T Time! With Mallery Avidon

May 10th, 2013 by Ken Greller

In our new series T Time!, we’ll talk to theatre artists with shows opening in New York, usually while drinking tea. The “T” stands for “Tea” and “Theatre,” but in this edition we had a nice beer and our guest had a tiny little Diet Coke from a glass bottle.

Mallery Avidon is a playwright interested in the intersection between fact and fiction. Her play O Guru Guru Guru, Or Why I Don’t Want To Go To Yoga Class With You, based on her own experiences growing up in an ashram, premiered this past March at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, KY. Her other plays include Breaks & Bikes and Mary-Kate Olsen Is In Love. Mallery is originally from Seattle, WA where she received a BFA in Theatre from Cornish College of the Arts before attending Brown University’s MFA Playwriting program.

Her new play, queerSpawn, begins performances tonight at the HERE Arts Center in a production by A Collection of Shiny Objects. The play takes on, among other things, Dan Savage and the “It Gets Better” project.

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T Time! With Eliza Bent

May 6th, 2013 by Ken Greller

In our new series T Time!, we’ll talk to theatre artists with shows opening in New York, usually while drinking tea. The “T” stands for “Tea” and “Theatre,” but in this edition we shared a plate of french fries. We both enjoy Mayo.

Eliza Bent is a playwright and performer. In her new play, The Hotel Colors, which opens Wednesday night at The Bushwick Starr, “Six travelers spend one night in a rundown hostel in the outskirts of Rome. Speaking in direct translation from Italian into English the eccentric voyagers form a temporary community and unexpected friendships as they fail–and flail–in their attempts to communicate.” Eliza’s work includes Toilet Time at Catch! 50, ”Little Theatre” at Dixon Place and the Great Plains Theater Conference and Kharma Kharms (or Yarns By Kharms) at the Target Margin Theater Lab. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, a New Georges affliated artist, and a company member of Half Straddle. Her show Blue Wizard/Black Wizard, with music by Dave Malloy, will premiere at the Incubator Arts Project in December 2013.

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T Time! With Lucas Hnath

April 29th, 2013 by Ken Greller

In our new series T Time!, we’ll talk to theatre artists with shows opening in New York, usually while drinking tea. The “T” stands for “Tea” and “Theatre,” but in this edition we had an iced coffee and our inaugural guest had a regular coffee. Neither of us took milk.

Lucas Hnath earned both a BFA and MFA in Dramatic Writing from Tisch and is currently a professor in the Expository Writing Program. His play Death Tax was produced at the 2012 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theater of Louisville, where his short play nightnight was seen this year. Death Tax earned him a Steinberg/ACTA Award Citation, and will be seen at the Royal Court this summer. Lucas’ play Isaac’s Eye completed a successful run at the Ensemble Studio Theater this past March and he will premiere Red Speedo at Washington, DC’s Studio Theatre next season. He is currently at work on a play for Tisch’s Graduate Acting program. His new play, A Public Reading of An Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, begins performances at Soho Rep tomorrow.

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How To Trick Yourself Into Thinking Spring Has Arrived

April 4th, 2013 by Ken Greller and Leah Clancy

As you all probably know, it’s technically been spring since last Wednesday. Unfortunately, our spring break (for those of us who stayed in New York/on the east coast) felt more like an arctic adventure. If you’re anything like me, the sliiiight signs of sun/potential for temperatures in the upper 40s makes you want to go outside without a coat and skip down the street non-suggestively enjoying a popsicle.

SO, here are some creative ways to make the most of this (somewhat) pleasant weather, even if our fingers are still numbing a bit if we text while walking (which you shouldn’t do, guys).

Our Facebook Poll Determined You Don’t Have Confidence In John Sexton. Or Maybe You Do.

March 25th, 2013 by Ken Greller

One vote.

If the 2008 Kevin Costner vehicle Swing Vote taught us anything, it’s that sometimes the biggest decisions come down to a single vote. But we’re not talking about some silly made up movie election between Kelsey Grammar and Stanley Tucci (wait, what? How did this movie not win every Oscar that year?  What even won that year? Slumdog Millionaire? Are you kidding me?) We’re talking, of course, about NYU Local’s recent Facebook poll asking you, the reader, how you would vote if presented with a vote of no confidence against University President John Sexton.

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Friday’s Gallatin Arts Panel Was The Most Gallatin Thing Ever

December 10th, 2012 by Ken Greller

This past Friday, Gallatin, in honor of her 40th anniversary (Does Gallatin have a gender? Feel free to problematize in the comments) hosted a symposium featuring twelve graduates of the school (both BA and MA) who are currently working in the arts.

The panelists included lauded filmmakers, writers, musicians, performers, dancers, theatre artists, critics, scholars, and Cody Horn. Yes, you read that right. Cody Horn, the strong-jawed model-turned-actress who gave the undisputed best performance since Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice as “Brooke,” Channing Tatum’s love interest in Stephen Soderberg’s masterpiece (and NYU Local’s Official Pick For Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Costume Design at this year’s Academy Awards) in Magic Mike. Horn graduated from Gallatin in 2011 with a concentration in “Humans and Earth,” though she was already pursuing her career while in school. Read more…


Sorry, Everyone In Brooklyn, The MTA Won’t Be Refunding Your MetroCard

November 13th, 2012 by Ken Greller

If we can learn anything from Taylor Momsen’s character on Gossip Girl (known for atrociously showing up to her Upper East Side high school armed with only “a bagged lunch and a MetroCard”), it’s that only people who live in Brooklyn take the subway – like, ever. Obviously, those NYU students in their cushy and cozy (sometimes very, very cozy) East Village apartments roll out of bed and directly into a car service every morning, and have all of their food and other wordly needs delivered to them. So it is only those brave souls (seniors) amongst the NYU student body who are affected by the MTA’s decision not to refund unlimited MetroCards, rendered unusable for nearly 1/4 of their lifespans (in some areas) during Hurricane Sandy.

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Tisch Asia To Close Permanently

November 9th, 2012 by Ken Greller

Bet you didn’t know that Tisch had a graduate campus in Singapore. Well, neither did anyone else, and since it opened five years ago, Tisch School of the Arts Asia “from the start faced considerable financial challenges and required increasingly unsustainable annual subsidies from Tisch,” said Tisch Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell in a statement. Today she officially announced that it is “not possible to maintain Tisch Asia without, in fact, increasing the annual subsidy beyond what is an already unsustainable level.”

During its brief existence, the Tisch Asia campus has offered Masters of Fine Art degrees in four areas: Film, Dramatic Writing, Animation and Digital Arts and International Media Producing. The campus is officially slated to close in 2014, meaning some students will have to be transitioned to New York in order to complete their coursework. According to Film Biz Asia, Singapore’s Media Development Authority will be offering Media Industry Scholarships to help with this transition.

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Consuming the Real Housewives, In More Ways Than One

November 6th, 2012 by Ben Murray, Alex Bedder, Ken Greller, and Jocelyn Silver

We know you’ve been as anxious as we have. Now, the wait is finally over.

No, we’re not talking about the election, silly. We’re talking about the return of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which had its third season premiere last night.

In the debut, our favorite plastic forty-somethings from the West Coast — sans Camille Grammer, but including newbie Yolanda Foster — returned to our television screens as feisty as ever. In celebration of the event, we decided not only to break down the premiere, but also to survey some of the vast array of wines and spirits that have come from the Real Housewives franchise.

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The Great Escape!: How Two Bored, Spoiled Kids Escaped Manhattan Last Week

November 5th, 2012 by Ken Greller and Sydney Smith

On Wednesday, October 31, NYU Local City Editor Ken Greller and Writer Sydney Smith escaped a darkened apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and began a voyage home to their native Baltimore. This is their incredible, true story. 

The time is 7 pm, and we’re playing the only board game in our apartment, Klaus Tuber’s Settlers of Catan. Settlers may in fact be the only non-electronic form of entertainment in our apartment, besides alcohol (books? you go read a book.) And when the power first went out, nearly 24 hours ago, we were excited by the quaint prospect of playing this little game by candlelight (also, we thought it might help familiarize us with inevitable takeover of the barter system in our soon-to-be-cashless dystopia). But this was our fourth trip to the island, and the sounds of settling were getting mighty restless.

Our roommate’s boyfriend Joe receives a text: Power is not likely to be restored until Sunday. Ken flips the board. “One more day I can do,” he whispers, “but not six.” That was when our Sandy exodus began.

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