Forbes: Many of the creative forces behind the renaissance of the Brooklyn Academy of Music—long before the borough became white-hot–had a reunion late last month at a gala performance of Peter Brook’s The Suit, a romantic tragedy that takes place in apartheid-era South Africa.
Brook’s 1987 production of The Mahabarata inaugurated what was then the BAM Majestic Theater, now called the BAM Harvey Theater, designed by architect Hugh Hardy and renamed in 1999 in honor of Harvey Lichtenstein, BAM’s former president and executive producer. Brook, Lichtenstein and Hardy all attendedthe gala.
2 comments:
I didn't like this article at all. From the title, I thought I would be reading about the background of The Suit and its reception last month in Brooklyn. Instead, the article was about the history of the BAM Majestic Theatre with a small paragraph summarizing the play at the end. As for what the article said, I'm not surprised that the Theater went through so many cycles before it shut down. Many theaters, especially in downtown Boston, were in similar situations.Hardy talked about how the building revealed layers of time that was the perfect setting for his work, yet I fail to see how that fits The Suits. The Suits is about how life stayed the same during the apartheid. I guess if you stretch it far enough, you can argue that the building shows life continuing through different stages, but that would be a very far stretch indeed.
I really did not like this article. The title is completely misleading. You think this passage will be about the story and production of "The Suit" when in actuality it is about the renovation of BAM's Harvey. I feel like the writer was too lazy to look in-depth into the show (which seems to have a big history, certainly enough to write one article about) and tried to make up for it using random facts about the Harvey's renovation. This passage needed to be two different articles. Being from Brooklyn, I know that the topics and themes of "The Suit" are very hot and popular right now, especially in Fort Greene where BAM is located. Fort Greene is a very political, vocal, and supportive community that loves to deal with heavy issues such as race, gender, sexuality, etc. Even based on the meager amount of information on "The Suit" in this article, I can tell it did very well at BAM.
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