The Atlantic Yards saga is now a play

Billy Eugene Jones as James Caldwell in "In the Footprint." 

By Meredith Deliso

The battle over Atlantic Yards may be over, but it’s still brewing on stage.

“In the Footprint,” a new play by the Fort Greene-based Civilians theater company, gives a second life to the protests, public hearings and legal proceedings of the past seven years over the controversial $4-billion arena located near Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, the borough’s biggest development project — ever.

“It’s a very important story for Brooklyn, important story for New York City, and it’s important in and of itself,” said director Steve Cosson, whose play opens at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene this Friday. “Theater is first and foremost about conflict, and the whole Atlantic Yards saga has no shortage of dramatic conflict.”

This company is called the Civilians, after all, which makes investigative theater based on real-life people and events, so the focus in the show is on the people on the ground — the residents, the politicians and the community activists — to explore the project from different perspectives. Though the company’s allegiance to the community is clear.

“Atlantic Yards is important in terms of the power of activism and the power of different groups coming together in a coalition to fight and oppose the project,” said Cosson, who noted parallels in other development projects in New York, including the Columbia University expansion and the redevelopment of Willets Point in Queens. “There will continue to be new issues any time the powers that be decide that a part of the city should change, and I think the play isn’t about opposing change, but about how change happens, and what involvement the public has in the decisions that will impact places where people live.” 

The actors conducted interviews with such key figures as activists Patti Hagan and Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s Daniel Goldstein; Borough President Markowitz, a booster for the arena; and Councilwoman Letitia James, who was not. These and other familiar faces are portrayed by actors in the play, which is primarily a collection of their monologues, performed verbatim either as prose or in song.

Prominent figures who declined to be interviewed for the piece, including Mayor Bloomberg and developer Bruce Ratner, will be represented by puppet objects (a suit for Bloomberg, a crane for Ratner), with voiceovers compiled from public statements. 

A preview run-through on Monday at the Brooklyn Historical Society showed that the piece is at its best when it embraces the song format, though it does get off topic. Take, for instance, a song based off of a conversation with former Councilman Ken Fisher, where he sings about the “Four Brooklyns” — Manhattan, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and Florida. In another number, “A Word of Advice,” a new arrival warns against telling people what your rent is — so they don’t out-bid you.

Throughout the play, the tone ranges from anger to incredulity for those on both sides of the debate.

“The characters are sophisticated about gentrification, and the play seems to humanize the people involved,” said Tom Angotti, an urban affairs professor at Hunter College. “The human drama was much more complex than this gross idea in the press, that it was all about opposition by selfish, middle class homeowner who were gentrifiers and here was this benevolent developer who was going to build affordable housing and bring jobs, which all turned out to be rhetoric and public relations.”

For those who might yawn at the expected legal jargon, inside baseball or even a historical take on a story that is still playing out, Michael Friedman, who composed the music for the play, found just that challenge the most engaging part.

“For me, the most interesting thing was the dissection of New York — the complexity of how a community is made and the complexities of city politics and planning,” said Friedman. “All these things might make your eyes glaze over, but when you’re dealing with something this emotional, it helps you understand how the city works in a way that I hadn’t before.”

“In the Footprint” at the Irondale Center [85 S. Oxford St. between Lafayette and Fulton avenues in Fort Greene, (718) 488-9233], Nov. 12-Dec. 11. Tickets $35. For info, visit www.thecivilians.org.

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'You Better Sit Down' and see this

By Meredith Deliso

The latest production from local theater company The Civilians, a recent transplant to Fort Greene that has covered topics ranging from the Atlantic Yards project, in “Brooklyn at Eye Level,” to Evangelical Christian political movement, now turns its eye on divorce.

“You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents’ Divorce” explores love, marriage, family, and life after a divorce. Conceived by Civilians actress Jennifer Morris (pictured), the production was initially envisioned as a short film about a Tiffany’s lamp. A lamp that is always a point of contention between her divorced parents of actress Jennifer Morris, especially for her mother, who tends to have a dramatic flair.

“If you bring it up, she would talk a blue streak for five minutes,” said Morris, one of the writers on the project. “I find it interesting, putting all of this arguing on an inanimate object that’s passively sitting there while all this stuff swirls around it. That was kind of the inspiration for the whole project.”

Of course, while a lamp sits passively, very much involved in a divorce are the children. After a two-year process, the final idea of the play has the four actors involved, including Morris, interviewing their parents and using part of that dialogue verbatim for the show, where they will then play their parents. Art really does imitate life.

“It felt like a very personal inquiry when we have the children playing the parents,” said Anne Kauffman, one of the co-writers and the director of “You Better Sit Down,” who lives in Prospect Heights. “It’s an investigation of marriage from one generation to another.”

With Morris, Caitlin Miller and Robbie Sublett playing their moms, and Matthew Maher playing both his parents (not all wanted or could be interviewed for the production), the play follows the courtships chronologically in about a dozen chapters, up until the bitter end and beyond.

“We’re interested in what that process is – falling out of love, and what the conditions are that split people apart,” said Kauffman. “And how children are affected…as though it were going to be a handbook for children of this generation.”

On three nights – November 12, 13, and 14 – The Civilians will put on “You Better Sit Down” at the Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, where they held their benefit earlier this year.

“It seems like a perfect venue for it,” says Morris, a born-and-bred Manhattanite. “It’s a beautiful cabaret space but has an intimate feel to it, which is a great fit for the show. We also get all my mom’s Manhattan friends out to Brooklyn, which is good for them.”

That intimacy, with the parents airing their feelings about a difficult time in their lives, adds to the feeling of that “guy at the end of the bar, singing his woes to the bartender,” adds Kauffman.

The live shows will not be the end of the production; two of the nights will be recorded, and The Civilians will be posting videos of each chapter online in the next several months. In a second phase of the project down the line, the online audience will also have the chance to replicate The Civilians’ process and share their own parents’ stories of divorce by videotaping their interviews and sharing them on the company’s Web site.

“Since divorce is such a common experience, I think the idea is transferable from our company to anyone who wants to participate in the project,” said Steve Cosson, The Civilians’ artistic director. “All these potentially nervous divorced parents are going to face questions by their children.”

Parents, you better sit down for this.

“You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents’ Divorce” runs at Galapagos Art Space (16 Main St.) November 12-14. Tickets are $15. For more information, call 718-222-8500.

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The Civilians @ Eye Level

On April 17, New York-based theater company The Civilians host a benefit at DUMBO's Galapagos Art Space.

Does that name ring a bell? Last winter, the group put on "Brooklyn @ Eye Level" at the Brooklyn Lyceum, a performance piece tha gave voice to the different interests surrounding the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project.

If you missed the weekend of performances, or want a refresher, clips can be found here.

More on the benefit after the jump.



Join The Civilians fo a special night in DUMBO

By Meredith Deliso

(Published in the 4.9.09 issue of 24/Seven)

There’s no place like home at Galapagos Art Space on April 17, when The Civilians host their annual benefit at the DUMBO performance center.

The theme of home was an apt one for the New York-based theater company, whose most recent productions include “Brooklyn @ Eye Level” and “A Beautiful City,” where the company investigated the idea of community in Brooklyn and Colorado Springs respectively.

In addition to performing excerpts from those two shows, the night will also feature an original Civilians piece put together from the audiences’ personal insights on what home means to them.
Soliciting responses as people purchase tickets for the benefit in the weeks leading up to the show, the Civilians will be putting together a mix of cabaret, theater and music based on the responses at the DUMBO space.

“Galapagos has a really wonderful nightclub atmosphere,” said The Civilians’ Artistic Director Steve Cosson. “The performance space is big enough to hold all the various performers we’re going to bring but still has that intimate nightclub feeling, which is great for a special one-night event like this.”

Brooklyn was another ideal location for the company’s benefit, following their production of “Brooklyn @ Eye Level” at the Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope this past winter, as they explore the theme of “home.”

“We’ve been spending a lot of attention the past few years looking at community, looking at how people live with each other, next to each other with varying degrees of success,” said Cosson. “For our benefit, we wanted to open that theme up to our patrons.”

The company will take inspiration from the sentences, quotes and pictures that patrons submit, creating an original piece, as well as performing excerpts from “Brooklyn @ Eye Level” and “This Beautiful City.”

Traveling to Colorado Springs, considered the evangelical capital of America, the company interviewed residents and created a show performed in New York, as well as in Kentucky, Washington, DC, and Louisiana that investigated the Evangelical Christian Political Movement through the complex mountain town that is its headquarters.

Closer to home, the company also put their lens on the residents and community affected by the proposed Atlantic Yards project, working with composer Michael Friedman, blues musician Michael Hill, the dance company Urban Bush Women, and the playwrights Lucy Thurber and Carl Hancock Rux to explore the changing face of Brooklyn from all sides and interests.

“I think I was certainly drawn to the idea largely because I live in Brooklyn and have been aware of how rapidly the borough is changing,” said Cosson, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “In terms of public attention it’s looked at in a certain way, largely in terms of real estate and the economics of it all. As a theater company, we wanted to look at what was happening in Brooklyn on a much more human scale and to really hear from the people who live in these neighborhoods what these changes mean to them.”

After a week of sold-out performances at the Brooklyn Lyceum in the first phase of the production of “Brooklyn @ Eye Level,” The Civilians are currently finalizing a commission of a playwright for a play to be produced in a couple seasons. They are also putting up clips of the initial performance on their Web site.

Proceeds from the benefit will help The Civilians in their next endeavors, only works in progress at the moment, but including project on divorce, another interviewing people working in the porn industry in Los Angeles, and a collaboration with Princeton University on climate change.
And as “Brooklyn @ Eye Level” evolves, the Manhattan-based company also has their eye on a Brooklyn home.

“If we can we’d like to relocate our offices to Brooklyn,” says Cosson. “As we move into the future we hope to have a more regular relationship with the community.”

“There’s No Place Like Home,” The Civilians’ annual benefit, is April 17 at Galapagos Art Space (16 Main Street). Complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres start at 8 p.m., followed by an original performance by Civilians associate artists at 9 p.m. and an after party at 10 p.m. Tickets range from $75 to $1,200, with $25 ones for the after party only. Audience members can submit their ideas of home on their RSVP card or the blog at The Civilians’ Web site. To RSVP, call 212-730-2019.

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