Contents
ODLE PLAY AMONG SIX ABOUT LOVE
KAMI RUSHELL SMITH IS A 10 IN “NINE”
SECRET GARDEN IS MAGICAL AT WHEELOCK
KIRSTEN GREENIDGE TALKS ABOUT WRITING
WHERE ARE THEY NOW………
HONORING THE LIFE OF JAMES SPRUILL
LIVING LEDGENDS – MUSEUM OF AA HISTORY
LILLY’S PURPLE PURSE
SEEING IT LEE’S WAY AT HIBERNIAN HALL
WHEN MAHALIA SINGS
BLACK HISTORY AT BOSTON CITY HALL
558 MASS AVE CELEBRATES BLACK ART – SUN.

ODLE PLAY AMONG SIX ABOUT LOVE
(pictured: Kaili Turner)
“How do I love you?” the 19th century poet responded famously. “Let me count the ways.” Six local playwrights came up with imaginative variations on the theme of love Elizabeth Barrett Browning so movingly probed long ago. The result was an afternoon of theater that amply demonstrated love’s highways and byways is a topic that’s arrived safely into the 21st. Some of the one-acts were hilarious, others disturbing. Every one of them got you to thinking about the intricacies of the hearts of men and women.

Clifford Odle had a dandy whose premise is, as they say, ripped right from the headlines. “Our Girl In Trenton” juxtapoised a newly elected black mayor waxing importantly about the high ethics of her campaign while back at the office two of her workers find that his marriage is no impediment to their embraces. Sonya Joyner was suitably smug as the newly elected black official while Kaili Turner smilingly followed where her desires took her with a shy but willing Marc Harpin.
On the more worrisome side Lyralen Kaye took a serious look at what happens to a pair of lovers who met at alcohol and drug recovery meetings in “Rescue.” In her well written piece that moved along in real time, the lithe Julia Short as Sunny and the muscular Joan Mejia as Jake found that physicality was the least important connective point to a happy relationship.

Yet another play looked at a confession of gay impulses between two boys from Southie that reached its apotheosis at the Broadway T stop as strobe lights flashed with a pronounced disco throb. The exceedingly well written “Birdbaths, ‘Twilight,’ And Other Sundry Topics” from Rick Park was a treat with actors Derek Fraser and Bryan Hoy matching Park’s writing with wit and panache.

Another Country Productions (named after the novel by James Baldwin) showed with this staging at Boston Playwrights Theater, Feb. 3-5, that they truly believe in their mission to offer diverse, innovative, and multicultural work. The other playwrights on the bill were Mark Harvey Levine, Ginger Lazarus, and Alison Potoma. Take note of all these names so that when you see them next, you’ll head to their shows.

By Kay Bourne

KAMI RUSHELL SMITH IS A 10 IN “NINE”

(pictured: Kami Rushell Smith)

Whether dressed in a slave’s tattered rags or an elegant gown right out of Italian “Vogue”, Kami Rushell Smith has that “wow” factor. But she’s more than a pretty face. Smith fills those clothes with real people.

“When I first look at a character,” said the actress currently in SpeakEasy’s production of “NINE,” “I find the humanity. I find out what’s different about this character than myself and also what’s similar. What makes this character tick.”

Circumstances dictated many dimensions of her two most recent roles. In NINE, Smith says of her role Our Lady of the Spa, one of the bevy of women surrounding filmmaker Guido, “because she owns the spa, she’s ever present. Sometimes she’s Guido’s confidant,” at other times she’s running her business.

Clothes do make the woman, Smith found. “Getting into the costume, this elegant gown designed by Charles Schoonmaker, was helpful” in my identifying who she is. Schoonmaker, a 4-time Daytime Emmy Award winner and resident costume designer at Jacob’s Pillow for seven seasons, also designed the costumes for Harriet Jacobs, the story of a slave girl’s resistance in which Smith played the title role.

The 1982 Broadway musical “NINE” based on the classic film 8 ½ by Frederico Fellini, and featuring a book by Arthur Kopit and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston continues at the Boston Center for the Arts through Feb. 20. As Guido, the Fellini character, approaches his 40th birthday, he’s facing personal and career crises; utmost he needs an idea for a new film after suffering three flops yet his mind is clouded by his current relationship with three women and memories of women in the past.

Smith’s role before “NINE” was the title character in the Underground Railroad Theater’s production of “Harriet Jacobs” by Lydia Diamond based on a mix of a slave narrative published prior to the Civil War in 1861 and Jean Fagan Yellin’s monumental biography of the narrative’s author Harriet Jacobs (“Harriet Jacobs, A Life”) published in 2004. Harriet Jacobs’s recollections of life as a slave in Edenton, North Carolina are capped by seven years hidden in a crawl space to avoid the sexual advances of her master, the town’s doctor. (She then escapes North).

“I’m from the South,” says Smith who grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi (birthplace of rock and roll’s Elvis Presley), and I was and still am an avid reader, as was Harriet (although it was against the law for slaves to read). “As a diary keeper, I loved to read. In my school, reading was not the cool thing to do.” When the doctor’s wife, Smith’s mistress, finds Harriet reading a novel the woman flings the book into a wash tub filled with water as well as admonishing Harriet.

Smith was the youngest of three sisters, “the only one interested in theater.” Her father, a lawyer worked for the federal government, her mother was the director of the housing authority in Tupelo. The entire family traveled North to see Smith in “Harriet Jacobs” which “they loved. Both my parents grew up right after the Civil Rights Movement and both have been pioneers in their fields. The story of a woman who beat the odds in dire circumstances was appealing to them.” There’s a family visit planned for “NINE.”

In what is a contrast to her role in “NINE” and most certainly to the intellectual minded Harriet, Smith the season before, when she was earning a master’s in musical theater, played April in the Boston Conservatory’s student production of “The Life,” which was directed by Jacqui Parker. Like many actors of color she was leery of playing a prostitute. These roles, along with domestics, were about the only parts offered to black actresses for decades in the Broadway theater and were usually one dimensional if not racist stereotypes. “I struggled with myself about auditioning,” said Smith. One of her reasons for trying out was the opportunity to work with Parker.

“She brought a safe place to explore the character,” says Smith, “to find the humanity and to probe what brought her to this situation. It’s not portraying a prostitute that’s the problem, it’s reflecting back on the history of theater.

“I look at it as a useful exercise in preparation for a Law and Order episode,” she says jokingly.

“I feel like with my schooling and the roles I’ve had a chance to do that I’m trained to play a wide variety of characters. And my number one goal is to tell their whole stories,” she said. In that vein she credits the strengths of directors whose work has informed her abilities to develop a role, for other examples, Megan Sandberg-Zakian (Harriet Jacobs) who emphasized knowing about “what was happening in the world at the time” the story takes place and Paul Daigneault (“NINE”) who is “inspiring because his vision is so clear. He imparts the story for each character so his direction is more than blocking, it’s knowing why they are going where they’ve gone.”

Among others, she adds Steve Maher into the mix of directors she’s learned from. Smith played Lady MacBeth in the “MacBeth” done by Shakespeare Now! performed at Mass College of Art in 2009. Smith was a radiant Hero in Actors Shakespeare Project’s “Much Ado About Nothing” also in 2009 which played at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury.

Smith attended college at Carnegie Mellon “because they offered me a great scholarship,” she says. She minored in theater participating in the student theater troupe Scotch ‘n Soda where as an undergrad Stephen Schwartz provided an original musical “Pippin Pippin” (which eventually became the Broadway show Pippin). Her senior year Smith performed in the 40th anniversary production.

Her major at Carnegie Mellon in writing which was journalism, grant writing, manual writing, and other practical writing skills has led to jobs such as her current position running Bostix.org. for Arts Boston.By Kay Bourne

NINE continues through Feb. 20 in the Roberts Studio Theater in the Stanford Calderwood Pavillion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St. in Boston’s South End. For more info you can phone 617-933-8600 or go on-line to www.SpeakEasy.com.

Official Website of Speakeasy Stage Company

SECRET GARDEN IS MAGICAL AT WHEELOCK
The clash of two ornery children provides the fireworks in “The Secret Garden” at the Wheelock Family Theater.
This version, which hews closely to the 1911 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is the work of WTF stalwarts Susan Kosoff (a founder of WFT), who wrote the book and lyrics, and Jane Staab, who composed the music as she has for many past productions at the theater. This production is an up-date of the script the duo created some 14 years ago.

Their work is being given an impressive staging, effectively directed by Susan Kosoff, with new music arrangements from Jonathan Goldberg.

Adaptations of ‘The Secret Garden” have been a perennial favorite over the past century – there have been three film versions: a silent version, a 1930s Hollywood adaptation with child star Margaret O’Brien and a more recent one, directed by Agnieszka Holland and produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

On stage it is best-remembered from its 1991 stage version, which played on Broadway for nearly two years and is famous for its line-up of female talent: Lucy Simon (music), Marsha Norman (book and lyrics), Susan H. Schulman (direction) and Heidi Landesman (its Tony-winning set).

The story takes place in 1849 during the early years of the reign of Queen Victoria. Sour puss Mary Lenox (Katherine Leigh Doherty), orphaned at age 11 (in the WFT version), is repatriated from India to Yorkshire, England, the home of her uncle whom she’s never met. Rebuffed by her parents who didn’t have time for her, she is an angry child wearing a perpetual scowl. Waited on by servants (who even dress her), she can do little for herself. Doherty (a veteran of WFT productions who in the 7th grade originated the role of Jane Banks in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins) gives a sturdy performance of the little girl who matures a lot in the course of the show.

Archibald Craven, Mary’s uncle, is the owner of Misselthwaite Manor, which butts up against the foreboding moors. He is a retiring figure, absent in mind and spirit as he mourns the death some 11 years ago of his wife. He is also physically absent, staying away home a good deal. He is portrayed with aristocratic grace by Russell Garrett.

The task of keeping order in the house belongs to Mrs. Medlock, something of a less malevolent version of Mrs. Danvers from “Rebecca.” Jacqui Parker provides Medlock with a firmness that is appropriately scary. She also, though, makes it apparent that she has a great deal on her hands, particularly with the sick child whose tantrums set everyone scurrying. Given, however, that Parker has as wonderful a voice as anyone in this cast of exceptional singers (her most recent role was Billie Holliday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” at the Lyric), it’s a pity there wasn’t an aria for her in this script. Also, a song would have given her more of an equal footing with the other characters as being a multi-dimensional person.

Under Mrs. Medlock’s thumb is a housemaid, played with zest and great good humor by Jennifer Beth Glick, who won an IRNE last season for her performance as Gertrude in WFT’s production of the musical “Seussical.” Glick’s Martha Sowerby does her best to make Mary’s stay at Misselthwaite Manor a happier one even though at times it jeopardizes her job whose income her family desperately needs. Her brother Dickon, a fey character who talks to animals and totally has their trust, is charmingly portrayed by experienced actor Andrew Barbato (artistic director of Cellar Door Stage which does original children’s musicals). He too is pivotal to Mary’s personal growth.

The cranky gardener Ben Weatherstaff in a strong performance from Neil Gustafson, sees a kindred spirit in Mary. He is impressed when a robin takes to the odd child. The robin, which appears with some frequency, is a beautifully carved and painted wood puppet from props designer Marjorie Lusignan manipulated by a hidden stage hand.

Mary’s cousin, the invalid Master Colin Craven, son of the owner of the manor, is played with a nicely-honed venom by Ellis Gage. He is, by his own choice, hidden away, just as the secret garden is. Mary scales the garden’s wall, and, figuratively speaking, scales his wall too; but not without drama. Theirs is a clash of titanic brattiness through which they emerge far improved in behavior.

Matthew T. Lazure, who has done many of the Gold Dust Orphan shows, designed the magnificent set. Lazure effectively creates the panorama of the bleak manor with its long corridors off which there are many rooms, including the sick room of the willful Colin. While outside on the estate property with its formal gardens another garden is hidden behind a high stonewall whose gateway is covered with vines.

The first rate costumer Stacey Stephens has dressed them all with flair. And the talented Goldberg, at the keyboards, doubles as orchestrator and music director, conducting a capable 4-piece ensemble in a lyrical score where much of the dialogue is sung and there are many arias.

“The Secret Garden” has held a magical appeal for children and in the memory of adults who were fond of it growing up for over a century. The production at Wheelock Family Theater is a happy revisit to this favorite story.

The Secret Garden continues through Feb 27 at the Wheelock Family Theater, 200 The Riverway, Boston. Performances are Fri. nights at 7:30 with Sat. and Sun.matinees at three. There are also school vacation week matinees at one, Feb. 22-25. More info on-line at tickets@wheelock.edu.

By Kay Bourne
Official Website of Wheelock Family Theatre

KIRSTEN GREENIDGE TALKS ABOUT WRITING
(pictured: Kirsten Greenidge)
The truism that black people profoundly understand whites (it’s been a matter of survival) is exampled in Arlington resident Kirsten Greenidge’s “The Luck of the Irish.” Her perceptive drama about a black family who pays an Irish couple to buy a house on their behalf in 1950s Boston and the impact of that agreement 40 years later had a dynamic reading as part of the Huntington Theatre Company’s new play development program.

The up-and-coming playwright whose drama “Bossa Nova” starring Ella Joyce premiered a month ago at Yale Repertory Theater (the launching pad for many August Wilson plays) benefits from the Huntington Theatre Company’s broad ranging commitment to the development of new plays, particularly from local writers.

“The Luck of the Irish” read Feb 3 by a top flight cast of actors under the direction of Melia Bensussen was staged as part of the Breaking Ground reading series. Past Breaking Ground playwrights include Lydia R. Diamond, Ronan Noone, Theresa Rebeck, David Rambo, and Melina Lopez.

KBAR interviewed Greenidge by phone the following day regarding the importance to a playwright of the Huntington Theatre Company’s involvement in developing her script.

“Theater offers live bodies,” said Greenidge about the value of the reading to her. “You get an idea how the play’s working. Afterwards I can do re-writes based on making sure of the clarity of the story or cut for repetition. Also, I don’t write comedies so if I have a joke in there that doesn’t get a laugh, I’ll cut it.”

Greenidge says the Huntington Theater Company does “a wonderful job” supporting a playwright. She was active with their development program for two years starting in 2008. “I’d meet once a month with the other playwrights, there were four of us, to discuss each other’s work which we’d read beforehand. There was an hour devoted to each play in which you got feedback.”

Greenidge sets her plays in Boston and environs, as for instance, “103 Within the Veil” staged several seasons ago by Company One which looked at the life of a black photographer in the South End at the turn of the 20th century. “Bossa Nova” is set in a home and at a private girls’ school in the Boston area. She has had seven plays staged. “I live here,” she explained about locating her stories here. You write about what you know.

“Movies set in Boston are doing well. I hope my work about Boston will ride that trend,” she said.
By Kay Bourne

WHERE ARE THEY NOW………
(pictured: Tony Rose)

The interview with record producer and book publisher Tony Rose currently of Phoenix is the second in a series of conversations KBAR will run with artists who were active in Boston but now ply their art in other places.

1. How did Boston inspire you as an artist?

Roxbury inspired me by its harshness, to be strong, tough and determined to succeed. Along with the knowledge to find another way of life away from my reality of poverty, alcohol, drugs and extraordinary violence. Roxbury inspired me by the spoken word and activism of the men and women of the Sixties. Roxbury inspired me by the talent of the young men and women I met during the Boston Black Music Scene of the late Seventies, early Eighties. Roxbury inspired me by the beauty of its people, its women all through my creative life. Roxbury inspired me by the R&B music on the radio (WILD AM) in the Fifties and Sixties I heard while growing up in the Whittier St, Housing Projects. Roxbury gave me the St. Francis de Sales School on Cabot St. where I learned the power of God and the will to learn. Roxbury gave me my voice, my strength, my courage, my spirit to take on the whole world.

2. What is your happiest memory regarding a) living and b) creating in Boston?

The streets of Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester and it’s women during all seasons, all types of weather, the warmth and love they gave, that would include my wife of thirty years Yvonne Rose, and the day the truck pulled up to my house at 428 Talbot Avenue in Dorchester, October 19, 1979, with my first record on my own record company, Solid Platinum Records and Productions, that I had executive produced, and produced with Charles Alexander, Maurice Starr and Michael Jonzun, by my new act that I was just starting to manage Prince Charles and the City Beat Band.. A little 12inch record called “In the Streets”. We had all just met and known each other a few months, we were all struggling to be heard, to get some musical name recognition. The record gave us all a local, national and international name immediately and I guess you could say with a lot more hard work, we never looked back. I met Yvonne Willis that same year also. What a beautiful year. I had gone to see Pope John Paul II at the Boston Commons, September, 1979 and prayed with him for courage, strength, stamina and wisdom. I wanted to succeed so bad. I attribute that to all the people that have helped me, all the glory that God has given me, to that day standing on a hill at the Boston Commons.

3. What supports for your art did you find in Boston?

First the people from Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester, then becoming known to a strong media force in Boston who supported my efforts through promoting the records, shows, concerts, parties, all that I was doing.
The African American media was the first and greatest – the newspaper and radio – Kay Bourne at the Banner and the Seventh Son at WILD radio and then Boston television. We did a lot of work, with a great station at that time Channel 68, then Karen Holmes, Tanya Hart, Denise Rollins, Mel Miller, all my friends in Boston. They were wonderful.

4. What drew you to where you now create?

The peace and quiet. I lived in Boston, Los Angeles, back to Boston, New York City, London, Paris, back to Los Angeles, back to Boston, back to New York City, back to Los Angeles and then to Phoenix, AZ. I lived in the whole world traveling and working, making a whole lot of noise , living a whole lot of life, creating and doing creative business always. So the peace and quiet for me in Phoenix is good.

5. How has your new location affected your art?

It hasn’t affected it one way or another, as the goal is always to just keep moving forward. I moved back to Los Angeles in 1995 and sold my music catalogue in 1995 and transitioned from the recording industry to the book Publishing industry in 1997. Since moving to Phoenix in 1996 I’ve written and published three best-selling books. Formed Amber Books and Colossus Books which incorporated to Amber Communications Group, Inc. and has a catalog of over one hundred titles, making it the nation’s largest African American Publisher of Self-Help Books and Music Biographies in the world, and started Quality Press in 2000, now the largest African American Self-Publisher/Vanity Press Book Packager in the country, having helped along with Yvonne, thousands of Self-Publishers publish their books.

6. Do you think of yourself as a Bostonian or otherwise?

I think of myself as a Roxburian, born and raised. The good and the bad. The best of the best.

7. What sort of a life have you made for yourself where you now are?

A very good life. A peaceful and quiet life, when I am here. Actually I am now just starting to really live here, meaning that I am getting involved in the city in a major way with the Phoenix Book Fair and Arts Festival which I founded in 2010. The city is sponsoring the Burton Barr Central Library and The Margaret T. Hance Park for our two day book fair use on October 21st and 22nd, 2011. It is going to be huge. With the digital Ebook age and getting older I don’t and can’t travel as much as I used to.

Bio. Tony Rose attended the University of Massachusetts and the University of California in Los Angeles. He was employed as a production assistant at the Burbank Studios (Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures), in the accounting and sales division at Warner/Electra/Atlantic Records (WEA), an accounts representative at Warren Lanier Public Relations and as an A & R representative at RCA Records, Los Angeles, California.

He returned to Boston and along with record producer Maurice Starr became the primary architect of that, which in the late 70′s and 80′s would be called “The Boston Black Music Scene” a movement that ultimately led to the discovery of the international blockbusters Prince Charles and the City Beat Band, The Jonzun Crew, New Edition and New Kids on the Block. In the 80′s he held recording / production deals with Virgin Records, Atlantic Records and Pavilion / CBS/Sony Records and has earned Gold and Platinum Albums and Golden Reel Awards for his musical efforts.

In 2004 he co-founded and became the Executive Director of The African American Pavilion at BookExpo America bringing together as exhibitors and attendees a community of thousands of African American book publishers and book publishing industry professionals, a feat that had been unprecedented in the 109-year history of BookExpo America. In 2005 he founded the Katrina Literary Collective, which has been responsible for collecting and donating over 90,000 books for the Hurricane Katrina Survivors and serves as a founding Director of the Harlem Book Fair National, The Harlem Book Fair/Roxbury, Mass and in 2010 founded the Phoenix Book Fair and Art Festival a subsidiary of the National Coalition of Citywide Book Fairs, Art Festivals and Pavilions.
He can be reached at 602-743-7211 or amberbk@aol.com. You can view his company at www.amberbooks.com and www.qualitypress.info.

HONORING THE LIFE OF JAMES SPRUILL
Renowned theater artist and scholar James Spruill, who died of pancreatic cancer on December 31 at the age of 73, will be memorialized, Saturday afternoon, February 12 from two to 4:30 pm at the Boston Center for The Arts. The Baltimore native had already made a name for himself as an actor in New York when he was called to Boston in the late Sixties to act in Athol Fugard’s “Blood Knot” for David Wheeler’s Theater Company of Boston. Many young actors such as Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jon Voight, and Robert DeNiro were helped to launch national careers from performances at the Jewel Box Theater but Spruill would make Boston his home and Boston would embrace him as one of their own. In turn, Spruill would himself launch actors into national careers from his position as a tenured associate professor of theater arts at Boston University and earlier as a teacher at Emerson College and as an artistic director of the Roxbury-based New African Company which he brought into being with actor Gus Johnson and ran for over 30 years with his wife playwright Lynda Patton. His research into the where-abouts of escaped slave and abolitionist William Wells Brown’s never performed play “The Escape:or A Leap for Freedom” led to Spruill’s staging the drama which he did twice. Interestingly, Well’s play was written in 1868, a century before the founding of The New African Company in 1968.

LIVING LEDGENDS – MUSEUM OF AA HISTORY
LIVING LEGENDS AWARDS
FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 11, 2011
Four Seasons Hotel Boston

In April 1833, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, and founder of the New England Anti-Slavery Society made his first trip to England intending to raise funds for a school for black children. Before he left Boston, Garrison gave a farewell address on April 2 at the African Meeting House. The next evening a group of black Boston leaders presented him with this silver cup. Garrison’s letter of gratitude acknowledged the gift “as a pledge of your friendship and appreciation of my labors in that noblest of all enterprises, the rescue of the whole colored race from servitude and degradation.” A replica of this cup is presented to the Museum’s Living Legends.
For more information, please email the Development Office at development@maah.orgor call the Museum at (617) 725-0022, ext. 222.

LILLY’S PURPLE PURSE
The irrepressible mouse heroine of Chester’s Way and Julius, the Baby of the World, Lilly loves everything about school, especially her teacher, Mr. Slinger–until he takes away her musical purse because she can’t stop playing with it in class. Lilly decides to get revenge with a nasty drawing of “Big Fat Mean Mr. Stealing Teacher!” but when she finds the kind note he put in her purse, she’s filled with remorse and has to find a way to make things right again. Based on the story book suitable for ages 4 to 8. Two shows remaining, Sat. & Sun. afternoons at two, Feb, 12 & 13 at YMCA Greater Boston, 316 Huntington Ave. near Jordan Hall. For more info go to info@bostonchildren’stheatre.org.

SEEING IT LEE’S WAY AT HIBERNIAN HALL
What a night! A free opening reception for the first exhibit in the Center Gallery, “Seeing it Lee’s Way,” will be held on Thursday, February 17, 6:00-7:00 p.m. The selection of photographs by Elliot Lee, curated by his daughter Patti Lee, depicts the South End and Roxbury during the 1970s. The public is invited to view the photography and greet the curator in the third-floor meeting room, and then segue into the ballroom for our weekly supper club, Cafe Tatant.

Milton Wright, accompanied by keyboardist Alonzo Harris, will offer a program of love songs at 7:30 in honor of Valentine’s Day. Four emerging young singers will be special guests: Shaffney Terrell, Zakiyyah Sutton, I Rose, and Supreme. As always, the music will be served up with a fine meal prepared by George Huggins of Ethnica Gourmet. Admission $12, meal and show combo $28, combo for two $54. Reservations preferred; contact Dillon Bustin: dbustin@madison-park.org or 617-849-6322.

WHEN MAHALIA SINGS
WHEN MAHALIA SINGS
A JOURNEY WITH THE WORLD’S GREATEST GOSPEL SINGER
PRESENTED BY MIXED MAGIC THEATRE
· PERFORMANCES: 2/4-2/20

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS @8PM, SUNDAYS @4PM

Jackson was a giant in a world of musical and social giants, listing among her friends some of the world’s most respected entertainers, writers and civil rights leaders. Though she reigned as a pioneer interpreter of Gospel music, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was described by Little Richard as “the true queen of spiritual singers.” This original play (with music) takes you on a train ride from Jackson’s hometown of New Orleans to Chicago, and traces her life and the story of America in the throes of deep change. It is a celebration of musical greats that inlcude Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, Thomas Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. It is also the story of her friendship with Martin Luther King and her commitment to the civil rights movement. Written & directed by Jonathan Pitts-Wiley.

BUY TICKETS

GROUPS OF 15 OR MORE: PLEASE EMAIL BOXOFFICE@CMACUSA.ORG TO GET GROUP DISCOUNT CODE INFORMATION.
Cambridge Multi Cultural Arts at 41 Second St., East Cambridge. For more info 617-577-1400 or go on-line www.cmacusa.org.

BLACK HISTORY AT BOSTON CITY HALL
In celebration of Black History Month, Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s Office of Arts, Tourism & Special Events presents exhibitions at Boston City Hall from January 10, 2011 to February 25, 2011. The three exhibits include the AAMARP artists in The Scollay Square Gallery.

Urban Celebrations, selected works from the African-American Master Artists in Residence Program. AAMARP is a center of excellence in multicultural visual and performing arts dedicated to creating an enriching cultural environment for a diverse community through exhibitions, concerts, performances, lectures, and workshops. Founded in 1977 by Dana Chandler, AAMARP today provides studio space for artists whose work has made an invaluable contribution to Northeastern University and to the vitality of the African-American art scene in Boston and throughout the nation. It remains a prominent center for discussion of the African Diaspora cultural growth and development. AAMARP is an adjunct of the Department of African American Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. The participating artists include Kofi Kayiga, Gloretta Baynes, Susan Thompson, Jeff Chandler, Walter Clark, Bryan McFarlane, Khalid Kodi and Hakim Raquib.

Also on exhibit are works on paper from Elisa H. Hamilton and Memories of Haiti’s Earthquake curated by E. Barry Gaither.

558 MASS AVE CELEBRATES BLACK ART – SUN.
The League of Women for Community Service is hosting a Black history month program ”History of Black Art in Boston: Then and Now,” this Sunday, Feb.13 from 2-4p.m. at 558 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA Our own Chandra Ortiz will be presenting, along with Edmund Barry Gaither, director and curator of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists. (see the attached program)

In Boston’s Historic Southend558 Massachusetts AvenueBoston, MA 02118Phone: 617-536-3747www.leagueofwomen.org

Official Site of the League of Women for Community Service

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Contents
“NIGHT CATCHES US” ON BIG SCREEN IN BOSTON
DAVENPORT: FROM “NEIGHBORS” TO “BROKE- OLOGY”
DRUMMING, MUSIC AND ALVIN TERRY IN RUINED
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO……
BILL T. JONES’ “BODY AGAINST BODY” AT THE ICA
RICK BERRY ART AT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
SOUTH AFRICAN ART AT B.U. PART OF TIM HAMILL SERIES
HATIAN ARTIST EXHIBITS AT THE MIDDLE EAST
Guided visit of the Museum of the NCAAA
5 PLAYWRIGHTS: LOVE LIKE THEY SEE IT AT BOSTON U.

“NIGHT CATCHES US” ON BIG SCREEN IN BOSTON
(pictured: Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie)

African American filmmaker Tanya Hamilton finds a mystery in recent history with her fictional “Night Catches Us.” At the height of the Black Panther movement in Philadelphia, a policeman is shot, a Black Panther lies dead in a shoot-out with the police, and an activist leaves town under the cloud of suspicion that he fingered the Panther’s where-abouts. .

Ten years later, Marcus returns.

The Color of Film Collaborative in association with The Roxbury International Film Festival (with Future Boston Alliance and Night Life Executives) premieres the New England screening of “Night Catches Us,” directed and written by Tanya Hamilton.

The urban family drama starring Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington will screen in a commercial theater for one night only. The film event takes place Thursday, Jan. 27 at 7:30 is at The Stuart Street Playhouse, 200 Stuart St., downtown Boston theater district.

“We live in a world where we continue to combat a lot of the issues that the Black Panthers were concerned about,” filmmaker Hamilton told the KBAR in a recent phone conversation about why she believes her movie has relevance to today.

She also wanted to tell a story that contains the Panthers’ concern for “the idea of community, a movie that gives a voice to the people who are working class and working poor.” Other concerns she admires in the Panthers’ ideals was their interest in health and how to manage health issues on a community level; how to address poverty, “alleviating it and the need for it, and their belief in getting legal aid to people who can’t afford lawyers.”

In the movie, Patricia, played by Kerry Washington, moves throughout the community in her role as a lawyer for little or no recompense. She, like the Panthers with their free breakfast for children, provides neighborhood children with milk and cereal and juice at her kitchen table. (Interestingly, many of the ideas thought up by the Black Panthers later became government services, such as breakfast in schools for children below the poverty line).

“The role of women seemed largely to be as workers for the Party,” comments Hamilton, who adds that Patricia, as with the other characters, however is not a stereotype but multi-dimensional.

Another character points up an aspect of the Panthers less commented on, “as men to look up to by young people who were fatherless,” she said. This aspect is revealed in the character of Jimmy, played by Amari Cheatom. Other principals in the drama are Jamie Hector as DoRight and Wendell Pierce as Detective Gordon.

Filmmaker Hamilton says she “finds their world fascinating. There’s a great humanity in it and it is an under-told story which has been misrepresented as one-dimensional.”

She also finds fascinating in the Black Panthers story, “the idea of being at war yet in your own neighborhood and your own country.”

Hamilton, 42, was born in Spanish Town, which is about 20 minutes outside of Kingston, Jamaica. Her mom brought her and her brother here in the 70ties where they settled in Silver Springs, Maryland. She attend Cooper Union and went on to graduate school at Columbia where she majored in painting (the design of her scenes in “Night Catches Us” reflects her original passion).

Two of Hamilton’s films have been shown at the Roxbury Film Festival, but Color of Film Collaborative’s founder and artistic director Lisa Simmons says that by July of this year “Night Catches Us” will already be out on DVD (as part of Magnolia Pictures distribution). “We wanted to give people the opportunity to see the film on a big screen, as well as, create a buzz for the festival coming this summer.”

By Kay Bourne

Tickets for the movie Night Catches US

DAVENPORT: FROM “NEIGHBORS” TO “BROKE- OLOGY”

(pictured: Johnny Lee Davenport)

Johnny Lee Davenport has scored a trifecta!

Last month he earned raves for his role as a bereaved dad in “Vengeance Is the Lord’s” at The Huntington Theater Company. Currently he’s an adjunct professor and beleaguered dad who looks out his window to see that the neighbors who’ve just moved in constitute his worst nightmare in Company One’s production of the controversial “Neighbors” (a debut script from Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, 26). And even before that run concludes Feb. 5, the Boston-based Equity actor starts rehearsals at the Lyric Stage for “Broke-ology” about a family at a crossroads.

Says Davenport about the hat trick, “I am really grateful.”

When the KBAR began our conversation with Davenport he was on the bus in a snow storm traveling to New York for an audition, this time hoping to land a spot with the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Company. He dreams of being in every one of the Bard’s plays, having chalked up 26 to date. The Equity try-out is for “The Comedy of Errors,” one of the plays he’s missing in his quest. At this point his phone – or mine – stops transmitting.

The next day Davenport is back in Boston, having not even been seen by the casting director. “Too many actors turned out,” he said. Acting is a highly competitive occupation. “I never thought I would work in my chosen field,” confides Davenport, who, born in Shreveport, Louisiana, grew up in the Jim Crow South.

Not many years back there was a dearth of roles for actors of color but opportunities have multiplied thanks to emerging black playwrights, area black theaters, more experienced African American directors, and theater companies interested in diversity. Davenport sees himself as a Boston-based actor. He likes the city’s “history of audacity” such as the Boston Tea Party and its environment that “fosters African American theater companies.”

He says of the third play in this trilogy of roles that he is pleased to have been asked by the Lyric’s artistic director Spiro Veloudos to work at his company. “He saw me in one of the Shakespeare plays I did with Actors Shakespeare Project. Afterwards, he told me that he needed to find a vehicle for me.

“Recently he phoned me with the news he had this play “Break-ology” he’d like to stage but he wouldn’t do it without me. It was all very flattering.”

The play will be directed by Benny Sato Ambush, a professor at Emerson College in the theater department formerly with American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and George Bass’s Rites and Reason black-oriented theater on the campus of Brown University. “Broke-ology” was written by emerging playwright Nathan Louis Jackson, 32, a Kansas City denizen who saw his family drama featuring a father with MS like his own father staged at Lincoln Center. Break-ology opens March 25, running through April 23. Neighbors is now playing, through Februay 5th at the Boston Center for the Arts. By Kay Bourne

Official Website of Company One

DRUMMING, MUSIC AND ALVIN TERRY IN RUINED

(pictured Alvin Terry)

In a Congelese bar and bordello, the women raped and brutalized by soldiers – and because of their condition now ostracized by their families – play host to men out for an evening, among them the very men who terrorized them.

Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Ruined, currently at the Huntington Theater Company stage through Feb. 6, gives voice to these casualties of a civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has raged for decades, while suggesting the reasons behind the horror.

As the drummer ensconced on stage throughout the play, Alvin Terry observes the goings-on, while playing the rhythms that back the dancing and singing. “I love playing music,” he said in a recent interview with the KBAR. “I feel it’s something I’m supposed to be doing.” Terry, who is married to sculptor Fern Cunningham, has performed with such artists as Archie Shepp, Avery Sharpe, Ricky ford, John Faddis, Leonard Brown, and Bill Lowe.

For “Ruined,” the playwright herself wrote several songs to be performed by the girls in Mama Nadi’s bar accompanied by a two-person band of guitar and drums.

As well, composer/arranger Aaron Meicht provided music for the Huntington production to be performed by the electric guitar and a makeshift percussion set designed in collaboration with Meicht and Terry. Meicht notes that the biggest difference in the music from production to production is the percussion because of how much freedom he encourages the drummer to have while building his drum set. Terry has included a Makuta drum (a traditional instrument from Central Africa a bass drum made from a rubber trash can, various cymbals, and a few shakers.

“Ruined” is Terry’s second theatrical venture. Last season he performed in the Company One production of “The Emancipation of Many and Miz Ellie” by Lois Roach, which was directed by Victoria Marsh at the Boston Center for the Arts. The drama took place at the end of the Civil War in the plantation South.

“Our heritage is our culture. The way we speak. The way we walk. Our accomplishments. Our talents that we have. It’s all a little bit different from other people because of what we endured. Our people who made something out of nothing. They believed that God would come and save them. That’s how they endured,” he said.

Terry is pleased with the compositions and arrangements provided by Meicht which Terry says is in the tradition of Central Africa. And he can see the influence too of African American music on the Congolese music performed in Mam Nadi’s bar. “There’s a part where the soldiers are dancing to the music we’re playing. It’s a steady beat, almost like disco but very layered, as layered as an onion.”

He is disturbed by the rapes that are the background story to the goings on in the bar. “It is very difficult for me to watch it,” he says of the parts of the play that reference that violence to women. “I’m hurt by it.”

“I don’t like the mighty trampling over the weak,” he says of the soldiers’ behavior generally.

He says of the play overall and his role in it, “you laugh, you cry. We move you every minute. One minute you are happy, the next you are plunged into one horror or another. And the music carries you.”

In the final analysis, says Terry, “it’s like the blues. You feel better because you got it out. ‘Ruined’ is really a great play.”
By Kay Bourne

Official Website of Huntington Theater Company

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO……

(pictured: The Warrior G.R.I.O.T.)

Where Are They Now?

The interview with poet Michael Bonds currently of Atlanta launches a series of conversations KBAR will run with artists who were active in Boston but now ply their art in other places.

1. How did Boston inspire you as an artist?

I grew up in Boston and on those serious and animated streets of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. As with many “urban communities” it wasn’t difficult to find inspiration in all the “nouns” that make up the grammar of my city. All I had to do was come up different “adjectives” to describe Boston. As New York has approximately “8 million stories”, so too does Boston have a number of its own stories to tell. Just how many, I don’t know. But I can honestly say that I starred in, witnessed and maybe even authored in some of the sentences, paragraphs and chapters that make up the biography of my city. I love Boston.

2. What is your happiest memory regarding a) living and b) creating in Boston?

My happiest memories of Boston are the wonderful experiences I had living amongst the diverse cultures that live in such a intimate environment. The communal aspect I discovered after my brush with the darker side of life in Boston gave me a healthy respect for the important things like freedom of speech, religion and culture. In my opinion, Boston is a microcosm of America. With its people, attitudes, injustices and history it wasn’t difficult to find my niche and create my own space in Boston from which I could launch myself and my ideas.

3. What supports for your art did you find in Boston?

My arts found support mainly from the community. However, being an art activist I was supported by the politics of the city and the social justice affiliates and nonprofit sector.

4. What drew you to where you now create?

As an artist there comes a time when you must grow and living in Atlanta allows me the opportunity to explore my art and discover my potential. I’m sure I will probably out grow this place as well.

5. How has your new location affected your art?

Atlanta has opened doors and made me one of many again. In Boston I was Warrior and known by many so it wasn’t difficult to find approval. Here I am hungry again and building a new network.

6. Do you think of yourself as a Bostonian or otherwise?

Of course I am a Bostonian. I will always be a Bostonian from Roxbury. As Ed OG of Ed OG & the Bulldogs said it: “I’m from the Bury the Bury but not the fruit y’all . . .

7. What sort of a life have you made for yourself where you now are?

I am graduating from Bauder College with a degree in Criminal Justice in May of 2011. I have a new grandchild. YES a “Grandchild” and I am developing a youth program designed after the many wonderful and effective programs I worked with in Boston.

Artist Bio

The Warrior is an internationally respected poet, author, spoken word artist and people mover (motivator) from Boston’s Roxbury community a member of the “Blackout Arts Collective,” he won Boston’s “Best Spoken Word Album” Award in 2008 at the “New England Urban Music Awards.” Published in various anthologies, he is the author of “”Gunz, Poems & Rosez, the Experience Strength and Hope of Michael Warrior Bonds”

He has performed with Dead Prez, Saul Williams, (Harvard University),Chico Debarge, (Hartford CT.) and Hip Hop legends Kurtis Blow and Whoodini (Rissell Auditorium, Boston) just to name a few.

He has 5 albums, I paperback and 2 chapbooks and 2 DVD’s to his credit. He “Has Poems Will Travel” He can be reached at mw.bonds@gmail.com .

Official Website of The Warrior G.R.I.O.T.

BILL T. JONES’ “BODY AGAINST BODY” AT THE ICA

(pictured: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company)

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents the WORLD PREMIERE of “Body Against Body ” by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

One of the most innovative voices in contemporary dance and theater, Bill T. Jones returns to the ICA fresh off the Kennedy Center Honors and a Tony Award for Best Choreography for the Broadway musical FELA!. With Body Against Body, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company returns to Jones’s roots in the avant-garde with a program that revives and reconsiders the groundbreaking works that launched Jones and his late partner and collaborator of 17 years, Arnie Zane, on the downtown New York dance scene of the 1980s.

Performances take place Feb. 4 and 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $45 reserved, $40 for members and students, and can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling (617) 478-3103.

RICK BERRY ART AT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Rick Berry – Seeing in the Dark
Gallery 360, Northeastern University through March 1, 2011 Seeing in the Dark, art by Rick Berry, continues through March 1 at Gallery 360, Northeastern University. Massachusetts based artist Rick Berry, is internationally recognized for his unique and powerful “expressionist figurative” works. Executed without models, photography or preliminary drawing, his process is one of discovery in the medium. Berry’s paintings blend mythic and visionary themes with a strong social vision. The human body is the lyrical evocation of anything from emotional narratives to evolutionary conjectures. Self taught, Berry began his art career in underground comics as a teen. He has produced hundreds of covers for books and comics, and worked in film before transitioning to creating gallery art. His work is exhibited nationally and in Europe, and can also be found in private collections throughout the world.

SOUTH AFRICAN ART AT B.U. PART OF TIM HAMILL SERIES

(pictured: Tim and Bobbi Hamill)

The Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and the Boston University Art Gallery will exhibit 170 works by South African artists in two major exhibitions celebrating The Caversham Press.

Running February 8 through March 27 at the 808 Gallery and BUAG at the Stone Gallery, the exhibitions speak to Caversham’s history as it reflects artists’ responses to the dramatic political and cultural shifts that have occurred in South Africa over the past two and half decades.

Opening receptions for South Africa: Artists, Prints, Community / Twenty Five Years at The Caversham Press (808 Gallery) and Three Artists at the Caversham Press – Deborah Bell, Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge (BUAG at the Stone Gallery) will be held on Wednesday, February 9, 6-8pm. William Kentridge will also be this year’s featured artist in the seventh annual Tim Hamill Visiting Artist Lecture, held Monday, February 28 at 6:30pm in Morse Auditorium. All exhibitions and related events are free and open to the public.

HATIAN ARTIST EXHIBITS AT THE MIDDLE EAST

Open invitation to see new paintings by Haitian artist Lanise Antoine Shelley (actress studying at A.R.T., Harvard University).

Water: Skin dark” Showing at The Middle EastRestaurant, 472/480 Mass Ave. in Central Square. Feb. 6th through 28th, 2011.Artist reception held Sunday Feb. 6th at 5pm to 7pm Please come and enjoy FREE food, dancing, poetry, music and art.

Acrylics portraits fused with text and Haitian folklore. “Water:Skin Dark” is the coming of age of a young girl’s journey from an orphanage in Haiti to the classrooms of Harvard University. A portion the proceeds to aid the US Foundation for the Children of Haiti, in Port Au Prince. For more info: Luniseantoine@gmail.com

Guided visit of the Museum of the NCAAA

The National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) fosters and presents the finest in contemporary, visual and performing arts from the global Black world. The museum presents a wide range of historical and contemporary exhibitions in many media, including painting, sculpture, graphics, photography and decorative arts. Tour the museum with Director E. Barry Gaither, hear of the building’s history and of the current exhibitions.

Saturday, January 29, 1pm-3pm

Meet at the Museum of the NCAAA, 300 Walnut Ave, at 12:50pm.

$5. Purchase an RSVP online or by calling 617-417-1006.

5 PLAYWRIGHTS: LOVE LIKE THEY SEE IT AT BOSTON U.

(pictured: Cliff Odle)

Roxbury resident Lyralen Kaye, SAG/AFTRA is Producing Artistic Director for an upcoming production of Points of View: 5 Playwrights Tell Love Like They See It.

Among the plays is Our Girl in Trenton which tells the story of the campaign for the first African-American governor of New Jersey in which the staff struggle with romantic and sexual ethics on the job.

Known for the sold out production SLAMBoston, Diverse Voices in Theatre, Another Country brings a new multi-cultural and diverse one act festival to the Boston Playwrights Theatre, this one focused on the absurdity and drama of love in all the wrong (and right) places.”Of course the festival focuses on multiculturalism and diversity,” says Kaye, “That’s what we do. It’s exciting now to take audiences into the worlds of intimacy and romance, where characters struggle just as much with right and wrong as they do in our more political plays.”

Follow The Color of Film   

Contents
“PEERS AND PATHWAYS” – A MUST SEE EXHIBIT
COLORED GIRLS: STANDOUT PERFORMANCES OF HOPE
ROCKETTE TALKS ABOUT DANCING
GOSSETT TALKS ABOUT HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND ERASICM
MFA NEW WING OPENS NOV. 20 – FREE
SOJOURNER’S TRUTH – THIS WEEKEND ONLY
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

“PEERS AND PATHWAYS” – A MUST SEE EXHIBIT
(from l. to r. Hakim Raquib, Gloretta Baynes, Reggie Jackson, Klare Shaw, Eric Meza, Ekua Holmes, Lou Jones and Omobowale Ayorinde)

When playwright Lorraine Hansberry penned the line “to be young, gifted, and black” (which diva Nina Simone powerfully riffed on as a lyric), artists of color grabbed onto the notion of identifying with their culture and heritage.

It was in this era, in the 70s, that seven young African American artists associated in one way or another with Mass College of Art banded together. They participated in a group show in Boston at the time. They hung out and they talked. They supported and advised one another. Their friendship and sense of connectedness has lasted through the years to the present day.

A vibrant exhibit “Peers and Pathways,” splendidly curated by Ekua Holmes (’77), one of the participating artists, with assistance from AAMARP’S Gloretta Baynes (’76), is eloquent testimony to collaboration and to the importance of nurturing gifted individuals.

Whether or not you know the back story, however, the exhibit is a stand alone treat as well.

A visit to the President’s Gallery on the eleventh floor of the Tower Building at Massachusetts College of Art and Design will reward you with a sampling of the current work of Omobowale Ayorinde, Ekua Holmes, Reginald Jackson, Lou Jones, Eric Meza, and Hakim Raquib.

The late Rudy Robinson is also represented with black and white prints from the collection of the Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists which are feeling their age or, should I say, you feel as if you’re looking at pictures taken awhile back.

The other works in Peers and Pathways have a more pristine air. This crispness probably emanates from their coming from these living artists’s own collections suggesting they’re newly printed for the show. (Coincidently, the multi-talented Robinson who was also a furniture maker has a bench in the collection of the newly expanded Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

The President’s Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm. For more info you can contact MassArt’s gallery at 617-879-7333.

The eloquent photographs of Reggie Jackson are not only aesthetically lovely but profoundly referential. A driving interest in these photographs taken while on one of his numerous and lengthy stays in resistance communities in northern Ghana is the traditional ways these Africans had for spiritual nurturing and for survival under sometimes extreme conditions, including successfully withstanding slave catchers. Jackson, more formally Dr. Reginald Jackson, Phd,, a professor emeritus from Simmons College whose most advanced degree is in visual anthropology, was well prepared to take on this life’s work of preserving a people’s fortitude for others to appreciate.

Young American black musicians, particularly those with street cred, have, some of them, made fortunes in purveying their hip hop messages on video. To do so, they’ve relied on such talents as film director Eric Meza to make an earful into an eyeful. Running on a loop are such products as Ice Cubes “Dead Homiez,” Public Enemy “Can’t Truss It,” and Boston’s own Bobby Brown “I Gotta Get Away,” along with a host of other shoots in that vein. In an entirely different style, also professionally strong, is Meza’s music video for “I’m Calling You,” the theme from the movie “Bagdad Café.”

Boston 19th century poet Amy Lowell in her “Patterns” ponders as she wanders her rigidly laid out garden paths how society mores have constricted and suffocated her; by contrast Omobowale Ayorinde’s explorations in his handsome and large manipulated photographs of the patterns in modern buildings feel liberating. The 1975 Mass College of Art graduate and currently an instructor at the Rochester Institute of Technology finds dancing rhythms in repeating shapes and lines.

Hakim Raquib relates how he was stopped dead in his tracks on his way out of Roxbury to a Cape Cod summer vacation spot by a huge revival tent that had been set up in the Dudley Station area. He only caught a glimpse of the giant white canvas out of the corner of his eye but he knew, perhaps as only an artist would, that the “canvas cathedral” and the worshipers gathering to praise God within its canvas walls cried out to be memorialized which Raquib has done to stunning effect.

As the refrain from the popular song goes, who can I turn to when nobody needs me, the nationally celebrated photographer Lou Jones was just the right mentor at the right time for neophytes Ekua Holmes, Omobowale Ayorinde, and others of this now distinguished group who sometimes felt misunderstood or inappropriately guided at Mass College of Art. Among the photographs from Jones in “Peers And Pathways” is a shot he says took him years to get, a look at the New Orleans’s Preservation Hall Jazz Band with their feet up, so to speak. Jones, who has photographed nearly everywhere in the world, it seems, and at every kind of occasion from the Olympics to scenes of laborers in Haiti, always tells a story you want to hear in his pictures.

By contrast, Ekua Holmes, as her name suggests, has not strayed far from home in her life and in her charmingly executed collages. At least for the past decade, she has been exploring Roxbury as she remembers the community in her growing up, a place that felt secure to a child. That’s not to say there isn’t an edge to her work as she delves deeper and deeper into memoir, which like African retentions, of late expresses the feeling of subconscious memory. The series here, which you could spend a long time taking in, is, as the collages’s prime source, made from a shoebox of old photographs given her by a distant relative of people she didn’t know but is related to, at least distantly, from sisters holding hands to Uncle Jack in drag.

The free catalogue that goes with the show is a keeper. It is handsomely designed and with informative essays, particularly the lengthy, well researched and well written overview of these artists and their times from Klare Shaw, senior program officer at the Barr Foundation.

By Kay Bourne
Massachusetts College of Art and Design Calendar

COLORED GIRLS: STANDOUT PERFORMANCES OF HOPE

Ntozake Shange’s 1970s stage play about the struggles of several black women is to say the least, a piece of work that makes you reassess where and who you are in your life at whatever particular moment you hear her words.

Tyler Perry’s movie version captures those famous chreo poems and intertwines them with a cinematic narrative that fills the back story of the six main characters of the play, to make it more “moviesque.”

Some of the lyricism is lost in the expansion of the narrative, but much of Shange’s message still comes through loud and clear: Black women endure much, but their strength, compassion and perseverance gives them the ability to overcome incredible difficulties, although, unfortunately, with a price.

You will be moved by the powerful performances from Janet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose and Loretta Devine. They have given this work their all and have clearly digested and lived with the material to bring it to the screen in an array of explosive, heartwarming and intensely moving work.

I know people have taken issue with Tyler Perry and his ability to bring to the screen such a revered piece of work, so in response to that I give you a quote from Ntozake Shange that appeared in the LA Times; “Shange, who consulted on ‘For Colored Girls,’ praised the film. “Mr. Perry has done the best he could. The actresses are powerful and sensitive,” she said.

She added however, that the movie reflects his vision, not hers: “That’s why I’m a poet and he’s a cinema artist.” A book, a play, a movie, all different mediums with different elements, each drawing from a significant piece of work.”

So that said, go see the film and then decide, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

By Lisa Simmons
Official website of For Colored Girls the Movie

ROCKETTE TALKS ABOUT DANCING

(pictured: Nirine S. Brown)
Radio City Rockette Nirine S. Brown has her suitcase at the ready. A six year veteran of the most renowned chorus line in the world, the New York native, Queens born, precision dancer has never performed at the famous Art Deco style music hall in Rockefeller Center.

“I love to travel,” the 5’6″ performer exclaimed in a recent phone call with the Kay Bourne Arts Report. “I have a check list of places I want to go.”

With 31 tours of the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular!” about to go on the road, Brown chose Boston. “I hear the city has amazing food,” she says as one reason she opted for the hub. Her most important consideration, however, was to ensure her grandmother could see the show and “New York is really close so she can make the trip.”

The extravagant production with a cast and crew of nearly 100 people (not to forget the camel and other animals for the manger scene) opens at the Citi Performing Arts Center Wang theatre Friday, DECEMBER 3 for 53 performances, concluding Wednesday, December 29. For more info you can call 866-348-9738.

They’ll unpack more than 300 costumes and 200 hats, all of the designs exclusive to the show. From a design unaltered since it was used in the original production in 1933, for example, comes the outfits for the Wooden Soldier. These hallmark costumes were the invention of Hollywood film director Vincente Minnelli (father of Liza) whose movies include the classics “Meet Me In St. Louis,” “An American In Paris,” and “Gigi.” To top off the white pants and red shirts is a 24-inch hat, including the plume on top which elevates the height of the tallest Rockette at 5’10″ to 7’10′ from top to toe. Headdresses that are even higher are the 17 inch antlers (that light up) for the line’s reindeer number.

Brown won a coveted place in the Rockettes when she was studying dance in the school at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at 9th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan.

“I wish I could tell you a story about how my aunt or a cousin danced with the Rockettes so I had an ‘in’ but really all I did was try out cold,” says Brown. She spotted an audition notice at the Ailey school, “part of the Rockettes diversity outreach,” she said. Black dancers have been hired for the Rockettes only since 1988. “Times have changed,” she said.

Brown was hired from her first audition, which is something of a rarity, as dancers return time and time again to try for the famed line where tapping, ballet, and ensemble work are the requirements.

“There’s a lot of competition,” notes Brown who believes it was “that spark, that twinkle,” that won her a place with the Rockettes. “You have to love what you do. You can’t fake that.”

She also urges hopefuls not to give up if they don’t get in on the first try. “Timing plays a big part of it too. Don’t give up. A dancer may leave the show who is exactly your height.” Brown’s background before getting the job was in high school at New York’s Talented Unlimited High School and full scholarships with Alvin Ailey and Ballet Hispanico.

The Christmas show is a two month gig and Brown has put her off time to good use. Last year she toured with international singing star Shakira and performed at the FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here she was doing African dance which is “two very different styles compared with the Rockettes. (You can view Shakira’s “Waka Waka/This Time For Africa” number including Brown dancing, which is the on various You tube shorts on-line).
“Dancing with a star, you are an accessory; with the Rockettes everyone matters, from Mrs. Claus to the sheep to the dancers,” she said. “We’re an intergral part of the whole.”

By Kay Bourne
Official Website of Radio City Rocketts

GOSSETT TALKS ABOUT HOLLYWOOD LIFE AND ERASICM

(pictured: Louis Gossett, Jr.)
Renowned actor Louis Gossett, Jr.’s long and sometimes turbulent life has been significantly defined by belief. Really getting into a role relies on “a system of belief” he noted in a recent phone conversation.
An Actor And A Gentleman (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), the title of Gossett’s recently published memoir, immediately brings to mind his Academy Award performance as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and A Gentleman.

The respected African American stage and screen actor made wise by the turmoil as well as the pinnacles of his career visits the Boston area for three difference speaking engagements:

Monday, November 8, he was the guest speaker at the venerable Ford Hall Forum taking place in the Rabb Auditorium, Boston Public Library in Copley Square. The talk by Mr. Gossett, followed by a public discussion moderated by Boston-based popular scribe Phyllis Karas, who co-authored Gossett’s book. The sixth and final event in the forum’s fall season was as always open to the public, as has been the tradition of these forums that date back to 1908 and which have hosted such a variety of figures as W. E. B. DuBois in the early years to Al Gore, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Garrison Keillor in recent times.

For people aware of Gossett’s current undertaking in life, the title also underscores his civility as he goes about convincing listeners of the importance of erasing the petty meanesses that keep us at each other’s throats. One glance at the cover of his book with Mr. Gossett gazing directly at you, his arm across his chest as if reciting the pledge of allegiance, evidences a man on a mission.

The next day, Mr. Gossett addressed some 2200 middle school students at Lynn City Hall where he will also talk anecdotally about his long career, his struggles for pay equity as a black man in Hollywood and with drugs and alcoholism that took him years to overcome, and his current work to eradicate racism and violence, which includes bullying and gay bashing.
Then on Wednesday, Gossett, whose Emmy-award winning role as Fiddler in the 1970s TV mini series Roots has also elevated his image to indelibility for Americans, spoke at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis.
That appearance elicited fond memories from Gossett’s of his growing up in the then largely Jewish neighborhood in southern Brooklyn’s Coney Island. The area was home to an amusement park that was a source of employment for him as a youth and where his neighbors and his family showed a strong belief that he had the potential to go a great distance which he acted upon.

“People stuck together,” says Gossett, who recalls his father going out fishing which netted a large catch of cod they distributed to neighbors for blocks around. “Whether they salted it or fried it up, depending on their culture, the cod was food for a week,” he said.
“We need to put that sense of being in this life together and that belief in our children today,” said Gossett. “My family and neighbors were not trying to make me a model black person but saw me as one of the exceptional ones of the kids in the neighborhood.” Other children treated likewise also have had outstanding careers from Neil Diamond to Harvey Keitel. These days the old gang gathers for reunions annually.

Belief has been a two way street all along for him.

“In the arts,” he says, “it’s how strongly you believe in what you’re doing that makes you stand out.”

The experience can be just as transforming for the audience as a stunning incident in Baton Rouge evidenced.

Gossett had been invited to the city to receive an honorary degree from the community college there. Earlier in the day he’d happened to meet with local police officers as part of his being shown around town by the mayor, a friend. Not many hours later, his security guard told Gossett that one of these officers, who is white, had been shot in the chest and was lying in the hospital in a coma.

“Several of the policemen asked me to go visit him and talk with him,” Gossett writes in his memoir. “I had been there only a few minutes, just holding his hand and talking with him softly, when he opened his eyes.

“The first words that he spoke were, ‘I can’t get down and give you forty right now, Sergeant. Maybe later,’” which are lines from An Officer and A Gentleman.
“What he gave me that day was a gift I will never forget,” writes Gossett.
Mr. Gossett says he wasn’t’ going to prepare a speech for any of the three occasions. “I don’t do speeches.
“I speak from the heart and I trust and have faith that the next words are going to come out. I will be telling anecdotes from my life just as I have in the book,” he said.

By Kay Bourne

Official Website of Louis Gossett Jr.

MFA NEW WING OPENS NOV. 20 – FREE

(pictured: Al Loving’s “Cube 27″)
The Harriet Powers “pictorial Quilt”, made by an ex-slave from Athens, Georgia between 1895 and 1898, hangs in the new Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Art of the Americas wing. This treasure by an African American has been occasionally displayed in the past but mostly kept in storage for the last 60 years.

A more recent acquisition, contemporary African American artist Al Loving’s “Cube 27″ (1970) also resides in a gallery in the glorious, 5-story glass building designed by Foster + Partners. Last year, the MFA had the winning bid of $84,000 for the coveted Loving painting at the Swann Galleries in New York.

From a watercolor by Paul Revere depicting the Boston Massacre with Crispus Attucks and his fellow unarmed Bostonians falling from a rain of bullets fired by the British Red Coats’s muskets is hung in the room where the Revolutionary silver smith’s plates and teapots are displayed. In another gallery there’s a newly acquired Alan Rohan Crite oil showing children playing beneath the artist’s living room window in Lower Roxbury.
The MFA is clearly on the road to inclusion of people of color, late as are most museums, but not too late.

As well, the new galleries display the work of artists from the two American continents North and South, and Central America in-between with Mexican artists prominent.

This is not your parent’s MFA where the shuttered doors on Huntington Ave. fostered the notion that residents of surrounding neighborhoods were unwelcome.

Those doors and the ones facing the Fens are open now, ready for the throng of visitors the museum will surely host. The new MFA has come into being under the leadership and vision of Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum. Elliot Bostwick Davis, who has the John Moors Cabot chair, leads the curatorial staff for the new wing.

The new wing officially opens 10:30 am, NOVEMBER 20 with a Community Day of free entrance and events to celebrate. The community day is sponsored by the Bank of America.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino has proclaimed this Saturday, “MFA Day” to mark the momentous day in the museum’s history. The museum expects large crowds and recommends using the T, either the Green line E train to the MFA stop, the Orange line to the Ruggles stop or Bus #39 to the MFA stop or #8, 47 or CT2 buses to the Ruggles Street stop.Official Website of the MFA<

SOJOURNER’S TRUTH – THIS WEEKEND ONLY

“I will shake every place I go to,” black abolitionist Sojourner Truth famously pledged. An itinerant minister, she had been born into slavery in the North, upper New York state on a farm, and had endured a horrific childhood and heart breaking young adult years.

Her best known speech “Ain’t I A Woman” definitely shook up the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, as did her preaching to the powerful about prison reform and against the death penalty. She railed against slavery prior to the Civil War.
Firebrand actress Ramona Lisa Alexander portrays this important visionary in “Sojourner’s Truth” for a weekend of performances beginning Friday NOVEMBER 19 at the Roxbury Center for the Arts at Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley Street in Roxbury, a block from Dudley Station next to the firehouse.

The Boston area premiere features live music by teen musician Stephany Marryshow, who gives the drama a modern day angle. She provides musical narration singing gospel songs and playing the guitar (she taught herself the guitar by watching You Tube).

The production is staged by the Holyoke based Enchanted Circle Theater and directed by Melissa Penley, who is known for doing provocative theater with special concern for survivors of sexual violence.

Written by Priscilla Kane Hellweg and Rachel Kuhn, “Sojouner’s Truth” will be performed for two matinees on Friday, NOVEMBER 19, at 10am and 1pm, Saturday night at 8pm, and finally on Sunday, NOVEMBER 21, at 2pm. For more info, you can phone 617-849-6322.

Official Website of Madison Park Development Corp

UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

Bunker Hill Community College presents a program of Eric Dolphy’s music by the Oliver Lake Quintet (Oliver Lake – alto saxophone, Freddie Hendrix – trumpet, John Kordalewski – piano, Wes Brown – bass, Yoron Israel – drums), Thursday, NOVEMBER 18, from 1 to 2:15 pm. This event is open to the general public, free of charge. It will be in the auditorium, room A-300.

November 18, 6:30 pm, Get to know artist Mark Bradford (pictured above) in a lively conversation with New Yorker writer Hilton Als and the ICA Chief Curator. Mark Bradford’s exhibition will be hosted at ICA starting Friday, November 19 until March 13, 201. Through his collaged paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations, Mark Bradford explores issues of class, race, and gender in American urban society. An archeologist of his own environment, Los Angeles, Bradford uses found materials-peeling movie posters, hand-lettered “FOR SALE” signs, endpapers used to perm black hair, salvaged plywood-which he layers, embellishes, erodes, and reconstitutes into abstract compositions. For more information, click HERE. The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston is located at 100 Northern Avenue on Boston’s waterfront.

Film Screening and Community Panel Discussion November 20, 10 am at Wheelock College: Please come to a Screening of “Beyond the Bricks” followed by a discussion about the film and the issues it raises. Produced by Washington Koen Media, “Beyond the Bricks” is a documentary film project and national community engagement campaign created with the goal of promoting solutions for one of America’s critical problems in education: the consistently low performance of Black males in school.

On December 2 Roxbury Center for the Arts at Hibernian Hall (184 Dudley Street, Roxbury) begins a weekly Thursday night supper club series. The Diane Richardson Group (Diane Richardson – voice, Bill Lowe – trombone, John Kordalewski – piano, Ron Mahdi – bass, Ralph Peterson – drums) will perform on opening night. Drinks are served at 6:00 pm, dinner at 7:00, and the music begins at 7:30. Visit http://www.madison-park.org/node/190. Or, for ticket information call 617-849-6321 or e-mail dmccroey@madison-park.org.

Isabel Wilkerson, the first black woman to win a Pultizer Prize in Journalism, who now teaches at Boston University as a Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction, has chronicled the decades long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities in search of a better life, “The Warmth of Other Suns:Voices of the Great Migration.”

She will discuss her epic and read from the book at a reception and book signing beginning at 4:30 pm, Thursday, December 2. The discussion takes place at Boston University’s Photonics Center, Room 206 (8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston). It is free and open to the public.

Call for submissions – SCRIBE Boston

Announcing SCRIBE Boston – a new annual publication for youth, being published in Spring 2011. We are looking for submissions of poetry, short stories or prose from students who live in the city of Boston and attend school, grades 6 – 12. We seek writing on a broad variety of topics and encourage students to be creative and to submit their best work. Students whose work is selected for publication will be expected to participate in a one day writing camp. A public reception will be held where students will present their work.

For more information and application guidelines, go to the website www.scribeboston.org. E-mail: info@scribeboston.org.

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Contents
COLTRANE CONCERT SURE TO DELIGHT
McWHORTER BACK ON STAGE AT THE BCA
EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS FOR ANNUAL SPELLING BEE
ONE WOMAN COMEDY AT M.I.T.
AFFLECK’S “THE TOWN”
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

In essence, the JCMC “explores the observable fact about John Coltrane’s music that the more you know of it, the more there is to be known about it,” says Price.

By Kay Bourne
Official Website of the John Coltrane Memorial Concert

By Kay Bourne
Official website of Speakeasy Stage Company

By Kay Bourne
Official Site of the Speakeasy Stage Company

“The solitude of doing math was hard for me. I enjoy time alone but with math there’s an awful lot of that. And it’s hard to share math with other people, even for mathematicians to communicate with each other.
“I’m a person who likes to touch people’s heart, to share emotional things with them, and to share the beauty of an aesthetic that’s accessible,” she said.

By Kay Bourne
. Official Website of The Central Square Theater

by Colette Greenstein Official Website of the movie The Town

THE FORD HALL FORUM announces its fall series of free public discussions, and invites you to join experts and opinion leaders defining our world today. Questions from the audience are provided equal time as the speakers’ remarks. Come listen, question, and take part in this series of conversations that has been at the heart of Boston’s cultural and intellectual life for more than a century:

• SEPTEMBER 30 – “AIDS, Social Justice and The Politics of Transformation” * What does prejudice, violence, substance abuse, and poverty have to do with stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS?
• OCTOBER 7 – WHO IS WINNING THE CHILDHOOD OBESITY BATTLE? * Who is responsible for policing childhood obesity and what are the unintended consequences of the methods we’ve tried so far?
• OCTOBER 28 – “AN EXTRAORDINARY UPBRINGING” * How did Condoleezza Rice’s parents shape the life of this extraordinary leader? CONDOLEEZZA RICE discusses her new memoir
• NOVEMBER 4 – “ELECTION 2010 and COMMUNITIES OF COLOR”
• NOVEMBER 8 – “AN ACTOR AND A GENTLEMAN” – LOUIS GOSSETT Jr. discusses his new memoir

All events are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Click here for details.
THE MAKANDA PROJECT, a jazz ensemble, will play at the ROXBURY FOUNDERS DAY, Saturday, SEPTEMBER 18, held annually in Roxbury Heritage Park, Eliot Square on Fort Hill. The group is dedicated to performing the music of woodwind player and composer Makanda Kenneth McIntrye (1931-2001) who grew up in Roxbury and went on to chair one of the first African American Arts Departments (State University of New York at Old Westbury).Other artists at the celebration at the Dillaway Thomas House include Boston’s Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, and author Rochelle O’Neal. The event is sponsored by the Roxbury Action Program and the Heritage State Park running from noon to 5 pm is open to the public and is free, and will include Writerways Institute Free Books for Children.
DISCOVER ROXBURY presents a Highland Park Harvest Walk. After the April showers, May flowers, and a summer of growing, find out what Roxbury’s harvest looks like. Three months after the spring Highland Park Garden Walk, return for a follow up with the Highland Park/Fort Hill gardeners on Saturday, SEPTEMBER 18, 10am-12pm Rain or shine. Bring your questions and learn tricks of the trade for preparing gardens for the winter. The tour is led by the aptly-named Tom Plant. Please wear sturdy, comfortable shoes for walking up and down irregular ground. Begin at the Cooper Educational Ctr & Community Gardens, 34 Linwood St. Purchase $10 tickets in advance by calling 617-427-1006.
“CAMELOT” at the Trinity Rep in Providence, until OCTOBER 10 King Arthur has everything – peace, prosperity and a happy marriage . . . but will the arrival of the handsome Lancelot change Camelot forever? Trinity Rep’s reimagining of this musical masterpiece is a rich tale of love, honor, and the quest to create a legacy. For tickets and information click here.
Marshall Hughes will direct “Of Mice And Men” John Steinbeck‘s classic tale of brotherhood and the lives of migrant workers set during the Great Depression for the Roxbury Repertory Theater. The director of Visual, Performing, and Media Arts at Roxbury Community College and a founding director of RRT was given. the Kenneth A MacDonald Award for sustained excellence and devotion to community audiences at this year’s Independent Reviewers of New England’s award ceremony. “Of Mice And Men” will have 11 performances OCTOBER 27 – 30 and NOVEMBER 4-6 at RCC’s main stage. For more info you can phone 617-541-5380.
The Boston Athenæum presents author TARIQ RAMADAN, who will discuss his book “What I Believe,” on Tuesday, OCTOBER 12, at 6 p.m. This event is open to the public and admission is $15. For more information call (617) 227-0270. Dubbed “a Muslim Martin Luther” by the Washington Post’s Paul Donnelly, Tariq Ramadan is one of the most prominent-and controversial-voices of Islamic reform. His passionate criticism of American foreign policy has earned him enemies: in 2004, the Bush administration denied him entry to the United States under provisions of the Patriot Act, a ban that was lifted in January of this year. His outspoken criticism of Shariah law and dictatorships has made Ramadan enemies as well. As of 2009 Ramadan was persona non grata in Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Syria because of his criticism of “these undemocratic regimes that deny the most basic human rights.”
SAVE THE DATE for OCTOBER 22 – DINNER & A MOVIE Screening of the film “American Faust: from Condi to Neo Condi” a documentary film that takes a look at the rise of Condolessa Rice from her segretated southern past to one of the most powerful women in politics. Doors open at 5:30, Dinner at 6, Movie at 7:15. More details in next month’s KAY BOURNE ART REPORT (KBAR).
In 1956, five teens from Roxbury recorded their original song “Ka Ding Dong.” It hit and the G-CLEFS became stars. The Doo Wopp Hall of Famers (one of the few groups performing with its original members) open for ’50s teen idol Bobby Rydell (“Volare”) at the “20th Annual Barry L. Price Center Fundraiser and Concert,” NOVEMBER 5, at the Brookline Holiday Inn. The non-profit rehab provides services to adults and teens with developmental disabilities. For more info call 781-239-1480.

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IDRIS ELBA ON “TAKERS”
HAIRSPRAY’s PERRY
A GREAT SUMMER READ
EKUA’S EVENING ART WALK
UP YOU MIGHTY RACE PRESENTS A STAGED READING
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

As heist movies go, “TAKERS” falls on the heals of some of the best, “Ocean’s Eleven”, the “Bank Job” and dozens more that are filled with testosterone, explosions, and great costume design (there is nothing like a European tailor). With a cast as hot as this one, PAUL WALKER, IDRIS ELBA, HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN, MICHAEL EALY, CHRIS BROWN and T.I., this movie can’t possibly fail, and it doesn’t.

As Elba says “we all had great fun together,” and “I love heist films and I wanted to be a part of one.”
Entertaining to the final moment, the film has strong writing from PETER ALLEN and GABRIEL CASSEUS (both whom have been to Boston with TCOF/RIFF events), and believable acting by the “takers” and the detectives (MATT DILLON and JAY HERNANDEZ) who are trying to catch them. To add a deeper richness to the film, MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE (“Secret and Lies” and “Without A Trace”) plays Idris’ drug addicted sister and allows us to see the depth of his character and the humanity that exists under his staid exterior. A storyline he says “that was an anchor for my character.”
Out of a love for independent films, (readers may remember Elba as the “bad guy” in the film “One Love” with KYMANI MARLEY that TCOF screened a few years ago) Elba has created his own production company in London that will work with young writers who have great material and the vision to make it work.
His newest film “Legacy” is his first acting/producing project because as he put it, “some of the roles I am getting are not challenging enough so I am looking more towards producing.”

With roles coming at him and his popularity on the rise, Elba gets scripts more readily these days but he says “It’s a matter of saying no rather than saying yes. I wouldn’t have the range as an actor if I didn’t stick to my guns. I’m not famous and that is one thing about being a character actor, that you can’t always recognize who I am, and I like that.”
As Elba’s star begins to rise it will be more and more difficult for him to seek refuge in the character parts that he plays. He tries to keep his two worlds separate, that of father and everyday guy with being a growing star and he feels the difficulty of balancing the two and creating a “clear separation” he says.

“My daughter doesn’t actually like when we are out and people are asking to take pictures. It is tough because part of your success is having notoriety and being larger than life and my fans are very important but you have to balance the two lives. I shake hands, I take a picture but when I am not in the mood, I’m not in the mood and I don’t pretend.”
Well from what we saw, Idris Elba that problem doesn’t often arise. He is gracious and charming and even if you came across him and he wasn’t in the mood, you would never know you were being pushed off. He takes his work very seriously and his command and respect for the craft is not only comforting, but very apparent. “Takers” is a great addition to the summer line up. It is sure to keep your attention in more ways than one.

By Lisa Simmons
TAKERS official website

By Kay Bourne
Official website of Reagle Music Theatre

By Kay Bourne
FINNY book trailer

DISCOVER ROXBURY presents EKUA’s EVENING ART WALK Thursday, AUGUST 26, 6pm-8pm. Limit 20 people. Purchase tickets ($5) online at the Discover Roxbury website or call 617-427-1006 for more information. Tour departs Roxbury Crossing Station at 6pm.
.
. Discovery Roxbury website

THE FORD HALL FORUM announces its fall series of free public discussions, and invites you to join experts and opinion leaders defining our world today. Questions from the audience are provided equal time as the speakers’ remarks. Come listen, question, and take part in this series of conversations that has been at the heart of Boston’s cultural and intellectual life for more than a century:

• SEPTEMBER 30 – “AIDS, Social Justice and The Politics of Transformation” * What does prejudice, violence, substance abuse, and poverty have to do with stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS?
• OCTOBER 7 – WHO IS WINNING THE CHILDHOOD OBESITY BATTLE? * Who is responsible for policing childhood obesity and what are the unintended consequences of the methods we’ve tried so far?
• OCTOBER 28 – “AN EXTRAORDINARY UPBRINGING” * How did Condoleezza Rice’s parents shape the life of this extraordinary leader? CONDOLEEZZA RICE discusses her new memoir
• NOVEMBER 4 – “ELECTION 2010 and COMMUNITIES OF COLOR”
• NOVEMBER 8 – “AN ACTOR AND A GENTLEMAN” – LOUIS GOSSETT Jr. discusses his new memoir

All events are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Click here for details.

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Contents
RIFF OPENS THIS WEEK
“CONTRACT” CONNECTS AT RIFF
“OFF AND RUNNING” at RIFF
MASCOLL IN GRIMM
GILLIAM AS OTHELLO IN THE COMMONS
HAMBURGERS WITH HUMOR AND HORROR
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

“Coupled with our continued commitment to local filmmakers, the Roxbury International Film Festival gives us the best of both worlds and an array of work that showcases the vision, voice, and vitality of people of Color here and abroad.”
The festival film selection committee received some 300 submissions from around the country and around the world – and some of the films that will be shown are from Cape Verde, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Canada, and the UK.
The festival offers networking opportunities for filmmakers and enthusiasts. Some of these activities are an acting workshop taught by TROY ROWLAND (one of Hollywood’s premiere coaches), a distribution panel moderated by QUINCY NEWELL, Executive VP and GM of Codeblack Enterprizes LLC, Youth Day activities, and the ever popular DINNER & A MOVIE night at Haley House.

Screenings will be held at various venues in and around the Roxbury community: Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts College of Fine Arts, Roxbury Center for the Arts at Hibernian Hall, the Annex Auditorium at Wentworth College, and the Haley House Bakery Café. For more information, including purchasing festival passes, please visit the festival website.

Roxbury International Film Festival website

At the heart of the documentary is the family story of the filmmaker himself. The film follows his journey to reunite his family after his uncle left for São Tomé and Principe in 1964.

“When I met my uncle in Sao Tomo it was a shock and a happiness,” relates Pires. “His story, his trip held a fascination for me as a film maker, and finally I had my uncle and could reunite him with the rest of my family. It was a lovely moment to me.”

Pires said that every time he sees that part of his movie, he gets emotional. “I feel like I’m going to cry even though it’s three years later.”
Pires, who currently lives in L.A., is eager to have “CONTRACT” in the Roxbury International Film Festival, he said “because the largest Cape Verde community in the U.S. lives in Massachusetts. I get to present the film to my people.”

CONTRACT ticket information

In a candid documentary film which she wrote with director NICOLE OPPER, “OFF AND RUNNING,” Avery is thrown off course. And her angst supports the notion that adopting cross racially doesn’t work well for the child, which has been the contention of many Black social workers over the years.
Exploring herself as a Black person, Avery sets up a face book as Mycole Antwonisha, the name her birth mom gave her. After being the only Black child in a Jewish day school, now she attends a high school with a large Black population where she does develop a support group of African American classmates and begins to date a Black young man.
An African American, born in Texas to a mother who kept children older and younger than Klein-Cloud, but gave her up for adoption as an infant, Avery was raised by two White lesbians in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The multi-racial family also includes two other adopted children, another African American, a boy, slightly older, and a much young Korean American boy. Avery has no doubt that she dearly loves the women who raised her and her siblings, but raised White but with dark skin, she feels at a loss as to who she really is.
As the film begins, Avery has posted a letter to her birth mom sent to the agency that arranged the adoption, hoping to make contact, yet fearing another rejection. She braves that fear because she says, “I just want to know who I am and where I come from.” Yet, her passion to become acquainted with her birth mom comes across as more fraught with emotion than merely gathering information. It seems in a way to be a longing to address the past rather than moving forward through embracing the birth mother and her other children. And when the birth mother is slow to respond after the initial letter, Avery goes into a tail spin emotionally, dropping out of school and bunking with friends, rather than going home.
Avery’s older brother Rafi has a quite different attitude toward his family of origin. He has a twin brother born with fetal alcohol syndrome, which motivates Rafi (who admits to some “survival guilt”) to push himself academically. He’s off to Princeton, having set his course on becoming a doctor who’ll try to alleviate the condition his twin suffers. He advises Avery to consider that you can think you’re destined “born into something” or you can take your future into your own hands and “be what you want to be.”
Fortunately for Avery, she has running. The sport has never disappointed her, but she discovers that she can disappoint herself, participating in the sport, by not being up to her personal best.
The documentary, which basically follows a year in Avery’s life, is enriched by lots of footage from her apparently happy childhood in her adopted family. There is also the full participation of her adoptive parents, whom Avery rails against, but who continue to love her so much they’ll go along this invasion of their privacy knowing Avery has negative feelings about them as well as positive.

“OFF AND RUNNING” screens this Sunday, AUGUST 1, 4:30pm along with “KNOCK OFF” a narrative short at Mass College of Art. Click the image of Avery above for ticket information, and visit RIFF’s website for a full schedule of all the films, shorts, documentaries, comedies, features, workshops and panels presented this year.

Roxbury International Film Festival website

The one in which Curmudgeon lusts after Snow White is by GREGORY MAGUIRE , whose novel “Wicked” was the basis for the hit musical (WINNIE HOLZMAN wrote the book for the Broadway show) and whose best selling works typically reframe fairy tales.
The other playwrights contributing to the Company One production are Boston favorites MELINDA LOPEZ, LYDIA R. DIAMOND, KIRSTEN GREENIDGE, MARCUS GARDLEY, JOHN KUNTZ, and JOHN ADEKOJE, all Massachusetts residents with national reputations.
Mascoll, who has been a regular with Company One for six years or so, finds acting with them “satisfying. They are one of the few companies that does a lot of plays of people of color, local and national.” Five of the playwrights for “Grimm” fall into that category.
A native Bostonian with a degree from UMASS/Boston in theater arts, Mascoll is an affiliate artist with Providence Black Repertory Company and works in New York as well. He was nominated for an IRNE twice, both times for performing in plays by ADEKOJE (one of the “Grimm” playwrights).
“John’s work is always a challenge. His political references and the rhythms of his dialogue require special attention.

Mascoll has branched out from theater and now has considerable experience as well in TV, films, commercials, industrials for trade shows and the like, and voice overs.

Recently, he was the photo double and stand in for Chris Rock in the feature film comedy “Grown Ups,” the Adam Sandler movie about five good friends and team mates, now adults, who reunite after their basketball coach from high school passes away.
Mascoll found Rock as a person “genuinely funny, really shy, pretty much the character we see on his TV show ‘Everybody Hates Chris’.”

The work went well and Mascoll was hired for a second Happy Madison Production as a deejay in “The Zookeeper” which gets him on camera if for only a few seconds.

The actor says what you bring to the set that matters is “your professionalism. You show up on time. Being prepared every day. Being courteous. Conforming to the environment. Knowing when to talk and not talk.”

“Getting work has a lot to do with connections. If people see you as professional, sincere, and talented, then people want to get to know you better.”

Mascoll adds that he has also found that “people respect your coming from the theater.”

KEITH MASCOLL’s website

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company website

“MACHETE JOE” (the feature): A group of out-of-work actors decide to take their careers into their own hands by shooting a low-budget horror film, about an urban myth. With only 15 days to shoot their unfinished script, at a remote castle in the desert, getting through the first night becomes a nightmare. As their egos begin to surface so do the dead bodies. Written by GORDON GREENE.
Menu for this event will include lots of great local food: -Haley House Homemade Chicken Dogs topped with our homemade Sauerkraut -Hardwick Farms Cheeseburgers with all the fixings -Haley House’s Own Special Veggie Burgers -Haley House Potato Salad with local potatoes and vegetables and Noonday Farm Eggs -Haley House Special Healthy Slaw made with Chinese Cabbage from Noonday Farm -Fresh local Tomato Salad -Sour Cherry Upside Down featuring Roxbury/Dorchester Cherries, courtesy of Earthworks, topped with Whipped Cream -Watermelon Punch -Organic Beer & Wine will be available for purchase Dinner & A Movie Tickets are not included in the RIFF Festival Pass, they must be purchased seperately, and are on sale now. Hope to see you this Friday night.

RIFF DINNER & A MOVIE ticket info

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Contents
IRNE’S SHINE LIGHT ON THEATER
UMOH RETURNS FROM BROADWAY
TRAILER PARK TOO FUNNY
PRINCE HALL HISTORY RETOLD
BHCC CHELSEA EXHIBITS MADDU
JUST WRIGHT IS JUST RIGHT!
ROBIN HOOD’S STORY BEFORE THE STORY
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

The production of August Wilson’s “Fences” at the Huntington took a number of awards, including ‘Best Director’ to KENNY LEON, whose production of the same play but starring DENZEL WASHINGTON with VIOLA DAVIS opened on Broadway at the end of April to rave reviews – one critic declared that the production is “a collective home run” for Denzel and Leon. The Huntington’s production of “Fences” also won for ‘Best Lighting,’ ‘Best Actress’ (CRYSTAL FOX), ‘Best Actor’ (JOHN BEASELY), and ‘Best Play.’
The Huntington won numerous other awards, as well, including one to playwright DAVID GRIMM for ‘Best New Play’ (“The Miracle At Naples”).
Perennial IRNE awards winner JACQUI PARKER, who now has six of them to her credit, won ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her portrayal in PAULA VOGEL‘s musical “A Civil War Christmas” of Elizabeth Keckley, a real-life figure who was the dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln.

On the plus side, Umoh notes that “my character overcomes the limits placed on her. It takes awhile but it happens.”
Originating a character is the dream of every actor. “To originate a character in a world premiere is extremely exciting,” says Umoh. “There are no preconceived ideas of who the character is supposed to be, no expectations by the audience. And you go down in history if the play comes off well.”
Thus far in a short career, Umoh, who was graduated from Boston Conservatory in 2008, has prospered. The way she handles the success she’s had, she says, is the way she looks at the prospects for a professional actor. “In our world, we have to take things one step at a time.”
She found an agent, Nicolosi & Co., which she says has been supportive of her interest in not being placed in “a Black box” but to play Black specific characters and other characters, as well. In that regard she’s played Sheila in “Hair” and was sent by her agent to try out for “The Fantastiks.”
She is grateful for the opportunities and attention she had in Boston while still a student. At SpeakEasy, she was in “Zanna Don’t!” and “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin” (directed by Jacqui Parker). She also played Sarah Brown in “Ragtime” at New Repertory Theater in Watertown, the role she did in 2009 on Broadway. She was nominated for an Elliot Norton Award and an IRNE. The “Boston Globe” did a series of articles on her.
These credits on her resume make her a little more “trustworthy” to a casting director, she believes. However, she adds, the people casting for “Johnny Baseball” hadn’t realized she had acted in Boston previously.
“JOHNNY BASEBALL,” directed by DIANE PAULUS, runs through JUNE 27 at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) in the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge. For more info, you can phone 617-495-2668.
A.R.T. website

THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL is playing at The Roberts Studio Theatre located in The Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at The Boston Center for the Arts, at 527 Tremont Street in Boston’s South End until MAY 30. Ticket information: 617-933-8600.

SpeakEasy Stage Company website

“These are portraits of women I knew about but did not learn about in school,” says the Mexican born Huacuja.

On view in the circular entrance lobby of Bunker Hill Community College’s new Chelsea campus, “MEXICAN FEMAIL ARCHETYPES” Huacuja’s series of large scale oil paintings greet the constant flow of students coming and going.

Some of the women’s names may ring a bell even for those viewers not of Mexican descent – all of the women have personal and stirring stories that you can easily connect with.

The poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, for one, wrote in the 1600′s but her verse and essays are enthusiastically read today. For Huacuja, the work that most exemplifies the writer’s significance to women is “Respuesta a Sor Filotea,” an impassioned essay defending the author’s right and every woman’s right to think and be educated, to have a voice in public and theological debate. She is regarded as the first advocate for women’s rights in the Americas.

Other portraits in this empowering exhibit include the Virgin of Guadalupe, the dark skinned patron saint of Mexico whose banner the Mexican people carried when they fought for the independence of Mexico and to whom people set up shrines to this day. There are also a number of warrior women who fought side by side with men or had their own regiments in the War for Independence.

Visitors to the exhibit are aided in understanding the importance of each of the women through an attractively designed, free guide book.

The exhibit was created by LAURA MONTGOMERY who runs the gallery at the main campus in Charlestown. She invited Huacuja to bring the paintings to Chelsea to inaugurate the new gallery space. Also on view, in a second floor gallery are works by well known Boston African American Artists: PAUL GOODNIGHT, JENNIFER HUGHES, LOU JONES, LOLITA PARKER, Jr., L’MERCHIE FRAZIER, HAKIM RAQUIB, PEG TUITT, DANA CHANDLER, KAYIGA, and ALEX RIVEST. There is also some student art.

The shows run through June. You can travel there directly from the Bunker Hill campus on the free, regularly scheduled shuttle or go directly to 175 Hawthorne Street in Bellingham Square, which is in the center of Chelsea.

JUST WRIGHT website

ROBIN HOOD website

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Contents
SHADY HILL USES ART TO TEACH CULTURE
ASP DELIVERS OTHELLO
WILSON’S ART OUTSIDE AND IN
BAUBACH’S LATEST FILM
A COMEDY IN FAMILY SECRETS
TRAINING YOUR DRAGON IS QUITE FUN!
UP-COMING EVENTS & COMMUNITY INFO

“While the sonnets are beautiful,” said Ivey, “the faces of the African American woman who are all shapes and sizes surrounding the image of the White female educator who has made it her mission to be a change agent for these women — that’s an image that’s hard to forget. Hers is a bittersweet story about a person in history very few people know about.”

“His art is a vehicle to teach us about ourselves,” she said.

At the March 19th session, Cooper demonstrated his technique of erasure art. He paints an illustration board with oil paint, and then, with a stretchy eraser, he erases the paint so that a picture emerges, rather like a sculptor with a block of marble chipping away until the figure he wants remains. He calls this method a “subtractive process.”

Earlier in the day, he showed his technique to children in the school. He said he likes to demonstrate that “there can be different approaches to age old problems.”

Official Website of Shady Hill School

Actor’s Shakespeare Project website

“JOHN WILSON/Prints & Drawings,” twenty works spanning his career, opened March 12 at MARTHA RICHARSON FINE ART, 4th floor at 38 Newbury Street, downtown Boston. There is an elevator. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm.

These choice pieces come from the gallery owner’s collection, among other contributions. “The show grew out of my love for his work,” says Richardson, who some fifteen or so years ago purchased her first drawing. Richardson specializes in 19th and 20th century American paintings, drawings, and prints.

The exhibit begins with a watercolor, “Standing Nude”, painted in 1946, the year Wilson graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts with highest honors. (There is an earlier lithograph “Grief” done in 1943 hung further along in the exhibit, which is staged chronologically.) Wilson would spend the next year obtaining a B.S. in education from Tufts University and then in 1949 enrolled in Fernand Leger’s school in Paris having won the James William Paige Traveling Fellowship for study in Europe granted by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. A color lithograph, the lively street scene with a bicyclist and pedestrians “Boulevard de Strasbourg,” 1949, is from that period.

Wilson who was born in 1922 in Roxbury, where he was first encouraged in his art through classes at the Boys Club, found inspiration from his community and the experience of being Black in urban America.

A pair of city scapes, chock a block full of teaming humanity, the ink and lithograph “Street Scene,” 1947, which is a drawing and then the same drawing reversed, vibrates with the energy of people going about their daily lives.

“Native Son,” a 1945 rendering of Bigger Thomas, the central character in Richard Wright‘s novel about racial inequality, delves into the young Black man’s psyche as he ponders his condition. In what is almost a companion piece, “The Trial”, 1951, a Black man stands at the foot of a high podium from which three White judges glumly assess the defendant, while to the side a white woman juror sits impassively, as if her mind is already made up that he is guilty, no matter his testimony.

While Wilson studied abroad and later in Mexico where he admired and has paid artistic homage to the social activist murals and where he felt less racial tension, his home and the Civil Rights Movement called to him. He returned in 1956 where he has remained, helping to establish the Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists and helping develop Boston University’s Art Department.

A splendid portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., an etching, aquatint, and spit-bite on chine-colle done in 2002, is the concluding work in the exhibit. Wilson’s bronze head of King, 1982, stands in Olmsted Park in Buffalo, New York. The etching in the exhibit is based on the studies for Wilson’s memorial statue in the United States Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.

Still vital at 88, Wilson continues to paint, draw, and sculpt making extraordinary the life of the man up against the odds and the great men who have risen from those ranks.

Martha Richardson Art Gallery website

It is based on a story by the director and his wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. It has witty dialogue and a great depiction of the very rich in LA, but fails in capturing the viewer’s sympathy, or even concern, about the title character.

The story of Greenberg, who has just been released from a mental institution for an unnamed diagnosis (though he clearly has a borderline personality disorder), house sits 3,000 miles away, in Los Angeles, for his successful brother. While in LA, Greenberg attempts to readjust to society, recapture his youth, and fit in with people far above him in money and far beyond him in maturity. The problem is, Greenberg is one of those creepy guys who is completely selfish and commits cruel acts simply because he feels entitled and, at the same time, feels less than a man. His mental disorders control his every waking moment but, of course, he doesn’t see it that way. He simply doesn’t understand why everyone can’t agree with him and act how he thinks they should.

BEN STILLER makes a valiant attempt to stretch himself from a comic actor, giving a detailed, somber portrait of this unlikable, narcissistic man. Unfortunately, the script often fails him. Greenberg engages his brother’s dog walker (Greta Gerwig, in a winning performance) in an affair, then mistreats her. It should be noted, she’s some fifteen years younger than Greenberg, since he’s very immature for his age and often acts like a pouty teenager more than a middle-aged man. His attempt to rekindle a romance with a girlfriend from twenty years ago (Jennifer Jason Leigh, seen too briefly, in a relaxed, naturalistic turn) is disastrous mostly because Greenberg doesn’t know how to relate to people his own age. He is stuck in bitterness and resentment. A funny section of the film is when he reads aloud his letters of complaint to such companies as Starbucks, American Airlines and others.

“Greenberg” attempts to engage us in the story of a man most of us cross the street to ignore in real life. It is by no means a bomb. It is an uncomfortable experience sitting in the presence of this most unlikable of man, although, like a car wreck, one is never tempted to look away. One wishes the director went somewhere with the story. But maybe that’s the point: a portrait of someone who gives you the creeps.

GREENBERG movie website

ANDY GARCIA was once poised to be ‘The Next Big Thing in Hollywood,’ after his Oscar nomination for “The Godfather Part 3,” Mostly, he’s been stuck in second and third rate films. With “City Island”, Garcia (who produced the film) shows us that early promise was genuine. He gives his best performance in years while also presenting a smart, fun, family film.

Garcia plays a corrections officer who has the film’s two biggest secrets: one is, instead of playing poker every week, he’s actually taking acting classes. fulfilling a long ago, youthful dream of movie stardom. He studies with an acting teacher (Alan Arkin, hilarious as a method-hating teacher) and, in a very funny scene auditions for a Scorsese-DeNiro film, presenting a hilarious Brando impersonation that impresses no one.

I won’t spoil the film by revealing his other secret, but it’s a (hilarious) whopper.

JULIANNA MARGUILES, in a complete turnaround from her buttoned-down characters on “The Good Wife” and “E.R.,” is great as Garcia’s volatile, angry wife. Newcomers Steven Strait and Dominik Garcia-Lordo also impress.

So if you’re in the mood for an engaging, fun film, see “CITY ISLAND.”

The official website of City Island

“HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON” however, was a pure delight, pretty close to the book and every bit adventurous. Who doesn’t like Vikings, dragons and a good underdog story. From the opening scene where fire breathing dragons are attacking his hometown, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) who is causing all sorts of problems and isn’t well liked by the town’s people or his father, for that matter, because he just isn’t the boy he thought he was going to be, to his final heroic scene, the film leads us on a wonderful journey.

It is a coming of age story, about a slight boy who wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a dragon slayer but realizes that because of his peaceful nature he doesn’t have the heart to kill. His gifts of understanding and communication help his hometown to see dragons differently and by doing so he changes the relationships with everyone around him.

A movie for the whole family, you will laugh and cheer and be on the edge of your seat. It’s great to have so many family-friendly movies to choose from these days because that is what movies should be about, going together and sharing the experience of the big screen and the event. Not just sitting in front of the 52″ by yourself. It’s just not the same. So go out and see this dragon movie and have some popcorn for me.

How To Train Your Dragon official website

Join photographer CATHRYN GRIFFITH at The Galeria Cubana, 460 Harrison Avenue, Boston on Friday, APRIL 2 from 5 – 9pm for an exhibition of some of her photographs from Havana, and a book signing of her book “Havana Revisited: An Architectural Heritage” which will be on sale that night, but is being officially released next week by W. W. Norton. For more info click HERE

FREE COMMUNITY JAZZ PERFORMANCE this Saturday, APRIL 3 at the DUDLEY BRANCH LIBRARY AUDITORIUM 65 Warren Street, in Roxbury from 7 – 10pm featuring THE MAKANDA PROJECT with VOICES:

• Kurtis Rivers – alto saxophone
• Lance Bryant – tenor saxophone, flute
• Sean Berry – tenor saxophone, flute
• Dan Zupan – baritone saxophone
• Josiah Woodson – trumpet, flute
• Jerry Sabatini – trumpet, flugelhorn
• Robert Stringer – trombone
• Bill Lowe – bass trombone, tuba
• Diane Richardson – voice
• Annette Philip – voice
• Patrice Williamson – voice
• John Kordalewski – piano, arrangements
• John Lockwood – bass
• Yoron Israel – drums

For this concert, The Makanda Project’s arrangements are expanded to include a vocal ensemble. The event will also feature an interactive demonstration of how an arrangement is created from one of MAKANDA KEN McINTYRE‘s compositions.

Listen to members of the Boston Youth Symphony perform on the upcoming episode of “From the Top,” the NPR radio program featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Boston Youth Symphony performs Mozart’s Overture to “Don Giovanni” with Music Director Federico Cortese. The performance will air on 99.5 FM on Saturday APRIL 3rd at 11am and Sunday APRIL 4th at 5pm. The episode was taped before a live audience at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall on February 6th.

Join Boston Playwright’s Theatre for the NUTLab’s 2nd fundraiser Monday, APRIL 5 at 7pm, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, to raise funds for a full production of new works in the fall. For more info click HERE.

All families are invited to the 24th Annual CHARLES C. YANCEY BOOK FAIR on Saturday, APRIL 10, from 12-3pm at the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge, 24 Washington Street in Dorchester. The Yancey Book Fair has been nourishing the minds of Boston children for over two decades. This year’s theme, “Be Inspired. Read,” denotes the excitement that the Yancey Book Fair aspires to generate in reading, education and career development.

Great Cuban percussionist DAFNIS PRIETO joins DONAL FOX and his quartet at Scullers Jazz Club, APRIL 10 for two shows, 8 and10pm. For info click HERE.

The Cambridge Center for Adult Education presents NIKKI GIOVANNI, world-renowned poet, writer, activist and educator to read poetry in Harvard Square, at the First Parish Church, 3 Church Street on Saturday, APRIL 10, 6-7pm. For information click HERE.

APRIL 13 at Jamaica Way Books, The New African Company in association with The Boston Black Theater Collective presents a staged reading of “SALLY’s RAPE,” written by ROBBIE McCAULEY from 6-8pm, at 676 Centre Street Jamaica Plain. Call 617-983-3204 for information.

SONNY ROLLINS, The master tenor saxophonist, from the golden age of jazz, performs at SYMPHONY HALL, Sunday, APRIL 18 in a concert marking his 80th birthday! Born Sept. 7, 1930, Rollins first recorded in 1949 and was recognized as one of the most promising, spontaneous, and creative tenor players on the jazz scene, sought after by Miles, Monk, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Ticket info HERE or by calling 888-266-1200.

The ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER springs into Boston for five performances, APRIL 15-18, at the Citi Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street Alvin Ailey’s masterpiece, “Revelations,” will close each evening. This year’s engagement includes premieres of works by Jamison, Ronald K. Brown, and Matthew Rushing. For ticket information click HERE.

April brings encore performances of “ANNE AND EMMITT” written by Janet Langhart Cohen, as an imagined conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, Friday, APRIL 16, 10am and 8pm and Sunday, APRIL 18 at 3pm. Tickets are $5 for students and senior citizens and $10 for adults with performances at Roxbury Community College’s Mainstage, 1234 Columbus Avenue. For more information or to reserve tickets, call Pamela Green at (617) 541-5380.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Ambassador’s Caucus and the African Union, in association with the United Nations Department of Public Information, present the exhibition, “400 Years of Struggle: for Freedom and Culture” as part of the “International Day of Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.” The award-winning exhibition, with components from The New London Maritime Society, the Schomberg Library and a Haitian component of paintings and pictures from the Caribbean Cultural Center and the Haitian born artist Patricia Brintle, will be on view at the UN in New Yorkthrough APRIL 25. For more information, call 212-963-7214.

APRIL 23 through MAY 2, is JAZZ WEEK ’10: “Made in Boston, Played in Boston”. Celebrate the special role the Boston jazz scene plays as incubator and stage for some of the most creative musicians in the world. Jazz Week is coordinated by JazzBoston. For the week’s schedule of performances click HERE.

Tickets on sale now for the 2010 TANGLEWOOD JAZZ FESTIVAL taking place in September 4-5, featuring Kurt Elling, The Count Basie Orchestra, Bob James, Donal Fox, Julian Lage, Jessica Molaskey, and more. Tickets are available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org or by calling 617-266-1200.

The Boston Public Library is seeking works for its Made in Massachusetts, local filmmaker screening series held every week in 2010. Interested filmmakers should contact Kathy Dunn, Communications Department, The Boston Public Library – Copley, at 617-536-5400 x4319 for submission guidelines.

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The IRNE Awards will take place APRIL 19 at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama. A reception starts the evening off at 7pm, the awards ceremony follows at 8pm. The IRNEs recognize theatrical excellence in big theaters such as shows from Broadway and the Huntington to the small theaters that are the backbone of the theatrical scene in the Boston area.

Among this year’s nominees are the musical “Suessical” produced by the Wheelock Family Theater, “Fences” at the Huntington Theater, and “The Best of Both Worlds” (the gospel play at A.R.T. in Cambridge). Donald Byrd is nominated for his choreography of “The Color Purple,” as are several cast members for their performances and Paul Tazewell for costumes for the musical based on Alice Walker’s novel. Jacqui Parker gets a nod for her supporting performance in “A Civil War Christmas” at the Huntington and so too Uzo Aduba in the same category in that play. Crystal Fox is up for Best Actress in “Fences.” Barbara Meek is up for Best Supporting Actress in “Raisin in the Sun” at Trinity Playhouse in Providence, R.I. Company One has a number of nods.

The much anticipated evening also offers the Kenneth A. MacDonald Award for devotion to the Boston area theater over many years.

With the New England premiere of “LEGACY OF LIGHT” at the Lyric, Roach is broaching time not culture. She is bringing together stories that happen in the 18th century and the 21st. During the Age of Enlightenment, as Sir Isaac Newton was watching apples fall, another brilliant physicist, Emilie du Chatelet finds herself with child. At 42, fearing she will die in childbirth, she races to complete her research and leave her legacy in science. Meanwhile, present day scientist Olivia, unable to conceive and wondering what she will sacrifice for motherhood, arranges for a surrogate. This character, as it turns out, will pull together the past and the present in a stellar collision.

Roach’s task is to pull off the seemingly unbelievable premise that parallels converge. The effort first involves the backstage artists, her creative team. Her message to the scenic designer, the costume designer, the lighting designer, and the sound designer in particular: “it’s critical that we show the world of the 18th century and the 21st converge and collide. We sat down early this past fall to begin with that objective,” she said.

A graduate of Emerson College, Roach’s theatrical training began even earlier. Her first teacher, she says. was Vernon Blackman, who led the drama department at the Elma Lewis School of the Arts, which expanded into the National Center of Afro American Artists.

“Mr. Blackman taught me to trust my gut,” says Roach. She notes two other artists of color who influenced her. Guy Williams was a fellow student at Emerson. “Guy taught me to hold my ground.”

Later Roach met up with Thomas Grimes, with Roach a playwright and actor. “Thomas taught me to do the work.”

That she paid attention, has been evident in the success she’s had directing over the years, from “Snake Bite” with SpeakEasy, to “Yellowman” and others with New Rep, “Having Our Say,” “Old Settler,” “Crowns” and others with Lyric, “Six Rounds, Six Lessons” with Company One, “Tremonisha” for Opera Providence, and on and on.

In May, Company One will present its annual award in her name recognizing outstanding commitment to the Boston theater community. (The other award is named for David Wheeler given in recognition of an emerging talent in the Boston theater scene.)

Roach has directed out of the country (Derry, Northern Ireland bringing together women from the Catholic, Protestant and Southern communities), however, her admirable career has been in Boston. “I’m glad I’ve stayed,” she told this writer. “Boston has been very good to me. Every time I started to leave for New York or L.A. or Washington, D.C. something creative or personal kept me here.”

Roach feels that she’s been given the plays she’s suppose to direct, and that something she brings to each and everyone of them is her spirit. “I love life and I love laughter. Hopefully I am patient, and learning to be patient. I also think that life is messy and you have a choice; you can succumb or you can rise above it. Grab ahold and keep on going.”

“Legacy of Light” continues through MARCH 13. For more info call 617-585-5678 or visit online.

Official Website of the Lyric Stage

In a powerful retelling of the events that led up to the unprovoked deaths of three Black youth shot to death by a barrage of bullets from a phalanx of policemen from the national guard and state police in 1968, a film documentary methodically details the events that led to what became known as The Orangeburg Massacre.

The documentary continues with the aftermath of cover-ups and political double talk that has obscured the true story of that awful night on the campus of South Carolina State College. Told in an even handed manner through interviews and reenactment, “SCARRED JUSTICE: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968″ never harangues or over dramatizes, and is all the more emotionally moving because of its even-handedness.

The Northern Light Production, incisively produced and directed by Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson, has been picked up by public television stations across the country for airing during Black History month. California Newsreel offers the video to public schools, libraries and others for $49.95 (it is not yet available for home video).

An intense viewing experience, “Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968″ gives solid evidence on behalf of a state investigation into the cover up of a tragic event.

Official Site of the movie The Orangeburg Massacre

The talented Boston transplant has had three successes in the past couple of theater seasons here, all of them entertaining, even at moments funny, however, their emphasis is on being thought provoking takes on Black life in the context of White racism and oppression.

Company One gave us two of the dramas: The Bluest Eye based on Toni Morrison‘s novel in which an adult’s self hatred prompts tragedy for a young child and Voyeurs de Venus which inter-cut two stories: Sartjie Baartman, a 19th century African woman taken from her home and displayed as a curiosity in Paris under the derogatory nickname “the Hottentot Venus” meshed with a contemporary African American woman academic and writer wrestling with the dilemma of presenting Baartman’s story without further exploiting her.

Very recently, Underground Railroad at the Central Square Theater staged “Harriet Jacobs”, which reconfigured the plot of a slave narrative into a theatrical piece and while not one word was from the narrative, but was written by Diamond, the story was based on the Jacobs’ memoir set in ante bellum North Carolina.

By contrast in style and tone, “STICK FLY” opening FEBRUARY 19 at the Huntington’s second stage, the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA – is what Diamond calls “a family parlor play.”

The comedy drama looks at a wealthy African American clan on Martha’s Vineyard wrestling with interracial romance, sibling rivalry, and issues of class and racial identification and parental expectations.

Diamond has found that in many ways adaptation was more difficult a challenge to her as a writer than sheer invention. With, for example, the Morrison story which “people know well and love, there was a lot of pressure to honor the tone and spirit of the novel. The satisfaction in writing a stage adaptation is located in a different place than when you are enjoying making something new. It’s partly a technical pleasure certainly.”

“With “STICK FLY”, for instance, the satisfaction is to live in the daydream of making up a story,” she said.

There was a major writing challenge for Diamond, however, and one she hadn’t expected. She admits that “my first attempt at writing a ‘well made play’ was grueling, a real learning curve.” For Diamond, who was more used to letting the characters drive the plot as with “Voyeurs de Venus”, the elements she adhered to were “like Ibsen, there is an invisible fourth wall and the actors do not acknowledge the audience (in Harriet Jacobs, by contrast, actors as characters of enslaved Africans toiling in the American South spoke directly to the audience about the horrendous nature of their daily lives).”

Other considerations of the “well made” play were that the story took place in the same space and at a time that moved chronologically. “As with “All My Sons” recently at the Huntington,” she pointed out, “or Lorraine Hansberry‘s “Raisin In The Sun,” “Stick Fly” is a comedy of manners,” says Diamond, who feels humbled by “the skills it took” writing in this tradition of stage plays and grateful for the help she got from “talented dramaturges and actors” when she tried out the script in workshops.

“What started out as a heady little exercise in writing for me then became a full scale project that I worked on with as much heart and dedication as any script,” she said.

The production initially opened at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. ; “the same show picked up from there and plopped down here,” she quips.

Kenny Leon directs. “He’s great!” says Diamond about working with the fabled theater director whose recent achievements include the popular 2004 Broadway revival of “Raisin In The Sun” starring Sean (P. Diddy) Combs and this past season’s “Fences” at the Huntington which he is restaging in April for Broadway starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, Leon’s fifth revisit of the August Wilson classic.

Diamond’s high praise for Leon relies on a number of key attributes. “Technically, he knows how to direct a play and through his work with August Wilson, he has a reverence for the written word.”

“There’s nothing a playwright likes more than to hear a director say, ‘My whole goal is to make a production that looks and sounds like the play you”ve written.’”

“From the very first day of rehearsals he told the actors he loved the play and was concerned that they not ad lib but be attuned to the rhythms of the language. He understands the musicality of language.”

“Also he has a good eye and he put together an amazing cast. He works well with actors. He’s very collaborative and can hear and incorporate what others say. He’s confident and secure enough in his own vision to hear other people’s ideas and use them when they’re right. He’s pleasant, respectful, able to articulate his vision and humble in all of that,” she said.

In the funny and moving “STICK FLY”, the complexities of a well-to-do African American family come to the surface. Sparks fly when Kent LeVay brings Taylor his fiancé to the family’s luxurious Martha’s Vineyard summer home to meet his parents. Taylor, under the microscope and unaccustomed to the LeVay’s affluent life style, challenges the household dynamic. When Kent’s womanizing older brother arrives with his White girlfriend, long-hidden family secrets are revealed.

“There is an enduring love in this family,” says Diamond whose play looks at sibling rivalry and the dynamics of parents and children.

Diamond herself is an only child who spent her younger years traveling from one college town to another with her mother who is a musician and professor. “She always took me to plays and musicals,” says Diamond, who initially intended to be an actor and enrolled in Northwestern University where discouraged by the lack of roles for African American woman changed her focus to performance studies and playwriting. After graduation she immersed herself in theater in Chicago where many of her plays have been done to critical acclaim. She first visited Martha’s Vineyard as an adult and points out that the characters in “STICK FLY” are purely of her imagination.

Martha’s Vineyard has been the summer destination of affluent African Americans over the past century or so.

Three recent novels have depicted aspects of this Black experience (as did the movie “The Inkwell” so named for a beach that Black summer residents favor). Boston born Dorothy West, who was an important voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 30′s and who afterwards made Martha’s Vineyard her home, set her novel “The Wedding” in the section of Oak Bluffs’s exclusive summer colony long a stronghold of well-to-do summering Blacks. Apparently, so too did Toni Morrison with the powerful and dramatic “Love,” although Morrison doesn’t specify the setting by name. So too, did Stephen L. Carter with his run away best seller debut novel “The Emperor of Ocean Park,” a mystery that intersects two privileged worlds: upper crust families who summer on Martha’s Vineyard and the inner circle of an ivy league law school.

Diamond says the setting for “STICK FLY,” however, most resembles Edgartown, a resort spot at the other end of the island.

STICK FLY ticket information

It’s a great film for kids and a great film to see this school vacation week. The movie, directed by Christopher Columbus is based on a series of adventure and fantasy books written by Rick Riordan and we can be sure there will be many awaiting the next four films.

The official website of THE PERCY JACKSON movie

An intriguing storyline set, mostly, in the volatile 1970′s, a decade when corruption in high office (from Watergate on down) was exposed to the masses – “RED RIDING” is set in three separate years that the killer was terrorizing (based on David Pearce‘s four novels about the Yorkshire Ripper, who claimed thirteen victims before being arrested).

“RED RIDING: 1974,” “RED RIDING: 1980″ and “RED RIDING: 1983″ are each a fully formed film. But the fun thing about watching all three is seeing how seemingly minor characters at the fray of one film turn out to be very integral to the entire slew of murders. Also, the acting and storytelling is superior to just about everything being released by Hollywood studios these days. These films show how everyone is connected somehow – and , though it shows police corruption and cover ups at their most vile and destructive – these films also demonstrates how much humanity is in each person. And, no matter what a human being has experienced in life, there’s always hope.

The very different directors – James Marsh (best known for “Man On Wire”), Anand Tucker (“Shopgirl”) and Julian Jarrold (“Kinky Boots”)- bring a unique stylization to each story without confusing the viewer.

Set in drab, working class neighborhoods, with small-time hoods, cops and working class heroes interacting, the “RED RIDING” films are a superior entertainment for film lovers who appreciate solid film making and great acting. They present a harsh slice of life without the moralizing of a “message” film. Also, the viewer will be on the edge of your seat as you try to figure out the identity of the killer. You will not be able to predict the various twists and turns. Or the consistent superior film making presented here. This is a unique film presentation – one to be savored by film lovers everywhere.

More info on RED RIDING TRILOGY

JUMP THE BROOM
produced by Kena Tangi Dorsey
Ayana, a 29 year old fun loving woman, is finally settling down and getting married today. She has chosen the all around perfectly, geeky-handsome man Sean to do it with. When Ayana goes to the church to get ready, Shamar, her tall, dark, five o’clock shadow wearing ex-flame pays her a visit.

SANTA CLAUS IN BAGHDAD
produced by Raouf Zaki
In impoverished Baghdad under Saddam’s dictatorship, 16-year-old Amal hopes to regain her social status at school by volunteering to find a book as a class gift for the departing literature teacher. Meanwhile her emotionally fragile little brother becomes obsessed with the notion that a visiting uncle from America–whom he confuses with Santa Claus–will bring him toys. Ashamed to have never been able to give his son a toy, the children’s father sells some more prized family possessions and buys a little car for his son. Amal finds the perfect book in the street market and presents it to the astonished but immensely pleased teacher. Only then does she realize the irony and sacrifices that link the two gifts.

The 3-course Latin feast includes: ~ Ensalada mixto with fresh herbs, tossed in a lemon vinaigrette

~ Pasta Latina Primavera: penne pasta with chicken sausage tossed in a zesty sofrito sauce with fresh carrots, mushrooms, broccoli and green and red bell peppers topped with parmesan (vegan option: no chicken sausage).

~ Flan de leche: custard topped with whipped cream (vegan option: ensalada de frutas – mixed fruit salad)

Doors open at 5:30pm. Dinner & Dessert served at 6pm, films start at 7pm, followed by a discussion led by Nina LaNegra of The Roxbury Media Institute. Tickets are $25 per person.
Ticket info for FEB 20 DINNER & A MOVIE

Two-hundred-plus voices strong, Greater Boston’s Mystic Chorale will present “MYSTIC CHORALE CELEBRATES GOSPEL” with guest director Jonathan Singleton in the Converse Hall at Tremont Temple, 88 Tremont Street, downtown Boston, FEBRUARY 27 8pm and FEBRUARY 28 at 3:30pm. General admission tickets at $15 and $10 for senior citizens and students. For information, call 781-316-2500.

Meet the imaginative artist CULLEN WASHINGTON JR. on FEBRUARY 28 from 6-8pm when The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists extends an open invitation to attend the final day of his exhibit of “HERO’s STORY,” which explores the stereotypes, expectations, and hopes that an African American boy confronts as he grows to manhood. The reception is at the museum, 300 Walnut Avenue in Roxbury. For more info call 617-442-8614.

The musical version of the “Ugly Duckling” story “HONK!” runs at The Wheelock Family Theatre, 200 The Riverway, through FEBRUARY 28. The award winning show by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe tells a story of love and how being different can be especially rewarding. The plot is taken from the beloved Hans Christian Anderson fable. For more info click here.

AUDITIONS: The Metro Stage Company is holding non-equity auditions for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” on MARCH 1, from 7-10pm (by Appointment Only) at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre. Callbacks will be held on March 2. MSC is seeking a diverse cast of five men and four women for its June 4-12, production. All actors will receive a small stipend. To schedule an audition please contact Chris Teague, Executive Producer, at auditions@metrostagecompany.com or by calling 617-524-5013. Audition requirements listed at www.metrostagecompany.com.

Tickets on sale now for the 2010 TANGLEWOOD JAZZ FESTIVAL taking place in September 4-5, featuring Kurt Elling, The Count Basie Orchestra, Bob James, Donal Fox, Julian Lage, Jessica Molaskey, and more. Tickets are available through Tanglewoods website, www.tanglewood.org or by calling 617-266-1200.

On MARCH 4, The Roxbury Community College Foundation presents the Boston premiere of Janet Langhart Cohen’s critically acclaimed “ANNE & EMMETT,” directed by Robbie McCauley, at Roxbury Community College’s Mainstage, 1234 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury with a playwright talk back immediately following the play. For information call Angela at 617-933-7447.

Provincetown Theater Company is SEEKING ACTORS FOR A READING of “Wetu in the City” a new play by Mwalim, to be directed by Born Bi-Kim. The play requires 10 actors to play 13 characters (6 female & 7 male). Contact mwalim@gmail.com . They will be preparing the play in the Boston area and present one reading of it in Provincetown on March 10th, as well as another possible reading in the Boston Cambridge area in May. This is not a paid project, but an opportunity for aspiring and emerging actors to work on the development phase of a new play.

NU Arts Alive presents “AN EVENING WITH MAYA ANGELOU” on Friday, MARCH 26. Showtime 8pm in the Blackman Auditorium, tickets are $30, for more information call Danielle Anzaldi Roca at 617-373-3449.

Middle and high school students looking for new educational opportunities are invited to THE BOXXOUT YOUTH ORGANIZATION EXPO, on Saturday, MARCH 27. The Boxxout Youth Organization Expo is an exciting, hands-on event, where students can experience many innovative programs, interact with special guests, compete for door prizes, and learn about many great educational opportunities! Students and/or their mentors can sign student participants up for the Expo at www.boxxout.org/expo.html. Registration is required, and ends on March 17. Breakfast and Lunch will be served.

The Boston Public Library is seeking works for its Made in Massachusetts, local filmmaker screening series held every week in 2010. Interested filmmakers should contact Kathy Dunn, Communications Department, The Boston Public Library – Copley, at 617-536-5400 x4319 for submission guidelines.

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The founder of the Art of Black Dance and Music, African dance anthropologist DeAMA BATTLE of Somerville was sent recently to South Beach for a week where 140 teen artists were buffing their skills. She had been invited, all expenses paid, to give pointers to a single artist, Nayilah Antoine of Brooklyn, NY, who’d made it to the finals of the 2010 Presidential Scholars in the Arts.

Antoine started out as one of 4000 hopeful candidates for the YoungArts competition, a program of the privately funded National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, based in Miami.

By the time she was readying for the finals, she was one of one hundred and forty 17 and 18-year-olds competing. Twenty of them will go to the White House in a program that disperses $500,000 in monetary awards and eligibility for $3 million in scholarship opportunities. Past participants include actress Vanessa Williams, the executive director of the American Ballet Theatre Rachel Moore, novelist Allegra Goodman, and Tony award nominated dancer/choreographer Desmond Richardson.

First off, Antoine had to winnow done to the dance she would do before the judges. All of them were from the old Mali Empire; she chose the Mandiani.

“It’s a coming of age dance for young women,” said Battle approvingly of the traditional choreography.

Battle comments that Antoine’s strengths in this presentation are that “she jumps out and engages with the audience from start to finish. That’s what this dance is about, involving the audience.”

Battle added that as the week went on, Antoine grew stronger in her presentation. “Her face had gone blank part way through; now her facial expressions are alive throughout. And she has learned ways to slow the movement down in order to breathe properly.”

Twenty-one dancers had made it to the finals representing Classical Indian, ballet, jazz, choreography, modern, Irish Step, and tap, and there were notable coaches in each of the areas including ballet’s Edward Villella and choreographer of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Mark Godden. The nine disciplines in the arts represented were jazz, musical instruments, photography, theater (Liv Ullmann was one of the coaches), visual arts, voice, and writing.

Battle currently teaches at the Boston Conservatory of Music, Dance, and Theater, the Parkway Academy in West Roxbury, and an elders program in Cambridge through a grant from the Cambridge Arts Council. She is also archiving African rooted dances in a film documentary.

Art of Black Dance and Music website

Set in post-apocalyptic America, Washington travels West to deliver an (initially unnamed) book. He’s been doing this for thirty years – with forces against him, conspiring to end his travels. A cross between a great episode of “The Twilight Zone” and one of the more entertaining science fiction films of the 1970′s (think “The Omega Man”), THE BOOK OF ELI has lots of action, great set design, some fun, over-the-top acting (Gary Oldman), a subtle turn by Jennifer Beals, and the young Mila Kunis in a good supporting role.

Stark, serious, but never boring, and moving at a steady pace – THE BOOK OF ELI is a fun night out at the movies. The Hughes Brothers have directed with a sure hand, pulling off a great popcorn movie, with plenty of action and laughs as well (Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon as a quirky elderly couple, all too eager to invite Washington to dinner, are hilarious).

It’s unusual to have such a commercial Hollywood film that also demands one’s attention. Though there’s plenty of comic book-style violence but, in the end, THE BOOK OF ELI challenges the viewer to think of the price of one’s religious beliefs while never being heavy handed about this message. A twist at the end will take the viewer by surprise. That’s just one of many reasons to venture out into the cold to see this entertaining film.

The Official Site of The Book of Eli

“HARRIET JACOBS” website and ticket information

The Official Site of Company One and ticket information

Like Stevie Wonder in more recent times who once told this writer that songs came to him all hours of the day and night, even when he was brushing his teeth, McHugh could write music through sheer perseverance – and, indeed, he liked tidiness and order while at work.

But there were also those moments when songs would poke out uninvited from his subconscious. So he always kept a pad and pencil with him.

In the small hours of one night, however, he woke up with a song running around in his head. Blurry with sleep, he scribbled the tune on his bed sheet. Come morning, he forgot all about it, and by the time he remembered, the sheets had been whisked off to the Beverly Hill Laundry. After some frantic phone calls from his hotel room, the soiled linen was returned to him. He told the story to a reporter from the Boston Herald at the time, 1939, but without mentioning the title of the tune. Later McHugh would conveniently link the song to “I Couldn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night” written for Frank Sinatra who sang it in the 1949 movie “Higher and Higher.”

Born in 1894, the prolific writer of songs that became both pop and jazz standards, was the eldest son of the five children James and Julia McHugh raised in a home with little money in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, then an Irish American enclave.

He got his start as an office boy and go-fer at $8 a week at the Boston Opera House on Huntington Avenue (now the site of the Marino Center at Northeastern University) where his back stage experience gained him crucial expertise on what goes over well with theater audiences. He learned piano from his mother who encouraged him putting a rag time spin on songs (and before he headed for New York at age 21 to be a song plugger, he played piano at ice cream parlors on Revere Beach where the poor and middle class enjoyed themselves).

To an interesting degree, the biography is a lesson book on how to write a song (and work successfully with a lyricist such as Dorothy Fields or an arranger such as Duke Ellington who had a long professional relationship with McHugh), as well as, an insider’s history of the music business as it developed from Tin Pan Alley to the clubs in Harlem in the Jazz Age to vaudeville and on to Broadway and Hollywood (he scored some 55 films with every star from Shirley Temple to Judy Garland).

Most unusually, McHugh’s more than 500 songs appealed straight across the board so that even his first significant hit (written with Gene Austin) “When My Sugar Walks Down The Street” while recorded early on by, among others, the comb and tissue paper specialist Red Mckenzie and the London based Savoy Havana Band, was recorded by the Greenwich Village dance band of Billy Wynne (featuring “hot” trumpeter Red Nichols) and the diametrically opposite stylistically speaking African American blues queen Clara Smith and her Jazz Band.

His next hit on a par with “Sugar” broke as radio was coming in. “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me” became one of the most performed songs of all time with Louis Armstrong‘s trumpet and vocal version in 1930 leading the way. The song found its way into the repertoire of Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Count Basie and nearly every one else of note among the big names of the swing era. Later, it became one of the songs most requested of Frank Sinatra.

The Beatles explosion in 1965 lost McHugh and other composers of his ilk their centrality on the radio and elsewhere but it had been an exceptionally long run.

Good songs take on a life of their own, however. Take the 2007 mega Broadway hit “The Jersey Boys” about the career of Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons, for example, which has three McHugh songs: “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “I’m In The Mood For Love,” and “Moody’s Mood For Love” (a jazz reworking by sax player James Moody of “I’m In the Mood For Love” which he yodeled his way through – and which McHugh had to take legal action to get the royalties owed him).

Very likely, McHugh’s songs will be coming on as long as there are music lovers, and in some part thanks to Shipton’s enlightening biography which switches on the klieg lights once again for McHugh.

“I Feel a Song Coming On” link

One reason Bridges’s talent has been taken for granted is he’s not a showboat actor. His performances are subtle, from his early work in “The Last Picture Show” – the first of his four Oscar-nominated performances – and the 1973 film version of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” through “Starman”, “The Fabulous Baker Boys” and his hilarious turn in the cult favorite, “The Big Lebowski”.

Bridges has the unique gift of making viewers – even those who’ve been watching him for 40 years – believe he IS the character he’s portraying. Each turn – whether as the President of the United States (his Oscar-nominated turn in 2000′s “The Contender”)or a Silent Screen Cowboy Star (1975′s “Hearts of the West”) – it’s an honest piece of acting work. Unlike many movie stars, Bridges is able to play the man, and get past his familiarity as a film actor.

CRAZY HEART contains scenes of heartbreaking loneliness as we see Blake (four times divorced) try to make it through one more night, just so he can end it in a haze of drinking. The fact that the viewer cares about this character, who has all but given up on life, is a tribute to Bridges’ multi-layered characterization. Blake’s pride and longing for affection (even from a bar full of strangers listening to his old tunes) shows us the man he could have been and the man he still might be if he can only put down the bottle, and his desire, even in his dissipated state, for acceptance and love.

Bridges (who released a CD of his music in 2000) brings a deep wistfulness and unbridled emotion to his singing that adds to his deeply affecting work in this film. Though the film itself is familiar (has-been drunkard performer in a self-destructive mode) is overly familiar to even the most casual film viewer (think Fredric March in 1937′s “A Star is Born”), director SCOTT COOPER, in an impressive film debut, makes the story seem fresh with a fast-moving pacing and by populating his film with well-drawn supporting characters and great turns by veteran actors Colin Farrell (quite good as a former protégé of Blake’s who is now at the top of the Country-Western music scene), Robert Duvall(who played a similar Country-Western alcoholic singer in his Oscar performance, “Tender Mercies”) and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

If you like great acting, that is reason alone to catch CRAZY HEART: Jeff Bridges deserves every accolade he’s won – and surely an Oscar should be awarded for his work here. But if you’re also looking to be moved by a wonderful film, this is another good reason to see CRAZY HEART.

Crazy Heart official website

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