Before every rehearsal and every performance, the cast and crew stand in a circle. They hold hands, close their eyes, inhale deeply, and exhale fully. “I am light,” they say. “I am love. I am here. I am light. I am love. I am here.” They repeat it over and over, until everyone feels ready […]
Before every rehearsal and every performance, the cast and crew stand in a circle. They hold hands, close their eyes, inhale deeply, and exhale fully. “I am light,” they say. “I am love. I am here. I am light. I am love. I am here.” They repeat it over and over, until everyone feels ready […]
By Nina Richards To Micah Kessel, assumption is the enemy of empathy. Empathy is the realization that each person has different, and equally valid, experiences and emotions that inform our every move. Which is why Kessel, Kelley Van Dilla, Adrienne Dent, and Annie Temmink have created an immersive experience to prompt empathic thinking and choice-making […]
Our ability to look at art—to see color, shape, texture—comes from light. We’ll spare you an in-depth science lesson, but most basically, light reflects off objects and into the eye. Cells in the retina (at the back of the eye) convert light into electrical impulses, which the optic nerve sends to the brain. The brain […]
Ring true: Boxer Jack Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight champion, and at the height of the Jim Crow era he was “the most famous and the most notorious African American on Earth,” according to documentarian Ken Burns. Directed by multi-faceted artist and C-VILLE contributor Leslie Scott-Jones, The Royale, written by Marco Ramirez, […]
Hindsight is 1616: It’s a battle to save the legacy of William Shakespeare when the Bard’s mates go on a mad scramble to gather up his disparate writings in Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will. At the time of his death in 1616, Shakespeare was well-off and popular, but had his friends John Heminges and […]
When you think of teenage girls, what do you picture? Perhaps you think of your own fast-talking children or your experience in high school. Or maybe you default to cliques and clichés: prom queens and geeks, victims and villains. In its latest production, a Pulitzer Prize- nominated play by Sarah DeLappe called The Wolves, Live […]
In Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Dean Cindy Wreen is fed up with a lot of things: her tiny college’s financial difficulties, plans to close an obscure natural history museum, and monogamy, to name a few. While her New England town battles to save a historically inaccurate woolly mammoth exhibition from a dark fate, […]
By Leslie M. Scott-Jones Walking into the downstage theater at Live Arts, the sounds are familiar. Vocal warm-ups have begun, and musical director Kristen Baltes shouts from the balcony that this is “real life,” signaling to the actors to fill the space with their voices (not easy to do in that room). Seated in the […]
Ti Ames loves William Shakespeare. Or rather, Ames loves the plays of William Shakespeare. It’s a love that started when Ames played a fairy in The Tempest at Live Arts at age 9, and it grew when, at 16, Ames became the first black actor to win the English-Speaking Union National Shakespeare Competition in 2012. […]
Imagine Romeo and Juliet in an urban, 1950s setting. You’re probably thinking of West Side Story—now replace that play’s tragic elements with absurdist comedy the way only John Waters could write it, and you get Cry-Baby: The Musical, a stage adaptation of the Waters rom-com. Featuring the classic star-crossed lovers plot with some subversive twists, […]