Each month, we pluck a long forgotten volume from the shelves of the New York Society Library to resurrect as a 1-night only NYC variety show.
Peek under our petticoats as New York Theater Review interviews Ayun about Necromancer’s withers, whys and wherefores.
UPCOMING SHOWS:
Necromancers of the Public Domain returns February 29, 2024 with BROADWAY RACKETEERS
Here are the ones we’ve returned to the vortex:
June 2021 The Periodical Cicada by Charles L. Marlatt
Much obscurity must always attach to the past history of this insect and the origin of its peculiar habits, and notably the causes and conditions which have led to the establishment of the long underground existence and the equally extraordinary regularity in time of emergence at the end of this period.
– From the book, 1907
WITH
Nick Balaban (Goodbye, Cruel World)
Brood X & the Cicadas – Dani Miriti Pacheco, Tomás Miriti Pacheco (Spin), Maria Miriti (Undergraduate Network for Increasing Diversity of Ecologists), Dan Cary, and Pete Cary (P.H. Cary Guitars)
Tyler Gunther (TikTok’s Greedy Peasant)
Greg Kotis (Silverback of the Apes and esteemed playwright)
Lisa Lim (cartoonist and storyteller)
Chris Lindsay-Abaire (Brave New World, Zamboni Godot)
Pearl Rhein (Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812)
Dejen Tesfagiorgis (Deja Deja Comedy)
Eva Van Dok Pinkley (Eva Pinkley Yoga + Healing)
February 2020 New York: The Nation’s Metropolis by Peter Marcus (1921)
WATCHING MANHATTAN as the boat comes near its shore, one seems to come under the spell of its incalculable weight, its stupendous mass of iron, brick and stone. It is oppressive, ominous. One feels the past, the present and the future; and the tremendous forces which must have worked together to produce this titanic offspring, to have spawned this mountain of precipices. One feels the hidden activity, the pitiless struggle going on beneath; yet a few puffs of smoke are all that betray the smouldering of the mighty fires. One lets one’s mind sink into the vast depths between, to see little humanity running here and there like ants amid the tangle of wires, tunnels and pipes. Little humanity that built it all.
– From the book, 1921
With:
Tim Ellis (Of the Moment / Casual Pimpin’)
Hannah Fairchild (Major/Minor / Hannah vs. The Many)
Bella Florence (Destination Recovery)
Serena Jost (Up to the Sky / A Bird Will Sing)
Christian Roberson (Who Made the Potato Salad?)
Jason Trachtenburg (Me and Lee – The Musical / The Pendulum Swings Big Band)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
January 2020 Cape-Coddities by Dennis and Marion Chatham aka Roger Livingston Scaife (1920)
I know of no greater relief than to escape from town and come to the Cape.
– From the book, 1920
WITH:
Melody Allegra Berger (Ganstagrass / Desperate Measures)
Peter Dizozza (Williamsburg Art & Historical Center / Cinema VII)
Bryce Edwards (Gobbydafoo)
Bob Fisher (The Annoyance Theater / Cardiff Giant)
Jamie Scotto (Funkrust Brass Band)
Milo Kotis (BOOTCUP)
Rob Neill (The New York NeoFuturists)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
December 2019 Dennison’s Christmas Book: Suggestions for Christmas, New Years, & Twelfth Night Parties (1921)
HUNTING FOR THE NORTH POLE
Select a corner, doorway, or stair post for the pole. Blindfold each child, turn him around three times, and tell him to find the pole. A cornball, wrapped in white tissue, would be a good “snowball” prize.
– From the book, 1921
WITH:
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Rho & the Nomads)
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette)
Ed Horan (Princeton University Rock Ensemble)
Connor Kalista (The Neo-Futurists) & Brendan Donaldson (Prophecy / The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby)
David H. Rosen (Shotz) with Alyssa Kempinski
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
November 2019 Wooings and Weddings in Many Climes by Louise Jordan Miln (1900)
In the slimy rivers that slug through the African tangles, there are hippopotami that are beautiful in their love of mate and their need of love. And we who are human, and therefore count ourselves on the top mammalian rung of the animal ladder, have never yet accomplished anything higher than the virtue of loyal love and the need of love.
– From the book, 1900
WITH:
Tyler Gunther(Medieval Comics / Dark Ages Deadly Wit)
Katherine Heller (The Infinite Wrench / Tell The Bartender)
Lorijo Manley (Airplane / Naked)
Stephen O’Rourke (Peas and Carrots / Love Sucks)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
October 2019 The Art of Aubrey Beardsley Introduction by Arthur Symons (1918)
Aubrey Beardsley ended a long career, at the age of twenty-six, in the arms of the Church. No artist of our time, none certainly whose work has been in black and white, has reached a more universal, or a more contested fame; none has formed himself, out of such alien elements, a more personal originality of manner; none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art. He had the fatal speed of those who are to die young; that disquieting completeness and extent of knowledge, that absorption of a lifetime in an hour, which we find in those who hasten to have done their work before noon, knowing that they will not see the evening.
WITH:
Sabrina Chap (Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction / We Are the Parade)
Tyler Gunther (Medieval Comics / Dark Ages Deadly Wit)
Timothy McCown Reynolds (Blue-Beard / Le Lycanthrope)
Shelton Pritchard Lindsay (The Shallow B-Rate Spectacle / Story As Rite)
Christian Roberson(Who Made the Potato Salad?)
Moses Rubin & Sarah Rubinstein Ocasio (Rubin & Rubinstein)
Teresa Toro (The Bushwick Book Club)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
September 2019 Women as World Builders: Studies in Modern Feminism by Floyd Dell (1913)
It will not do to pluck freedom like a flower and give it to the lady with a polite bow. She must fight for it.– From the book, 1913
WITH:
Debra Castellano (CitizenDeb.com / Waste Management: The Show)
Katie Kay Chelena(The Infinite Wrench)
Lady Von Tramp(Flighty Spirit)
Amy Lemmon (The Miracles) & Marielena Andre (Taktile Design Studio)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Moses Rubin and Sarah Rubinstein (Rubin & Rubinstein) with Hudson Cooke
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
June 2019 The Greatest of These by Laurette Taylor (1918), A Diary with Portraits of the Patriotic All-Star Tour of “Out There”
Thank goodness America is starting to employ the stage, in time of trouble, as she does the mechanics, the writers, the financiers….
WITH:
Bryce Edwards (Gobbydafoo)
Emily Frembgen (Me & Lee)
Katie Fricas (The Guardian / Spiralbound)
Jamie Hook (The Naked Proof / Point Break LIVE)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Christian Roberson (Who Made the Potato Salad?)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
May 2019 Childhood by Alice Maynell (1913)
Children have a thousand distastes. Things are tedious to them. We have no right to attribute to them a belief in fairies, or an unwearied delight in bread and milk.
WITH:
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Rho & the Nomads)
Anthony Dean (Glass Attic Collective / Vandals)
Bob Laine (The Books of the Bobul / It’s Getting Tired Mildred) with Timothy McCown Reynolds and Jeff Lewonczyk
Connor Kalista(The Neo-Futurists) and Brendan Donaldson
Anna Padgett (The Good Ms. Padgett / The Naysayer)
Charles Reaves with Andria Alefhi (We’ll Never Have Paris / Listening to Work) and Harold
Teresa Toro (The Bushwick Book Club)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
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April 15 2019 The Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art 1919
Melody Allegra Berger (Ganstagrass / Desperate Measures)
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette) with Heather Cole
David Carl (Trump Lear / 200 Impressions)
Katie Hartman (David and Katie Get Re-Married / Made to Order)
Katherine Heller (The Infinite Wrench / Tell The Bartender)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown / The Truth About Santa)
Rob Neill (The New York NeoFuturists)
Christine Schisano(Damascus)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read a review of this edition in The Theater Times.
March 11 2019 The Up-to-Date Waitress by Janet McKenzie Hill (1914)
The particular things that a waitress is called upon to do vary with the mode of life of those by whom she is employed, no less than with the section of the country in which she is located. But an axiom in life particularly applicable to the waitress is that ones value largely depends upon the number of things one knows how to do well.
WITH:
Rosalind Grush (The Tank / Rosalind Grush’s Reproductive Cycle)
Katie Hartman (The Coldharts / The Twin Cities Horror Festival)
Stephen O’Rourke (Peas and Carrots / Love Sucks
Nate Shaw (Brooklyn Music Factory / The Oprah Winfrey Show)
Jason Trachtenburg (The Type / Me and Lee – The Musical)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
It would make exciting reading if a forty-year-old grizzly bear were to write his autobiography. Beginning with the stories from his mother of the long and exciting journey of his ancestors from far-off Asia and of her own struggle in bringing up her family, and then telling of his own adventurous life and his meetings with men and with other animals, he could give us a book of highly dramatic quality.
WITH:
Mike Andrews (Bridgeside Live)
Iossy Freud and Milo Kotis (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division / Animal Farm)
Jenny Hann (Puppet Playlist / WonderSpark Puppets)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown / The Truth About Santa) with Bob Laine (It’s Geting Tired Mildred)
Jeff Morris (Charming Disaster / Kotorino)
Patrick Nash (PND)
Charlie Nieland with Susan Hwang (Lusterlit / The Bushwick Book Club )
Connor Sampson (The New York NeoFuturists / The Great American Drama)
Suzie Sims-Fletcher(Samu-Shamu, The Sonam Stories: Narratives of Childhood in Bhutan)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read the full text here.
WITH:
Mike Andrews (Bridgeside Live)
Ellia Bisker & Jeff Morris (Charming Disaster / Kotorino) with Heather Cole
Riley Kellogg (through a glass / Wonderful Town Tours)
Lady Von Tramp (Flighty Spirit)
Christine Schisano (Damascus / HOME)
Kyra Sims (Spamalot / The NY Neo-Futurists)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read the full text here.
December 10, 2018 Christmas in Art by Frederick Keppell (1909)
All the happy homecomings of grown up sons and daughters, all the festivity, good will, and good cheer which belong to our own festival of Thanksgiving Day, belonged in Europe, and still belong, to Christmas. Happily of recent years, our American Puritan grimness is rapidly disappearing and is giving place to the older and more joyous observances of the day.
WITH:
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette) with Heather Cole
Bryce Edwards (Gobbydafoo)
Rosalind Grush (The Tank / Rosalind Grush’s Reproductive Cycle)
Lloyd Miller (The Deedle Deedle Dees / Trashed Out)
Rob Neill (The New York NeoFuturists)
Stephen O’Rourke (Peas and Carrots / Love Sucks)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read the full text here.
November 12, 2018 Physical Training for Women by Japanese Methods (1904) by H. Irving Hancock
One of the phrases that should be stricken from the English language is “the weaker sex”. After a long experience in Japanese athletics, the writer has no patience with women who consider that merely because of their sex they should be weaker than men. In Japan, the women are not weaker, and in this country they have no right to be.
WITH:
Iosef Freud (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Quintin Harris (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Milo Kotis (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Lisa Lim (Soma So Strange / Guernica)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Nate Shaw (Brooklyn Music Factory / The Gowanus Reggae Society)
Stephanie Summerville (Zamboni Godot / The MOTH)
Paul David Young (Faust 3 / In the Summer Pavilion)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
October 15, 2018 What Makes the House Beautiful: A Collection of Building Details with Measured Drawings Henrietta C. Peabody, editor, (1920)
An elaborate stairway is as out-of-place in a simple house as a simple one is in an elaborate house. An eccentric one is bad in any house.
WITH:
Andria Alefhi (We’ll Never Have Paris / Listening to Work)
Charlie Carr Baker (Rockwood Music Hall / All-Nighter with Charles Baker)
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette) with Hannah Cole
Shayna Strype (Antrak / Curiouser and Curiouser) with Sarah Willis
Stephen O’Rourke (Peas and Carrots / Love Sucks)
Nate Shaw (Brooklyn Music Factory / The Oprah Winfrey Show)
Olga Terlitsky (The Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey / The Virtuoso Suzuki Academy)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read the full text here.
September 2018: HOW TO SING A SONG: The Art of Lyric and Dramatic Interpretation by Yvette Guilbert (1918)
Make the public conceive that you too are a poor human being…full of hope, full of deception…a poor human being dreaming of kindness, of beauty, of love. Show your public all the precious smiles you have, hidden behind your tears, and let the public guess how you must have suffered to be able to translate its own suffering! Hide from the public the effort you make to smile so that they should smile…Speak to their hearts, speak to their souls!
WITH:
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Musician around town)
Emily Flake (The New Yorker / Mama Tried)
Ammon Gompson (Blue Man Group / The Complex)
Debra Castellano (CitizenDeb.com / Waste Management: The Show)
Artemisia & Renee Guerrero (The Poetry Brothel / Romanze: Songs of Tosti)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown / Yeast Nation )
Shelton Pritchard Lindsay (Pink Wallet Productions)
Anthony Wills, Jr. (Artistic Pride Productions)
Hosted by Queen of the Apes, Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / East Village Inky)
Read HOW TO SING A SONG: The Art of Lyric and Dramatic Interpretation for free online.
June 2018: Pictorial Photography in America (1922)
We cannot claim for our art any outstanding phenomenon like the interest in the radio that has swept the country this year, or any remarkable development in the science of photography like the invention a few years ago of the Lumière plate. The day may come when our exhibitions will show masses of color on their walls which will make the water-colorists and the miniaturists green with envy, but that day is not yet. And I for one would be sorry to see it come.
Featuring:
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Musician around town)
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette) with Hannah Cole
Avram Gleitsman (Blue Man Group – The Complex)
India Kotis (The Tangibles / American Museum of Natural History)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown / Yeast Nation )
Lilian Rona (Acapella: Classical and Contemporary)
Michael Rubin (Blues Clues / Bubble Guppies)
Shayna Strype (Antrak / Curiouser and Curiouser)
Hosted by Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / The East Village Inky)
Read Pictorial Photography in America (1922) for free online.
Relive the moment with Ellia Bisker and Hannah Cole, below:
May 2018: The Spinner Family (1903)
All of Nature’s children are interesting, whether rock or stream, herb or tree, bird or insect or other animal, and the spiders are by no means the least interesting among them all. Nowhere will the student and lover of nature find a more profitable study or a keener joy than in delving into the secrets of the spinners, or watching them solve the problems which they meet in their struggle for existence.
Featuring:
Bryce Edwards (Gobbydafoo)
Iossy Freud (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Katie Fricas (The Guardian / Spiralbound)
Halley “Halogyn” Gerstel (NYC Dance Educator)
Quintin Harris (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Milo Kotis (Theater of the Apes Sub-Adult Division)
Alix Marello (Jazz Singer/Songwriter)
Rob Neill (The New York NeoFuturists)
Pearl Rhein (The Bushwick Book Club / Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
Michael Rubin (Blues Clues / Bubble Guppies)
Hosted by Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / The East Village Inky)
Read The Spinner Family for free online
April 2018: My Country by Queen Marie of Romania
Once I was a stranger to this people; Now I am one of them, and, because I came from so far, better was I able to see them with their good qualities, and with their defects…
Necromancers: :
Rob Ackerman (Tabletop / Volleygirls)
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Musician around town)
Karen Christopher (Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects)
Leah Coloff (This Tree)
Susan Hwang (The Bushwick Book Club / Lusterlit)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown / Yeast Nation )
Charlie Nieland (Lusterlit)
Ben Watts (The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald)
Paul David Young (Faust 3 / In the Summer Pavilion)
Hosted by Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / The East Village Inky)
This Necromancers transpired in in The New York Society Library’s Members Room, a grand setting seldom seen by peasants such as ourselves.
Read an interview between the New York Society Library’s Head Librarian and the Queen of the Apes about the Necromancer process!
March, 2018: Campward Ho!
Someone has said, “We camp to live with Nature.” If living is knowing, let us then while we camp, learn to know the great out-of-doors, and at the same time take advantage of being together, and learn to live as Scouts. The information given is the result of experience gained not only as a camp Director and a housekeeper, but as a co-worker with hundreds of Scouts whose needs are very real.
Necromancers:
Nick Balaban (Blues Clues / Musician around town)
Ellia Bisker (Charming Disaster / Sweet Soubrette)
Debra Castellano (CitizenDeb.com / Waste Management: The Show)
Susan Hwang (The Bushwick Book Club / Lusterlit)
Charlie Nieland (Lusterlit)
Dejen Tesfagiorgis (Let’s Make a Mixtape / Solid Footing)
Merit Badges by Sandye Renz, Girl Scout cookies by the ROC’s Girl Scout Troop
Listen to Ellia Bisker’s beautiful original song for Campward, Ho! featuring violinist Heather Cole, below:
February, 2018: Masterpieces in Colour: Bastien-Lepage
“There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are preordained to receive the higest favours within the gift of glory; they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant. Bastien-Lepage was one of those meteors.”
Necromancers:
Nick Balaban (Pianist extraordinaire)
Raquel Cion ( Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie)
Katie Fricas (The Guardian / Fashionique)
Greg Kotis (Urinetown: The Musical)
Susan Hwang (The Bushwick Book Club / Lusterlit)
Charlie Nieland (Lusterlit)
Stencils by Margaret Peot (The Successful Artist’s Career Guide: Finding Your Way in the Business of Art)
Below, cartoonist Katie Fricas pulls together her Necromancers’ slideshow lecture on the life of Jules Bastien-Lepage, as recorded by Maia MacDonald for her Process Pieces podcast.