To commemorate the year that was, we invited an array of artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and performers to share a list of the most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects they encountered in 2019.
Richard Maxwell is a director and playwright who’s presented works at the Walker numerous times, including Boxing (2000), Joe (2005), and the Walker-commissioned performance, The Evening (2015). He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Spalding Gray award, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. In addition to the Walker, his work has been commissioned by ICA London, Festival D’Automne, Kunsten Festival, Vienna Festival, and presented in the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. In the spring 2019, Maxwell wrote and directed Police and Thieves, presented at New York City’s Performing Garage. This fall, Maxwell made a project (Dévoiler) in collaboration with refugees in France at Théatre de la Commune in Aubervilliers. His latest book is the first monograph on his plays, The Theater Years (Westreich Wagner and Greene Naftali, 2017). Forthcoming is the publication of a collected trilogy, Evening Plays (Theatre Communications Group, 2019). Other books include Theater for Beginners (TCG, 2015), and Plays, 1996-2000 (TCG, 2004). In January 2020, his production Queens Row will be presented at The Kitchen. Here, he shares 10 memorable moments from 2019.
1.
HEROES OF THE FOURTH TURNING
I don’t see a lot of theater these days because honestly it has started to feel too much like a foregone conclusion, politically speaking. Therefore, watching Will Arbery’s thoughtful, not-preaching-to-the-choir play at Playwrights Horizons last month was a nice surprise. The rendering of contemporary conservatives meeting at a Catholic college in Wyoming was careful, in so much as it was thorough, and the staging was effective and unobtrusive… and nice listening from the performers. Very clear, unpretentious stuff.
2.
NARCOS: MEXICO
I was working in Aubervilliers, France. Jetlagged and alone, and a severely limited French vocabulary, I watched episodes at night on my computer. I enjoyed the writing, watching the brother relationship develop and devolve, watching actors I didn’t recognize, their faces. There seems to be something different about the acting, when compared with standard American TV acting; less pointing at meaning, perhaps. And in general I like the way it was shot: the slightly oversaturated amber colors helped the ’70s/’80s setting along. It captured atmosphere from nighttime summers growing up in the sticks and a fatal vision of what it must be like in the big city.
3.
THE SIGN FOR WILLARD MUNGER INN IN DULUTH, MINN.
I did a lot driving cross country the last couple of years. I stayed in my share of chain motels. They run the gamut in terms of comfort and service, of course, but they seem to mostly trade on the bare minimum, enticing with notions of free breakfast and wifi in the rooms. The places make their managerial decisions knowing that most people will only stay one night. I saw across this great land of ours empty motels and entire sections abandoned, with naked mattresses inside dark rooms and overgrown grounds. I tried to imagine when or if these motels were full up. Their signs high and mighty along the interstates are made for cars, but I have to wonder who or even what these motels were made for. Which is why it was lucky that Peggy, my sister, happened upon it and convinced us all to meet there for a few days. It was a treat, and a harbinger of my family’s stay there, to come upon the Willard Munger Inn sign, which is the first thing you notice. The graphic, which is the logo of the generations-old, family run motel, is forest green, backlit by fluorescent light, and inside a plain aluminum frame is the image of pine trees. Then you notice two deck chairs under the sign. Even though it’s on a curbed peninsula of grass in the parking lot, the chairs under this sign feel of a piece and invite you to sit in them. In fact, when we arrived, people were sitting in them. Yes, the motel is not along the interstate, and that makes everything a lot calmer. But I decide it’s the sign and its relationship to human scale, the height of it, that either aptly represents or perhaps even engenders this entire set-up, with friendly laid-back staff and free bikes to borrow. The sign is the keystone design, with people in mind. For me it does not hold together without the sign, which has become an emblem as I look back, and forward, to my eventual return.
4.
TINA SATTER’S IS THIS A ROOM
Tina Satter took her Kitchen production to off Broadway, where I saw it at the Vineyard. A simple premise, timely, yet presented without fanfare, and very precisely: what was spoken on stage was restricted to the transcript of the interrogation by the FBI of whistleblower Reality Winner (the performance is coming to the Walker in January as part of the Out There festival). The largely procedural dialogue, and putting faces and bodies to the words, creates a wild dichotomy in the mind; a spare and direct staging with spacial configurations mix with this window into a neo-gothic southern United States of America. At the end of the 70-minute presentation, the show left the audience to draw its own conclusions. Emily Davis and Pete Simpson’s performances linger still.
5.
IKUE MORI AND ARTO LINDSAY AT BLANK FORMS BENEFIT
If I was going in order, this really belongs at the top. Arto, flanked by Ikue and Craig Taborn, at Blank Forms comprised maybe the best power trio I’ve seen. The music still haunts me; Arto’s lilting melodies were as though hung on disjointed and improvised sounds, at times like a refrigerator falling down a stairwell or like standing next to a turbine engine powering up, but especially the endings, which makes me question now all endings… our collective need for them to be profound. These songs ended like someone inadvertently cut off the main power switch.
6.
MUSÉE DE MONTMARTRE
My favorite period in painting is mid 19th century, when realism is starting to break apart. I appreciate how paintings from this impressionistic era are as much about painting as they are about their subjects. I must have missed this subject as a kid, because I find it fascinating. Create a story within one frame. The cadmiums and quinacridones of Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet get me going.
7.
COWBOY ANGEL BLUE
Watching, with my family, my brother Bill Maxwell play at the American Legion in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in his band, Cowboy Angel Blue. My brother, a legal aid attorney for northeastern Minnesota, has played out in this band for around 20 years. He sings and plays guitar, but what dawned on me this last time is that if you lead a cover band, you are a curator. You have to know your audience and venue, and you have to pick songs that are familiar but not overplayed, but also, fit the occasion or mood. And, on top of all that, you have to pick songs that you can and want to play, which play to the strengths of the players and singers in your band. When I listen to Cowboy Angel Blue play through its setlist, I’m struck that my brother, who, in addition to being a performer in different bands pretty much his entire adult life, was an English major in college, and has a keen appreciation for the well-written lyric. Check out these examples, vivid, funny, terse, and clearly articulated: “Love Potion Number Nine” (The Clovers; written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller), “Nadine” (Chuck Berry), “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” (Buddy Holly), and “Small Town, Saturday Night” (Hal Ketchum).
8.
UNSANCTIONED SMALL TOWN FIREWORKS CELEBRATIONS (USA)
I’m a big believer in shooting off your own fireworks. I don’t want to say where because I feel like acknowledging it will jeopardize it. But drive out to the golf course, circle up with all the others, and shoot off what you bought. It’s an adrenaline rush, the flash and sound, the smell of smoke and gunpowder, to be so close and underneath, the night soaring above. When you light off your own, it’s more purge than commemoration.
9.
SAWMILL SESSIONS, PARIS
While walking along the old canal, I happened to hear, twanging into the air, the stands of bluegrass music. I thought i must be hearing things. But it was true, there was a bluegrass celebration on board the docked barge, packed with musicians from different countries that had broken off into top and bottom jamborees. I walked in expecting at any moment a hand on my chest, but no one stopped me. Even though I knew no one there, my connection to the music from this “club” that only meets once a month made me feel instantly at home and inside my skin. I got a beer and settled down to listen and apprehend my luck.
10.
THE GARDEN CITY WIND 9, ALPINE COWBOYS 3
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