Looking Back, and Forward, as Ma-Yi Celebrates 30 Years of Innovative Work

By Billy McEntee

MAR 2020 | Theater

The Obie and Lucille Lortel award-winning theater company started out in 1989 producing solely the work of Filipino American writers; while that has evolved, so has the theater’s definition of what a “Ma-Yi play” is. And that’s a strength: in a company whose ethos and blessings are fortified by its creators, each new playwright brings with them—to Ma-Yi’s numerous productions and artistic programs—their own world and experiences to expand and delight the company’s evolving landscape of thought-provoking, envelope-pushing American plays.

Printmaking and Studio Work

DEC 19-JAN 20 | Critics Page

I have difficulty imagining what my work today might be, or look like, if I had never made prints. I take for granted so much of the experience made possible by the printing process that subsequently circled back into my studio, that I find it impossible to sort it all out and remember, let alone understand, what comes from where.

Grace Notes: Pam Tanowitz and Simone Dinnerstein’s New Work for Goldberg Variations

By Rachel Stone

FEB 2020 | Dance

The ushers at the New York City premiere of choreographer Pam Tanowitz and pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s New Work for Goldberg Variations at The Joyce Theater warn me that the program is 75 minutes—75 minutes!—with no intermission. It’s possible they have to tell me this, but either way, the length of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” (which, apocrypha alleges, he composed in 1741 as an anti-Scheherazade to help an insomniac count finally sleep) intimidates.

‘The Work Is Never Done’ at MoMA: enacting and obscuring archives

By Benedict Nguyen

DEC 18-JAN 19 | Dance

Beyond the title itself, there’s something about the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, running from mid-September 2018 to early February 2019, that brought up meta thoughts about what work I’m doing. What could this writing, this work, do?