OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
COURIER LIFE, NOVEMBER 12-18, 2021 33
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
For Brooklynites who prefer to spend
their evenings with the week’s newest
long-form magazine feature or podcast
episode, Pop-Up Magazine is bringing
the perfect night out back to Brooklyn
for one night only at the BAM Howard
Gilman Opera House.
Founded in San Francisco in 2009
and touring the country since 2015, Pop-
Up bills itself as a “live magazine,” presenting
a selection of in-person, multimedia
stories with live speakers, videos,
photography, and live musical accompaniment.
At Pop-Up, writers and creatives
present stories they’ve never told
before – and may not again, at least not
in exactly the same way, since no video
or audio recording is allowed at their
live events.
The 2021 issue is Pop-Up’s fi rst live
event since February 2020 — last summer,
they brought stories and art to
the streets of Brooklyn, San Francisco,
and Los Angeles, ran onlineonly
issues, and even shipped out
physical copies of “Issue in a Box,” but
none quite captured the experience of
watching a story unfold in-person.
In Brooklyn, the magazine will feature
writers Chanel Miller, Cord Jefferson
and Shima Oliaee. It will also
THEATER
be the fi rst time Oliaee, a Brooklynite,
writer, and radio producer, is taking
one of her stories live — a piece she
came up with while working on her
next podcast series, tentatively titled
“Pink Card.”
“My mom was a freshman in college
when the ‘79 revolution happened
in Iran,” Oliaee said. “She actually
left Iran the same day as the
Shah. My mom was always crazy
about soccer, and so the story kind of
looks at three generations of women
in Iran who absolutely love soccer,
but it’s really about the game behind
the game.”
Since 1979, women have been
banned from attending soccer games
in Iran. There have been exceptions,
through the years. In 2019, a few thousand
women were allowed to watch a
qualifying match when FIFA put immense
pressure on Iranian authorities.
Despite the ban, and despite the
threat of harsh punishments from
the government, Iranian women not
only protest their exclusion — they
fi nd ways to sneak into the stadium to
watch the game they love.
Oliaee is no stranger to making immersive
and engaging work — she produced
the award-winning series Dolly
Parton’s America and co-created The
Vanishing of Harry Pace, both for Radiolab,
and produced the Stitcher series
UnErased —but telling a story at
Pop-Up allows her to move away from
the confi nes of sound.
“I’m really appreciative to be doing
it at Pop-Up,” Oliaee said. “Because
when you see the video of one of the
girls subverting censorship, and how
she does it, and how she sneaks in…it’s
wild to see. I think you see the depth of
what she’s fi ghting.”
A friend who was working on the se-
Pop-Up
stars
‘Live magazine’
returns to Bklyn
next week with
all-new stories
WHAT’S POPPING: Justin Kaneps and Cecelia Aldaron perform at Pop-Up Magazine in 2020 – the last time Pop-Up held a live show. The “live
magazine” returns to Brooklyn next week. Photo by Photo courtesy of Pop-Up Magazine
Pop-Up’s 2021 Issue BAM Howard Gilman
Opera House at Lafayette Avenue
and Ashland Place in Fort Greene. www.
bam.org. (718) 636-4100 Nov. 16 at 7:30
pm. $39.
Continued on page 34
/www.bam.org
/www.bam.org
/bam.org
