Maurice Peress, conductor, and Lorca Peress, director

Theater director Lorca Peress is directing two one act operas opening this weekend at Queen College's Goldstein Theater. My Kinsman, Major Molineau (making its New York premiere) and The Image Maker (making its world premiere) were both composed by Bruce Saylor and are conducted by Ms. Peress's father Maurice Peress, the legendary conductor and author of Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots . (When we covered it for Sound of the City, we had the pleasure of having Maestro Peres as our date at the world premiere of Philip Glass's Symphony No. 9 in Carnegie Hall last January, where he had once worked as Leonard Bernstein's assistant.)

We interviewed Ms. Peress over the phone last week about the new pieces, working with her dad, and creating new work at Queens College.

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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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Because there's no better way to start off your April Fools' morning than with a video of our venerable mayor singing tunelessly alongside a Jonas brother: here you go. It's footage from last night's Inner Circle Show, which we previewed yesterday. Alongside current How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying stars Nick Jonas and Beau Bridges, Mayor Bloomberg sang, danced and even spoke in Spanish. The show's "Brotherhood of Man" number became about the "brotherhood of Mike." Watch after the jump.

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Tonight marks this year's "Inner Circle Show" -- the annual event in which the city's political press corps gets together to make light of the what they cover -- and, according to Inner Circle Chairman Mark Lieberman, no one is safe. Lieberman, who talked with Runnin' Scared on Friday explained that there will be commentary on Occupy Wall Street, the mayoral wannabes, the mayor's kiss with Lady Gaga, Rick Santorum, Tim Tebow and Rush Limbaugh, who gets an Act 2 song called "Birth Control Killed The Radio Star." "Nobody is immune from the parody," Lieberman said. Even the title, "Preoccupied" pokes at two different groups. "It's a double entendre," Lieberman said. "It's Occupy Wall Street, obviously, and also the fact that so many people in the Bloomberg admin may be preoccupied as to what they are doing when the mayor's term ends."

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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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Prior to receiving the above "telegram" today, we've been to the McKittirck Hotel twice to engage with Punchdrunk's Sleep No More.

Now, it seems the production is about to undergo a radical change.

Or engage in an April Fool's Day prank against would be returning customers.

Or maybe, as the click through site tells you to return in two days to purchase tickets, it's simply a phishing scam to get your credit card data.

Either way, it's an intriguing mystery.

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Courtesy of Theatre of the Oppressed

Tony Horton, homeless actor who died last week, standing center during a curtain call.

Tony Horton spent decades living on 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

But the big difference between him and his Upper East Side neighbors is that Horton, an actor and an artist, lived underground.

The homeless New Yorker died in a fire on Sunday at the F train stop at that intersection where he had lived for many years. It was news earlier this week when we happened to be writing about a Monday night performance of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, where Horton was an actor.

Runnin' Scared spoke yesterday afternoon with Katy Rubin, founding artistic director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, to hear about the troupe's response to the loss of one of its members and to learn a bit more about the life of Horton -- a homeless man in his 40s who hated shelters, loved giving gifts, and frequently played the role of police officer in the troupe's performances.

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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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Mia Yoo, Artistic Director of La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club), responded to our story about Millenium Film Workshop being served an eviction notice from La MaMa on Wednesday night with this statement:

Since December 2010 La MaMa has been talking and meeting with Millennium Film to try and understand how we can help them as they continue to find ways to stablize their organization. We will continue to do so. We believe and support the mission of Millennium Film and consider it a very important cultural institution.

Tamara Greenfield, the Executive Director of Fourth Arts Block who has been mediating between Millenium and La MaMa over the past many months (including a long meeting yesterday) explained what the process has been like for the two non-profits, her belief that La MaMa wants to keep Millenium in its home (under a different configuration, where some of their current real estate can be rented out to increase revenue), and why she thinks there may have been an "overreaction" from Millenium to the eviction notice.

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The definition of what makes a woman has never been as black and white as simply having a vagina. In Young Jean Lee's latest production, the Obie recipient puts this perplexing label to test in the Untitled Feminist Show, where audiences experience what it's like being female--in all its form, and completely nude, through a performance featuring six famed downtown stars of theater, dance, cabaret, and burlesque.

The practically silent dance piece, part of the 7th annual Coil Festival sponsored by P.S.122, includes Becca Blackwell, World Famous *BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (a/k/a Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle, and Regina Rocke.

For the continuously fascinating, and hilarious, Blackwell, who's been seen in the productions of Circus Amok, Room For Cream, and Parlour, a film (directed by Sharon Hayes) at the Whitney Biennial, dealing with gender and identity issues is always a constant battle. And although this isn't the first time she's been naked on stage, because of the rawness of this show she says "it's really the most naked" she's ever been. More >>