Shoshana Greenberg

Disclaimer: I only rank shows that I watch and I’m not a TV critic. Also, there are some spoilers. Read at your own risk…

1. The Americans
The first season of The Americans was good but not memorable enough to make last year’s list; the second season, although it aired in the spring, never left my head. The story arc was broader and it dug deeper. Every character, even the children, who in a lesser series would just be bratty teenagers, had more of a role, and the themes of marriage and parenting were stronger while maintaining their subtlety. The Americans is also the first show I’ve watched that successfully portrays a compelling female anti-hero without attempting to make her overly sympathetic. The season two finale set up a great story for season 3, and, if the writing remains strong, this next season could be even better.

2. The Middle
The Middle continues to bring me so much joy, even in its 6th season. I cry at almost every episode (it’s like the sitcom equivalent to Parenthood) because the characters and situations are so hilarious yet familiar and real. My favorite character has always been Sue, who is now navigating the college admissions process and confronting the reality of both her family’s finances and her own limitations, but through it all she remains the overly optimistic Sue. The highlight of the year was the season 5 finale in Disney World, where through some mishaps the family receives an expensive suite for the night free of charge. After freaking out over every amenity, they oversleep because they’ve never slept in sheets so soft.

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I saw 25 movies this year. This is up 4 films from last year’s 21, but my count used to be in the 30s, so this is still a sad number. However, I have accepted that with all the theater I see and all the TV I watch, I’ll never have time to see enough movies.

Obvious Child

I am again counting the movies I saw at MoMA (both old and new), as well as the operas in HD (although I didn’t see any this year), the film programs a the Paley Center, and other museum programs and events. I am also counting (and this was a large source of movies this year) my company’s Movies for the Mind series, which I help run.

I saw 12 NEW movies this year. That is 1 more than last year! Of these 12, 4 were in regular movie theaters (5 less than last year… wow I did not go to the movie theater that much), 1 was at the Paley Center (1 less than last year), 1 was at Barnard’s Athena Film Festival (my first time attending), and 6 were at MoMA (I didn’t see any new movies at MoMA last year). Of the 4 I saw in a regular movie theater, I paid full price for 1 of them and used passes or got discounts for 3 of them. In total, I saw 12 films (both old and new) at MoMA (8 more than last year!), 1 at The Paley Center (1 less than last year), and 7 at my company’s Movies for the Mind series. Of the 25 movies I saw this year, I saw 23 for the first time (a high percentage compared to previous years).

My rating system uses stars and equates as follows: 1=bad, 2=ok 3=really good 4=great.

My favorite new movies (4 stars) this year were:
Obvious Child
Stories We Tell

Runners up (3.5 stars):
The Bling Ring
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
Veronica Mars
Boyhood
Into the Woods

My favorite old movies I saw for the first time:
Europa Report

My favorite old movies I loved seeing again:
Gravity

Some Extra Fun Favorites:
Barnard’s Athena Film Festival

Worst new movie:
None

Worst old movie:
Sunshine (not awful, just not great)
The Lady from Shanghai (Could be good but fell asleep)
MASH (Not a bad film, just weird with mean characters)

The Big List:

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It wasn’t really a vacation (aside from the three days I spent down the shore), but I did have a fun, productive summer. The biggest developments have been with the musical I am writing with composer and co-bookwriter Hyeyoung Kim, which is inspired by the activities of The Weathermen/Weather Underground Organization and The Black Panther Party in 1969 and the early 1970s. After our wonderful experience with 4@15 back in April where we presented a 15-minute version called “Days of Rage”, we have been working to complete a full-length version with the goal of having a first draft by the final weekend in October.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3waIJyvwAA&index=1&list=UUlZ8t63ht0Zn7Gs70QTFMeg

The song “Necessary Violence”at Hyeyoung Kim’s cabaret on August 21, 2014

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to spend six days at the beautiful Two River Theater Company in Red Bank, NJ, as part of a writing retreat through our graduate program (the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts). We stayed in an adorable apartment overlooking one of the rivers and worked all day in the spaces at the theater, including the stage. We also met with the theater staff and received feedback on our work.

One evening, all the writers at the retreat presented a song for an audience of theater staff and friends of the theater. We presented a song we wrote in the past two days called “Tom,” in which one of our main characters, Jean, remembers her brother fighting in Vietnam. We then had a short Q&A with the audience, during which we talked about our show and why we are writing about this time period. The people who have lived through it are surprised that younger people are interested in it, but it’s hard not to be interested in this time in history. And there are so many parallels to today.

One of my other shows, Lightning Man, with book by Maggie-Kate Coleman and music by Jeffrey Dennis Smith, is also progressing, and I should have more news on that show in the coming months.

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While the search for Avonte was a shared NYC experience, I think it had a different resonance for people who have seen a severely autistic family member bolt away. I can still see clearly in my mind my 8-year-old brother running down the road before I chased after him almost 20 years ago. When I watched the security footage of Avonte running out of his school, I thought, “I know that motion. I recognize that speed, that force of will.”

What made the search for Avonte so important to me was that suddenly so many people cared about the fate of a child who would otherwise have been invisible to the mainstream media. The fact that the Department of Education was responsible ensured that his face was inescapable in the NYC subway system, and like many people I kept seeing his face in strangers and having fantasies about discovering him on the street and returning him to his family. Back in October, when there was still a strong hope of finding him, I jotted down this little poem as I was walking:

I thought I saw Avonte
Upon the thoroughfare
But then I saw his eyes betray
A not-so-vacant stare

His clothes were clean and fitting
His pallor hardly wan
I should have asked a question
Just to check, but he was gone.

I’ve found it a bit incongruous that everyone in the city of New York would be sharing an experience that would otherwise have been smaller and more personal, and I wonder how different this story would have been if Avonte had bolted from his home and not his school or if he had been 22 instead of 14. I would have had the same reaction, but would have the city?

The day Avonte’s death was confirmed, I was reading Amiri Baraka’s poem “The Incident” and these lines jumped out at me:

“Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere. And his spirit   
sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than   
his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying…”

Just as I will always remember my brother running down the road, I think I will always see Avonte’s face on those ubiquitous pictures that forced an entire city to confront what for me had once been so familiar.

Disclaimer: I only rank shows that I watch (and I did not watch Breaking Bad or Orange is the New Black, etc.). Also, there are some spoilers. Read at your own risk…

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Last year, I read 13 books! This year I read 12, although 3 of them were A Series of Unfortunate Events books I am reading to my babysitting charge. However, last year many of my books were very short (3 The Walking Dead trades, for example) and 1 was also a Series of Unfortunate Events book, so I think I’m pretty even this year.

1 of the books I had started reading in a previous year, but it was a long book (Backlash) and I was only halfway into it. Overall, I read 4 Children/Young Adult series books, 1 classic novel, 5 non-fiction (1 biography, 1 history/personal account, 1 humor biography, 2 feminist texts–well, 1 feminist text and 1 pseudo-feminist text depending on your views), and 2 adult fiction series. All but 1 were by American authors. 2 were by an author I work with. 1 I read because it related to something I was writing.

I did also read 14 New Yorkers and 5 New York magazines in between each book, plus some New York Times and various other magazine and website articles.

My favorite books of the year:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Backlash

Worst book of the year:
I didn’t read any bad books this year.

The List:

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