BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Theater for the New City’s award-winning Street Theater Company is back with a brand-new, topical and uplifting musical for this summer. “The Socialization of a Social Worker or The Fight for Social Justice” is a rip-roaring original work that tells the story of a humanitarian case worker learning to overcome despair and find strength for today’s challenges through people power.
The musical’s book, lyrics and direction are by Crystal Field, artistic director and co-founder of Theater for the New City. The musical score is composed and arranged by Peter Dizzoza. Free performances kicked off on Aug. 3 with a performance outside the East Village theater and are currently touring parks, playgrounds and closed-off streets throughout the five boroughs through Sept. 15.
In the play a social worker, transferred to a New York City hospital, burns with hope that he will help make things better for the growing immigrant population that is being cast upon New York. But he is surrounded by red tape in every direction. He is tempted to give up when he meets a bunch of New York City activists who are campaigning for the future of homeless children. They show him that even among the homeless population there is power for change, but that no one can do it alone, and that the power to instill change lies within our neighborhoods.
The activists lead the social worker through an odyssey of homeless life in the subways, the horror and terror of the Jan. 6 insurrection and the heroism of the Capitol Police, and the causes of women’s rights, abortion and affordable housing. He learns that politicians are not perfect, even the good ones, but that they can be swayed by collective people power. Ultimately, the protagonist learns that change is driven by “civil society mobilization.” This means that every day is a new day and that everyone must vote when election time comes, learn the lessons of Jan. 6, “and not succumb to the hatred and resentment.”
The production, which runs one hour and 15 minutes, is staged with an elaborate assemblage of trap doors, giant puppets, smoke machines, masks, original choreography and a huge (9-foot-by-12-foot) running screen, or “cranky,” providing continuous moving scenery behind the actors. The company of 22 actors, 10 crew members, two stage managers, three assistant directors and five live musicians (led by composer Dizozza at the keyboard) share the challenge of performing outside and holding a large, non-captive audience. The music varies in style from bossa nova to hip hop to musical comedy to classical cantata. The play is described as “a bouncy joyride through the undulations of the body politic, with astute commentary couched in satire, song and slapstick.”
TNC’s free Street Theater productions are suitable for family audiences, since complex social issues are often presented through children’s allegories, with kids and neighborhood people as the heroes.
Michael David Gordon heads the cast of 25, with Michael Vazquez sharing top honors for the performances on Aug. 16, 17 and 18.
Theater for the New City has mounted a new musical for a five-borough summer tour each year since 1976. In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 lockdown, TNC’s Street Theater production “Liberty or Just Us: a City Park Story” was an oratorio that live-streamed for an eight-week, 14-performance run. Each performance payed tribute to the park or other location for which it had been originally scheduled. The popular tradition returned to live, in-person performances the following year.
Author/director Crystal Field began writing street theater in 1968 as a member of Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia. She wrote and performed her own outdoor theater pieces against the Vietnam War and also curated and performed many poetry programs for the Philadelphia public schools. Her earliest New York street productions were playlets written in Philadelphia and performed on the flatbed truck of Bread and Puppet Theater in Central Park.
In 1971, Field became a protégé of Robert Nichols, founder of the Judson Poets Theater, and of Peter Schuman, founder of Bread and Puppet Theater. “The Expressway,” by Robert Nichols, directed by Crystal Field (a street theater satire about Robert Moses’ ill-fated plan for a Lower Manhattan Expressway to plow destructively through Little Italy, Soho and Chinatown linking the Holland Tunnel and Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges) was actually the first production of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival.
Nichols wrote street theater plays for TNC in its early years, but as time went on, wrote scenarios and only the first lines of songs, leaving Field to “fill in the blanks.” When Nichols announced his retirement to Vermont in 1975, he urged Field to “write your own.” The undertaking, while stressful at first, became the impetus for her to express her own topical political philosophy and to immerse her plays in that special brand of humor referred to often as “that brainy slapstick.” Her first complete work was “Mama Liberty’s Bicentennial Party” (1976), in honor of the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Field has an associate’s degree in dance from Juilliard and a B.A. in philosophy from Hunter College.
Field has written and directed a completely new opera for the TNC Street Theater company each successive year. She collaborated for 11 years with composer Mark Hardwick, whose “Pump Boys and Dinettes” and “Oil City Symphony” were inspired by his street theater work with Field. At the time of his death from AIDS in 1994, Hardwick was writing a clown musical with Field called “On the Road,” which was never finished. One long-running actor in TNC Street Theater productions was Tim Robbins, who was a member of the company for six years in the 1980s, from age 12 to 18.
The Village Halloween Parade, which TNC produced single-handedly for the parade’s first two years, grew out of the procession that preceded each Street Theater production. The late Ralph Lee, who created the annual parade with Field, was chief designer for TNC’s Street Theater for four years before the Village Halloween Parade began.
Field has also written for TNC’s annual Halloween Ball and for an annual Yuletide pageant that was performed outdoors for 2,000 children on the Saturday before Christmas. She has written two full-length indoor plays, “Upstate” and “One Director Against His Cast.”
Schedule:
Friday, 8/16 @ 5:00 PM – BROOKLYN: Coney Island Boardwalk, Aquarium Wall area at W. 10th St.
Saturday, 8/17 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: St. Marks Church at E. 10th St. & Second Ave.
Sunday, 8/18 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Jackie Robinson Park at W. 147th St. & Bradhurst Ave.
Saturday, 8/24 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Washington Square Park
Sunday, 8/25 @ 2:00 PM – QUEENS: Travers Park at 34th Ave. betw. 77th & 78th Sts.
Saturday, 9/7 @ 2:00 PM – BROOKLYN: Sunset Park at 6th Ave. & 44th St.
Sunday, 9/8 @ 2:00 PM – BROOKLYN: Fort Greene Park, Myrtle Avenue & St. Edwards Street
Saturday, 9/14 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Sol Bloom Playground, W. 91st Street btwn. Columbus & Central Park West
Sunday, 9/15 @ 2:00 PM – MANHATTAN: Tompkins Square Park at E. 7th St. & Ave. A
For more information, call the theater at 212-254-1109 or visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net.
A wonderful show! Thank you Crystal Fields and Theater for the New City.