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Marin Ireland as Cate and Reed Birney as Ian in Sarah Kane’s “Blasted” at Soho Rep. Photos by Simon Kane.

Among the interesting post-election trends I’ve noticed is a certain impatience among audience members with, shall we say, downer art. As one friend whispered in my ear at the start of a recent show, “I hope this is upbeat. I just can’t get into sad stuff right now.”

Well, there’s sad stuff, and there’s “Blasted,” the unrelentingly brutal play that announced the English playwright Sarah Kane to the world in 1995 (Kane killed herself in 1999; she was 28). The New York premiere production I saw, directed by Sarah Benson, almost immediately sold out its initial run. Thankfully, Soho Rep has extended performances through December 21.

Everyone. Should. Go. Shiny happy Obama-ites included.

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“Les sept planches de la ruse.” Photos by Richard Termine.

I write fortified with Riesling.

I have just been to see Compagnie 111 and Scenes de la Terre’s “Les sept planches de la ruse” (The Seven Boards of Skill) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it had its U.S. premiere as part of the Next Wave Festival. Call it theater, call it dance, call it cirque nouveau, whatever: no matter the genre(s), this was pure, enragingly empty, well-financed international spectacle, the kind BAM specializes in all too often these days.

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The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in “Another Evening: Serenade/The Proposition.” Photo: Paul B. Goode.

For its September 25-October 1 issue, “Time Out New York” anointed “The New York 40.” Some readers wrote in, wondering why TONY’s list of movers and shakers was almost entirely monochromatic. The editor published a response, including the following:

“…for better or worse, that list is also a reflection of New York in the past dozen years—a city whose cultural elite have been mainly white. Our Top 40 was never meant to endorse that fact, but it can’t help but reflect it.”

That, um, didn’t go over so well. Angry emails began circulating. Some of those emails were forwarded to me, and I started thinking about the state of racial politics in the arts these days: what issues are artists of color facing, what do they think of Obama’s historic candidacy in relation to their own work, what frustrates them, what are they heartened by?

I was curious. So I asked. The artists I chose to interview aren’t meant to represent any kind of cultural elite (though “The Art.Cult Five” has a nice ring to it). In fact, they aren’t meant to represent anything other than themselves: five interesting artists whose work I admire and am intrigued by, and who I thought might have thoughtful things to say about art, race and the election.

They did. And then some. The piece I did for WNYC airs today at 5:50, I am told - I’ll publish it once the link becomes available (Here it is.) Meanwhile, below you’ll find more of these artists’ thoughts, and a few of mine - after all, I’m the token white girl …

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Raúl Esparza, Jeremy Piven and Elisabeth Moss in “Speed-The-Plow.” Photos by Brigitte Lacombe

I’m guessing that some poor techie got his clock cleaned after yesterday’s matinee of “Speed-the-Plow,” the David Mamet play that opened on Broadway last week.

A few moments before the ending, the stage lights unexpectedly cut out, breaking the momentum of the final scene and sending a rippled of confused murmurs through the audience. The actors continued as if nothing unexpected had happened - as if, you know, it were only a flickering of our television screen that they weren’t even aware of - and the blip in the matrix was soon corrected.

Hopefully the technical supervisor went easy on whoever screwed up. After all, he did remind us that we were involved in something live.

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For any student of performance history, or of the culture wars, the words “victim art” immediately bring to mind “Discussing the Undiscussable,” Arlene Croce’s infamous and fascinating 1994 New Yorker essay on the choreographer Bill T. Jones. Croce deemed his dance-theater work, “Still/Here,” “beyond the reach of criticism” in its incorporation of the testimony of terminally ill people. “I can’t review someone I feel sorry for or hopeless about,” Croce explained. And so, instead, she offered a scathing critique of Jones, and of all those making this so-called victim art.

I have always been puzzled by Croce’s essay - not the politics of it, which are clear. But the fig leaf of ill people, or disenfranchised people, being beyond a critic’s reach. It goes along with the model of critic as serene, uninvolved, objective judge, a model that, in my view, is utterly alien to the way we take in art. Aren’t the watchers in the mud as much as the doers? Aren’t things hopeless for all of us mortals in the end?

Then, this weekend at St. Ann’s Warehouse I saw “Black Watch,” the celebrated National Theatre of Scotland play about Scottish soldiers in Iraq, and I started thinking about our avoidance of art and entertainment that has to do with the war and with September 11th. It occurred to me that many of these works are the opposite of victim art: they’re hero art. And maybe that’s why we steer clear of them - for a variety of complex, often contradictory reasons.

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I’ve been hearing a lot of excited whispering about the show I’m going to see tonight: “Chekhov Lizardbrain,” by the Philly troupe Pig Iron Theatre Company. But, of course, the shouting has centered around the blockbuster Broadway productions, all packed with Hollywood celebrities: “The Seagull!” ,“All My Sons!”, “Speed-the-Plow!”

All this buzz is great for theater, right? Or is it?

“Chekhov Lizardbrain”

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Last week, my esteemed colleague Nathan Lee blogged about Gillian Anderson’s performance in “The House of Mirth” - this of course led to a Comments conversation about the X-Files movie, and a healthy little debate sparked by Nathan’s critique of the plot’s troublesome “strain of homophobia”:

“I’ve never seen gay marriage used as a trope of evil before! And the way the movie pits the heroic/hetero Mulder/Scully paradigm against the evil/gay Russian Frankenlovers felt really unexamined, lazy, and offensive.”

I didn’t see the movie, so can’t weigh in on that discussion. But it got me thinking, again, about the troublesome strains of homophobia lurking in the performing arts.

Venus (Joshua Cruz) gives Deity (Glenn Davis) the business in “Wig Out!” Photo by Carol Rosegg

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Last night at the Duo Multicultural Arts Center in the East Village I caught the premiere of an amazing multi-media performance piece from choreographer Keely Garfield. The piece, Eva Potranspiration Cloud 9, features herself, her partner Brandin Steffensen and her daughter Vivian Ra. The three performers use simple found objects like fluorescent light tubes, trash can lids, and ironing boards to transform the theater into both living room and world stage.

Eva is the third installment in an ongoing performance cycle Garfield is working on. Here is a video of the second part First Attempt

I spoke with Garfield to learn more about what exactly is going on here…

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Where’s your wand, Harry? Daniel Radcliffe gallops onto Broadway.

Since you’re all way too sophisticated to be interested in Daniel Radcliffe’s nude scene in the Broadway play “Equus”, let’s start with his acting. I’m happy to report that Harry can bring it live - he was certainly a hell of a lot better than many of the big name actors who traipse through Shakespeare productions and the like at BAM, showboating like there’s no tomorrow. (Ian McKellen, this means you.)

But don’t take my word for it. Jackie Sadofsky and Corey Rosen, two 15-year-old fans of the theater (and Radcliffe), came down from Westchester to see Wednesday’s matinee. Both were impressed.

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(You can hear my chat with the fabulous Soterios Johnson here)

Last week it was the opening of the Crossing the Line festival, this week it’s Prelude ‘08, the contemporary theater and performance festival, which began its three-day smorgasbord last night with a discussion entitled “Between White Cubes and Black Boxes: Performance, Place & Context.” Then everyone headed to a nearby karaoke joint to get sloshed:

If only all panels ended this happily (All Photos: Rachel Roberts)

The line of the night? This gem from artist Raul Vincent Enriquez: “I rarely have an intellectual take on things - I want them to be exciting.”

He was talking about his approach to making work (check out his moving feast, “A Burrito Truck,” this Saturday as part of Prelude), but, really, isn’t it the hope of every audience member upon settling in to see a show, whether it’s in a black box, white cube, empty lot or grand pavilion? As the art historian RoseLee Goldberg, another panelist, put it, “As much as we talk about how we should all move into these different realms, we have to remember the particular pleasures that drive us.”

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