TALK
She’s Gone Missing | November 5 at Hudson Hall
When 22-year-old Long Island native Gabby Petito went missing in early September, it made headlines across the country. When her strangled body was found in Wyoming weeks later, the news coverage only intensified. One thing to note: Gabby Petito was white. This point is not lost on Heather Bruegl, director of education at the Forge Project and a member of the Oneida/Stockbridge Munsee Nation. Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic in the US. One in three Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67 percent of these assaults are perpetrated by other races. Cases of violence against Indigenous women rarely make headlines, however. In her talk “She’s Gone Missing (The Epidemic You Don’t Hear About): Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” Bruegl examines this epidemic of violence at Hudson Hall in Hudson on November 5 at 6pm.
FILM/THEATER
“Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live” | November 9 at Sugarloaf Performing Arts Center
Let’s just say it plain: Joel Hodgson is a genius. When the show premiered on a local Minneapolis station in 1988, the creator of MST3K cast himself as Joel Robinson, a janitor trapped by two mad scientists on the Earth-orbiting Satellite of Love who was forced to watch a series of B movies in order to monitor his reaction to them. The ingenious premise—a man sitting in a room watching crap fare alongside two wise-cracking robots—had legs, and, 33 years later, it’s now a live show. MST3K’s Time Bubble Tour brings back together the cast of 2019’s Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour (Hodgson supervised the show but does not perform) to pillory Roland Emmerich’s 1985 Making Contact, which concerns a nine-year-old boy who develops psychic powers and does battle with a ventriloquist’s dummy named Fletcher who is possessed by a demon. “Mystery Science Theater 3000” Live” will be performed on November 9 at 6pm in Chester.
COMEDY
Theo Von | November 11 at The Egg
Chronogram’s creative director, David Perry, is a big fan of Theo Von. He describes Von’s comedic voice as a mixture of James Joyce, Mark Twain, and “Beavis and Butthead,”—a thinking man’s redneck, in other words. Von’s tales of a white-trash childhood (and adulthood) are both poignant and profane—from eating owl at Thanksgiving to sharing the innermost details of his battles with depression and substance abuse. The man who talks in his shows about having grown up in the “stray animal belt” of southern Louisiana is back on the road with his aptly named Return of the Rat Tour. Von takes the stage on November 11 at 7pm at The Egg in Albany.
THEATER
“Apples in Winter” | Through November 14 at Denizen Theatre
Miriam’s son Robert is on death row. Robert wants his mother to bake him an apple pie. That’s the starting point for Jennifer Fawcett’s one-woman play “Apples in Winter.” Over the course of 75 minutes, a real pie will be baked, and Miriam will tell her family’s turbulent story and struggle with parental paradoxes like How is it possible to love someone capable of evil? on a journey motherhood, madness, and mercy. The show is directed by James P. Rees and stars Jennifer Delora (former Miss Ulster County, 1986). Denizen Theatre’s first in-person production since the start of the pandemic, “Apples in Winter” will be performed Thursday through Saturday at 7pm and on Sunday at 2pm in New Paltz.
FILM
Don’t Look Back | November 19 at the Bardavon
Filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker followed Bob Dylan to England in 1965 to document his 1965 tour, capturing extensive behind-the-scenes footage of the 23-year-old musician. It’s a shockingly intimate portrait of the inscrutable folk messiah as he transforms into an angry rock god. It’s tough to watch at times, as Dylan arrogantly squabbles with many of the people he encounters, including journalists, fellow musicians (Donovan chief among them), and audience members. In his 1968 review of the film, Roger Ebert described the man at the center of the film as “immature, petty, vindictive, lacking a sense of humor, overly impressed with his own importance, and not very bright.” And yet, still very much a genius, or genius-in-gestation. In a 2014 Sight & Sound poll, film critics voted Don’t Look Back the joint ninth best documentary film of all time.Don’t Look Back screens on November 19 at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie at 7:30pm.
SATIRE
Mikhail Horowitz & Gilles Malkine | November 19 at Unison Arts Center
You may have seen us plugging this show in the last month’s Fall Arts Preview. Why, then, are we spilling more ink on these old codgers’ performative lamentations? Well, suffice it to say that we believe Mik and Gilles when they say this is going to be their last show. Ever. The formerly hip and presently clueless comedy team take the stage—if they live that long—one more time at Unison Arts Center in New Paltz on November 20 at 7pm for a night of satire, or what passed for it 30 years ago. Since their first gig in Woodstock in 1989, Horowitz and Malkine have logged over 500 shows in the Hudson Valley and beyond. Expect a tour through the pair’s greatest hits, including “Rappin’ for Godot” and “The Monthly Meeting of ACOMP (Adult Children of Mediocre Poets).”
COMEDY
JB Smoove | November 20 at Paramount Hudson Valley
JB Smoove is a comedian and actor who’s best known for his role on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as Leon Black, a supporting character who’s become one of the show’s comedic lynchpins, playing Falstaff to Larry David’s demented king. In 2017, Smoove (as Leon Black) published The Book of Leon, dropping his character’s wisdom and good (read: bad) advice on fans of the show. Smoove, a stand-up veteran, has toured the world with his brand of comic funk. (We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Smoove’s critical involvement in the 2001 cult classic Blaxploitation spoof Pootie Tang, in which he portrays the hero’s best friend, Trucky, and provides voice-over narration.) JB Smoove performs at Paramount Hudson Valley in Peekskill on November 20 at 8pm.
This article appears in November 2021.
