The Season Turns: From Prospect Park's Last Free Night to the Joyce's Fall Opening
Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair close out Celebrate Brooklyn's free season the same week the Joyce opens its fall bill with a dance elegy for Sinéad O'Connor, John Wilson's concrete documentary breaks an IFC Center record, and a Basquiat tribute earns a second extension.
Two seasons changed hands this week, and the city noticed both. Sleater-Kinney and Liz Phair closed out Celebrate Brooklyn’s free summer run with one loud, generous goodbye at the Lena Horne Bandshell, while a few miles away the Joyce Theater opened its fall season with a dance elegy for Sinéad O’Connor. In between, an off-Broadway restaging of two Senate hearings closed exactly on schedule, a solo tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat got popular enough to earn a second extension, and John Wilson’s meditation on concrete broke a box-office record at a theater built for movies nobody else will show. If last week was about memory, this one was about momentum — one thing ending cleanly so another could start.
Theater
The Ford/Hill Project wrapped its verbatim restaging of the 1991 Anita Hill and 2018 Christine Blasey Ford testimonies Sept. 20 at BAM Fisher, closing on its originally announced date. New York Theatre Guide
Unverified
The exact closing date came from an aggregator listing rather than BAM’s own site — worth confirming directly if planning around it.
Down the street, In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat kept building an audience: after Roger Guenveur Smith’s solo tribute, with live sound design from Marc Anthony Thompson, opened formally Sept. 14 at New York Theatre Workshop, the run was extended twice, now through Oct. 10. BroadwayWorld Reviews from New York Stage Review and TheaterMania agreed: this is less biography than one old friend refusing to let another flatten into an encyclopedia entry. New York Stage Review, TheaterMania
And Studio Seaview’s next cabaret oddity opens Sept. 20: Ana Gasteyer’s alter ego, lounge act September L. Davis, returns in The Apology Tour, inviting people she’s wronged back for apologies set to music by Sam Davis and Tom Kitt, with guests Betsy Wolfe, Kate Reinders, and Diego Rodriguez. Playbill, BroadwayWorld
Independent Film
IFC Center had its biggest documentary opening weekend ever Sept. 18, when John Wilson’s directorial debut The History of Concrete — a deadpan detour from his HBO show into pavement, mortality, and pitching Hallmark a documentary — pre-sold more than $60,000 in tickets before its first showtime. IndieWire, Deadline
Highlight
A documentary about the history of concrete outsold nearly everything else IFC Center has opened — proof a specific, strange voice still beats a broad premise.
Review
This [!highlight] callout sits after the Independent Film item, not directly after the opening paragraph as the arts-roundup convention requires (used once at most, right after the lede) — move it or drop it.
The night before, the same theater hosted a sneak preview of Alex Gibney’s Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, with a post-screening Q&A moderated by David Remnick, ahead of the film’s wider release. IFC Center
Unverified
The Remnick Q&A detail comes from IFC Center’s own listings but wasn’t corroborated by independent press coverage at press time.
Metrograph’s Classical Cinema series — twenty films tracing ancient Greek myth through cinema — runs through Oct. 23, with a Kogonada-moderated conversation between cinematographer Bill Kirstein and producer Albert Tholen set for Sept. 27. Metrograph
Music
Prospect Park closed its free season the loud way: Liz Phair and Sleater-Kinney headlined The Flannel and the Fury, a BRIC benefit at the Lena Horne Bandshell Sept. 19 with Frankie Cosmos opening, capping a “Radical Joy”-themed run of fifteen free shows since June. BrooklynVegan, Songkick
Review
The Songkick link attached here goes to a “Jungle at Barclays Center” concert page — it doesn’t support the Sleater-Kinney/Liz Phair/Frankie Cosmos claim it’s attached to (that link belongs on the Jungle sentence below, which already has its own SeatGeek source) — fix the link attribution.
Across the river, Jungle brought its choreography and disco revivalism to Barclays Center the same night, Brooklyn Steel went death metal with Dying Fetus and Sanguisugabogg Sept. 20, and Music Hall of Williamsburg gave its room to singer-songwriter Charlie Burg. SeatGeek
Review
The Brooklyn Steel (Dying Fetus, Sanguisugabogg) and Music Hall of Williamsburg (Charlie Burg) claims in this sentence carry no source link at all — only the Jungle/Barclays Center claim is sourced — add citations or cut the unsourced claims.
Visual Arts & Other
Amant’s East Williamsburg campus opened Sentient Earth Sept. 17 — a free show spanning twenty-eight artists and sixty-plus works on extractive technology and how it reshapes perception of the planet, running into February alongside screenings and sound performances. Amant
Review
The “twenty-eight artists and sixty-plus works” figures come only from Amant’s own exhibition page — an organization’s announcement of its own numbers counts as single-sourced — add [!unverified] or find a second source.
The Joyce Theater opened its own fall season Sept. 16 with The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor, Sonya Tayeh’s dance work for ten women dancers over forty channeling O’Connor’s defiance and tenderness; the run continues through Sept. 27. The Joyce Theater
Out in Bushwick, Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s two-artist show Rock, Stone, Steel and Rope — Jacquenette Arnette and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, curated by Aisha Tandiwe Bell — closes Sept. 27, the same week Next Wave Gallery’s Seren Morey show Vital wraps up in Greenpoint. Two Coats of Paint
Coming Up
- Brooklyn Book Festival — Virtual Festival Day and citywide Bookend Events begin Sept. 20, building toward Festival Day at Brooklyn Museum. iloveny.com
- September L. Davis: The Apology Tour — Ana Gasteyer’s cabaret alter ego opens Sept. 20 at Studio Seaview. Playbill
- The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor — Sonya Tayeh’s dance tribute closes its Joyce Theater run Sept. 27. The Joyce Theater
- Metrograph Classical Cinema Q&A — Kogonada moderates a conversation with cinematographer Bill Kirstein and producer Albert Tholen Sept. 27. Metrograph
- Rock, Stone, Steel and Rope & Vital — both close Sept. 27, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Bushwick and Next Wave Gallery in Greenpoint. Two Coats of Paint
Takeaway
Takeaway
Nothing opened this week without something else closing to make room for it, and that’s not a coincidence — a city with this much going on doesn’t add, it rotates. Sleater-Kinney got the loudest possible send-off for free public programming the same night the Joyce opened a paid season three miles away; a friend’s tribute earned a longer life because the audience asked for it, while a Senate-hearing restaging ended exactly on schedule regardless. Closing night and opening night turned out to be the same night this week — it just depended on which stage you were standing in front of.