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Saturday, April 4, 2009
Humana Festival review: Ten-Minute Plays
In the spirit of the 10-Minute Plays, I will attempt twitter-length (140 characters) reviews (not counting play title) ….
‘On the Porch One Crisp Spring Morning” by Alex Dremann”:
mother-daughter both spies, poison coffee,commercial tone,double-cross, barter 4 antidote, twisty plot, surprise end, funny but sketch-y
“3:59 a.m.: a drag race for two actors” by Marco Ramirez
two actors in spots,two stories come together on unfamiliar streets,intense writing,charged performances, 10 minutes well-spent
“Roanoke” by Michael Lew
living history, missing colony, actors in bad careers,raleigh tells it like it is,colorful performances,fun comedy,also sketch-y
Official site: The Humana Festival of New American Plays
Review of “ Ameriville”
Review of “ Slasher”
Review of “Brink!”
Review of “Wild Blessings”
Review of “The Hard Weather Boating Party”
Photos by Harlan Taylor
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Humana Festival review: The Hard Weather Boating Party
In the program notes, Naomi Wallace’s “The Hard Weather Boating Party” purports to be an exploration of the lives of people living in Louisville’s district known as Rubbertown, formerly a tire-making center now given over to chemical production.
And indeed, the characters - three men gathered in seedy hotel room as they prepare to commit a crime against the CEO of the company they work for, a company whose processes expose them to life-threatening chemicals.
But the context in which their circumstances are revealed is so bizarre and unconvincing that her point is lost.
The realistic style seems to be in conflict with the allegorical intent of the story, and the three men, one executive who called them together and two men who work in the factory, behave in ways that break down the suspension of disbelief. That is, it seems unlikely that men of this sort would play “Truth or Dare” as a trust-building ice-breaker,” or that the sexual tension would be so strong among them.
Official site: The Humana Festival of New American Plays
Review of “ Ameriville”
Review of “ Slasher”
Review of “Brink!”
Review of “Wild Blessings”
Photo by Harlan Taylor
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Theater
Humana Festival Review: Wild Blessings, A Celebration of Wendell Berry
Even being the professional English Major that I am with a degree in poetry, I had never delved so much into the work of Wendell Berry as I just have in the production of “Wild Blessings: A Celebration of Wendell Berry,” but now I feel as though I must go buy a book of verse.
This is an Actors Theatre original, adapted for the stage and directed by the troupe’s artistic director Marc Masterson with music by Malcolm Dalglish, a hammer dulcimer player from Bloomington, Ind., who has found the melody in Berry’s free verse.
Berry is the Mad Farmer who espouses an existence that celebrates hard work, free thinking, and simple and sustainable living, and his poetry strives to not break the silence from which it sprang (I paraphrase).
Oddly enough, one of his admonitions is to live clear of screens, but one of the beauties of “Wild Blessings” is the multi-media components with layers of projected images: A large screen of a window center stage and scenes of nature projected onto a cyclorama behind.
This is the second play of the festival (so far) that seems created by committee, though “Wild Blessings” is a walk through the forest where “Ameriville” was a helicopter flight over a disaster area.
Both have their uses, but I particularly like the stroll, especially when accompanied by the likes of the gentle Mad Farmer.
Official site: The Humana Festival of New American Plays
Review of “ Ameriville”
Review of “ Slasher”
Review of “Brink!”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Theater
Miami art prof writes book on African-American artists
Miami University professor and chair of the art department, dele jegede, has recently published “Encyclopedia of African American Artists: Artists of the American Mosaic” with Greenwood Press (Westport, Conn., 2009).
The book is about the work, life and times of key African and African American artists, with an emphasis on the extent to which their work represents a visual text of the times in which they live and the significance of culture on their expressive output. It is the first major work that brings together a mosaic of artists from the Black Diaspora who have lived and worked, or continue to do so, in the United States.
The book includes entries on 66 individuals with eight pages of color plates and black and white images throughout. From traditional media of painting and artists such as Horace Pippin and Faith Ringgold, to photography of Gordon Parks, to new media of Sam Gilliam and installation art of Martin Puryear, the African American experience is reflected across generations and works. Other artists include: Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Okwui Enwezor, Aminah Brenda Robinson, Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker and Melvin Edwards.
jegede has taught in diverse environments and served in academic, professional and leadership capacities locally and internationally. He joined Miami’s faculty in 2005. He earned a doctorate in art history at Indiana University, Bloomington and obtained his first degree in fine art from the Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria.
He was a Fulbright Scholar at Spelman College in 1987; director of the Center for Cultural Studies, University of Lagos, 1989-1992; president, Society of Nigerian Artists, 1989-1992; senior post-doctoral fellow at the National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Institution, 1995; president, Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA), 1996-1998; and professor and chair, department of art, Indiana State University, 2002-2005.
As an art historian, jegede’s research is concerned with the contemporary and popular arts of Africa. As a painter, he draws on iconic elements in African and Western cultures. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions.
He has published extensively in his field and curated major shows, including “Women to Women: Weaving Cultures, Shaping History,” Terre Haute, 2000 and “Contemporary African Art: Five Artists, Diverse Trends,” Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2000.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Literary, Miami University
Miami faculty, grad student receive grants for Individual Excellence from Ohio Arts Council
Miami professors Kay Sloan, English, and Ellen Price, art, have been awarded Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). Also honored is Dorothy Maxwell Goepel of Cincinnati, who earned a Miami master’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. The award to each is $5,000.
Sloan, who supervised Goepel’s master’s thesis, says receiving the OAC the same year as her student “makes the award more deeply rewarding for me, personally.”
The OAC approved 59 awards totaling $300,000 in late February. Individual Excellence Awards are peer recognition of creative artists for the exceptional merit of a body of work that advances or exemplifies the discipline and the larger artistic community. These awards support artists’ growth and development and recognize their work in Ohio and beyond in 13 different disciplines. The process is competitive: only about 8 percent of applicants are granted awards.
Sloan, who joined Miami’s faculty in 1984, will use the fellowship to complete research and writing of a collection of interlocking stories set in New York between the 1930s and 1970s.
“The main characters, an ordinary Jewish couple swept up in the exuberant idealism of Communist ideology in their youth, annually attend an adults-only socialist camp in the Adirondacks,” she said in a press release. “This collection will look at the lives of ordinary families who saw the Party as a lively, daring intellectual and social arena.”
One of the central stories, “A Stain on the Sofa,” appeared in Fiction Magazine last fall and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Sloan’s earlier two novels, “Worry Beads” and “The Patron Saint of Red Chevys,” also explored pivotal historical eras in U.S. history. Sloan has published three books on American cultural history and received a previous OAC award in 2002. Her documentary film, “Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema,” was funded by an Ohio Humanities Council grant.
Price, who joined Miami’s faculty in 1987, previously received OAC grants in 1996 and 2001. Her prints are included in public and private collections, including the Cincinnati Art
Museum, Brockton Art Museum, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska and the 3M Corporate Art Collection. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include “7th Lessedra World Mini-Print Annual” in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2008; “New Prints/Winter” shown at the International Print Center in Chelsea, N.Y. and Columbia College in Chicago, 2009; and an invitational group exhibition, “Making a Legacy, Living the Legacy” at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2006.
Goepel’s award supports her non-fiction work, a collection of remembrances of her deceased mother and father, whom she recalls as a walking contrast in ethnicity and culture, as well as the key place of her youth, a Mexican American neighborhood on the West Side of San Antonio, Texas.
Goepel received her undergraduate degree at the University of Cincinnati. She taught part time in the English departments of Miami, Xavier, the University of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University. She recently completed a tour of duty as acting superintendent of the 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs Office, Shaw Air Force Base, Sumter, S.C., as a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve where, among leadership and management duties, she designed and taught five writing workshops.
“St John’s” by Miami art professor Ellen Price (paper plate lithography, 16’ x 10’), one of 12 prints Price submitted for an OAC Individual Excellence Award.
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MU Chamber Singers, Glee Club perform spring concerts
Miami University Chamber Singers, conducted by William Bausano, 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, Hall Auditorium. Free. (513) 529-3014.
The group of select male and female voices will perform works from the Renaissance courts of France, 19th Century Russian Cathedrals, and contemporary America.
The Miami University Men’s Glee Club, directed by Ethan Sperry, will perform its annual spring concert at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18 in Hall Auditorium.
The choir will perform pieces written especially for the Club by its own members, alumni, as well as current and former Miami professors. Also performed will be a variety of pieces including African-American spirituals, broadway showtunes, and other Glee Club favorites.
Tickets are $5 students/youth and $7 general. Tickets are available at the box office in Shriver Center, (513) 529-3200.
For more information, call the department of music at (513) 529-3014.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Free Events, Miami University, Music
Humana Festival review: Brink!
One of the traditions at the Humana Festival is the annual anthology plays in which the Actors Theatre commissions a set of playwrights to create short plays and vignettes on a specified theme.
This year, the show is called “Brink!” with a series of pieces centered on the “magico-religious aspect of crossing frontiers.” That is, our life changes and the rituals that go along with them.
This is one of the better ones I’ve seen, and one of the reasons is that there are a couple of different story lines that run through the 90-minute piece. “Grandpa’s Cologne,” a two-song musical by Kristoffer Diaz and Greg Kotis, tells the story of a young man preparing for his first date with an older woman, a seventh-grader who just moved into his condo complex. The first song is a rap and the second a catchy little jingle, and a pair of Greek soldiers find life-long companionship on their way to fight Trojans.
Highlights include “Today I Am Woman” by Deborah Zoe Laufer in which a young woman spouts quotes from Sartre and Camus making a statement at her bat mitzvah but ends up daddy’s little girl when it comes time to dance. Laufer also contributes “Evolution,” the tale of the first sea creature to venture onto dry land. In “The White Bread Ballet” by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and Deborah Stein, a girl tries to run away from the circus to become an accountant in Cincinnati, but sees that life flash in front of her in a dance set to overwrought movie music.
I find it a little surprising that more schools and community theater groups don’t pick up on these Humana anthology shows for productions. They have good writing for the most part, are usually funny and have lots of roles but could also be done by a talented smaller ensemble.
Official site: The Humana Festival of New American Plays
Review of “ Ameriville”
Review of “ Slasher”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Theater
