Countdown to 2013: 2012 Movies

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Shoshana G.

I saw 34 movies this year–more movies than last year (last year the count was 29)! This reverses what was a continuing downward trend, as this is the first time the number has gone up from the previous year. I believe this has to do with the number of films I saw at MoMA when I was unemployed, as well as a few programs I saw at the Paley Center. I am again counting the movies I saw at MoMA (both old and new) and also the movies I saw on the Hudson River Park pier (although I unfortunately didn’t get to any of those this year, but usually they are counted in this), as well as the operas in HD, the film programs a the Paley Center, and other museum programs and events.

a better life stillThe film A Better Life

I only saw 14 NEW movies this year (the same as last year!)–7 in regular movie theaters (3 more than last year!), 1 at the New York Film Festival (same as last year), 4 at the Paley Center (same as last year) , and 1 at MoMA (3 less than last year). Of the 7 I saw in a regular movie theater, I paid full price (either in NYC or PA) for 1 of them and used passes or got discounts for 6 of them. In total, I saw 14 films a MoMA, 7 at The Paley Center, 1 at The Whitney, 1 at the New York Film Festival, and 2 operas in HD. Of the 34 movies I saw this year, I saw 29 for the first time.

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:
Moonrise Kingdom

Runners up (3.5 stars):
A Better Life
Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
Ruby Sparks
Ginger and Rosa

My favorite old movies I saw for the first time:
Walkabout
On the Waterfront

My favorite old movies I loved seeing again in the theater/outside:
Titanic (3D IMAX)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (IMAX)

Some Extra Fun Favorites:
Ginger and Rosa Post-screening discussion with Sally Potter, Elle Fanning, and other cast members at the New York Film Festival and my encounter with Sally Potter before the scenning

Worst new movie:
None.

Worst old movie:
Black Swan (Finally saw it and found it well-done but manipulative and a bit exploitative)

The Big List:

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Countdown to 2013: 2012 Theater

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Shoshana G.

Last year I saw 93 shows/readings/cabarets. This year I saw 99— 6 more than last year! I am happy that the number has gone up from last year (last year was the first year the number had gone down!) but I’m also disappointed I didn’t crack 100, which is where the number used to be in years past. I can only conclude that friends not having cabarets anymore has really taken its toll (I only went to 2 song nights, 1 reading, and 1 presentation this year), although I thought actually paying for a bunch of tickets this year would bring the number up.

Rodgers and Hammerstein at Carnegie HallSome Enchanted Evening: The Music of Rodgers and Hammerstein (Carnegie Hall)

I’m not going to go into statistics as I do with the movies (there are just too many!), but I saw most of these shows for free and paid a discount rate for the others (I actually only paid for 16 of them–5 more than last year–but 3 were with family). I worked 2 openings and attended 1 implosion party. I saw 1 show 3 times and 4 shows 2 times. I sang in 3 of these performances and my work was featured in 2 of them.

In the past, I’ve done a star rating system, but since I know people involved in many of these shows, I’ve done away with that and just highlighted my favorites.  After the favorites is the HUGE list of everything I saw. Then, I have listed some fun panels, exhibits, and events I also attended this year.

Top 10 Favorites (in no order, I swear):
Gob Squad’s Kitchen (Public Theater)
Rx (Primary Stages)
In This House (Two River Theater Company)
Uncle Vanya (Sydney Theatre Company-Lincoln Center Festival)
Melancholy Play (13P)
13P Implosion Party and show (13P)
Einstein on the Beach (BAM)
Some Enchanted Evening: The Music of Rodgers and Hammerstein Concert (Carnegie Hall)
Sherie Renee Scott (54 Below)
The Whale (Playwrights Horizons)

Runners Up (Also in no order):
Giant (Public Theater)
Annie
Orpheus (New York City Opera)
Marvin Hamlisch Memorial Concert (Juilliard)
Into the Woods (The Public)
Merrily We Roll Along (Encores)
The Morini Strad (Primary Stages)
Falling (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A Civil War Christmas (New York Theatre Workshop)

The Big List:

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I’M THANKFUL FOR: The TV Version

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Shoshana G.

I like the idea of doing a TV version of what I’m thankful for.

1. I am thankful for HBOGO and ShowtimeAnytime, which allow me to watch all my cable shows. Even though I’m behind in all of them, at least I don’t have to wait until I’m babysitting at a house with cable or visiting my parents’ house to watch them.

GirlsHBO’s Girls

2. I am thankful for all the wonderful network sitcoms, especially the ones I started watching this year: The Middle, Cougartown, Happy Endings, Suburgatory, Community, Raising Hope, Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23, Ben and Kate, and Go On.

3. I am thankful for Leslie and Ben on Parks and Recreation. They have given me so much joy. The rest of the cast is good, too.
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I’M THANKFUL FOR…

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Shoshana G.

Thirteen years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I had an assignment to write an “I’m Thankful For” piece–a list of fun things for which we were thankful, organized by rhyme and alliteration–modeled after a piece in the local newspaper. I loved writing it. It was the first time I really went through the process of thinking about words and how to organize them, and I remember thinking that maybe I could do this thing that Sondheim and other lyricists do. I didn’t entertain that idea again for another five years, but now that I am a lyricist I enjoy looking back on this piece at Thanksgiving not only to see a snapshot of who I was at age 17 but to remember the first joyous impulses of playing around with the sounds of words.

 

I’m Thankful For

To the creators, innovators, accelerators, investigators, and educators:

I am thankful for Latin, satin, General Patton, The Cat in the Hat, and a welcoming mat. For Gone With the Wind, winter, windows, white, woods, and Woody Allen. For digression, progression, a procession, and possession, for lessons, for success, when someone cleans up my mess, and my personal best.

“Angels We Have Heard on High,” I am thankful for creation, elation, and emancipation, the Emperor Vespasian, and congratulations. For cereal, the ethereal, the lyrical, and satirical. For my singing voice and personal choice. For working hard and birthday cards, for blankets, my brother, balloons, and the Bard.

For reading, speeding, and succeeding, for need, greed, and getting a lead. For chocolate, chicken, and cheese, and especially for my sister, Leez. For Steven Spielberg, silence, the city (especially New York City), singing in the rain, silk, and 2% milk.

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10 Takeaways from Singing Rodgers and Hammerstein at Carnegie Hall

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Shoshana G.

Friday night, October 12, the choir I sing in, Essential Voices USA, sang in the New York Pops concert, Some Enchanted Evening: The Music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, with soloists Kelli O’Hara, Paulo Szot, and Aaron Lazar. The experience was wonderful and a bit surreal. The following day I watched the film The Sound of Music with my four-year-old babysitting charge and wondered if I really sang those songs on the stage of Carnegie Hall the night before. Here are ten takeaways from this experience:

1. The prologue to The Sound of Music film is a beautiful piece of music. I never really listen to it because when it’s playing I’m distracted by Salzburg and the Alps. Listening to it without the visuals allowed me to really hear the shimmering music.

2. Whenever you can, sit near a harpist. I had that opportunity once before in the first row at the Met for Lucia di Lammermoor (which has an exquisite harp solo), and Friday night I was close enough to the harpist to watch her pluck the strings and hear her part.

3. Speaking of individual instrumental parts, I was behind the clarinetist and could clearly hear all his parts. As a former violist, it was great to be so close to an orchestra again. In the audience it’s difficult to pick out the parts–you hear the whole–but sitting where we were it was easier to focus on different parts.

4. Funny line I never much thought of: “There are no books like a dame.” from “There is Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific.
Nope, there aren’t.

5. “This Nearly Was Mine.” I know I’ve heard this song before, but sometimes it takes a few times to really understand how beautiful something is.
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CONCERT: SINGING RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN AT CARNEGIE HALL

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Shoshana G.

I’m singing at Carnegie Hall this Friday night, October 12, in this concert:

The New York Pops
Some Enchanted Evening: The Music of Rodgers and Hammerstein

Performers

  • The New York Pops
    Steven Reineke, Music Director and Conductor
  • Aaron Lazar
  • Kelli O’Hara, Guest Artist
  • Paulo Szot
  • Essential Voices USA
    Judith Clurman, Music Director and Conductor
  • New York Theatre Ballet
    Diana Byer, Artistic Director

I’m singing as a member of the chorus Essential Voices USA, and I’m excited to be part of this concert for a number of reasons. One is that I love singing in choruses and have done so for most of my life. I had been looking for a new chorus to sing with, and after interviewing composer Joshua Schmidt last spring about his concert with Essential Voices USA, I knew I had found a great chorus.

While I love singing traditional choral music, I’ve enjoyed exploring the songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein for this concert. I already know their work, of course, but it’s different when one is really studying the music and words vocally and is inside the music as one is when singing. I’ve always loved Rodgers and Hammerstein as musical theater writers, and it will be exciting to perform their music at Carnegie Hall for the Rodgers and Hammerstein families.

I wish I could say that this was my Carnegie Hall debut, but I actually performed with a chorus there in 2002 when I was in college. I will instead call this my triumphant return.

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A Musical Theater Writers Clubhouse

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Shoshana G.

Just last week I was talking with a few musical theater writers, and the topic of “people to watch” and “people you should know” list came up. I said that those list make me want to quit musical theater. Today, I woke up to an article on Playbill’s website titled, “PLAYBILL PICKS: The Contemporary Musical Theatre Songwriters You Should Know, Part One.”

I’m not angry about the specific people on this list (or, really, any list). Some of them are friends, and all of them are talented and work hard. I do, however, object to the fact that we must have these lists at all because they create a clubhouse mentality, with Playbill.com in this case deciding who’s in the club. It also doesn’t help matters that for Playbill, the clubhouse is entirely white men.

It’s a shame Playbill could not be more creative not only with this list but with their features. “People you should know” lists, with their insular nature, are only detrimental to theater artists and the theater community. So many exciting and diverse musical theater writers are out there trying to be seen and heard, and I wish these news outlets would work to tear down walls, not construct them.

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VIDEO: Allyson Kaye Daniel sings “My Name is Mildred Loving”

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Shoshana G.

“My Name is Mildred Loving”
Lyrics: Shoshana Greenberg
Music: Jeffrey Dennis Smith

Singer: Allyson Kaye Daniel

Presented at Obamarama: Songs for Justice
September 22, 2012
Duplex Cabaret Theatre

“My Name is Mildred Loving” was inspired by a profile of Mildred Loving in the New York Times Magazine section in 2008. Loving had died that year. In 1958, she and her husband were jailed after visiting family in Virginia, where it was against the law for a black person and white person to be married. The resulting court case, Loving v. Virginia, made interracial marriage legal in all states. A year or so before her death, she was approached by a gay rights group to make a statement in favor of gay marriage on the 40th anniversary of the ruling, which is where this song begins.

As writers, we were struck by the simplicity of Mildred’s language and character. She didn’t pursue the court case to make a political statement. She just wanted to live her life. More striking was after years of living the simple life she fought so hard for, she realized the power that her name could hold in making life simpler for others. As marriage equality gains momentum throughout the country, we think it’s important to remember that, like the Lovings, we’re fighting for something simple–the right to live our lives.

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Essay: Yom Kippur and The X-Files episode “One Breath”

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Shoshana G.

One year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I used the mid-day break to watch The X-Files. I randomly popped in the season two episode “One Breath” and realized that Mulder’s journey throughout this episode relates wonderfully to the journey many Jews take on this holiday. Now on Yom Kippur I always think of “One Breath” and Mulder’s process of letting go of his anger.

Before I continue, I should briefly explain the holiday. Yom Kippur comes after ten days of introspection that begin on the Jewish new year of Rosh Hashana. The task during these days is to look inside yourself and ask what sins you may have committed in the past year and then ask for forgiveness so that you can start the new year fresh.

Mulder begins “One Breath” in anger. When Scully arrives at the hospital unconscious after her abduction, he yells at the doctors, “How did she get here? Who did this to her?” He even goes so far as to threaten: “If you’re with them… Whatever it takes, I’ll find out what they did to her.”

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“My Name is Mildred Loving” part of Obamarama! Concert 9/22

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Shoshana G.

Songs for Justice

A song of mine (with composer Jeffrey Dennis Smith) is in this concert tonight. The song, “My Name is Mildred Loving,” has only been performed one other time, so I’m looking forward to seeing/hearing it performed again. The song is inspired by this article from The New York Times Magazine in December of 2008 about the life of Mildred Loving.

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