Kenneth Aaron

Mike Daisey in last season's "If You See Something, Say Something."

Every spring, we here at Voice receive a stream of press releases from local theaters and theater groups announcing their play lineups for the coming season. They're quite the tease, these schedules, always promising more artistically than they ever really deliver. With that in mind, though, we can't help but be impressed by next year's Public Theater roster, announced yesterday. While the theater season is not exactly a competition, artistic director Oskar Eustis's Public is looking like 2009-2010's winner.

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Peter Bellamy

It's been a big theater season for playwright Craig Lucas. In November, his Prayer for My Enemy made its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons, and now comes The Singing Forest, currently in previews at the Public Theater. The new piece--directed by Mark Wing-Davey and featuring Olympia Dukakis and Jonathan Groff among its cast--explores sexual desire, psychiatry, family history, and the legacy of the Holocaust in both grave and farcical tones. On the occasion of the new play, we sent Lucas a few questions....

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Daniel S. Neuner

Experimental Jet Set? Sonic Youth meets Merce Cunningham.

Of all the strange bandstands Sonic Youth have played on over the years, this had to be one of the strangest. This past weekend, the group joined Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and composer Takehisa Kosugi to provide the soundscape for Merce Cunningham's highly anticipated Nearly Ninety dance show at BAM. But the musicians were not stationed down in the pit; instead, they were mounted on a towering and elaborate metal construction at the rear of the Gilman Opera House stage, churning out their grinding aural endeavors as Cunningham's choreography unfolded before them. The three- or four-level (hard to tell!) contraption, designed by architect Benedetta Tagliabue, did an entertaining job of upstaging Cunningham's dancers, despite their 1967-season Star Trek costumes.

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Knowing that our friend, Morning Joe's Willie Geist--"The Oracle of MSNBC"--is a big sports fan, we thought we'd check in with him about the NCAA's Final Four. Willie has fielded some questions from us before, so we're pleased he had time--between Indian-wrestling matches with co-host Mike Barnicle--to answer a few more.

OK, give us the Willie Geist breakdown of the Final Four.

First, a disclosure: I have massive, life-changing amounts of money riding on North Carolina beating UConn for the national championship. This country's fascist anti-gaming laws prevent me from saying anything more, but I do have a rooting interest here.

My financial considerations aside, UNC and UConn are the two teams that should play in the title game. A typical college basketball team is lucky to have two good players. Carolina and UConn each have four or five. I don't like most of those players, but that doesn't mean they're not good. North Carolina's star Tyler Hansbrough is perhaps the least likable college star to come along since Christian Laettner. He has a boring, old-man's YMCA-league game and he plays with all the joy of Meryl Streep's character in Sophie's Choice. His unchanging facial expression is reminiscent of the one you see on hostage tapes--"Someone's forcing me to be here. Send help." The good news is that he has no chance of being a good NBA player, so we won't have to watch him much longer.

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Photo from the Royal Court's February production in London

For a minor playlet, Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children has certainly generated quite the brouhaha. In seven brief scenes, the 10-minute piece tracks 80 years of Jewish history--from the Nazi era to the recent Gaza invasion--in the form of a conversation about how Jewish children should be taught about what's happening in the world around them.

In London, the Royal Court's February production of Seven Jewish Children caused a tempest, with some championing the play's provocation and politics, and others calling it anti-Semitic. (Read our earlier coverage, or check out the script for yourself.) So it was with much anticipation that a crowd gathered at New York Theatre Workshop on Wednesday night to see a staged reading of the play, which was followed by an audience conversation (hosted by GritTV's Laura Flanders) and an encore solo performance of the piece by theater legend Andre Gregory.

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"The NFL is this close to being the Taliban."

A few weeks ago, Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Impressed by his sagacity--or at least his insights into Family Ties and José Canseco--we decided to ask him a few more. So below, more of Willie's views on sports, television, and his co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

If you and Joe Scarborough had to share a bunk bed, who'd get the top and who'd get the bottom?

Before I answer, I want you to know I see right through your attempt to get me to describe my relationship with Joe in "Top/Bottom" terms. Having said that, Joe is totally a bottom, so I'd have to climb the ladder to the top of our NASCAR-themed bunk beds.

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Debate continues to rage in the British press as to whether or not Caryl Churchill's new playlet Seven Jewish Children is anti-Semitic or not. The 10-minute piece, which was written is response to Israel's invasion of Gaza, just concluded its run at London's Royal Court, where it was met with a range of sometimes impassioned responses.

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Nick Drake purists that we are--angrily changing the TV channel whenever that "Pink Moon" Volkswagen ad would come on--we nonetheless find ourselves charmed by the expansive cover of "Fly" performed by Swedish psych-rockers the Soundtrack of Our Lives on their new CD, Communion. Drums! Electric guitars! Wall of Sound! Not what poor Nick ever intended for "Fly," we're sure, but we hope he'd approve of the near-epic take on his once gentle tune. You can check out Soundtrack's cover here.

If you prefer your Scandinavians live, abdominous frontman Ebbot Lundgren and the rest of the band will be playing the Music Hall of Williamsburg on March 11 and the Bowery Ballroom on March 12. No word yet on whether fans wearing replicas of Lundgren's signature kamiz will be admitted free.

Paula Court

Maybe Stockhausen next? Foreman and Zorn's "Astronome"

It's not exactly Tosca, but Astronome--a collaboration between MacArthur-genius director Richard Foreman and MacArthur-genius composer John Zorn--is an opera of sorts. In the piece, currently playing at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Foreman's funhouse mindscape animates Zorn's cacophonous, amusing, semi-headbanging score. Our reviewer, Tom Sellar, describes the production as "a head rush and a quick trip to the sublime." A compliment, indeed, so we thought we'd ask Foreman a few questions about his innovative new project.

How did your collaboration with John Zorn come about?

About four summers ago, turning the corner on Broadway and Houston, there's John. We greet each other (when John first appeared in New York, he used to spend lots of time hanging out at my loft theater at Broadway and Broome--even answering the phone!--so we've known each other for over 30 years). John says, "What are you up to," and I say, "I'm going to L.A. To do an opera with music by Michael Gordon (What to Wear)--but what about you, John, why don't you write me an opera?" And John says--"But I can't write music for words, the best I can do is an opera in Vocalise." "OK, do that. I'll stage it." John tells me he didn't believe me at first, but over the next two years I would ask him every couple of months, "Where's my opera?" So finally he calls me up one day, "Hey, Richard--I did the opera. We're doing a concert version in England. Then it'll come out as a CD on my Tzadik label and you can hear it."

So another couple of months, I get to hear it. It's very aggressive for much of its length, and I immediately think, "What the hell can I do with this unrelenting blast of music?" (John tells me recently he never expected me to agree to stage it after hearing it!)

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Way funnier than this photo would lead you to believe.

Open-minded types that we are, we're finding ourselves increasingly entertained by MSNBC's Morning Joe, which we'll nominate as the best show to breakfast by--it has a kind of looseness that TV needs more of, plus it's actually aimed at adults. And our favorite within this favorite is Willie Geist, who co-hosts the program with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (along with regular guests Mike Barnicle and Pat Buchanan). Willie may well be the most amusing man on morning television, so we thought we'd ask him a few questions about his early-a.m. cable life.

Is it our imagination, or is more alcohol consumed on your show than on most morning programs?

It is not your imagination. People assume there's some FCC rule that says you can't drink alcohol on television. Nonsense. No such rule exists. Actually we haven't checked the rules, but there probably isn't one, right? Anyway, thousands of drunk people are watching our show at 3 and 4 a.m. in some parts of the country. The least we can do is share an occasional drink with them.

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