misses one essential truth: the age of the atom is still upon us. The play hops as far forward as 1969 and seems to paint the age as something come and gone. But the journey is not just a wistful look back, it still continues. This play’s message might be more powerful if it carried it up to modern day events. The atomic age is now. The cold war taken up by Pakistan and India, the yellow cake justification of the Iraq War, Iran’s three card monte routine in its nuclear inspections: it is still happening. The atomic age and the miracle of science is as much a cancer and a blessing as it ever was.
Still, this is an ambitious production that is overall successful. As part of the Dream Up Festival, it really is a shame it has such a short run. I can only hope they manage to mount a second run in the near future. It deserves to be seen.
(Nuclear Love Affair plays at Theater for a New City, 155 First Ave, between 9th and 10th Streets, through September 3, 2011. Performances are August 25th at 7PM, August 26th at 9PM, and September 3rd at 5PM . Tickets are $15 General Admission and are available at dreamupfestival.org or by calling Smarttix at 212.868.4444.)
Originally published on Theatre Is Easy <http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2011/N/nuclearloveaffair.php>
Our First Review: “brilliant”
Nuclear Love Affair
nytheatre.com review
Richard Hinojosa · August 16, 2011
Sometimes I’m surprised that we survived the Cold War without some sort of mutual destruction. But as survivors we can now look back on it with objectivity and, if you are the producers of Nuclear Love Affair, a great deal of creativity.
This show may very well be like something you’ve never seen before. It is a strange carnival of performance. The show opens with a recipe for nuclear batter that is mixed up on stage right before your eyes and what follows is a series of scenes about the triumphs and struggles of the nuclear race and its effects on our psyche. The subtitle of the show is “a bold new spectacle starring the atomic bomb” and it is just that—a bold new spectacle. It layers a cacophony of music, new and old, with sound bites (nicely designed by Amy Yourd) and clips from TV’s past along with dance and finally text taken from the actual first-hand accounts of real people who lived through it all. Projections are cast on the actors’ all white costumes (finely designed by Michael Krass), on a giant white sheet stretched across the back of the stage and even on an umbrella. The characters are a mix of everyday folks, countries, pop icons and historical figures from Cuba to Marilyn Monroe to Ethel Rosenberg.
Nuclear Love Affair is very dark and extremely provocative, living up its atomic title. The many layers of media and performance are well stitched together and performed with precision. I was really blown away by the innovative style and the cast’s exuberance putting over the material. Writer/directors Sanaz Ghajarrahimi and Ben Hobbs weave an extraordinary tale of victory, hypocrisy and ignorance. Their vision of a world gone all wrong is both funny and harsh. They create brilliant mashups of characters such as Ethel Rosenberg playing the part of Lucy in the classic Vitameatavegamin scene, only she’s not obliged to drink the disgusting product—she’s getting strapped into the electric chair with vaudevillian choreography. This is followed by an actual account of her execution and her last statement. Hobbs and Ghajarrahimi use a lot of this sort of juxtaposition and their cast is right there with them.
Emily Brazee, Sophie Labelle, Vincent Santvoord, Soren Stockman and Hobbs are brilliant. They all take on several roles jumping seamlessly in and out of them throughout the night. One of my favorite performances of the night was Hobbs playing Marilyn Monroe. His performance of her suicide is warped and dead on. Santvoord plays a great Charlie Chaplin who made me have to suppress a guffaw when he enters and plays with Monroe’s dead body in his signature slap-stick style. The choreography is conceived by the cast. They mix some interpretive dance with creative movement that at times is abstract or erotic. I loved the intermittently slow motion boxing scene between the USA and USSR that is also a battle over who gets to screw Cuba. The physical nature of this production is certainly one of its strongest points.
Multimedia/multi-disciplinary shows can fall into the trap of more turning out to be less, but in the case of Nuclear Love Affair a perfect balance is reached that makes for an amazing theatrical experience. The show is part of Theater for the New City’s Dream Up Festival going on right now. So much attention is being given to the FringeNYC festival but if any of the other shows in their program are like this one I think the festival is well worth a look.
Opened: August 14, 2011
Closes: September 3, 2011
Show Info
Synopsis: Built for Collapse presents a spectacular investigation of historic events that follows America as she enters the Atomic Age and begins her torrid love affair with violence.
More Info…
Venue: Theater for the New City
Prices: $15.00
Ticketing Info
Online Ticketing
Box Office/Info: 212-254-1109
Tickets On Sale Thru: September 3, 2011
Performance Schedule:
Aug 14 at 7pm, Aug 16 at 9pm, Aug 18 at 9pm, Aug 25 at 7pm, Aug 26 at 9pm, Sep 3 at 5pm
Artists Involved
- Created By: Sanaz Ghajarrahimi, Ben Hobbs, Vincent Santvoord
- Producer: Built for Collapse
Built4Collapse 
