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Culture
October 3, 2012, 11:30 am

Awkward, Amusing Dance of Sitting In and Falling in Love

By NICOLE PASULKA
Pasulka3Nicole Pasulka A recent dress rehearsal.

While developing “Micro-Mini Maxi Mystery Theater: En Total,” Jessica Dellecave asked the five dancers in the cast to recall their most embarrassing protest moments. With their help, she created a show that explores the often cringe-inducing intersection between activist fervor and queer young love.

The work, premiering tomorrow tonight at Dixon Place, grew out of three 10- to 15-minute studies the playwright, who goes by J. Dellecave, wrote between 1999 and 2010: one was about her experiences as a young, queer activist in the late ’90s, another about her frustrations with activism in 2005, and the other dealing with her mixed feelings about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In a controlled frenzy, Ms. Dellecave and her “pod” of dancers travel to space, find love at the protest march, and belt out Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Ms. Dellecave humps the floor in a pink mini skirt while delivering a monologue on love and activism. “Isn’t this romantic, going out in the street and smashing the state?” she asks.

It’s not romantic at all, but it is familiar. Like love, first experiences of activism can be both nostalgic and awkward to remember ten years, or even ten hours, later. Ms. Dellecave, whose full first name is Jessica, pokes fun at her history as a queer activist and, in doing so, pushes audiences to examine their own experiences. Read more…

Culture
April 23, 2012, 10:10 am

Satirist Nikolas Kozloff on East Village Anarchists, Pet Owners, and Pie Men

By DANIEL MAURER
Post-Academic Stress Disorder

Around the time he moved from SoHo to East 12th Street in 2004, Nikolas Kozloff – author of three non-fiction books about Latin America and numerous pieces about Occupy Wall Street for Al Jazeera and Huffington Post – was writing a novel loosely based on his brief tenure as an adjunct professor at CUNY. “Post-Academic Stress Disorder,” which Mr. Kozloff, 43, finally self-published last month, is the story of a young, socially vexed young man attempting to carve out a niche for himself in academia, latching onto subcultures in his new East Village neighborhood, and desperately seeking love and companionship – all while dodging a nefarious plot hatched by a fellow faculty member. The Local asked Mr. Kozloff, who now resides in Brooklyn, just how much of his novel’s wry observations about the anarchists, spiritualists, health nuts, pet lovers, and pie-throwers of the East Village were based on his six months there.

Q.

To what degree does your novel portray an exaggerated version of the East Village? The scene where the narrator, Andy, visits A&H Dairy (an exaggerated version of B&H) and is told that his grandfather had an affair with the neighborhood’s great anarchist, Emma Goldman, is pretty over the top.  Read more…