by | Dec 13, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen photo
Little kiddos coming soon.
A nonprofit cafe and job training program for immigrant and refugee women has won city permission to open a worker-owned childcare center in the basement of a downtown church.
by | Dec 12, 2024 4:25 pm | Comments (0)
Linda Zhou photo
Elena's Light Founder Fereshteh Ganjavi (left) with Qaderi (center) and Siawash.
When Siawash reads the once-unsent letters that his mom wrote to him while she was living in exile and he was a child in Afghanistan, he isn’t filled with sorrow.
“Every time I read the letters my mom wrote to me, I see that history repeats and repeats,” Siawash said before a crowd in Yale’s Dwight Hall. “I have hope for the future.”
Continue reading ‘Homeira and Julia Bring Ukraine, Afghanistan To New Haven’
by | Dec 12, 2024 9:47 am | Comments (0)
Merik Goma
As I Wait, Untitled 6.
A man stands in front of the bathroom mirror in a towel. He’s just getting in the shower, or just getting out. At first glance it might appear he’s shaving, or putting on cologne. But the object in his hand isn’t a razor or a bottle. It’s something else. And maybe that’s when you also notice the sink is overflowing with fruit. “Some people may not recognize it as an old fire extinguisher,” artist Merik Goma said of the object the man is holding, or “they may be drawn to the fruit.”
“Where is he going? What is that thing supposed to be? Is it a symbol? Is it literal?” Goma said. “It can mean a lot of things.” And that’s part of the point. Goma starts the story. It’s up to us to finish it.
by | Dec 11, 2024 1:01 pm | Comments (36)
Zachary Groz photo
Planning on Tuesday night for a new and improved Green.
An ice skating rink. An “interactive” fountain. A cafe. A new business plaza.
The New Haven Green could look pretty different soon.
by | Dec 11, 2024 9:40 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Baub Bidon: "We didn't sue another rapper, we just battled."
On Friday, Free 2 Spit celebrated the completion of its 20th year holding down an open mic for New Haven’s spoken-word scene at the New Haven Peoples Center on Howe Street, with a night that drew newcomers, seasoned New Haven-based poets, and voices from one state over alike to share the mic and their words, heating up a wintery night.
by | Dec 10, 2024 8:47 am | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photo
Whitney White in Macbeth in Stride.
When we first meet Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s best-known and often-staged tragedies, she seems designed to steal the show. Her speeches are riveting, her emotions keyed up and powerful. When her husband Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis promoted to Thane of Cawdor, arrives home, she delivers more drama, prodding his dithering into regicide, and even shows him how it should be done when it comes to implicating the two guards that Macbeth and his Lady have drugged.
All this Whitney White — in her show Macbeth in Stride, now playing for one week only at Yale Repertory Theatre through Dec. 14 — delivers with musing commentary. Then comes a coronation that looks like it could be featured on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Murderous.” After that triumph, what next for our ambitious queen? As White, who wrote the show and performs the lead (called “Woman”) in the piece, flatly states: “She gets to host a dinner party.”
by | Dec 9, 2024 5:26 pm | Comments (7)
Laura Glesby photos
Dolores Jeter at Monday’s ribbon cutting: “It’s like my prayers have been answered from 30 years ago.”
Hello laundry and shower and medical and more.
Dolores Jeter watched the blue ribbon whirl apart to celebrate Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s new all-in-one drop-in center.
She nearly teared up thinking back to her life 25 years ago, when she herself was homeless and had to zig-zag across the city each day in order to meet each of her needs.
“Do you know how many times I had to cancel out on an appointment because I didn’t have the fare to get the bus? Or I was too tired to walk?” Jeter said.
by | Dec 6, 2024 12:33 pm | Comments (3)
Contributed photo
Snazzy threads? Yankees seats? Mid-century Enson's had you covered
It’s no small thing to stay in business for a hundred years, but Enson’s Gentlemen’s Fashions at 1050 Chapel St. has accomplished that feat of entrepreneurial longevity.
The reason? There’s a surprisingly old-fashioned thread — pun very much intended — that runs through the decades.
“Nice things, great customer relations, and all these years, we’ve had great tailors.”
by | Dec 6, 2024 7:35 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
A cold December temperature didn’t keep crowds away as New Haven celebrated its 111th tree lighting on the New Haven Green Thursday night, with an evening of festivities that included food and craft vendors, live music from bands and choirs, amusement park rides and activities for kids, and a visit from Santa Claus.
by | Dec 4, 2024 9:44 am | Comments (10)
Jabez Choi photos
Tenants union leader Zach Postle tapes a pamphlet to Farnam's front door ...
... as union members and supporters rally for a collective lease.
Another tenants union rallied outside another front door of another Ocean Management successor — calling for their new property management company to step it up on maintenance, and to be open to negotiating a collective lease.
Continue reading ‘Tenants Union To Farnam: Time To Negotiate’
by | Dec 3, 2024 8:58 am | Comments (1)
"Mind/Matter" show panel: Something's not quite right here ...
Look once, and it’s just an upside-down face of a woman smiling. But look again, perhaps a third time, and a few details seem off. Something’s wrong, definitely wrong, even if you can’t quite figure out what it is.
by | Dec 2, 2024 8:20 am | Comments (34)
Yale's proposed dramatic arts building, circa 2029 ...
... to be located at York and Crown.
All the world’s a stage — for Yale, which plans to construct a new seven-story, 188,000 square-foot building for its drama school and the Yale Repertory Theater, to be located at the northwest corner of Crown and York streets.
by | Nov 21, 2024 8:21 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Videodome.
On Wednesday night at Cafe Nine on the corner of State and Crown, two area bands, Nervous City and Videodome, welcomed a touring band, Parachute Club, to its first-ever gig in the state of Connecticut with big riffs, squalls of guitar noise, and an appreciative crowd of rock fans ready to stay up and have a good time.
by | Nov 20, 2024 8:09 am | Comments (1)
Raheem Nelson
The Alchemy of Art.
The small portrait of New Haven arts maven Ann Lehman welding in her studio is instantly recognizable to anyone who visited “The Alchemy of Art,” the show devoted to her work last year at Creative Arts Workshop. But New Haven-based artist Raheem Nelson’s graphic surrounds that portrait with a constellation of ideas that distills much of that complex exhibition and the various reports of it. In less than 10 seconds, we get a snapshot of who Lehman was, what her contributions to Creative Arts Workshop and the city were, and why we continue to celebrate her legacy. And our curiosity, perhaps, is whetted for more.
by | Nov 19, 2024 8:17 am | Comments (1)
Bill Healy
Self Portrait, King Nothing, Princess Leia.
Bill Healy’s three collages cover three subjects, from the real to the imaginary, but are united by their distinctive personalities, half playful, half unsettling. In each face, there are a few delightfully recontextualized shapes. In Self-Portrait, the grimace is an Amazon smile turned upside down. One of King Nothing’s eyes is a bowl of soup. The middle of Princess Leia’s face is a tire. It’s the kind of lateral thinking that marks the most engaging collage art, and in another place, another space, the artist might be parlaying it into a social media following. But Healy — along with the rest of the artists in the show — isn’t on social media, and the work might not have made it to a gallery wall without a keen eye paying attention.
by | Nov 15, 2024 9:36 am | Comments (0)
A still from the film "Madame Sata."
Grit and glitter played equal parts in Thursday night’s Yale Film Archive presentation of Karim Ainouz’s Madame Sata, the 2002 film based on the true story of Brazilian legend Joao Francisco dos Santos, who fights his way through the streets and onto the stages of 20th-century Rio de Janiero to become a prominent trans performer who considers himself a “disciple” of Josephine Baker.
Continue reading ‘Madame Sata Takes The Screen At Yale Film Archive’
by | Nov 14, 2024 11:40 am | Comments (2)
Jabez Choi photo
Lala McClain (right), with Will Tuttle: "This is a beacon of hope for me today."
Kevin DeSilva seemed to experience the impossible — he was in and out of the DMV in under an hour, and he didn’t even have to leave New Haven’s city limits.
by | Nov 13, 2024 10:58 am | Comments (0)
Abdullah Ibrahim.
Jazz legend Abdullah Ibrahim waited at the piano, listening intently, while his bandmates, Cleave Guyton on flute and Noah Jackson on bass, finished a quietly acrobatic rendering of a Duke Ellington classic that was also a nod to Ibrahim’s past. Guyton and Jackson finished, and left the stage. Then Ibrahim began, slowly, deliberately, with exquisite touch and gorgeous dynamic control, the product of decades of playing. He took his time working through his theme, and as the large audience at the Shubert Tuesday was struck silent, seemed to stop time itself.
Ibrahim’s performance — organized jointly between the Shubert and the Schwarzman Center — was part of a string of performances carrying the venerable College Street theater through the end of the year.
Continue reading ‘Shubert Ending Year With String Of Shows, New Space’
by | Nov 8, 2024 8:57 am | Comments (0)
NHTC Photos
Ralph Buonocore.
It’s been years since Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell met, and in that time, the literary stars of both poets have risen. They have each moved from place to place in the United States and beyond, and chased and acquired romantic partners. They are living lives, on one level, that seem full of realized ambitions. And yet none of that stops Lowell from writing to Bishop, long into their correspondence, that “I seem to spend my life missing you.”
Continue reading ‘New Haven Theater Company Explores Two Lives In Letters’
by | Nov 7, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photo
Velapatino, Caicedo, Tortora, Atehortua, and Diaz Costa.
Two Colombian films, both made of film fragments, gave audiences insight into the history of not only the country, but cinema itself, as the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale (LIFFY) held its third night of screenings.
In its 15th year, the festival — which runs Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 — has over 40 films from 16 countries shown both virtually and in person as well as panel discussions and Q&A sessions to offer attendees, all of which are free and open to the public.
Continue reading ‘Latino Film Fest Gives Voice To Silent Witnesses’
by | Nov 6, 2024 4:32 pm | Comments (31)
Jabez Choi photos
James Lazarus: "They want to uproot me."
Parks Department carries away belongings-turned-"trash."
The city’s Parks Department has officially cleared the homeless encampment on the Upper Green — amid a debate over when unattended belongings become discardable “trash.”
by | Nov 6, 2024 1:20 pm | Comments (4)
Crownmediahouse photo
Sasa Harriott: "My fight was not over yet."
The crowd listened, rapt, as Sasa Harriott told them about her lowest point.
by , and | Nov 5, 2024 10:47 pm | Comments (1)
Jabez Choi photo
Debby Sauls and Rae Dehal, with Sauls's dog Jules: Nervous about the election, glad to be in community.
MSNBC election updates blared across TV screens at queer space and pan-Asian restaurant Blue Orchid, while upbeat music played throughout the bar at around 8:50 p.m.
A couple dozen people sat at the counter and around the restaurant eating and drinking, some with a blue shot that they could get for free if they showed an “I VOTED” sticker.
by | Nov 1, 2024 11:24 am | Comments (27)
Thomas Breen photo
At Church St. between Crown and Center Friday morning.
(Updated) One person has been arrested and one remains in critical condition following an early Friday morning downtown shooting that injured two men and two women between the ages of 19 and 22.
by | Oct 31, 2024 10:09 am | Comments (0)
Without knowing anything about them, on viewing Windy Day, Summer by Vivaldi, and the series of paintings that surround them, it’s possible to imagine that they’re all the work of a singular, bold hand, unafraid of the canvas, expressing a singular vision. In fact, those paintings are the result of a group effort.