Thursday, December 13, 2007
Special Events Memories (of What Our Neighborhoods Were Like Before We Moved In)
Posted by Mark on Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 12:00 PM
click to enlarge
So maybe you've seen some fake American Apparel ads around lately (including in our magazine, maybe? I don't generally keep track but I seem to remember this one). Ones with, like, cats in them, like the one pictured? This makes perfect sense, believe it or not. See, they're for an amateur theatrical going down this weekend (tonight through Sunday) that's about, like, the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, only about hipsters. Kind of? Cats on Broadway. I'll let them explain:
Set on the border between Bed-Stuy and Bushwick (Broadway, Brooklyn) and performed in the newly renovated Bruce High Quality Foundation Theater (1100 Broadway, Brooklyn), Cats on Broadway brings together an all-volunteer cast of performers, musicians, stagehands, and designers to reflect the emotional conflicts of the gentrification of Brooklyn while satirizing both the utopian reform schemes and self-pitying nihilism often associated with the artists responsible for gentrification's "first wave."
I've been saying for a while (to, like, my friends, not so much to you) that it's time people like, well, me started addressing our gentrification anxiety straight-on. Like, yes, believe it or not we do know that by liking and by being able to afford to live in certain neighborhoods, we kind of ruin them, too. (Or at least pave the way for other people to ruin them, eventually.) So this seems like a potentially valuable attempt at coming to grips with our role in the urban environment, through the vehicle of ironic musical theater. Hooray.
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