Bwogger Mariela Quintana attended yesterday's Bloomsday on Broadway celebration at Symphony Space. Here, she explains what to expect from a seven hour performance of two episodes of Ulysses.

Last night, literati, and admirers of Eire convened on the academic megaplex that is Symphony Space to celebrate the 104^th anniversary of Bloomsday. Each year the venue hosts "Bloomsday on Broadway", a commemoration of the day Leopold Bloom traversed through Dublin in Ulysses, James Joyce's epic and famously esoteric novel, one of the few canonical works left off the Lit Hum syllabus for the welfare of both freshmen and their professors. How could a work that could not be encompassed by our august Lit Hum be circumscribed in single, public event?

Dressed in a sharp white summer suit and a royal blue button down, emcee and co-founder of Symphony Space Isaiah Sheffer introduced the reading with the cavalier familiarity that only twenty-seven years of tradition could afford. In his opening remarks, Sheffer discussed the enduring relevance and accessibility of Joyce's work in New York City street culture and in the mix and flow of voices on Broadway. The night, Sheffer explained in his sedate, NPR timbre, would consist of a multi-voiced reading of the entire "Ithaca Episode," a musical interlude and then the reading of the final episode, "Penelope," performed by Fionnula Flanagan. As the final two episodes in the novel, "Ithaca" and "Penelope" are collectively known as the "Homecoming" and detail the culmination of Bloom's day (after he has returned home with Dedalus) and Molly Bloom's final address, respectively.

Bwog's resident theater expert Michael Molina managed to weave his way through the large, metal, bleacher-like sets to review KCST's As You Like It, and was kind enough to send us his review.

The King's Crown Shakespeare Troupe's performance of "As You Like It" brings laughter and general amusement despite rain clouds, graduation bleachers, and a three-hour performance. While Shakespeare seems to be at it again with his "Oh, shit, he doesn't know that's not her even though it is" and the typical "Why did that guy do that? Now he's ruined everything!", the members of the troupe bring jovial glee to this complicated comedy of silly proportions. Although this piece of student theater is not the most groundbreaking interpretation or presentation of Shakespeare, the profound talent of the cast and the mostly insightful direction of Priyanka Choksi creates a general mood of merriment that can be seen for two more nights outside near the steps.

The play begins with low energy and stagnant blocking, but it's immediately jump-started once Kris Wiener and a wrestling ring of Christmas lights ascend upon Low Steps. Throughout the play Kris does a fantastic job of moving the show along with a carefree, cocksure nature. And the Christmas lights foreshadow the imaginative elements of what's to come.

Didn't see CMTS' production of A New Brain? Too bad! Bwog daily editor Alexandra Muhler wants to tell you what you missed.

A New Brain is, in a few ways, typical musical theater. The lead spends most of the show's two hours in a gown. The ballads are sincere and softly lit. In all, there are about two spoken lines in the play. And, most upsettingly, audience participation is forced at every turn.

But A New Brain is also quirkier than your average musical. The gown donned by Gordon (Ross Ramone), the frustrated songwriter at the center of the play, is a hospital gown, worn as he undergoes an improbably named "craniotomy." The moments of cast-crowd interaction toy with the standards accepted in such exchanges—first row audience members will be sung to, chastised, and sometimes even forced to sing along.

However, the mushy incoherence of bad musical theater rarely seeps into this production. Though the beginning of the second act lags a little with a string of earnest solos, the show is dominated by a crisp aesthetic.

Free theater is one of the many perks of a being a Columbia student. Camino Real is an opportunity to see the work of young professionals that should not be missed. The final two performances are today at 2pm and 8pm at the Riverside Theater on Claremont and 120th St.

As Janis Joplin puts it:"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." And without a doubt there's a bit of "Me and Bobby McGee" in Tennessee William's Camino Real, now being performed at the Riverside Theater Columbia. But instead of wailing out the blues of a broken heart, Williams casts the Camino Real's wayward denizens in a shroud of obscurity. Tony Speciale's direction, however, gives Williams' elliptical script an innovative, new spirit.

The performance capitalizes on the surreal setting of the original script — a ghost town somewhere south of the border, haunted by the bygone dreams and achievements of its residents. Even though the Camino fosters its inhabitants illicit cravings, a desire to escape binds them all. The stage, imaginatively designed by Russell M. Schram, divides between the Siete Mares, a seedy resort, and the Ritz Men Only, a flophouse that seems more appropriate for Amsterdam's Red Light district than the work of a Southern Gothic.

Last night, Bwog attended the penultimate performance of the CUplayer's performance of Neil Simon's Plaza Suite. Read on to see what you missed if you didn't make it.

The high ceilings and picture windows of the Wien Lounge perfectly recreated the elegant atmosphere of Neil Simon's Plaza Suite. Although Melanie Silver's stage design could not have been more appropriate, the choice of Simon's play in three acts seemed less appropriate for an undergraduate theater production.

In Act One: A Visitor from Mamaroneck, Jason Resnikoff and Masha Kamenetska play Sam and Karen Nash, a conventionally unhappy middle age couple, who have come to suite 719 for their 24^th wedding anniversary. Attempting to extract some tenderness out of her husband's severe retorts, Kamenetska's bubbly performance is painfully contrasted against Resnikoff's sedate resignation. Resnikoff's furrowed brow and gravelly pitch suit Sam's perpetually dour mien, but his performance is best when he laces his cruelty with humor. Similarly Kamenetska plays an excellent peppy house-wife, but she adds depth to Karen's seemingly shallow anxieties when she hisses, "What can I do, Sam? I'm attached to you!" The fine acting showcased here successfully draws out the conflict buried within Simon's script: What does one do with life or love when it becomes boring?

Bwog's theatrical afternoon continues with Tony Gong's review of the Classics Department's production of Antigone.

Last night, I journeyed into Columbia classics undergraduates' first performance of Antigone at the Minor Latham Playhouse in Milbank, buried deep within the Barnard's campus. The mystical and labyrinthine trek was well-worth it—partly due to the unique theater experience that followed, and partly because Hewitt dining hall was pretty good that night.

Sophocles' Antigone picks up where Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes ends, with brothers Polyneices and Eteocles dead, and their power-hungry uncle Kreon instated as king. Kind of like the end of Star Wars: Episode III. And, like the newly asthmatic Darth Vader, Kreon demerits all family and friendship for loyalty to the state by denying the dead Polyneices proper funeral rites for fighting against Thebes. Hence the drama begins, when Antigone, Polyneices' sister, is caught trying to bury her brother, and ordered to death.

Take advantage of student theater! The final performance of Harold Pinter's Moonlight is tonight at 8 o'clock in the Lerner Black Box. Go and be literary!

Harold Pinter's Moonlight is in no way the typical drama performed by eager undergraduates and Sarah Wansely's choice to take on this work reflects a certain courage and confidence both in her own talents and that of her cast and crew.

Pinter is famous for word play and subtext and Moonlight is no exception. The script challenges the actors cast to grapple with big emotions and big fears without their usual emotive volume. Here, Wansely offers an almost all too real look at familial relations, intimacy and the responsibilities they respectively entail.

Against Birdy Sahagian's stage, designed all in blacks, whites and gray, the actors explore the blurry boundary between secrecy and intimacy that plagues almost every family's home. Surrounded by shades gray , the characters quite literally inhabit this nebulous state and subtly voice questions families often are too scared to ask.

This afternoon and at 8 PM tonight, the CU players present Absurdité, a two hour-long presentation of three short plays by Christopher Durang and one by Eugene Ionesco. The performances of the four plays surpass mere tributes. Showing remarkable creative vision, the four directors produced innovative adaptations of Durang and Ionesco's works and successfully guided their casts through the murky territories of these renowned absurdists.

Making the most of the overwhelming space the Roone Arledge Auditorium offers, the CU Players seated the audience between the curtain and a screen set further back on the stage, and skillfully imitated the atmosphere of a black box theater.

Want some theater this weekend? First, read a review of Mark Twain's play "Is He Dead?"! Then, take advantage of CUarts Initiative $20 ticket offer!

Given Mark Twain's archetypal place in American Literature, it's no surprise that his recently unearthed play, "Is He Dead?" is attracting large crowds. But the characteristic wit that the audience might expect of Twain's script is not featured here. Instead David Ives, the contemporary playwright who reworked the original script, capitalizes on ribald humor and satire to revitalize Twain's writing, typified by puns, word play and innuendo.

Despite its lack of verbal cunning, "Is He Dead?" is thoroughly enjoyable. After a dense first scene, dragged down by plot details and contextualization, the play sets off on an unabashed pleasure ride full of mixed identities, racial stereotypes, cross-dressing, slap-stick clowning and even a couple stinky cheese jokes.

Blogger Yelena Shuster reports on this weekend's production.

If Valentine's Day didn't give you enough of an excuse to get vagina-happy, a good option is this year's campus production of the Vagina Monologues. For those of us who have seen the show for the past three years, prepare to be shocked. This is no traditional approach.

The show started with a bang—complete with a marching band and its rendition of Salt N Pepa's "Push It." Girls in gold sequined dresses and purple leggings writhed, shimmied, and humped onstage, against the backdrop of a giant cut-out vagina (acting as convenient stage entrance as well as educational anatomy tool).

The most powerful part of the show is the first hour. Director Casey Llewellyn included original monologues to broaden the conversation Ensler started. As our androgynous, suit-clad host said, "Some women face violence because they don't have vaginas. Some men face violence because they do."

Shall I compare thee to a Latenite anthology? Thou art more zany and whimsical. And a tad longer. The Egg and Peacock playwrights were given starting lines, and had to hand off their plays' last line for the next writer to start another another play. The imposition of the start/end through-lines didn't add anything to the drama or the comedy, but only dictated where the jokes would turn.

The night opened with "Demographics," (written by Chas Carey, directed by Will Scheussler), which was essentially a power play between women. Enter highlight number one, Gabe Miner in frump-dragg. The third play, "The Abolition of Compassion" (written by Matt Herzfield, directed by Ameneh Bordi) featured a terrorist, played by David Iscoe, who waltzes into a ladies room with thundering heavy metal and blood red light, but can't bring himself to look at possibly naked women. The first act ended with Michael Molina's nightmare-sitcom "The Merit Badge." Lakshmi Sundaram and Katherine Atwill played convincing boy scouts and received some of the biggest laughs of the 2 1/2 hour quasi-impromptu play marathon.

In which Bwog theater correspondent Michael Snyder ruminates on Broadway's take on familial destruction:

In our post-post-modern world of narrative tricks and linguistic games, it is easy to forget that a meticulously constructed, intelligently written, and vigorously performed family drama can still pack a powerful emotional and intellectual punch. If you need proof, look no further than Tracey Letts' spectacular new play August: Osage County. Not since my first encounters with Williams and Albee have I been so wildly entertained by viciousness, and not since Long Day's Journey Into Night have I been so completely invested in the lives of a family on stage. At this point, August has been so showered with praise that to write another rave review seems redundant, and yet it is difficult not to get excited over a play so clearly poised to become a classic for our generation of theatergoers.

Have you been wondering why the Lerner Box Office has been boarded up for weeks? Chad Miller, Events and Outreach Manager of the Columbia Arts Initiative, has all the answers - CUArts has been working with the Office of the Provost, Columbia College, and Student Services to create an all-new Ticket and Information Center, which opens tomorrow.

According to Chad, the TIC will be selling "tickets to on-campus productions and events, discounted tickets to Broadway, Off-Broadway, first-run films and events at major cultural and arts institutions as well as information on how to connect to the arts here and around town." Tickets can be purchased with cash or credit card, and www.tic.columbia.edu promises that students will be able to use flex to pay for tickets soon. As an added bonus, anyone who buys or reserves a ticket with the TIC by March 7 gets a FREE subscription to Time Out New York. Exciting!

It's been under construction for months, and the waiting is about to end: on January 22, CUArts will officially open the new Lerner Box Office, which Outreach coordinator Chad Miller says is meant to be the organization's "physical presence on campus." They'll have paid staffers to sell tickets for shows both at Columbia and in the city, freeing up student groups from organizing people to man the booth. Look out for the launch party as the week approaches.

Meanwhile, check out Barnard's new-ish box office blog, which has opportunities for free and discount shows as tickets come up for grabs. Never pay full price for Broadway again! Use the extra dough to feed a stagehand.

This year, Bwog's doing a better job of getting to every student production and telling you about it. There's still one more night to see the King's Crown production of The Real Inspector Hound.

When a cold gust ripped through Wien at the play's most tense moment, everyone looked around for the wind machine — meanwhile, the King's Crown crew moved quickly to close the lounge windows against the storm that was building outside. Tom Stoppard's popular work of meta-theater, "The Real Inspector Hound," lucked out as a result of more than one fortuitous coincidence on Friday night. During an early pause, a few confused Wien residents wandered onto the balcony, leading more than one member of the audience to crane their necks back and wait for dialogue from the rafters. At the same time, the real cast was lurking outside the windows, keeping PrezBo's private security detail awake next door.

For the record, due to the frantic nature of the play within "Hound," I found myself writing most of my notes while the critics were dictating their long, overwrought columns to each other. So any particularly awful turns of phrase must have made their way into this post by osmosis.