Program Notes

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, which shelters writers persecuted in their home countries, has done a pretty good job over the years representing itself and its guests. Since its founding, in 2004, its several guests from around the world have participated in numerous public readings and other events, and at least one went on to teach at Pitt.

Still, especially if you don’t know about COAP, the representative sampling of guest writers in this new stage work is worth a look before it closes Sunday.

The energetic student cast, directed by playwright and Pitt faculty member Cynthia Croot, are not for the most part close physical matches for the four writers, and, probably wisely, they don’t attempt impersonations.

The show, consisting largely of staged vignettes from each writers’ work, is vividly staged. Here's Michelle Pilecki's review in this week's CP.

If I have one complaint, it’s that the play could have paid a bit more attention to the organization that it’s named after. Audiences unfamiliar with the group (which is Pittsburgh’s independent incarnation of an international network of COAs) could easily leave with a good sense of the writers’ writings but only a fuzzy notion of the organization that, after they’d suffered years of threats, torture or imprisonment, let them work in peace.

Performances of City of Asylum continue nightly through Sunday at the Charity Randall Theatre, Stephen Foster Memorial, in Oakland. Tickets are $12-25.

You can hardly discuss The Beatles without noting their collective sense of humor, but as far as I know, until now no one’s written a book about it. And if someone did, it couldn’t have been as lushly and cleverly illustrated as The Beatles Were Fab (and They Were Funny).

The oversized hardback, by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer, with illustrations by Stacy Innerst, is new from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Innerst is best known around here as a veteran illustrator for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (though on the book’s jacket, he notes that had his boyhood wish come true, he’d now be Ringo).

Here's his double-page spread depicting the four trying to name the band:

In a world where pop stars were still rarely heard offstage, The Beatles’ carefree cheek paved the way for more radical dealings with the press — like Dylan’s, a couple years later — not to mention their own increasingly outspoken politics. (Though none of that, of course, figures in a kids’ book.)

While Fab comes complete with a bibliography, rest assured, parents, that this is a cleaned-up telling focusing on the lads’ light-hearted side — the public giddiness of Beatlemania being the touchstone.

Throughout, Innerst’s richly illustrations capture the band with just a loving touch of caricature and spot-on gestures. (Though it might have been fun to see what he could do with Sgt. Pepper’s silliness and maybe even a bit of psychedelia.)

If you remade A Hard Days’ Night as a children’s book — and in color — it would look a lot like The Beatles Were Fab.

Written by Jeff Ihaza

Pittsburgh author Matthew Newton is familiar with the reality of economic decline. Raised at the end of the steel age, Newton has a perspective on the world informed by the unpredictability of local economies.

In 2009, against a backdrop of nationwide economic uncertainty, Newton learned he’d lost his job as an editor of a nonprofit automotive magazine. The news came just as the author and his wife were contemplating a larger family, while vacationing in the Laurel Highlands.

“I think the title is a representation of all of the things surrounded by a good job: the idea of providing for a family that we’re sort of brought up with,” says Newton, who Founded the online journal Annals of Americus and whose work has been published by The Atlantic, Esquire, Forbes and others.

Much like a play, the 17-page book is divided into three parts, walking readers through the experience as through the stages of grief.

In Part 1, titled “Permanent Vacation,” Newton charts the emotions of an increasingly familiar American experience with a precision that comes only from having lived it.

Newton often recalls the feeling of worthlessness associated with being fired over the phone. From there, he rebuilds. Part II, “Burn it Down,” brings readers into the awkwardness of collecting personal goods from a former workplace, with Newton’s inner monologue describing his racing thoughts in those moments.

The digital book is being distributed through the popular blog Thought Catalog, which Newton once edited for. It is also available in the Amazon Kindle bookstore.

In a literary landscape nearly as uncertain as the 2009 job market, Newton finds the emerging digital market a perfect ground for innovative work. He draws a parallel between the growing popularity of eBooks and the independent music scene, the content in both cases being in the hands of its creators.

“No one really knows what to expect out of all this yet,” Newton says.

By publishing his relatively short work digitally, Newton seeks in essence to creatie a market for works that might be too long for a typical magazine feature but too short for a traditional print book.

“I really had a concentrated burst of information. The first few drafts were longer and definitely had more expletives, but the finished product just sort of fit in this format,” Newton says.

As for the “death” of Newton’s job, the writer is currently working as an editor for a nonprofit that publishes academic journals. He continues to contribute work to Thought Catalog and is working on a nonfiction collection that depicts life in the suburbs called No Place for Disgrace.

Much like Death of a Good Job, Newton’s current project is influenced by personal experience. He lives in the suburb of Churchill with his wife and two sons.

Pretty gutsy of playwright Young Jean Lee to title this 2012 show as she did. On the one hand, you risk scaring away people afraid of the word “feminism,” or at least those who fear a harangue of some kind. On the other — given the kind of show it actually is — you risk ticking off people who expect a harangue of some kind.

Because whatever else it is, the world-touring Untitled Feminist Show — here courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum’s Off the Wall series — isn’t what you’d expect. While it shares elements with some of Lee’s earlier work, it’s consistently fresh and unpredictable, starting with the fact that the six female performers are stark naked the whole one-hour show.

And so the show’s form and function were largely one: The women’s simple acts on stage were the point, but that point was made with plenty of craft. Lee drew her cast (four of whose original six members performed here) from the worlds of dance, cabaret and burlesque. Each had her own considerable stage presence. Most also moved really well — especially important because the show has no dialogue (needless to say, another first for Lee).

The six women gave us a series of vignettes including: a childlike group frolic blended with a Grimm’s fairy tale; Malinda Ray Allen’s winsome pop-concert parody (with lyrics consisting entirely of “la-la”’s); and Amelia Zirin-Brown (a.k.a. Lady Rizo) pantomiming sex acts which gradually escalate to cheerful absurdity. (Think braided male progenitive organs.)

Other highlights included a bravura slow-motion fight sequence with two combatants and four onlookers taking sides — and the fight’s loser (Desiree Burch) encoring with an erotic dance. A few other set pieces, like a sort of dance to spring with pink parasols, felt like simple tributes to the joy of movement.

The show’s revue format, with a fair amount of direct-to-audience address by individual performers, was familiar from Lee’s The Shipment, a potent exploration of racism her company performed here last year.

Off the Wall has invited Lee most every year for the past several seasons. When she and her collaborators are firing on all cylinders, it’s easy to see why.

This stage bio of African-American singer Roland Hayes isn’t a play in the standard sense. It’s more a succession of imagined scenes from his groundbreaking life, from childhood in rural Alabama poverty to stardom on world concert stages in the early 20th century.

Of course there’s plenty of music too, with the powerful voices of Jubilant Sykes (as Hayes) and Kecia Lewis (as his mother) booming out everything from vintage spirituals to German art song. Many scenes in fact feel built around the songs they lead up to.

This isn’t a heady evening at the theater. Playwright Daniel Beaty has arranged the scenes chronologically, with some flash-forwards to tie things together. And it’s all built around a few simple conflicts: Hayes’ desire to sing; his mother’s resistance to that career choice; and society’s resistance to a classically trained black vocalist. (Hayes was born in 1887; and we thought Marian Anderson, born 10 years later, in Philadelphia, had it tough — because, of course, she did.)

But the whites who kept Hayes down are represented in this show by a single character — a brutal Southern cop. The other seven roles played by actor and piano accompanist Tom Frey are all sympathetic. If more genteel influential persons ever barred the singer’s way — and they must have — we never get a concrete sense of it. Worse, despite some lyrical writing, Beatty never offers much insight into Hayes. He’s simply someone driven to sing and who hates segregation, both qualities you could have guessed going in.

Still, as Michelle Pilecki points out in her review of the show for CP, the skilled and tireless three-member cast are quite enjoyable. And Hayes’ amazing story — he died in 1942 — is too little known. If nothing else, Sykes’ performance makes sure you won’t forget it.

There are four more performances of Breath & Imagination: 8 p.m. tonight, 5:30 and 9 p.m. tomorrow, and a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday.

City Theatre is located at 1300 Bingham St., on the South Side. Tickets are $15-55.