Two Weird Art Trailers & One Good Play

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First up, there's the trailer for Sufjan Stevens' upcoming rodeo movie Round-Up, which is screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music later this month; it's via The Playlist, where Suffy's also interviewed alongside the filmmakers about the project and his live musical accompaniment; nobody asks the obvious question, aka did Sufjan ride any rodeo clowns bulls himself? He's got the hips for it. Oh and there are a couple of purposefully garish shots of Sufjan's hula-hoopers cowgirling it up at Sufjan's personal tumblr, if you're curious. I guess they're part of the project too (of course they are.) 

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Secondly, there's the trailer for Kiddie Flamingos, which I told you about a couple of weeks ago; John Waters is having an art show here in NYC starting this weekend at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, and for the show he's provided a video of a table-read of a bunch of children reading a somewhat sanitized version of the Pink Flamingos script. My god! I'm headed to this show this weekend (and the Sufjan show in two weeks) so I'll try to keep y'all informed of the glory. Oh and as long as we're here...

... talking about Me Doing Things In The World, I saw the play Constellations last night, like I told you I was going to, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. As you can see from that Instagram shot, which I shot stealthily before the show began, I was practically sitting on the stage beside the two of them. The show is wonderful, though - it's a virtuoso spectacle of memory; I was in awe of watching the two of them shift from moment to moment little itty bitty bits of dialogue over and over and over again, making the same lines feel entirely different seven times over.

If you don't know the play's about multiple simultaneous timelines and watching a love affair come together and fall apart across different dimensions all at once; Jake & Ruth spin around and make minute changes from moment to moment to moment; it's really a feat. But beyond just the practical skill of What They're Doing, it all builds to a true crescendo at the end as the purpose becomes clear - it's really just one or two lines of dialogue, but well I'm crying even now just thinking back on it. It's a beautiful lesson imparted, simple and true, and it moved me. I highly recommend the show.