by | Oct 22, 2018 7:42 am | Comments (0)
In Shakespeare’s celebrated comedy As You Like It, the forest of Arden is often conceived as a utopian space, a place where the rigors of the court are set aside for a more freewheeling style of life, and where erotic love flourishes. In exile there you can really figure things out and find that certain someone. And what if the court is cisgendered, while Arden is not bound by old-fashioned gender binaries?
by | Oct 19, 2018 7:41 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photos
Tasha Lawrence (l) and Linda Powell (r).
A spacious kitchen and dining area with an attached living-room/porch, Dane Laffrey’s set stretches across the Long Wharf thrust space on a diagonal. We see a facsimile of a settled domestic space that looks realistic, though also entirely theatrical. That both-at-once quality is key to Jen Silverman’s The Roommate, a play about making new connections in middle age that uses unexpected turns and a subversive edge to unsettle its theme of the fraught path to friendship. We might feel we’re on comfortable, homey ground, but that might just be a façade.
by | Oct 5, 2018 11:52 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photos
Jennifer Paredes and Maria-Christina Oliveras.
About midway through El Huracán by Charise Castro Smith, the play’s two central characters, Miranda (Irene Sofia Lucio) and Ximena (Maria-Christina Oliveras), undergo a radical transformation even as they lay themselves bare.
As they both shed their costumes, Miranda takes us through almost three decades of guilt for a single hasty decision, and Ximena through the anger she can’t let go of. As they excoriate themselves, a small crew helps them change, first putting on pads that fill out their bodies, then clothes over those pads. What we might have thought was natural hair were wigs all along, that are changed.
At the end of their monologues, both Miranda and Ximena have aged, 27 years in the span of a few minutes, and we understand why.
by | Oct 3, 2018 7:24 am | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photo
The Shubert Theatre’s new digital marquee on College Street.
An historic early 20th century theater took a step into the 21st century with a new digital marquee that advertises upcoming plays with text, images, and videos displayed above the venue’s College Street entrance.
by | Oct 1, 2018 11:59 am | Comments (0)
Lawrence.
There’s a moment in Jen Silverman’s The Roommate when Sharon, a woman in her fifties putting her life together after a divorce, and Robyn, her new housemate, have already gotten to know each other a bit. They know about each others’ kids. Robyn knows about Sharon’s dissatisfaction with her marriage. Sharon knows Robyn knows how to grow weed. They’ve even shared a joint together. But then Sharon discovers that she doesn’t know the half of what’s going on with Robyn, and she’s scared by what she finds. She’s not sure she even knows Robyn’s real name anymore.
“But what were you born as?” Sharon asks her. And Robyn answers: “I was born as a malleable, changeable template.”
by | Sep 27, 2018 1:41 pm | Comments (2)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
FOCUS team member Haley Moller performs community service at Bregamos Community Theater.
Amid the throngs of Yalies filling downtown streets is a growing force of students who make it a priority to venture beyond the university bubble for active engagement and community service across the Elm City.
by | Sep 27, 2018 7:52 am | Comments (3)
Atrossity Photography / Creative Commons
As the crowd gathered outside College Street Music Hall on Tuesday night, two drivers from New York approached and asked what the “big deal” was. A brief rundown of the answer: performing that night was Aziz Ansari, well-known comedian and actor from the sitcom Parks and Recreation, and creator of the Netflix comedy Master of None, who got caught up in #MeToo when a date he had ended poorly. According to the date’s account, he repeatedly ignored verbal and physical cues.
“Oh,” one of the drivers said, “#MeToo?”
by | Sep 25, 2018 7:57 am | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen photo
Long Wharf’s Joshua Borenstein, College Street Music Hall’s Keith Mahler pitch the Parking Authority.
Who will bring more people to downtown New Haven? Who has the sounder business plan, and the deeper pockets? And who will better complement the entertainment district’s current mix of restaurants, theaters, clubs, concert venues, schools, and other community arts groups?
Those were some of the many questions asked Monday night during a New Haven Parking Authority meeting dedicated almost entirely to discussing who will next occupy the vacant commercial space on the ground floor of the Crown Street Garage.
by | Sep 20, 2018 8:03 am | Comments (0)
A handful of people in a scrappy Alcoholics Anonymous group, struggling to get sober and help everyone else stay sober, one day at a time. Two cops in Cleveland, and what happens when one of them pulls the trigger. A family in Uganda, each person in it just trying to make their way.
Continue reading ‘At Long Wharf, Addiction, Shootings, & Trip To Uganda’
by | Sep 17, 2018 8:01 am | Comments (1)
Josh Levinson Photo
The cast of Inferior Planet
This past Friday night I went out to play two roles. One was arts reporter for the New Haven Independent. The other role: Sinister KP.
Since June 2018 I have been involved in a production titled Inferior Planet written, directed, and produced by Ken Carlson and held at Koffee? on Audubon St the second Friday of each month. It’s a story not unlike my own, where fictional and real life worlds meet for a short time
by | Sep 6, 2018 8:03 am | Comments (17)
Top: Rendering of one proposal. Bottom: Shubert team’s Fisher & Verrasatro; Music Hall’s Mahler and Nussbaum.
Newly obtained documents show College Street Music Hall and a consortium of Long Wharf Theatre / Shubert Theatre / Albertus Magnus College presenting two competing visions for downtown’s next entertainment venue.
by | Aug 23, 2018 1:13 pm | Comments (0)
Mike Franzman Photo
Kingston Farady and Betzabeth Castro.
A half-hour before Elm Shakespeare Company’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost is set to start in Edgerton Park, several of the cast members strut onstage with instruments — a guitar, a banjo, a bass, a trumpet, a sax, a drum — to explain that they’re going to warm up the crowd. And warm the crowd they do, with take after enthusiastic take on early jazz, with a few more modern flourishes thrown in. It’s the kind of music that makes the audience tap their feet and chuckle spontaneously. It’s also a great encapsulation of Elm Shakespeare’s approach to this not-often-performed Shakespeare play. This Love’s Labour’s Lost is smart, lighthearted, full of energy, and a lot of fun.
Continue reading ‘Elm Shakespeare Does A Winning “Love’s Labour’s Lost”’
by | Aug 23, 2018 7:35 am | Comments (0)
The road to Kennies Earl Kreative House — an all-purpose creative space for photography, music production, theater, and workshops on Shelton Avenue — started in Earl’s stepfather’s apartment about 15 years ago, when Earl, still in college, got a synthesizer and started to use it.
His stepfather, Earl recalled, “thought I was making too much noise.”
Continue reading ‘Kennies Earl Kreative House Keeps Growing’
by | Aug 21, 2018 1:14 pm | Comments (9)
Christopher Peak Photo
Amistad Academy’s Isaiah Germain, Joseph Jackson and Carlos Torres, back from summer programs.
After two months constructing the set for the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Edgerton Park, Carlos Torres said with unabashed pride, that he became “a huge theater nerd.”
Through Achievement First Amistad High School’s summer internship program, which paired him with Elm Shakespeare Co., Torres learned to use obscure power tools, scanned iambic pentameter, splotched paint onto half of his wardrobe and found a passion for working behind the scenes in theater.
Continue reading ‘At Amistad, College Prep Doesn’t Stop For Summer’
by | Jul 2, 2018 12:06 pm | Comments (0)
Sammi Katz and cast in Cabaret.
Sam Plattus, director of Cabaret — playing now at Lyric Hall in Westville until July 15 — met us, his guests, with warmth and enthusiasm on our way into the auditorium. We found the stage filled with the cast in their attire, quiet chatter and knowing smirks abounding as they managed their preparations. Just after a hush settled over the whole room, Plattus walked to the foot of the apron.
“Today there were protests all across the country. … It was really important to the whole cast that they were happening,” Plattus said. “I’ve learned, working on this show, that we live in a very fragile world. It looks more fragile by the day. It’s the responsibility of all of us together to make sure that the world doesn’t break.”
by | Jun 15, 2018 10:03 am | Comments (0)
Arts & Ideas
If the giggles and gasps I heard Thursday night from both adults and young children — often in unison — in Yale’s University Theatre is any indication, A Billion Nights on Earth is that rare thing: an evening of theatre for children that is not children’s theatre. Rather than a brightly colored cartoon story with enough double entendres to keep the parents awake, creator and director Thaddeus Phillips has taken the braver step of reminding us adults that we are at our best when we are like our children. Although the evening he has crafted lasts a scant hour and holds a trifle of a plot, it is designed, like a vivid dream, to linger long after it ends.
by | Jun 14, 2018 8:01 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Cantrell Cheeks as Chai, with director Katie Sparer.
For teenager Chai’s birthday, his girlfriend Caryn is getting him something unusual: a new name.
She knows Chai doesn’t like his name, his full name, so behind his back she does some crowdfunding and raises the money — over $2,000 — to legally make the change.
One thing, though: Chai doesn’t know what to change it to. Another thing: Caryn doesn’t even know why Chai doesn’t like his name, or what it will do to his small nuclear family if he tries to change it.
by | Jun 13, 2018 7:56 am | Comments (2)
Gordon Edelstein
An iconic local theater was led for over a decade by a “big personality” whose personal charisma and artistic success made him “too big to be held accountable” for his rampant sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace.
Continue reading ‘Long Wharf Moves Past “Big Personality” Workplace Culture’
by | Jun 13, 2018 7:54 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Eddy.
Cliff Bradshaw (Nate Houran) has just interrupted his love interest, Sally Bowles (Jay Eddy), canoodling with another man. She storms offstage and Cliff moves to follow her. He’s stopped by Ernst (Jeremy Funke), who wants to make a deal with him. Cliff wants no part of it. Ernst is a little confused, but not thrown off his game.
“I know you need the money,” he says, “so it must be something else. Ah — that Jew at the party?”
That’s when Cliff hits Ernst, landing a punch right in his stomach.
by | Jun 5, 2018 2:51 pm | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Nearing Photo
Azhar Ahmed.
Azhar Ahmed fled the war in Sudan in 2004. For a decade she lived with her husband in Cairo, working as a teacher and applying for refugee status in the United States. In June 2015 she and her husband finally arrived in New Haven. Her son was born six months ago, in a friend’s house.
“You have to start from the beginning,” she said, of her experience of arriving in the United States.
by | May 31, 2018 7:48 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Campbell and Duff.
On the stage of Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School on Tuesday, Isabella Violante Fletcher, Jayliz Freeney, Nehima Bell, and Chidimma Nzekwe —better known as Mustardseed, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Moth in their costumes — were chanting about animals.
“Spotted snakes with double tongues, thorny hedgehogs be not seen. Newts and bloodworms do no wrong. Come not near our fairy queen.” They sang it to the tune of Brahms’s famous lullaby. In the middle of them was Zyana Campbell, or Titania, who sank slowly into slumber. One of the fairies stood guard, until Martin Duff as Oberon shooed her away.
He knelt down and cast his own spell to work some of the mischief that fuels A Midsummer NIght’s Dream — the eighth annual Shakespeare production at Mauro-Sheridan, put together by a deep collaboration among Jodi Schneider of Mauro-Sheridan, the education program at Elm Shakespeare Company, Hopkins School, and most important, a cadre of game, hardworking, and talented fifth- to eighth-graders at Mauro-Sheridan.
Continue reading ‘Mauro-Sheridan Declares “Midsummer” In June’
by | May 14, 2018 2:50 pm | Comments (3)
East Wall Westville’s festival installation.
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
Green Goat dairy goats begin their assault.
A second New Haven “Goatville neighborhood” was opened in Edgewood Park during Westville’s 21st annual Artwalk festival.
But this “neighborhood,” a wooded and overgrown corner of the park, has real, live goats that will be performing special community service for several years to come.
by | May 14, 2018 12:03 pm | Comments (0)
Megan Chenot Photos
The cast of Rumors.
It’s fitting that Neil Simon’s Rumors — playing May 16 to May 19 at the New Haven Theater Company on Chapel Street — effectively starts with a slamming door. Before that is a brief, frantic conversation between Chris Gorman (Jenny Schuck) and her husband Ken (Peter Chenot). Chris is dressed in an evening gown. Ken has blood on his tuxedo shirt.
“He’s bleeding like crazy,” Ken says.
“Oh my God!” Chris says.
“It’s all over the room,” Ken says. “I don’t know why people decorate in white.”
by | May 8, 2018 8:34 am | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photos
Who gets to enact the story of someone else’s suffering? Is it worthwhile to enact situations you have no knowledge of, through belief in some common, shared existential state? Global citizens, denizens of the internet, aren’t we free to access whatever speaks to us?
by | May 1, 2018 7:14 am | Comments (0)
The daughter of an evangelist must come to terms with her own faith and doubt while traveling on the revival circuit in the Great Plains in Majkin Holmquist’s Tent Revival. The aftermath of a rape is depicted for both the assailant’s mother and the victim in Genne Murphy’s The Girl is Chained. Recidivism within a Philadelphia family occurs in a span from the 1980s’ crack epidemic to today’s opioid crisis in Josh Wilder’s Marty and the Hands that Could.