Re-cap: June 18-19 Adult Film’s Film + Theatre Festival

Ryan Czerwonko is a go-getter, a thoughtful subversive, a committed artist, immersed in theatre history and the precedents set by the giants who came before, he knows his shit, he’s an actor and writer and filmmaker committed to creating a space where good work can flourish, work that doesn’t fit into the little ideological boxes so prevalent in theatre right now (and everywhere else, I suppose), where the Message is more important than the Story. Ryan appreciates mess. He appreciates grown-up topics, he appreciates ambivalence, ambiguity, bad behavior, the dark side, all things I’m interested in too. Wanting art to model good behavior for the susceptible audience is, frankly, Victorian. It’s a very weird thing that’s happening right now – in reaction, I realize, to the appalling behavior modeled by “authorities” … but it’s Bad for Art. Very bad. What happens when you want art to be a Model for Good Behavior, is that ambiguity is sacrificed, and anything that was written before five years ago is seen as suspect, corrupted. For example, did you know that Tennessee Williams was a misogynist? And Blanche DuBois is borne out of his misogyny? Yeah. It’s news to me too. You don’t have to swallow this hook, line and sinker. And you don’t even have to pay lip service to it. It’s anti-intellectual, anti-historical, anti-art, and I want no part of it. So what is to be done? Well, you can do what Ryan is doing. Create your own space where stuff like that isn’t a factor. Do your own work. Be true. The best defense against that kind of thinking is to push forward on your own path, creating a separate lane. In communist Czechoslovakia, the hounded harassed persecuted playwright (and eventual President, once the USSR collapsed) Vaclav Havel said that he chose to live “AS IF” he were free. Spoken like a true man of the theatre. AS IF. Stanislavsky’s magic “IF”. Havel’s plays were famous the world over, but banned in his home country. This comparison is a major exaggeration of some of the constrictions on art right now, but it is a possible End Game, and we should all keep that in mind. In a world where ideology trumps all, doggedly living AS IF you were free is an act of courage.

Ryan lives in Bushwick, and works with a group of actors and filmmakers, doing play-readings, having film nights, acting workshops. They surround themselves in an atmosphere of creativity and possibility. This is reminiscent of my earliest Chicago days, when I studied at the Actors Gym – it was invite only – held in this huge empty warehouse on the South side – where we did acting exercises, read books by people like Vakhtangov and Boleslavsky, did scenes, did Strasberg’s Song and Dance exercise, and basically lived in a safe space where we could try stuff, go crazy, be bold, be spontaneous, and it wasn’t in a commercial setting. The risks were emotional only. You could look stupid. You could fail. There were no lasting consequences. I met a couple of lifelong friends in the Actors Gym. The Actors Gym was short-lived, but I remember that time very fondly. The commercial pressures of a career in theatre and/or film are acute. I always struggled with that – even though I worked all the time. To be in a space where “anything goes as long as you’re truthful” … was the best antidote to the audition process, the hustle, all that other stuff.

So Ryan and his group – they call themselves Adult Film – are attempting (and achieving) a similar thing. This past weekend, they launched their first festival with a packed program of short films and live performances, held at a brownstone in Bushwick – the entire brownstone turned into a theatre space, with different alcoves and rooms and stoops, etc., transformed into teeny tiny theatres. It was such a success that hopefully it will turn into an annual thing. “If you build it, they will come”, you understand. And “they” did come. Apparently, almost 200 people attended over the course of the weekend.

I connected with Ryan through our mutual friend Mitchell. I had no idea Ryan was a regular reader of my work, and that he and his group read my essays on acting and theatre (particularly the ones on Stella in Streetcar – there are two big ones). That connection was there, only I didn’t know it. Eventually Ryan and I start corresponding. We discuss Tennessee Williams, the state of art right now, Camille Paglia, you know, everything. In the planning stages for his festival, Ryan asked to see my short film to possibly include it in the program. I sent it along. After a quick back and forth, he decided to put it in the block of films screening on the 19th.

It was a crazy weekend for me, but I decided to pop down on Sunday morning to go to the festival. I had to miss the Saturday because I had something else going on. I am so glad I went. What an inspiring night.

Held in a brownstone in Brooklyn, utilizing all of the floors, the festival included about 20 short films altogether (10 on one day, 10 on the other), and four one-act plays, one by Tennessee Williams and the rest original works. Each play was held in a different area of the house: the backyard, the front stoop, upstairs, downstairs – and the whole audience moved around, cramming into small spaces to watch the work, climbing the stairs in single file, coming back down again, etc. All of the work was thoughtful, funny, powerful, with personal POVs, and good acting.

The event, which could have been total chaos, was very well-organized. Ryan was the MC – he started off by introducing himself, and the group, saying they called it Adult Film because they “liked porn”, wanted to reference the “seedy” side of old New York, and also wanted to underline that these projects were for adults only. His speech was funny and charming. There were others on tech duty, queueing up each short film, and others who were audience “guides”, leading us from one-act to one-act. They split us up into two groups (which meant the casts of each had to do the plays twice in a row). There were about 90 people there, I think! Some came for all of it, some came for parts … there was a door charge, but other than that, you were free to come and go.

The event started off in the basement apartment, a big space, with a kitchen, a bed, all in one uninterrupted space, with a mobile of the solar system hanging over the gigantic television. People were sitting on the floor, the couch, there were extra chairs, and then people also stood along the walls, crowded in the back. The vibe was just incredible, all of these people sitting and standing quietly, totally focused on what was going on. I have MISSED this kind of thing, the collective experience of falling silent and focusing on the work unfolding.

I was so happy that my nephew Cashel joined me. He ran into two people he knew from school!

The first short film screened was Within Reach, directed by Tess Goldwyn, starring Goldwyn and Caleb Eberhardt. There was poetry here in the images – the light, the editing, the dreamy montage effect – the sound of a heartbeat, whispers – but the underlying reality was clear and strong.

There’s been some kind of global disaster – climate-related, or environmental-disaster related – and life has been reduced to a subsistence level. A couple attempts to not just make sense of it, but live within it, and find hope within their connection. Very down-to-earth filmmaking and good acting. Grounded. Sensitive to everything: light, mud, water, empty storefronts, faces.

Next up was Burned Rubber, directed by Roman D’Ambrosio (who also wrote one of the one-acts performed later in the event). Starring Kara Jobe, Ina Hudson, and a glittering gleaming blue-jeweled necklace worthy of Elizabeth Taylor. Strong dramatic color palette: blues and purples and blacks and gleaming molten golds … visual representation of a sleazy underworld of sex and theft, desire and greed.

Håber , directed by Amour Luciani, and written by Imani Love and Lorenzo Pozzan. Pozzan starred, alongside Briana Cortesiano. Some short films are meant to be short films. Others you can feel a feature within the limited time line. Haber has the makings of a full-length.

This was a beautiful film, compact in size and length, but expansive in mood and theme. Shot in one location (as far as I can remember), but you could feel the outside world pressing in. Many intersecting themes: grief, love, loss, jealousy … and you add onto that a commitment to a cause greater than yourself … It reminded me a little bit of Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs. I was really impressed.

Tricks, directed by Beaty Reynolds and Chris Graves, also written by Beaty Reynolds (who wrote Transference, one of the one-acts performed that night). Shot in stark black-and-white, Tricks takes place in what looks the middle of nowhere. A town on the side of a desert. A gas station. A cheap motel. A woman (Elizabeth Rose) staggers into this town with just a purse and not much else. She’s in a state of distress.

She has nothing, no money, no way out. But then she notices what is clearly a sex-work transaction unfolding a couple doors down at the motel and she hatches a crazy (very) plan. Cashel and I really loved this one. It’s very funny, and the atmosphere is rich, the visuals and location beautifully isolated and stark. Bleak. The end of the road.

The first block was closed out with For I am Dead, directed by Patricia Delso Lucas, a dream-like period piece where Satan himself shows up at one point. Very ambitious and beautifully shot.

It was so fun watching all of these films!

Then we began the One-Act portion of our program. We were led out to the backyard, a jungly space, with a dilapidated shed, a nice big deck, and grass and vines, to watch Kingdom of Earth, which Ryan adapted from one of Tennessee Williams’ short stories. Ryan also directed and starred. Ryan played “Chicken”, with Chelsea Cristoffor as “Myrtle” and Ira Gamerman as “Lot” – an explosive love/sex triangle can’t last long. They used the whole of the backyard, they were everywhere – up on the deck, back by the shed, rolling around in the grass and dirt … The acting broad and big, but it was also deep and connected. And funny too! There was a freedom in the “playing” that makes you – as an audience member – relax instantly. You’re like, “Oh. Okay. They’ve got this.”

You get the feeling that these actors can do anything. Not only do they “want it” that bad, but they create the atmosphere and space where they CAN do anything. The work felt very free and very pure.

It was also so special to be outside, the sounds of the city all around us, the light leaving the sky, music blasting from somewhere down the block, honking car horns, the buzz of the city, but here … in a small green space … a play was unfolding, a group of people sitting, standing, clustered wherever we could fit, watching a theatrical work by an American master unfold. It was magic.

Then we all filed down the basement steps again and into a tiny – and I mean tiny – room – to watch the next one-act, which was Transference, written by Beaty Reynolds (see above mention). Sigrid Sutter directed (and her name will come up again as well), and it starred Ell Peck and Laura Ornella. When I say it was a tiny room, here is what it was like watching that play:

It’s amazing how many people could squeeze into that spot. Transference – a very clever title – takes place during one very fraught and funny therapy session, where Susan (Peck) talks nonstop to – and AT – her often weary and possibly bored therapist (Ornella), who barely says a word. Susan’s monologue is long and filled with digressions and switchbacks, Susan attempting to make contact, get validation, or, hell, even just a response from her therapist. It was super entertaining – and also tremendously impressive: these two actors doing their thing in that ^^ environment! Amazing!

After that, we were led through the basement and out the door onto the front stoop, for the next play, entitled 3 Lesbians Smoking Outside an Art Gallery. (lol). It was written and directed by Roman D’Ambrosio – who also, as it turns out, was the guy leading us around from space to space (and he also directed the short film Burned Rubber. He is so talented). When the audience emerged outside, clustering around the stoop, on the sidewalk, etc., the play was already underway, the three characters lounging on the stoop, smoking cigarettes, drinking, and talking. The actors were Matilda Berke, Lucy McKendrick, and Patrick Callahan. The conversation was insightful and sharp, about the state of the art world, and “representation”, art vs. commerce, or … not EVEN, how art IS commerce. And how does queerness and/or lesbians fit into all of that? The script was very funny: each character representing a different point of view, and the characters hashed it out in vigorous debate. The bursts of laughter from the audience felt more like recognition rather than just a reaction to a joke. Like, one of the characters said something like, “Can’t people just be tomboys anymore?” or “Whatever happened to tomboys?” and then spouted some quote from Camille Paglia, and everyone BURST out laughing. This is a smart crowd! They GET it.

We then went back into the brownstone, and climbed to the second story, for the final play in the lineup, Still Life, written by Matthew Gasda. I highly recommend reading the recent profile of Gasda in The New York Times. He’s up to so many interesting things. He writes and writes and writes, and produces stuff constantly. The pandemic was a clarifying moment for many of us. Still Life was directed by Ryan, and it starred Sigrid Sutter and George Olesky, as a married couple having an increasingly tense seven-year-itch kind of conversation while waiting for a subway train. We were sitting in an upstairs room, cleared of furniture except for chairs against one wall, and a very realistic-looking painted backdrop of a subway station, complete with ripped advertisement.

The play was excellent, and the acting was superb. It felt like one of those old-fashioned (in a good way) one-act plays we grew up with as actors. Michael Heller’s stuff – “Split”, etc. Perfect for acting classes, one-act festivals, amazing for actors to show their stuff, so much fun to do. The couple in question are clearly in a rut. They are considering welcoming a third woman into their couple … just for kicks? It’s not clear. Both seem fairly ambivalent and they go back and forth on it. The fight gets extremely heated. The couple teeters on the brink of an abyss. And etc.

I was so impressed with the writing and the performances. It was funny and truthful and occasionally even tender and sweet. It’s hard to write a one-act. This one had such a confident tone – with some unexpected switchbacks, and a sense of real unpredictability. You didn’t know what either of these characters would do. Would they call it quits during the course of the one-act? Would they hook up with that third woman? Would they re-commit to each other? All seemed equally valid and possible. I really dug this.

It was time then for the two audience groups to merge back together for the final block of short films. Meanwhile, even more people had arrived. The basement room was twice as crowded as it had been earlier. Everyone buzzing with the high of the night and the experience. For the most part, I just felt happy that my film was included. I didn’t give it a thought beyond that. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. I didn’t even re-watch it beforehand. Suddenly, as everyone settled down for the films, I felt a bolt of stress, a flutter of butterflies. “Jesus, Lord, I hope people like it.” Ryan introduced me in an extravagant fashion, which was completely unexpected. It’s weird to talk about your own work, but here I go. People were so engaged by the characters, you could tell the audience was REALLY listening. Since my film is all about the dialogue – the back and forth – it was so gratifying to hear how closely everyone was listening to it. Listening like that has texture and feel. The things that got laughs, the things that DIDN’T get laughs … I absolutely loved sitting there FEELING everyone around me watching it, listening to it. And Cashel too! He hadn’t seen it!

After my film came 100 Boyfriends Mixtape, directed by and starring Brontez Purnell
I actually saw this one when it was streaming on the Criterion Channel! Very exciting to find it here as well. I saw it for the first time alone in my apartment and absolutely loved it but it’s a totally different experience seeing it in a basement packed with people. The laughter! The alive-ness of it all! It was commissioned back in 2017 by Visual AIDS for the Day With(out) Art. Purnell, an author, a dancer, a performer, wrote, directed, starred. A man named DeShawn sits in a filled tub, shrink-fitting his new shoplifted Levi’s, and chats on the phone, all beneath a huge picture of Tupac. It’s genius. It plays like a bat out of hell.

You can watch the whole thing here:

100 Boyfriends Mixtape (The Demo) by Brontez Purnell for Day With(out) Art 2017 from Visual AIDS on Vimeo.

Next up was Brontosaurus, an animated film directed/created by Jack Dunphy. It’s about a time in his life when he started seeing this girl who gave him a plastic brontosaurus. It’s so funny and melancholy. Loneliness. You can feel it. You can watch it on Vimeo:

Brontosaurus from Jack Dunphy on Vimeo.

Dunphy is so talented!

Then came The Hunter, directed by Sam McConnell – who, unfortunately, wasn’t present – and starring Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Alan Mingo, Jr. What a beautiful strange script, with so many different layers of sex and class and race, all spiraling around the story of Antigone. Or, at least, she is the guiding principle. I found this film incredibly moving.

The short film Let’s Got Lost, directed by Sam Stillman, starring Stella Schnabel and Peter Greene, with Eloisa Santos and Leaphy Wyndragon, was so gorgeously shot it’s almost overwhelming. I should have guessed this, since I am so familiar with his work, but it was shot by Sean Price Williams. Cashel and I gasped at the credit screen, and then were both like, “Of COURSE it makes perfect SENSE.” There are a couple of scenes of the New York city streets on a rainy night – awash with reflections from the red stoplights, yellow stoplights … the lights at Lincoln Center fuzzy through the rain, the lights all bleeding together … where it’s so beautiful it takes your breath away. I think I might have even said out loud, “My God” at one point. It’s that beautiful. The film takes place in a jazz club, mostly, with one drunken outing to the Lincoln Center complex …But look at this unbelievably beautiful shot.

Hunter Zimny is also listed as a cinematographer, so I am not sure who did what – and it is a testament to the film that I can’t tell. But every shot had a smudged late-night-drunken beauty. You can revel in it here:

Let's Get Lost (2020) from B FLAT on Vimeo.

After the films ended, people just hung around, spilling out into the backyard, crowded on the front stoop, talking, smoking, drinking, making a RUCKUS. I befriended a bunch of people, exchanged information with even more, had great conversations about their work – and my work – I got to hear people’s individual reactions to my work which is always so interesting. I love to hear what people “get”. Imani and Lorenzo were so fun to talk to, as was George, Ryan, Brandon. I also had a nice exchange with Chelsea, where we talked about Stella in Streetcar. Everyone needs to talk more about Stella in Streetcar! Ha! I loved hearing what people were up to, I loved being in that crowd.

I’ve been slightly dissatisfied with my writing career right now. Don’t tell anyone. lol A night like this was so necessary, so important, filled with gems of goodness and validation that I need to continue and – most importantly – to not compare myself to others, to forge my own path. It’s mine. My path is a weird one and it’s not traditional but the rewards are great. Being around creative enthusiastic funny smart people, all of whom are creating work and showing work and moving onto the next thing, was really important for me in a moment where mainly I am like, “What the hell am I even DOING.”

It’s the kind of environment – collective and eccentric, “out there” and bold – that I have really missed. I was sixteen when I first did a real play and discovered this whole world outside of high school. I found a world of weirdos and flamboyant expressive people, artistic and creative, funny and open … and immediately knew I had found my people. I was about 20 years older than every person at the Adult Film festival and the age difference was totally irrelevant.

You hope that young artists are out there doing stuff like this, creating safe spaces – in the classic sense of the word, not the corrupted sense – where work can flourish. Artists have done this in every era, but especially in harsh unsupportive times. Attendance was way beyond expectation as well, an encouraging but not really unsurprising sign. The amount of people crammed into that basement was evidence of how much events like this are needed. People are HUNGRY for it.

Come together. Show your work. Watch others’ work. Be open to other people’s stories. Share your own. Talk. Light each others’ cigarettes. Make esoteric references and have someone nod because they know what you’re talking about. Make recommendations. Receive recommendations. Learn from others. Show up.

These are dark days. And they’re about to get darker. Adult Film is a Utopia. Protect the Utopias in your life. We need them now more than ever.