by | Jul 23, 2021 5:16 pm | Comments (9)
Jami LaRue Photo
DeLauro with constituent at YMCA event.
New Haven’s federal delegation came home Friday with big smiles — and big pots of money for local families and businesses.
by | Jul 6, 2021 9:19 am | Comments (0)
Eva Skewes Photos
Dress rehearsal for Heaven or California.
Aerial routines. Juggling. Tumbling. All in the service of telling the real and tragic story of the Donner Party, a group of wagon-train settlers who, in 1846, tried to get to California from the Midwest but were trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846 – 47; those who survived did so by resorting to cannibalism. This was the vision of director Liz Richards, who, with the help of a crew of New Haven artists, will bring that vision to life as Heaven or California, performed at Air Temple Arts on July 10.
by | Jun 30, 2021 1:53 pm | Comments (5)
Music mogul and noted superyacht owner David Geffen has donated $150 million to Yale School of Drama so that all students can attend tuition-free in the future.
Continue reading ‘$150M Gift Means Free Sailing For Yale Drama Students’
by | Jun 9, 2021 8:46 am | Comments (0)
Maria and Ndemeh.
Making a painstaking cup of coffee the traditional way while recounting a harrowing story of flight from Ethiopia into an unknown future. Family photographs lovingly thumbed through, even while the speaker mourns a sense of childhood lost. And dancing that invokes ancestors and reaches back into the past to both face trauma and draw strength.
Curated and produced by Jasmin Agosto and featuring Haben Maria, Colleen Ndemeh, Paul Bryant Hudson, Zvlu, Yexandra Diaz, and Ch’Varda, Yerba Bruja is part ceremony, part storytelling, part music, spoken word, and dance performance, and all honesty and respect, as the participants ruminate on what it means to leave home, lose home, and reconnect and stay resilient, in ways large and small.
Continue reading ‘“Yerba Bruja” Finds Roots In Elm City Earth’
by | May 26, 2021 8:42 am | Comments (2)
The cast of A Light in the Dark — the showcase from Lights Up Drama Club at Wilbur Cross High School, which will be broadcast June 4 and 5 — assembled in a rehearsal room at the school that would also serve as the beginning scene for the number “I Feel So Much Spring,” from the William Finn-penned musical A New Brain.
As the music began, and music director Matt Durland conducted, all the voices behind the masks sprang to life.
The students glided across the floor as co-director Salvatore DeLucia weaved among them with a camera. It would all be edited together into a final product, with 17 other songs, in time for broadcast.
Continue reading ‘Wilbur Cross’s Drama Club Shines “A Light In The Dark”’
by | May 5, 2021 8:53 am | Comments (0)
A visit to a gynecologist’s office that may or may not be under siege. How copulation might resemble the objects you might find in your attic. And the travails of a child maligned by his shallow parents, seeking May 4‑appropriate, Star-Wars-themed revenge. On Tuesday night the Regicides — the improv troupe from A Broken Umbrella Theatre Company — started ArtWalk in Westville, which returns to live, in-person, yet still social distanced activities this year.
by | Apr 30, 2021 8:46 am | Comments (2)
Teaching artist Justin Pesce looked over his cast of A Comedy of Errors through the window of his Zoom meeting. Before him, on the screen, 13 students from Mauro Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School were ready, in their Renaissance clothing, to perform.
“Show me what you got today,” Pesce said, both goad and encouragement. “Yesterday I challenged you and you stepped up to the challenge. I know each and every one of you can do it. Everybody get into your space. Have a great run through. We’re going to have fun.”
Continue reading ‘Mauro Sheridan Makes A Pandemic “Comedy Of Errors”’
by | Apr 22, 2021 10:09 am | Comments (0)
Liz Lauren Photo
Darci Nalepa and Priya Mohanty in Queen’s world premiere at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.
For director Aneesha Kudtarkar, two scenes from Madhuri Shekar’s play Queen stood out as scenes she was most excited to stage sometime in the future. In one, Sanam, a scientist, and Arvind, a Wall Street broker, go out on a first date in Northern California. They’re there because they’re both in their 30s, and in India, their grandfathers apparently played golf together, and while this isn’t exactly a possibility of an arranged marriage, it feels a little like it. In another, Sanam and her longtime scientific colleague Ariel are arguing over the ethical quandaries their years-long project has stumbled into, and it all comes out — the cultural and economic differences between them, the strains of being women in a male-dominated field. They’re the true heart of Queen, and in that scene, the heart perhaps beats the loudest.
by | Apr 1, 2021 9:30 am | Comments (1)
Two murder mysteries. A string of love letters. A Choose Your Own Adventure-style story. And testimony after testimony of the things lost and found during the pandemic.
Co-op High School’s theater department has joined a national theater-by-mail festival, and in doing so, will have a chance to show New Haven and beyond how a high school theater program can continue to make art even when stages have to stay dark.
Continue reading ‘Co-Op High Puts Its Stamp On Pandemic Theater’
by | Mar 11, 2021 11:25 am | Comments (1)
Contributed
Anthony McDonald inside his hallowed new place of employment.
Anthony McDonald, the new executive director of the Shubert Theatre, took a tour recently of the theater’s facility at Co-op High a block away. It brought him back to his own experiences of doing theater in high school, in Kenilworth, N.J.
by | Mar 9, 2021 11:08 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Photo
New Shubert Executive Director Anthony McDonald.
The Shubert Theatre has a new executive director, promising to bring new energy and diversity to downtown’s historic stage as he steps into a role his predecessor commanded for two decades
by | Mar 3, 2021 10:49 am | Comments (1)
Pages from journals are frozen in midair, as if caught in a photograph of them flying away in a windstorm. A figure emerges from a book, a look of concern on her face. A mirror captures the skyline of a city. They’re all part of a larger show and puppet theater piece called Sueños, by artist Anatar Marmol-Gagné, running in the project room at Artspace through March 20. Together, the elements combine wonder and gritty, emotional realism to tell a story about family chaos and the wrenching effects of immigration that make the political deeply personal.
by | Feb 9, 2021 11:01 am | Comments (3)
Brian Slattery Photos
Ty Scurry.
“I have so much stuff planned for this place, and everybody’s like, ‘you’re crazy, you’re only 19 — how are you going to get all this done?”
So Ty Scurry — actor, singer, Wilbur Cross graduate, and theater director at Hillhouse High School — said with a humble chuckle about assuming ownership of Family Music Center in Hamden, which he hopes to not only rebuild out of its Covid-19 shutdown, but expand into a community-based center for students of the visual and performing arts.
Continue reading ‘New Owner Keeps The Family In Music Center’
by | Dec 10, 2020 10:48 am | Comments (0)
Zulynette stood on a stage blank enough that it felt like a void. “This show is a spell,” she said. “If you have lived a life, you have a story to tell.”
She was introducing A Little Bit of Death — now available on Long Wharf Theater’s website through Dec. 11 — an evening of storytelling she put together that is part of Long Wharf’s new One City, Many Stages program.
In teaming up with Zulynette, the Long Wharf’s artistic leadership is making good on its promise to ground the theater further in the community around it, even as it wrestles with the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
Continue reading ‘“A Little Bit Of Death” Captures A Lot Of Life’
by | Dec 3, 2020 10:41 am | Comments (2)
Host Babz Rawls-Ivy beamed from the offices of the Arts Council at the over 100 people gathered virtually Wednesday evening to celebrate the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s 40th annual arts awards. She noted that it was an historic occasion — but not because pandemic restrictions had prevented the audience from gathering in person at the New Haven Lawn Club, as they have in years past.
“Forty years,” she said, “and all the awardees are Black. I love to see it.”
by | Nov 2, 2020 10:30 am | Comments (1)
Arts maven Bitsie Clark welcomed her virtual audience to her 89th birthday party on Friday evening with a cheeky rendition of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It.” But there was a serious intent behind the festivities: to check in with the 2019 recipients of the Bitsie Clark Fund’s annual $5,000 grants, and to award another $5,000 grant to a new artist for 2020.
by | Oct 27, 2020 10:37 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Singing. Dancing. Trivia. Beer floats. All this and more was part of the Shubert Theater’s second Covid-era installment of “Next Stop: New Haven,” a fundraiser and night of entertainment on Monday evening that featured Broadway stars, the Shubert staff, and a host of downtown restaurants who contributed snacks and libations to make an evening at home feel like an evening out.
by | Oct 22, 2020 10:30 am | Comments (0)
A play by a coalition of theater professionals, based on a Brazilian legend, is arriving just in time to make sure Oct. 31 feels like Halloween.
Continue reading ‘Theater Community Comes Together For Halloween’
by | Oct 13, 2020 10:27 am | Comments (12)
Raffael DiLauro: Half a century later, still finding the joy.
Group W Bench, the venerable Chapel Street head shop, art gallery, and psychedelic boutique that has operated continually in New Haven for 53 years, is in negotiations to be sold.
It’s not because of Covid-19. It’s not because the rent is too high. Health complications are part of the equation, but owner Raffael DiLauro has been contemplating the move for a long time.
by | Oct 6, 2020 10:11 am | Comments (0)
Allison Hadley Photos
Kate Gonzales sat tranquilly in her lyra, a large acrobatic hoop elevated several feet above the ground, gesturing elegantly to the pavement below. Decked out in a rich royal purple unitard that matched the material wrapping the lyra, she contorted and posed around the hoop, demonstrating mighty core strength and flexibility as she bent around to strike another pose. The tones of Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 in A‑flat major conjured a dance of courtly love. After a particularly elegant pose, fellow performers shouted, “Yeah Kate!” and the tiniest hint of a smile broke through her composed concentration of performance.
by | Sep 29, 2020 9:06 am | Comments (0)
Artist Z Bell sang the song of Azhar Ahmed and turned the experience of Patrick Morrison into poetry. “The American Dream don’t shine at night,” Bell said. “The American Dream doesn’t teach you what’s right.” Ayse Coskun, on a park bench, talked about what it is to miss home even as you create new ones. Ismael Al Hraaki talked about the help he got in arriving from Syria via Jordan. “I want to show all these people it wasn’t a waste of time taking care of me,” he said. He wants to become a docfor and help take care of people right back.
Continue reading ‘New Haven Play Project Brings The Stage To The People’
by | Sep 23, 2020 9:06 am | Comments (0)
Benny Mikula appeared with guitar in hand on Saturday. Before the pandemic he’d usually be found with seven-piece band The Alpaca Gnomes; tonight he was billing himself as the Lone Gnome.
“How’s everybody doing? Thanks for tuning in,” he said. And then sang a song that felt like easier times. “Little bit of happiness after the pain,” he sang. “A little bit of love can go a long way.”
It was part of the Shubert Theater’s Apart Together program, and part of the rollout for its fall programming as the theater finds ways to stay connected to its audience virtually during the Covid-19 shutdown.
by | Sep 14, 2020 3:41 pm | Comments (2)
Rabhya Mehrotra photo
Blumenthal at Monday’s presser.
65 to 25. 57 to 17.
Those are the staffing-level cuts at two local theaters since the Covid-19 pandemic hit. On Monday, theater managers and advocates joined U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal in calling for help to save their stages.
Continue reading ‘Theaters Join Blumenthal Bid To “Save Our Stages”’
by | Aug 25, 2020 11:49 am | Comments (4)
Forget the door-to-door trick-or-treating and the accidental sidewalk clustering of ghosts, demons, ballplayers, and Beyonces. Covid-19 may not allow for those traditions.
Here’s an alternative idea: Invite small groups of socially distancing trick-or-treaters and their families to four different garages to watch four groups of actors perform a story of a giant Brazilian snake that saves the forests and the world.
Continue reading ‘Garage-Based Pandemic Halloween Alternative Pitched’
by | Jun 24, 2020 12:37 pm | Comments (3)
Brian Slattery Photo
The Zoom meeting filled fast Tuesday evening with about 15 Wilbur Cross students — half the cast from Lights Up Drama Club‘s spring production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. The students had gathered together virtually for the online ceremony for the Halo Awards, for excellence in high school theater across the state of Connecticut. Their production of How to Succeed had been nominated in five categories. It would win two.