Culture & Arts

The Bridges of Madison County, a successful book and film, has been reimagined as an operatic musical. Now at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, Broadway darling Kelly O'Hara and hunka hunka burning love Steven Pasquale play the star-crossed lovers who, for four glorious days in 1965, find their soul mate.

It's hard to imagine these two as tired, middle-aged people, but as participants in a doomed romance, erotic sparks fly.

Robert, a National Geographic photographer, always stands outside his subjects; Francesca, an Italian war bride, is part of a tight-knit farm community. She escaped one horror, war-torn Naples, only to embrace another: a loveless marriage to the grim, tightly wound Bud (Hunter Foster) in rural Iowa. She may be devoted to her children (Caitlin Kinnunen and Derek Klena), but she leads what Thoreau called a life of quiet desperation.

That is, until Robert appears. While her husband and children attend the state fair, Francesca has a few, glorious days to experience profound love -- and the chemistry between Pasquale and O'Hara is electric.

O'Hara, who starred with Pasquale in last summer's Far From Heaven, is sympathetic and heart-wrenching; her lilting voice is extraordinary at capturing pathos and longing. She is equaled by Pasquale, whose intense arias always hit their emotional mark.

Jason Robert Brown, the talented composer of the underrated Parade, has produced a touching score. Deeply moving numbers, such as "Falling Into You" and "One Second & a Million Miles," express profound yearning; it's easy to understand why there isn't a dry eye in the house.

The musical could easily become overly sentimental; instead, it's simple and straightforward in its emotional trajectory. Marsha Norman's book gives all characters their due -- from the nosy but well-intentioned neighbors (Cass Morgan and Michael X. Martin), to Bud's inarticulate care. Passions ignite in a pure way, thanks to O'Hara and Pasquale's stellar performances.

Donald Holder's exquisite lighting and Michael Yeargan's economical set, which makes Iowa a key character in the production, are essential to the show's artistry. Bridges of Madison County showcases the subtle, inexplicable romance of two people who, for a brief moment, experience transcendent joy.

The only bridge they can't cross is the one into the future -- but the image of their fleeting happiness remains long after the music ends.

Conversely, in the nonfiction realm, the magic is strictly manufactured.

The off-Broadway Axis Theater is the former home of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Ludlam, who had a gift for using illusion to illuminate the truth, was working on a show on Houdini when he died.

Houdini exposed illusions to reveal the trickery and fraud of spiritualists.

Interestingly, Nothing on Earth Can Hold Houdini at the Axis, written and directed by Randall Sharp, addresses the moment in 1922 when the Scientific American magazine offered a cash prize to the first scientifically proven clairvoyant. The man chosen to debunk any prospects was Houdini, one of the greatest magicians.

Unfortunately, the ghost of Ludlam's genius is nowhere in sight.

The play suffers from a lack of drama, as well as solid narrative. Houdini's (George Demas) crusade to expose fraudulent mediums led him to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Spencer Aste). Doyle, the acclaimed creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a fervent spiritualist; he fell for the Cottingley Fairies photographs and attended séances in the hopes of contacting his son Kingsley, who died in World War I. He was particularly taken in by one of the leading mediums of the day, Mina Crandon (Lynn Mancinelli), who competed for the magazine's $5,000 prize, aided by her doctor husband (Brian Barnhart).

There is an intriguing premise here -- the ability of grief to undo otherwise rational people -- as well as the fervent desire to believe in the unknown. Unfortunately, the magic and the manipulation fall flat.

The cast tries, especially Demas, who re-enacts Houdini's locked chains and straightjacket stunt. But the script is devoid of dramatic tension; it doesn't adequately put the event in context. And given the heightened nature of the subject, the performances aren't strong enough to compensate.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Based on past productions, the Little Fish Theatre appears to have been custom made to feature plays set in cabins. Cozy, rustic (viz. pomp-less), and, for the audience (lucky us), accessible. Norman Foster's "The Melville Boys," directed by Paul Vander Roest, is no exception.

The show's perfectly paced. It begins frat kegger funny and then, almost in a whisper, becomes sad as hell. It ends neither maudlin nor tragic. Instead, to Vander Roest's credit, it glows with a gentle humanity: all four characters must (and do) come to terms with the one thing that no one who's ever lived can avoid.

It takes place over the span of a weekend. It features the Melville brothers, Lee (Bill Wolski) and Owen (Michael Hanson). They work together in a plastic factory. They come to their aunt and uncle's cabin, ostensibly, for some bro-time: beer, cheese puffs, and fishing, punctuated with an unplanned encounter between two sisters, local women Mary (Holly Baker-Kreiswirth) and Loretta (Kyla Schoer).

Sound like fun and games? It is. Owen, engaged to be married, wants to fish, have more than a few brewskis. Lee, married, with two daughters, is more stolid, is there seemingly to provide adult supervision to his quixotic younger brother. Similarly, Loretta is up for anything while her sister, like Lee, serves as an anchor. Sounds idyllic (and funny; and charming): skinny dipping and canoodling (Owen and Loretta), a dance at the Legion hall, a turnip cake (no one ate it, they were all filled up on all the other food).

But if Lee doesn't have a secret, then he at least tends to the biggest elephant imaginable in the room. It explains his solemnity, his behavior toward both Owen and Mary; and it makes you realize that everyone has a backstory. All four backstories not only explain character and define plot. They also propose that we don't judge people by their superficial propensity for either elder sibling seriousness or younger sibling frolicking.

The chemistry between the characters is flawless. All four actors play their characters with nicely pitched reserve. Of great interest was the simmering volcano that was Wolski's Lee. This was, after all, Lee's story. He wasn't bitter at what life dealt him. He just wanted his in-denial brother to tend to a few things (his wife, his two daughters) in the rudderless future. This made his one eruption effective because we saw that he wasn't as much concerned at what would eventually happen to him but what would occur subsequent to him.

Likewise with Hanson's Owen, Baker-Kreiswirth's Mary, and Schoer's Loretta. All three were funny, spontaneous, and amenable to a philosophy of what happens in the cabin stays in the cabin. But they weren't so over the top that their various concerns - hope that an errant husband would return; hope that an acting career would take off; hope that growing up meant not living someone else's life - overrode those of Lee. In light of the bigger picture, it wasn't such a bad philosophy after all.

Performances are 8pm Friday & Saturday and 2pm Sunday, March 23. Tickets are $22. The Theatre is located at 777 South Centre Street, San Pedro CA 90731. The show runs until April 5. For more information call (310) 512-6030 or visit www.littlefishtheatre.org.

According to the New Cities Foundation, a new independent non-profit with offices in Geneva and Paris:

" Over the next decade, some $ 250 billion will be invested in the creation of new cultural districts around the globe" ... "success is not just getting an arts building or series of buildings out of the ground, it is about ensuring that they are viable and play a central role in their communities."

The reasons why such districts are popping up in cities around the world vary but in most cases they are designed to nurture, retain and attract the talented 21st-century workforce so vital to success and survival in the global knowledge economy.

Manufacturing and service provision from one nation are finding the lowest cost in another and seeking distribution throughout the world market. This is what author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman means when he says, "The World is Flat." Every nation, every community, every person is competing with every other. Indeed, all the economies in the world are now knitted together and competing for the new knowledge jobs, the dollars they offer and the enhanced quality of life such jobs create.

Not surprisingly, a whole new economy based not on manufacturing or even service provision, but on knowledge or more precisely creativity and innovation is slowly taking shape.

What makes people creative and innovative however, is still being debated. Clearly our schools and the educational curriculum must change. But what too, about the communities where young people spend more than half their lives and where their families, friends and fellow citizens live and work. Communities, indeed whole cities, need to reinvent themselves.

The New Cities Foundation was created in 2010 to help cities think through what's at stake and what's involved in the effort to renew and reinvent themselves for such a bold, new future; and, as they themselves put it, "to incubate, promote and scale urban innovations through collaborative partnerships between government, business, academia and civil society."

Beginning this June 17 through the 19 in Dallas Texas, through a new arm of the Foundation called the Global Culture Districts Network (GCDN), they are focusing on the role of "culture districts"... areas including museums, theaters, performing arts centers, and other assets such as live/work spaces, coffee shops and restaurants that help define a city. Think of London, New York, Berlin, or Paris.

The Global Culture Districts Network aims to ensure that these projects are vital assets for their communities, contributing to the vitality of 21st century cities, according to AEA Consulting Director Adrian Ellis, who is also Director of GCDN.

"The idea of GCDN is to support the leaders of Cultural districts - both planned and existing - wherever they are," he says. "There are clearly many differences between Seoul, São Paulo, Vancouver and Muscat - to take a random four - but there are many similarities too, in a world where ideas, people and capital are highly mobile."

Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, Beijing's Olympic Green, Dallas Arts District, Chicago's Millennium Park, Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District, Singapore's Esplanade, Doha's Cultural District, are cited as models of how high-profile urban developments have been planned to embrace cultural activities as an important part of the public realm.

In addition to an array of programs discussing the future of cities, leaders from Hong Kong, Qatar, the UK, Amsterdam, Germany and the U.S are shaping the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN). The GCDN has taken as their mission initiatives deigned to "foster co-operation and knowledge sharing between those responsible for conceiving, funding, building and operating Cultural Districts internationally."

At a meeting June 17-19 in Dallas, Texas, The New Cities Foundation expects to attract over a thousand leaders from cities around the world, most of whom will hear about creative place making, technology innovations, new transportation schemes, sustainability, financing and audience building as well as a host of other topics all of which will be discussed in a plenary session and numerous breakouts.

Ellis argues that:

"For planners (the art and culture districts) can help build community and social capital; for sociologists they keep at bay the forces of anomie; for economists, they incubate and inculcate creativity, and draw those fickle high-net-worth tourists; and for the politicians and the semioticians alike, they signify and calibrate complex aspirations and identities. But they are difficult to get right, and expensive and politically embarrassing to get wrong."

The GCDN will seek to provide the following services for its members:

● Regular convening to share emerging best practices, hear expert panels, and discuss the place of cultural districts in urban policy, economic development and related areas of public policy such as travel and tourism;

● Original research on topics of common interest such as programming, audience development, cultural tourism, professional development, relevant trends in technology and creative industries strategies;

● Regular summaries and circulation of secondary research and news of common interest;

● Virtual forums for detailed sharing of information and discussion of opportunities and challenges;

● Opportunities for establishing strategic partnerships for content, programming, skills training, and knowledge transfer.

"This isn't just about the arts," Ellis says, "this is about urban policy." Whatever the motivation, cities are beginning to see the need to renew and reinvent themselves for a very complex and different world economy. "Its scary" he says, and executives, architects, city planners, and policymakers alike, must begin to collaborate on the effort of "Reimagining the City," the theme of the Dallas event.

Co-Chairs of the GCDN are Maxwell Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art and Chairman of the Dallas Arts District, and John Rossant, Chairman of the New Cities Foundation.

The Summit kicks off a week of discussions that will place Dallas at the very heart of global thought-leadership on the future of cities. Following the Summit, Dallas will be host to the Annual Meeting of the US Conference of Mayors on June 20-23.

The series Faces is on Faith, a female greyhound, both beauty queen and racing dog. An "exceptional" animal which German photographer Julia Christe chose to emphasize in a series of portraits. Responding initially to an order for a magazine cover, Christe coincidentally viewing a hood over the head of her dog to protect hair from his ears, was seized by the fragility and "humanity" that emerges from the animal. A feeling that gives meaning to the special relationship people have with their dogs propelling the viewer to go further into the portraits. She decided to conduct a personal work on this animal by organizing a photo shoot with some fifty different hoods. The stunning series was born.

Julia Christe lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Julia Christe

Faces

Via trouvaillesdujour

I'm taking screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto at his word: that there's nothing coming at the end of his superbly crafted and brilliantly acted True Detective (concluding tonight on HBO) that relies on the supernatural or extraneous evidence not previously presented in the series. If he's a bullshitter -- and I don't think so; the series has been too real, too honest with its audience throughout -- then he's in for some serious fecal blowback in the flat karmic wheel of showbiz.

I'm also buying heavily into the early foreshadowing of Marty Hart's reference to "the detective's curse," namely that the "solution was right under my nose, but I was paying attention to the wrong clues."

So here's the requisite spoiler alert: If you believe, as many have speculated, that either Hart (Woody Harrelson) or his partner Ruston Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) are part of the conspiracy, then you probably won't want to go any further here. Ditto if you're looking at the owner of the Vietnamese restaurant at which Hart and Cohle have lunch one day. Keep your head where it's dark and pungent. My speculation and linkage of the evidence is even bleaker and a lot more disturbing. And I think I may be right.

First off, the easy one: It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind's blowing in the moral wasteland of the Louisiana bayous.

In his most recent post-episode interview, Pizzolatto says a little cryptically that we've seen the face of our killer. It's the closing shot of Episode Seven -- "Lawnmower Man," Errol Childress (played by Glenn Fleshler), the "green-eared spaghetti monster," whose police sketch, provided by one of his victims, is featured in Cohle's makeshift investigation headquarters. Childress is the illegitimate grandson of Sam Tuttle, father of Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle, and uncle of Eddy Tuttle, the former governor of Louisiana and now a U.S. Senator. It's part of the conspiratorial "sprawl" that Cohle has referenced throughout the series.

We know with cold certainty that Reverend Tuttle was one of the conspirators; he's dead. So are Reggie and Dewall Ledoux. With Childress now identified, that makes four. Certainly other members of the extended Tuttle/Childress/Ledoux clan are involved in the conspiracy as well. That's where Pizzolatto wants us to go.

But here's the nitty, gang, and it's on all of us that we skipped over it. Recall when Hart's young daughter Audrey is revealed to have drawn several obscene images in a notebook and Hart sees that she has arranged a sexualized gang-rape formation out of some small plastic toy figures in her bedroom? That storyline never had any resolution. It got swept under the narrative arc. And there hasn't been a false move yet in Pizzolatto's superbly crafted screenplay.

Take a look at the freeze frame of those figures: they form precisely the same formation that's in the photograph of murder-victim Dora Lange with five horseman dressed in Courir de Mardi Gras costumes and in the horrific video footage found by Cohle in one of Billy Lee Tuttle's mansions of Marie Fontenot being raped. Hart screams in dire anguish when he watches the footage; the truth is -- it was right under his nose all along -- that he's seen the imagery before in his daughter's bedroom.

And remember that scene where Audrey takes the crown from her sister's head and throws it up into a tree? Marie Fontenot was wearing a similar crown. (It's also the cover footage for Hart's soliloquy about overlooking evidence.)

Ruston Cohle also knows the same formational imagery. He's seen the footage. While he's being interviewed by detectives Maynard Gilbough and Thomas Papania, he cuts out five makeshift figures from his six-pack of Lone Star beer, and places them in front of his interrogators. It's the same formation as in the Lange photograph and the footage of Marie Fontenot and in Audrey's bedroom. The sixth can he turns into a metaphor for flattened time.

So we've got at least as many as five perpetrators. Three are dead and one is standing in the cemetery. The Yellow King could be the progenitor of this madness, Sam Tuttle. Could be his nephew, the former governor (king?) of Louisiana, Eddie. Could even be Errol. But I think Maggie's father is also involved in this, too. And that's why it's on us: all the signs were there and we looked right past them. Maggie's got some dark stuff she's hiding. When Gilbough and Papania query her about Cohle and Hart's bad blood, she flat out lies. She's not above the cover-up, especially when illicit sexuality is involved. Pizzolatto went out of his way to establish that kink in her character. And how did she know where Cohle was working? And why did she really go to see him?

Maggie's got something to do with the denouement. She's hovered on the periphery throughout the series, moving to center stage only on occasion, but with an unsteady undercurrent and sufficient ice running through her veins, all suggesting that she's somehow involved in this madness.

So I'm predicting that it's all gonna hit a little closer to home than the Tuttles and Ledouxs. Maybe Maggie's father is the illegitimate offspring of Sam Tuttle as well. But nothing in this show does not circle back and that's the one storyline that has yet to come home.

As they say in the Spanish quarter, vamos a ver.

If I'm wrong, well, then, I'm wrong. Won't be the first time. Certainly won't be the last. And I'll get on with my life after the conclusion of Sunday's final episode and put some crow on the spit.

But if I'm right, then Nic Pizzolatto took a serious -- and brilliant -- artistic gamble in the narrative arc of his screenplay, a wager calculated on a deep dark propensity in the American psyche. And, if I'm right, like Ruston Cohle, I'll "close the loop" on that speculation when it's over.

Welcome to Carcosa.

I walk to my spot and sit down, a mat beneath me and two cushions under my bottom. I'm comfortable now but I know it won't last. Within ten minutes the aches will begin. Dull and annoying to start and then as time drags on they will intensify. Ten days of silence, meditating eleven hours a day. Why do I do it? You'd think once would be enough. And yet I have returned time and time again to sit for ten days in silence and in pain.

Must of us live a life of fear and reaction. We do too much in order to impress, or hide so no one will expect anything of us. Tossed on the vagaries of emotion, it's an exhausting and wasteful way to live. When I sit in silence I experience all emotions, all feelings, all states. I experience them knowing they will change. Everything always does. Even the pain. And during this time, when I'm supposed to be meditating where does my mind go? Everywhere. It dives into the past, raking over the embers. It plunges into the future, inventing scenarios. And when it's done regretting and worrying it makes up possibilities of increasing drama and intensity. After a while I tire of all of this. But am I ready to do the work? Am I ready to meditate properly? Not quite yet.

1. Meditation clears the mind clutter and allows your creativity to blossom.
When all the whys, wherefores, he saids, she saids, he dids, she dids, blaming, reactions and catastrophes are done, creativity is free to roam with characters, stories and adventures that are pure imagination, often not of this world. It's fascinating and freeing to allow yourself to follow where creativity leads. Meditation breaks down that very thin membrane between the conscious and the subconscious. And let's face it, the subconscious is where all the interesting stuff happens.

I'm not a very good meditator it's true, but there comes a time when the meditation takes over, when my mind finally stills, when I get the essence of what I'm here to do. Come out of all suffering, be liberated from all misery. Stop reacting and resenting. Stop being so afraid. I'm not perfect, not even close, which is why I keep meditating. I meditate because it helps in my day to day life, literally. I saved my job and found a husband through meditation. I also meditate because it helps my writing.

2. Meditation gives you the kind of detachment a writer needs.
Meditation is creative, not only because my restless mind supplies me with endless plots and characters. It's creative because it helps me to write, no matter what mood I'm in, no matter what's happening around me. It's not selfishness, it's just knowing that what ever the problem or drama is, it will pass without you meddling or trying to fix it. And if it doesn't? Then it's time for a different approach but an approach that's tempered by thoughtfulness not desperation.

3. Meditation allows you to write with courage and honesty. To stop judging.
With the loving detachment that meditation brings you're better able to step aside and let the story glow and burn without the temptation of modifying it to make yourself look better. Judgement is a hinderance to life and to creativity. It carries the weight of expectation. Impossible to meet. The more I meditate the less I judge myself and my work. Other people may judge. They will think what they like. It's none of my business. Besides, what they think will change. Everything does.

I have returned to the meditation center seven times. Seven times I have spent 10 days sitting in silence and in pain. Seven times I have reaped the benefits. Am I suffering for my art? Some say life is suffering and the art is to overcome that suffering. For me meditation is the art of living. And writing. It is the art of creation.

Mary-Lou Stephens' meditation memoir, Sex, Drugs and Meditation, is the true story of how meditation helped changed her life, save her job and find a husband. You can buy it here.

(The following review contains spoilers about the first season of "Looking.")

By the time the inaugural season of "Looking" is over, every viewer will have fashioned a hierarchy for the characters. For a show about a circle of friends, it won't settle for parity among the storylines, inadvertently begging us to gab about which of the central figures we deem most detestable. Is it Patrick, the videogame designer who spends the series' opening moments "cruising" for an outdoor hand job that gets curtailed by cold hands and an ill-timed phone call? How about Dom, the budding restaurateur who's stuck somewhere between being the group's maturity compass and its battered soul? Or perhaps Agustin, the adrift artist with a habit of landing in stilted predicaments that convince no one but himself of his stability?

If those descriptions don't sound kind, it's because the show takes a hard-line approach to much of its characterization, almost as if it doesn't want you to like these gentlemen. But the disparate nature of the three men's personalities is what makes their unlikely friendship all the more enjoyable. Our protagonists are at different phases in their lives, yet whatever character constraints "Looking" contains, creator Michael Lannan (who based the show on his short film "Lorimer") and writer/director Andrew Haigh (of 2011's poignant "Weekend") don't let us linger when we question the authenticity of their dynamic. Viewers' character hierarchy will vary from one to the next (mine goes: Dom - Patrick - Aug, if you couldn't tell from the earlier descriptions). Even if the mandated pecking order distracts from the narrative, what's consistent is that "Looking" is not reduced to Grindr-hopping, parade-going San Francisco stereotypes, even if that summary is entirely apt. Because there's enough originality, there's no eye-rolling needed when the men attend a street fair with a leather-only dress code or engage in clichéd anonymous hookups. We don't need diatribes about marriage equality to make their plights feel genuine -- their routine interactions do the trick.

As the narrative nucleus, Patrick (a beguiling Jonathan Groff) earns the show's opening moments and a standalone episode that doubles as a 30-minute insight into his burgeoning relationship with Richie (Raul Castillo), the stud he meets on the bus after a terrible date. Even with a protagonist who dominates, "Looking" is effective in convincing us that its characters exist both within Patrick's orb and outside of it. By the time that breakout installment arrives, in which Patrick and Richie traipse around San Francisco instead of going to work, Dom (Murray Bartlett) and Aug (Frankie J. Alvarez) are developed independently enough not to deflate the episode to needless diversion.

The best moments in "Looking" offer a group of gay men who don't look anything like the eccentrics who populate sitcoms with punch lines as equally as they do potpourri. What's even more resilient than a trite discussion about media stereotypes is this: The "Looking" we see by the time the first season ends is not a replica of what we encountered in the pilot. My feelings about each of the storylines paraded out at the start took U-turns by the finale. I applaud the show for introducing itself that way.

When I extolled Patrick in Episode 4 for not hooking up with his hunky boss Kevin (Russell Tovey, whose every inflection is purposeful) amid chatter about a boyfriend of two years, I didn't expect to be cheering him on as their bodies grinded in the finale. It's hard to discern whether that's the reaction the writers wanted, seeing as Patrick spends the first seven episodes fawning over a deepening connection with Richie, who's only his second boyfriend. (At 29, Patrick's age is a refreshing contradiction to his lack of experience.) "Looking" seems to want desperately for us to embrace the relationship, but the winds of Richie's sail blew me farther off course as the season progressed. When he terminates their first sexual encounter because Patrick mistakenly notes that Richie's Mexican penis isn't uncut like his friends joked it would be, Richie's unwillingness to sympathize with the gag is just as frustrating as Patrick's affable inability to shut his mouth.

looking

Some will adore Richie because he seems earnest, but I didn't buy it. In one episode he's telling the uptight Patrick to relax more, and later he's storming off because Patrick's nerves about introducing a boyfriend to his parents for the first time make him fussy. By the time Richie's huffy departure leaves Patrick to attend his sister's wedding without a date, I wasn't even in the boat anymore. More grating than endearing, it makes Richie the token minority in a show that revolves around minorities. His intrigue in the pilot, for me, was absent by the finale. It's not that Patrick is above reproach -- I found him relatable in the aforementioned wedding ordeal, but I understand if you protest -- but I'm not convinced we should idolize Richie simply because his modesty and self-assurance are inconsistent with Patrick and his pals. The writers play the martyr card with that character too often, and here I am doting on a minor player instead of discussing our other two leads. In short, Patrick is intelligent enough not to be rendered hapless solely because of his limited relationship experience.

The central trio has a weak link, too, though: Aug. The newly 40-year-old Dom emerges, in his turbulence with semi-suitor Lynn (the wonderful Scott Bakula) and his midlife disorientation, as the most layered and enjoyable character. But Aug is a stock personality: the lost artist. You won't know it in the first episode because his plot is disguised as character development. He moves out of Patrick's apartment and in with his boyfriend Frank (O.T. Fagbenle), which simulates progress. Instead, Aug hires a $220-an-hour hustler to have sex with Frank while he films it for an art project. (Aug initially omits the price tag.) By the time Aug withdraws from his art show and admits his blunder to Frank, it's too late. We've already dismissed the show's attempt to make him the troubled vagrant whose foibles stem from selfishness. It's one step forward, two steps back for Aug's stability, and he becomes an insufferable caricature by the season's end. I'm not convinced Dom and Patrick would be able to stand Aug without constantly eviscerating his actions.

In spite of some mismanaged characterization, "Looking" still succeeds in feeling fresh. It's brimming with new energy, as though this is a story that truly hasn't been told on TV before. Even with low-lit camerawork that's akin to an Instagram filter, its San Francisco setting offers a less grimy tone than New York scenery would. The show is less of a comedy than HBO would have you believe -- it could use a few more laughs in Season 2 -- but its lack of contrivances is stimulating. We're invested in these men because their storylines feel like something we'd see in our own lives, and, for better or worse, we all know a Patrick, a Dom and perhaps even an Aug.

With slick writing ("At 40, Grindr emails you a death certificate") that employs callbacks to various references within the show (including two adorable "Golden Girls" moments), Season 1 left me wanting more. Richie and Patrick's tearful breakup presents the latter with a clean slate, and in turn we accept that these eight episodes can hit the refresh button on his stamina. (HBO has already announced that Richie will return in Season 2, which I'll make peace with only if his role is less dad-like.) When Aug gets the invective he needed from Frank and moves back in with Patrick, it's the wake-up call we demanded he receive. There's ample material to leave us invested in this show because the characters, including minor players like Patrick's straight friend Owen (Andrew Law) and Dom's sassy roommate Doris (Lauren Weedman), feel like they could be our acquaintances too.

"Looking" strives hard to be a character show. At times, it works too intensely to position the viewer among its plots. Struggling to find yourself -- whether at 20-something or during a mid-life crisis -- may produce delusions, but it doesn't come without heart. The show knows to weave that yarn into its fabric, and it mostly succeeds. "Looking" provides what its title implies: a tale about friends who find support in their surroundings, no matter how much searching they have to do.

As virtually every arts organization tries to improve their fundraising results, the pressure to get help from board members becomes a priority. And yet, try as they might, I find that many arts managers find it difficult, and often impossible, to get board members to assist, actively, in the fundraising effort. In fact, the question most often asked of me is, "How do I get my board members to ask for money from their friends and associates?"

I am completely sympathetic. There is nothing more frustrating than to have a board member who is successful in business, has access to a number of people of means, and connections to important corporate leaders, who is unwilling to use these connections to benefit the organization.

Isn't this the job of our board members? Don't they understand that our ability to create art while maintaining fiscal stability depends on their active involvement in fundraising?

I have found no magic formula for engaging board members in fundraising. There seems to be a gene that some members have--the ones we all know and love who are fearless about soliciting funds--that others are missing entirely.

And while it is true that those arts organizations that consistently produce exciting art and aggressive institutional marketing campaigns have an easier time motivating their board members, there remain those stubborn few, potentially potent members who remain dormant.

So what to do?

The simple answer is: engage these board members in a specific effort, or campaign, over a limited period of time. I find that the board members with the most unrealized potential are also often the busiest people on the board. They have important jobs and many competing time commitments.

If one asks busy executives to help with annual fundraising efforts, they will often ignore the appeal. They will assume others with the 'fundraising gene' will act on behalf of the organization; this allows these executives to focus on another of their activities.

If one asks a busy executive to participate, or even lead, a campaign of limited duration, however, they will often agree to do so. They can be of service, fulfill their commitments to the organization, and know that three or six months later they can focus on other, pressing activities.

When successful executives are given a specific goal and a limited time frame, it is often astonishing how quickly they will act. The short time frame will often galvanize them to act and to call on others on the board and in the extended organizational family to assist them in achieving the campaign goal. Their connections will often respond to their solicitations with gifts far larger than the organization is used to receiving; and when one busy executive asks another for a gift, the response time can be incredibly short. I have seen multi-million dollar campaigns completed in just a few weeks or months.

The busy executives can then focus elsewhere, comfortable that they have fulfilled their obligations well and have had a lasting impact on the organizations they serve.

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun on the set of Grisgris

In the last few days, cinematic circles have been all abuzz at the news that the Cannes 2014 Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury will be headed by Abbas Kiarostami. Yet as much as I adore the Iranian filmmaker and count some of his titles among my top ten favorite films of all times, a name jumped at me from the list of his co-jurors: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

Haroun's latest film Grigris has a groundbreaking, pioneering aspect to it that cannot be overlooked. The first official entry from Chad to the Academy Awards Foreign Language Oscar race, it is simply a moot point that the film did not make the shortlist. It had already premiered in Cannes, where the film's director of photography Antoine Heberlé won the Vulcan Award, screened at festivals around the world, and is getting ready for a theatrical release in the U.S. soon, through prestigious world cinema distributors Film Movement.

Grigris is a human story. A story about someone who doesn't let disabilities he's born with, both physical and geographical, stop him from dreaming. It's a story of Africa, and of "the Other," that stranger who easily turns into the face in the mirror, depending on where we find ourselves in the world.

At this year's Dubai International Film Festival, I had the privilege of sitting with Mahamat-Saleh Haroun for a talk. His charm is palpable, just as his intelligence and insight are undeniable. But perhaps the most wonderful quality Haroun offers, with each word, each glance, each movement, is his wonderful humility, despite his enormous talent. Cannes promises to be magical this year.

You deal with somebody who is really "the Other" because of his disability, and yet is able to overcome it and be a completely positive character. How do you deal with the idea of "the Other" in your films?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: It's a great question, you know, it's just like "the Other" is this experience, the intimate experience of being African in this world. I'm not saying about being black. There is a big difference, being African... I travel a lot, I used to travel a lot, my parents were diplomats, and so you feel always, you are "the other of the others." Every time. And the question of being legitimate in a place is always there, this question. I am like the other one, I mean in the world. So this intimate experience helps me to reflect about this kind of person Grigris, [actor] Souleymane Démé and I think that when you are considered as the other, the different one, the only thing that you have to bring and to break down the differences is just your human part of being.

If you see yourself as only part of the human race?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: Absolutely. In your stories you just have to bring this idea of "I am a man, and so I am universal." I am going to tell you a story about a human being and not about the way how you see me in an ethnographic way. So I'm always trying to tell a tale, that's kind of about African feelings and about the representation of Africa. It's like a painting that you have in your room, which is not right - (Haroun makes a gesture in the air, pretending to straighten the imaginary painting) - my job is to make it right.

Where did the story come from? Did you find your lead first and build the story around him?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: I had the story first, because I know these young people in Chad, in my neighborhood, that used to bring gasoline from Cameroon and they cross the river by night and then they sell gasoline in small bottles in the street. They are in our same neighborhood, they are dealers, but we understand also that they don't have the means to live - it's a question of survival you cannot just condemn them. And so I started working with them and wanted to tell their story, but it wasn't very interesting. In a way it was a kind of thriller without something else. Then, in 2011 I was in Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou during the film festival, and I met this guy, Souleymane Démé in a dance show. He had a small sequence of five minutes, in the middle of the show you see this man coming into the African night and he was - as you see sometimes black people - he had blond hair... He came out dancing like a muppet. It was incredible and I said "This is Grigris!" This is my guy.

And how did your film change?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: I had the title but I didn't know that Grigris will become a dancer. I discovered the guy and I said "this is Grigris and he's going to be a dancer" and then I started changing the whole script, because I'd met him and he accepted, even if he didn't have any experience.

So how do you deal with a first time actor?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: It's a kind of love relationship with actors, so you have to understand them, respect their reasons. It's a kind of tempo and it's just like trying to let them give you their truth and being always sincere, let them feel that you love them in a way. And in response they will give you love. That's it. It's a question of sharing something with a lot of sincerity. That's why I think we could all become, in a way, actors. Maybe not become, but act once if it concerns our own life.

Do you like to work with first time actors?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: Absolutely. I love it because it's a kind of virgin territory. I think that freshness is very important and this also naive side that you can have in some people is very interesting. Nowadays is all just a question of performance and I don't like that. There are a lot of places in the world where people are not really living a performance life. I like working with people where the issues are just human, they are not financially driven.

Is your actor, Souleymane Démé, continuing to pursue a career in films?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: Yes, my French distributor used to say Grigris changed the world because Grigris has changed the life of Souleymane Démé. He was in Cannes, right now he's on a tour in France because he got a contract, now has an agent, in Paris. As you have seen in the film, he used to dance in bars, and people used to give him small change. But since he acted in the film, now they say, you will have a contract, we will pay you and you're going to dance. So he's become a professional guy, and I think it's very important. Where I come from in Africa, it's nice that cinema could make that change.

How did the film change you as a filmmaker?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: My first distributor and the producer wanted us to be part of the Oscars, but I didn't expect anything. I thought that the Oscars, that's too far from me, they don't care about this kind of cinema... And that's not true. When you don't know people you can imagine things and they are not always right. America is just an amazing country. You think people only like commercial cinema, then you meet some and they understand very well what you are talking about.

And finally, what is your next project?

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun: It is called Indian Passion and I'm going to shoot between Chad and Mumbai.

Top image and poster courtesy of Film Movement, used with permission.

Located west of Peoria in the small town of Bartonville, the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane was originally built in 1897 in the style of a medieval castle, but was never used. Legend says the building was constructed on top of an abandoned coal mine that compromised the integrity of the building. The official explanation that was given was that having a castle like structure didn't fit the modern sensibilities of treating the "insane," and they wanted to use a cottage like design instead of having one large building. The building was demolished and rebuilt, and by 1902, the Asylum reopened and began treatment of the "incurably insane" under the direction of Dr. George Zeller.

Well respected, Dr. Zeller treated his patients using therapeutic methods for "curing the insane," instead of more experimental treatments that were popular at the time, like electro-shock therapy, lobotomies and hydro-shock therapy. He also used newspapers to educate the public about mental illness and offered training programs to nursing students. In the 1920s, Dr. Zeller published a book Befriending the Bereft, The Autobiography of George Zeller, which chronicled his daily experiences at the asylum, many of them strange and mysterious.

One such popular story took place in the asylum's nearby cemetery. Funerals were held for those whose bodies were never claimed by the family. The staff didn't know most of the patients, but out of respect, they would gather around as the coffin was lowered into a grave that was marked only by a numbered headstone. A gravedigger named Manuel A. Bookbinder often stood next to a large elm tree as the service took place. Sobbing and moaning loudly with his hat removed, Bookbinder attended every service and always displayed his mournful cries even though he never knew most of those who were being buried.

When Bookbinder finally passed, a service was held, and as his coffin was being lowered into his grave, sobbing and moaning was allegedly heard by the staff coming from the elm where he always stood. As they turned to see where the noise was coming from, they allegedly saw Bookbinder standing there, sobbing and moaning loudly as he always did. Shocked by the experience, many of the staff ran from the site; Dr. Zeller ordered his men to remove the lid of the coffin to see if it was empty, but when they did, Bookbinder's body was still in his coffin. When they turned back towards the elm, the figure reportedly vanished.

Within a few days, the elm tree that Bookbinder stood next to began to wither. Attempts were made to save the tree, but as it finally died, Dr. Zeller ordered the elm to be removed. As the ax man swung into the tree, sobbing and moaning could reportedly be heard. Unnerved by the experience, the ax man left and when another attempt was made to remove the tree, this time by fire. Once again, as a fire was started at the base of the tree, sobbing and moaning was reportedly heard. All attempts to remove the tree where halted from then on.

By the 1950s the asylum reached its peak with a population of 2,800. Then, over the course twenty years, the asylum's population began to decline, and eventually closed its doors for good in 1972. Many of the thirty three buildings were abandoned, and most were demolished; only the hospital buildings remain, and attempts to renovate those structures has been difficult.

Paranormal investigators over the years have reported seeing apparitions, shadow people, disembodied voices and doors that open and close by themselves. It's uncertain who would haunt the building -- maybe the patients, the staff or even Bookbinder himself? Maybe the patients have never left because the time they stayed there were of good memories.

When I visited the asylum one humid summer day, I definitely felt intimidated by the size of the structure. Under a gloomy sky the gray imposing building stood out from the surrounding neighborhood, void of any trees; it felt like nature itself was keeping it distance. The black windows stared down on me as I walked around taking my pictures trying to gain my courage to get closer to the building, to maybe find a window low enough to see inside. Unfortunately, at the time I was unable to see inside, but I'm hopeful I will soon return and contact the owner to get a chance to explore the inside of such a historic and legendary building.

You can view more of my work on my website: http://www.phantasmagoriaphoto.com

This was nonstop art week between the opening of the Whitney Biennial and the art shows. The Armory Show is held at Piers 92 and 94 in New York City and is perhaps the best advertised and attended art show of the week. I have gone to both the Armory Show and ADAA's the Art Show for years and it has been interesting to see the progression of each. This year I had the pleasure of visiting both shows with a well-regarded art dealer who had exhibited at the Art Show for many years and it was interesting to gain from her perspective.

The Armory Show does extensive advertising and marketing, and offers a contemporary and modern section (if you need a break visit the modern section which is much quieter and less crowded; I always like to pick up a sandwich or a chocolate chip cookie to keep me going through the exhibits as there is so much art to see). The Art Show in comparison does very little advertising and, in it's 26th year, is the nation's longest running fine art fair representing 170 of the nation's leading galleries in the fine arts. The opening night benefits the Henry Street Settlement, a not-for-profit agency that provides social service, arts and health care programs to New Yorkers of all ages. The exhibitors are all members of the Art Dealer's Association of America. What I have slowly noticed, however, is that there has been a migration from the Armory Show to the Art Show. The Armory show used to have many of the top notch blue-chip New York art galleries but many now appear at the Art Show. Some exhibit at both shows, including CRG Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, Sean Kelly Gallery, Hirshl and Adler and David Zwirner. Others are solely exhibiting at the Art Show -- 303 Gallery, Marianne Boesky, Marian Goodman, Galerie Lelong, Luhring Augustine, Metro Pictures, Pace Gallery, Salon 94, Sperone Westwater, Cheim & Read and Matthew Marks. The Art Show used to be filled with galleries from the modern period and they are disappearing, replaced by more well known contemporary galleries. I find that sad as it provided a nice contrast with the Armory Show.

A great time to visit the Art Show is Wednesday while all the VIPS are at the Armory Show -- it is quiet and meditative and affords time to look at the art. You can also walk a few blocks to visit the Whitney Biennial, which, when I was there for the opening was not quiet and didn't afford a good chance to view the art because of the crowds. I look forward to going back.

It's Women's History Month, and you'll read about all the usual bright women who helped change the world. Amelia Earhart, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, yeah, yeah, we know about their accomplishments. What about the criminal-minded women who bootlegged whiskey, rum and gin during Prohibition?

You mean 1920s-era women were not all church-going sweet belles with bonnets and daisies?

In fact, the rowdy world celebrates the likes of Al Capone, George Remus and the "Real" Bill McCoy for their booze-smuggling prowess. But, women were far better bootleggers than men because many states had laws that made it illegal for male police officers to search women. Back then, it was considered insulting to accuse a woman of such a dastardly crime.

Women bootleggers would hide flasks, even cases, on their persons and taunt male police officers. "A painted-up doll was sitting in a corner. . . . She had her arms folded and at our command she stood up. But then came the rub. She laughed at us . . . then defiantly declared to bring suit against anyone who touched her," an unnamed Ohio "Dry Agent" told the Hamilton Evening Journal in 1924.

The alcohol smuggling syndicates took advantage of these legal loopholes, recruiting women into their ranks. Even if the gangs didn't hire women bootleggers, they hired them for ride alongs to reduce searches and robberies. "No self-respecting federal agent likes to hold up an automobile containing women," according to The Boston Daily Globe.

This had become such a problem for law enforcement officials that the government feared women bootleggers outnumbered men five to one. "On the Canadian, Mexican and Florida borders, inspectors are constantly on the lookout for women bootleggers who try to smuggle liquor into the States. Their detection and arrest is far more difficult than that of male lawbreakers," said Miss Georgia Hopley, the first female Revenue agent.

And frankly, bootlegging was good money with little punishment. In 1925, a Milwaukee woman admitted to earning $30,000 a year bootlegging. She was caught and fined $200 with a month's sentence to jail, netting $29,800 for the year. Denver's Esther Matson, 22, was sentenced to church every Sunday for two years after her bootlegging trial in 1930. Even President Warren G. Harding pardoned a Michigan woman bootlegger, and Ohio governor Vic Donahey commuted a woman's sentence to five days.

It seems as though the court system and politicians just didn't have the stomach for putting mothers and grandmothers behind bars. Most women were earning money just to keep a roof over their family's head and food on the table. But there were some pistol-packing ladies who commanded empires.

These profiteer bootlegging women had cool nicknames, such as the Henhouse Bootlegger, Esther Clark, who stored liquor in her Kansas chicken coop; Moonshine Mary, who was convicted of murder for killing a man with bad liquor; Texas Guinan, aka Queen of the Night Clubs; and my favorite, Queen of the Bootleggers.

Anytime a woman was arrested for bootlegging and enjoyed a nice living, the press hailed the woman as the Queen of the Bootleggers. In my research for Whiskey Women, I found a dozen women who were called Queen of the Bootleggers.

In 1921, federal authorities found $5,000 in bootlegging cash on Mary White, a stout woman with a "swarthy" complexion and missing front teeth. After sentencing, the press asked her if she was indeed the Queen of the Bootleggers, to which she replied: "I wish the hell I was."

Gloria de Casares, wife of a wealthy Argentinean merchant, reportedly commissioned whiskey ships that stocked up on Scotch and smuggled it back into the United States. In 1925, when her five-masted General Serret, was preparing to set sail for America from London, detectives seized her ship and found 10,000 cases of Scotch. Her captain ratted Gloria out, and neither she nor her ships could travel without harassment again. English authorities once confined her to a hotel room to make sure she wouldn't make any bootlegging deals. In the process, they confiscated her clothes. "What am I to do? First I am deprived of my nationality. Now they want to deprive me of all my clothes over $25 worth. Twenty-five dollars is just about enough for a hat. Do they expect a woman to go about the world with $25 worth of clothing," Casares told the New York Times.

Casares never admitted to bootlegging, but nonetheless she was a true worthy contender for the "Queen of the Bootleggers" title.

However, the greatest female bootlegger was Gertrude "Cleo" Lythgoe, a legitimate licensed liquor wholesaler in Nassau, Bahamas. A majestic-looking woman, Cleo was mistaken for Russian, French and Spanish, but she was American with ties to a British liquor distributor.

When Prohibition became law, she moved to the Bahamas and used her Scotland connections to import the best Scotch. In the Bahamas, this liquor was loaded on the boats of The Real Bill McCoy and brought into the U.S. liquor supply. But, Cleo eventually moved into commissioning her own boats -- that's where the money was, after all. Bootlegging also came with greater risk.

Like Casares, Cleo became a target of the U.S. authorities and was even stripped searched by a female officer at a port. But, unlike the other so-called Queen of the Bootleggers, Cleo loved the limelight and gave several media interviews. She became a true media darling with newspapers from Jamaica to New York publishing her photo. Men fell in love with her and sent "love letters" to the newspapers. An Englishman, who simply signed "One Who Loves You," wrote: "I only wish you lived in England. I would marry you, as a home life would be far more suitable for you than your present occupation."

But, Cleo said frequently "I don't need a man to tell me what to do." She was independent, strong and knew how to use her charm. She could also threaten a man quite well, staving off competition with razor blades and potential rapes with pistols.

When one of her boats was seized in 1925, Cleo turned state witness on her former employees, who "stole" her boat to run liquor into the United States. This trial quietly went away, and Cleo never bootlegged again.

The Wall Street Journal estimated she was worth more than $1 million, but nobody really knows. Cleo was cryptic and never incriminated herself about her illegal dealings.

That's the thing about women bootleggers. While the men were brash and loud, killing whoever got in their way, most women were swift and rarely talked.

It just goes to show: Women can keep secrets better than men. Until they get caught.

What about that baby in Carrie Cracknell's Young Vic production of A Doll's House at BAM? You don't see too many live babies on stage these days and this one was remarkably well behaved. However besides the baby, the production has much to commend it including Hattie Morahan in what can only be defined as a phenomenological interpretation of the character of Nora, to the extent that it doesn't address her femininity or lack thereof, but the confines of her being. Actually the current production centers around both Morahan's Nora and the family friend, Dr. Rank (Steve Toussaint). There are three key scenes in this regard. In the first Nora reveals her big secret to an old childhood crony, Kristine (Caroline Martin), a widow left with "not even grief for a sense of loss to nurture." For the sake of present happiness Nora's mortgaged her future. In plain terms she's signed a fraudulent loan to accommodate a yearlong trip to Italy. Whether she's making a sacrifice for Torvald (Dominic Rowan) who has been ill or merely using his illness as an excuse is ambiguous. Supposedly it's her husband who treats her like a child addressing her as his "hamster," his "skylark," his "humming bird," his "most treasured possession," but her actions are plainly impulsive and childish and a reflection of her own ability to quell her appetites.

Ingmar Bergman's production of A Doll's House, which played at BAM a number of years ago emphasized the notion of self-realization. The Bergman Nora could have been a man as well as a woman. But the brilliance of this Nora is the way it's influenced by Hedda Gabler, introducing the death instinct in its exploration of the feminine mystique. The two scenes exploring Rank's being both occur with Nora. In the first he talks about life as fulfilling the need "to continue feeling tormented." In the second he unveils another layer of the onion. He's consumed with love and is critically ill. While Nora is lying, Rank is dying. These two leitmotifs say more about the play then the famous denouement when Nora walks out -- which considering the modernity of the interpretations provided seems almost anticlimactic. Yes, Torvald's narcissism and selfishness are revealed. Nora is just a piece of the puzzle. But so what? Is Nora any less directorial and narcissistic in her machinations. The revelation is almost Newtonian in a production that's well situated in the world of relativity.

The rotating set is like an old vinyl record revolving on a turntable and the feeling it creates is one of synchronicity. Rather than a succession of epiphanic moments, the varying scenes unfold complete and complex lives. The circularity is mirrored in Morahan's rendition of the play's famed tarantella which foreshadows her so-called liberation. The current A Doll's House, with its emphasis on subjectivity and intention, is a brilliant and out of the box approach to the Ibsen classic.

{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}

The art world focuses once again on New York as the Armory Show and its satellite fairs open this week. This year, the fair has undergone improvements, new features and a new design to up its ante in its rivalry with May’s Frieze Week. The return of high powered blue chip galleries are joined by Armory Presents, emerging galleries 10 years old or less, Focus: China curated by Philip Tinari of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, panel discussions, larger booths and a redesign by Bade Stageberg Cox. Coinciding with the last Whitney Biennial at the iconic Breuer Building, this year’s fair is shaping up to an exciting week for art lovers in New York.

Inside the fair at Pier 92 and 94. Courtesy The Armory Show.

The Armory Show has been trimming the fat since Frieze’s appearance in New York three years ago, cutting back on exhibitors in order to give galleries more space, in addition to tighter control on their curatorial choices. This year’s fair presents 203 exhibitors, 12 less than in 2012 and 71 less than in 2011. Well known blue chippers, including David Zwirner, Marianne Boesky, Michael Kohn and Lisson Gallery have continued their support of Armory Week with their reappearance, joined by other big names like Lehmann Maupin, James Cohan, October Gallery and Honor Fraser. The emerging gallery section in Pier 94, now called Armory Presents, features 17 young galleries, each exhibiting one or two person shows in larger booths -- about 30 square feet bigger than last year’s. Highlights include INVISIBLE-EXPORTS’ presentation of Scott Treleaven, Galerie Max Mayer’s Klaus Merkel and Nicolás Guagnini and Hayal Pozanti presented by Jessica Silverman Gallery.

The legacy is more important than instant gratification, 2013. Courtesy Michael Kohn Gallery.Hayal Pozanti, Sacred Canopy, 2014. Courtesy Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Philip Tinari, the Director of Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art was chosen to curate the fifth year of Armory Focus, with an eye on China. Tinari has hand-picked a roster of 17 galleries, half of which will be showing outside of Asia for the first time. Along with the exhibition, Tinari has also organized The China Symposium, incorporating eight discussions about various aspects of contemporary art in China today. The symposium, which will run Saturday and Sunday, will be the most comprehensive discussion of the Chinese art scene that New York has experienced yet. Focus: China was also the influence for this year’s commissioned artist, Xu Zhen. Working in video, installation, performance and photography, Zhen’s work has a special installation and will be the centerpiece for Focus. The Armory Show has also partnered with Citi Bike, and will feature ten bikes wrapped in a pattern piece by Zhen, which will be available in Citi Bike docks near the fair.

Xu Zhen, Under Heaven, 2014. Courtesy the Armory Show.

New York based curator and writer Isolde Brielmaier has curated a program of panel discussions for Open Forum at T: The New York Times Style Magazine Media Lounge at Pier 94 that run from Thursday through Sunday. Impressive members of all aspects of the art world will weigh in on curated issues, including artist Duane Michaels, designer Jonathan Adler, gallerist Sean Kelly, and curator Christian Viveros-Faune.

Visitors and exhibitors will notice a more sleek fair design, handled once again by New York firm Bade Stageberg Cox. With the theme of “Thresholds,” the firm has designed a space that connects one world to the next, including a special entrance to Pier 94, a layered screen VIP Lounge and a scrim-encased staircase between the Modern and Contemporary sections. In addition to the redesign, the firm has also commissioned five furniture projects that incorporate locally produced sustainable furniture. Bigger and better, the Armory Show is showing Frieze that it has no intention of backing down in its role as New York’s art fair.

“Thresholds” fair design concept. Courtesy Bade Stageberg Cox.

Along with the Armory Show are a host of other exciting goings-on during Armory Arts Week. Check out our list below.

Satellite Fairs

Scope's Pavilion at Skylight at Moynihan Station. Courtesy SCOPE Art Show. Outside Volta's venue at 82 Mercer. Courtesy VOLTA.

ADAA, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, March 5-9, Gala Preview March 4.

The 26th annual Art Dealers Association of America show will bring solo, two person and thematic exhibitions from 72 dealers to the historic Park Avenue Armory.

Independent Art Fair, 548 West 22nd Street, March 6-9.

For its fifth year, Independent returns to its original location, with 50 international galleries, including Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Elizabeth Dee and White Columns.

SCOPE Art Show, 312 West 33rd, March 6-9.

For its second year at the historic Moynihan Station, SCOPE returns with 68 international galleries, 8 special programs, and a gala benefiting Chashama. The fair will be the second for new exhibitors’ relations director, Katelijne de Backer, formerly of The Armory Show.

Spring Break Art Show, 233 Mott Street, March 6-9.

The curator-driven fair enlivens an old school in Soho, transforming the former class rooms into art venues from 39 gifted curators.

VOLTA, 82 Mercer Street, March 6-9.

Exclusively presenting solo artists projects, the fair’s 8th edition is the Armory Show’s little sister, with shared VIP access and shuttles. 100 international galleries will present 100 solo exhibitions in the Mercer space.

Auctions

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (MILK), 1970-1980. Courtesy Christie’s Auction House. David Salle, Painting for HCA, 2007. Courtesy Phillips Auction House.

Christie’s First Open Sale, Rockefeller Plaza, March 6.

Offering 343 Post-War and Contemporary works including painting, photography and sculpture, Christie’s First Open Sales invite new and established collectors to bid on both established and emerging artists, including three works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the Alexis Adler collection.

Phillips Under the Influence Sale, 450 Park Avenue, March 7.

Also combining emerging and big name contemporary artists, the upcoming auction includes pieces by David Salle, KAWS, Os Gemeos and Walead Beshty.

Museum Shows

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler (Actors) (detail), 2013. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art. Zhang Huan, Family Tree, 2001. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, 945 Madison Avenue. March 7-May 25.

This year’s biennial takes on outside influences, as three curators from outside of the museum were invited to curate the show. Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA), Anthon Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), and Michelle Grabner (artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago) each have their own floors to flex their curatorial muscle.

Isa Genzken: Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street. Through March 10.

Making its American debut, the expansive 30 retrospective of one of the most influential female artists in history closes just after Armory week on March 10th.

Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Avenue. Through April 6, 2014.

Carrying on the Armory Show’s Focus: China, Ink Art is the first major exhibition of Chinese contemporary art to ever be mounted by the museum, including 70 works by 35 Chinese artists.

Gallery Shows

Laurie Simmons, Blue Hair/Red Dress/Green Room/Arms Up, 2014. Courtesy Salon 94 Bowery. Logan Hicks, The Rescue, 2014. Courtesy the artist.

Opening Thursday:

Sarah Lucas, NUD NOB, Gladstone Gallery, 515 W 24th, 6-8 pm.

Using found objects and available materials, Lucas’ work draws from art history, cultural stereotypes and British tabloid culture to create sculptural works addressing gender, sexuality and identity.

Dan Graham, Danh Vo, Giuseppe Penone and Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street suite 301, 6-8 pm.

Goodman brings a group show of her top artists to wow the Armory week crowds.

Opening Friday:

Laurie Simmons, Kigurumi, Dollars and How We See,Salon 94 (Bowery), 243 Bowery, 6-8 pm.

Simmons explores Kigurimi in her new body of photographs, a Japanese cosplay that uses doll-like masks and latex body suits into public life, also known as Dollers and Kiggers.

Logan Hicks, Love Never Saved Anything, PMM Pop Up Space, 154 Stanton Street. 6:30 – 9 pm.

Known for his incredibly detailed technique of layering up to 15 stencils for one image, Hicks’ new paintings explore figurative underwater imagery, and will also be shown with his haunting photographs of the artist’s daredevil urban exploration.

Jim Campbell, Jim Campbell: New Work, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, 505 W 24th Street, 6-8 pm.

The new media artist’s latest exhibition will focus on his recent series of sculptural light installations.

If juggling the schedules of seven children, a wildly successful music career, a husband and a huge annual fundraiser for the local Children's Hospital sounds like your "sweet spot" then you and Sara Evans have a lot in common. When I recently spoke with her and asked what song in her soon to be released album, Slow Me Down, most aligned with her current state of mind, she answered immediately: "The most light hearted song I wrote for this album is called Sweet Spot and it reflects just how I am feeling about my life right now. I feel happy and settled." What a wonderful way to experience life.

Named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People," Sara Evans has turned the delicate balance of marriage and family, career and charitable giving into an art form. In 2008, she married former pro quarterback-turned-sportscaster Jay Barker and added four more kids to her brood. Part of her magic, Sara tells me, is surrounding herself with family who seconds as her support staff. Her brother, Matt plays the bass in their band, and her sister-in-law, KK is her stylist and go-to girl. KK and Sara also write a blog together called A Real Fine Place that chronicles their lives and loves on and off the tour bus. Having immediate family with her wherever she goes made it much easier for Sara to bring her three children on tour as they were growing up. Combining the weekly schedules of her three kids, now ages 14, 11, and 9, with their four step siblings, ages 15, 14, 12 and 12 makes touring with Mama Sara now more of a weekend and summertime activity. Sister-in-law KK has a tag along on tour, too -- her 2-year-old daughter, Milly, is now a part of the family travel bus.

With Sara, family comes first, but it has not deterred her musical stardom or success. She was pregnant with her eldest son when her first big hit came out. Sara remembers wondering how she would be able to successfully combine making music with motherhood. Determined not to leave her baby behind, she found inspiration from other country musicians that brought their children right along on tour.

Sara expresses pride in the choices she makes each day -- like her decision to make Birmingham, Alabama home. She has found the right balance as country singer, mom, wife and philanthropist. Although Sara couldn't resist becoming the first country artist to compete on ABC's Dancing with the Stars, as a real "people pleaser" it has taken enormous willpower for her to say no to many opportunities that would take her just too far from home.

But Sara finds plenty to do at home in Alabama. Along with husband Jay, she organizes Rock the South, a festival that raises money for the Children's Hospital of Birmingham and Alabama Forever (an organization that helps rebuild areas of Alabama devastated by tornados). Just last year, 50,000 country music fans came together at Rock the South, and this year's festival will be on June 20th at Heritage Park in Cullman, Alabama.

On her newest album, Slow Me Down, Sara is excited to share with her fans the duets she sings with country stars Gavin DeGraw and Isaac Gray. Also Vince Gill has added his bit of magical harmony to one of the songs. This newest release is a fine portrait of her life and loves. Sara has figured out how to keep country music making and motherhood in perfect pitch.

For more official Sara Evans news go to www.saraevans.com

co-authored by Ellen Dobbyn-Blackmore

Angelina Massa performing in Grieg Piano Concerto with Ballet Academy East. Choreography by Rex Wheeler, photo by Rosalie O'Connor.

Ballet Academy East is well known as one of New York City's top ballet schools. Its alumni fill the rosters at dance companies all across the country. Less well known is that its students also excel at academics. Darla Hoover, Artistic Director of BAE, and Julia Dubno, the founder and Director, are not content to just train dancers. They measure success in helping to make their students better people. Many BAE students are on their school's honor rolls and they regularly go on to top colleges including Harvard, Columbia University, Vassar, University of Pennsylvania and others.

BAE's recent performances at the Alvin Ailey Center showcased the students in diverse works with original choreography and there was a seamless quality to the shows. From the top students down to the novices, they moved with stylistic unity, confidence and clarity. BWV 1063, choreographed by David Morse, amply displayed the strong talents of the advanced students, especially Zoe Stein who commanded attention with her quiet, composed elegance. This was sophisticated dancing that made the students reach beyond their comfort level and they met the challenge.

A Modest Suite set to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was a comedic work made by Kelly Ann Sloan to present the younger students who moved with no less authority and confidence than the older ones. The Amethyst Fugue, by Stacy Cadell was ably led by Marc Pierre and Verity Azaria. Jenna Lavin choreographed the closing Ever, a lyrical piece that gave Arielle Friedman and Cassidy McAndrew their turn to shine. The school, as a whole, has a tremendous esprit de corps and they danced with the sort of assured confidence that is a pleasure to watch.

Among the dancers featured was Angelina Massa who will soon be graduating from Bronxville High School and moving on to college at Harvard. Many little girls start in ballet with dreams of tutus and tiaras, but only a few end up as professional dancers. Learning ballet at the advanced level that can lead to becoming a genuine tutu-wearing ballerina requires a level of commitment that few youngsters are willing to make. For those who don't end up in a ballet company, they find the training is still valuable and changes their lives for the better. Angelina Massa epitomizes the value of ballet training as preparation for life. Following the performances at Alvin Ailey Theater, Massa talked about her experience at Ballet Academy East.

Andrew Blackmore-Dobbyn: To be a dancer means a lot of sacrifice and a lot of commitment -- what do you feel like you had to give up for all these years of dance training?

Angelina Massa: Definitely a lot of sleep. I rarely sleep enough with all the school that I do, too. But probably more, just the normal high school social life. It's such a time commitment. After all these hours of dancing, like on Saturdays, when other people are at parties, you're so exhausted so you can't go to all the usual social events like other high schoolers. There's no sports or clubs or any of that stuff. You have to give it up.

AB-D: What you think about other dance schools and how they run in comparison to BAE?

AM: I think what sets BAE apart is the supportive, fun-loving community. There is a sense of fun competition. Everybody is working together to make everyone else better. You're inspired by seeing other people improve. One of the things that made me feel really welcome when I first came was how, when I improved on a certain step, people would clap. I never see that at other places. It's not very competitive. Some people think that ballet is a cutthroat kind of thing. Here at BAE we are actually genuinely happy for people when they improve or get a part.

AB-D: After all the training, all the time you spend in class perfecting the tendus, pliés and all the sacrifices, what does performing mean to you?

AM: Performing is my favorite thing. After all the hours that you spend perfecting everything, it's so nice to be seen and to show the audience how much you've worked on everything. In this last show, we were backstage talking about how crazy it is that we've been working on a piece since October, and it's only seen four times. Having just those few moments after so long in preparing for it makes it so special. This is what we've been working toward. It gives you something to be proud of. It's your moment to show it to everybody. I love that.

AB-D: As you draw to a close with your BAE experience, what do you think you're going to miss?

AM: I think the people, the teachers, are so amazing here and all of the friends I've made here at BAE are so supportive, and I'm going to miss being with them for so many hours every day. It's so much time that we spend together. We have this understanding with each other from doing this rare art form and we understand how much dedication and discipline goes into it. I'm definitely going to miss that.

AB-D: While you might be at the top of the academic heap, actually everyone at BAE does pretty well in school. Is there something about ballet training or the school culture that makes all of you do better in school?

AM: I think that, first of all, it's time management. We get very good at managing our time because of all the ballet that we do. The other things that you develop, like the great discipline, when you're working on the same things every day and it's very hard, you get really good at pinpointing the things that you need to work on in order to achieve your goals, a little bit each day. Discipline and time management are the biggest things that dancers have to learn to do well.

AB-D: With all the time that you've put into dancing so far, are there opportunities to dance at Harvard?

AM: They have the Harvard Ballet Company. It does really cool ballets... like they've done Balanchine ballets. It's not too much of a time commitment. Not as much as I do now. That will be a bit of a transition, but it will be great because I can continue in ballet while at school.

AB-D: When you were an eighth grader coming in to BAE, were you planning on becoming a professional ballet dancer?

AM: Yes, that was my dream. Now that I've gotten into college, I've realized that it's not a failure at all not to have become a professional dancer because I've managed to keep up with a very rigorous school schedule and a very rigorous ballet schedule. I'm going to a great school that I know I'm going to love, and I've learned so much about discipline and time management, all these things carry into academics as well. I know that it's not realistic for me to become a professional dancer, but I've totally accepted that, and I'm so happy that I came here. I don't regret any of the hours I've spent in ballet. I'm so happy I did it. From the beginning, Darla (Hoover) teaches everyone not to just be good at technique. You have to show your personality and your confidence. Everybody here does that and coming here, I was inspired by the community and the atmosphere.

AB-D: So, it changes the way you walk through the world?

AM: Yes! You have this posture. One of the biggest things is that Darla always wants us to be proud of ourselves wherever we go. In the lower levels, she teaches them from the very beginning to exude energy and confidence. You really develop that here.

I've gotten so much from BAE. Learning to just look at myself and not compare myself to everybody else is huge because everyone has a different trajectory. In ballet especially, because you're always looking in the mirror wearing just a leotard and tights, it's easy to compare yourself to others. At BAE we're all very supportive of each other, and it's taught me not to get caught up in what everyone else is doing. If I just work on myself, I can improve at my own rate.

AB-D: Has it made you more accepting of yourself?

AM: Yes. With ballet in general, it's hard to be accepting of yourself because you don't want to get complacent. This school has made me see how much there is to improve all the time, even though I know I can't be perfect in every way. It's made me more accepting of myself.

AB-D: Has it put you more in touch with your inner self?

AM: I think performing mostly does that. The feeling that you get on stage is indescribable. It's kind of spiritual, I think. Ever since I decided that I was not going to try to be a professional ballet dancer, performing and taking ballet classes took on a different dimension. It takes pressure off. I didn't stop working or anything but it's removed unnecessary doubt in myself or lack of confidence. It's made me think about the big picture of why I do it and why I love it.

AB-D: What will it be like to do your last performance with BAE?

AM: Last year, after the spring performance, so many of our classmates were leaving, and everyone in my level stood on the stage hugging each other and sobbing. They finally brought up the curtain and said: "You guys have to leave."

AB-D: How do you think it will affect you when you leave BAE?

AM: I think it's going to be really hard to make that adjustment because BAE structures my life in so many ways that when I don't have this in my life for so many hours each day, I might not know what to do with myself. I've come to love the teachers here so much and the piano players and the studio itself... I'm so attached. Having it all taken away after this year is going to be really hard for me.

Ballet Academy East Slideshow, all photos courtesy of BAE.

Tamara P. Cedre has long been concerned that within the photographic experience women have always been portrayed within a male gaze. She felt that doing so objectifies women, and she wondered if her portrayal of women would be any different from the countless images that have gone before, should she start photographing what she calls the "lived moments" of a woman's life.

Looking at her work I'd say the answer is a resounding yes!

Tamara Cedre's work is raw, honest and unflinching. There is no missing the struggle for wholeness -- maybe even wholesomeness -- in these women she is photographing. One feels inescapably caught up in the moments of the life of her subjects, and, even walking away, there is the sense that something of who these women are walks off alongside you.

I first became aware of Cedre's haunting photographs and video work when I visited, in the summer of 2013, her thesis show at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Here were women, in her large riveting photographs, who were caught up in the moment-to-moment living of their lives. These women were not romanticized in any way, but rather stood there, in all their disillusionment, sadness and complexity, staring right back out at me. I could not stop looking. Indeed, I wanted to know more about the woman who had created, as another viewer of the photographs described her work, this matriarchy.

While Cedre was born on mainland United States, both her parents hail from the island of Puerto Rico. Though she does not consciously evoke her Puerto Rican identity in her work, the island and that island-culture remain very important to her. Indeed Cedre's mother, who is presently having end-of-life care in a hospice, was the original source of her work. "In losing my mother," the artist said, "I feel like I am losing so much of who I am. My mother was the last one in our family to speak Spanish. She connected us, my sister and I, to that world, that Puerto Rican world." She paused, then continued. "My mother and my sister were the first subjects of my photographs. I photographed them as a means of getting to know myself better. From those close family members, I could move on to photographing other women."

In her latest body of work, entitled "She Leaves Behind," Cedre has photographed women she is familiar with, pulling out various strands and fragments of their lives. "These women are not models, but rather people I know," she explained. "I follow these individuals around, sometimes for days and weeks and even months at a time, photographing them. I have taken long walks with some of them in the woods, talking and photographing them. It is true that the work is constructed, because I am editing from the images that I take, but I want to think that there is a complexity to these images -- of one woman looking at another woman, and showing another woman -- that I often do not see in the photographic experience."

The photographic experience. It is a term Cedre uses often to describe her work, since she works not only in photography but also in video, installation and sound, as well. She seeks to slow moments down, to try to still or even freeze a moment, because she believes that it is in slowing things down that we can really see what is happening.

Maybe because she is facing the loss of her own mother, Cedre is preoccupied with not only where the women whom she photographs are going in their lives, but also what they leave behind. Consequently, her work has evolved into an examination of not only the women, but, as well, the objects that they cherish. "I have now gotten to the stage," the artist reflected, "in my ongoing work in 'She Leaves Behind,' where I am now photographing the physical things that these women treasure or just what they have around them. I photograph these objects as if I was photographing people. I think of all the ways that people imbue meanings into objects. I think of how, for example, my grandmother had this porcelain rose that was so important to her. How that porcelain rose became a replacement in some ways for individuals in her life. The things that she had loved and lost or was in the process of losing all became wrapped up in that porcelain rose."

In photographing the objects that women value, the artist seeks to concretize that which is fleeting and ephemeral; that which we think we are holding in our hands when we hold onto something tangible. Her works are evocative and highly resonant. Yet there is no overarching meta-narrative to the work, and this is precisely as she wants it.

"I feel in this work as if I am charting new territory. I am not sure what it all means yet, but I am very much caught up in the act of looking. So much of photography today is about speed and quantity. That is not my preoccupation. Rather, I want to see and look and identify with the woman that I am photographing. There is a place for photography outside of documentary, and in this body of work, that is the space that I am exploring. I want to slow down the moments of a life to really see what is happening."

In her latest work Tamara Cedre does just that. Giving us moments to stop and think and breathe and wonder. Giving us time to claim one woman's photographic gaze through another woman's life.

Until next time.

Since it's impossible to stay on top of absolutely everything on view from one year to the next in burgeoning New York City theater, I'm only now catching up with Robert Askins's Hand to God, at the Lucille Lortel, after its three sold-out runs during the 2011-12 Ensemble Studio Theatre season. So coming upon an astonishing play featuring an astonishing performance by Steven Boyer -- both of which have already won Obies -- was delayed for me but surely not in any way lessened.

The delight at encountering such excellence -- including Moritz von Stuelpnagel's direction and the playing by other cast members Geneva Carr, Marc Kudisch, Michael Oberholtzer and Sarah Stiles--is so extensive that it's a challenge to know where to start distributing the praise.

Maybe a toss of a coin will help: heads for the play, tails for Boyer's contribution.

It's come up heads for Askins's play, one of the best on the subject of religion I've ever seen -- and therefore one of the most genuinely religious plays I've ever witnessed. The setting is a church basement in a semi-rural Texas town where Margery (Carr) is attempting to make progress on a puppet program that will be performed by her timid son Jason (Boyer), troublemaker Timothy (Oberholtzer) and nice girl Jessica (Stiles), the three of them forming The Christketeers.

Getting nowhere with the trio and trying to make sure mannerly but persistently on-the-make Pastor Greg (Kudisch) gets nowhere with her, Margery has her hands full. There's foul-mouthed, on-the-make-as-well Timothy and disturbed Jason, whose left hand and forearm are literally full of Tyrone, a furious puppet. Anyone familiar with stories of dummies that take over their manipulators -- the 1946 Dead of Night, starring Michael Redgrave, is a precursor -- knows about these situations.

Jason, a shy lad uneasy with Jessica's well-meaning advances, is slowly sacrificing his autonomy to the fire-and-brimstone-spouting Tyrone. ("Tyrant" is more like it, of course). At the same time, Margery and Greg are losing their hold on societally prescribed composure. The major suspense is whether Jason can be saved from his possessing demon, but what will happen to the others remains at stake as well.

Jessica, a savvy young miss introduces a partial solution to Jason's predicament by way of a female puppet as randy as Tyrone. And if the sight of puppets having a wild sexual encounter while their presumed handlers engage in rational discourse doesn't make spectators laugh themselves silly, there's something wrong with them -- not with the superbly imaginative Askins.

Notions such as "demons" and "salvation" are at the core of Askins's beautifully disguised treatise. Having begun his spell-binding work with a prologue during which Tyrone delivers a brief history of good and evil, the playwright goes after the catastrophic damage religion has done over the millennia by perpetuating the belief that external forces are responsible for the sins of man and woman. He contends that created deities (God, Jesus, Lucifer) mustn't be held accountable. What's required is that men and women understand they must take responsibility for their own actions.

Askins sees repression as one of religion's worst ramifications. Of the five Hand to God (what an apt title!) characters, all but Jessica have repressed their feelings. It's that repression and the rage resulting from it that's the true besetting sin, Askins insists.

Margery, whose husband died two years earlier, is holding back her fury, and when she unleashes it in a couple of libidinous tussles with Timothy, she disgraces herself. Pastor Greg tamps his feelings down and can only begin to let them free. Timothy, who initially seems to edit nothing, is actually acting out because he doesn't know how else to keep his amorous impulses towards Margery under wraps.

The most repressed of the lot is Jason, which is why his dilemma is endlessly juicy. It's certainly why no one with anything less than the brilliance Boyer brings to the role could even begin to take on the assignment. Not only does he have to play the monumentally repressed Jason, but he repeatedly must switch in an instant to Tyrone's gravelly rage. While Tyrone rules Jason's left hand -- i. e. Boyer's -- Boyer holds in his right hand the sticks that manage Tyrone's long furry arms. (Marte Johanne Ekhougen designed Tyrone with his wide mouth full of shark-like teeth.)

Boyer is expert at executing all this. He knows the role and its inordinate demands inside and out by now, but that only begins to explain his uncanny aptitude. When someone this breath-taking arrives, a reviewer automatically has an impulse to recall the last time he was so startled by a relative newcomer's performance. What came to my mind was Al Pacino in Israel Horovitz's 1968 stunner, The Indian Wants the Bronx.

Everything about this Hand to God return is well-done. Carr may have her best role yet as the troubled Margery, and she doesn't let the woman down. Stiles, one of the funniest young actors around, brings smart-girl charm to Jessica. Her copulation puppetry is a howl. Oberholtzer's Timothy is a great blend of the comic and the menacing.

And is the highly rated Kudisch ever rated highly enough? In the past year or so, he's been an outstanding Claudius in the Yale Rep's Hamlet, a top-notch Tartuffe in the Westport Country Playhouse production of the Moliere comedy and one half of the entertaining Holiday Boys. (Jeffry Denman is the other half). He's got leading-man good looks and character-actor skills, and once again he employs everything he's got (okay, he doesn't sing this time) for everything it's worth.

Beowulf Boritt designed the clever set, the walls of which bend from time to time to reveal other environments. As the basic surrounding, they're covered with posters and drawings dedicated to the glory of God and his only begotten son. Later they're covered with Tyrone's graffiti and serve as yet another opportunity for belly laughs by patrons who relish the iconoclastic. Sydney Maresca's costumes, Jill BC Du Boff's sound and Jason Lyons's lighting (one dying-bulb effect in particular) add to the immense pleasure.

As Hand to God races along, fragments of things like The Exorcist, Carrie, The Book of Mormon and Sigmund Freud's Civilizations and Its Discontents spring to mind. Yet, at the end of the day, it's its own extremely special thing.

It's hard to avoid the tender and occasionally tasty tentacles of the service industry. For anyone who likes to dine in restaurants, stops to have a drink at a bar, or hangs out at a café, service with a smile (which was once considered the norm) has increasingly become a perk.

Some people hunger for new experiences at the trendiest dining spots; others find themselves craving comfort food served to them by comforting comrades. Cheers (the popular television series that ran for 11 years) boasted a tagline that identified it as the place "where everybody knows your name." Frank Bruni's charming article in the New York Times entitled Familiarity Breeds Content captured the essence of developing an ongoing relationship with a favorite restaurant's menu and staff.

But for those who pour the drinks, deliver food to the table, and have to deal with a wide spectrum of dysfunctional behavior from people whose generosity and good will directly affect their incomes, customers are often pegged by the number of the table at which they've been seated or the percentage of the bill they leave behind in the form of a tip. Sometimes, as in the opening scene of 1956's hit musical, The Most Happy Fella, a simple gesture can pave the lyrical road to a complex romance.

Each year, as I attend performances at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, I spot a series of attractions that share an unintentional common bond. 2013's theme was unmistakable: intelligent women struggling to maintain their dignity while working for tips in the service industry.

What made last year's trio of monologues so interesting was that one took place in a bar, one took place in a restaurant that was attached to a bar, and one took place in a restaurant without a bar. Each service situation offered up a variety of wounded egos, abusive working conditions, and thick-skinned damsels who were ready and able to dish out as much distress as they received from their customers.

* * * * * * * * * *

Let's start with the basics: a female bartender who has kicked a nasty cocaine habit and is now trying to serve and mollify a motley group of manipulative men with various alcohol-related behavioral problems.

One man is an effete snob who thinks that a free round of drinks can solve everyone's problems.

One man is a former pugilist who's been cut off from being served alcohol at the insistence of the bar's owner, but who cannot afford to lose face among his friends.

One man is an obnoxious Italian tourist who can't understand why a female bartender would insist on seeing a piece of identification that proves he's of legal drinking age.

One man is always trying to prove his machismo while telling the bartender how much he "respects" her.

Finally, there is the smarmy bar owner who won't hesitate to sabotage his bartender's authority as long as he can remind everyone that he owns the place and considers himself a local hero.

Jill Vice in The Tipped and the Tipsy

In her monologue, The Tipped and the Tipsy (which was honored as one of the best attractions at the 2013 San Francisco Fringe Festival), Jill Vice takes on the physical and vocal characteristics of her clientele at Happy's Bar in an impressive array of body language and vocal talent. Without using any props, she describes the never-ending power plays from customers, the pressures to keep them happy, and shares the challenge of trying to rescue the alcoholic boxer who helped her break a nasty coke habit when he, himself, can't risk having another drink.

Jill Vice in The Tipped and the Tipsy

Vice's performance is robust, her material well written, and her characters quite memorable. She earns the audience's sympathy as a tough broad trying to protect an alcoholic senior from his own worst enemy: himself.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alexa Fitzpatrick, whose monologue is entitled Serving Bait to Rich People, describes what it was like to come to the sad realization that, although she had a solid background in endocrinology, she could earn more money tending bar. An avowed ski bum, she ended up in Aspen where celebrities and other wealthy tourists flocked to the expensive sushi restaurant where she tended bar.

Alexa Fitzpatrick in Serving Bait To Rich People

Aspen, however, is a small town that relies on the service industry. While some celebrities are nice to her and prove to be decent tippers, others can be astonishingly rude and cheap.

Fitzpatrick's performance style is much more like stand-up comedy. While she gets plenty of laughs, many of them come at her own expense as she describes how one's expectations are quickly diminished with more exposure to the local dating scene. She also delivers a scathing analysis of the various pick-up lines men like to use when trying to hit on a bartender (often to no avail).

* * * * * * * * * *

There were multiple reasons why I found Parly Girl to be the most compelling of the Fringe Festival's three monologues about women in the service industry. First and foremost was the fact that, at the performance I attended, there were barely six people in the audience (an actor's nightmare).

But Sandra Brunell Neace had quite a tale to tell. What set her monologue apart from the other two?

Whereas Jill Vice and Alexa Fitzpatrick are attractive women who can easily be categorized as an "actress/model/waitress," Neace's bulky frame, pouty face, and chip-on-the-shoulder attitude place her at a distinct disadvantage when serving the public.

Whereas Vice and Fitzpatrick's efforts were primarily focused on dealing with male customers, most of Neace's clientele were women (some with kids in strollers, some with dietary restrictions, but almost all of them with "first world" issues).

Whereas, because of their looks and charisma, Vice and Fitzpatrick rarely had to worry about trying to survive on minimum wage, the plainness of Neace's presentation and the pathetic cheapness of her customers proved to be a distinct disadvantage.

Whereas Vice and Fitzpatrick did not necessarily see their bartending work as a career obstacle, Neace had moved to New York with high hopes of becoming an actress.

Whereas Vice and Fitzpatrick were experienced at fending off men's sexual advances, Neace's naiveté played a critical role in her failing to understand that her boss's attempt to get her to make a porn film with him was actually his way of covering for a complete lack of social skills.

Neace helps to put a pained face on the lives of many people in the service industry who are barely scraping by while having to keep their mouths shut as they try to please wealthier people who can't stop moaning and bitching about the hardships and injustices of their daily lives. As a result, her narrative finds its dramatic strength in a much deeper level of financial despair and a growing inability to tolerate fools while keeping a smile frozen on her face.

Sandra Brunell Neace in Parly Girl

Just when Parly Girl begins to feel like a sad sack's tale of utter hopelessness and helplessness, Neace's solid writing explains how her personal vulnerability helped her to take charge of a transformative moment that rekindled her soul, reframed her ambitions, and allowed her to find a moment of grace by picking up the tab for two women who had just lost their father. It's a beautiful transition, which this talented writer/actor handles with the wisdom of a woman who has experienced far too much misery and emotional pain of her own to trivialize the aching heart of another.

To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape

Each year Art Dubai, the leading international art fair in the MENASA (Middle East/North Africa/South Asia), presents its Marker program. The program focuses either on relevant and significant themes or else geography. Marker 2014 will be curated by the artist collective Slavs and Tatars. (They will also have a show of their own, "Language Arts," at The Third Line in Dubai.) Its geographical focus will be Central Asia and the Caucasus. Featuring five booth exhibitions (and the work of about 20 artists) as well as education and research programs, it will broach issues of faith, identity and language.

Slavs and Tatars invited five art spaces to participate in this year's program. The spaces feature state institutions, galleries, and artist-run initiatives. These spaces are ArtEast (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan); Asia Art (Almaty, Kazakhstan); North Caucasus Branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) (Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia); Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project (Tbilisi, Georgia); and YARAT Contemporary Art Space (Baku, Azerbaijian).

Slavs and Tatars conceived a "regime of portraiture" that would include faces, places, and traces that ranged from mid-twentieth painting to contemporary drawings and sculpture. This they did via the creation of a chaikhaneh or Eurasian tea salon that will be the starting point for stories that extend far beyond portraiture to the politics of identity.

JS: You obviously began this project long before the region became the focus of global news headlines. What besides your collective's own focus on the interplay between Slavs, Caucasians, and Central Asians attracted you to the art of Central Asia and the Caucasus in the first place?

S&T: Well, it depends on your perspective. We'd argue Central Asia and the Caucasus have been the focus of global headlines (or the equivalent) for well over a millennium, with its relatively remote status in the 20th century being the exception not the rule. Whether it's the Islamic renaissance that produced Ibn Sina (the global canon of medicine until the 18th century), Al-Khwarezm (the founder of algebra) or Al-Beruni (modern day astronomy), the coveted silk route, or the Great Game between the Russians and English, this region was to the 19th century what the Middle East is to the 20th and early 21st.

As artists, we've been interested in excavating, redeeming, resuscitating certain thought patterns, behaviors, and ideas associated with the region but were never particularly interested in the art, until the invitation to curate Marker.

JS: What were your criteria as you narrowed the number of art spaces down to five?

S&T: We were keen that the selection of spaces speak to the very varied nature of the arts infrastructure in the region-so we have an online archive (the Astral Nomads project of Asia Arts) on an equal footing with a physical bricks and mortar state institution (NCCA, Vladikavkaz)-that is the result ironically of expediency, of a dearth of proper institutions or a market.

JS: How many spaces did you initially consider?

S&T: To be honest, we did not set out to invite spaces or even artists per se, but rather were driven by our interest in work which disrupted the preconceptions one might have with this region. So that is why you will see very little overt Soviet iconography: if people are familiar with the Caucasus and Central Asia, then it's as satellite regions of the USSR. We are not whitewashing the Soviet influence but rather are more interested in the long view of history.

JS: Did politics and religion affect your choices?

S&T: The context of the Gulf was a compelling reason for us: it is safe to say we probably wouldn't have accepted an invitation to curate art from Central Asia and the Caucasus for a venue in, say, London or Berlin. The Caucasus and Central Asia and the Gulf share a relatively recent history of nation-building: 1960s and 1970s for much of the Gulf and the early 1990s for the former Soviet sphere. But perhaps most importantly, the Gulf has a compelling imperative to consider the role of these regions in the development of a pluralist, even modernist Islam. As mentioned, it can be argued that the Golden Age of Islam happened not in the Gulf or only in Baghdad or Cairo but equally in Bukhara, Khwarezm, and Samarqand. Or more recently in Tashkent and even Tbilisi where the moderate modernists such as the Jadidists inaugurated crucial reforms in educational policy. Or Baku home to half the world's oil supply before World War II and the discovery of oil in the Middle East.

JS: Do you believe that the Marker work shown at Art Dubai, in the context of global culture, is "historically neutral and spatially meaningless"?

S&T: Absolutely not.

JS: Is there anything political about a "regime of portraiture"?

S&T: In so far as regime implies a ruling or prevailing system, yes.

JS: Would you please elaborate on how you can up with idea to frame the work within the idea of a chaikhaneh or Eurasian tea salon?

S&T: There's often been an emphasis on seating in the spaces we produce as artists, whether our Beyonsense at the MoMA or Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz at Sharjah a couple years ago. but also the idea is that ideally, this project is supposed to become a departure point for larger discussions. As you know, we are not interested in art as an end in itself. It has to speak to the larger issues facing us. We are shameless about the instrumentalization of art in the services of something else, and for us work should be instrumental to larger discussions around ideas and questions of faith, identity, nation building, preservation of history and so on and so forth.

Since this region seems remote not only to the western world but also to the Middle East, we decided to start with the basics. If a place remains unknown, impenetrable or a blind spot, then we should begin by familiarizing our audience - meaning the Gulf, mainly, in the context of Art Dubai - with the notion of representation and figuration in this region within the space of the teahouse. Representation is of course a fraught concept, not only in Islam: we tend to look to it order our universe only to find ourselves rebelling against this very order.

JS: In light of both the work you've done for Marker 2014 as well as the overall efforts put forth by Art Dubai, what do you think are the benefits of regional art fairs like Art Dubai for artists, collectors, galleries, museums, and the viewing public?

S&T: Art fairs are perhaps the exemplary modernist accelerator in so far as they establish and extend new networks within pre-existing ones. Our chaikhaneh or tea salon aims to slow down the tempo, this frenzy somewhat, offering visitors a space to contemplate the works, to engage with others. If you look at the instability across the region at large, though, Dubai's role and Art Dubai is a perfect case in point, serve as ideal and urgent venues of exchange between those from the region or interested in it. Sadly, you simply couldn't organize a similar scale event today in Beirut, Tehran, Cairo or Damascus, for a number of very distinct reasons.

JS: Do you believe that art fairs can truly further the discussions of the role of art in contemporary society? How?

S&T: Art Dubai is unique amongst art fairs in its editorial emphasis, as platform for an exchange of ideas as much as of works or objects. The fair's emphasis and investment in the Global Art Forum is a perfect example: the people we've met in Dubai during the fair the past couple years, from UN policy thinkers to writers, dentists to artists, are a testament to the discursive energy that can result directly or indirectly from a fair.

JS: If you step back a moment, do you believe in a global culture or is culture best understood as a mosaic of regional artistic contributions?

S&T: To quote Hamid Dabashi: "Every home has its abroad."

JS: Showcasing the region under the auspices of Art Dubai, what's the single most important message you want Marker 2014 to broadcast, not just to the Middle East art world but also to the world at large?

S&T: If you look at how the Muslim world is defined today, it uses an old cold-war leftover of an acronym, MENASA (Middle East North Africa and South Asia). If the Caucasus and Central Asia were included in this moniker, it would do wonders not only for accuracy but for the celebration of pluralism and complexity sorely missing from the juggernauts of revolutionary Shi'ism or Gulf-based Wahabbism.

Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz (installation view), 2011. 10th Sharjah Biennale. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Rappaport.

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