Dripping water from A.C. units. Getting priced out of your neighborhood. A damn-fine bacon, egg and cheese. ICE agents. Falling in love. Grieving a sibling’s death. Being proud of your identity. Moving to the city’s beat.
And, obviously, Knicks in Five.
Individual cast members voice these snapshots of New York City life in the Public Theater’s musical “Public Record,” premiering at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater on Sept. 4 for a five-night run.
As in previous shows from the Public Works program, the 100 cast members are almost all amateurs — ages 7 to 84 — with a smattering of professional musicians and dancers. This year, for the first time, they are not performing a classic but rather telling their own stories as New Yorkers. One woman proudly reveals, for example, that after having been on a ventilator with Covid, she attended her nephew’s wedding: “I burned a hole on that dance floor.”
After a recent rehearsal in the Public’s LuEsther Hall, Dan Canham and Emily Lim, who conceived and directed the 70-minute production, explained its themes. While structured around the cycle of life, from birth to death, “it’s also about joy, loves and passions from all parts of the city,” Lim said.
Jacob Lino, 12, from the Bronx, said he had heard “so many amazing stories from so many amazing people” while rehearsing “Public Record.” Lino, who wants a career in performing, said the show had broken “the shell” of his shyness and “bought out my true colors.”
Another Bronx resident, Angel Santana, 38, said that he relied on theater to help him “reconnect” with himself after being incarcerated for 15 years. He sees himself as representing other incarcerated people, and their loved ones, who are “without a voice.”
Rajeeyah Finnie-Myers, from Harlem, is performing with her children. “This program invites you to learn about humanity and diversity. There are people of all races, gender identities and from all paths of life. You feel valued and seen, and you value and see others.”
One sign in the room reads: “Everyone is an artist.” This has been the guiding principle of Public Works since Lear deBessonet founded the program in 2012 as resident director at the Public, leading to its debut production of “The Tempest” the next year. Now the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, deBessonet recalled her motivating questions: “What does it mean for theater to belong to everyone? How can it live these values?”
Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, said Public Works was underpinned by the notion that “artistry exists in all of us.”
“Art has a vital role to play in repairing America’s social fabric,” deBessonet said. “The idea that every human being is innately creative, and deserves to have art as part of their experience, provokes us to think about the possibility of a truly democratic society where every person matters.”
Theaters are expert at handling VIPs and public figures, deBessonet noted. “Public Works redefines that. The people of New York are our VIPs. We wanted to apply the same honor-and-welcome principles to them as we would to our biggest donors and stars.”
Last year, Canham and Lim, both from Britain, oversaw the original iteration of “Public Record” in Sunderland, England, in partnership with the Public Acts program of the National Theater, where Lim is a resident director.
Pablo Hernandez Basulto, the director of civic artistic programs at the Public, said the 265 New Yorkers who auditioned this year underscored that “art is more than a commodity and making art is more than a job. People say, ‘Even if I don’t get into the show, it’s changed my life.’”
The participants’ stories have been framed in a script by the playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring, with original orchestrations and music by Michael Thurber.
Dring said that people’s sharing their stories had been “humbling and tectonically shaking. It’s eroded any cynicism I had as an artist and changed what I think is possible onstage.”
“It’s impossible to represent New York City’s full musical diaspora” in a piece of relatively short length, said Thurber. He gives it an impressive go; there’s Latin jazz, South Indian classical pieces and club, house, folk and roots music. A live recording of the show will be preserved at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
As choreographer, Canham is responsible for the show’s most striking moments, when the company lets loose with limb-shaking abandon. “It’s a political gesture to celebrate and foreground people moving in their own power and taking up space,” Canham said.
“We’re not making this show in a vacuum,” Lim added. “I hope it creates a sense of community that will outlive and outlast any divisions that are trying to be forced between us.”
And the show is very New York. At the end, participants ponder what legacies they’d like to leave behind when they die, mentioning a love of travel or contributions to medicine. Then a woman steps forward, coolly observes the audience and says she’d most like to be remembered as “not an asshole.”
The post The Show That Makes New Yorkers the Stars of Their Own City appeared first on New York Times.
