by Paul Bass | July 3, 2008 9:10 AM

David Bromberg doesn't know what songs he'll play when he takes the Little Theater stage Sunday. But if he plays Mr. Bojangles, you can predict what notes he'll play -- including the solo.

Continue reading "A Picking Virtuoso Returns"

by Paul Bass | July 1, 2008 2:48 PM

The hottest ticket in town is free, with one non-monetary cost: It asks you to ditch romantic notions about the "madman" who painted Starry Night. Click here, and on play arrow, for the full story.

by christopher grobe | June 25, 2008 2:01 AM

Early in The Pride of Parnell Street -- a gorgeous new monologue-play by Irish playwright Sebastian Barry brought to New Haven courtesy of the Festival of Arts & Ideas -- a lower-class Dublin woman tells about those heady days during the 1990 World Cup. Ireland's national soccer team strung together a series of unexpected victories and came as close to the championship as they've ever come. Dublin went mad, "happy mayhem" ruled, and this depressed, terror-wracked, still-developing nation felt something rare. Janet -- that's this storyteller's name -- doesn't try to shoehorn this oceanic feeling into one word, but surely the nearest word would be "pride."

Continue reading "Dear, Dirty Dublin"

by Allan Appel | June 24, 2008 9:30 AM

That's neither a natural tunnel in the Southwest nor a new museum in Montivideo but a gelatin silver print called "Open Dictionary" by the contemporary photographer Abelardo Morell. Full story here.

by Melinda Tuhus | June 23, 2008 6:58 PM

“Interplay in the Spirit” was the name of a sacred dance performed in the Edgerton Park Community Garden as dusk fell on the day of the Summer Solstice. It was part of the “613 Radical Acts of Prayer” that are being performed by the Liz Lerman Company throughout the Arts & Ideas festival.

Continue reading "Sacred Dance on the Solstice"

by christopher grobe | June 19, 2008 8:40 AM

The typical praise for a production of a classical play like Sophocles's Antigone is that it makes the play seem "shockingly up-to-date." That usually means the director and actors have successfully paddled out into the strongest currents of contemporary culture -- usually political culture -- without capsizing. For better or worse, The Burial at Thebes, a new version of Antigone adapted by Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney and brought to New Haven's Festival of Arts & Ideas by the Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company (UK), seems to be looking for this sort of accolade.

Continue reading "Revisiting Sophocles"

by Paul Bass | May 30, 2008 7:53 AM

Full story here.

by Staff | May 28, 2008 10:05 PM

By Tony Phillips
The "Groove, Give and Get" benefit for The Senator Chuck Allen III Scholarship Fund takes place on June 11 from 6pm-8pm at NHarlem, 114 West 116th Street. Allen, a New Haven political legend, passed away in March. Previous Independent stories can be found here and here.

Continue reading "Jones & Company: Actor Hosts Groove, Give and Get Benefit"

by Allan Appel | May 19, 2008 7:43 AM

In 2005 young artist Andres Madariaga was accepted at the prestigious Cooper Union in New York to pursue his dream, a visual arts career. When his immigration status foreclosed on possibilities for applying for the scholarships necessary to attend, his creativity shut down. It might have stayed that way, with serious consequences, had not his teachers and ARTE invited him to show. Click here for the full story.

by Staff | May 16, 2008 11:04 AM

Check out some of these photos by Judy Sirota Rosenthal. You can see the full exhibit, "Reverence in Bali: Ancient Culture, Modern Translation," at the Slifka Center (80 Wall St.) from May 20 through Aug. 15. Rosenthal gives a talk at the official opening, Thursday, June 5 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Continue reading "On Rice Mountains"