Company News

Masha Gessen: Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot
March 3, 2014  7:00 p.m.-9 p.m.
FREE!

BookCourt
163 Court Street, Cobble hill

The heroic story of Pussy Riot, who resurrected the power of truth in a society built on lies.
On February 21, 2012, five young women entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. In neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas, they performed a “punk prayer” beseeching the “Mother of God” to “get rid of Putin.” They were quickly shut down by security, and in the weeks and months that followed, three of the women were arrested and tried, and two were sentenced to a remote prison colony. But the incident captured international headlines, and footage of it went viral. People across the globe recognized not only a fierce act of political confrontation but also an inspired work of art that, in a time and place saturated with lies, found a new way to speak the truth.
Masha Gessen’s riveting account tells how such a phenomenon came about. Drawing on her exclusive, extensive access to the members of Pussy Riot and their families and associates, she reconstructs the fascinating personal journeys that transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, gave them the courage and imagination to express it unforgettably, and endowed them with the strength to endure the devastating loneliness and isolation that have been the price of their triumph.
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Paperback Launch: I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp
by Richard Hell, with Robert Christgau
Tuesday, March 4, 2014, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
FREE!

Powerhouse Arena
37 Main Street, DUMBO

The punk iconoclast and writer reveals his adventures in this poetic autobiography. Music journalist and “Dean of American Rock Critics” Robert Christgau joins Hell in conversation.
About I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp:
Musician, writer, and provocateur Richard Hell was at the center of the social and cultural upheaval of the 1970s that came to be called “punk.” With his best friend, Tom Verlaine, he started the band Television, which as the first band to play at a then-obscure downtown bar called CBGBs, ignited an entire movement. Malcolm McLaren admitted that he drew inspiration for the look and music of the Sex Pistols from Hell’s original style. Hell’s song “Blank Generation,” recorded with the Voidoids in 1977, became a defining anthem for the searching, renegade youth of the era.
Hell’s unsurprisingly candid and reflective autobiography, I DREAMED I WAS A VERY CLEAN TRAMP, chronicles the coming of age and artistic birth of this iconoclastic icon, and indelibly captures the seminal years when punk rock exploded across New York and London. At the vortex of this seismic shift, Hell helped define its unwritten principles and the sound of its primal battle cry.
Born Richard Meyers in Lexington, Kentucky, the boy who would ultimately push the boundaries of art had a childhood defined by the desire to run away. Innately bright, but a poor student, young Richard had trouble in school and ultimately dropped out of high school—although not before meeting fellow boarding school classmate and future band mate Tom Verlaine (née Miller). At seventeen, Richard landed in New York, where he found work in bookstores and other low-paying jobs, lived in a series of downtown dumps, and began writing poetry and publishing a literary magazine. He had love affairs, including a character-shaping two-year relationship with Claes Oldenburg’s ex-wife Patty, fifteen years old than he.
When Tom later arrived in New York, the two friends formed a fraternal bond and artistic collaboration that lead to the formation of Television. The band’s regular gig at CBGBs put Hell and Verlaine on the map, and Richard embraced the life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. His circle included all of the downtown artists who would come to define the age alongside him—Patti Smith, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry, the Ramones. But discord forced Hell to leave Television and move on. He formed The Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders and later started the Voidoids with Robert Quine, landing a recording deal with Sire Records and touring the UK as the opening act for The Clash. After years of taking drugs, Hell also found himself with a full-blown addiction to heroin, and later cocaine, ultimately confronting these nemeses with the same unapologetic lack of sentimentality that has marked his art.
I DREAMED I WAS A VERY CLEAN TRAMP is a post-punk twist on the classic American coming of age story. An acutely rendered memoir of passion played out through art, rebellion, sex, and drugs, it is the unforgettable testament of one revolutionary artist and the cultural movement he helped create.

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Lou Reed Birthday Tribute @ The Way Station
Wednesday, March 5, 2014 – 8:00 p.m.
FREE!
Organizer: Gail Heidel

The Way Station
683 Washington Avenue, Crown Heights
347.627.4949

Lou Reed was a seminal force, a proto-punk proselytizer, an icon and an iconoclast. On Wednesday, March 5th at 8pm, The Way Station will celebrate his life and music with a Lou Reed Birthday Tribute. Come down and hear seven bands re-imagine the music of Lou Reed, paying tribute to a truly innovative New York artist.

Michael Pennacchio, Drum the Jaguar, Prewar Yardsale, Perp Walk, Even Twice, All Night Chemists*
* Line-up subject to change
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Hillary Capps
Thursday, March 6, 2014  8:00 p.m.
FREE!

Ba’sik
323 Graham Avenue, Williamsburg
347.889.7597

Hillary Capps, a native Vermont singer and songwriter now based in New York City, released her first full-length album, The Wishing Forest on January 21, 2014. With strong female influences such as Sara Bareilles and Adele, Capps’ pop-oriented music encompasses subtle jazz phrasings and catchy melodies that display a mature songwriting and tight musicianship.

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Judy Rifka: Star Street
Curated by Alison Pierz
with graffitti environment by Victor Ving;
Video installation by Judy Rifka and Daniel Dibble
Through March 22, 2014

Trestle Projects
400 Third Avenue Gowanus
718.858.9069
By appointment only. Please email [email protected]
to schedule your visit.  

Star Street marks an important new showcase for Judy Rifka’s most recent works on paper and canvas. Her assembled compositions suggest universes as well as the age-old human desire for mark making. Like cave drawings for the twenty first century, her latest collage and painting is presented in juxtaposition with the graffiti work of her Lower East Side neighbor, tagger Victor Ving.
Star Street also includes a presentation of her video works with British sound and visual artist Daniel Dibble. Rifka and Dibble maintain an ongoing virtual collaboration and their output is testament to Judy’s ease at incorporating contemporary technologies with her mature artistic sensibilities.
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Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry's Letters to "The Ladder"
 November 22, 2013–March 16, 2014

The Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Suggested Donation, $12 ($8 62 and over)

This exhibition explores a largely unknown but significant aspect of Hansberry’s biography connecting her to the gay rights movement: the letters she wrote in 1957 to The Ladder, the first subscription-based lesbian publication in the United States. In these provocative letters, Hansberry drew on her own identity and life experiences to articulate the interconnected struggles of women, lesbians, and African Americans during the period. She pointed to her identification with the burgeoning feminist movement in a 1959 interview with Studs Terkel, saying that "the most oppressed group of any oppressed group will be its women," adding that those who are "twice oppressed" often become "twice militant."
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Every Monday Night
Bring Out Your Vinyl

The Saint Catherine
 660 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217, Crown Heights
 Hours: 7pm to 2am

There will be a turntable set up. Bring your vinyl and come see who’s got the rarest, hippest, most obscure records in the neighborhood.

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Every Tuesday Night
8:00 p.m.
MANIFESTO!
A Weekly Stand-up Comedy Show

The People's Republic of Brooklyn
247 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens
FREE!

Every Tuesday at 8 pm, Tim Ellis and Mo Fathelbab host Manifesto! -- a comedy uprising in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. They bring a lineup of the best comedians in NYC and beyond to The People's Republic of Brooklyn -- a current hotbed of comic dissent. The revolution will be hilarious...and FREE!

The Tues, Marc h 4 lineup features these amazing performers*:

Alex Babbitt, Garrett Barnes, Sean Donnelly, Sam Grittner, Charlie Kasov, and Debbie Meisenzahl

Stop by early to catch or to be a part of the free open mic THIS IS HAPPENING, hosted by Dustin Drury! The weekly mic starts at 6:30 pm (sign-up at 6).

*Lineup is subject to change

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Every Tuesday Night
Beer Tasting, every Tuesday night 7 PM

BierKraft
191 Fifth Ave., Betw. Berkeley Pl. and Union St. Park Slope
Beer Tasting! 'Nough said.
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Every Wednesday Night
The Mandingo Ambassadors
Every Wednesday at 10 p.m.

Barbès
376 Ninth St., (at 6th Avenue) Park Slope
Mamady Kouyate is a pioneer of the Guinean musical movement known as Authenticité. He played in various bands - his own band, Les Ambassadeurs du Mandingue, being one of them - but is probably best known as the guitarist in the classic Bembeya Jazz National. Kouyate, who now lives in NY, has reformed the Mandingo Ambassadors, updating the sound of his youth, but keeping it very close to the standard of Authenticité. The new All-Star band includes Mamady "Djelike" Kouyate, guitar, leader; Bebe Camara, vocal; Eudy Fernandez, trumpet; Oran Etkin, tenor sax, clarinet; Sylvain Leroux, flute, Fula flute, alto sax; Sam Dickey, guitar; Nick Cudahy, bass; Andy Algire, drums; Foluso Mimy, percussion.
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Every Saturday

Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza
Grand Army Plaza 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Brooklyn’s biggest, at the entrance to Prospect Park
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Every Sunday
Comedy Night at The Knit "Front Bar"
 9:00 p.m. FREE! (21+)

The Knitting Factory Brooklyn
361 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211, Williamsburg

Hosted by Hannibal Burress

Every Sunday night in the Front Bar of Knitting Factory Brooklyn, Hannibal Buress hosts: Comedy at The Knitting Factory with special guests each week. Past performances have included unannounced sets from Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Louis CK, & more!