The City Remembers Out Loud: Carnival, Testimony, and 9/11 at 25
Eastern Parkway's Carnival, a verbatim restaging of the Hill and Ford hearings at BAM Fisher, and a Fresh Kills photo series timed to 9/11's 25th anniversary all land in the same week — alongside a mostly-naked comedy hit at Studio Seaview and a Queens warehouse night pairing UK bass with LA dance-rap.
Twenty-five years is long enough that a date stops being news and starts being architecture — something the city builds around rather than reacts to. This week held that quiet architecture next to its opposite: three days of costume, mud, and horn sending Carnival down Eastern Parkway, and a Brooklyn stage restaging two Senate hearings word for word, as if repetition alone could still shame someone. In between, Greenpoint and Bushwick’s small rooms kept doing what they always do, anniversary or not. If the city has one instinct this time of September, it’s this: remember loudly, remember quietly, but remember.
Theater
The Ford/Hill Project made good on the previews flagged here last week, opening formally Sept. 8 at BAM Fisher with Elizabeth Marvel and Gabby Beans reciting, word for word, the 1991 Anita Hill and 2018 Christine Blasey Ford confirmation-hearing testimonies, with Teagle Bougere and Josh Hamilton as Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. BroadwayWorld, BAM Culture Sauce’s review dwelt on how little the methods used to undermine both women’s credibility changed across nearly three decades. Culture Sauce The run continues through Sept. 20.
Off-Broadway, Garry Starr: Classic Penguins opened Sept. 8 at Studio Seaview after previews from Sept. 3 — Damien Warren-Smith’s mostly-naked, under-an-hour sprint through the Penguin Classics catalog, directed by Cal McCrystal. New York Stage Review filed it under “Naked Laughter,” and reviews landed warm enough that the show has added a week, now running through Oct. 11. New York Stage Review, BroadwayWorld, Playbill
Previews for In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roger Guenveur Smith’s solo tribute to his late friend and collaborator, began Sept. 9 at New York Theatre Workshop, following a sold-out Under the Radar run earlier this year; the formal opening lands next week. New York Theatre Workshop
Independent Film
Metrograph opened a new strand Sept. 6 — Classical Cinema, a self-described crash course through the genre’s mythological wing, from Jason and the Argonauts to Hercules in the Haunted World to Oedipus Rex, launching with a Jean Cocteau/Marcel Camus Orpheus double bill on 35mm. Metrograph
Unverified
Individual screening dates within the Classical Cinema series beyond the Sept. 6 launch weren’t confirmed on Metrograph’s own listings at press time — check before planning a visit around a specific title.
Smaller and gentler: BAM’s Best of BAMkids Film Festival ran a program for the 3-to-5 set on Sept. 12. BAM
Music
Reggaeton filled Barclays Center Sept. 9, when Omar Courtz brought his tour through Brooklyn. SeatGeek The next night, Knockdown Center in Maspeth paired Eliza Rose and Channel Tres on the Enigma Tour — UK bass and LA dance-rap sharing one Queens warehouse. Edmtrain, Songkick
Uptown, the West Harlem Summer Jazz Festival closed its season Sept. 12 at Morningside Park’s 114th Street pond, free at 5 p.m. — a low-key civic tradition, presented by the West Harlem Arts Alliance and Harlem Late Night Jazz, that has quietly run since spring. NYC Parks, West Harlem Arts Alliance
Review
“closed its season Sept. 12 at Morningside Park” — the WHAA jazz series runs across multiple parks May–September; unconfirmed whether Sept. 12 at Morningside was the definitive final date of the whole season or just that venue’s last date — verify against WHAA’s full schedule.
Visual Arts & Other
Eastern Parkway did what it does every Labor Day: J’Ouvert broke before dawn on Flatbush and Empire Boulevard, and the West Indian American Day Parade — its 59th year — filled Crown Heights with steel pan, Jab Molassie devils in chains and motor oil, and, by most local accounts, hundreds of thousands of people. Hoodline, BKReader, bkmag
Review
“hundreds of thousands of people” — round-number crowd estimate with no specific inline source and no unverified flag, though multi-sourced (bkmag uses similar phrasing) — add unverified flag or accept as adequately corroborated.
Review
“its 59th year” cited to Hoodline — the linked Hoodline piece is an August pre-parade preview and doesn’t appear to itself state the “59th” ordinal (the count is true, confirmed elsewhere) — claim-link mismatch — attach a source that states the count explicitly.
Highlight
The real story wasn’t any single float or costume — it was that the whole mile of Eastern Parkway belonged to Carnival again, at full scale, after years of scaled-back programming.
Review
[!highlight] — this callout type isn’t defined in BRIEF_TEMPLATE.md (only unverified, takeaway, human, and review are valid) — fix (convert to plain prose or an approved callout).
In Greenpoint, Next Wave Gallery opened Seren Morey’s Vital Sept. 6 — sculptural resin paintings from a Pratt-trained artist who also co-owns Guerra Paint and Pigment, the specialty shop supplying half the neighborhood’s studios. Two Coats of Paint
And Jade Doskow’s ongoing photographs of the Fresh Kills landfill mounds — where 9/11 debris was sent — anchor a show reportedly timed to this week’s 25th anniversary, one entry in a citywide reckoning NPR found still divided on what the day means a quarter-century on. Dwell, NPR
Unverified
The Doskow exhibition’s title and gallery pairing came from a single aggregator listing rather than the gallery’s own site — worth confirming directly before treating it as a fixed, scheduled show.
Review
Doskow/Fresh Kills gallery pairing (frontmatter lists “All Street Gallery”) — research suggests Doskow’s “Freshkills” exhibition may actually be hosted by Tracey Morgan Gallery (Asheville, NC) per Freshkills Park’s own site — the venue in the frontmatter may be wrong or conflated with a different presentation — verify the gallery name directly.
Coming Up
- In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat — Roger Guenveur Smith’s solo tribute, in previews now, opens formally Sept. 14 at NYTW. NYTW
- The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor — Sonya Tayeh opens the Joyce Theater’s fall season Sept. 16–27. The Joyce Theater, TDF
- Sentient Earth — Amant’s East Williamsburg space opens a new group show Sept. 17, running into February. Two Coats of Paint
- Alex Gibney and John Wilson at IFC Center — the documentarian’s new film and Wilson’s feature debut both open Sept. 18. IFC Center
- Brooklyn Book Festival bookend events — nine days of borough-wide author talks begin Sept. 20, building to Festival Day at Brooklyn Museum Sept. 27. Brooklyn Book Festival
Takeaway
Takeaway
A parade doesn’t need permission to mean something, and neither does a landfill mound or a Senate transcript read aloud years after the fact — this week, all three did the same job. Carnival remembers by repeating itself joyfully; the Ford/Hill Project remembers by refusing to paraphrase; a photographer’s decade on Staten Island’s fill remembers by simply not looking away. Twenty-five years on, the city still hasn’t decided whether memory is a celebration or an indictment. This week, it let it be both.