Lightbox:

At one point, the heat begins to get to Gary. Understandable, because his outfit, a sequined, black, full-length robe with a crown on his head and a silver chain, wasn’t designed for New York City heatwaves. Nevertheless, as a past President of the Imperial Court of New York, he proudly wears his formal attire. Damian too is dressed in a fancy white admiral’s jacket with an elaborate gold lapel hanging across his chest. Damian is all smiles, making sure that others knew how happy he was. With every picture, the couple beams, glowing in the way that one expects a couple to glow on their wedding day. 90 minutes later, Gary and Damian reach the steps leading to the Clerk’s office. Over the din of a “if you’re gay and you know it, stomp your feet” chant from the line behind them, the couple climb the steps. Damian nervously mentions that his heart is racing and works to fill every moment with excited conversation. Gary acts reserved and makes jokes about his last chance to run away. “No one could take this from us,” exclaims Damian proudly as he walks through the doorway. “Yes! Yes!”

To Have and To Hold

Subway Performers – Amazing Grace

Subway Performers – Amazing Grace

As I was waiting for the subway last night after work, there two musicians across the subway tracks playing Amazing Grace on electric guitar and trombone. It was hauntingly beautiful and I had to record the little bit that I could before the train came.

Its fun to see wonderful friends captured in stunning photographs.

Its fun to see wonderful friends captured in stunning photographs.

Brazenhead Books, An Underground Bookstore in New York City

laughing squid:

“There’s No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books” by Andrew David Watson is a short documentary about an illegal used bookstore hidden in a private residence in New York City. The owner of Brazenhead Books, career bookseller Michael Seidenberg, began selling books from his residence after being forced to close a more traditional second-hand shop due to rising rent. Over on the Etsy Blog, Andrew David Watson explains how he found the bookstore and filmed the documentary.

NPR: The RSC In NYC: 41 Actors, Five Plays, Six Weeks One week before the first performance, the Dri

NPR: The RSC In NYC: 41 Actors, Five Plays, Six Weeks One week before the first performance, the Dri

NPR: The RSC In NYC: 41 Actors, Five Plays, Six Weeks

One week before the first performance, the Drill Hall of the armory is filled with steel and timber, costumes, sets, props and workers scurrying around. Michael Boyd, the artistic director of the RSC, eagerly shows off the intimate 975-seat theater, which was packed in 46 shipping containers and is still being assembled, kind of like a huge IKEA kit. (You can see a time-lapse video of the theater being constructed, along with clips from all five plays, at the RSC’s YouTube page.)

“Millimeter for millimeter, it’s pretty much the same as what we’ve built in Stratford,” Boyd says. That’s Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace and the RSC’s permanent home for the past 50 years. “It’s now Wednesday afternoon,” Boyd continues. “By Friday morning, a technical rehearsal with actors is theoretically going to start!”

The RSC has come to America to do what it does best. The six-week residency, which kicked off last week, features productions of five Shakespeare classics: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, and King Lear. And all of the actors play at least two or three different roles. Sam Troughton, who plays Romeo and Brutus in Julius Caesar and understudies Polixenes in The Winter’s Tale, says seeing Shakespeare in repertory is a great way to be immersed in the variety of the Bard’s work.

See previous: Enter a Royal Ensemble, Preceded By Its Stage

The Royal Shakespeare Company is performing a summer repertory season of five plays here in New York City, in association with Lincoln Center Festival. This tour is not so much about what they’re performing as much as it is about where they’re performing.

THE Royal Shakespeare Company doesn’t travel light. In mid-June a convoy of 46 shipping containers began to arrive at the Park Avenue Armory, having made the journey by truck and boat from Stratford-Upon-Avon to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Multimedia One container was filled with flat-packed hoop skirts and World War I uniforms. Another held a life-size model of a wild boar and a 12-foot bear suit with glowing eyes. A third stored 20 wigs, 15 mustaches and several cans of litchis to serve as Gloucester’s savaged eyeballs in “King Lear.” But that was just for starters. As it happens, the company also packed a million-dollar theater. For its six-week stint at the armory beginning Wednesday, co-produced by the Armory and the Lincoln Center Festival in association with Ohio State University, the company will perform five plays in repertory (as well as two plays for young audiences) on an almost exact replica of its new main stage in Stratford. Exploiting almost every inch of the Armory’s 65 feet of usable height, this three-tier auditorium seats 975 and boasts a thrust stage that extends far out into the audience, allowing for greater interplay between actors and spectators. The portable theater’s ingenious design incorporates most of the shipping crates to raise and support the stage and to create a backstage storage area. The original Stratford stage took more than two years to build; the armory one must be assembled in just two weeks.

(via the new york times)

Enter a Royal Ensemble, Preceded by Its Stage

A stunning timelapse video of the sunset and fireworks on the Hudson River on July 4th, 2011. It was

A stunning timelapse video of the sunset and fireworks on the Hudson River on July 4th, 2011. It was shot by John Huntington from Pier 66 on Manhattan’s west side.

(via Pat Kiernan)