Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
On Tuesday night, “Shrek: The Musical” opens at Proctors.
It’s the third production in the venue’s five-musical Broadway season. (“La Cage Aux Folles” started the season, followed by “The Addams Family”; later will be “Jersey Boys” and “Memphis”). Now that the season is around the halfway point, I thought I’d try my powers of prognostication about what may be in store for Proctors’ 2012-13 Broadway season.
Although nothing has been announced at Proctors, some current Broadway shows have already announced 2012-13 tours, even the biggest one of them all — “The Book of Mormon” — which last year won nine Tony awards, including best musical. The show, which satirizes organized religion and Broadway shows, comes from the same brains behind the TV show “South Park,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez, who co-wrote “Avenue Q.” So the questions are: will Proctors be able to snag this hot ticket, and will the venue be able to sell enough tickets to fill its 2,646 seats for a run of a week or longer?
Of course, the matter of selling tickets is the big question for every show at every venue, but the kinds of shows Proctors brings in says something about the audience. Are Capital Region theatergoers eager and open enough for a musical about naive Mormon missionaries in Uganda, a production that Stone has called an “atheist’s love letter to religion”?
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
The New York State Writers Institute recently released its spring schedule, but in thinking about writers coming to the region this spring, my first thought goes to Darin Strauss.
His books include the memoir “Half of Life” (2010), in which he recounts how he killed a classmate in a car accident and its aftermath, which won a National Book Critics Circle award, and his 2001 debut “Chang and Eng” (2001), a fictionalized account of the famous conjoined brothers.
It was because of that book that I first heard Strauss give a talk in the common room of a dorm at Skidmore College. I was a student at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, studying with Marilyn Robinson and Russell Banks, and he was one of the alumni with a success story – the publication of his first novel. He said he had worked on the novel at the Writers Institute at Skidmore, and was especially impressed with the sharp-eyed Douglas Glover, who at that time would read manuscripts from students and offer a one-on-one critique that was both thrilling and terrifying.
What I remember best was how Strauss responded to the question of what it was like going from a writer working away, often alone, to having published a book. He said something like, “You know the saying, ‘the quiet before the storm.’? Well, it’s like the quiet after the quiet.”
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
Happy New Year!
2012 looks to be an exciting year in arts and entertainment for the Capital Region, with events such as the Broadway musical “Memphis” in April at Proctors in Schenectady, Roger Waters “The Wall” in June at Times Union Center in Albany, the release sometime in late summer or fall of the filmed-in-Schenectady “The Place Beyond the Pines” and, in November, the exhibition “Heroes and Villains: The Comic Book Art of Alex Ross” at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.
The Times Union will have plenty to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about the arts in the region. In that spirit, and buoyed by the promise of a fresh year, I have a three-part agenda that is like a New Year’s resolution, except that it is more about what I want from others than just about what I will do. (Is that even allowed?)
2. I want better comments online in general, because nowadays everyone’s a critic.
3. I want to skew the word critical to its more positive definitions. Too often it means “nitpicky” and “negative”; however, the word also means “analytical” and “vital.” It’s all in the dictionary. Look it up. I’ll wait. Continue reading →
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
As the year winds down, I and the arts and entertainment team at the Times Union have been looking back on the highlights of 2011. The thought exercise offers a reminder that the greater Capital Region offers a wonderful breadth and depth of cultural opportunities in dance, classical music, opera, literature, theater, visual arts, jazz and popular music.
This fall, I had the opportunity of taking part in one of those offerings from the New York State Writers Institute. It wasn’t the free authors’ readings — though I did attend plenty of those in what was a particularly strong season with Nicole Krause, Ian Frazier, Isabel Wilkerson, Colson Whitehead, Tom Perrotta, Robert Caro and, of course, William Kennedy, the founder of the instituteand author of many novels, including his latest, “Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes.”
The opportunity I had was an eight-week writing workshop for prose writers. The workshops — one was offered this fall in poetry, another in prose — are offered for free to residents of the Capital Region who are selected based on writing samples submitted beforehand.
I had applied for the workshops before, but this was the first time I had been accepted. Continue reading →
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
Many discussions about the arts in crisis focus on the need for institutions to adapt. One report even suggests the arts are doing fine, it’s the institutions that are having problems.
But can you separate arts from arts institutions? And, if so, what would the arts look like? With those questions in mind, I visited Troy Night Out last month. This is what I saw.
At 71 Fourth St., the space that was once the Kismet Gallery, art hung on dingy walls, a DJ played tunes and art lovers mingled. It looked like a guerrilla street-art one-night happening, bringing life to an otherwise vacant space. The venue wasn’t even listed on the evening’s map.
The works of one of the highlighted artists, Chip Fasciana, were abstract blobs on fields of sombre colors, and one, with more geometric shapes, on a yellow field seemed to explode with movement. This, I thought, is what art without an institution looks like.
Then I remembered that Fasciana had recently had a piece honored as “the masterpiece” in the “Tomorrow’s Masters Today” exhibit at Albany Institute of History & Art, an institution that has been around since 1791.
So art institutions may be inescapable because they can legitimize an artist. But even art institutions may not be what we think they are. The Clement Art Gallery and Frame Shop, for example, is the kind of dual-purpose space that is not only common in the region, but also already satisfies the need for art institutions to adapt.
Of course, Kismet tried to the same thing, but it closed. What’s the difference? Where Kismet focused on giving young artists a chance, Clement often shows well-respected and veteran artists. For example, landscapes by Harry Orlyk, Len Tantillo and Robert Moylan were on the walls last month. The shop was also filled with picture frames, prints, paintings and even pages from mid-19th-century Harper’s Weeklys, suitable for framing, giving the space a staid elegance, where frames support the art.
At the Arts Center of the Capital Region, the main gallery was crammed with art hanging salon-style for its annual “Fence Show.” (Full disclosure: my wife and stepson have work in the show.) The show has been around for more than 40 years, and got its name when members hung work on the iron fence surrounding Washington Park, where the center was previously located.
Though that literal blurring of non-institution and institution may be gone, the gallery show retains that open spirit with a wild array of work in terms of subject, medium and quality. Any member of the arts center can have work in the show, and anyone can become a member for just $35.
But the show is also juried, which is what institutions do best: establish hierarchies. This year’s juror is Ian Berry, the director and curator of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. He selects a limited number of works for the “Fence Select” show, which begins later this month. I recommend seeing the show while the vast array of art is still on the walls. That way, you can see what was selected and what wasn’t and ask: Why this piece instead of that one? Does it reflect an identifiable standard? Does it reflect Berry’s sensibilities?
One part of the show won’t change: the student division. This seems right. Youngsters in the early stages of their artistic lives shouldn’t be subject to the same hierarchies.
I’ve always enjoyed the student show, because the work often shows a wealth of imagination, and was intrigued by a portrait in which the face seemed cobbled together with red, green and blue. The artist, Ceili Conway of Bethlehem, has a couple paintings in the show. She said she’s taken classes at the center and has been making art since she was 3. She’ll be going into the seventh grade in the fall.
At her age, the family refrigerator is often the place where art gets displayed. A public display in an arts institution, however, lets students know that they, too, are engaged in a tradition like the artists around them.
“Ceili shows strong drawing ability for her age level,” said Caroline Corrigan, the education and exhibits manager at the center. She called one of her paintings “very brave, considering the challenging foreshortening of the face in the image. Not many artists (young or old) are willing to tackle that point of view.”
Ceili also showed deep insight when I asked her why she made art. Her answer is probably true for many people making art, and is one reason why there is hope for art — and arts institutions.
“You can kind of do anything you want,” Ceili said, adding, “It’s mostly how I express myself.”
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
Tim Miller stands in the middle of the floor at Highways Performance Space & Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif. He’s surrounded by 25 arts journalists, including me.
He directs us by saying something like, “Let’s take 50 seconds and move around the stage riding a skateboard while frying eggs and dodging machine gun fire and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.”
And we — the fellows of the NEA Arts Journalism Institute and Theater and Musical Theater — slide our feet across the floor, flick our wrists and bend our waists while saying the pledge. People bump into each other. It isn’t pretty, but Miller is giving us an entrance into the creative process of performance art.
In last week’s column, I wrote about a critic’s take on theater that matters. This week, I’m writing about Miller’s take.
Miller may be best known as one of the “NEA Four” — four artists who had NEA grants overturned in 1990 by the first Bush administration because of their subject matter. Miller’s art often has to do with his identity as a gay man, and the loss of government funding was seen as an attempt by a conservative administration to stifle creative expression.
The “NEA Four” sued the government in 1993 and eventually were awarded their grants, though Miller had part of his grant revoked in 1998 when the Supreme Court ruled that standards of decency can be used in federal funding of the arts.
Miller, a co-founder of Highways, tours the country performing and teaching. The exercises he took us through were just a warm up.
Now Miller has us stand in a circle, close our eyes, think about an important moment and to imagine a movement or a gesture that expresses that moment.
We open our eyes and go around the room acting out our movements without words. Some people took a few steps, others seemed to stretch, and one person made a violent shoving motion. Without words or context, the movements were a mysterious dumb show.
Miller puts us in groups of three. He tells us to create scenes from our gestures using our group as actors and to think up six short, strong sentences to go with the movements. We have 10 minutes. Then we perform.
One person re-enacts his wedding ceremony with his partner, reciting lines of Walt Whitman. The man’s shove, in context, reveals he pushed a woman away from an oncoming vehicle, saving her life. The scenes åre intimate and revealing. Some people even cry, overcome with emotion, when we talk about what was shared. It’s the most intense ice-breaker ever.
Then Miller puts our actions into a bigger context.
He says he believes art was vital to our lives, that people were painting on caves long before they were ever batting balls or building businesses.
But, he says, when the tsunami struck Indonesia in 2004, killing hundreds of thousands of people, he felt his ideas about art were worthless. He wished he knew how to do something practical, like a relief worker. How relevant is art in the face of disaster?
Later, though, he saw a BBC news program that showed children orphaned by the tsunami acting out a piece of performance art. One child stood on a chair, surrounded by other children who waggled their fingers and raised their arms to suggest rising water. The interpreter’s voice spoke in short, strong sentences about how the waters rose and one by one people died. Then the BBC program showed the children together laughing.
Miller says the children were doing what we had just done as a group. When he saw those children, then he understand that art was important for survival, that it gave them the tools to get them through trauma, that it allowed them the hope to save their humanity.
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
In an age of seemingly endless choice, is theater still relevant?
All that driving around, by the way, reminded me of the Capital Region, where theatergoers have to put in a lot of miles to catch the wealth of theater that’s an hour’s drive or less from Albany. Just this week, the motivated theatergoer can see 22 plays or musicals.
What’s the last one you saw? A sobering report from the National Endowment for the Arts showed a double-digit decline in live theater attendance from 1982 to 2008. In other words, fewer people find theater relevant.
At the institute, LA Weekly theater critic Steven Leigh Morris argued that what makes the arts in general — and theater in particular — relevant is that they help save our humanity.
He gave examples of how artists have fought tyranny, such as playwright Vaclav Havel’s Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. And he said the arts take people outside daily routines, away from the crushing forces of media that serve the few and not the many. He also wrote about the subject in LA Weekly.
Sports and religion, I think, also take people outside daily routine, though into another routine. The arts, at their best, thwart routine by being unexpected or difficult to understand.
What makes theater different is that it is storytelling with a human connection. Morris stressed something that is obvious, though quite deep: Live theater is where people perform stories in front of other people. If an artist is concerned about people, then he or she should be in theater.
The power of theater is that it strikes the heart first. For some, the emotional experience is enough. Relevance comes into play when the audience member asks: Why do I feel this way? What does this have to do with the things that concern my life now?
Answering those questions, Morris said, is the mission of the critic. The critic doesn’t say something is good or bad, or I liked it or didn’t like it. The critic evaluates the work based on how well it realizes its potential to be meaningful to people right now.
Of course, not all theater strives to do that. Some, like Capital Rep‘s current production of “The Marvelous Wonderettes,” just want to have fun. (The culture of escapism makes a good topic for a future column, though.)
Morris recognizes this by making a distinction between relevant theater and popular theater. But that doesn’t mean popular theater can’t be relevant. Think of “The Lion King,” which is coming to the 2,600-seat Proctors next year. Few musicals are as popular. Few musicals are based on movies that have grossed nearly $800 million. True, success was never guaranteed. And Julie Taymor’s vision that included puppets was a risk. But it paid off. The musical is still running on Broadway.
But is it merely popular? “The Lion King,” if done well, can be a thoroughly satisfying theatrical experience because of the engaging story of Simba’s journey from cub to king allows for a deep emotional connection as well as thoughts about universal themes such as parent-child relations and destiny: Who we are as people (or lions) depends on what is given to us and what we do with it.
Another play that strives to do more, though it isn’t as well-known, is “The Whipping Man,” which recently closed after a string of sell-out shows during its New England premiere at Barrington Stage Company’s smaller 110-seat theater.
The 2006 play by Matthew Lopez is set in a broken-down house in Richmond, Va., in April 1865 at the end of the Civil War. A Confederate soldier returns home to find two of his family’s former slaves living there. In addition to the familiar complexities of the “peculiar institution” that binds these men together, all of them are Jewish.
At one point, one of the former slaves quotes a Leviticus prohibition against Jews owning other Jews as slaves and shouts: “Am I a slave? Or am I a Jew?”
His question was his attempt at asserting an identity beyond the crushing forces embodied by his former master. In so doing, he not only enunciated what the L.A. Weekly critic was talking about, he gave audience members a chance to think about the legacies of war and religious beliefs, two powerful forces that have been on the forefront of most Americans’ minds since Sept. 11.
The play was powerful stuff, and it was popular. That suggests to me that plenty of people in the Capital Region share my belief that theater matters.
Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)
For two years now, I’ve had the privilege of working as the Times Union’s arts and entertainment editor.
The post offers a unique perspective on the ceaseless flow of TV, film, video games, classical music, pop music, jazz, visual arts, theater, opera, literature and festivals available to the Capital Region, as well as access to people who curate and create the cultural landscape — artists, administrators, publicists and audiences.
In this column, I want to add to the ongoing conversations about the arts in the Capital Region, and the conversations about the Capital Region in general. I believe too often the arts have been relegated to some fictional place outside daily life. I’ve often heard that the basic necessities are food, clothing and shelter, along with jobs to acquire those things and the laws to secure them. That kind of thinking, however, fails to value the basic necessity of the arts. The arts are the realizations of the imagination — of rich inner lives — which is crucial to what it means to be human.
My title “editor” doesn’t quite get to the heart of what I’m describing. A better word is culturalist.
By culturalist, I don’t mean the kind of -ist linked to a singular ideology (such as anarchist); rather, I see it as a mix of a profession (think dentist) and of someone who uses something (think guitarist).
Culture, however, is a weighty word. It has separate and distinct meanings in the realms of humanities and science: The culture of a city is quite different from the culture in a petri dish.
Or is it?
The culture of a community isn’t static. It is a living organism that requires care to thrive — or else it dies.
So if the Capital Region can be viewed as a petri dish, then what is its culture? I’m often asked that question when speaking with people outside the region. What I often say is the region is decentralized and has a bit of an identity crisis, meaning we have difficulty describing what it is (as opposed to what it is not).
Let me explain: We have no cultural center. Instead, we have great institutions in all directions such as Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown to the west; the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake to the north; Tanglewood in the Berkshires to the east; and Art Omi in Ghent to the south. The region’s four core counties, as well, have many major institutions such as SPAC in Saratoga, Proctors in Schenectady, EMPAC in Troy and The Egg in Albany.
Of course what I’ve named are just a few places, not an exhaustive list, and I apologize to all the worthy places I’ve left out. The point is that one defining characteristic of the Capital Region is that you need a car to explore the rich offerings of its wide geography.
The region’s identity crisis is perhaps best summed up by the nickname “Smallbany.” Sure, the Capital Region exists in the shadow of the huge metropolises of Boston and New York City. And Smallbany has self-effacing charm and it sounds accurate, especially when people realize they are linked by a lot less than six degrees of separation. But it unfortunately makes Albany seem like the center of things, when it isn’t.
The Capital Region’s identity crisis has manifested itself most recently in the online discussion about the Best of the Capital Region, especially in the arguments that pit local businesses against chain restaurants and stores. Some people have even expressed embarrassment over the presence of chains. (See for yourself at http://blog.timesunion.com/bestof2010 and read especially the comments about Best pizza and Best Italian restaurant.)
Why? People want the Capital Region to have a distinct culture and to think of themselves as unique. Any individual’s experiences are unique, but as a group placed together by circumstance and geography, it is difficult to stand out when we are already shaped by the might of the larger American culture.
The conversation about chain vs. local, however, is just one of the conversations going on now that help define our region — and ourselves. It is an ongoing conversation in which we can all take part. Join me.
