Archive: Arts & Entertainment

To mark the completion of their fifth season Theatre Incognita  revives their acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder’s American classic Our Town and mounts a brand-new, youth-driven Romeo and Juliet on the boards of the Hangar Theatre.

The two plays, featuring over 30 actors ranging in age from 10 to their 80s, will play in alternating repertory at the Hangar Theatre the first two weekends of May; with matinee and evening performances Saturday and Sunday. Each day features both plays, with enough time between them to take in dinner in downtown Ithaca.

Not so very long ago, John F. Kennedy said “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bicycle.”  How true for many people.  And to a surprising number of visual artists, bicycles bring not only pleasure but also creative inspiration.

For the month of May, you can see the output of that inspiration at Two Wheels to Freedom: Ithaca’s First Annual Juried Bike Art Show, showing at Collegetown Bagels downtown on Aurora Street.  The works of eighteen Ithaca-based or Ithaca-connected artists are brought together in a vibrant collection of bicycle themed photographs, prints, and paintings.

The Hangar Theatre celebrated their accomplishments of 2013 at their annual meeting on Monday, April 7th where one business organization and three community members were recognized as substantially impacting the artistic integrity and financial health of the Center for Performing Arts. Board members, staff, volunteers, and community members all gathered to celebrate the continual success of the Hangar and the positive impact of those who so generously contribute their time and resources to the Hangar Theatre.

For the past 10 years, the Hangar Theatre has presented the Philanthropic Angel Award to a person or organization for contributions that set a pace for support of the arts in our community and at the Hangar Theatre. This year, Lisa Whitaker, the President and CEO of CFCU Community Credit Union was present to receive the Philanthropic Angel Award on behalf of the CFCU. Managing Director Josh Friedman presented the Philanthropic Angel Award to CFCU Community Credit Union "for their continuing faith in the Hangar and our mission as demonstrated by their generous Partner In Flight sponsorship, as well as their financial expertise, guidance and assistance in the Hangar's financial planning."

May 2nd marks the fifth anniversary opening of the East Shore Festival Of The Arts (ESFOTA).  This year opening night boasts about 28 Finger Lakes artists and a wealth of music, exhibits, puzzles and food.  Organizer Robin Schuttenberg says the opening will be bigger this year, including all the buildings in the Town Hall Complex.  More than 100 pieces will hang in the Town Hall and the Lansing Community Library until June 21.

"We have some really different stuff this year, a lot of abstracts," she says.  "Really big ones from new artists, new to the festival.  We are striving to be the venue for the person who has never done a show before, to feel comfortable enough to take that big step -- allowing someone to critique your work and say it is in or out.  We have several new artists, and some returning artists."

The History Center in Tompkins County will open the exhibition Switched-On:  The Birth of the Moog Synthesizer on Friday, May 2nd. Telling the story of Bob Moog and the development of the groundbreaking electronic instruments bearing his name, Switched-On will provide museum-goers an interactive, engaging opportunity to learn about this important chapter of our region's history.

Based on a series of wide-ranging oral history interviews done with family members, colleagues, and contemporaries, and done in partnership with the Asheville, N.C.-based Bob Moog Foundation, the exhibition provides unparalleled insight into the unique genius of Bob Moog and the ways in which he ushered in a revolution in music. From the words of Herbert Deutsch and Bernie Worrell to Shirleigh Moog, David Borden, and many others, and featuring rare Moog instruments such as a vacuum tube theremin, a pre-production Minimoog, and an early Moog amplifier of which only three were ever sold, Switched-On will be the first major exhibition on Bob Moog and Moog Synthesizers to occur in the region, and will run through May 30th, 2015.

Hangar Theatre announced its lineup of accomplished directors and designers for its 40th Anniversary Mainstage season. While some of these artists are returning to the Hangar from past production favorites, others, including new Artistic Director Jen Waldman, will be making their Hangar debut. The roster includes many talented artists with local ties to Ithaca, including Ithaca College and Cornell University alumni.

Waldman will direct two of the Mainstage shows this summer: the Tony Award-winning Red by John Logan (June 12-21) and the rocking, hilarious musical Little Shop of Horrors by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (July 10-26). Joining her in the director's circle will be Hangar Associate Artistic Director Jesse Bush, taking the helm of the hilarious adaptation of the Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days (June 26-July 5), and Mark Shanahan making his Hangar debut directing the regional premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Other Desert Cities (July 31-August 9) by Jon Robin Baitz.

Gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos is not only a scorching virtuoso, but also a musician of extraordinary stylistic versatility. Equally comfortable performing classical music as he is playing jazz and in his own Hungarian folk idiom, Lakatos is the rare musician who defies definition. Lakatos brings his rejuvenated Ensemble to Cornell's Bailey Hall at 8:00 pm on April 24th for a concert of matchless virtuosity and surprising repertoire ideas including long forgotten melodies set in totally new and original arrangements.

Born in 1965 into the legendary family of gypsy violinists descended from Janos Bihari, 'King of Gypsy Violinists', Roby Lakatos was introduced to music as a child and at age nine he made his public debut as first violin in a gypsy band. He is referred to as a gypsy violinist or 'devil’s fiddler', a classical virtuoso, a jazz improviser, a composer and arranger, and a 19th-century throwback, and he is actually all of these things at once.

Aurora, New York— The Wells College theatre and dance department proudly presents 'Passages,' the Wells College 2014 Faculty Dance Concert. An annual favorite on campus, this year's concert takes place on Friday and Saturday, April 11 and 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Phipps Auditorium on the Wells College campus. Admission is free, and the performance is open to the public.

'Passages' features new and repertory work by long-time Wells dance faculty Jeanne Goddard and Elizabeth Wilmot-Bishop, performed by the students of the Wells College Dance Ensemble. Goddard will re-stage her brightly costumed comic piece "The Kitchen Revue," featuring a pot and its lid, a whisk, a broom, a dishcloth and a distraught hostess. The dance was originally commissioned by the Ithaca-based chamber ensemble Music's Recreation and is set to a score by Bohuslav Martinu ("La Revue de Cuisine"/1927). Goddard has also recreated "Three Studies for a Decorated Vessel," a quintet premiered last summer, with live accompaniment by Steven Stull, baritone, and William Cowdery, pianist, who will perform lieder by Strauss, Brahms and Schumann. Goddard's epic new ensemble piece, "Voyage," is inspired by poetic images from Antarctic explorations and is accompanied by the music of contemporary composer Michael McLean. The mood of this abstract work progresses from mysterious to exuberant as winter melts into spring.

SMART TALK SMART TALK

by Dr. Tilde Cedilla

BLACK HUMOR: Soon after I arrived from Cuba, I heard the term black humor. I thought it meant a particular style of humor as practiced by African Americans, and being very dark myself, I wasn’t sure how to react to that. I confided my confusion to a colleague at the Center for English as a First Language. English not being my first language, its idioms can still throw me off.

My colleague laughed, which surprised me, and told me to look it up. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says it’s “a form of humor that regards human suffering as absurd rather than pitiable, or that considers human existence as ironic and pointless but somehow comic.”

So it has nothing to do with race. Well, try saying that to a black person who’s been shocked at the jokes that some ignorant white people tell. One thing I’ve learned in this country is that Gentiles shouldn’t tell Jew jokes, and white people shouldn’t tell race jokes. Some white people like to talk about how far this country has come, but the jokes and the obstructionism in Congress tell me that you still have a long way to go.

 

One step on the way would be to stop using the term black humor. You have excellent alternatives in dark humor and, sometimes, gallows humor.

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The Gallery@FOUND welcomes Furniture Maker Tim Wells to the Gallery for the month of April. 'Emerging From Winter' opens Wednesday, April 2nd and will be installed in the Gallery through Sunday, April 27th.

Inspired by the honesty of the Arts and Crafts movement and the 1970s British crafts revival, Tim Wells uses traditional techniques of high quality construction with a contemporary twist on design, blending simplicity of form with function. He approaches his work in a unique way, by drawing on British joinery techniques and using honest materials to create new designs.

How is it that British playwright Duncan Macmillan has written such a perfect play for Ithaca?  The young couple in LUNGS care deeply about the earth and their responsibility to protect it, and this awareness of the big picture affects all their decisions, large and small.  LUNGS is a modern love story, filled with concern and hope for the future in equal measure. Previews are March 26 - 28, the press opening is on March 29, and the play runs through April 13 at the Kitchen Theatre Company.

Macmillan is among Britain's new generation of playwrights who are stripping the theatrical event down to just the essentials - text, movement and actors.  This sparseness allows us to zero in on the ideas, emotions and moment-to-moment shifts between the characters. Macmillan's writing mixes the ironic, the comic and the dramatic with wonderfully surprising wit.

Aurora, New York— The Wells College String Room Gallery presents the exhibition 'Henry Wesselwoman,' the latest collaboration by the artists Alli Miller and Trey Burns. The exhibition will be on display from March 19 to April 24, with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19. The exhibit is free.

Alli Miller and Trey Burns have an ongoing collaborative practice through which they explore liminal, hyperbolic and humorous visions of the American commercial landscape. This latest effort features work stemming from a character they’ve designed named 'Henry Wesselwoman,' a direct revisionist reference to the New Topographics generation of landscape photography. They will employ photography and installation to engage with and reconsider this history.