SO LONG, BOSS
Brooklyn Democratic Party leader to step down next week
BY AIDAN GRAHAM AND
INSIDE
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Founder of the feast: Kathryn Turner, being held aloft, plays the wealthy title character in Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens,” opening on Jan. 19 at Theater for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare
Center in Fort Greene. Photo by Henry Grossman
Power play
Shakespeare show confronts wealth and gender issues
By Bill Roundy She’s got a heart of gold.
One of Shakespeare’s least-known
plays will get a vital new staging this
weekend, a revival that deals with gender,
greed, and loyalty. The star of “Timon of
Athens,” which opens at Fort Greene’s
Polonsky Shakespeare Center on Jan. 19,
says that diving deep into the canon offers
a chance to break new ground.
“It’s exciting to welcome people to
a play that they’re not familiar with,
and don’t know the story,” said Kathryn
Turner, who plays the title character.
The play follows a wealthy Athenian
who lavishes money on his friends, goes
broke, and is abandoned by those same
friends. He retreats to the woods and
becoming a misanthropic hermit, only to
discover a hidden trove of gold there. For
this production, Timon has been re-written
as a woman — a change that still feels true
to Shakespeare’s time, said Turner.
“Originally, the female parts were
played by men, so Shakespeare was always
playing gender games. So in that sense,
we’re very Shakespearean,” said Turner.
The creators briefly considered having
Turner play the part as a man, but decided
that it would be more interesting with
a woman in the lead, said the show’s
director.
“At this moment in time, a woman
playing it as a woman felt like the more
audacious option, in a strange way,” said
Simon Godwin, who developed the play
with Turner for a run with the Royal
Shakespeare Company in 2018.
Godwin is not precious with the words
of the Bard, noting that Shakespeare
himself was always experimenting with
his plays.
“The more experimental and brave
we are with them, the more I think
Shakespeare-the-ghost likes us for that,”
he said.
The show has undergone a few
changes since its first production in
England. It opens in Timon’s over-thetop
home, featuring gold walls, gold
chairs, and golden cups. For New
Yorkers, the scene evokes the famously
gilded accessories of Trump Tower, but
Godwin toned down the set to downplay
the connection.
“The set was actually much more gold,
and we’ve made it more silvery this time
in order to avoid too strict a parallel with
Trump,” he said.
The play has a lot to say about greed
and the power of money, but it is not
particular to this time, or to this president,
said Godwin.
“In the play, there are no easy
symmetries,” he said. “Is Timon Trump?
Absolutely not. But is there a resonance
with the corrosive power of money?
Absolutely yes.”
“Timon of Athens” at Theater for a New
Audience’s Polonksy Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Fulton Street
and Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, (866)
811–4111, www.tfana.org. Jan. 19–Feb. 9;
; Tue–Fri at 7:30 pm; Sat at 2 pm and 7:30
pm; Sun at 3 pm. $90–$117 ($20 students or
those 30 or younger).
Your entertainment
guide Page 41
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HOW TO REACH US
COURIER L 4 IFE, JANUARY 17-23, 2020
KEVIN DUGGAN
Frank Seddio will step
down as the leader of the
Brooklyn Democratic Party
next week, saying he wants
to take a less active role in
county politics as he edges
closer to retirement.
“I think eight years is long
enough,” Seddio said. “I’m 74
years old and I want to do more
with my wife and my family.”
Seddio, who was fi rst
elected as Chairman of the
Kings County Democratic
Party in 2012, will offi cially
step down Monday and the
party’s executive committee
will choose his replacement at
a closed-door meeting on Jan.
20.
Brooklyn’s top Democrat
is choosing to back Assemblywoman
Rodneyse Bichotte
(D—Flatbush) as his interim
successor, who, if elected,
would be the fi rst woman to
hold the position, which would
give her signifi cant infl uence
over the borough’s court system
and local elections.
Bichotte did not return a
request for comment.
The sudden announcement
of Seddio’s departure — coupled
with the impending vote
for his successor — took some
Brooklyn Democrats by surprise,
with reform-minded
district leaders and political
activists accusing the party’s
chief of handpicking his replacement
in a rush to ward
off any serious contenders.
“I would like some assurances
that the new leader was
put in place because people
felt that she or he has the requisite
skills to rule the party
and wasn’t part of some deal
making behind the scenes,”
said Josh Skaller, District
Leader for the 52nd District,
which includes Downtown
Brooklyn.
As it stands, rank-and-fi le
Democrats have no clear understanding
of Bichotte’s platform,
nor of her plans for the
party, and with only seven
days before the borough’s 42
District Leaders are asked
to vote on their next county
chairperson, there are currently
no clear viable alternatives
to Seddio’s chosen
candidate, according to a
spokeswoman for a progressive
political club.
“Brooklynites deserve to
hear what Rodneyse’s vision
is and for other candidates to
be able to put themselves forward,”
said Jessica Thurston
of New Kings Democrats. “It
seems predetermined by existing
leadership.”
Seddio has existed as a staple
of Kings County politics,
particularly around Canarsie,
Mill Basin, Sheepshead Bay,
and Marine Park, since the
1980s, when he parlayed his
experience as a community liaison
for local police precincts
into a career as a civic leader
and later as a politician.
The Canarsie native served
alternatively as Community
Board 18’s district manager
and chairman in the late ’80s
early ’90s, before being elected
as an assemblyman to represent
Flatlands, Marine Park,
Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, and
Canarsie from 1998–2005.
A practicing attorney, Seddio
was later elected as a surrogate
court judge, and in 2010
became the male Democratic
District Leader for the 59th
District, before taking over
the helm of the party from the
late Vito Lopez two years later,
after his predecessor stepped
down in the wake of multiple
sexual assault allegations by
female staffers, to whom he
offered public funds as hush
money.
Seddio’s resignation comes
amid concerns raised by activists
about the health of the
Democratic party’s fi nances,
which have deteriorated under
Seddio’s stewardship from
$505,000 in 2013 to just $32,800
in July 2019, according to a
NY Daily News report.
The party’s fi nancial troubles
occur as Seddio himself
faces lawsuits over debts totaling
$2.2 million he allegedly
owes to the Kentucky-based
Golden Resources LLC, which
owns a Golden Corral restaurant
franchise in which he invested
in the Bluegrass State,
the Daily News reported.
Seddio denied that his fi -
nancial diffi culties played into
his decision to step down.
At its last twice-yearly
meeting in September, the
party’s full membership voted
to create a fi nance committee
to oversee the party’s ailing fi -
nances, to which Bichotte was
appointed chair.
Seddio also came under
fi re for using hundreds of absentee
votes known as proxy
cards to overpower rank-andfi
le members at the party’s
typically raucous meetings,
and one Greenpoint district
leader hopes that whoever his
successor is will limit that tactic.
“Regardless of who’s in
charge, the party needs to get
more transparent and more
democratic,” said Nick Rizzo.
“It’s the only way this rusty
old machine can survive.”
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Frank Seddio said he will step down as leader of the Brooklyn Democratic
Party next week. File photo by Derrick Watterson
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