![]() and I’ve noticed that on a personal level, it’s changed the way I perceive music and think about music and its relation to dance and performance.” ![]() “So it adds another it that adds almost intangible unity and quality to the music side that, you know, it’s really rare. “It’s not just 12 musicians on stage behind their instruments, but it’s 12 musicians also moving through space while playing together,” said Freedman. Daniel Freedman and Jacquelene Acevedo, two of the band’s six percussionists, spoke about to Our Town about the show. Without the confines of cords or equipment, the band members, with their various instruments (mostly drums), don matching suits and perform in grayscale. Like him, or the version of himself he presents here, they’re heading into the twilight, wondering why the hell they haven’t grown up yet,” Brantley wrote. “In “David Byrne’s American Utopia” - an expansive, dazzlingly staged concert - he emerges as an avuncular, off-center shepherd to flocks of fans still groping to find their way. The New York Times’ co-chief theater critic Ben Brantley, like several others, compared Byrne to Mister Rogers in his 2019 review upon the show’s original Broadway debut. ![]() As Byrne recorded the songs for his “American Utopia” album, the idea came to him to play it live. Having equal representation has always been a part of this show.Īs Byrne wrote in a note in 2019 published on the show’s website, “American Utopia” did not come together all at once, but rather it “evolved organically” over time during the planning stages. James Theatre on September 17, is comprised of 12 band members, including Byrne - most of whom are Broadway outsiders with strong backgrounds in music - and several of them are people of color. The show, set to return to Broadway’s St. This sent the lives of entertainers everywhere into limbo as productions went on pause.ĭavid Byrne’s “American Utopia” had finished its stay on Broadway and subsequent cross-country tour, totaling around 300 shows, in February 2020 before the pandemic. Using disco in “Here Lies Love,” he said, allowed him to pay his respects to that sound but also freed him to write songs for other people that he wouldn’t write for himself.As we return to a new normal, over a year after the start of the pandemic, Broadway is seeing a revival of its own - and at time when we could all use a little “Once in a Lifetime” feeling.Īt the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Broadway went for dark the first time since the Spanish Flu in 1919. ![]() In fact, his record collection includes Donna Summer, The O’Jays and The Spinners. ![]() “I wanted you to understand a little bit what’s motivating Imelda, what’s driving her, what her delusions are, but also what her pain is, what she loves, so you understand what makes her do the things that she does,” Byrne said in 2014.īyrne - an art-rock progressive who famously sang “This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco” - said he’d never had anything against club music. Their son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989 and Imelda, now 93, has returned to her homeland and entered politics. The Marcoses ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986 - the last 14 years of that under martial law - before being driven into exile in Hawaii during a 1986 popular revolt, leaving the country’s economy faltering under huge debts. The lyrics are mostly taken from speeches or interviews from all sides during Marcos’ era and the standing-only audience moves around the space with the 15 actors. ![]()
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