Calypso @ Storefront

1. Paul Rome reading one of the two stories & 2. Rome with his dad who came for this occasion from Boston.

It was almost a tornado raging in Bushwick on Thursday night, which apparently was no big deal for the crowd at Storefront gallery. I arrived slightly late completely soaked with a broken polka dot umbrella, and mascara all over my face and couldn’t stop but wonder how many people could fit into the gallery’s fairly small space.

1. Adam Wilson has read on so many occasions lately he lost all the stage fear. Last night he came to listen. 2. Deborah Brown, a co-owner of Storefront. 3. Roarke Menzies was responsible for music and he also helped to read one story.

Roarke Menzies just started to read the first one (of two) short stories of the night by Paul Rome. He was sitting behind a desk with a lamp on top, all other lights in the gallery dimmed, the music to enhance the effect of his reading in the background, with the audience completely silent and listening to his word. After he finished reading the first part of the story, he left the mic to Paul Rome, who started to read the second short story of the night. After Paul finished the first part of the second story, Roarke took over the mic again.

Even though the stories we heard were very different from one another, the concept of dividing them into two parts worked surprisingly great and the audience was listening, thrilled until the end. The combination of the music from Roarke Menzies’ production, very well written fiction by Paul Rome, the setting of the gallery and the fact that both Paul and Roarke are excellent readers, made Calypso a very different reading that I am used to going to. The experience of Calypso at Storefront felt almost like attending a good theater piece.

–Katarina Hybenova is a writer and a photographer based in Brooklyn, and the editor in chief of www.bushwickdaily.com