via nolongerempty.org

Actors in Theatre of the Oppressed's upcoming production in the Bronx.

When directors with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC asked a group of teenage girls to strike a pose that they think represents the Bronx, most of them did the same thing: They chose images with weapons.

This is how artist Melanie Crean remembers a workshop with around ten teenage girls in the Bronx, who were then in the early stages of creating a play that they will perform in front of a live audience this coming week.

"[Violence] is a very real part of their lives that is not necessarily getting discussed and analyzed in schools or elsewhere," Crean told the Voice. "We're starting to...get people talking about problems, so we can start to think about solutions."

This is part of the unique process of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, a nonprofit group on the rise that collaborates with organizations throughout the city to create original productions with communities that face some kind of oppression or discrimination.

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Faced with the unattractive and expensive prospect of raising money to find traditional spaces in which to perform, a young theater company, Rudy's Meritocracy, has turned to manual labor. The group is advertising their services as a makeshift moving company. If you hire them, they'll help you move your stuff, and after that's done they'll put on a 40 minute show about moving titled THISISMYREALLIFE in your new apartment. The group came upon the idea in part from their experiences of being 20-somethings in the city. "All our friends are moving all the time," Cordelia Istel, one of Rudy's Meritocracy's three members, told Runnin' Scared Friday. "We're two, three years out of school and have just looked at friends constantly moving and realized that provided us with empty space."

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Some of these folks have never acted on a stage before, but then again, this is most definitely not your traditional performance.

Tonight, Theatre of the Oppressed NYC is partnering with nonprofit group Housing Works to put on a show centered around the experiences of being homeless and HIV-positive in New York City.

The actors, who have been collaborating on all aspects of the performance since September, are all HIV-positive (except one staffer from Housing Works), and all have experienced homelessness themselves. The production, called The Worm in the Big Apple, aims to tell the personal stories of these New Yorkers and shed light on some of the larger challenges this population faces.

And the audience gets on stage, too.

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via @NYCMayorsOffice

Though much of the real-life news in the city this past week was worth of a couple Law & Order episodes, the mayor's office brought our attention to on-screen drama. Not only was there the Thursday Gossip Girl hoopla (xoxo, Mayor Mike), but on Tuesday the film Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close got a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Picture. In a press release the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting announced that Extremely Loud was a "Made in NY" film. To learn more about that label, we talked to Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Friday. Read some excerpts of our conversation after the jump:

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Courtesy of SPiN NYC

When we saw reports of Susan Sarandon hanging out at the opening of the High Line roller skating rink this summer, we immediately wanted to do two things. First, we wanted to go check out the rink -- which we did (hey, celebrity endorsements work!). The second? Chat with the 64-year-old Sarandon, a Chelsea resident who prefers downtown to uptown, and is an outspoken devotee of the city. So, how did the High Line relationship happen?

"I just loved when they approached me about supporting the High Line," she told us by phone last week, in a conversation ranging from her Jackson Heights childhood to cycling in the city and parks, ping-pong, and her dogs. "I love finding ways to use things that have been around for a while. Maybe that's something you develop as you get older and you yourself want to keep being used."

That's not something we think Sarandon has to worry about. Highlights from our chat, after the jump.

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Veseth R. Sieu

Would Strindberg like big sun hats? Amanda Weiss in Dreamplay

We stepped back into this year's New York International Fringe Festival, which continues through Sunday. Below, some highlights and lowlights of a recent batch of theater-going.

Revision of a Classic
Highlights: Butoh Electra; Dreamplay
In Butoh Electra, Jordin Rosin reimagines Sophocles' tragedy: Mycenae becomes feudal Japan, the chorus an ensemble of Butoh dancers, and Electra dons a variation of hakama pants. Rosin's successful synthesis of classical Greek and Japanese traditions enriches the myth at the piece's core, as do commanding, physically impressive performances from the Ume Group.

Joseph Thierren's Dreamplay, an adaptation of August Strindberg's dizzying masterpiece A Dream Play, focuses the original's abstract, surrealist elements by combining masks and puppetry with the talents of seasoned performers and Suzuki movement. The result is compelling, if grotesque: Dreamplay is nightmarish in the best way possible.

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Wikipedia

Even after eight years, Wicked is still popular. (Sorry about that, we just had to.) HopStop calculated the top 10 Broadway shows New Yorkers have been going to see this summer, based on what theaters were most frequently inserted as HopStop destinations or starting addresses between the dates of May 23 through July 17. The long-running, Glee-covered, teenage girl-idolized Wicked came out on top.

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Joan Marcus

Since 1996, the musical Rent has entered the musical theater pantheon, won a Pulitzer, and been praised, parodied, and panned (when it made its way to the screen). Now, three years after the show closed its Broadway run after 12 years in 2008, a revival is in previews at New World Stages off-Broadway, and is set to open August 11.

Surely, you know the story. Rent is the work of rising talent Jonathan Larson, who died suddenly just before its off-Broadway opening; the show is about a group of friends in the East Village, many of whom suffer from HIV/AIDS.

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Esther Zuckerman

John Raymond Barker and Jared Pike face Colman Domingo.

This week, theater usher Jared Pike will work at the production of Hair, which is playing on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on 44th Street. Monday night, however, he kissed his husband, John Raymond Barker, on that stage, surrounded by the show's fringe-clad tribe, as a packed house watched and applauded.

Pike and Barker were pronounced married, along with two other couples, by actor Colman Domingo in a brief ceremony in between the play's curtain call and the dance party with the audience that occurs onstage after every performance.

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Mike Bodge

Yesterday we let you know about a neat new website called NSKYC that tells you what the average color of the sky in New York is every five minutes. The site, which launched on the solstice Tuesday, was created by Mike Bodge, the creative director at Lolz LLC, whose work includes a number of New York City-inspired web projects. Trying to find that person you fell in love with on the subway? Bodge has you covered. Same goes if you're looking or a place to eat in Williamsburg. We chatted with Bodge this morning about his creations.

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