A different kind of ‘Downtown’ experience via Mana Contemporary’s Living Room Show
From The Jersey Journal
The latest installment of the quarterly "The Living Room" is a variety show taking place Saturday, Feb. 22, at Mana Contemporary. It's curated by James Jackson, Jr. ( top left in photo composite), who posed the question to performers Adam Enright, Michael R. Jackson, Raja Feather Kelly, Molly Pope, and Elliot Roth: "How many pieces does it take to make a self?"
By David Menzies | The Jersey Journal
Quarterly show “The Living Room” is back at Mana Contemporary, and this time the Saturday, Feb. 22 show is a variety show curated by James Jackson Jr. – whose talents as an actor, singer, and musician have graced the stages of Radio City Musical Hall and Carnegie Hall. As a cabarettist, he’s frequently been able to integrate many of his skills into one dynamic experience for audiences.For Saturday’s show, performers Adam Enright, Michael R. Jackson, Raja Feather Kelly, Molly Pope, and Elliot Roth will be exploring their own takes on questions posed by Jackson:“How many pieces does it take to make a self? Can I do it alone? Do these heels make my art look fat?”A 20-year resident of Jersey City, Jackson is originally from Boston. The theme of exploring the self is not one that he hasn’t done on stage himself.“In my twenties, when I was focused on more musical theater work, and I desperately wanted to ‘be on Broadway,’ I was going into these audition rooms, after waiting in line for hours, and auditioning for people who could not have been more disinterested in who I was,” Jackson said in an interview by email. “How could you remain interested after your sixth hour of the same type of person with the same desperate energy singing the same material over and over? It is very easy to lose who you are on either side of that table.”About a decade ago, when Jackson started producing his own solo work, doors began opening for him. “I learned so much more about myself, my art, and my abilities,” Jackson said. “If a self is just a reflection of what the world sees and how you feel about that reflection, why would you ever try to be someone other than yourself? Sounds weird and wordy, and even flighty. But putting myself at the center of my own art, made me much more comfortable walking into situations where I had to attempt to use my art to get a job on someone else’s terms.”Exploring what comprises the person they’ve become may seem like particularly vulnerable territory, but to Jackson, that’s there any time someone gets on stage. And it’s a good thing."The person on stage bringing themselves to you in story or song or joke or dance, and you in the audience having to listen, watch, and absorb. It’s creating the most vulnerable and personal of situations and we don’t do it enough in our everyday lives,” Jackson said.“Seeing these smaller, more personal, or ‘Downtown’ experiences – as they would be called in Manhattan – is where, I believe, some of the best art can be found,” Jackson continued. “Vulnerability is the truth. It can be both very hard to share the truth and it can be very hard to hear it. But isn’t it the coolest thing when those two events get to happen? The performers and creators in this cabaret, ‘Downtown’ performance art world tell such beautiful truths, and they know that audiences are not dumb. Audiences are craving the truth. On the other side, there are people that want to escape into the often sugar-coated, Disney-fied world of Broadway, but what about the rest of us? I’ll take some truth any day.”Jackson admires the way this line-up of performers have managed to hang on to a sense of community. In addition to “being some of the most amazingly talented, truth-telling, soul baring performers I’ve ever watched, they have all in some way worked together over the past several years," Jackson said. "While being such individual creators, each of their paths have crossed artistically as well as personally in such a beautiful and supportive way, it makes me giddy with the idea that their collective energies get to be showcased in one evening.”Jackson’s professional life has been centered in Manhattan for as long as he’s lived in Jersey City, and in that time, he said he has friends based in NYC who’ve never visited him “because it’s ‘so far,’ and ‘well…it’s Jersey.”“It’s, always been very weird to me,” Jackson said. “ The wonderful growth that Jersey City has undergone in the last 20 years shows exactly how many different people working together can exact change. When people ask me where I’m from originally, I always say Boston,’ which is true. ... I have even had people look at me and say ‘Oh … I’m sorry’ or ‘Wow, and you made it out OK?’ There’s an expectation that a gay, black man who grew up in the 80s on the south shore of Massachusetts, about 15 minutes outside the city of Boston, must’ve really ‘been through something.’ I think people have assumptions. Assumptions about Jersey City and assumptions about Boston. People have had assumptions about my art and who I must be. What better way to help them, than show up, do the work, and be myself?”
Tickets to “The Living Room” variety show curated by James Jackson Jr. are $10 (free for Mana Contemporary members) and can be bought online https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-living-room-variety-show-curated-by-james-jackson-jr-tickets-91339325381. Doors open at Mana Contemporary, 888 Newark Ave., Jersey City, at 7 p.m. for a reception, followed by performances at 7:30 p.m. The show lasts until 9 p.m. and includes a 15 minute intermission.
