American Families in Crisis

July 4, 2014, 9:57 pm

≫ Next: First Nighter: 'Henry IV Part I' and 'Henry IV Part II' on Screen With Antony Sher

If one were to draw up a quick list of important American plays that deal with families in crisis, I'm pretty sure the following 10 dramas would rank near the top.

Awake and Sing! (1935) by Clifford Odets.

The Little Foxes (1939) by Lillian Hellman.

The Glass Menagerie (1944) by Tennessee Williams.

Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) by Eugene O'Neill.

The Subject Was Roses (1964) by Frank D. Gilroy.

A Delicate Balance (1966) by Edward Albee.

Buried Child (1978) by Sam Shepard.

Fences (1983) by August Wilson.

August: Osage County (2007) by Tracy Letts.

While each of these dramas deals with weighty issues, it's no surprise to hear the audience frequently laughing during the performance. Is it because one man's tragedy is another man's comedy? Or because human beings, in their most fallible moments, are a constant source of wonder and entertainment?

Following her trip to the magical land of Oz, Dorothy Gale learned that there's no place like home. But in some dramas, a threat to a family's real estate (whether or not the actual residence has been a warm and loving home) can provide the catalyst that launches a painful family conflict. In 2010, Bruce Norris brought new meaning to that theory with Clybourne Park, a play set in the home purchased by Chicago's Lena Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959).

In Clybourne Park, audiences first see the home in 1959, as its previous owners are preparing to make way for the Younger family to move in and then, again, in 2009 after the neighborhood has gone through several waves of gentrification. Like most dramas that involve a conflict of interests, you can learn a lot by following the money.

* * * * * * * * * *

The California Shakespeare Theater opened its 40th season with a deeply moving production of A Raisin in the Sun. At the time of its world premiere, Lorraine Hansberry was the first African American (and African American female) playwright to have a play produced on Broadway. In the two years following its opening, Hansberry's drama was translated into 35 languages.

Lorraine Hansberry

Much of the play's tension comes from her experience as an eight-year-old girl, watching what happened when her father, Carl Hansberry (a real estate agent), purchased a home in an all-white neighborhood at a discounted price. In her posthumously published book entitled To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, Hansberry wrote:

"Twenty-five years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago's 'restrictive covenants' in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile 'white neighborhood' in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house... My memories of this 'correct' way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed, and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. I also remember my desperate and courageous mother patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger (pistol), doggedly guarding her four children while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court."

Ruth (Ryan Nicole Peters) feeds her son Travis (Zion Richardson)
his breakfast in A Raisin in the Sun (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

In Hansberry's play, the child is a boy whose father desperately wants to become a role model for his innocent, young son. Despite facing huge obstacles caused by racial segregation, the Younger household is nevertheless bursting with ambition.

Walter Lee (Marcus Henderson) is a hot-headed fool employed as a white man's chauffeur who has dreams of investing in a liquor store. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against him.

Walter's son, Travis (Zion Richardson), wants to become a bus driver when he grows up.

Walter's sister, Beneatha (Nemuna Ceesay), wants to go to medical school but has trouble resisting the attention of an exchange student named Joseph Asagai (Rotimi Agbabiaka), who paints a very different vision of what her life could be like as a proud black woman in his home country of Nigeria.

Walter's wife, Ruth (Ryan Nicole Peters), wants to escape from the dilapidated, rat-infested tenement in which the Younger family has been living.

Walter's mother, Lena (Margo Hall), wants to make the best possible use of the $10,000 insurance check she is about to receive following her husband's untimely death. Her goal is to provide for the future of her children and maybe even have a little money left over for small garden of her own.

Ruth (Ryan Nicole Peters) and her mother-in-law, Lena (Margo Hall)
in a scene from A Raisin in The Sun (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Written in 1957, A Raisin in the Sun deals with many of the issues faced by families around the world: an unexpected pregnancy, the desire to move to a better location, the hope that one's children can receive a better education than their parents did, the need to retain one's sense of personal dignity, and the fact that a fool and his money are soon parted. What Hansberry's play accomplished, however, was to let mainstream audiences see how the same, familiar drama played out within a contemporary African-American household.

A Raisin in the Sun was nominated for four Tony Awards and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play of 1959. Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil starred in the stage and film versions of the play.

In 1973, the musical adaptation of Hansberry's play (Raisin) won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

During the decade following the Broadway premiere of A Raisin in the Sun, while America struggled with the growing tensions of the Civil Rights movement -- as well as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Broadway audiences got quite an education about racism and anti-Semitism:

After September 22, 1964 (when Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway), the show's producers and creative team were surprised and deeply gratified to discover that non-Jewish audiences often responded to Tevye's tsuris as if it represented their own ethnic struggles.

In November 1966, when Cabaret premiered on Broadway, audiences were brutally confronted with the rampant anti-Semitism in Germany's Weimar Republic.

In April 1967, Hallelujah, Baby! followed its ambitious and ageless heroine through the first half of the 20th century. The show won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Leading Actress in a Musical for its star (Leslie Uggams), and Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Lillian Hayman).

On November 12, 1967, Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway took Broadway by storm with an all-black cast of Hello, Dolly! (I was lucky enough to be in the St. James Theatre that night). Many theatregoers had never seen so many talented African-American performers on one stage.

In 1968, when Hair moved uptown and settled into the Biltmore Theatre for a long run, Broadway audiences saw black and white actors performing (and disrobing) together.

Sadly, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1963. Her only other play to be produced during her lifetime was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which closed after 101 performances on January 24, 1965 (the night Hansberry died at the age of 34). Had she lived, Hansberry would have been astonished to watch America elect an African-American President in 2008 and see the Obamas attend this year's revival of her play (starring Denzel Washington) in New York.

Directed by Patricia McGregor, the California Shakespeare Theater's production of A Raisin in the Sun helps Bay area audiences return to the source and experience Hansberry's drama anew. While racism is still very much a problem in America -- and the clumsy attempt by Karl Lindner (Liam Vincent) to buy off the Younger family in order to prevent them from moving into Clybourne Park is still shocking -- most theatregoers are a lot more enlightened than audiences might have been in 1959.

Ruth (Ryan Nicole Peters) argues with her husband, Walter Lee
(Marcus Henderson) in a scene from A Raisin in the Sun
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

McGregor has a top-notch ensemble at her fingertips and the results of their work are quite admirable. Marcus Henderson gives a powerhouse performance as Walter Lee while Ryan Nicole Peters (Ruth) and Nemuna Ceesay (Beneatha) bring depth and dignity to their characters. Rotimi Agbabiaka does some beautiful work as Joseph Asagai. York Walker does double duty as Beneatha's date, George Murchison, and Walter Lee's hapless friend, Bobo.

Lena (Margo Hall) and Walter Lee Younger (Marcus Henderson)
in a scene from A Raisin in the Sun (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

While many people think of A Raisin in the Sun as a star vehicle for the man who portrays Walter Lee Younger, the play gets its real dramatic strength from the actress portraying his mother, Lena. As expected, Margo Hall delivered the goods with a performance of deep inner strength, unconditional love for the son she suspects to be a fool, and the iron will to inspire him to stand up for his family and not "sell out to the man." Her portrayal of Lena is one in a long line of memorable performances by one of the Bay area's most gifted actors.

* * * * * * * * * *

Berkeley Repertory Theatre recently presented the West coast premiere of Tony Kushner's intense family drama entitled The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (iHo). Directed by Tony Taccone, it is a mammoth achievement which puts a massively dysfunctional Italian-American family on display, warts and all.

Clocking in at nearly four hours in length (with two intermissions), iHo is the kind of play one could love or hate. But this much is certain: With so much emotional baggage fighting for the spotlight, you'll never be bored.

If I have one reservation, it's that Kushner sets up numerous passages in which rival conversations/arguments take place simultaneously, making it nearly impossible to understand anything being said. After several of these schizophrenic scherzi (which resemble the shape-shifting and frenetic buzzing of swarms of bees), one gets used to the fact that this is a family where everyone talks but no one really listens. Having accepted that baseline of dysfunctionality, one develops a much better understanding of the family dynamic.

When push comes to shove, how can you not love a play whose first act builds to a breathtaking climax with the precision of an operatic Rossini ensemble and whose conclusion could rival that of Frank R. Stockton's 1882 short story, The Lady, or the Tiger?

The protagonist in Kushner's play is Gus Marcantonio (Mark Margolis), a retired dockworker who enjoyed a second career as a union organizer. A life-long Communist, Gus is now in his early '70s and convinced that he is developing Alzheimer's. In order to maximize the estate he can leave to his children, he has decided to sell the family home in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn to an undisclosed buyer.

Gus is also determined to commit suicide and has contacted an old friend, Shelle O'Neill (Robynn Rodriguez), whose husband suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Gus knows that Shelle can help him with the details of how to kill himself.

Empty (Dierdre Lovejoy), Shelle (Robynn Rodriguez), and Gus
(Mark Margolis) discuss the properly methodology for committing
suicide in The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and
Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Kushner's play takes place in June of 2007, at the height of the real estate bubble, when cashing out makes sense to Gus. Although he loves his children dearly, they often drive him crazy. In fact, Gus often feels as if their narcissism and emotional neediness are what's killing him.

Pill (Lou Liberatore) thinks he is in love with Eli (Jordan Geiger) in
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism
with a Key to the Scriptures (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Pill (Lou Liberatore) is a deeply conflicted gay man who, despite being in a long-term relationship with a theologian (Tyrone Mitchell Henderson), has spent $30,000 of his sister's savings on Eli Wolcott (Jordan Geiger), a male hustler whose vulnerability touches him. The sad truth is that Pill enjoys sex much more when he has to pay for it, a fact which does not sit well with his partner at all.

When Pill suggests that he and Paul move Eli out to their home in Minneapolis and welcome him into a thruple arrangement, his devoted partner erupts, delivers a scathing takedown followed by an ultimatum, and gets ready to head back to the Midwest -- with or without Pill (short for Pier Luigi) by his side.

Paul (Tyrone Mitchell Henderson) lays into his lover,
Pill (Lou Liberatore) in a scene from The Intelligent Homosexual's
Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Empty (Deirdre Lovejoy) has always been Gus's little girl. He coached her in Communist theory, labor relations, and watched as his daughter evolved into a nurse and then switched career tracks to become a talented labor lawyer. Empty (a nickname for Maria Theresa) used to be married to Adam Butler (Anthony Fusco), who now lives in Gus's basement apartment.

Since coming out as a lesbian, she has gotten into a relationship with Maeve Ludens (Liz Wisan), who is now nine months pregnant and about to go into labor. Curiously, Empty shows little concern for Maeve (also a theologian) and is more intensely focused on pleasing her father.

Maeve (Liz Wisan), Empty (Deirdre Lovejoy), and Adam
(Anthony Fusco) get into an argument in a scene from The
Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism
with a Key to the Scriptures (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Vito (Joseph J. Parks) is Gus's youngest child. Mechanically gifted but dangerously short-tempered, he is married to Sooze (Tina Chillip), an attractive young Asian-American who has mastered the art of communicating her displeasure with a royal stink eye. When, in a burst of anger, Vito shoves a bust of Garibaldi through a wall and discovers an old attaché case, Sooze can't wait to learn what is hidden inside.

Gus (Mark Margolis), Sooze (Tina Chillip), and Vito (Joseph J. Parks)
in The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism
with a Key to the Scriptures (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Watching Gus's emotionally needy children and their spouses from a jaundiced, "seen-it-all" point of view is Gus's sister, Clio (Randy Danson). After a colorful past that included several years as a nun, Clio has finally learned how to let go of things she can't control. Despite her brother's determination to commit suicide, she knows it is time for her to move on.

Working on Christopher Barecca's jigsaw puzzle of a set, Tony Taccone has done quite an impressive job of staging a complex work about politics, passion, prostitution, and priorities in which the most lucid character turns out to be a well-educated hustler (the whore who speaks the truth). Above all, Berkeley Rep's production of The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures offers Bay area audiences a chance to marvel at the craft of a master playwright and how his characters have been brought to life by a gifted ensemble.

To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape

↧

First Nighter: 'Henry IV Part I' and 'Henry IV Part II' on Screen With Antony Sher

July 5, 2014, 7:14 am

≫ Next: A Stravinsky Vaudeville with Claws: The Feather Gatherers

≪ Previous: American Families in Crisis

William Shakespeare historians have tried and failed to find a figure during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V who might have been the inspiration for Sir John Falstaff, whom many of the playwright's advocates consider the preeminent Shakespeare character.

Appearing in both Henry IV plays and again in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is a full-bodied personage in more ways than one. Over the course of the three plays he's as lovable and trying a man as can be imagined. In that measure, he can be seen as Shakespeare's version of Everyman and profoundly appreciated as such.

So with every new production of the works in which Falstaff rambunctiously struts his considerable stuff -- disseminating lies right and left, then wriggling out of the corner into which he's gotten himself -- one of the chief questions is who will impersonate the man. What superb actor is going to portray a man who declares himself "not only witty in myself but the cause of wit in others" and a man so indifferent to the practical applications of honor that "Therefore I'll have none of it"?

Here's the good news, Falstaff lovers. (What Shakespeare fan doesn't dote on Falstaff?) The opportunity to savor another outstanding one is coming your way. He's Antony Sher, whose Falstaff is a gutsy (again in more than one senses of the word), genuinely earthy Falstaff. Sher's offering his crafted and crafty handiwork in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Henry IV Parts I &II, directed by company artistic head Gregory Doran.

(The HD version starts showing up on international screens July 5. Check for dates at theaters near you: onscreen.rsc.org/uk/cinemas-and-tickets/).

I'd like to go on and on about Sher's performance -- Sher, a first-rate Shakespearean actor for decades (an indelible Richard III, an unforgettable Fool to Michael Gambon's Lear). And I will, but not before making it clear I'm assessing his performance and the performances of his equally polished colleagues not on their entire performances in the enduring history plays but only on the first 100 minutes of each that are included in the CDs sent reviewers.

What that means is that, among numerous other beautifully realized scenes, I've watched the brilliant tavern segments in both Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part II. The first is the one where Falstaff impersonates the King to Prince Hal (Alex Hassell) playing himself, after which they switch roles. The fun stems from Shakespeare's having Falstaff praise himself while pretending to be King Henry, only to have Hal as the king fiercely deride Falstaff to Falstaff as the Prince. In the second play, Falstaff's boisterous make-out session with Doll Tearsheet (Nia Gwynne) and the arrival of the mad Pistol (Antony Byrne) turns up to distinguish the first 100 minutes.

Both scenes illustrate Shakespeare's ability to find the very real humor and pathos in the behavior of the bawdy lower classes. The examinations of the raucous Boar's Head crew can be enjoyed by Shakespeare partisans in contrast to his depiction of rustics in the comedies. In the latter instances, where what may have made them thigh-slappingly funny in the 16th century but doesn't always translate as amusingly to the 21st century, the Henry IV vignettes retain a contemporary ring.

So though I'm declaring Sher way on top of the material as far as I've seen it, I can't comment on what happens after the first 100 minutes in each play. I'm writing without having seen how Sher handles the speech about honor or how he reacts when (spoiler alert for those coming fresh to the play) Hal becomes king and in a new guise snubs his old friend and drinking companion.

To carry on about Sher isn't intended to ignore the accomplishments of his fellow cast mates. Hassell is a commendable Prince, a young man marked by his enjoyment at being a scamp with pal Ned Poins (Sam Marks, strong) and athis sometimes chummy, sometimes abusive treatment of Falstaff. His riotous behavior covers up the large trick he's playing on everyone as a prodigal son. The joke is that he's setting himself up to astonish the nation by making a dramatic about-face when he succeeds his father.

Also forceful in the cast are: Jasper Britton as a Henry IV still suffering guilt pangs after deposing Richard II; Trevor White as an extremely short-fused Hotspur; Paola Dionisotti as a wizened and subtly wise Mistress Quickly; and Joshua Richards as a delightfully slow-witted Bardolph. Not appearing in those first 100 minutes of Henry V Part II was the always reliable Oliver Ford Davies as the aptly named Justice Shallow.

The Henry plays were videoed at the RSC's Stratford-upon-Avon home and are therefore presented on a thrust stage that designer Stephen Brimson Lewis supplies with partial sets from time to time but just as often keeps bare. At those times, it falls to Tim Mitchell's lighting to establish the mood for the forest robberies, the castle anterooms and the other crucial events, which he does with effortless effort. Much depends on the effectiveness of Martin Slavin's sound and Paul Englishby's music, and they come through as well.

Since Shakespeare's quotable quotes spice all his plays, audience members at them can be seen nodding as familiar passages are uttered. Perhaps the most trenchant in Henry IV Part II is "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The dying king speaks it when not only his life is ebbing but his spirit is also failing. It's a statement that goes to the heart of a frequent Shakespearean theme: the complexities of sovereignty

Britton, sitting on the floor in nightclothes makes the observation memorable here when he confides it. But an instantly recognizable remark doesn't have to be the only reason for something to cling on in the memory. Take careful note of Sher when, in an unusually defenseless Falstaff moment, the irascible fellow cuddling Doll Tearsheet on his knee, says, "I am old. I am old." What Sher allows his Falstaff face to do then is the essence of first-rate acting.

Shakespeare knew what he was about, and in their turn Doran and company know what to do when tackling the incomparable playwright.

↧

A Stravinsky Vaudeville with Claws: The Feather Gatherers

July 5, 2014, 8:59 am

≫ Next: 'Bobby Jasoos' (Hindi; English subtitles)

≪ Previous: First Nighter: 'Henry IV Part I' and 'Henry IV Part II' on Screen With Antony Sher

feather gatherers sample 1 from Normandy Sherwood on Vimeo.

work sample from a workshop of The Feather Gatherer's at Dixon Place

"Even though there's no God -- I mean, Especially because there's no God! There must be a Devil."
-Narrator, The Feather Gatherers

If the Devil had a band that doubled as a theater production company, that company might the The Drunkards Wife, for nothing this delightfully experimental could be considered holy. But then again, that depends on which gods you revere. DIY theater makers, Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanigan, have long been tinkering with history and music, reframing old tales in new exciting ways. Their latest co-authored collaboration The Feather Gatherers "a visionary tale of seduction and abandonment . . . A fictional Stravinsky vaudeville set in 1960's Serbia channeling Yugoslavian Black Wave film" premiere's in the 2014 Ice Factory at the New Ohio Theater July 9-12th.

Your work involves extensive fantastical world creation which includes theater, music and more. What kind of world have you created for the Feather Gatherers?

CF: Action and spectacle! Lots of dances. The show is fast-paced -- there are big emotions, there is silliness. There are fabulous costumes, as anyone who has seen any of Normandy's past shows can attest.

The band for this show is onstage. A seven-piece ensemble. There's no recorded playback. It's very intimate to have all the music live with the show; the musicians and actors play off one another, and that gives them leeway to play with pacing and dynamics.

You will hear some of our very favorite music ~ tunes by Igor Stravinsky, folk songs from Eastern Europe, original music, and scenic improvisations. We have an amazing band on this show. They navigate all these styles as if they were one ~ folky in the best sense, but precise.

The show has big ideas, but abounds in pratfalls. We tried to walk that line between smart and dumb, and accept occasional missteps on either side. It's super knowing, but strangely, still earnest.

So, this play is a feast of history and anachronism. You mention earlier that the show channels Stravinsky, vaudeville, the 1960s, Serbia and Yugoslavian Black Wave film. What inspired you to write about these things?

NS: We loved the music for L' Histoire du Soldat-- who doesn't-- and especially loved the instrumentation that the score calls for -- a violin, a contrabass, a bassoon, a clarinet, a trumpet, a trombone and percussion. (Notice: no chord instrument.) The story is that Stravinsky was trying to design an orchestra small enough to tour in the lean years after WW1 -- a practical project many contemporary artists can relate to! -- but the instrumentation is also like that of a Klezmer band.

We were attracted to this double-ness -- an avant garde, forward looking score with a complex relationship to folk music. Even though there are no accordions (usually the backbone of our music) we thought it was something we had to engage with. Happily our accordionist, Tom Abbott, could switch to clarinet for this show.

CF: This was a brief period when Stravinsky was working through an idea of creating what he called "fairground entertainments" -- portable music, vivid stories, pantomime and costumes. He was also working through his conflicted ideas about "russianism". It seemed perfect for us.

NS: There's a kinship between this and The Drunkard's Wife -- understanding our own world by engaging with old forms. Our project and Stravinsky's were/are interested in escaping the present on some level. And then, last summer, our "someday" turned into "right now." Time collapsed! We immersed ourselves in modernism circa 1918.

CF: Which naturally led us to 1968.

NS: Because we see a resonance between these distinct eras-- and from the vantage point of our contemporary moment, a kind of nostalgia for a time when it seemed like rewriting a folktale could change something in the world.

CF: The music to l'Histoire still sounds modern, but the story has not aged well, and the piece is rarely performed as originally written. Usually only the "Suite" version is performed, which is a selection of the best tunes, but none of the text.

NS: We were wary of the creaky Ramuz libretto and its moralistic ending. I translated Ramuz's text, and Craig started reading about the way the piece was created. It was apparently a difficult collaboration, the Histoire du Soldat--Ramuz and Stravinsky were at odds much of the time. We thought of that as kind of a challenge--that with our own collaboration we would create something we would want to see in conjunction with Stravinsky's score.

CF: In reinventing this narrative, we dialed the story back to its roots and started over. We made a couple simple decisions at the beginning, then let the material take us where it had to go. We started with the original folk tale that inspired l'Histoire: the good Soldier, the helpful Devil (the Great Enabler), the Narrator earnest in his task, and added the intervention of the pathetic Orphan (herself a familiar folk-story type).

You can look at Feather Gatherers as the story of a Narrator, who is telling the story of a Soldier. Who trades his violin to the Devil in exchange for wealth untold.

But it's never as easy as just telling a story, is it? Meanings and allusions proliferate. They pry at every crack in the Narrator's facade. The great failure of the Histoire libretto is the decision to "universalize" the story. Any alert storyteller learns that particularizing a story makes it more powerful. It's details that tell ! Vagueness breeds vagueness, but detail calls up specific associations -- And this story is so rich in associations.

For another thing, the folk music Stravinsky claimed to base these melodies on never actually existed -- the Narrator is forced to reach back into his own musical upbringing to supply the resonance. -- Interestingly, the makers of this show (21st century Americans and Slavs) grew up with Slavic folk music in ways that Stravinsky never did. Stravinsky's "russianisms" purport to be ethnographic but are ultimately personal -- and we engage fully with that.

Or you can say this the story of the Devil. Partly the rollicking Gogol devil of Evenings Near Dikanka. Partly the Daemon Lover. Partly the most subtle of all the beasts. But always a slave to the desires of others. Everyone conjures her own Devil.

NS: For me the way in was an Orphan who creeps into the story-- who lurks around the sidelines until she finds an opportunity to intervene and redirect the narrative. This was the original Feather Gatherer (The Feather Gatherers, who give the show its title, are the marginal, communitarian group who become the heroes of the show). Once she existed, she allowed us to reinvent -- we threw out the Ramuz and followed her creepy call.

She suggested to us some of the anachronistic juxtapostions you mention. She has a kind of DIY ethic--"I'm an orphan, no one will write me music for my songs--I have to sing them quiet, to myself, with music I invent myself"--and is very self righteous but also very sincere. She got us thinking about the films of Dusan Makaveyev (Yugoslavian "Black Wave" filmmaker) --his films glorify revolutionaries, activists and communitarian groups. They evince a desire to find a new way of living, a hopefulness, and are at the same time bitterly satirical-- for instance, the commune the heroine visits in Sweet Movie is the only place here she is not treated as a commodity, but at the same time it is really gross! The orphan character became both something out of a melodrama and also this utopian communitarian. And so she needed a posse: The Feather Gatherers.

CF: The Feather Gatherers of our show make a virtue of their poverty, and embrace their dispossession. They take their name from the gypsies in an Aleksander Petrovic film -- which is really very Brooklyn of them.

Everyone in the play is poor. Being poor, they understand that they should long for riches. That's a given. But is it the only possibility? And what's in that gap between what's given and what's possible -- as Herbert Marcuse put it. And what are riches, exactly.

An early Drunkard's Wife review called us "A village wedding and the 1968 Paris student riots rolled into one." How flattering is that? But at that point it was more aspirational than descriptive. With this show, bringing the folk and anarchist/situationist strands together, I feel like we're finally starting to close the gap for real.

Tell me about your music backgrounds? How did you begin making music? Telling stories?

CF: One day I picked up a guitar and that was it. Didn't want to do anything else ever. My first band, God Is My Co-Pilot, made albums and toured non-stop for a long time, then and one thing led to another, which led to The Drunkard's Wife.

NS: I always told stories, but for a long time, in my twenties, I had this mistaken idea that I wasn't interested in narrative, especially linear narrative. But actually, I think that all along I was just really interested in resistance to narrative--why we reject some narratives and accept others. How narratives fail us. I'm actually obsessed with how stories are told, and who gets to tell them, and especially how we get to tell them.

How do you write as a team?

CF: The two of us have collaborated on many projects, in many different media ~ but always in clear roles; actor/director, singer/guitar player, music/words, words/music, designer/builder, etc.

On the Feather Gatherers script, the roles were up for grabs -- it's first writing we have done together in a completely co-operative way.

NS: Practically, this worked out to us passing the draft back and forth and talking about it obsessively for many months. I did the translation of the Ramuz, threw it out, and then started writing the first draft last summer while at Yaddo. When I came back we both worked on it. I have done a lot of writing in collaboration, both with National Theater of the United States of America [NTUSA] and with others, but this is the first collaborative writing I've done where I really can't remember who wrote what first, most of the time.

Circling back to your mentions of the film influences on The Feather Gatherer's-- is there film in this?

CF: I misread the question at first as "Is there a film in this?", to which the answer is YES! this show should so be a movie. Producers, directors: call us.
But is there film in it, like projections? Nope. Not even any pre-recorded music or sounds -- it's all live without a net.

NS: We revere out filmic patron saints though! Makaveyev we talked about before, but the films of Sergei Parajanov, the Soviet-era Georgian/Ukrainian/Armenian director, have also been important to us in creating Feather Gatherers, especially visually. In the sixties and seventies, Parajanov made these spectacular films based on folklore from different regions of the USSR. For this show we kept returning to his film Ashik Kerib which is his version of Azerbaijani folkore. It is a bonanza of textiles!

CF: Apropos of that, I didn't know until we were well into this project that, bizarrely, the Soldier was voiced by Dusan Makaveyev in an animated cartoon version of this story...

Speaking of creating characters . . . you're both well known for world creation, not only with music and playwrighting, but also as designers. I assume you are designing the show as well? What design elements can we expect to see?

NS: You can expect a lot of fabrics--the set is primarily made of fabric--curtains and backdrops, carpets! Some of these have been lovingly loaned to us from my other company, The NTUSA. We want the set to look like the inside of a yurt!

And here is a preview of the costumes.

Claw Glove by Normandy Sherwood.

NS: I just finished making a prop for this show that is "a mound of rotting flowers with bodies composting in it." It's so literal and creepy that I'm not even sure we'll use it in the show! But maybe. You have to come and see.

Any newly built instruments?

NS: The Feather Gatherers of the show are a ragtag bunch of semi-itinerant rain makers, sin eaters, subsistence farmers, and instrument builders . One of their projects is to build a new fiddle for the Soldier ~ and they choose to build a Stroh-Violin ! The heart of the stroh-fiddle is the sound reproducer from an old gramophone -- in this case, the reproducer is one that Craig picked up at a street market in Transylvania a long time ago. Transylvania, as you may already know, is the one place we know of where stroh-violins are still manufactured -- the woman who sold Craig the reproducer knew just what it was for, and extolled its virtues for the purpose.

CF: Please cross your fingers, and hope that I finish the Cigar-Box Ütögardon in time for the production as well...

What does Richard Taruskin think of this show?

NS&CF: We've invited him. Let's wait and see!

NORMANDY SHERWOOD is theater maker: playwright, costumer, director, performer. Her plays have been presented at many theaters, including The Kitchen and Skidmore college. In addition creating work with the Drunkard's Wife, she is a co-artistic director of the National Theater of the United States of America. She is also one of 5 curators of Little Theatre at Dixon Place and she teaches in the Expository Writing Program at NYU. She has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.

CRAIG FLANAGIN was guitarist in No Wave legends God Is My Co-Pilot and Runt. He designs and builds electro-acoustic instruments, and recently made a machine for recording Edison Cylinders. He writes and directs plays, often in collaboration with Normandy Sherwood, with whom he ran the LIC theater space the Uncanny Valley. Their company is called The Drunkard's Wife.

For more information please visit http://www.newohiotheatre.org

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'Bobby Jasoos' (Hindi; English subtitles)

July 5, 2014, 10:02 am

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Bilkis Ahmed aka Bobby (Vidya Balan) wants to be a detective. But there are obstacles. First, her training. She has none, a point her boss from the agency where she wanted to work pounds home. Second, her gender. She's a woman. Her parents despair of her choice of profession and her lack of interest in marriage. When she makes stacks of money from a big case, her proud father won't accept her gifts.

Her contemporaries watch soap operas and dream of their weddings. She doesn't. She prefers to hone her craft. Coming from a conservative family, she's over the hill at thirty. She stands in stark contrast to her sister, Noor (Benaf Dadachandii), who is eager to get married. All this takes place against the swirling, colorful, and, to us in the West, exotic backdrop of the old part of Hyderabad, in the South Indian state of Telangana. "Bobby Jasoos" ("Jasoos" roughly translates to "detective"), directed by Samar Shaikh, charts Bobby's efforts to prove everyone wrong.

This could have been a serious film. A lower class woman shuns marriage to create a successful business. Parts of it are serious. A client, Anees Khan (Kiran Kumar), hires her to find two young women. Then Bobby suspects his motives when the girls go missing. It turns out that Khan's motives were Mother Teresa pure. Mostly though, the film's a riot. Bobby shows great ingenuity as she tracks her quarry. She dons many disguises; she even sets up fake TV auditions to find one of the girls. From a mile away we can see that she's going to fall in love with TV host Tasawur (Ali Fazal). He hires her to find a reason to discredit a marriage his father sets up (The 36th one is the charm). One would think, given Bobby's intuition and sleuthing skills, that she would see that Tasawur's the one. Of course she's the last to know.

Balan is formidable as the driven Bobby. She commands our sympathies because she's so earnest. Her character is driven, charismatic, and resourceful. When she's on a case, she's a force of nature. She might not be the most deductive detective in the world, but she certainly finds ingenious ways to solve each case. Her funny side and her serious side are driven by the same bubbly enthusiasm and faith in herself.

There are a few fault lines in the script. We'd understand Bobby better if we knew why she was so eager to be a detective in the first place. Her unique position, a female detective in a conservative society, is only alluded to at the beginning, when she fails to land a job at the all-men detective agency. Nonetheless, Shaikh nicely weaves all the story lines together. He balances the funny bits with the not-so-funny bits to set up a satisfying resolution that ties together the loose ends. It also proves that even a detective doesn't necessarily notice how love stares her squarely in the face for pretty much the entire film.

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Is the Term 'Chinaman' Derogatory?

July 5, 2014, 12:23 pm

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≪ Previous: 'Bobby Jasoos' (Hindi; English subtitles)

At the intermission of No ël Coward's Private Lives, my wife asked me whether I had been offended by the use of the word "Chinaman." We were watching a splendid production by the Washington, D.C. Shakespeare Theatre. Other than that one bit of language, it was a perfect comedy of manners.

I replied that I wasn't sure.

Coward, who set the standard for English wit in the 20th century, wrote the delightful three-act during the Depression. It could not have been more sophisticated then; it remains stylish now. The leads are a couple so well-to-do they have no discernible occupation other than to be clever, droll and entertaining to everyone -- especially themselves.

Despite their shared elegance, they could not stand one another. They divorced, when that decision could shock.

As the curtain rises, Elyot and Amanda have not forgotten one another. Their lives continue to be defined by their relationship, in its absence.

Each has found a new spouse: Elyot courted the squeaky-voiced young Sybil; Amanda seduced the stolid, solid Victor.

Their spiritual bond is confirmed by their independent choices for a honeymoon destination. They have chosen the same resort.

When they arrive, settle in, and order cocktails to enjoy on their respective, side-by-side, identical balconies, they realize the exquisite coincidence. Their polish is matched by perfect costumes and set design. The dissimilarity of the stars to their new spouses is absolute.

The plot is clear to all. Elyot and Amanda must reunite. The events are not logical, but they are believable.

They run off to Paris. They have their own honeymoon. As a preventative measure, they agree to a safe word, "sollocks," to avoid squabbling spoiling the arrangement.

Coward famously wrote this hit, one of many, in Shanghai, China while recovering from the flu. He had arrived with 27 pieces of luggage, not counting a gramophone, and spent only four days devising this entertainment. It was assumed to have reflected his own relationship with his frequent co-star, Gertrude Lawrence. Audiences were thrilled at the possibility they were looking at a mirror showing the two celebrities' real interactions.

In early press photographs, Coward would say, he was depicted as if he were a "Chinese decadent" on "dope." In this particular play, he had his characters make fun of Catholics, observing at length that they would continue to be married according to the faith; and the French, who are subject to casual abuse.

I have to say that in my life, I have never heard the term "Chinaman" said in the same manner as the term "Englishman," as a description without condescension. I suppose, however, that for Coward, it could have been meant without disparagement. Nobody calls himself a "Chinaman" who is familiar with English, though it would be common enough to call one's self an "Englishman" in English or Chinese (technically, "English-person" in an exact translation). Coward himself, for example, penned a popular tune about "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." "Chinaman" is grammatically not quite right; a strict parallel would be "Englandman."

In contemporary popular culture, there has been a lively debate on whether the term is offensive. I've always regarded offensiveness as the wrong test. A prude would be offended by the sexuality of Coward's work, to say nothing of his life. It's how people respond when the problem is presented that interests me. Those who are dismissive are signaling their disrespect for others; if the intent of the speaker is not to do harm when she utters "Chinaman," then she wouldn't repeat the usage once aware of the implications. That's how conversation among equals proceeds.

As any playwright would appreciate, our communication isn't merely words -- it's not even mostly words: it's all about the context, history, body language, and delivery and tone. When Elyot and Amanda are discussing the size of China and Japan, as the playbill noted, they really are talking about something else altogether: if they still love one another.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't advocate tampering with the script. It presents an opportunity to notice the asymmetry of race and an anachronism that shows progress.

The actual dialogue, between Victor and Amanda, is as follows. Victor, not as sadly as might be supposed, turns out to be mistaken about Amanda.

"Oh, Mandy, of course, you are sweetly divinely normal."

"I haven't any peculiar cravings for Chinamen or old boots, if that's what you mean."

"Mandy!"

"I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives. It all depends on a combination of circumstances. If all the various cosmic things fuse at the same moment, and the right spark is struck, there's no knowing what one mightn't do."

Coward could not have foreseen a future in which Chinamen not only spoke English fluently, but also enjoyed his art in their shared native language. That wouldn't have been normal in his day. But there has come about a new combination of circumstances.

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The Artist and the Astronaut by Bruce Helander

July 6, 2014, 5:57 pm

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Chicago artist Marla Friedman's recent portrait sculpture of the legendary Apollo 13 astronaut Captain James A. Lovell, Jr. follows the historic and time-honored realist tradition. She has had the unique honor to work with the American icon and space pioneer on a number of portraits, both in painting and sculpture, and her portraits of Captain Lovell are in the permanent collection of the Naval Academy Museum, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center.

Artist Marla Friedman sculpting clay bust in her Wilmette, Illinois studio, 2010.
Photo credit: Ahri Golden.

"Collaborating with Captain Lovell was a history lesson that has been endlessly inspiring," Friedman recalled when I spoke to her about their artistic partnership. "His youthful optimism was a constant, and I could readily see how that particular quality was absolutely key to bringing Apollo 13 home. Our objective for the most recent portrait bust was to combine Captain Lovell's ages: as he is today at 85 years young and while in his forties at the time of the Apollo missions. I wanted to capture his enthusiasm and optimism, but also his intense leadership qualities."

Captain James A. Lovell with sculpture bust by artist Marla Friedman, 2010.
Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries.

During my interview with Captain Lovell, I discovered those positive, distinctive personality characteristics that seem to manifest themselves in Friedman's sculpted depiction of the astronaut cast in bronze. With the extraordinary career of this American icon, from test pilot, the Naval Academy, Harvard Business School and NASA to becoming the first man to journey twice to the moon to numerous honorary doctorates and the Presidential Medal of Freedom among so many honors, I thought about what the dynamics must have been between the artist and her world-renowned subject. Captain Lovell gave me an unexpected inside perspective over the phone, full of clever observations and genuine compliments on the experience of sitting for a portrait with Friedman. "Considering a sculptured image of your physical profile initially formed from a lump of clay into an accurate, lifelike portrayal is a completely unfamiliar, albeit enjoyable, experience," Lovell said. "She's at the top of her game."

Captain James A. Lovell, sculpture portrait sitting with artist Marla Friedman, 2012. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries.

To date Friedman's commissioned portraits include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient; former United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, also a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the former president of Poland; and corporate civic leader Alex Manoogian. Academically trained in painting and drawing at the Art Students League in New York, the National Academy of Design and L'Ecole Albert Defois in the Loire Valley, France, and having maintained her painting studio in the historic Carnegie Hall Studios, Friedman has been dedicated to cultivating her art based on the principles founded in the Beaux Arts. It was in Paris at the Musée d'Orsay where she recognized her greatest affinity in the work of the late 19th century academic master portraitist Léon Bonnat, specifically his 1890 oil portrait of the president of France, Jules Grévy. "I remember coming upon Bonnat's masterful portrait and being transfixed with the nuances of pastel-like brushwork--the subtlety and power of a single speck of Prussian blue," Friedman recalls. "It forever changed my concept of portraiture to a new level and realm of possibility."

Self-taught in sculpture, Friedman similarly was inspired by the sculpture portraiture of Jo Davidson. With no preconceived notions of what may be 'right' or 'wrong' in sculpting, having never taken a class, she immediately felt at liberty to express herself with the same kind of freedom so apparent in Davidson's sculptural interpretations. Using no measuring tools, as Davidson impressed, Friedman simply sets up her clay and begins. It was with this freedom that the artist began her first sculpture in 2010--that of Apollo 13 astronaut Captain James Lovell.

Captain James A. Lovell completed clay portrait sculpture by artist Marla Friedman, 2013. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries.

Life is interesting in the way the circle often completes itself. Raised on the south side of Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood known for the University of Chicago and its unique blend of scholarly sensibilities and classical architecture, Friedman discovered that among her chief early influences was the majestic Museum of Science and Industry--literally her playground while she grew up across the street from the late nineteenth century architectural masterpiece. Years later, Friedman would learn that it was the former Palace of Fine Arts of the 1893 Columbian Exposition; the crown jewel of the White City that exhibited the realist tradition of painting and sculpture to which she would later naturally gravitate.

The Museum of Science and Industry is now home to the space capsule of Captain Lovell's historic Apollo 8 mission; first to orbit the moon and so beautifully honored with the crew's Christmas Eve Broadcast to earth on December 24th, 1968. It was the same year Marla Friedman was beginning to find her voice as an artist in the shadow of the Museum of Science and Industry/ Palace of Fine Arts, already on her own trajectory to the 'moon.'

It did occur to me during research that oddly enough, Ms. Friedman shares some serendipitous parallels with other artists working many moons before her, who although anonymous, also captured the essence of men in flight literally thousands of years ago, as ancient ships from space presumably hovered above or landed briefly on Earth; there are indeed tangible clues pointing to the creation of the very first astronaut-like portraits carved in stone. Our fascination with the moon is as old as man. Captain James Lovell, being the first to orbit the moon and now immortalized in sculpture, with his signature carved into the clay to create an historic document, is as timeless as the curious images depicted on the cave walls of Pompeii and in ancient Egyptian frescoes.

Captain James A. Lovell carving name into clay bust by artist Marla Friedman, 2013. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries.

Marla Friedman has been in her own self-propelled, accelerated orbit as an artist finding articulation in the finest nuance of portraiture. "I am most interested in capturing the subtleties of expression. This is true also of still-life paintings. For me, it is the golden moment of that one gesture in clay or single brushstroke that hits the 'note'.... and it is euphoric."

Bronze portrait sculpture of Captain James A. Lovell at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center unveiling, 2013. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart Galleries.

Now represented exclusively by Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York City, one of the world's most highly esteemed contemporary fine art galleries, for her portraiture in both painting and sculpture, Friedman's platform to grow exponentially is in place. With the genuine success of an artist reaching the pinnacle of her profession, Friedman enjoys the "quiet confidence" of working with an extraordinary art dealer in Hollis Taggart. She noted the similar qualities recognizable in both Captain Lovell and Hollis Taggart: "An expansive world view and optimism that is 'over the moon.'"

For more information visit: www.hollistaggart.com.

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Cloud Galleries: The Rise of the Virtual Art Establishment

July 6, 2014, 9:03 pm

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Today I get this in an email:

"THE INFINITY POOL IS A DIGITAL EXHIBITION SPACE WHERE SELECT ARTISTS CAN BROADCAST EXCLUSIVE BODIES OF WORK."

Clicking on the link I see that, "PROJECTS ARE EXHIBITED FOR 31 DAYS OR LESS. ALL RECORDS ARE THEN DELETED." Their current exhibition is a loving homage to the work of cult horror filmmaker Mario Bava and the website is the project of the artists David Alexander Flinn and Adam Ianniello.

A few days prior, at the invitation of my friend, the performance artist known as Narcissister, I see this:

Petrella's Imports is pleased to present the sixth and final installment of Live Stream -- a series of performances situated to materially emphasize the flow of content into the physical and metaphysical landscape of the city."

Clicking on the Petrella's Imports website, I find an extraordinary virtual bookshelf of projects by artists that include, "The Source Code of My Website Translated into Latin" by Nick Demarco and a mysterious newsprint of a blank gallery by Daniel Lefcourt among many other works. Petrella's is both a website and a real newsstand conceived of by artists Anne Libby, Elise Mcmahon, and Sophie Stone.

Earlier this year I heard about WHERE Gallery live-streaming its exhibitions and performances via a 24-hour security-webcam operating out of a shipping container. It is the brainchild of writer and curator Lucy Hunter and the artist R. Lyon. Projects have included Siebren Versteeg playing off a live feed of Snoop Dogg's Instagram account with algorithmic paintings based on those images and Brock Enright, aka the "kidnapping artist," whose project was a series of one on one "instructional encounters" with individuals inside of the container. Currently, the exhibition presents Melissa Brown's poker table in which an active poker game is ongoing and which also allows people to call the players while they are playing.

The domination of mega-galleries is a frequent topic of conversation of late in the art world. And yet, at the same time, there is an explosion of creative activity on the ground (or in the cloud) and it is in these places that artists have an abundance of power and these digital endeavors are playing out in many conversations in art publications and institutions.

Light and Wire out of Los Angeles has been going strong for six years now. Their recent exhibition of paintings by Max Maslansky received a rave review in the Los Angeles Times. Light and Wire was started in 2008 in Los Angeles by Gladys-Katherina Hernando and Jessica Minckley. With too many great projects to choose from, I recommend a perusal through their treasure trove of past projects which include works by artists such as Jacob Ciocci and David Horvitz who are renown for their work in the virtual sphere.

(Image: a detail from "Untitled," 2013, Max Maslansky)

New York's New Museum has for the past several years regularly commissioned artists to do exhibitions exclusively for the web for their New Art Online series. Curator Lauren Cornell had the inspired vision to do one of the foundational exhibitions with Taryn Simon and Aaron Swartz, who devoted his life to making the internet a free and open place.

If you are reading this, please post links to other online galleries, exhibition platforms and curatorial endeavors that you know and love. I believe that in the very near future (which, for many, is already here) most artists who show their work in the physical world will also have made work in some form or fashion for an online gallery.

I will end on this exceptionally creative innovation in virtual exhibitions. Curatron. An auto-curation program is designed to replace and make democratic the role of curators by getting artists to vote on all the other artists in the pool, removing the curator completely. The end result is that chosen artists get into a "real" exhibition.

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Cinematic Ukraine: Getting Ready for the 5th Odessa International Film Festival

July 7, 2014, 6:29 am

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Back in May of this year, the Odessa International Film Festival embarked on a crowdfunding campaign to raise $25,000 through Indiegogo. To quote festival organizers, their financial goal was needed to "maintain the high level of the line-up and hold the Ukrainian National Competition," an integral part of the festival.

Needless to say, they reached their target and even surpassed it by a bit, and as a result the Odessa IFF will be taking place in just a few days, from July 11th through the 19th. There is no better time for a film festival in Ukraine, even if it would appear to be during such a volatile moment in the country's history. I'm with the Odessa IFF team all the way when they write, "we believe that cinema is a powerful tool of a civil protest, it unites people of all nationalities and is able to make a positive change as well as to raise the spirit of a nation. That's why the Odessa IFF should take place in Ukraine this year!"

All we have to do is read a newspaper, click on Twitter or turn on our TVs to know we are living in an increasingly divisive and divided world. Sometimes I notice people's eyes glaze over when I say my sole purpose in writing about world cinema is to unite, create a bridge of cultural understanding through the Seventh Art. Today, as illogical battles rage on in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Israel and even Ukraine, my mission seems far off, unpopular, and impossible. But when I read a statement like the one above put out there by filmmakers, who insist on going against all the odds with a festival they believe in deeply, while also reaching out to the world asking for their support -- and receiving it in return! -- I'm encouraged. We may turn out to be OK after all.

This year's Odessa IFF will open with Paolo Virzi's Il Capitale Umano, or Human Capital, which stars Valeria Golino and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and screened in the US earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. It will close with Vincent Lannoo's Les Ames de Papier, Paper Souls starring Stephane Guillon and Julie Gayet. But the grandiosity, the artistry of the festival also lies in those seven days in between.

There will be screenings of two 2014 Cannes favorites, the French Party Girl by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis -- this year's Camera d'Or winner -- and Winter Sleep by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hitchcock's Blackmail and Fantomas by Louis Feuillade will be shown on the big screens of two grandiose outdoor venues, the Potemkin Stairs and the Lanzheron descent. There will be international features, shorts, Ukrainian films and world documentaries all vying for prizes and audiences. I'm particularly curious at how Jehane Noujaim's Oscar-nominated The Square will be received, when it screens in the "Way to Freedom" section, alongside other filmed documents to a world in revolution, such as Maidan and Velvet Terrorists. The tagline of the section is a vintage quote by South African activist Albie Sachs, yet one oh-so actual today: "All revolutions are impossible until they happen; then they become inevitable."

And then there are Galas, as no self-respecting festival happens without a few of those, and masterclasses, such as one online with Darren Aronofsky and a Q & A with Stephen Frears, who is also the festival's Guest of Honor at this momentous fifth edition. A tribute series of screenings of films by the master filmmaker include My Beautiful Laundrette and his latest Philomena.

The festival's concurrent film market features a few talks on the business of filmmaking, a pitching session and a section for works-in-progress. In fact, two of the films in the festival this year, both by Ukrainian filmmakers, were seen as works-in-progress in last year's market at Odessa IFF. They are My Mermaid, My Lorelei by Nana Dzhordzhadze and The Guide by Oles Sanin.

Finally, I leave you with the inspiring words of Festival President Viktoriya Tigipko, who sent chills up my spine when she disclosed:

This year has been very difficult and at the same time momentous both for the country and every one of us. Our team is doing the very best for this festival to happen and be held on a top level. We have been supported in our aspiration by our colleagues: over 250 influential representatives of international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin and Venice, have outspoken their support of our festival. Their support demonstrates that OIFF, during the five years of its existence, has exceeded the level of a national event and made its way to an international film festivals agenda.

For more details, as well as the full program of films, check out the Odessa IFF website.

Image courtesy of the Odessa International Film Festival, used with permission.

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The Life After Death of My Mother Marylu de Watteville Raushenbush

July 7, 2014, 7:41 am

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My mother died at 9:35 on July 4th, as I stroked her cheek with my arms around her, and repeated the litany of love that we had been reciting over the last 36 hours. "I love you, Mom" as her breathing came at longer and longer intervals. "Lorraine loves you, Carla loves you, Rick loves you, Walter loves you," I intoned, "Nick, John, Elizabeth, Genevieve, Barbara, Flynn, Brad, we all love you Mom."

Filled with incredulity and awe that I was witnessing my mother's final moments of life, I said an approximation of the Anglican Prayer for the Dying, crying and holding the woman who had given me life 50 years earlier. Then she didn't take another breath.

And so life after Marylu's death began -- for us, and for her.

Shortly after Mom died, I went to pick up my father who had been resting at his "grandpa suite" built for him in my sister Lorraine's house located near the assisted living home where my mother has lived for the last four years with Alzheimer's. On the way to Marylu's deathbed, my father explained how he had really lost his wife years before, and that her death was an opportunity to "reinvigorate his memories of their 58 years of married life together."

I knew what he meant. Over the last years, my perception of Mom had subtly changed from the stunning, powerful woman I had known throughout most of my life, to someone who had lost ability to think and act for herself. Already, minutes after her death, my own memories of Marylu were reinvigorated.

My mother was born Marylu de Watteville and was proud to be a member of one of Switzerland's founding families with its crest of three angel wings. Raised in Oklahoma, she was building a career in advertising when she met my dad Walter and settled in Madison, Wisconsin where they raised their four children, of whom I was the youngest. While my father taught at the law school, my mother dove into local politics and was an activist in civil and women's rights with leadership roles in the NAACP, the Mayors Council on Human Rights, and co-founding the Wisconsin Citizens For Family Planning. Her circle of friends were women movers and shakers and I am a feminist today because of the example of my mother, who didn't have to teach me that women were equal to men -- she showed me.

Marylu was a celebrated artist working in ceramics and metal before focusing on photography. She received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, and her work was shown at galleries, museums and libraries around the country including portraits of women such as Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and actress Julie Harris as well as revealing self-portraits. I once asked my mom which were her favorite photographs. She replied: Oh, anything with people." My sister Carla was mom's favorite subject, and Marylu's portraits of her exposed simultaneously Carla's inner fragility and her power, demanding respect from the viewer.

My mother valued travel and adventure and came up with the most extraordinary gift of a backpacking trip to Europe for the four children. My brother Rick and I traveled together and my sisters traveled together, eventually meeting up in Pamplona, Spain for the Running of the Bulls. She was always trying to expand our world. During our childhood when we were living in the Southwest, my mother would take us to Indian reservations where we observed the spiritual connections between people, art and ritual. Once we attended a festival that culminated with acres of glowing embers being pushed off a cliff to create the vision of a waterfall of fire.

Much of my appreciation of art and culture came from my mother's instruction and example. I remember watching my mother in front of a solitary statue displayed in the center of a mausoleum in Berlin. Most of us were taking routine photographs of the piece of carved stone in front of us. Marylu had instead trained her camera on the shaft of light coming through the ceiling that illuminated the statue giving it its vivid power.

I have to mention Marylu's incredible sense of humor. Once she insisted my sisters go and clean out a chest of drawers in an upstairs room, and waited downstairs for the screams when they came across the dead mouse she had earlier discovered there. When my now husband Brad first came to meet my parents, my mother remained out of sight until we had gotten to the breakfast table in desperate need of our morning coffee. Then she leapt out from the pantry with a huge rubber monster mask on her head. Marylu certainly made a lasting impression on people.

Physically active all her life, my mother was a superb tennis player and golfer and an avid sailor. She was vibrant and full of life when she was struck with the baffling disease that would eventually kill her. However, while I understand what my father was saying about losing his wife four years ago, I cannot say that the time has been wasted. There was a painful grace that emerged from the illness that may have been impossible without it.

As a powerful and ambitious woman herself, my mother was at times unsympathetic and harsh with criticism of her children (although she was also immensely proud of all of us). The disease made her vulnerable; and opened up the possibility of a new kind of relationship. My sister Lorraine was the heroine of our family who provided extraordinary love and care for Marylu almost every day for the last four years. I know she doesn't regret it. Marylu's illness and dependence, however horrific, helped to melt the edges off our jagged memories. By the time of her death, the love we felt for our mother was pure and unqualified.

The life of Marylu we remember after her death includes both the powerful and vulnerable times, and we feel deeply grateful for all of it.

But what of her life now?

The last 48 hours of her life were an intensely spiritual time. While I am ultimately agnostic about what exactly happens when we die, my mother's death had a sense of the Holy hovering around it. Marylu was a seeker all her life. She was a Presbyterian and raised all of us in the church as well. However, her spiritual quest took her beyond the walls of the sanctuary to shamans in the jungles of Peru, the Sufi shrines in Turkey, ashrams in India and Buddhist temples in Tibet.

As her body shut down, her eyes would at times be alert, registering on the people around her bed singing "Amazing Grace," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and even the Doxology from the Christian worship service. Throughout those hours when we joked with her, cried over her, and told her how much we loved her, we felt a beautiful spirit in the room even in the midst of our sorrow. When I was holding her in those last moments as her breaths slowed, her eyes, which had half shut and glazed, suddenly opened, focused on me and then beyond me.

I don't know where you have gone, Mom, but we celebrate you and we are so grateful for your life with us -- and for your life after life.

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A-Sides with Jon Chattman: Nico & Vinz and the Quest for Song of the Summer

July 7, 2014, 8:13 am

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Ten years ago, Kevin Lyttle had a smash summer hit with the soca ballad "Turn Me On." I remember that song for oh so many reasons. For starters, it's not every beat that can get this guy (points to self) moving at bars or clubs. I should never dance. Period. I also remember it well because it was played repeatedly during my Caribbean honeymoon, and not once did I get tired of hearing it. Why am I bringing up my terrible dance skills and wedded-bliss trip? It's simple -- the Nico & Vinz track "Am I Wrong," which is on track to being the song of the summer, evokes the same positive vibes for me. Maybe I'm off base, but that's OK. It just feels the same way for me. But, I'm not saying Nico & Vinz's track is a copy of that "wining on me" song. It's not. Far from it actually. With inspiring, uplifting lyrics and beats and hooks that won't quit, the song has been unstoppable this season, and rightfully so. To put it simply, the song makes you want to dance, sing-a-long with it, and drink pina coladas on the beach while pumping it loud - perhaps all of the above should be done simultaneously. To throw out some stats: "Am I Wrong" just reached platinum status here in the states and is a worldwide smash, and the Africa-shot music video has well over 20 million views.

Late last month in Chelsea's McKittrick hotel, the Afro-Norwegian dynamic duo Nico Sereba and Vincent Dery offered a sneak peek of tunes off their upcoming debut Black Star Elephant. They were kind enough to let A-Sides film their live cut of their unstoppable hit, and sat down for a chat immediately afterwards. Watch it all (filmed by Yale Goodman) below, and pour me a drink.

A-Sides "Delve Into Twelve" Countdown
Each week A-Sides unleashes its Top 12 tracks of the week AKA the "Delve Into Twelve"based on the following contributing factors: songs I'm playing out that particular week NO MATTER WHEN THEY WERE RELEASED (think overlooked songs, unreleased tracks, and old favorites), songs various publicists are trying to get me to listen to that I did and dug a bunch, posts and trends I've noticed on my friends' Facebook walls, and - most importantly - the songs my two-year-old son gravitates toward by stomping his feet in approval. Yeah, you read that right. This weeks follows below (LW= last week's rank).

12. "Get Hurt" (debut) - Gaslight Anthem
11. "Rent I Pay" (debut) - Spoon
10. "Now Hear In" (LW-6) - Cloud Nothings
9. "Habits" (LW-7) - Tove Lo
8. "Am I Wrong" (LW-8) - Nico & Vinz
7. "Shadow" (LW-10) - Bleachers
6. "Chandelier" (LW-4) - Sia
5. "Let it Burn" (LW-5) - The Orwells
4. "Would You Fight For My Love?" (LW-2) - Jack White
3 "Seasons (Waiting On You) - (LW-11) - Future Islands
2. "Glory" (LW-1) - Wye Oak
1. "Stolen Dance" (LW-3) - Milky Chance

_________
About A-Sides Music

Jon Chattman's "A-Sides Music" series was established in August 2011 and usually features artists (established or not) from all genres performing a track, and discussing what it means to them. This informal series focuses on the artist making art in a low-threatening, extremely informal (sometimes humorous) way. No bells, no whistles -- just the music performed in a random, low-key setting followed by an unrehearsed chat. In an industry where everything often gets overblown and over manufactured, I'm hoping this is refreshing. Artists have included: fun, Courtney Love, Air Supply, Birdy, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Pharrell Williams, American Authors, Imagine Dragons, Gary Clark Jr., and more! A-Sides theme written and performed by Blondfire.

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Music I (Mostly) Hold Dear: John Corigliano and David Del Tredici

July 7, 2014, 10:43 am

≫ Next: Reacting to the 9/11 Memorial and Other Recommended Readings

≪ Previous: A-Sides with Jon Chattman: Nico & Vinz and the Quest for Song of the Summer

Discussions regarding the relationship between musical persona and sexuality are mostly wrongheaded, dumb, and beside the point. If the music is superb it doesn't matter if a transgender giraffe, homosexual zebra, or a very straight lama wrote it. Why should one care if it is a lesbian or gay, as opposed to a straight man or woman who prefers coffee to tea, who writes a great work? In regards to how music qua music is to be evaluated it shouldn't, and doesn't, matter in the least.

I say this as some might question this pairing of two gay men, John Corigliano and David Del Tredici, the former rather circumspect and the latter more public about his orientation. I do so not because they are both gay but because there is something similar about their musical profiles. I will leave it to others for whom this might matter to parse the supposed influence of their sexuality.

Both men, who are in their mid-70s, have written large quantities of delightful music. Corigliano has written numerous dramatic, and well-conceived and received, concerti (for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, and violin), a grand opera, song cycles and symphonies. Del Tredici's imagination seems to be most animated by the combination of words and music and thus a very large part of his output includes the voice. What they have in common is that they both write music of a highly charged and theatrical nature, music that doesn't stop until it is, or close to, over the top.

They write wonderfully for the orchestra, which is to say not only do they have a natural ability for it- my guess is either you do or you don't- but they obviously work hard at it as well. Corigliano and Del Tredici have made it one of their primary avenues of expression and this repertoire is far richer as a result.

They are interested in the orchestral medium for a number of reasons. The large modern orchestra can play really loud and really soft, and both composers exploit this dynamic bandwidth. Del Tredici pushes the envelope even further in a work like Final Alice, for example, by amplifying the soprano soloist and adding a section of folk instruments and saxophones to an already large orchestra. Corigliano, in Three Hallucinations from the movie Altered States, includes scoring for a large percussion section and an organ.

Their color palettes are highly varied and almost perfumed. There are never clumsy sounds- rather, each invariably glistens. These composers delight in the orchestra's many sonic combinations and treat it as a vast reservoir of sensuous possibilities.

This is not to say that this is the primary feature of their music (like early Pendercki), because for music to make an immediate impact, as well as to survive for the long haul, it must have strong, perceivable, and memorable content. The music of these gentlemen has this in spades. From their earlier works-Corigliano's Piano Concerto and Violin Sonata, and Del Tredici's Syzyrgy and I hear an Army-it is clear that these composers were capable of finding strong ideas and taking them on a fine journey to a satisfying conclusion. They had the strongest of musical personas and identities right from the start. As they matured, their respective languages developed and deepened significantly while, surprisingly, proceeding in opposite directions.

Corigliano started off as an extended-tonalist in the American symphonic camp probably as the result of growing up at the feet of Leonard Bernstein. (Corigliano's father was the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic when it was under the direction of this conductor among others.) The early music displays a neo-classic rhythmic vitality and jauntiness, warm and lyrical melodies, and a penchant for sweet extended harmonies. Over the years his music has become eclectic, inclusive of broader technical and aesthetic possibilities. The resultant works, like Three Hallucinations and his blockbuster hit Symphony No. 1, could be called poly-stylistic, as they include polymorphous textures, quotations of older music, aleatoric effects, and a mixture of tonal and non-tonal materials. They are less direct than what came before but more emotionally expansive and nuanced.

Recent works like The Red Violin, a concerto developed from his music for the eponymous film, and Mr. Tambourine Man, an orchestral song cycle based on poetry of Bob Dylan, show him still developing his refined sense of lyricism and drama. The former is a bravura work in the lineage of Beethoven's Violin Concerto (it is all about scales, arpeggios, passage work, and a few very good tunes), and the latter is as direct and clear as the early pieces but carries greater emotional weight.

Del Tredici moved famously in the '70s in the opposite direction, from the serial
camp to unabashed tonality. This was largely dictated by his infatuation with the story of Alice in Wonderland and its wider literary penumbra (associated stories
and commentary) which seemed to require a simpler and more straightforward language. In writing works on these texts he mentions that he first wrote what was decidedly tonal music, always expecting to go back and put in the "wrong" notes, but finally concluded it just didn't make sense to do so. He took a figurative beating from many of his colleagues for this apostasy, but audiences ate it up. Final Alice is the most famous of the Alice pieces, and Del Tredici calls it an "opera in concert form." It can be described as multiple variations on a simple tune whose ascending major 6th (as in "My bonnie") is so ubiquitous that it drives the listener just a little bit crazy, but this obsessiveness is at the center of the experience and is ultimately winning in its peculiar and off-kilter way.

In more recent song cycles like Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Chana's Story he continues to plumb the possibilities of a post-Romantic tonal language that is able to contain, hold, and -- here is the kicker- integrate, references to late Romantic, Impressionist, and lounge-lizard, music. In the vocal parts he employs a vast range, repeats words and small phrases with abandon, employs Wagnerian crescendos and pitch trajectories (like the whoop of the Valkyries!) and single note recitatives. The piano parts are busy with elaborate figuration and virtuosity -- these are no fragile accompaniments but rather present a full-fledged, if occasionally overbearing, partner.

David Del Tredici and John Corigliano did not become different composers with the change or expansion of their materials. Just as Stravinsky showed us that a composer could talk in different languages and still retain immediate identifiability and individuality, so is this the case here. A good example is Del Tredici's compression and expansion of time that carries from Szyrgy to Final Alice (usually an exponential process carried out in both directions); his heavy orchestrations that are layered with a thickness that is like impasto on a canvas; and the emotional quality of frenzied exhilaration. While with Corigliano it is the frequent presence of a finely wrought tune of a wistful nature, a looking forward and backward in musical time almost in the same glance, the fast or languidly slow move from the gentle to the barbaric, and the affect always clear and right on the surface.

These two composers have matured in a delightful way from their auspicious beginnings. Their oeuvres are worth encountering.

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Reacting to the 9/11 Memorial and Other Recommended Readings

July 7, 2014, 11:18 am

≫ Next: Andrea Chung's Artistic Love Affair With Process and Materials

≪ Previous: Music I (Mostly) Hold Dear: John Corigliano and David Del Tredici

Artwork of the Week:

Goulandris Master
Cycladic Female Figurine, ca. 2500-2400 B.C.
Marble
16 5/16 × 4 3/16 × 1 1/2 in.
The Walters Art Museum

#1
Adam Gopnik on the 9/11 Memorial.
"The site contains more contradictions, unresolved and perhaps unresolvable, than any other eight acres in Manhattan. A celebration of liberty tightly policed; a cemetery that cowers in the shadow of commerce; an insistence that we are here to remember and an ambition to let us tell you what to recall; the boast that we have completely started over and the promise that we will never forget--visitors experience these things with a free-floating sense of unease. The contradictions are already so evident that they've infuriated critics, from right to center to left."
The New Yorker

#2
Reaction to the Marina Abramovic exhibition at the Serpentine
"It's easy to say that you could just sit on a chair quietly at home and have the same result (who needs a fashionable avant garde artist to make you stare at a white wall?) but, in fact, in our non-stop, connected world, it's a very difficult thing to find the time and space for. Like many others who have been, I felt powerfully conflicting emotions about the Abramovic show, but I can't wait to go back."
The Guardian

#3
Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works by Marianne Stockebrand, William C. Agee, Rudi Fuchs, Donald Judd, Adrian Kohn, and Richard Shiff

#4
The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s by Werner Sollors
"In Germany, the years immediately following World War II call forward images of obliterated cities, hungry refugees, and ghostly monuments to Nazi crimes. The temptation of despair was hard to resist, and to contemporary observers the road toward democracy in the Western zones of occupation seemed rather uncertain. Drawing on a vast array of American, German, and other sources--diaries, photographs, newspaper articles, government reports, essays, works of fiction, and film--Werner Sollors makes visceral the experiences of defeat and liberation, homelessness and repatriation, concentration camps and denazification."
Harvard University Press

#5
On Museums Acquiring Apps
"The impetus for the acquisition," says Sebastian Chan, Cooper-Hewitt's director of digital and emerging media, "is that software has become one of the most significant arenas of design." Code, the underpinning of any app, may be digital and insubstantial; you can't touch it. Yet we interact with apps daily and their design affects our behavior. When Facebook, for example, created its "News Feed" feature, users encountered a stream of their friends' status updates. "No one quite knows what it means to collect design artifacts in a world where design is increasingly intangible," says Aaron Cope, Cooper-Hewitt's senior engineer.
Smithsonian Magazine

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Andrea Chung's Artistic Love Affair With Process and Materials

July 7, 2014, 11:33 am

≫ Next: On the "A" w/Souleo: Star of Tupac Shakur Inspired Broadway Musical Defends Rapper's Controversial Legacy

≪ Previous: Reacting to the 9/11 Memorial and Other Recommended Readings

Though she started out life as an illustrator and a painter, these art forms by themselves were never totally fulfilling to Andrea Chung. For one thing, she did not like "bringing to life someone else's ideas," which is what illustration calls for. She also did not find painting "really relaxing or therapeutic," as she heard others around her describe their love affair with painting. What she did like, though, was finding materials and applying paint to them. It was this interest in materials and process that would come to drive her work.

And it was through her love of materials and ideas that she came to realize that she is really a mixed-media conceptual artist.

Chung obtained her BFA from Parsons School of Design, where she was an illustration major. She completed her MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Chung credits MICA for helping her find her artistic voice and her artistic vision. When she got to MICA, Chung began to examine fibroids in the lives of black women in particular, who are known to be more impacted by fibroids than other groups of women. The artist wondered why this was so. Through her work she began to unravel how one's diet tangibly affects one's health and body. These realizations led to a powerful series in which she used cutouts and photographs of black women and made literal the effects of certain foods -- sugar, for example -- on one's reproductive system. In these works Chung is looking at the effect of colonialism on black female bodies. The cotta that women in these stunning works carry on their heads is both an actual and a symbolic load.

As the child of a Trinidadian mother and a Jamaican father, Chung considers herself Caribbean-American, and she is preoccupied with issues relating to the Caribbean region. She does not hesitate to admit the complexity of her heritage. "When I am in the Caribbean," she told me, "I am seen as more American. While in America I am seen as Caribbean. As a Caribbean person in America, I am often forced to confront the really skewed ideas that many people have about the Caribbean."

In her "May Day" series she does just that by using collaged images to make pointed commentary on the racial politics of the Caribbean and how the Caribbean is often stereotyped and viewed by outsiders. The Caribbean, she believes, was constructed as a place where "foreigners can come and feel safe." Hence the oversized focus on tourism, and a kind of "domestication" of the local population, to placate a touristic imagination.

Chung's earlier work with food would resurface in her examination of the diets fed to people who were brought to the Caribbean. A diet in fact heavy in starch and made up largely of foods not indigenous to the region. She did a series of sculptures on wooden shipping pallets in which she traced the history of certain spices and food items as they made their way to the Caribbean. In doing so she found out that "there is not only a rich history but a lot of power in tracing back where food comes from. I was finding out that, like people, different types of food have migrated to the Caribbean region."

In a series of installations at various residencies, Chung has dealt specifically with sugar, which she says has a really rich history of movement and migration. As a Fulbright fellow in Mauritius, she became interested in the comingling of the history of both sugar and fishing on the island. "After the abolition of slavery on the island of Mauritius," she explains, "many newly freed slaves became fishermen and subsequently established small fishing villages, especially in the southern part of the island, rather than return to the cane fields to work for their former enslavers. Many of these fishing villages remain today and these fishing traditions have been passed down for generations. Unfortunately the trade is now threatened due to overfishing."

Chung began making multiple boats, similar to the boats used by Mauritian fishermen, cast out of sugar, that are floated in a large water bath. "Over time," says Chung, "the boats disappear, mirroring the disappearance of the fishing trade in Mauritius. I also cast liquor bottles out of sugar to recreate a method of fishing used by some Mauritian fishermen. The bottles are accompanied with small metal and sugar replicas of fishing tackle, such as weights and hooks, and are wrapped and entangled in fishing line. As I cast the bottles they are hung and left to the elements of the space. Over time the bottles dematerialize and shatter, reflecting the disappearance of both a community and a trade."

Chung is a prolific artist. She is always working, always experimenting. Oftentimes her work takes years in gestation. As she said to me, "Those sugar pieces that I made about Mauritius took me about three years to figure out how to make them. But luckily, I like experimenting. I like finding interesting materials and seeing how they work together. I love examining the history of a material."

There is a clear preoccupation with movement and migration in her work. But interestingly enough, there is, too, a preoccupation with not only history but generations, and the passing down of knowledge from one generation to another.

Currently, the artist is engaged in a collaborative work that looks at the persecution of black midwives both in the Southern United States and in the Caribbean. In this work she is examining the various ways of birthing and, yet again, the wisdom passed down from one generation (of women) to another. "There is the idea, for example," she notes, "of cutting labor pains by putting scissors under the birthing bed of the woman. It is ideas like these that my collaborator and I will be examining in this latest body of work."

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On the "A" w/Souleo: Star of Tupac Shakur Inspired Broadway Musical Defends Rapper's Controversial Legacy

July 7, 2014, 12:23 pm

≫ Next: The Piano Man and Nostalgia: On Listening to the Words We Sing

≪ Previous: Andrea Chung's Artistic Love Affair With Process and Materials

It is the presence of strong women in the Broadway musical, Holler If Ya Hear Me that attracted Saycon Sengbloh to be part of the cast and serves as a reminder of one usually overlooked facet of Tupac Shakur's enduring legacy: his female empowerment anthems. The production, currently playing at the Palace Theatre uses Tupac Shakur's music to frame the non-autobiographical story of an ex-offender John (Saul Williams) who returns home to a community plagued by poverty, joblessness and violence. Sengbloh plays the role of Corrine, the ex-girlfriend of John who tries to steer him away from the wrong path.

"I think the female voice in this production is very important," said Sengbloh. "With my character I inspire men in the play to see that you can choose to love your brothers and sisters by not harming them."

Although the musical is centered on a man, throughout are performances of several of Shakur's songs about the struggles and triumphs of women such as 'Brenda's Got a Baby,' 'Keep Ya Head Up' and 'Dear Mama.' For Sengbloh the fact that a man who was found guilty of sexually abusing a woman created these songs doesn't detract from the power of the late rapper's lyrics.

"I won't defend or make excuses regarding his innocence but an entire group of teenagers were moved to not have unprotected sex by 'Brenda's Got a Baby.' I won't remove that song from their ears because of an issue that happened at another time. I do believe everyone should be allowed an opportunity for redemption."

Off the stage, Saycon is creating her own music to touch listeners as heard here.

Eriq La Salle takes artistic control while giving back

After memorable roles in everything from the big screen classic Coming to America to the hit television series ER, Eriq La Salle is finally where he should be. And that place is either behind a desk or in the director's chair as he balances career reinvention as an author and director.

La Salle recently released his second novel, Laws of Wrath, a thriller sequel to Laws of Depravity, which follows NYPD detectives Quincy Cavanaugh and Phee Freeman as they attempt to stop a cult from committing ritualistic murders. But these are no cheap thrills as La Salle says the plot is meant to inspire contemplation on the nature of faith. "The book really raises the question of where does faith and spirituality lead you. Will it lead to forgiveness or vengeance?"

La Salle's spiritual convictions have also led him to the director's chair where he is determined to increase diversity and broaden the representation of women on-screen. La Salle recently directed episodes of CBS' Under the Dome and NBC's Crisis (the latter is now cancelled).

"As a director I love getting a script and having a role written for a man and saying why not make the judge a female. It's not always that they [TV networks] are resistant to it. It's just that they haven't thought about it. Those victories of helping there be more diversity are tangible and meaningful for me."

Equally important is La Salle's passion for giving back. He regularly mentors aspiring television directors and lends his support to charities such as the Bronx Charter School for the Arts. This past June he served as an ambassador to the school's Friends of Bronx Arts program where he helped raise over $50,000 to supports Bronx Arts' arts and academic programs.

Hennessy's 'wild rabbit' campaign like you've never seen it before

Lillian Ling's project/Courtesy: Hennessy

What does your 'wild rabbit' look like? That was the question presented to ten Pratt Institute graduate students as they were challenged with creating art inspired by Hennessy's popular campaign which celebrates the inner motivation that pushes one to reach their full potential.

Eduardo Palma's interactive installation/Courtesy: Hennessy

A panel of judges including legendary street artist, Futura selected the winner, Eduardo Palma and first and second finalists, Eden Daniell and Lillian Ling, respectively. Winners receive funding to help support their careers and a trip to Los Angeles to display their works in conjunction with the launch of Hennessy's new art bottle designed by Shepard Fairey. Take a look at the winning designs below including the work of one outstanding participant, Jiajia Jin, who surprisingly did not advance to the finals.

Eden Daniell's ring design/Courtesy: Hennessy

****

The weekly column, On the "A" w/Souleo, covers the intersection of the arts, culture entertainment and philanthropy in Harlem and beyond and is written by Souleo, founder and president of event/media content production company, Souleo Enterprises, LLC.

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The Piano Man and Nostalgia: On Listening to the Words We Sing

July 7, 2014, 1:13 pm

≫ Next: Music for the Mythical Brazil

≪ Previous: On the "A" w/Souleo: Star of Tupac Shakur Inspired Broadway Musical Defends Rapper's Controversial Legacy

Growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, my rock and roll musical awareness was limited to the Beatles and Billy Joel. My parents listened to some classical music, and the Carpenters seemed to own the 8-track tape player in the station wagon (the one with the rearward facing back seats). But until my adolescent alienation of the mid-1980s and my discovery of the New Wave (including The Smiths, The Cure, and early U2), all I knew were the Beatles and our sort of local, Long Island hero, Billy Joel.

Finally, after about three and a half decades of listening to his music, I saw and heard Billy Joel perform live recently at Fenway Park. Even though it was a stadium show, the sound proved stunningly sharp. His voice was strong and the lyrics quite clear.

The audience, however, puzzled me.

What really struck me was the audience members singing along the words to Piano Man, one of Joel's iconic songs. Now, I admit, generally I am no big fan of audiences joining in to sing. I attend concerts to hear the singer or group perform the songs, not my fellow attendees. I recognize that audience participation can enliven a show, but still, the singing along is not my ideal.

Part of the problem is that people join in on the songs they know and remember well, I imagine as a kind of nostalgia--regardless of the nature of the song. People smile and sing and dance, seemingly oblivious to the actual lyrics.

So back to the Piano Man. People sang happily, presumably out of nostalgia, but were they listening to the very words to which they gave voice? Piano Man is actually a profoundly sad song. It is about loneliness, alienation, dead-end jobs and dead-end lives, about being stuck, unable to escape an unfulfilling, provincial life:

They're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone....

It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they've been coming to see
To forget about life for a while.

There is no joy or redemption at the end; there is music and alcohol to provide a temporary eclipse of the pains of life and living.

Indeed, if one listens carefully, many of Joel's songs echo such sentiments. Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) runs through a number of characters in similarly desolate situations, with the narrator seeking to escape. Allentown laments the closing of factories and the passing of better times. Joel sings, "I won't be getting up today." His closing song of the encore and concert, Only the Good Die Young, remains a rather cynical song (whether or not it reflects Joel's actual views).

Now, please do not take my observations as a critique of the Billy Joel songbook. To the contrary, he is brilliant at capturing these tones and moods of sadness and alienation, failure and loss. These are powerful feelings and experiences in our lives. Especially when linked to the frequent alienation and melancholia of adolescence, they touch and no doubt imprint our hearts. After the Fenway concert, I appreciate Billy Joel no less. If anything, more so. In a world where so much pop music is about boys and girls and relationship problems and break-ups, Joel's music and lyrics tell stories, draw characters, and evoke deep feelings.

I remain puzzled, though, how fandom and nostalgia can blunt the power of the music and words, replacing them with a fleeting happiness. Perhaps I misunderstand the situation, but would we not better honor the musicians by paying greater attention to the words they sing?

↧

Music for the Mythical Brazil

July 7, 2014, 1:24 pm

≫ Next: One Woman with Many Voices Tells About Passage from Guyana to the USA

≪ Previous: The Piano Man and Nostalgia: On Listening to the Words We Sing

The World Cup lets us non-Brazilians (and some Brazilians) bask for a moment again in the mythical Brazil -- land of dazzling futbol, beautiful beaches, sultry supermodels and supernatural jungles, all moving to a samba beat.

The truth, of course, lies just under the stereotype -- there is some tough living in Brazil and young Brazilians probably listen more to hip-hop and rock than samba, But before FIFA leaves the place, let's not let reality get in the way of our Brazilian dreams. Cue Gisele, Adriana and Alessandra...and Neymar, Hulk and Fred.

Part of the mythos of Brazil, bossa nova is the son of samba that went off to university -- it's a more sophisticated, subtle style as it was first created in the late 1950s. Today it probably has more devotees outside of Brazil than inside, and has spawned its own sub-genre: chilled-out electro-bossa. More upbeat than many electro-bossa performers, the group Bossacucanova recently released its consistently fun fourth album, Our Kind of Bossa (Six Degrees).

This time out, the group has Brazilian samba and pop stars singing on each cut -- with great results. The formula, which works beautifully, is to juxtapose earthy, sensual singers with the skittering electronics that literally swing between the bossa and samba ends of the spectrum.

In the hands of the Bossacucanova-istas, the beats always swing hard, accompanied by ever-changing splashes of sound -- DJ scratching, jaunty brass, electric guitars. The group's bass player, Marcio Menesal, is actually a bit of bossa royalty himself: his father, Roberto, was among the bossa vanguard and he helps his son close the album with "To Voltando."

Maria Rita (daughter of the revered singer Elis Regina) floats over the beats on the lively "Deixa A Menina." On "A Pedida E Samba," singer Elza Soares shows why folks call her Louis Armstrong's long-lost daughter: her brassy, jazzy voice here is well-matched with some hip electronics. On "E Preciso Perdoar," the late Emilio Santiago brings his ultra-smooth crooning to one of the few slower tunes on the album. Veteran sambista Martinho da Vila sings his own "Segure Tudo," infusing the funked up version with his sly spirit.

Hard-core bossaheads may think the fun-loving Bossacucanova is committing blasphemy to the delicate music of Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, and it is true that it is somewhat of a distant if loving relative. That said, the group has mastered its distinctive corner of the intersection of Brazilian and electronic genres, creating a collection of irresistible, easy-going tunes.

For another twist on the bossa formula, there's jazz singer Stacey Kent's The Changing Lights (Warner), which has its elegant, old-style bossa swing along with playful English-language lyrics.

The New Jersey-born Kent chooses seven bossa chestnuts, but goes for the English versions for most. In addition, she sings several new songs in the bossa style written by her husband and musical partner, Jim Tomlinson, including two with lyrics by the Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro.

One of these originals, "The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain," echoes the wistful tone of saudade, the nostalgia-like mix of sadness and happiness that embues so much of Brazilian music. The nice thing about her singing in English -- whether intentional or not -- is it helps Americans hear the emotional complexity that accompanies the harmonies of the best of bossa.

As befitting the quiet genre, Kent's voice is all spun sugar, lithely gliding along the playful melodies. With the gentle insistence of her band behind her, Kent effortlessly recreates the intelligence and life-loving spirit of the original bossa innovators.

The optimism of the era that spawned bossa nova still evokes a sunniness that warms but never burns. Even more than the gritty reality of the World Cup pitch, the field where Brazilian music plays is the jogo bonito that consistently delivers the dream.

Bossacucanova tearing it up on "Balanca" in someone's apartment?

Stacey Kent having some fun with Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba"

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One Woman with Many Voices Tells About Passage from Guyana to the USA

July 7, 2014, 1:35 pm

≫ Next: The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow: A Celebration

≪ Previous: Music for the Mythical Brazil

DEMERARA GOLD, A One-Woman Show by Ingrid Griffith

OPENING: JULY 17 - JULY 31
www.demeraragoldtheshow.com

You have only to read a few poignantly detailed paragraphs below which tell about the life changing journey of Ingrid Griffith and her family from Guyana to the United States to want to see her new one-woman play, DEMERARA GOLD, at Dorothy Strelsin Theatre in Manhattan. Griffith plays no less than 18 people in her autobiographical collage of characters.

The path of immigration is something that most American citizens have in common somewhere in their history. We have heard and continue to hear the many stories of Jews, Chinese, Italians, and the Irish who came across the world from their foreign lands to Ellis Island to become Americans. But the humanistic contemporary stories of the newer traveler with bags packed full of hope for a better future are less known.

The new immigrant comes with no less a determined heart and soul and sometimes perceptions that make them feel alone in their unique position, anywhere other than home. DEMERARA GOLD is a coming of age story about the effects of immigration on personal identity and family dynamics.

Words by Ingrid Griffith:

Over a decade ago, I found myself in New York City on the road to a professional path in business. I had earned a college degree, had a good-paying first job on Wall Street, enrolled in the 401k plan, had found a roommate and was ready to share an apartment that was centrally located in Manhattan. Basically, I had a degree of comfort and peace of mind.

But I also had a persistent feeling that something was missing. I heard my father's voice as he railed at being stuck in a decent paying but low-level job, at the lack of respect he felt in America, at the frustration of being underutilized and misunderstood. In Guyana, he had been a teacher, an accountant, a steel band player. He was from a respected family, part of a vibrant community. In America, he was just a supervisor in a Long Island factory. His name carried no weight and his presence was overlooked. I carried his bitter indignation with me as I left home to make my way in the world. I carried the wounds that immigration had inflicted on my identity and on my family. Then it dawned on me. I couldn't turn the clock back but, I could tell the story.

I could tell about the pain of separation when my parents were forced to leave my sister and I behind when they emigrated to Long Island. I could tell of the years of wondering when we would be a family again. I could tell of the exhilaration of reuniting and the wonder of America. I could let people know what it felt like to leave the bustling familiarity of Georgetown for the blank windows and silent empty streets of suburbia, the incessant television shows, the hip new clothes and language. I could let people know how it feels to be invisible in a school dominated by upper middle class white kids who drove their own cars to school. I could tell what it was like to become a woman in a society of new and strange expectations and conventions.

The move from Guyana to Long Island was jarring. It seemed as if one day my grandmothers were keeping vigil over my sister and I, making sure we passed no words to the jolly and vocal boys on our Georgetown street. Suddenly, I was feeling pressured to lose my virginity. Try culture shock in the back seat of a car.

Web: DEMERARA GOLD
Facebook: Demerara Gold - A One Woman Show
Twitter: @DemeraraGoldShw
Instagram: @DemeraraGoldShw

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The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow: A Celebration

July 7, 2014, 2:09 pm

≫ Next: Home to Havana: A Story of Ballet, Family and Country

≪ Previous: One Woman with Many Voices Tells About Passage from Guyana to the USA

I first visited Poland 25 years ago with my mother. She was returning to her native city of Krakow for the first time since the end of the Holocaust, in which she lost everything and everyone. Although it retained its old world charm, Krakow was dilapidated, and the worst slums seemed to be in Kazimierz, a district that had once been vividly Jewish.

In the intervening years, Communism ended; a new generation born in a free Poland came of age; and in the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg made Schindler's List in Krakow, using Kazimierz as a crucial location to depict its worst moment in history. Ironically, the film is now credited with transforming this area: today, it is filled with Jewish restaurants and shops in addition to the restored Tempel synagogue. And in 1990, an annual festival devoted to something seemingly paradoxical -- Jewish Culture in Krakow -- began.

During World War II, the Nazis used the Tempel synagogue as a horse stable. Most of the Jews who lived in this vibrant Polish city were rounded up, locked into a ghetto, and then deported to camps including nearby Plaszow and Auschwitz. It is therefore astounding to listen to a Klezmer tango performed in the synagogue a few nights ago -- part of the 24th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.

The Tarras Band hails mainly from Brooklyn, and they energize the sacred space with rhythms and melodies that could have been heard in this city before the war. It's the music of Ashkenazi (Central European) Jews, familiar to the few elderly remnants of the Jewish population still to be found in Krakow. But this festival boasts a truly eclectic mix of ethnicities, balancing Ashkenazi traditions with Sephardic (Middle Eastern) ones.

Photo Credit: Pawel Mazur

Twenty hours earlier, the performers in the Tempel synagogue were A-Wa, three sisters from Yemen whose songs in Arabic led many of those seated in the pews to jump up and dance. While most were young Polish women, in their midst was a Krakow-born Holocaust survivor, an elderly man gyrating gracefully to the infectious rhythms.

This is a different Poland from what I saw in June 1989, just before Solidarity won in the first free Polish elections. For non-Jewish attendees -- who form the bulk of the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival's population -- learning about Polish-Jewish history is simply a joyful process and responsibility.

One of the festival events I attended was the humorously titled "Meshugoyim," blending the Yiddish words for "crazy" and "non-Jew." Held at the Jewish Community Center in the heart of the Kazimierz neighborhood, it features the Christian volunteers who keep this JCC going. "I'm the first generation born in a free Poland," says a young woman. "Polish-Jewish relations were cut by the Holocaust and by Communism. My parents didn't have the opportunity to work on Polish-Jewish connection."

Another volunteer is a graduate of the local Jagiellonian University with a major in Jewish Studies -- which might seem surprising to people who have often associated Poland with anti-Semitism. "There are many non-Jews among the 200 doing Jewish Studies," she offers.

Photo: Annette Insdorf

They are part of the thousands of people who fill the square for the closing concert of the festival. "Shalom on Szeroka Street" exudes a pride not only in being Jewish, but embracing the reintegration of its culture and history in Poland, which the Nazis tried to eradicate. "Szeroka" (pronounced Sher-O-kah) means Broad Way, and the crowds in the square rival Times Square on New Years Eve. But they are not waiting for a giant ball to drop, announcing a forward movement in time; rather, the crowd cheers music that is equally about the past and the future. Musicians like Shai Tsabari and the Middle East Groove All-Stars (from Israel) rock the square.

Photo Credit: Pawel Mazur

The ceremony that follows is a reminder of how this festival is not only about culture but identity, and even faith. Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, leads the service of "Havdalah," welcoming the end of Shabbat. The prayers in Hebrew certainly don't elicit the same level of crowd engagement as rollicking Klezmer music, but they introduce non-Jews to the religious source of Jewish tradition. The half-moon over the square seems appropriate to Judaism in Krakow, whose Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Half is visibly lit, while the other half is absent or at least hidden from view.

Only 60 kilometers away is the death camp of Auschwitz. The Krakow Jewish Culture Festival is therefore literally and figuratively in the shadow of the Holocaust. If this event is any indication, Jewish Krakow seems to have risen like a phoenix from the ashes. The person most responsible for this "Rejewvenation" is Janusz Makuch, a multi-lingual creator and organizer of boundless energy. In introducing A-Wa, he invokes the philosophy that animates this unique festival of both commemoration and celebration. "Pluralism is God's will," he says. "We are all equal but -- thank God -- completely different."

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Annette Insdorf, Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, is the author of PHILIP KAUFMAN.

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Home to Havana: A Story of Ballet, Family and Country

July 7, 2014, 2:28 pm

≫ Next: Jane Szabo: Sense of Self

≪ Previous: The Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow: A Celebration

Sarasota Herald-Tribune staff writer Carrie Seidman and photographer Elaine Litherland accompanied Ariel Serrano and Wilmian Hernandez, two former dancers who defected from Cuba in 1993, as they returned to the land of their birth and the ballet school where they both trained as children. With them were students from the ballet school they founded in Sarasota, Florida and their children, including their 17-year-old son, Francisco, a late-bloomer poised on the brink of a promising professional career. This is an excerpt from "Home to Havana," a story of remembrances, reunions and hopes for building a ballet bridge for the future. To read the entire three-part story, see a video documentary and an extensive photo gallery from Cuba, go to http://Havana.HeraldTribune.com

By CARRIE SEIDMAN
carrie.seidman@heraldtribune.com

HAVANA, Cuba -- It all seems a little surreal.

From the darkened wings of Havana's national theater Ariel Serrano stares toward the brightly-lit stage, where the finalists in the XII Concurso Internacional para Jóvenes Estudiantes de Ballet, an international ballet competition for aspiring student dancers, are awaiting the announcement of the medal winners.

Seated among them is his 17-year-old son, Francisco, the only American ever to participate in the April event. With a long and lean ballet body, a conversational grasp of Spanish and the curly, black hair and cafe con leche coloring of his heritage, he seamlessly blends in with the other dancers, who are all from Cuba or Mexico.

Oh Panchito, m'ijo, Serrano is thinking, murmuring a diminutive of the nickname his wife gave their eldest child as an infant. How can this be? Are we really here -- aquí, en La Habana? Is that you on the stage, or is it me?

Serrano scrubs his face with his hands as if to wash away the sheen of disbelief. His thick fingers clench and release, clench and release. He is sweating in his black Ralph Lauren polo shirt, though the backstage area is one of the few over air-conditioned spots in this hot and congested city.

At the front of the house, perched on one of the hundreds of fraying cloth seats in a theater that has seen better days, Serrano's wife, Wilmian Hernandez, makes small talk with her sister, Magaley. A week of escorting a half-dozen students from the Sarasota ballet school she and her husband founded, of waiting in endless lines to renew her Cuban passport, and of dealing with Havana's traffic, pollution and chaos has left fatigue etched on her eternally cheerful face.

She is thinking back to that day, four years earlier, when her son asked if he could take up ballet, the art that propelled his parents from this Caribbean island to the United States more than two decades ago. Francisco was 13; she had started her own training at 8. Her husband, watching his son try in vain to touch his toes, told her firmly: "No, Wilmian. It is no good. He doesn't have it."

She believed otherwise. This was her only son, the one she had nicknamed "Panchito" because "Pancho" - the usual Cuban nickname for Francisco -- seemed too big for such a slight, sweet and subdued boy.

Now seated on a folding chair in the back row, behind dozens of his dancing peers, Francisco wonders why he is here -- in this strange moment, on this foreign stage, in this country that is both his and not his. Why is he sitting alongside all of these dancers who are more experienced, more at ease, more "into it," in a way he can't begin to put into words?

Why did they ask him to dance tonight, at this final gala? Could this mean he has actually won something? That can't be, he tells himself, tamping down a quiver of expectation, hoping he is mistaken. Because much as he doesn't like competitions, he does love performing.
And maybe...

Just maybe, when I do my variation tonight, I will throw in that step at the end, a step no one, not even my father, is anticipating, he thinks. Maybe they will clap for me as they did last night -- that thunderous rhythmic, unison pounding that Cuban audiences reserve for their favorites. He'd felt like running back on stage for a second bow when it happened, wishing he could scoop up the ephemeral weight of the accolades in his upturned palms.

Ramona de Sáa, the director of the Cuban National Ballet School and Ariel Serrano's former teacher, steps toward a microphone at the front of the stage.

The house lights dim.

The backstage shuffling ceases.

Voices fall silent.

Ariel Serrano takes a deep breath.

The announcer begins:

"Buenas noches, señoras y señores..."

To read the entire three-part story, go to http://Havana.HeraldTribune.com

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Jane Szabo: Sense of Self

July 7, 2014, 2:59 pm

≫ Next: Fabelo: Art Review

≪ Previous: Home to Havana: A Story of Ballet, Family and Country

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order." -- Virginia Woolf

"The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own." -- Susan Sontag

The images in Jane Szabo's Sense of Self exists at the intersection of multiple threads of contemporary photography -- self-portraiture generally, and by women artists in particular; a related exploration along the continuum of gender roles and the construction of identity; and as a purely formal matter, the narrative potential for serial images and the emotional depths of abstraction. Szabo started making this work following a period in which her series of environmental portraits called dis.place.ment explored parents photographed in their childrens' rooms and vice versa. Whether the subject was male or female was not as important to Szabo as was the sense of dissonance that the displacement of the person in the space created. The work ignited in Szabo the somewhat unsettling conviction that, as she says, "It was time to turn the camera around." The gestural, impactful, evasive, awkward beauty speaks to the vulnerability and self-examination Sense of Self was conceived to chronicle.

Susan Sontag and other public intellectuals engaged with the problematic charisma of photography often deconstructed the language of the medium, which is the language of the hunt. Take, capture, shoot. Its predatory leanings were especially apparent in the male photographer/female model structure that had inhabited all of art history and only grew more dominant with the advent of photography. In this context, female self-portraiture took on and continues to retain a special power within the genre -- a quality that telegraphs political, personal, psychological, literary, and emotional awareness. Yet to some degree this imbalance of power exists in every transaction where one person takes another person's picture. In that sense, Szabo's deployment of self-portraiture, inspired by her experience picturing others outside their comfort zones, is more concerned with matters of universal human nature.

Though reminiscent of artists like JoAnn Callis (with less sexuality and more clothing) and Cindy Sherman (with less makeup and much less mess) -- whose staged self-portraiture overtly takes on the power dynamic -- for Szabo, Sense of Self is about her individual "struggle to maintain a sense of order in myself and my environment (a process that is failing)." It's an "attempt to contain chaos" that reflects her "urge to grid and sort" as a mechanism of control -- a trait that inevitably comes into conflict with what she calls her "desire to be free." In service of this idea, the evocative blurriness of the figures and the surreal, stylized yet minimal atmospheric architectural settings -- and the heavily symbolic interaction between the figures and elements of this environment -- suggest both regimentation and expressivity. Her use of serial imagery, what the artist calls "documenting a process" is part Eadweard Muybridge and part Virginia Woolf. Her background as a painter inheres in her photographic compositions, with her striking emphasis on pattern and color doing as much of the narrative work as the attitudes and actions of the figures (herself).

SENSE OF SELF opens Thursday, July 10 (7-9pm) at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) during Downtown Art Walk.

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