The Hill: A Thieves Theatre Podcast

The end of the story. The story that never ends.  Nick and Gabriele narrate their final days on The Hill, leading up to the day it was finally razed, and tell what they know about what happened to their neighbors and friends in the aftermath.  They bring together their past and present research but are unable to discover the true story behind the arson/murder of Mister Lee.   In this final episode...

Plagued by grief and guilt, and estranged from everyone, including Gabriele, Nick wanders the streets hunting for Mister Lee’s murderer. Wearing his ghost shirt, he dances himself into trance-like states, and starts receiving visions, signs... directives for what he needs to do to complete his mission. On his journey into the world of mysticism and magic, he is given comfort and direction from fel...

Nick and Gabriele knew from all the articles written about it that the fire was designated as arson, but neither the press nor they were privy to any information as to how that was determined.   Who committed the arson and why? Dan Hays from the New York Daily News wrote five articles trying to get to the bottom of the cops’ involvement before his editor pulled the plug. At the same time, Nick was...

We are coming toward the end of this story. A few more episodes and the events of the tipi in the shantytown will have been told. This episode will end with the murder of Mister Lee, followed by the chaotic aftermath and the eventual demise of The Hill itself (albeit over a year later).   But it is not the events, the facts, that are difficult to narrate. It is the painful task of trying to make s...

On the 101st anniversary Gabriele and Nick explore the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre and the adjacent landscape –– the sacred Black Hills of the Lakota –– seeking to find acceptance and support for the tipi memorial they had erected. In their exploration of the Black Hills, they happen upon the Crazy Horse Memorial. At the 1939 New York World's Fair, a Polish American sculptor named Korcza...

Gabriele and Nick examine the nature of memorials and gravesites. The tipi on The Hill was both a memorial commemorating the centenary of the Wounded Knee Massacre and a political statement about homelessness. But it was also a deeply personal endeavor, especially for Nick, whose deceased brother had struggled with heroin addiction.  Harriet Cohen, from her official capacity in the office of Ruth...

Many years later, Nick begins to understand what motivated him – both to erect the tipi and to stay on The Hill after it became dangerous.  He recounts a mental health crisis experienced upon returning home from the Army and precipitated by childhood memories of his brother Steve.  #drugs #addiction #mentalhealth #trauma #military #familytrauma    For extensive documentation and to purchase the bo...

By the summer of ‘91, less than seven months after putting up the tipi, The Hill’s character had changed dramatically. A drug dealer had infiltrated the tight-knit community that until then had felt like family.   The racial makeup of The Hill was changing. Whereas once the community was a model of diversity, now racial and ethnic tensions were developing.   The drug trade brought violence and a c...

Nick and Gabriele talk about how split the Native American reaction was on them having erected a tipi as a memorial to the Wounded Knee Massacre. There were those who told them they had no right, and others who claimed they wanted to adopt them into their tribe.   Before erecting the tipi, Gabriele and Nick, together with Ace who said he was part Cherokee (people on The Hill sometimes referred to...

Gabriele and Nick place their work on The Hill in a historical context of popular culture’s use of the terms “woke” and “cultural appropriation.” They relate personal stories of growing up in their respective cultures (the US and Germany) and reflect on society’s movement toward cultural awareness. They discuss the ground-breaking film Dances with Wolves – which coincidentally opened the same week...

Four months before G & N arrived on The Hill, the New York Post came out with an article about the community entitled, “Squatter War Coming to ‘The Hill’.” The article turned out to be prescient. The initial war to be fought was one for self-representation. As scores of print media, films, commercials, music videos, photographers and others mostly looking to exploit the encampment descended, G...

In going through the journal gathering entries concerning The Hill’s relationship to the media, G & N also discovered evidence on how life on The Hill went from light to dark without them noticing.   The New York Post arrived first, followed almost simultaneously by The New Yorker. In an effort to control the representation, G & N decided to give access to the New Yorker. Writer Jim Lardne...

One week after erecting the tipi, cops “Frick and Frack Fury” arrest Nick for taking a roll of linoleum from the edge of a construction site and charge him with burglary and criminal possession of stolen property. It took over 36 hours for him to be arraigned and appear before a judge. The Chinese Assistant District Attorney, under pressure to clean up Chinatown, is determined to make an example o...

The final two original core residents that greeted Nick and Gabriele when they arrived at The Hill were “The Chinese Man in the Back,” or as Nick referred to him, the Geomancer, and Mister Lee. They built the two most ingenious dwellings on The Hill.  The Hill is part of a rich history of the landscape, which Nick had researched not long after arriving at The Hill. It includes the Lenape tribe tha...

Nick and Gabriele continue to profile their neighbors on The Hill, highlighting Tito and Woodsman Tony. They come to understand how the tipi has become a site where routines and everyday conversations become ritualized through intention.  At approximately sixty years old, Tito was the oldest heroin addict on The Hill. In his former life he was a bartender/waiter and the proud inventor of the “vodk...

Nick and Gabriele continue to profile their neighbors on The Hill, highlighting “Chinese Jimmy,” Larry and Elaine.  Jimmy was Chinese mob connected. The gangs extorting money from Chinatown business owners have their roots in the tong wars of the 19th century, a history that Nick encapsulates in this episode.  Larry was pimping a young woman named Elaine, by far the saddest case of all the residen...

Nick and Gabriele continue to profile their neighbors on The Hill, highlighting the four brothers - Billy, Mike, Donald and Eddie - as well as Billy Toyota.  The hierarchy on the Hill was never really fixed, but the four brothers from Jersey always factored into whatever authority structure existed on The Hill. They were referred to as the “James Gang.” Billy and Mike, with their jailhouse tattoos...

Nick and Gabriele continue to profile their neighbors on The Hill, highlighting Louie, Indian Jim, Ace, Juan, Sammy, and Lisa.   Running partners Louie and Jim were the last of the “Bowery bums.” They had used the weed-covered Hill to sleep off their binge nights on the Bowery years before any huts were built there. Louie had become almost the mascot of the “homeless man,” featured in numerous art...

Nick and Gabriele profile their neighbors on The Hill, beginning with Ali, Red, and “the Chinese man in the back,” aka the Geomancer.  Ali was the “keeper of the wrench,” and opened the corner fire hydrant every morning to take his public shower. Red was an inventive thief and scavenger supreme, who often served as the moral center in disputes. The Geomancer was an ascetic who carved a mystifying...

Thieves Theatre’s final significant production before the #tipionthehill was the controversial R. W. Fassbinder play, “Trash, the City and Death.” Seven productions of the play were attempted, including by Fassbinder himself, each time unsuccessfully, succumbing to protest and scandal. Fassbinder had stipulated that the play needed to premiere in either Frankfurt or New York, where the play’s them...

This episode highlights Thieves Theatre’s 1983/84 production “The Marat/Sade” in Toronto and how it crystalized the paratheater aesthetic that would lead to The Hill. The project began as a theater workshop, led by Gabriele and Nick, with members of an activist anti-psychiatry group of mental patients called On Our Own. The Peter Weiss’s play with the 17-word title – “The Persecution and Assassina...

Trying to reckon with the tragic fallout from The Hill project, Nick and Gabriele contemplate the big picture, which includes their 42-year history together. They recount the series of personal biographical and theatre-related events that engendered Thieves Theatre. They also consider the “American success story” versus the alternative ways to “make one’s mark” in the world; bravery versus bravado...

The opening episode of The Hill elucidates the driving force behind Thieves Theatre and, in particular, the inspiration for the tipi that graced the shantytown. It also sets the scene by painting a vivid backdrop of New York City in 1990, capturing the zeitgeist of that era. The tipi in the shantytown was a remarkable symbol of hope and perseverance amidst the dire circumstances of homelessness in...

The year 1990 marked the centenary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. In commemoration, Gabriele and Nick installed a replica of a Lakota tipi in the center of a Manhattan homeless encampment known as The Hill and moved in on Thanksgiving Day. In her journal Gabriele details their day-to-day lives as they navigate one of New York's largest-ever police corruption scandals, city politics in the Dinki...