New York, New Yorker			Claudio Pinhanez

Week 1: films and tribes

If I spend a whole summer in New York, am I a tourist? I don't feel like one, I'll have the time to wait and discover, and enjoy this city in its details, and hidden alleys. But at the same time, I still feel ashamed of looking for streets and train stations on a map, unlike the locals. And waiters still sniff my accent and try to charge for cold water. How can someone become a New Yorker? And people are so interesting here. And beautiful, and diverse.

I went to a concert on Central Park last Sunday, and what a crowd. Forget the singers, the show is on this side of the stage, all the tribes, all the possible rainbow shades of hair color, all dance styles. Central Park in a sunny Sunday, that's the place to go, to jog, cycle, walk, skate, play, sleep, flirt, love, and, above all, to find your tribe. Under a bridge, at 72nd St., the swing crowd gathers, almost no organization, someone brings a stereo and tapes, and the girl wearing a red tank shirt is taken by the fat Japanese guy, and what a show. Everyone claps, and in the back of bridge the beginners look and try harder in the next dance, protected by the discretion of the darkness of the bridge. On the front "stage", it's time for a senior dancing with a Chinese girl, dressed in a blue dress, dressed to spin. And they spin.

After that, what about a movie? It's hard to choose, too many options, exploding out of the TimeOut magazine, bible of the entertainment in the city. Looking for unusual stuff? Go to the Village, to the Film Forum or to the Quad cinema. In the way, you can have Japanese (real Japanese!) noodles on 7th Avenue, near Times Square. Sort of a shack, but a ramen that tastes like... well, similar shacks in Tokyo. Cheap, fast, and great, for its price and speed. Satisfying.

We saw "Getting to Know You" on Saturday, and "Croupier" on Sunday. Two different movies, from the intense drama of lives passing by a bus station to an all-English view of the world of gambling. Helen Matarazzo is great as a nobody in "Getting to Know You". Like all nobodies, with her own dramas, like ours. The actor who portrays her brother starts weird in the movie, but ends with a superb actuation. The whole movie takes time to get you, but wait, hold on, it will get you. "Croupier" is more cool.

Today I saw Tom Stoppard's "The Right Thing", this year's Tony's for best revival of a play, and for its leading couple. Jennifer Ehle is pure energy on the stage, even from the far mezzanine I could feel her character's intense love, and intense contradiction. Tom Stoppard is such a good writer that he wastes the beginning of the play with traditional but great jokes and lines. But it is in the intensity of the dilemma of Max, by the extraordinarily versatile Stephen Dillane, that Stoppard's talent and ideas are revealed. What you do when your love has a lover, but still loves you? How love can support sharing the loved body, even when knowing that is not sharing the love? Whoever hasn't lived through this, in reality or wish, have not lived life, and the play plunge us in the convulsive waters of love, and jealousy, and its harder brother, betrayal. The great survivor is my love for theater, fueled by all this great acting and writing.

Come to New York.