by | Mar 31, 2015 4:41 pm | Comments (0)
Carol Rosegg Photo
The Yale Repertory Theatre’s gorgeous revival of Bertolt Brecht’s 1944 play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by Liz Diamond, finds the fun in what could be an off-putting work.
Continue reading ‘“Chalk Circle” Timelessly Timely — And Fun?’
by | Mar 27, 2015 1:05 pm | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
Playing to a full house at the Shubert, Ammon Downer and Tanaiza Glass set the beat and a joyous tone for their talented crew of singers and dancers from the Edgewood School in “A Friend Like Me,” from the musical Aladdin.
Continue reading ‘Kids Sing Their Way To Victory At Shubert’
by | Mar 27, 2015 12:00 pm | Comments (5)
Fake Babies Photo
Unit G-2, aka “The Submarine,” before last week’s raid.
When I first came to Daggett Street Square in 2007, I was taken by its rambling hallways, its pulley-operated elevator. The building may not have been insulated, but it was insular. By that time, few live-work spaces remained in New Haven. There had been others — on River Street; in the Munniemaker cigar factory on State Street; at Chapel and Church, above what is now Gotham Citi — all now shut down.
Now we can add Daggett Street Square to the list: Last week officials ordered it cleared out.
David Lasala Photo
David Lasala.
by | Mar 25, 2015 2:20 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Montana Telman as Georgia Hendricks, leading the dancers.
Nearly three dozen actors, 20 student musicians, 12 techies, and a new all-student dramaturgy team have created a murder board in the lobby of Co-op High.
A murder board is a good thing. It’s all part of the school’s presentation of Curtains, a charming play-within-a-play backstage murder mystery musical comedy, as its all-school spring show.
by | Mar 20, 2015 12:22 pm | Comments (1)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
“You’re gonna hit one, two and then I’m going to swing,” Devonne “Da Bomb” Canady told Catrina Ganey. “Got it?” Ganey had it.
Continue reading ‘Leading Lady Discovers “B-Side” At Dixwell Gym’
by | Mar 19, 2015 3:05 pm | Comments (2)
When ConnCAT founder Erik Clemons first heard selections from brownsville song (b‑side for tray), he realized something very quickly: Even the smallest section of Kimber Lee’s masterfully true-to-life script lent itself to hours of discussions he was waiting to have.
The same was true for youth worker Steve Driffin, who immediately seized on the importance of sharing the play’s narrative — a young, precious and imperiled black life — with the New Haven community as necessary and therapeutic.
by | Mar 12, 2015 4:21 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Wormser (left) with admirer and fellow poet David Leff.
The williwaw — an icy, mountainous wind that literally drove some GIs crazy during the Aleutian campaign in World War II — made a chilling and beautiful appearance in both words and music, alongside the propulsive verses of nationally known poet Baron Wormser, in a haunting evening of poetry at the Institute Library.
Continue reading ‘Williwaw and Wormser Blow Institute Library Away’
by | Mar 12, 2015 3:01 pm | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photos
Mom, left, meets actress, right.
Catrina Ganey wanted to know what it’s like to lose a child to a random bullet. Tracey Suggs knew all too well.
Continue reading ‘Justus’s Mom Brings Leading Lady To Tears’
by | Mar 10, 2015 1:04 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
“I saw that he was laying in the doorway with a bullet wound in his head. Then he went into convulsions. and then he was out.”
Continue reading ‘The Organic Truth, From Trayvon To “Tray”’
by | Mar 9, 2015 1:29 am | Comments (6)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
It may be time to call a moratorium on shouty dysfunctional family plays. This season so far the Yale Rep has given us Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ War and Dania Gurira’s Familiar. After the heartwarming season-opening fake-out of Our Town, Long Wharf Theater has presented Dael Orlandersmith’s Forever — which, though it’s a one-woman show, bristles with mother/daughter antagonisms. Now it’s putting on the current small-cast contemporary-setting darling of regional theaters nationwide, Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews.
by | Mar 4, 2015 4:46 pm | Comments (0)
Before there was Engelbert Humperdinck, the super-lite English pop singer (sort of the Brits’ Wayne Newton), there was the man from whom he took his name, the great German opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854 – 1921).
by | Mar 3, 2015 3:25 pm | Comments (0)
Yale Cabaret
The Yale Cabaret’s most recent feature, The Untitled Project, proposed and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood and devised by the ensemble, is a meditation on being a black man in America. Using a battery of techniques, including straightforward address to the audience, a series of projections from historical and popular sources, interpretive dance, soliloquies, readings, skits, and even a send-up of blackface minstrelsy, the show might be likened to Hamlet’s strategy in trying to outfox the king: “by indirections find direction out.” The “indirections” are the many, many racist distortions of what it “means” to be black; the direction is finding a way to maintain purpose and dignity within a racist context.
by | Mar 3, 2015 1:40 pm | Comments (0)
NHTC
Steve Scarpa.
What is the value of doubt? In directing John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play Doubt: A Parable, the latest offering from New Haven Theater Company, George Kulp finds that keeping uncertainty as part of the creative process is key to the dramatic possibilities of the play.
Continue reading ‘New Haven Theater Company Puts It All In “Doubt”’
by | Feb 26, 2015 2:49 pm | Comments (0)
Yale Cabaret
“When it comes to the physical side of things, you have to know how to hit someone without damaging a kidney.”
“I’m proud of the fact that I got two kids out of my small hole. My boys are awesome.”
So said two of the eight women — including a nun, a dominatrix, a musician, a lawyer, an actress, and someone who worked for Mother Teresa in Calcutta — in Shiny Objects, a show conceived, developed, and performed by Maura Hooper and Zenzi Williams for a Feb. 19 – 21 run at the Yale Cabaret.
by | Feb 25, 2015 9:11 am | Comments (0)
Peter Chenot Photo
Curtiss checks out Dixwell’s Elephant In The Room gym.
Curtiss Cook Jr. has an all-too-familiar story to tell New Haven, one he hopes the city will help him unpack: a story about a young African-American man, full of promise, shot dead in a senseless murder.
Continue reading ‘Eyeing Breakthrough, He Explores City’s “B Side”’
by | Feb 24, 2015 4:01 pm | Comments (26)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
John Cavaliere doesn’t want Lyric Hall to be added to a growing list of places in New Haven that used to be — but a five-figure back-taxes bill threatens to lower the curtain on the Westville cultural gathering place.
Continue reading ‘Historic Westville Theater Faces Foreclosure’
by | Feb 24, 2015 9:37 am | Comments (1)
Contributed Photo
For six years, A Broken Umbrella Theatre has been producing theatrical works that incorporate New Haven history, staged in relevant locations. With Seen Change!, which has its final run of shows Feb. 25 – 28, the local troupe has put together a show that trades upon the history of theater in New Haven, using the Shubert lobby for Act I, the lobby of the Taft next door — where traditionally opening night receptions were held — for Act II, and the stage and orchestra section of the Shubert itself for Act III.
by | Feb 23, 2015 4:05 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Andreassi with mentee Mychael Green during rehearsal last summer.
James Andreassi, the guiding spirit behind New Haven’s Elm Shakespeare Company, has decided to retire as artistic director. But he has one more round of free summer performances to stage first.
by | Feb 20, 2015 2:34 pm | Comments (0)
The New Haven Firebird Society and Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church are sponsoring a black history theater workshop series for the last two Saturdays in February.
by | Feb 20, 2015 12:44 pm | Comments (0)
Dan Dion/NPR
At The Outer Space music club, everyone had come to hear writer, comedianne, and radio show host Ophira Eisenberg’s comedy.
For her part, Eisenberg was perhaps hoping to have people correctly pronounce her name.
“My name is Ophira Eisenberg, or as I was introduced recently at a party, as Oprah … something Jewish,” she said.
And then there was the hapless fellow she met in a bar, whose inability to understand her name ended, as most bar misunderstandings do, in Nazis: “ ‘Your name is the Fuhrer!?’ Yes. Yes. The Fuhrer Eisenberg.”
Continue reading ‘Ophira Eisenberg Offers Tough Love To NPR Crowd’
by | Feb 18, 2015 5:23 pm | Comments (0)
Christopher Thompson Photo
Ato Blankson-Wood prepares for one -night School of Drag show.
I was raised in a pretty heteronormative household on the East Side of Detroit. My mother, who put herself through college and has had a full-time job since age 21, does not find anything remotely funny about drag. For her, drag is clear-cut, simplistic, and injurious.
by | Feb 16, 2015 4:53 pm | Comments (0)
Tom Breen photo
Bennett Lovett-Graff.
On Thursday night, Bennett Lovett-Graff, George Kulp, and J. Kevin Smith smuggled two epic poems into the Institute Library, disguised as 20th-century American short stories.
The two stories, Harlan Ellison’s “Along the Scenic Route” (1975) and John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” (1964), were the featured works in February’s installment of Listen Here!, one of the Chapel Street upstairs haunt’s several now-regular events.
by | Feb 16, 2015 1:51 pm | Comments (1)
Gov. Dannel Malloy may have called for a second-chance society. But the people who make money off the prison system have no interest in second chances. They just want to make money. And nothing will change until that does.
That was the message from the audience at the New Haven Public Library Saturday to Rev. Marilyn B. Kendrix. She was there as co-author of The Justice Imperative: How Hyper-Incarceration Has Hijacked the American Dream, which makes the case for criminal justice reform in Connecticut. The talk was sponsored by the library and the Long Wharf Theatre, in anticipation of brownsville song (b‑side for tray), which will run Mar. 25 to Apr. 19.
Continue reading ‘Can “Second-Chance Society” Compete With Big (Prison) Business?’
by | Feb 13, 2015 3:04 pm | Comments (0)
Long Wharf Theater
For many actors, landing a role at Long Wharf Theater is a feather in their cap, a chance to walk the same stage as Al Pacino, Brian Dennehy, or Kathleen Turner. For Kelly McQuail, who’s making her debut there in the controversial Bad Jews — which opens next week and is apparently almost sold out — it is also a homecoming.
Continue reading ‘“Bad Jews” Lead Credits ECA For Launching Career’
by | Feb 12, 2015 2:38 pm | Comments (0)
Batman, the crime-fighting alter ego of millionaire Bruce Wayne created as a comic strip in 1940, has perhaps never been more iconic after the hip and hyped success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies. But well before those milestones in the Batman story, and even before Tim Burton’s creepier film versions (let’s forget about Joel Schumacher’s corny travesties), there was Batman, a kids’ TV show of the late 1960s. That show ran for 120 lovably campy episodes and then went to syndication.
Until now. Husband and wife team Tori Keenan-Zelt and Steven Koernig concocted an imaginary Episode 121, titled Catfight, and that “lost episode” was brought to blam! pow! life at the Yale Cabaret, from Feb. 5 to Feb. 7.