by | May 6, 2016 7:03 am | Comments (2)
Courtesy NHTC
The cast: Chenot, Shaboo, Nicoll-Bifford, and Kulp.
If there is a mathematical proof sitting on a picnic table, and a young woman says she wrote it, and no one believes her because she is a young woman, and cannot possibly be as in control of her actions as she thinks she is … what is the probability of her statement actually being true?
by | May 5, 2016 6:30 am | Comments (0)
A play about what happens when two married men — one an architect, the other his assistant (whose wife is pregnant) — realize they are in love. A play about middle-aged siblings having to tell their sister, institutionalized with Down syndrome, about the death of their last remaining parent. A play that looks at how black lives matter at three points in history: a slave plantation in 1822, a classroom in 2016, and a spaceship in 2300.
Continue reading ‘Carlotta Festival Goes Back — And To The Future’
by | May 4, 2016 7:31 am | Comments (0)
WNHH’s studio was filled with song and poetry and theatrical performance as a 36-hour “Great Give” radiothon/webcast entered its second phase.
by | May 2, 2016 7:15 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Smith.
Jasmine Smith had a story to tell. But she didn’t want the audience to stop at listening to her voice.
by | Apr 15, 2016 7:23 am | Comments (0)
Jamia Jones, Hamden High senior.
High school senior Jamia Jones found it “nerve-racking” to stand at the open mic to begin her spoken-word piece on the floor of the Long Wharf Theatre main stage at the second annual Moments and Minutes Festival.
by | Apr 14, 2016 7:15 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Randy Danson and Martin Moran.
We’re on a patch of sand next to a local highway outside of Lewiston, Idaho. There’s a wonderfully gaudy, yet nearly defunct fireworks stand to the left of us. It’s right before the Fourth of July, but there isn’t a customer in sight.
Nearby, Alice and Connor, two people old enough to be grandparents, are testing some of their supply. It gives off a few sparks, just sputters and fizzles out.
“It makes me want to move to Canada,” Alice says.
by | Apr 8, 2016 7:19 am | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Green Photos
A still from فریادا.
Posed against a backdrop of newspapers too small for the audience to read, Shadi Ghaheri was trying to introduce herself to Stella Baker. A jumble of words flowed from her mouth into the space between them, where they languished in the silence that followed. Baker was trying to do the same, taking on a bouncy, bell-like tone as she presented her name like an offering, and waited for Ghaheri to acknowledge receipt of it.
by | Apr 4, 2016 7:30 am | Comments (0)
Carol Rosegg Photos
The cast of Cymbeline.
William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline — now playing at the Yale Repertory Theatre through April 16 — is a hard play to pin down. It’s almost as if the great playwright, late in his career, started throwing stuff at the stage to see what would stick. Initially, the play got classified as a tragedy, which is preposterous. It ends happily for everyone but the villains, with one of the most delightful final scenes in all of Shakespeare. Then again, if it’s a comedy, it amuses with murder plots, warfare, ghostly apparitions, and a headless corpse.
For some, the play is best identified as romance, which means, essentially, that it can have whatever elements Will wills.
In this production — the first time the Rep has ever staged the play — some new wrinkles have been added. In Shakespeare’s day, men tended to play all the parts, a convention improved upon by allowing women to take part ages ago. The key idea in director Evan Yionoulis’s casting is that gender specificity is old hat, and that Shakespeare, with his heroines often disguised as men, is best served by greater license in assigning roles. Whether a character is designated as male or female puts no constraints on the gender of the actor.
by | Apr 1, 2016 7:45 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Goodheart with props from an ESC Macbeth, in SCSU’s Lyman Center, ESC’s new home base.
As every New Haven Bard-o-phile knows, every August for the past generation, Elm Shakespeare Company (ESC) has given us high-level, exuberant, and pay-anything-you-wish-but-please-contribute-something-really-almost-free Shakespeare in Edgerton Park.
Now ESC founders Jim and Margie Andreassi have passed the company’s leadership baton on to a a single person, Rebecca Goodheart. This is Goodheart’s first season as its producing director, meaning that she wears the hats of both the artistic and business leader of the company. In August, she’ll present A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Tina Packer, the distinguished founder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. and her own and Jim Andreassi’s mentor
And this Sunday, Packer herself is presenting at the John Lyman Center at Southern Connecticut State University her performance of Women of Will, a dramatic tour of females in Shakespeare’s canon, as a fundraiser and welcome for the beginning of the Goodheart chapter of ESC’s ongoing story.
by | Apr 1, 2016 5:34 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy in Love Letters.
One might think that having two actors — regardless of how much aura they exude — sitting at a table reading letters back and forth would become pretty boring pretty fast. That it doesn’t, or not too much, has to do with the fact that, in Love Letters, playwright A.R. Gurney knows his characters and how to create engaging repartee, even in the medium of the missive.
Gurney’s plays are well known for their eye upon the Northeastern upper crust, much as Woody Allen is known for work inhabited by anxious New York intellectuals. Love Letters, directed by Gordon Edelstein and playing at the Long Wharf Theatre until April 10, stars Mia Farrow, star of more than a handful of Allen movies, and two-time Tony-winning actor Brian Dennehy, last seen at Long Wharf in Krapp’s Last Tape. In the theater world, the popularity of Love Letters stems from the fact that big-name actors often pair up for this two-hander where the leads read rather than speak, as if extempore.
Continue reading ‘Love Letters Brings Back Romance In The Age Of Cellphones’
by | Mar 31, 2016 2:23 pm | Comments (0)
Judy Sirota Rosenthal Photos
Alasdair MacRae asks the audience to throw “snow” on cue.
Winter 2010 — the longest, whitest winter Scotland has seen in years — and it’s karaoke night at a pub in Kelso, a quaint and funny town nestled in the Scottish borders where a conference has just taken place.
Center stage, professor Colin Syme is leading the charge on a night of academics gone wild, bumping and grinding with colleagues atop a table as lights pulse in the background and pop music seethes through the speakers. Snowed-in pubgoers laugh and drink and strip on all sides, reveling in this messy, unexpected winter bacchanal.
At the fringes of it, peering miserably into her pint of bitter red ale, is uptight academic Prudencia Hart, feeling every ounce of out of place.
by | Mar 30, 2016 6:05 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
The peas inside the spray cans rattled as Seven, JC, and Dose shook them.
“Jase, you finish. Your handstyle is cleaner,” Seven said.
“No, homie, this is all you tonight. This is what you’ve been dreaming about,” JC replied. “Make it legible, though, so the people can read it.”
by | Mar 30, 2016 5:37 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Pippin cast members Zasha Rodriguez, Nomble’ Tanner, & Gabby Christofor hoof it in an opening number.
When the entire student and teacher body can suggest a play they’d like to see performed; when all the students, no matter what the major or grade, can audition for parts and crew; and when, for the very first time, the director selected to helm the play is not even in the theater department, well, that’s the very definition of an “all-school” play.
Continue reading ‘“Pippin” at Co-Op High Is Dark And (B)Right’
by | Mar 29, 2016 4:11 pm | Comments (6)
Paul Bass Photo
Aleskie with WNPR’s John Dankosky and Catie Talarski and A&I’s Alex Ripp at last year’s lineup announcement.
When Mary Lou Aleskie took over the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in September 2005, she didn’t know that much about New Haven. She’d moved to the Elm City from San Diego for the position, so everything was new to her. Neighborhoods sprang up, full of possibility, performance venues popped out of the woodwork. She was greeted by a local arts scene that, for a city of just over 130,000 people, was more “jam-packed” than she ever could have anticipated.
Aleskie hasn’t stopped trying to nail down the rhythm of New Haven, or satiate its hunger for local and international arts. Over 11 years, she has seen — and enacted — considerable change, taking the community into account whenever possible.
As she prepared to announce on Tuesday the festival’s year 21 programming, the Independent had the chance to talk about how Arts & Ideas has changed, what truly involving community looks like, and what new steps have her excited looking ahead to summer 2016 and beyond.
by | Mar 28, 2016 7:52 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Resident dramaturg Christine Scarfuto.
When the world premiere of Samuel Hunter’s Lewiston hits Stage 2 at Long Wharf Theatre on April 6, stage manager Chuck Turner will be hoping for one thing: that no one in the audience knows who he is by the end of the night.
Or, if the play is really flawless, by the end of the run.
by | Mar 28, 2016 7:51 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery photo
Cormier.
It was standing room only by the time writer, performance poet, and musician Ken Cormier stood up at the mike, kicking off the last night of the Wobbling Roof Revue, organized by musicians Paul Belbusti and Lys Guillorn at Never Ending Books on State Street.
The event Friday night featured an eclectic lineup of performers from New Haven and elsewhere for a variety show that stayed true to the phrase — and kept a rapt audience in the seats — from beginning to end.
by | Mar 18, 2016 12:49 am | Comments (1)
“Hamilton” (top); Clark (bottom).
Twenty New Haven seniors headed for the Big Apple to see the hottest show on Broadway. Thanks to Frances “Bitsie” Clark, they already knew the songs.
by | Mar 17, 2016 12:02 pm | Comments (2)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Dejesus, Bazinet and Allison Hardy as Edna, Velma and Motormouth.
Looking outward from a small, just-bright-enough circle of light, Edna Turnblad steeled herself for an onslaught of epithets, defiantly holding a sign that read “Hungry for Justice” while a lily-white crowd encircled her, white teeth glistening like fangs in the stage light. To her left, Motormouth Maybelle joined in, hoisting a placard that read “End Segregation Now!” The two looked at each other briefly, as Velma von Tussle tried to pry her way through them. “I am big, blonde, and beautiful,” they took turns announcing. A policeman approached, raised his club, and leaned in.
With ancillary posters bearing slogans such as “Victory Will Be Ours,” “Equality for Everyone,” and “Black Is Beautiful,” the scene could have been a Black Lives Matter protest in New Haven. Or a revolutionary-minded commotion outside of a Donald Trump rally, where the presidential candidate has proposed a new wave of religious segregation.
Instead, it was the end of Act I of Hairspray, the film-turned-Broadway musical that catapulted to fame in 2002 with a story about an earlier civil rights era, in its final moments of Cross Drama’s dress rehearsal.
Continue reading ‘“Hairspray” Clears Up The Acne Of The Soul’
by | Mar 9, 2016 3:56 pm | Comments (7)
Allan Appel Photo
Denease points to an image of Margu, whom she’ll portray in this week’s 175th Amistad decision anniversary.
Portrait of Margu by William Townsend.
In 1839 Margu was was only 9 years old when she was snatched from her home into slavery. She was marched 80 miles to the slave pens off the coast of Sierra Leone, to await the harrowing Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean to Cuba.
In New Haven, she would help make history that our city is celebrating Wednesday, 175 years later after a landmark civil-rights victory.
by | Mar 7, 2016 1:00 pm | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Hennessey.
Props gurus Frank Alberno and Maureen Hennessey faced a serious gastronomic challenge earlier this year at Long Wharf Theatre, as director Jade King Carroll worked through the script for Having Our Say: Stage a convincing “ballet of food” nightly, in which it appeared that the characters were cooking a full meal from start to finish in two hours, with a kitchen that was more set design than full function.
by | Mar 3, 2016 4:01 pm | Comments (0)
Christopher Thompson Photos
When the lights come up on And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens — which is playing at the Yale Cabaret now through Saturday night— something transformative is already taking place.
It’s not just the elaborate set, arranged to reflect queer New Orleans circa 1957.
The specter of Tennessee Williams is everywhere: reclining on the chaise, where he’s dressed in a nothing but a red silk kimono; mixing a cocktail at a well-stocked bar; straight-backed and skinny at a typewriter, a set of flexing, manicured fingers striking the keytop as a ribbon whirs away inside.
I think the strange/the crazed/the queer/will have their holiday this year, Williams writes out, letting the verse bounce and echo in his head. I think for just a little while/there will be pity for the wild.
by | Mar 1, 2016 5:48 pm | Comments (0)
“What’s the difference,” Kelly Wuzzardo asked the Fair Haven schoolkids around her, “between noise and music?”
by | Feb 29, 2016 6:14 pm | Comments (1)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Brenda Pressley and Olivia Cole.
Two old women reminiscing about their lives may not seem the stuff of gripping theater, but then the Delany sisters are not just any old women.
As the voices of oral history behind Having Our Say, a memoir written and published with the aid of Amy Hill Hearth, the Delanys, 104 and 102 when the book was published, created a best-selling sensation in the 1990s. Adapted for the stage by Emily Mann, the show had an extended Broadway run and received several Tony nominations. With the book and the play, you might easily suppose that Bessie and Sadie Delany, who died in 1995 and 1999 respectively, have had their day. And you’d be wrong.
by | Feb 25, 2016 1:14 pm | Comments (0)
Half an hour before seeing Teatro a Mil‘s Escuela͟, written and directed by Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, I learned the entire play would be performed in Spanish
I gulped down a mouthful of tomato-pesto pizza and prepared myself to stretch out in a sparsely crowded theatre to digest like a bull sea lion capitalist.
But upon entering the Isemann Theater, where the Yale Repertory’s No Boundaries series was presenting Escuela, to reach the concierge I had to wade through the most diverse theatre crowd I have encountered at a New Haven production. Patrons of every age, race, and gender packed the Isemann on opening night, dressed in berets, peacoats, and logos alike.
Continue reading ‘“Escuela” Might Be School For Sanderistas’
by | Feb 25, 2016 8:30 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Peter Chenot as sheriff Will offers to help Megan Chenot as the troubled chanteuse Cherie.
There are lots of bus stops on Chapel Street, but only one where you travel back in time — to the cozy, innocent world of Midwestern America, circa 1956.
Continue reading ‘All Aboard “Bus Stop” at English Building Markets’