Criticultura em Portugal

For non New Yorkers, the Armory is a large performance space in Manhattan, originally used in the 19th C for storing munitions/weapons, now used as a BIG space for arts productions. For example, when I saw  Macbeth  there a couple years ago, an entire gladitorial arena was set up inside, and you entered through foggy moors. In March I saw Die Materie , a 4 act opera/tone poem/? by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Unlike some of the new agey-spiritual spectacles, this one did not come off as one bad LSD trip, at least not always. While there were episodes of un-spiritual stasis, it was an overall fascinating thing to see (see picture of 200 sheep on stage, e.g.) The music was sometimes interesting, occasionally too repetitive without enough forward motion. Movement 1 was about man's technology-- lots of rhythm, pounding chords (exactly 144 to start), Bachian math ratios, symbolic portrayal of the founding of Holland via shipbuilding, zeppelins overhead. Movement 2 was adagio, s

The Red Speedo, a play about performance enhancing drugs and the pressures of the high performance athlete, is most striking before a single word is spoken. I was seated in row 2, 3 feet behind a long 1.5 m tall, 1m deep translucent "fishtank" that extended the width of the stage. Actor Alex Breaux enters clad only in a red Speedo, dives into the chlorinated tank, and does a few laps with flip turns before toweling off. This Speedo will be his only attire for the rest of the play. A memorable opening! As for the talking, there are few characters, and few new insights if you read the papers about PEDs in sports. The athlete is manipulated for profit and fame, and appears cluelessly focused on his times, like most high level competitors for whom times/winning are the sole metrics of success. Playwright Lucas Hnath does a good job of moving things along and not preaching, thankfully. I did appreciate the complexity built into the story as the swimmer himself manipulates and