Call it a late spring cleaning. This week, a trio of local arts organizations revealed details about the work going on within their walls. For a pair of venues, it means bringing in a bit of new blood; for one former music venue, it means that last yard sale to send friends away with a few memorable bits and pieces. Take a look.
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If these walls could act: Live Arts promises a bit of Hank Williams, David Mamet and Stephen Sondheim in its upcoming season. |
Live Arts: As first reported in the Feedback blog, departing artistic director John Gibson delivered his final season announcement, an event he refers to as a sort of “state of the state” address.
“We build community,” he announced to the crowd assembled in the theater’s DownStage space, their eyes scanning a pair of chalkboards and set pieces from Tartuffe (read Wistar Watts Murray’s review here), ears trained on Gibson.
“What does that mean? It means I have paint on my hands, dirt on my fingernails,” said Gibson, and spoke about meeting with a group of Live Arts regulars including Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell and her daughter, Harper (named for Tidwell’s character in the Live Arts production of Angels in America), to paint his garage recently.
“[It means] I know where this girl’s mom comes from,” finished Gibson, who added that contemporary times “conspire against people being together,” but that being together is “what we do.”
And we’re going to spend plenty of time together during the next Live Arts season, gals and pals. Live Arts’ new season starts September 18 with the profane peacocking and masculine, er, measuring contests of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made better by the presence of the state’s toughest female director, Boomie Pedersen, in the director’s chair. From there, Live Arts runs through an Ain’t Misbehavin’-style treatment of Hank Williams’ Lost Highway, a gig that seems custom tailored for Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees as a house band (just speculating here), and a world premiere from Tidwell and company’s Performers Exchange Project, dubbed Our American Ann Sisters. For an overview of the full season, click here.
Try & Make: During The Bridge/Progressive Arts Initiative’s wildly successful Revel, Feedback ran into Jaymee Martin, director of the newly christened Try & Make space on Preston Avenue. Burning a hole in your thinking cap trying to place the space? Well, Martin took out a lease on the spot once pursued as a mid-size music venue by Red Light Management, at 610 Preston Ave., near Reid’s Supermarket.
So far, she’s off to a promising start. A “pay-what-you-want” object sale last week offered work from artists like photographer Billy Hunt as well as the first copies of a locally spawned poetry project, The Emily Dickinson Reader, in which local Paul Legault “translates” 500 of Ms. Wild Nights’ poems into English. (Take No. 9: “If today is opposite day, I’m happy.”)
As Red Light’s pursuit of the same space proved, finding the right room for your purposes can be a struggle. Then again, as spaces like The Garage (on N. First Street, opposite Lee Park) have shown us in the last year, the right sort of effort can be transformative in even the smallest room. Do yourself a favor and drop by; hours and a list of upcoming events are available at tryandmake.org.
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Yard sale! The remaining bits and pieces of Gravity Lounge will be for sale during a public auction on Tuesday. |
Gravity Lounge: Ever wanted to get your hands on one of those irrefutably groovy lantern lights that hung from the beams above the Gravity Lounge stage? Tuesday may be your best opportunity. According to the classified pages in The Daily Progress, items from “Poverty Peak Ventures, Inc.”—oof, there’s a troubling name—will be sold in a public auction on May 12 at 9am.
“The assets shall be sold AS IS and WHERE IS with NO WARRANTIES,” reads the ad. Which leads a live music fan to ask: What of all that beer left in the Gravity Lounge fridge? Up for grabs?
Even if the suds are a dud, Feedback will be there; read our blog for a report on the auction.
