“Chautauqua!”, which is part of the Under The Radar Festival, begins with Dr. Dick Pricey dressed in a formal 19th century suit giving a lecture, and ends with him buck naked in front of three dozen musical theater majors from Pace and NYU playing a guitar. In-between are a puppet show, a melodramatic re-enactment of the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, a medley of songs, several dances, serenades by trombone, banjo, accordion and drum…and, above all, a series of lectures.
Dr. Pricey (played by James Stanley, who also co-wrote the show) offers a lecture on the Chautauqua lecture circuit, which for half a century — as he explains, accompanied by slides — was the major form of entertainment as well as a popular means of instruction for much of rural and small-town America, evolving to include far more than just lectures. He delivers another lecture entitled “A Brief History of the Public Theater,” which is where “Chautauqua!” is being performed. It is not all that brief nor just about the Public Theater: Dr. 
Price begins 500 years ago (the first slide is of a forest labeled “Public Theater, 1510″), explaining the history of Manhattan’s settlement by Europeans, the career of John Jacob Astor, the construction of the building on the site, its purchase by Joseph Papp, etc. Another lecturer offers a “disquisition on maps.” On the night I saw the show (its debut in the festival), writer Zoe Rosenfeld delivered a guest lecture entitled “New York in Quotes” offering remarkably relevant comments about the city and its residents by famous people over three centuries: “They talk very loud, very fast and all together,” John Adams said about New Yorkers….in 1774. (Promised future guest lecturers include novelist Jonathan Lethem, set designer Ming Cho Lee, Lincoln Center executive producer Bernard Gersten, Aurora Wallace, professor of media, culture and communication.)
There was much crammed into the 100 intermission-less minutes of “Chautauqua!” (25 more than advertised). But what exactly is it?
It is somewhere between an updated re-enactment of a Chautauqua show and an erudite examination of the evolution of American entertainment. It is both a provocative piece by some smart theater professionals — it was created by the members of the National Theater of the United States of America, an experimental troupe that has been impressing critics for a decade — and a kind of amateur variety hour by some unpolished if exuberant performers; the question here is how deliberate is the amateurishness? (My guess is: very). It is in short weird, and often wonderful…and only $15.
“Chautauqua!” will be shown through Sunday, January 17th, the last day of the sixth annual Under the Radar Festival.
Photographs by Justin Bernhaut
Jonathan Mandell
Jonathan Mandell, who tweets as New York Theater, is a native New Yorker and third-generation journalist with diverse experience on newspapers, magazines and websites.He has ...
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