Returning to Theater and Movies

There are countless reasons to love NY, but above all, our entertainment program is supreme. Covid decimated all of it from galleries, museums, live theater, live music, and the movies. We need the arts. The arts define our times. Anything we can do to support that community is important.

Blindness at the Daryl Roth Theater is the first theater we have been to in a long time. It is one of the first shows to open. Simon Stephens adapted the book by Jose Seragamo into a 70-minute immersive audio play. If you haven’t read Blindness, do. It is a phenomenal dystopian book that was published in 1995. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, and Blindness was one of the reasons.

Set inside a city where over a short period of time, everyone goes blind except the woman telling the story who can see although feigns blindness. She tells the tale over 70 minutes during flashing lights and darkness through a set of headphones the entire audience is wearing. You feel immersed in the story. Her voice is mesmerizing. I could listen to a book on tape for hours with her voice.

You had to show your vaccination card, temperatures were taken, and everyone had to wear their mask and chairs set up six feet from each other except next to your friends. Being in a theater with strangers and experiencing a really well-done live show felt fantastic. During the end of a global pandemic, dystopian theater points to the reminder that you never know what would happen.

Our next experience was going to the Film Forum. One of the gems of downtown NY. A non-profit theater supporting independent films since 1970. We watched a film I have tried to watch find streaming most of Covid and missed at Sundance two years ago. The Truffle Hunters. A documentary film in Piedmont, Italy, where the 80+ year men still hunt truffles like they did hundreds of years ago. It is a beautiful film.

No popcorn, no soda, not even Milk Duds yet, so that is a bummer. But sitting in a theater, even if there were only 6 other people there, watching a film on the big screen made me just long for more.