Washington’s National Gallery Showcases ‘Degas at the Opera’
For today’s audiences entranced by cell phone entertainments, the idea of going to a grand communal event is a rarity if not a total unknown. But there was a time when entertainment aimed at conveying a larger national character. For nineteenth century France, the Paris Opera declaimed itself the grandest of the grand—it was the nation’s cultural and social center, and people dressed in high foppery to showcase the importance of being French. It was all about unabashed spectacle.
MoreNYC’s The New Group: ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice’
Surprise of all surprises, the 1969 movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” thanks to The New Group and Pershing Square Signature Center, is back in the news again—this time, not as a film but as a play with music. Cleverly directed by Scott Elliott, from a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman, the musical has dialogue and locations nearly identical to those in the film.
MoreNYC’s Cherry Lane with ‘The Confession of Lily Dare’
In or out of drag, whether on stage or page, the 65-year-old actor playwright Charles Busch, with some forty years of show business under his belt, is a force to be reckoned with. His signature calling card is in his allover inventiveness, his humorous tongue-in-cheek playfulness, looking outrageously spectacular in a gown and wig, and most importantly, a straightforward honesty in everything he touches. In short, Busch is entirely believable even when he is not.
MoreNYC’s Baryshnikov Arts Center: Tú Amarás (You Shall Love)
After performing around the world, Bonobo, the internationally acclaimed Chilean experimental theater company finally made its way to New York City’s Baryshnikov Arts Center, with Tú Amarás (You Shall Love), a socio-political offering with a surreal touch that examines what is an enemy, how do we create one, and how do we connect to others?
MoreToronto’s New, Sleepover Gallery: An Interview with Founder, Apollonia Vanova
Emese Krunák-Hajagos (EKH): As you’ve said, Darren Gallery is reopening with a new concept, Sleepover Art Gallery, after a long and painful renovation. Where did this idea come from?
More?A Stunning Exhibition (and Quagmire) at The Mattress Factory,“Factory Installed 2019”
The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh is internationally acclaimed for showcasing some of the most innovative and divergent selections of installation art in the United States. Its co-founders, the late Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk, very early recognized the importance of Installation art that celebrates a shift in focus from object-hood and what art visually represents to what site-specific work could communicate about a place while providing unique experiences for viewers. Since 1977, this institution has given over 600 artists the opportunity to experiment, take risks, and explore the creative process while engaging with the community through its residency program.
More?Money, Matrimony & Madness, at Irish Rep’s ‘London Assurance’
First things first. Before I delve into the Irish Repertory Theater’s marvelous production of London Assurance by Dublin-born playwright Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) – extended now through Sunday, February 9 – I must say that the award-winning Irish Rep is a gift from heaven.
MoreMake It Mine! Washington Theaters Update Classics for Today ?
The current passion for reinventing ‘classics’ to fit today is replete with both good intentions and overbearing ego. The core idea of a ‘classic’ is that it has something significant to convey over time. Updating ideas of significance for contemporary audiences can work wonderfully, but there are also huge opportunities to create flops.
The movie Little Women opened to popular and critical cheers this past Christmas. Director Greta Gerwig has explained that she loved the Louisa May Alcott classic as a child, but that it conveyed such new relevance when she re-read it in her 30s that she had to make it into a film. There have been earlier movie versions—notably the 1933 movie directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn as Jo—but Gerwig thought a new movie could beautifully encapsulate the book’s core ideas intersecting women with ambition, art, and money. Meryl Streep’s Auntie March gives an iron-fisted definition of how women in the 19th century had to marry unless they had their own economic independence—unless, as Auntie chortles, they were rich like she was.
More?J. M. W. Turner: Watercolors from London’s Tate, at Mystic Seaport, CT
The exhibition J. M. W. Turner: Watercolors from Tate, presented at the Mystic Seaport Museum in partnership with Tate, London, offers the largest number of this master’s watercolors to be seen in the USA in decades and it is the only North American venue. David Blayney Brown, the Tate’s Manton Senior Curator of British Art 1790-1850, curated this superb display that provides viewers with an extraordinary chance to see key watercolors spanning the entire career of this prominent artist. The distinct assortment of 97 works were chosen from the legacy known as the “Turner Bequest,” comprised of more than 30,000 works on paper, 300 oil paintings, and 280 sketchbooks. The vast collection was bequeathed to Great Britain after the artist’s death in 1851 (b. (1775). According to Brown, “Here we see not the public Turner, whose large oil paintings hung prominently in the Royal Academy, but the private artist who continually tested compositions, color, and tactile effect.”
MorePhilanthropy Today: Murky Waters, Quirky Consequences, and the Joys of Public Art
Philanthropists may fancy themselves the Medici of today’s art world. Demanding or endearing, they control the money that shapes public access to contemporary art and culture. The Sackler family has earned the consequences of outraged headlines, with the Louvre the latest museum to scrub “Sackler” from its walls. Other major museums like the Met, the Guggenheim, and the Tate have stopped accepting Sackler money.
More?How Many Tears Are Enough? An Installation by June Ahrens
June Ahrens’ installation How Many Tears Are Enough? is a contemplative work that slowly reveals its intricate symbolic, emotional content. It is comprised of various types of shape defining wires and ropes suspended from the ceiling, all hovering just above long sheets of highly reflective silver Mylar. While the main expression of three-dimensional lines dominates most of the space of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford Art Gallery, there is also a back wall covered with unadorned black, knotted rope that creates a waterfall-like backdrop. When seen together, these two works give gallery visitors a basis for establishing personal links that may be viewed by some, as a dramatic field of ascending souls.
More?Heroes of the Fourth Turning; a Conservative Christian Fugue
Will Arbery’s latest play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, having been extended two times by popular demand, is now running Off-Broadway through Sunday, November 17, at New York’s Playwrights Horizons. With more religious, personal, and political exposition (read talk) than many a mind can absorb at one sitting, Heroes of the Fourth Turning is essentially a snapshot of the current divisive state of affairs in this country. It is a play that not only digs deep but demands one’s fullest attention. In short, this is not a play that one can sit back, relax, and let it gently waft over you.
MoreHarold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal,’ on Broadway: From the End to the Beginning
“I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.”~Harold Pinter, taken from his 2005 Nobel Prize Lecture
When I first heard that Harold Pinter’s Betrayal was coming to Broadway I was thrilled. I was long craving for something above and beyond the usual Broadway fare: something challenging that would set my brain to thinking, and my heart to feeling. On the other hand, having seen Betrayal a number of years ago and remembering virtually nothing about it, I was of the mind that this play, based on Pinter’s own seven-year extra-marital affair during the 1960s, and written in reverse chronological order, was a one-trick pony.
More?Washington’s Folger Theatre with Henry IV, Part 1: The Art of Falstaff
The Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., has opened its 2019-20 season with a production of Henry IV, Part 1. The theater describes the play as a “layered coming-of-age tale of power, rebellion, honor, and redemption.” It’s actually much more worthwhile than this pro forma statement.
MoreSculptor, Patrick Dougherty and ‘A Passing Fancy’ in Falmouth, MA?
Patrick Dougherty is motivated to work with stick materials because of increased massive urbanization and the destruction of forests all over the United States. Knowing that sticks have been a foundation for human survival across cultures and throughout time –being used for building shelters, ladders, and tools for hunting in addition to keeping warm and cooking—he finds them a universal material for his work. Since the early 1980s Dougherty has been fabricating huge environmental installations that he calls Stickworks. The majority of his large, quirky and temporary pieces take approximately three weeks to construct and each monumental sculpture is distinctly unique. Prior to starting a work he takes time getting to know the milieu in which it will be created, oft visiting the place several times prior to its actual construction. The installation’s final shape results from Dougherty’s observations about the overall locale, the interaction of the volunteers in the community who help build the work, as well as the specificity of the site where it is erected.
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