A ticking sound fills the air. Hope sits alone on a park bench, facing the Climate Clock in Union Square.
Alyssa Wray, from Kentucky, brings depth and brilliance to the role. Hope is approached by Grayson, played by Oliver Prose, an actor and singer with on- and off-Broadway credits. Under ordinary circumstances, Hope would ignore someone like him, but they are surrounded by an “End of the World Party.” As the ticking grows louder, they sit side by side on the bench, drinking and mourning what has been lost as the world nears its end. Grayson remembers the fireflies, once so plentiful that they “would shimmer like a chandelier,” and never imagined they would disappear. Hope misses the falling snow in Massachusetts, where the sparkling flakes made it impossible to see the stars. The music is ably supplied by Carter Quinn Tania and Joshua Evan Eiger. Carter Quinn Tanis and Marissa Raine Carlin wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Whiskey, Hope, and The Climate Clock. In just eleven minutes, they capture the losses caused by environmental destruction. Through intimate images of fireflies and first snow, they make those losses personal while sounding a warning about our rush to damage the environment.
After a ten-minute intermission comes Sing Truth to Power, Howard Ho’s twenty-minute story of Magpie, a singer who protests the rule of an evil dictator named Tiger. Julie Kim Caldwell, whose work has taken her from Toronto to London, gives Magpie a vivid and complete presence. Austin Ku plays Kumiho, a producer searching for “someone to grab the tiger by the tail.” He discovers Magpie and persuades her that he can refine her music with a slicker veneer. Magpie, who calls herself a “dictator hater” and has millions of viewers, ultimately challenges Tiger by singing, “I am the voice of the crowd/ Tiger you’re going to have to kill me in a mushroom cloud.” She is arrested for “chart-topping terrorism,” and Tiger appears. Ben Langhorst, with experience in stage and film, plays the dictator as both menacing and unsettlingly admiring: he is Magpie’s greatest fan. Magpie soon realizes that Tiger has co-opted her art. This is more than a protest song like “Turn! Turn! Turn!” or The Times They Are a-Changin” becoming elevator music. Magpie’s songs have become a blueprint for Tiger’s tyranny. He tells her, “If art comes from pain/ then I want to make art great again,” and later, “every lyric you wrote was a blueprint/ Every evil I do is a tribute to you.” Magpie is left to confront a devastating question: how can she reclaim her art once it has been turned against her?
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club remains a creative home where artists have the freedom to take risks. It has become a force for change, supporting work that challenges audiences, shifts perspectives, and encourages discussion. Both Whiskey, Hope, and The Climate Clock and Sing Truth to Power are strong examples of the kind of bold work La MaMa fosters. The Downtown Urban Arts Festival (DUAF), an annual spring event, presents groundbreaking works in venues throughout New York. Together, La MaMa and DUAF fulfill their shared mission of nurturing creativity in New York theater.
