New Haven Independent

New Haven and its neighbors will ponder that and other questions after reading (or re-reading) the book this coming year.

In a town hall-style meeting attended by some 50 people at City Hall Wednesday to discuss the 2008 edition of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, festival Executive Director Mary Lou Aleskie announced that the Ray Bradbury classic of a future dystopia in which reading is banned and the resistance memorizes large chunks of the Bible will be the focal point of the festival’s Big Read component.

The Big Read will go regional, with the festival involving in this effort libraries and communities in the 20 towns of the Greater New Haven area.

In response to some criticism of last year’s festival, artists, vendors, entrepreneurs, and volunteers wanted to know the themes earlier so they could have more time to plan their participation. Hence Wednesday’s meeting.

If the Bradbury book will provide one theme for programming — social issues, civil rights, technology, and aesthetics in a post-9/11 world — the other major ingredient for the festival will provide a countervailing theme of hope. It is to be a community-wide choreographic extravaganza organized by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange called 613 Radical Acts of Prayer. Exploring the relationship between spirituality as prayer and spirituality as action, this theme is designed to be the hub around which all kinds of programs, lectures, tours, and discussions on tolerance, the role of spiritual communities and the environment might spin.

613 is the number of commandments, or mitzvot in Hebrew, required of religious Jews. The New York-based Lerman company, known for connecting choreography with pressing realities, is going to be in residence in New Haven for a month, beginning in February, to help create grassroots programming that explores these ideas.

Among possible programs, explained Cathy Edwards, the festival’s programming director (in the red beside her colleague Andria Matthews and, from the Arts Council, Jose Monteiro) might be a parent-child dance, dances for roller derby groups, a kind of church to church lurch or walk, with a culminating massive dance on the Green on the last weekend of the festival.

While the festival needs to lock in these large components, said Matthews, such meetings as this town hall gathering have as their aim to encourage local groups to participate as artists, vendors, and volunteers. Participants were reminded that the festival’s goals are not only artistic but economic development, as well as utilizing the arts to bring the community together.

Leonard Smart (pictured above with Aleskie) for one asked how local dance studios in Greater New Haven might participate. Smart is associate director of the Greater New Haven Business and Professional Association, a kind of black chamber of commerce. When Edwards said that the festival had already had a meeting with some of the dance studios and would be involving more, Smart appeared to be satisfied. In years gone by, he said, reaching out to local grassroots vendors and artists had been more talk, but with Aleskie and her team there was also action and follow-through.

Last year, according to Aleskie, the festival innovated with the “Village of Villages,” a kind of fringe festival in which 1,200 artists appeared on the Green not for a fee, but for the opportunity to promote themselves and network as well as perform.

In one of the breakout sessions, Jim Gregory of West Hartford, representing the Noah Webster House Dance Group, was talking with the festival’s program, manager Missy Huber. Two years ago they performed in the Village of Villages, he said. He was exploring whether to come back in 2008.

A new feature this year might be a crafts version of the Village of Villages.

Last year, Aleskie said, the festival came in with a small surplus. It had a $17.8 million impact on the city during a two-week period, along with 14,000 participants in the Big Read.

This year, with the Big Read being coordinated not with the New Haven Free Public Library alone but the Connecticut Library Consortium, which involves the 20 surrounding towns, the number of participants should increase. The Big Read is a program funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities and requires a local organization to match financially. Another of the festival’s partners, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven — whose “catchment” area is also the 20 towns — has provided the match for 2008

Aleskie said that in this, her upcoming third festival, she has a better sense of the community.

While the big elements are in place, Arts & Ideas staff are eager to hear from local people with suggestions for programming — names of individuals or groups or ideas for events, discussions, partnerships. Remember the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451, one Guy Montag? He’s called a “fireman” because it’s his job to burn books, and business is apparently good. Fireman? … Now how can the festival link up with the New Haven Fire Department in this regard? Maybe this year those free copies of the books can be delivered via a hook and ladder. The website is artidea.org. The contact is Cathy Edwards, director of programming; email her here.