Holding up a "Brooklyn Rocks!"
T-shirt, Deanna Pacelli, star of the one-woman show
There Goes the Neighborhood, looks at it with
embarrassment.
"O.K., I bought this in 1996 when
it was ironic," she says. "I can't wear it now. I'd look
like an asshole."
Pacelli is speaking as Peter,
a white, thirtysomething architect living in Carroll
Gardens. A resident of the neighborhood for more than a
decade, the affable Peter is one of the early invaders
of what not long ago was a close-knit, working-class
Italian neighborhood. He is also one of the 10
characters of varying ages, races, and sexual
orientations whom Pacelli inhabits to recount the story
of Carroll Gardens's rapid gentrification.
Written by Mari Brown and based on interviews
with neighborhood residents that she and Pacelli
conducted over a two-year period, There Goes the
Neighborhood, playing at P.S. 122 through May 29,
weaves together the perspectives of the nine residents
and one outside observer to create a complex and
insightful portrait of the neighborhood, while creating
10 dead-on portraits of these people who live and work
there. Smart, wickedly funny, compassionate, and
insightful, There Goes the Neighborhood is a
brilliantly written, brilliantly performed piece.
Pacelli, who carries the entire hour of the play
on the strength of her characterizations, switches
effortlessly, almost breezily, between characters like
Peter; Vinny, a lifetime resident of Carroll Gardens and
third-generation owner of Cositini's Pork Shop
("Bringing You the Best Pork in Brooklyn for Over a
Hundred Years!"); and Mike, a nightclub owner from Hong
Kong with an enthusiasm for the nouveau in culture,
music, and art.
For example, moments after
making her confession about the "Brooklyn Rocks!" shirt
as Peter, Pacelli has pulled a Brooklyn Cyclones
baseball cap on her head and is standing with shoulders
back and chest puffed out while she booms in Vinny's
classic Brooklyn Italian-American dialect, "Hello?
Hello? What is this? What is this, 'Brooklyn Rocks'? Who
rocks? I'm Brooklyn, do I rock?"
Inhabiting all
of her characters with equal poise, Pacelli delineates
each one with a few well-chosen mannerisms (adjusting
her bra straps, putting on Chapstick, pushing her
glasses up her nose), a prop or two, and a handful of
linguistic tics.
It helps, of course, that
Brown's script gives her pitch-perfect lines to deliver.
In an article published in The New York Times in
2003 (There Goes the Neighborhood was first
performed in Carroll Gardens in 2003), Brown says that
when she began waitressing in a local bar back in 2003,
listening to her customers talk was like hearing lines
of dialogue.
But even if she owes some of the
natural richness of the script to a good ear for
conversation, Brown has taken her raw material and
arranged and polished it to perfection. The rough and
smooth, the bad and good, the complaints and the paeans
all fit together to make a deep and compelling portrait.
In fact, the "Brooklyn Rocks!" T-shirt is a fine
metaphor for the show. Some of the characters hated it.
Some loved it. A lot didn't understand all the
fuss--Carroll Gardens, heart of Brooklyn, was their
home, whether it rocked or not. There Goes the
Neighborhood is a window into that world, and for
the space of the play, it's easy to feel as if it's your
home too.
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P.S.
122 (1st floor) |
Category: Solo
Performance
Written by: Mari
Brown
Directed by: Mari Brown and David
Travis
Produced by: Synapse
Productions
Opens: May 12,
2005
Closes: May 29, 2005
Running
Time: 1 hour
Theater: P.S.
122 (1st floor)
Address: 150 First
Ave.
New York, NY 10003
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets: $15.00
$12 for
students and seniors.
Phone:
212-477-5288
Hours: Tues. - Sat. 2-6 pm
(telephone & walk-up) 6 p.m. - showtime (walk-up
only) Sun. 4-6p (telephone & walk-up) 6pm - showtime
(walk-up only)
Online Ticketing: Show's
Website
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Creative TeamWritten
by: Mari Brown
Directed by:
Mari Brown and David Travis
Produced by:
Ginevra Bull
Light Designer: Alistair
Wandesforde-Smith
Sound Designer: Eric
Dearmon
CastDeanna Pacelli as DJ
Trans4ma, Vinny, Roberta, Josephine, Lily, Kitty, Joyce,
Peter, Andy and Mike.
CrewGeneral
Manager: Daniel Matz
Stage
Manager: Morgan Peck
Sound
Operator: Katrina
Maurer
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