This is Not a Review of Spring Awakening

There are a couple of reasons why Jasper cannot review Trustus Theatre's current performance of Spring Awakening -- not the least of which is the fact that the director of the play is dating the daughter of the editor of the magazine. The fact that we can't review the play is unfortunate for a couple of reasons, as well -- not the least of which is the fact that the editor of the magazine doesn't hold anything back, and doesn't care who is dating whom.

That said, there are issues of propriety which we will respect. So, as you read, please keep in mind that this is not a review of Spring Awakening.

What this is is the story of how, thanks to the generosity of Coralee Harris, a dear friend and all around lovely person, whom Tracie Broom most aptly denominated as a bon vivant, this writer and more than one hundred other luckies had the opportunity to enjoy one of the last dress rehearsals of Spring Awakening on Wednesday night last week. It was cozy and friendly -- we sipped champagne, munched on our free popcorn, and simply took in all the youthful angst and profundity that the performance offered.

As frequent theater goers, it is unusual for us to attend a play in Columbia in which we know few of the actors, but this was the case on Wednesday night. Of course, we were very familiar with the work of the  director, Chad Henderson, who previously directed such plays as Assassins, Dog Sees God, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and more. And if you live in Columbia and don't know the work of the two people who played the parts of the adult male and female respectively, Christopher Cockrell and  Vicky Saye Henderson , I'm sorry, but it's my duty to inform you that your life would be so much better than it is if you did.

The new faces were universally young and unaffected; their voices, powerful and eager. From the closeness of our second row seats we were easily caught up in the almost palpable atmosphere that their combined energies created -- it was like some kind of youthful and frustrated pheromone. We could sense how thrilled and terrified they were to be on the stage, and how delighted they were by their own abilities to overcome their terror and giddiness and give us a professional performance. While I would usually never recommend sitting so closely, this was one time that proximity paid off.

The contrast of the young and eager cast against the laid-back and experienced persona of the band also needs to be noted. With local legends like professor of Jazz, Bert Ligon, and loyal Trustus stage musical director, Tom Beard, on deck, we expected the music to be exceptional, and it was. The gentlemen were joined by Jeremy Polley on guitar, James Gibson on bass, Greg Apple on percussion, Dusan Vukajolvic on cello, Jerrod Haning on viola, and Jennifer Hill on violin. Their steady, subdued-but-excellent sounds seemed at times to perturb the young actors who, when singing seemed to try to channel to the band the message to play louder and faster so they could metaphorically roll down the windows on the theatre and let their voices and spirits soar.

Our favorite part of the performance happened before the play itself got underway. Director Henderson had his actors frolicking about the stage, as young people are wont to do, as the audience arrived.  Then, they took their places perched atop chairs that were literally hanging off the wall at random heights and order. It was as if the young people had been set on shelves -- out-of-the-way, out of sound, out of mind -- until the performance began, and the young actors were finally in charge -- taking the stage and, with sometimes heart-breaking results, taking control.

It is the little things, like suspending the children on the wall at the beginning of the show, and two young and damaged women singing together and ultimately taking one another's hands in courage, that touch people so much about Spring Awakening. It's the authentic tears of young Patrick Dodds who plays Moritz and the Judy Collins-like voice of Adrienne Lee's Ilse. It's the sad realization that the premise of the story -- adults being fearful and unwilling to affirm the agency of a new generation, and the individuals within it, because of the fear of their own authentic selves -- is just as applicable in modern America as it was in late 19th century Germany.

No, this is not a review of Spring Awakening -- clearly it was a night to remember -- but you can find an excellent assessment by Jasper's own staff writer, August Krickel by clicking right here.

(Like reading Krickel? Tune in tomorrow for his reflections on, for many of us, the day the music died.)

The Aura of Things (or the work of installation art) by Ed Madden

 

I’ve been thinking about things lately.  That is, I’ve been thinking about things.  Material objects, physical things.  How do things mean?

In part I’ve been thinking about things because of the grotesque consumerism of Black Friday, the greed of the season, and the ways that our culture encourages us to think love and happiness can be approximated and revealed in material objects.  (Jewelry commercials seem especially icky examples of this.)

But I’ve also been thinking of things because of two installation art exhibits I saw during the December Jingle & Mingle on Main Street art crawl: Susan Lenz’s “Hung by the Chimney with Care” at S&S Art Supply and Amanda Ladymon’s “Kindred Harvest” at Frame of Mind.

Installation art is tricky.  So much depends not on the idea, nor the execution, but on the things used. Socks, buttons, old cigar boxes, a Parcheesi board, yarn—things with little value, but weighted, in these projects, with meanings extraneous to the objects but integral to our perception of the art.  A useful word for this for me is aura, not necessarily in the sense that Walter Benjamin uses it to talk about the almost religious authenticity we feel (or once felt, he insists, before photography destroyed it all) for a work of art.  (And let me say here that I’m not an art theorist or an expert on Benjamin, just someone who likes to think about how artworks affect me, and why.)  In both of these installations, the objects had to be more than what they were, and our response depended on the associations those things held in our perceptions, our reactions.

Ladymon’s work depends on our emotional associations with childhood board games and family photos, even those not our own: a couple on a beach, a little girl on a bike, a family portrait, a wedding, an ultrasound fetal image.  I was moved by this display, but must admit that I wondered if there might be a fundamental disconnect in my experience of this work about familial, geographic, cultural connections, since these connections were marked not only by the overlay of photos over maps and images but also by the web of yarn connecting or not connecting these images to the Parcheesi board.  I’ve never played Parcheesi.  Although I have my own emotional and cultural associations with board games, and though I understand her explanation of how our lives and our families are created through unpredictable sequences of events, I sensed I might inevitably be missing something important about this work, since its heart was a resistant object, a thing that I didn’t understand.

Lenz, more perversely, demanded our attention to detritus, leftovers, garbage.  In a piece she produced earlier this year, "Two Hours at the Beach," Lenz incorporated all the garbage she found in two hours on Folly Beach into an art quilt, making an ecological statement as well as a fascinating textile piece.  (The quilt is currently part of a window display at Tapps.)  If that earlier work raised litter to the level of art, Lenz amps up that process with the new installation, layering cultural and emotional meanings (including the kitsch, the cliché, emotional garbage) onto our experience of what is basically, a bunch of junk.

An artshop window filled with old socks, scattered buttons, and a sad artificial Christmas tree with shabby tinsel would be a perverse display, were it not for the explanation prominent in the window: that these things came from the laundry of the old state mental hospital, and that her impulse—foregrounded in the title, a line from that bit of sentimental Christmas kitsch, “The Night Before Christmas”—was to emphasize the idea that not everyone gets to celebrate Christmas with family, either because they can’t be there, or because they’re not welcome there.  Junk here is transformed by our knowledge of its origins, like the beach trash but with a lot more cultural and political baggage.  Not just the mental hospital but also the cultural fictions of family that demand kitsch-ified versions of the holiday that don’t match the experiences of many.  Even our possibility for sympathy was registered in cliché—“There but by the grace of God go I,” a statement Lenz rendered on images of the hospital in cut-up letters like a ransom note.

But there were those socks, all those socks.  Parodies of the clichéd hung stockings.  Anonymous, leftover, but also registers of the authentic, the individual.  If this installation was filled with junk, it reminded me of the ways our culture treats certain people as junk: the mentally ill who are forced onto the streets by budget cuts, those whose lives don’t fit the cheery fictions of the season—the divorced, the orphaned, the rejected.

The window was so weird and powerful for me, filled with junk and cliché but so insistent that the viewer find a capacity for empathy—so insistent on an emotional authenticity in the aura of those things.  And so much depended on the origin of those things.  (Would the window make sense without that explanation in the window?)

I say all this not to diminish these projects.  I loved both, spent time with both, took my partner by to see both when he made it down after doing time eating over-salted food at some office party at a Vista sports bar.

What we do with things, how we think about things, the aura of things—this is part of how art works.

I have an artwork in my office at home: a page ripped from an old book, the poem “Sad Mementoes,” the first words of which are “Bereaved and forlorn.”  Other words are difficult to make out, since the page has been distressed with electric tape.  It’s an object marked by the process of erasure: lighter color, roughened texture, where the paper’s foxing and the poem’s ink have been lifted off the page with tape.  Above the title there is an image of a statue from a photo proofsheet.  Affixed to the page with a remnant of that black tape is pressed botanical specimen.

The work of Barry Jones, MFA student at USC back in the mid-1990s when I first came to the university, it is, for me, a haunting piece.  I don’t have to know that it is about his brother, or mental illness, or a book he found at a local antique shop for it to make sense, though those associations are now part of what it is and how it means.

Put a bone in a box—I’m thinking of my tenth-grade exhibit of animal skulls found on the farm—and it’s an object.  Call it “Reliquary,” and suddenly bones and boxes are weighted with a different kind of meaning—emotions, intimations of mortality.  They mean at a different register, not because of the objects but because of the aura of associations we have now for those objects.

As I type this, I’m wearing my father’s grey and black plaid flannel shirt, its literal warmth surely augmented by the emotion I associate with its wearing.  He passed away earlier this year.  He didn’t speak to me for almost a decade, literally, after I came out as a gay man, and I didn’t go home for Christmas for the past 16 years.  I spent three months earlier this year helping with his hospice care.  On my bookshelf there are three tiny plastic cups.  Clutter to anyone else, litter to another, but to me, a memory: one of those times that folks from church brought by the ritual bread and wine (crackers and grape juice), and we drank from those cups, me, my mother, and my father, lying in his hospital bed.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about things.  What we do with things.  How they mean.

-- Ed Madden

Mingle and Jingle -- Where Credit is Due

Jasper apologizes for not sharing this sooner, but better late than never ...

Mark Plessinger, owner of Frame of Mind and originator of First Thursdays on Main, was the guy who got Mingle and Jingle started as an ARTS EVENT back in the day. We keep hearing all this talk about it being a retail event now -- and, well good, as long as folks are buying art. Jasper likes growth and progress, but we also believe in giving credit where credit is due AND we like being true to original missions and goals.

Mark has done an excellent job of explaining what's going on in his regular First Thursdays on Main blog.

So come on out to Mingle and Jingle tonight, visit some shops sure, but remember that the art is why this whole party got started.

Support your local artists --Give Art this Christmas.

Hung By the Chimney With Care, an installation by Susan Lenz

I know, I know. The weather is getting nippy. You've got a million things to do toward getting ready for the holidays and/or ending the semester. You're behind on sleep and ahead on stress. And just when you were getting used to it being November, damned if December didn't sneak up behind you and go boo. You may be thinking to yourself that, given what a good patron of the arts you are in general, this particularly busy First Thursday in December might be one that you don't really have to attend.

Think again.

Even if you aren't a sap for the holidays like we are at Jasper, if you're an arts lover, this First Thursday -- also known as Mingle and Jingle on Main -- is one event that you really don't want to miss.

We wrote yesterday about Amanda Ladymon's new work, Kindred Harvest -- which is more than enough to go out in the cold for -- but we are equally excited about the multi-artist exhibition at Anastasia & FRIENDS (featuring local arts celebs such as Virginia Scotchie and Susan Lenz) as well as the Tapp's Arts Center Winter Mix, guest curated by Jeremy Wooten and showing work by a whole slew of local artists including Nikolai Oskolkov, Alex Smith, and Fausto Pauluzzi -- not to mention the good folks in the Art Studios in the Arcade at 1332 Main Street including Eileen Blyth, Richard Lund, Debra Paysinger, Bettye Rivers and more.

But one of the main reasons to come out into the cold on Thursday night is to see new work by fiber and installation artist, Susan Lenz.

Though reluctant to admit it, Susan Lenz is an artist who knows no fear, recognizes few obstacles, and to top it all off, somehow has the energy of a 14-year-old and a work ethic that would send Orwell's Boxer the workhorse early to the glue factory in shame. (Witness the fact that Lenz will be participating in no less than three exhibitions on Thursday night.)

Her new work, installed in the windows and interior of S & S Art Supplies on Main Street, is entitled Hung By the Chimney With Care, and has been in the making since last spring when Lenz, ever the forager and scavenger, discovered an abandoned pile of socks in a laundry facility on the grounds of the South Carolina State Mental Hospital. While most people would have looked at the pile and seen crazy people-laundry, Lenz looked at it and saw art. Lenz writes about the installation here.

We haven't seen this new installation yet, but we've seen almost everything else that Lenz has done -- and she's done installations and shown in exhibitions far and wide mind you, (and if you're wondering why Jasper hasn't written about her yet, rest assured that she and her work will hold a place of prominence in the March 2012 issue of Jasper, subtitled All Women -- All Arts). So while we may not know what exactly to expect from Lenz's latest project, we do know that, based on the history of her work, we should expect a thorough and fully realized installation with fastidious attention to detail; in all probability, a somber message; but, knowing Lenz as we do, likely in a whimsical form.

For these reasons and more, we look forward to seeing you on Main Street on Thursday night -- most likely in front of the windows of S & S Art Supplies.

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“Kindred Harvest” -- new works by Amanda Ladymon

kin·dred   [kin-drid]  noun or adj:

a person's relatives collectively; kinfolk; kin.

b.group of persons related to another; family, tribe, or race.

har·vest   [hahr-vist]  noun:

5. the result or consequence of any act, process, or event.

 ~~~

Local artist Amanda Ladymon will be showing some interesting new works during Mingle and Jingle on Main Street this week, though not at her home gallery at S & S Art Supply. Ladymon's work can be found down the street as an exciting installment in the FOM series at the Frame of Mind optical shop.

The new exhibition is composed of mixed media paintings on wood panel and on paper. Ladymon used a new photo transfer method in incorporating old photographs, dating back to the early 1920's through the 1980's. Incorporating biological drawings, she creates a metaphorical dialogue between the event or person in the photo and what is being implied through form and line. While it ranges from subtle to obvious, the shapes are consistently referring to reproductive processes in the female body, starting from the cellular level.

Upstairs at FOM, a special mixed-media assemblage and found object installation occupies part of the loft space.

According to Ladymon, life in so many ways, is much like a game of parcheesi. So many decisions, mistakes, or unexpected encounters happen with just the "toss of the dice." Each decision one player makes will inevitably affect the other players. Ladymon writes that she feels that life parallels this "game" in that, for every action, there is an effective chain of events that lead to everything else, whether we win or lose.

Over twenty-five altered cigar boxes, hang suspended and glowing from the inside. Each box contains photographic images layered with maps and other images, revealing an important clue as to where the photo was taken, or perhaps what memories are tied with that person or specific event taking place in the photo. Some of the boxes are connected with a line of string to different areas on the game board, signifying the connection between not only the people, but the events themselves.

For a better understanding of what brought Ladymon to this work, please read her artist statement below --

“Having recently tied the knot, my husband and I are weaving a new path and creating our own family, which makes me reflect back on my family and its many generations of strong women who held it together. This body of work investigates the many complexities of family and the roles played within those relationships. The mother and child bond and reproductive process is one strong influence on this work. Our upbringing affects us all, especially in determining what kind of person we turn out to be. Within this body of work, there are many photographic images used to reflect on my family’s past – all the photographs and drawings were acquired directly from my family albums. The many shapes and organic drawings interspersed amongst the photographic images represent the connective energy between each person, whether it was the memory of loving or possibly more of a longing. The use of circular forms continues to symbolize the connective relationship we have with one another in a biological or conceptual sense.

 “Another theme I have touched on is the idea of how each moment and decision in life affects another. While I generally feel repulsed by the images and ideas of war, I cannot deny the fact that if WWII hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t exist. World War II was a monumental turning point in America, in which millions of families were created due to strangers meeting and falling in love. My grandparents had such a story. They met while he was recovering from a broken back after his plane crashed.  He was a southern boy from Georgia and she was an adventurous, strong-willed California girl. With every little decision, mistake, and circumstantial event, they met and created a family. This sequence of events eventually lead to my birth and the strong influence their marriage continued to have on me throughout my adolescence and early adulthood.”

Of Ugly Sweaters, Funny Tunes & Smart Fundraising

It's not that Jasper doesn't care for fashion -- he adores a dapper chapeau and a neatly cinched windsor or pratt -- it's just that Jasper doesn't require haute couture of his friends or neighbors and is, in fact, a bit more inclined toward the comfies than the prissies in his own personal trousseau. And, of course, he only wears natural fibers. So the old boy was a bit taken aback Friday last when, in order to attend a night of merry-making at his beloved Trustus Theatre, he was implored to don garb specifically in the category of ugly -- an ugly sweater, to be precise.

It was all part of the plan to raise money for Trustus via their Ugly Sweater Karaoke Night in which lucky patrons paid a mere $10 at the door, filled their cups with $1 and $2 beer, then spent the evening laughing at one another as well as themselves. And while there were many chuckles to be enjoyed over the course of the evening -- both at the sweaters and the singing -- the joke was on the hosts because the impromptu vocals of several of the stage regulars was nothing short of stellar. Special kudos to Kim Harne, Kevin Bush, Terrance Henderson, and Walter Graham -- Jasper even swooned a bit, when the latter took the stage.

Congrats to the young bloods at Trustus for asking for about the only kind of money people can give these days, and giving folks a fun, silly, and easy-going way of giving it.

And now, for a look at those (gasp!) sweaters!

(With thanks to Kristine Hartvigsen for her photography.)

Horizontal Hold

Last month when Jasper Magazine conducted its First Annual Pint and Poem Walk, a few folks asked for a copy of this poem, so here it is for those who asked (and those who didn't.) It's an amusing, odd piece I wrote under the influence of pain medicine after my eardrum ruptured. I was deaf in that ear for nearly a month. Anyway, here goes: horizontal hold

narcotics kill the pain

my mind a barren pool rusty ladder descends into earth and weeds

three lesbians gather wood together they build a Frank Lloyd Wright doghouse

monogamy -- monotony one of them is cheating on her husband

i have weird dreams of my dead father a fire engine Leonard Nimoy and a 19 percent raise

my carpet is the state fair for roaches city pigeons die quietly on my windowsill heads folded neatly into wings

loose audio tape lies in a tangled pile at my feet

i am openly seduced glistening nude in hues of violet by a body without a face

amplified pounding in my head clock ticking blood pumping machine-driven raucous vacuum

find me, bring me down where I can feel again

my antenna flails in the wind please slide on a tennis ball and help ride me of all this static

-- Kristine Hartvigsen

On Jasper Issue #2 -- a message

A Message from Cindi: By now I hope that most of you have had the opportunity to take a look at the newest edition of Jasper -- The Word on Columbia Arts. We released the new copy on Tuesday, November 15th, and have been steadily distributing it throughout the week. Unfortunately, being the mom & pop kind of shop that we are, we don't have a large van or a crew of delivery persons to make distribution simple and efficient. But we do have a list and we're checking it twice, so if a stack of Jaspers has not materialized in your gallery, boutique, or restaurant space yet, no worries. Monday will come and your magazines will, too.

I do want to take a moment and comment on this, the second issue of Jasper. It's a little different from issue #1.

The first difference you may notice is the cover. Heyward Sims, our design editor, came up with the cool look of the magazine cover being torn away to expose the art living on the inside. I like the way the reader opens the magazine to find the full image - in this case, Thomas Crouch's American Crow, waiting right there in all it's glory. (Visit www.jaspercolumbia.com to see more of Crouch's work.)

Some of you also may have noticed that the magazine is a little heftier. That's because, in our efforts to give Columbia artists their due, we increased the number of pages from 48 to 56 and plan on continuing with this trend.  There's no shortage of stories -- we just need the pages to write them on.

We also added two new departments to this issue. Jasper Takes Notice and Day Jobs. Of the two, I'm most excited about Day Jobs.

I fear that, too often, people on the outside of the arts community fail to realize how difficult it is to be and declare oneself an artist. Very few folks can do this without relying on a day job to help them make ends meet. And in the process, these artists become two-fold contributors to our culture -- via their day jobs and their work as artists.

I'm tired of folks who aren't in the know making assumptions about the lifestyles of artists. Of all the people I know, artists are almost universally the hardest working. Their art isn't a luxury -- it's a necessity; and they make sacrifices for it in hours of sleep, dollars earned, and relationships untended that those of us who just love art, rather than create it, will never know. Dammit.

Our other new department, Jasper Takes Notice, allows us -- sometimes with the help of advisers -- to shine a little light of attention on a fresh and new local artist who has caught our collective eye. Jasper's first Newly Noticed Artist is Rachel Borgman, a student at USC. We were most taken by Rachel's warm and glowing color palette and the Old World aesthetic she brings to her work. We don't want to take our eyes off of Rachel as she grows and matures as an artist.

Of course, you'll likely find other tweaks and turns in this issue of the magazine that weren't there in the last. While we want you to be comfortable with our pages, we never want you to be bored -- so expect things to shake up a bit every now and then.

But there are a few things that will never change:

Our  promise to release a magazine every other month on the 15th of the month (unless the 15th falls on a weekend in which case we'll release it the Thursday before)* just like we said we would; and,

Our commitment to the principle that those of us who endeavor on this magazine do so for one overriding reason -- it's not about our egos, or the writing or the photography or the design; it's not about the magazine itself. It is about the art and the fact that, because of it, Columbia is a better place to live than it would be without it. We're simply proud to be a part of the process.

That said, we'd like to know what You think about the magazine. What would you like to see more or less or? Who would You recommend Jasper to take notice of? What have we not written about that you would like to see in our pages? Write us at DearJasper@jaspercolumbia.com -- we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading friends -- please keep in touch.

*The Jasper January 2012 issue releases on Thursday, January 12, 2012 with a party at the Art Studios at the Arcade on Main Street

Review -- August Krickel on Workshop Theatre's The Dixie Swim Club

Jasper has a thing for feisty women of a certain age, especially when they periodically reunite to do some female bonding, and to recharge their collective vitality.  The reunion going on at Workshop Theatre isn’t just the one we see on stage in The Dixie Swim Club, which opened to a packed and appreciative house this past Friday, but also the reunion of veteran director Cynthia Gilliam and some of Columbia's favorite actresses.  Depicting four girls-only beach weekends stretching over several decades, Workshop's new production is strong on laughs and characterization, a little bit less so on depth and substance, but you enjoy the performances of the five leads so much, that's all that matters.  

The script (by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, i.e., the team responsible for numerous down-home community/regional theatre favorites like the Dearly Beloved/Futrelle Family trilogy) introduces us to five gal pals who have kept their friendship going long after the heyday of their championship college swim team.  Once a year, all spouses, children and telephones are banished, and the quintet meet at a beach house in the Outer Banks, with the expected results. The framework is part Same Time, Next Year, part Big Chill, with liberal doses of Designing Women and Steel Magnolias, but it works, thanks to excellent casting and direction.

Four of the five are recognizable types:  Barbara Lowrance plays the flirtatious and often-married Lexie, Leigh Stephenson plays the former team captain Sheree, Andi Cooper plays the career woman Dinah, and Drucilla Brookshire plays the Southern-fried Vernadette. Tracy Rice has the biggest challenge as Jeri Neal, who reinvents herself several times in the course of the play. In the hands of less seasoned actresses, these roles could be quite stereotypical and derivative: Lexie is a more vulnerable version of Sex and the City's Samantha, attorney Dinah is basically Miranda, preppy and optimistic Sheree is a variation on Charlotte, while long-suffering yet wisecracking Vernadette is more like Roseanne's sitcom character.  (That three fairly collegiate types would be this close to two fairly rural country girls is a bit of a stretch, but not overly distracting.)  Likewise, the plot doesn't forge any new territory; you can pretty much guess in advance what sort of challenges five friends will face as they age from 44 to 77.  There will be marriages and divorces, children and grandchildren, issues with careers and health, and ultimately, as with any group of friends, someone will be the first to pass on.  I doubt I'm giving away any plot spoilers when I reveal that through it all, their friendship is the one rewarding constant on which they can depend. Thankfully, Gilliam has cast the right performers to make the evening a showcase for their acting skills.

A few weeks ago, I noted that many of the Midlands' finest performers from the past few decades were gathered together for Jim Thigpen's swan song at Trustus; just about everyone who missed out on being in that cast turns up here.  (In fact, Gilliam directed a number of these actresses in a similar show, Ladies of the Alamo, several decades ago at Workshop, and the only Alamo alums not in this were onstage a mile away down at Trustus!)   Top honors have to go to Brookshire, who takes what could have been a stock, down-home comic relief character and makes her believable, while getting some of the biggest laughs of the evening.  While the storyline is fairly thin, the script is replete with classic, quotable one-liners, as when Vernadette declares that she "never knew true happiness until I got married, and then it was too late," or when Lexie reveals that she gave her ex "the thinnest years of my life." Actually, this is the sort of show where, believe it or not, references to divorce, infidelity, even early-stage dementia can become jokes. For me the tenderest moment was when Stephenson's eternally youthful ex-athlete breaks into tears not because of some tragedy, but upon realizing that she's going to be a grandmother.  Another highlight (and a perfect audition piece or monologue for someone looking) is Vernadette's defiant and hilarious defense of biscuits, deep fat fryers, and the Southern way of life - this actually got a huge round of applause in the middle of the scene on opening night.  All five play a tad younger than their actual age as the play begins, and define their progression through the years more with their voices and physicality than actual make-up (although Cherelle Guyton's wigs are extremely believable and help to define both age and personality.)

Randy Strange's ultra-realistic set is one of the best I can recall in recent years at Workshop. The show wisely avoids too many references to specific times or places (in fact, it could probably be done fairly well on a bare stage with a few chairs) but Strange has gone all-out, crafting a believable beach house setting.  Something that I really admired was the detail lavished on a screened-in porch at stage left, which doesn't really figure into any plot elements, but makes for a familiar and credible feel.  Chuck Sightler's sound design is subtle and effective, with passing noises (thunder, rain, a car horn) coming from the right direction, and often muted, not distracting from the dialogue.  A minor quibble would be a lot of wasted space above the set, which could have been used for projected images of sand dunes and sea oats, or perhaps to suggest changing climate (clouds, storms, the sun, etc.)

In the program, Gilliam notes that this production is not great dramatic literature, but I'd say that she and the cast nevertheless give it their all, as if it were.  The Dixie Swim Club, as above, is a showcase for the skills of its cast and director, and Columbians who have followed them over the years will enjoy seeing the team back together again.   The Dixie Swim Club runs through Sat, Dec. 3rd; contact the Workshop Box Office at 799-6551 for ticket information.

~ August Krickel

Jasper Issue 2 Release Event Music & David Adedokun

We here at Jasper are super-stoked that David Adedokun, a local singer/songwriter who often goes under the name The Daylight Hours, is headlining, and curating, the musical performances at the release of Vol. 1, No. 2 of our magazine.

As long time fans of David A., we want to tell you exactly why you should be excited too.

While it’s been awhile since we’ve heard new tunes from Mr. A (although we hear he has a bunch of new ones he’s ready to play on Tuesday), his 2007 debut How To Make A Mess of Things was, in fact, a stunning display of lyrical prowess and pop sensibility that we still count as one of our all-time favorite local releases. The songs on the record are performed by a stripped down-yet-emphatic backing band that largely leave the spotlight for Adedokun’s soaring voice, strong melodies and clear-headed (and occasionally cynical) meditations on relationships, true love, faith, and (on the closing “Old #7”) the bottle.

Mr. A has the local indie-pop act Dead Surf and singer/songwriter Dylan Dickerson opening up for him inside 701 Whaley, with Tom Hall & the Plowboys taking over the outdoors deck.

Come celebrate some great music in addition to all the great art covered in Jasper Magazine, No. 2!

-- Kyle Petersen

(Kyle Petersen is the Music Editor for Jasper -- The Word on Columbia Arts. Read more of Kyle's work at www.jaspercolumbia.net.)

Thanks to Dan Cook & the Free Times for giving One Book, One Columbia a nice welcome for 2012

With much appreciation to Free Times editor, Dan Cook, Jasper is re-posting his Arts Beat blog from Friday November 11th, which is an excellent example of how to whip up enthusiasm about something of which Columbians have a right to be proud -- reading and the second year of our One Book, One Columbia program.  Read below for more info via Dan.

~~~

One Book Program Seeks Reading Advocates

by Dan Cook, November 11th 02:57pm

Spearheaded by City Councilwoman Belinda Gergel, the One Book One Columbia program was launched in April with the goal of promoting not only literacy, but also community dialogue. The idea was simple: Get as many people in the city as possible to read the same book at the same time, and then get them talking about it.

The book that launched the program, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, served as a starting point for conversations about history, family, race, religion, education and much more. (See the Free Times story "Can a Book Get Columbians Talking?" for more background on the program.)

Now it's time for the launch of the 2012 One Book program. On Dec. 13 at 5 p.m., the Richland County Public Library will host an orientation for reading advocates; advocates are volunteers who agree to read the book and promote the program within their own ciricles of friends, acquaintances and co-workers.

Interested in being a reading advocate for the One Book program? Contact Gergel at bfgergel@columbiasc.net by Dec. 5.

As for what book has been chosen for the 2012 One Book program, you'll just have to wait ... the title will be announced at the Dec. 13 event.

May Evans Kirby & Stepson, Staff Sergeant Richard Kirby, Share Poetry on This Veterans' Day

Through the magic of social media, Jasper had the opportunity to read a lovely poem this morning, written by a loyal and loving member of the Columbia's arts community, May Evans Kirby. May Weatherwax Evans married local musician, attorney and ne'er-do-well Bentz Kirby on December 12, 2009 when Bentz's son Richard was 24 years old.

She and Richard have been getting to know one another ever since.

She writes, "This morning, my stepson and Bentz's son, Richard Kirby, Jr., posted a poem on his wall. He is a Staff Sergeant in the Air Force and is currently serving in Afghanistan. The poem took my breath away. We chatted on Facebook, and we talked about how much work can go into writing a poem. I told him Worthy [Evans -- May's brother] told me his pieces are always in the works, which made me feel better."

May continues, "I got to know Richard a little better this morning. Thank God for Facebook, Bentz Kirby (for the making of Richard and the marrying of me) and all the amazing gifts each of us has, and what a blessing it is when they are shared."

Here is the poem May shared with Richard this Veteran's Day morning, and below that, the poem Richard wrote which inspired her to share her own.

The Wall

"Let tyrants shake their iron rods..." I became my fifth-grade self when I heard the band playing ... the hymn I once loved.

Blue eyes stare at me from under a cap of blond curls, A reminder of the wall names as young children who also once stood wondering.

As his parents lift their beloved's name from the cold black stone, they boy and I watch each other- I think he wonders why he is there. The shame of knowing makes me look away.

Carnations weep from the granite base, A sad irony, this beautiful statuary and the ravenous war which engulfed young men and spat out undending casualties.

I cry because I know, and the little boy does not, of the many lists (not nearly as beautiful) already made, and the others yet to come.

I cry again when the music stops, and the lone last band member walks away, instrument and chair in hand. ~May Kirby, 2006

A Fleeting Dream...

I sit upon a string unwinding And remember times that are behind me Of love, of hate, and wasted days Of the straight and narrow, of wandered ways Times of cheer and times of woe And forward to the times unknown On I move, seeking my Eleanor My dream to hold forever more

Still I wait, my thoughts roam free I've consider long, how things could be If everyone could see as I Keep those close they push aside Yet only thine-self one can control Even that bears a heavy toll For the pain that resides in ones own heart Can tear a man's world apart

Though time may heal your mortal coil The demons left inside will kill your soul Of this I pray that all will see And know how true friends should be Still it matters not the feeling felt You can only play what cards are dealt.

~ Richard Kirby

(May Evans Kirby is originally from Alexandria Virginia. When she is not writing poetry she is a customer support rep at a local educational software company.)

Book It to Main on Saturday

I remember the first time I heard eboniramm, the local jazz & blues poet-performer, at a literary event.  That voice, that presence, that easy movement between gospel and blues, between song and poem, between joy and pain.  Stunning. She's on the line up of remarkable poets and performers scheduled for Bookin' It On Main: A Celebration of Black Writers, set for this Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in and around the Columbia Museum of Art.  Also on the line up is the launch of Home Is Where, a collection of poetry by African American writers edited by Kwame Dawes.  This is an unprecedented collection of writing by a real range of poets, including winners of the National Book Award and Ansfield-Wolf Award and participants in the Cave Canem workshops.  Beautiful work, politically important, and, you can get a copy on Saturday at the festival (and get lots of the participating writers to sign it as well).

Here's Sharon Strange, one of the writers scheduled for Saturday, reading her poem "Unforgettable" on NPR.

Eighteen of the country's finest poets — all of them featured in the new anthology —will be reading Saturday.  They'll be joined by comic book artists, musicians, the Richland Northeast GAP Choir, and local storyteller Darion McCloud (whose acting and directing work many of us have seen with Trustus Theatre and the critically acclaimed NiA Company, our local multi-ethnic theatre company).

There will be readings, writing workshops, book signings, music.  There's also a BYOB - Bring Your Own Book (not beer!) for younger children, during which children who bring a book can have it read aloud.

Here's the schedule of readings, all in the Columbia Museum of Art:

10 a.m. Porchia Moore Joyce Rose-Harris Michele Reese Howard L. Craft Glenis Redmond

11:45 a.m. celeste doaks eboniramm Lenard D. Moore Linda Beatrice Brown

1:30 p.m. Candace Wiley Nichole Gause Stephanie Suell Monique Davis

3 p.m. Sharan Strange Tanure Ojaide Earl Braggs Monifa Jackson KING Shakur

A ground-breaking anthology and a day full of performances and readings.  This promises to be an amazing event!

On the Wings of a Snow White Dove ...

It was a Saturday night back in September at Bill’s Music Shop & Pickin’ Parlor, and the place had the feel of a great big family picnic. There were laughter and hugs. Small children scampered here and there. A long table was filled with covered-dish staples, and folks were unpacking guitars, banjos, and fiddles.

A hush fell over the crowd when someone said the guest of honor was on his way. Cameras were readied, kids were shushed, and when the doors to the Pickin’ Parlor swung open, in stepped Bill Wells, the man who has championed bluegrass music in South Carolina for the past 26 years."

That's how I began my column a few weeks ago for the new issue of Jasper, which will be released next week. I'd heard that Bill was suffering from stage-four melanoma and was in a bad way. I'd known Bill for more than 20 years, and a friendlier, more humble person you'd never meet. In a small way, I wanted to pay tribute to the man who raised awareness of bluegrass in the Midlands and gave pickers and grinners a place to call home on Meeting Street in West Columbia for more than two decades.

Bill died yesterday, and his passing has left a hole in the heart of the Columbia music community. Bill was steadfast in his devotion to the music he loved, and for him, pure acoustic bluegrass music was the highest art there is. I'm sure he's circling around a single microphone up in heaven right now with Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt, having a good ol' gospel sing. Rest in peace, old friend.

Bill Sings Life's Evening Sun here.

Someday We'll Meet Again Sweetheart

Listen to Bill sing more here.

-- Mike Miller is associate editor at Jasper --The Word on Columbia Arts

www.jaspercolumbia.com

(To read Mike's column on Bill, please pick up a copy of Jasper Vol. 1 No. 2 available throughout Columbia and the Midlands on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011.)

Show Preview: Free Times Music Crawl

 

Every year Columbia’s (rather under-appreciated) alt. weekly puts on a locals-centered music festival designed to illustrate just how much music gets made around these parts. This year, the crawl spans 2 days, features 41 bands, and takes place across 6 stages—all of which means any reasonably interested music fan is gonna have a hard time not finding some local music to blow their socks off. With so many options though, how does one choose where to be and when? Well, this week’s Free Times has provided extensive coverage to give you a feel for the bands here, but we thought we’d also tell you what Jasper recommends…

Friday Night: Arts & Draughts at the Columbia Museum of Art

This is the easy night, since none of the bands overlap. However, Jasper would like to HIGHLY recommend coming out tonight for the following reasons: 1) Arts & Draughts is always a good time—good beer on tap, the Bone-In BBQ food truck will be there, and you are supporting our thoroughly awesome art museum, 2) Jasper’s editor-in-chief is giving a unique perspectives tour of the museum’s permanent collection tour (see previous blog here), and 3) these bands are just awesome.  The night kicks off at 7 pm with a great buzz band out of Denver, CO, The Lumineers, who remind us of The Head and the Heart mixed with Mumford & Sons.

Listen to the Lumineers here.

Following them up are Columbia’s own Say Brother, who play amped-up blues and country tunes with punk rock fervor.

Listen to Say Brother here.

Mac Leaphart and his Ragged Company take the stage at 9 pm, and Leaphart’s songs are written with the poignancy and humor of John Prine, but this a band that takes it cues from Gram Parsons and The Rolling Stones.

Listen to Mac Leaphart here.

And, most, importantly, South Carolina’s most badass musical duo closes the show, Charleston’s Shovels & Rope. I could go on for pages about Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, the husband-and-wife team who power through their amazing songs with minimal accompaniment in a way that is simply breathtaking. Seriously, you only need to hear Ms. Hearst’s voice once live to be forever taken with the band’s music.

Listen to Shovels and Rope here.

Saturday Night: Free Times Music Crawl, the Main Event

Alright, where to begin? First off, it is worth noting that the stages are set up roughly to accommodate a music fan’s particular interests. Wet Willie’s features R&B and Hip-Hop acts (including joke rappers Sweet Vans, who might actually appeal more to the indie rock crowd), Flying Saucer has mainly bluegrass/alt. country bands (with Myrtle Beach’s new wave-ish Octopus Jones being the odd man out), and Art Bar, Kelly’s, and the Tin Roof are the primary rock stages, with each venue having a pretty thorough mix of acts. Jasper always has a difficult time getting down to Wet Willie’s at these events despite best intentions, largely because the distance between that stage and the rest of the venues eats up valuable time. Anyway, let’s get down to the schedule:

7:10-7:40pm – Pinna (Kelly’s)

Even if you are the kind of person who hates jam bands, this is still an act worth checking out. Lead guitarist and singer George Fetner (who has a degree in music composition from USC) is one of the town’s most gifted guitar players, and he and his band mates, more than most jam bands, actually engage and surprise their listeners with their adventurous improvisational forays.

7:30-8:00pm – Those Lavender Whales (Art Bar-indoors)

A quirky indie pop act who don’t quite sound like anyone else, this is a group also worth checking out because they run Fork & Spoon records, one of the most admirable record label/collectives in town.

Check out Those Lavender Whales here.

8:10-8:40pm – Ye Mighty! (Kelly’s)

Although it might seem silly to call a band “buzz worthy” within the confines of a local scene, it’s easy to call Ye Mighty! just that. Featuring the wonderful vocals of Beth Dickerson and a cast of well-known scene members backing her up, the group plays swirling post-punk that threatens to burst into full-blown anthems.

8:40-9:10pm – Marshall Brown (Tin Roof)

Brown is a singer/songwriter whose music is absolutely drenched in 60s and 70s psychedelia, mixed with a bit of the bedroom pop eclecticism that sprouted up in the 90s. Even in a town with a music scene as diverse and quirky as Columbia’s, Brown stands out for forging his own, singular path.

Here's some Marshall Brown

9:20-9:50pm – Fayth Hope (Wet Willie’s)

Hope makes music in the neo-soul tradition, which means an earthy mix of soul and R&B with a decidedly retro feel. She has a gorgeous voice, and the advance tracks from her forthcoming LP are positively tantalizing.

9:30-10:00pm – Death Becomes Even the Maiden (Art Bar – indoors)

This overlaps a bit with Hope, and could not be more different, but Jasper is also equally excited to see the heavy, complex post-rock of DBETM again as well—although, full disclosure, guitarist Heyward Sims is our design editor. Even if he wasn’t, though, it would be hard not to champion dark, propulsive tunes and formidable chops.

Listen to DBETM here.

10:10-10:40pm – Elonzo (Kelly’s)

A Rock Hill family band with a definite Southern vibe, these guys make dreamy, grandiose indie folk-pop with a hint of Americana. This is the kind of music that tends to disarm even the most cynical of us with its buoyant, cathartic musical releases into the stratosphere.

10:50-11:20pm – The Unawares (Flying Saucer)

Jasper has previously reviewed the band’s new record  here, and we are psyched to see some of these new songs played in action.

11:00-Midnight – Magnetic Flowers (Art Bar outdoors)

Kinetic, literary indie folk/rock at its finest.  Built around three songwriters, four singers, and the dizzying keyboard parts of Adam Cullum, the band’s well-layered sound and penchant for capturing the unvarnished truth about their generation (for better or worse) in their lyrics makes them one of the scene’s most powerful acts.

12:10-12:40am – Junior Astronomers (Kelly’s)

Built upon the ferocity and dynamics of emo, Charlotte’s Junior Astronomers can credit their success to incorporating classic rock arrangements and energetic, prog-like guitar parts. That, and the unfettered passion of lead singer Terrrence Richard’s vocals and on-stage charisma.

Here's some Junior Astronomers.

1:00-1:45am – The Restoration (Art Bar – indoors)

This is where we are closing out the night (unless John Wesley Satterfield is still playing over at Kelly’s). The Restoration are one of our favorite bands in the city. Their 19^th century concept is heartfelt  and authentic, the stories are told with complexity and death, and Daniel Machado and Adam Corbett just write great songs. This ambitious, chamber pop-meets-old-time folk band deserves to be a national name—and we here in the Capitol City should just count ourselves lucky that they happen to sprout up here, and are willing to share with us their tunes in the wee hours of Sunday morning…

And it's The Restoration

-- Kyle Petersen is the Music Editor of Jasper -- The Word on  Columbia Arts

Unique Perspective Tour at CMA Arts & Draughts tonight

A note from cindi --

Tonight, I have the honor of combining two of my favorite topics of conversation -- gender studies and art --  into a singular discussion when I host a Unique Perspective Tour as part of the Columbia Museum of Art's Arts and Draughts event.

I'll be talking about the duality of representations of women in the visual arts from pre-Renaissance through the 20th century, and how feminist theory informs this reality.

Essentially, we'll be looking at the social construction of women as either good girls (think Doris Day or the Virgin Mother) or bad girls (think Marilyn Monroe and Mary Magdalene) with little in between. Our permanent collection at the CMA is replete with images that reinforce this dichotmization of women into one of two categories. We'll take a look at some of these images and, at the same time, examine the icons and attributes in the paintings and draw some conclusions from these, too.

I recognize how hard it will be to tear yourself away from the outstanding bands the CMA has performing tonight -- Say Brother, Shovels and Rope, and the like. Not to mention some of the other cool activities those wild women and men at the museum have planned. But if you take a notion, join me upstairs at 8 and again at 9 as we talk serious stuff about an aspect of the role of women in the world of art.

And by the way, does our local art museum seriously rock or what?

See you tonight!

Jasper's Ghost Story Salon at 701 Whaley = Scarily Fun

The Jasper family has been busy of late putting together the finishing touches on your next issue of the magazine, but we took some time to celebrate All Saint's Eve by staging a Ghost Story Salon on Halloween night as part of the 701 Whaley amazing Halloween Costume party staged by Tracie Broom and Debi Shadel of Flock and Rally.  We were fortunate to have some of the most talented story tellers in the community share their gifts of conjuring up a mood with us. Sometimes it was a little hard to hear, but it was always a lot of fun. Have a look below at the tellers of the tales.

Occupy Poetry

 By Guest Blogger, Susan Levi Wallach

Did you hear the one about four poets walking into a bar? How about four bars (which is about right for poets)? How about a pint in each for them and their friends (actually, friends of Jasper Magazine, who, given the evening’s literary and other perks, got quite a deal for $25 a head)? The poets: Ed Madden, Ray McManus, Tara Powell, and Kristine Hartvigsen. The bars: White Mule, The Whig, Hunter Gatherer, and Thirsty Fellow, which spread from Columbia’s midtown Main Street to south of the Vista on Gadsden, leaving plenty of opportunities to stop between hops shops to read aloud a poem or five for the assembled crowd. The crowd: about two dozen (even before the first pint it was difficult to count, this crowd being social, with everyone wanting to talk to everyone else. If you know what I’m talking about, then you were (or should have been) on Jasper Magazine’s first Pint & Poem Walk on Wednesday.

Everyone seemed to agree that poetry and beer make for a better mix than, say, poetry and lecture halls or auditoriums or anywhere an audience is expected to stay still and dry until the wine-and-cheese reception afterward, when they’re expected to remain on their best behavior and the wine is rarely any good.

Cindi Boiter, Jasper’s founder, editor, and the evening’s host, said London pubs and poets do such things all the time. Why not Columbia? (A question that has the makings of a motto for the city’s arts community: Why not, Columbia? or Why not Columbia? — why shouldn’t this little city, where the cost of living is low and artists and writers are more plentiful than a lot of people realize make the arts as much of a priority as big business?)

A stop in front of the Statehouse marked the Pint & Poem midpoint at 9:30 p.m., and the Occupy Columbia brigade clearly felt more enthusiastic about having few poets in their midst than they would have been about, say, a group of CEOs and other one percenters. Having in the past several days perfected the rhythm of antiphonal chanting, they gathered about Madden with placards in hand, repeating each line of the poem he read as if it were a slogan (sometimes, the line particularly complex, he had to say it twice till everyone got it right). Poetry for the rest of us.

Letter to Travis

by Ed Madden

I saw that photo of you, lean, grinning, skinny jeans, flannel shirt, newsboy cap, and nearby,

my former student Anna, hair dyed black, arms crossed over her tie-dyed purple tee, leaning

on a not-quite-life-sized bronze George Washington (the one boxed off at the MLK march

earlier this year, unfortunate fodder for FOX to spout off about respect and legacy and shit like that,

the one with the broken cane, broken off by Union troops in 1865 and never repaired,

as if he’s doomed to limp down here, and he was shot later by drunken Governor Ben Tillman, the one

so racist he got his own statue in 1940, just across the square from George, standing watch

now over a cluster of punks in sleeping bags, just down the lawn from the one for gynecological

marvel J. Marion Sims, who Nazi-doctored black women, then ran off to New York to experiment

on destitute Irish immigrant women -- such difficult history here, stories of the black, the poor.). I heard more

about George this morning on NPR, his whiskey distillery back in business, though without the slave labor,

that story after the one about Occupy Washington clustered near K Street. The front pages

of the local papers are Gadhafi’s slaughter, the body stashed in a shopping center freezer, GOP

would-be’s descending on us for another debate, the state fair ending this weekend, its rides and fried things.

I’ve got the list of what you guys need, Travis, gloves, storage tubs, “head warming stuff,”

water, and I plan to drop by later with supplies. For now, though, I look out my window,

the weather beautiful if cool, fair weather, the dogwood gone red and finches fidgeting among the limbs.

Too easy, probably, to turn all pastoral at times like these, to tend my own garden,

the last tomatoes ripening up, collards almost ready, needing that chill to sweeten a bit.

A dear friend wrote me this week, says he’s scared he’ll lose his job come the new year,

a fear we hear over and over, though the GOP folks tell us it’s our own fault that we’re

not the rich -- individual responsibility and all that. I want to believe in the joy

and resistance I see there on your face, Travis, the will revealed in Anna’s crossed arms.

I want to believe it, I want it to last, I want it to win. I’ll stop by later with gloves and water.

Release Your Freak Tonight at the Carpe Noctem FREAK SHOW

Give into your inner freak tonight at Unbound Dance’s third annual Carpe Noctem FREAK SHOW from 7 p.m. to midnight at 701 Whaley. This freaky fundraising gala includes performances by Unbound Dance, Columbia Alternacirque and Party Time Gurls featuring Carla Cox.

Attendees will be greeted at the door by a consortium of perilous women known as the Columbia QuadSquad. They will enter into a menacing carnival scene designed by local lighting designer Aaron Pelzek, scenic designer Kimi Maeda and puppeteer Lyon Hill.

Unbound Dance will perform three original pieces including an encore of the audience favorite “Thriller.” Emcee Alex Smith will guide the audience through their freakiest carnival experience while Charleston’s DJ Lola pumps music on the dance floor between sets.

In addition to live entertainment, FREAK SHOW will tempt the audience with a silent auction, carnival foods, caged freaks and cash bar. Attendees may want to disguise themselves so they are encouraged to wear their craziest carnival costume for a chance to win the FREAK SHOW Costume Contest.

Carpe Noctem FREAK SHOW is open to the public. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door. A portion of the proceeds will go to Unbound’s dear friend, Amy Hardy, who is battling stage four metastatic breast cancer at the age of 30. The remaining proceeds will go to Unbound Dance.

-- Margey Bolen

Review -- August: Osage County

Jasper loves dysfunctional families.  Wait, let's clarify that - Jasper loves Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas about dysfunctional families, and there's a doozy of one running right now through Sat. Nov. 12th, at Trustus Theatre. August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts, is billed as Jim Thigpen's directorial swan song; he and wife Kay, with whom he founded Trustus 26 years ago, will retire at the end of this season (see the current issue of Jasper at http://jaspercolumbia.net/current-issue/ for details.) Fortunately, he has assembled a highly functional cast of family, both literal (brother Ron Hale and daughter Erin Wilson) and theatrical (a veritable who's who of local theatrical talent) to bring this provocative and compelling work to Columbia audiences.

The show recounts a few weeks in the lives of the Weston family, disrupted by the disappearance of the father. His three daughters return home, family and significant others in tow, to support their mother, and along the way we meet an aunt, and uncle, a cousin, and a few innocent bystanders. I was only familiar with this work from some reviews I read a few years ago, when it premiered and promptly won the Tony and N.Y. Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play, the Drama Desk and Outer Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Play, and the Pulitzer. As a result, I had some misconceptions going in.  This is in no way, shape or fashion a comedy, even a dark one.  There are certainly some witty lines; most of the characters are fairly eloquent people connected to academia, and often barbs spoken in moments of great anger, frustration, and passion get some big laughs. Nevertheless, this play is a tragedy of the ordinary, an examination of the dark underbelly of contemporary American society, depicted before us via one truly unfortunate family.

Likewise, the title notwithstanding, this isn't really a rural or country-themed play at all.  While there is a plaid shirt here, some cowboy boots there, a backdrop that suggests dull stucco or adobe walls, and a Native American housekeeper, the setting isn't so much Oklahoma as it is any desolate location, and the desolation is as much spiritual as literal. One character notes that this isn't the Midwest, but rather the Plains, which he compares to the Blues, just not as interesting.  Nor is the show particularly surreal or avant-garde, as I somehow had expected. Sadly, the obstacles that confront these characters (with perhaps one Southern Gothic exception) are all too commonplace: divorce, infidelity, youthful rebellion, repression, substance abuse, suicide, and depression. The language is sometimes quite eloquent and poetic, but more often quite down-to-earth and familiar.

Yet this is a tremendously entertaining evening at the theatre, thanks to the supremely talented cast. While each of the thirteen actors gets his or her moment to shine on stage, top honors have to go to Libby Campbell Turner, in the central role of Violet, the harsh matriarch of the Weston family. We first see Violet helplessly struggling to form her words and thoughts as a result of her addiction to painkillers; the effect is shocking, especially for those familiar with Campbell Turner's assertive stage presence in any number of shows over the last several decades. Have no fear, however: Violet's coherence returns with a vengeance, as she tries to bring down each of her three daughters in turn. We chillingly realize that while the pills may have loosened her tongue, they surely didn't create her venom.

Violet's main adversary is her eldest daughter, Barbara, played by Dewey Scott-Wiley. She and Paul Kaufmann (as her husband Bill) are masters of the stage whisper, which they must employ for a marital spat that they desperately wish to remain unheard.  Scott-Wiley expertly depicts this ordinary yet complex character, as we see her first channeling her father in an alcohol-fueled intellectual ramble, then mirroring her mother, attempting in vain to control all around her, while still clad in her nightclothes.

Another standout is Gerald Floyd, as Violet's amiable but long-suffering brother-in-law whom she bitingly notes is now the family patriarch "by default," after her husband's disappearance. In a play where characters often naturalistically talk over one another, timing is everything, and Floyd is the champ, portraying a man who rarely gets a word in edgewise, yet always makes his point known.  Late in the third act, his demand that his wife (played by Elena Martinez-Vidal) show some shred of decency and compassion to their son, was for me perhaps the most moving moment in the play.

Another cast member whose vocal talent must be noted is Ellen Rodillo-Fowler, as the housekeeper Johnna. Brassy and feisty just a few weeks ago in Third Finger, Left Hand, here she plays soft and stoic, often pausing a half-second before most of her lines, and thus showing the depth and thought behind them.  Ron Hale, as Violet's husband, shines in the opening scene, waxing poetic and philosophical while concealing the depths of despair into which he has fallen. Sarah Crouch as the granddaughter Jean, Joe Morales as the local Sheriff, Kevin Bush as the supposed loser cousin "Little" Charles, Erin Wilson as the frustrated, plain-Jane middle daughter, and Robin Gottlieb as the somewhat spoiled youngest daughter who foolishly thinks she has escaped the family cycle, all do fine work, many playing against type.  Stann Gwynn as Gottlieb's fiancé has perhaps the fewest lines, but is memorable for making the audience wonder which is creepier: his interaction with Jean (which quickly moves into "Like to watch gladiator movies?" territory) or his career as a yuppie entrepreneur profiting from the Persian Gulf conflict.

One suspects that just as every great actor must try Hamlet in his youth, Macbeth in middle age and Lear as he gets older, so too must every playwright, Letts included, take a stab at a tragedy of family dysfunction.  August: Osage County presents us with no moral or lesson, but rather portrays people making the choices they must, but then living with the consequences.  I was reminded more than once during the show of a line spoken by Clint Eastwood in the film Gran Torino, about how "the thing that haunts a man most is what he isn't ordered to do."

Critics have called this the first great play of the new century. I'm not so sure I'd quite go that far, but there are certainly echoes of any number of classics:  Lillian Hellman's "little foxes, that spoil the vines," the spectre of substance abuse from A Long Day's Journey Into Night,  the bleak sense of frustration and yearning from  Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Turgenev's A Month in the Country, families coping with long-repressed secrets from Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Ibsen's The Wild Duck,  and a dozen Tennessee Williams works, and the domestic battles in the homes of academics from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and On Golden Pond.   Shoot, stick togas on the Westons and you'd basically have the cursed House of Atreus.  Time will tell if this is the latest retelling of eternal themes from the human experience, or a well-crafted pastiche of those themes, designed as an acting tour-de-force for a talented ensemble.

Either way, it rarely gets better than this if you want to see some of Columbia's finest performers flexing their dramatic muscles in some rich and juicy material. Director Thigpen made a wise choice for his finale, and deftly pulls it all together for a rich and thought-provoking evening at the theatre.

If you're going, note that the show runs a solid three and a half hours, with two intermissions, but it feels like not much more than two. Just be sure to make dinner and babysitter arrangements accordingly.  Call the Trustus Box Office at 254-9732 for ticket information.

~ August Krickel