Jasper Magazine Endorses Andy Smith for At-large Columbia City Council Seat

Last night, as I sat at The Whig and looked around the room while City Council Candidate Andy Smith spoke from the corner, I was struck by two things.

First, of the full house of individuals gathered there, filling up the tables and bar and jockeying for standing space on the open floor, not only was every single arts discipline represented, but almost every single arts organization in town, large or small, was represented as well. Dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, theatre artists, writers, musicians, and poets – and more than a handful of head honchos of our leading arts organizations – were all there.

But next, and even more importantly, in a place known for its noise and the rumble of hearty conversation, the only sound that could be heard was that of Andy Smith’s voice as he answered questions on the many ways he can envision improving the lives and work of Columbia artists – and backing up his visions with workable, well thought-out plans.

It was almost thrilling to hear him talk about the dreams many of us have about the future of the arts in our city and realize that, if we elect him, it can be the beginning of making those dreams a reality.

I was there the day the seed of running for office was planted in Andy Smith’s mind. A few of us from the arts community had been gathered in the office of Larry Hembree, when he was still at Trustus, to help another candidate (who is still running) come to some understanding about the arts in Columbia. While this candidate, a good man and possibly my second or third choice for the seat, spoke about the arts in his life mostly involving grandchildren in weekly classes and the occasional trip to see a film at the Nick, it became obvious that the idea of the arts being any part of life – much less the measure of life itself as it is to someone who makes their living as an artist or arts administrator – was foreign to him.

Andy seemed to realize this, too.

While Andy had spent years thinking about ways of improving our city and the major role the arts would play in the machinery that makes a city great, this candidate was on another track entirely and was just at that point beginning to ask if the arts were even important. Try as we might, I don’t think we convinced him they were. And are.

I noticed the difference between Andy and the other candidates again when I attended the City Council Arts Forum that One Columbia hosted a couple weeks ago at 701 Whaley. Once again, candidates spoke about the arts in terms of children’s dance recitals and the one time they took their grandchildren to see The Nutcracker. It didn’t seem to dawn on the candidates that they were speaking to a room almost 100% full of artists, arts administrators, and members of boards of directors for arts organizations.

Until Andy Smith spoke.

Andy spoke about the development of a Cultural Plan for the city which would build the development of the arts into both a flow chart of city improvement as well as a budget for getting it done. He talked about the city investing in its arts and artists both financially and philosophically. He discussed the importance of reforming Hospitality Tax policies, creating incentives for property owners to provide affordable space for artists and new arts organizations in under-resourced communities, and working with school board officials to make the arts a larger and more valued part of public education. And perhaps most importantly, Andy Smith talked then and continues to talk about ways to bolster artists of color and more meaningfully support non-profit organizations led by people of color.

And people listen.

That’s why it is with so much pleasure that Jasper Magazine – The Word on Columbia Arts offers our endorsement of Andy Smith for the Columbia City Council At- Large Seat in the election on November 3^rd.

The election of Andy Smith to City Council means more than just seeing our colleague in a position of power from which he will so thoughtfully help govern.

It means the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way our city council approaches growth, development, and quality of life.

It means recognition of the integral role the arts play in building the type of community we want to work, live, and raise children in.

It means a future in which our artists are valued, applauded, and paid for their contributions to culture.

I invite you to join me in supporting Andy Smith for Columbia City Council and helping spread the word about the difference Andy can make in the future of the city we call home. Vote on November 3^rd and make sure your friends, families and neighbors vote.

Thanks,

Cindi

Cindi Boiter is the founder and editor-in-chief of Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts, and the 2014 recipient of the Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor's Award for the Arts.

More information on  Andy Smith is here.

REVIEW: Nothing Like a Real Woman, Titty Diaries, CMFA 24 October, 2015 by Ed Madden

 "It’s not the sexy that’s the problem: it’s the sexism."

                                                                                  -- Ed Madden

Let me start by saying I really wanted to like the play Titty Diaries, written by Trinessa Dubas and directed by Caletta Harris-Bailey, staged at CMFA October 23-25. It has all the right bona fides. It was staged in partnership with and as a fundraiser for Dianne’s Call, a local health non-profit targeting underserved communities (http://diannescall.org/). It’s by a new playwright—and I want to raise up the city’s up-and-coming writers. With its title and episodic monologue structure, the play is also clearly intended to echo The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, a play I have taught, a play staged annually in Columbia as a fundraiser for domestic violence and rape crisis services. Staged during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Titty Diaries is supposed to address breast cancer awareness and body image. And it was clear that the audience seeing the play Saturday evening enjoyed the performance, not just its broad and usually stereotypical humor, but its emotional pathos as well.

So many reasons to want to like this play, and yet I left the theatre deeply troubled, in part because the play seemed more endorsement than indictment of a sexist culture that objectifies women. I also left convinced that the play is not quite ready for the stage—despite the playwright and director’s announced intentions to extend it to a full-length production and take it on the road—mostly because it’s not quite clear yet what the playwright wants this play to do and be.

Gender, or Yes but Why Bother

The first and fundamental problem is the play’s awkward engagement with gender issues. Like a lot of mainstream culture, from country music to community theatre melodrama to Real Housewives of Whatever, it seems to be about female empowerment, but only within the constraints of traditional gender roles, and only if we refuse to question the pervasive cultural sexism they reenact. Despite a script filled with female roles and stories, options for women here are limited.

The first scene, “My Eyes Are Up Here,” established my unease. In it, Terra, a single woman in a bar says she uses her cleavage to get free drinks. She gets annoyed when a man ogles her breasts and tells him, “My eyes are up here,” but that little moment of feminist snap is framed within a scene that’s all about using your anatomy to get things.

As Terra puts it: “As a single woman, I get a good thrill off of simple mined men. It’s not me, but do I ask for this? Am I inviting unwanted niceties when I decide on the cut of a shirt? Or can the blame be put on a man who may quite possibly have been breast-fed and can‘t get past a titty without salivating? Can I truly expect him to concentrate on what I am saying as opposed to what he sees, when my titties are so very prominent in this V? The answer is yes, and why bother? […] the purpose when flying solo in the Queen City is to get them dranks.”

Yes, she suggests, I should expect a man to listen to me, whatever I’m wearing, but why bother—men being men, the culture being the culture. It’s not about empowering sexual expression: it’s about using your body to get what you want. This becomes overt three scenes later in “Cause I Get What I Want,” the story of Fatima, a golddigger with a couple of pro athlete boyfriends. Like Terra, she doesn’t want to feel guilty about her own self-objectification: “I have to say this; it really is not my fault. […] Because of these babies (little chest jiggle to show breasts) I get what I want.” As if to chide audience members like me, she adds, “Now don’t knock me for being sexy. It’s a fact that I had to accept.”

It’s not the sexy that’s the problem: it’s the sexism.

I know there’s a fine line here. On the one hand, the play wants to insist, à la Eve Ensler, that women’s sexual expression can be about women’s sexual and self empowerment. On the other, we live in a culture that objectifies women and hypersexualizes black women. (Google it.) So when Fatima tells us “a girl needs sponsors,” the line between female sexual empowerment and self-objectification is erased. Of course, these are only two of 11 scenes, but we really don’t get any corrective or counter voices.  We get an aging exotic dancer wondering if she can go back onstage because her breasts are no longer perky. We get two older women telling a young wife to “titty-fuck” her husband when she’s menstruating because her job is to make her man happy. That she doesn’t understand that the “string of pearls” she will receive is a euphemism only reinforces the play’s emphasis on using your body to get what you want.

Representation, or Nothing Like a Real Woman

The second problem, as suggested by Fatima the golddigger, is the use of stereotype. The play offers a project of inclusivity, including multiple generations, even the stories of a man who suffers from gynecomastia (enlarged male breasts) and a transgender character. But it’s one thing to traffic in stereotypes for humor’s sake and another to reduce human stories to caricature, especially given the play’s seeming vision of inclusion.

The trans character (or caricature), Chortnii, announces, “Today transsexuals, transgender and transvestites are all over the place. We celebrate ferociously, but ain’t nothing like a real woman, with real titties.” Really? Despite RuPaul’s Drag Race, out in the real world trans people suffer violence and discrimination. And how offensive is it to put the play’s most anti-transgender line (“ain’t nothing like a real woman,” emphasis on real) in the mouth of a trans character? As if to make this character a grab-bag of sexual otherness as well as an anti-transgender caricature, the play adds fetishism and sexual orientation to the mix. Born “a boy who likes boys,” Chortnii morphs into sexual fetishist—“my fetish, men with titties”—and she dismisses a friend as “an old lesbian hag.” Given the fact that studies have found that lesbians and bisexual women have higher rates of breast cancer than heterosexual women, this joke only deepens the offense of the most offensive scene in the play.

Thinking about representation and inclusivity, two other issues seem striking. The inclusion of the male character, Frank, highlights the often ignored issue of male breast cancer, as well as the issue of bullying, but it also is the only narrative that addresses sexual abuse. “I was molested as a teen,” he says, his breasts groped by an old man. In a play full of women’s voices, it seems at the very least awkward that his is the only story of sexual abuse. Just as the trans character is forced to bear the burden of all sexual otherness, the issue of sexual abuse is displaced onto the only male character in the play.  Thinking about representation and women’s experience, I also thought it odd that in a play about breasts, there are no references to nursing—a positive and familial image of nurture and generational connection—other than Terra’s suggestion that men fetishize breasts because they suckled too long.

Intent and the Human Story

Finally, despite the pre-performance publicity, it simply wasn’t clear what this play is meant to do and be. The “dear diary” voiceovers that precede each monologue suggest a kind of intimacy, an entrée into private stories we don’t usually hear. But the voiceovers themselves either emphasized the characters as types, or, confusingly, as real people, in an I-knew-someone-just-like-that way. Further, both the script and the program insist the play is “ethnic/gender neutral,” but I wondered if, in fact, it might be a more interesting play if it were more explicitly about African American culture. That is, rather than disavowing the ethnic element, as the playwright does, would an examination of the specificities of cultural experience actually strengthen the play.

The question of intent is primarily located in the script, but I wonder if the staging amplified this issue. Whether to make the point that these stories are all connected, or because of the exigencies of CMFA lighting, or both, the director put all the cast on stage, lights up on all, a bit of furniture here and there marking off each individual performance space. As a monologue was performed, the lights went down and that character left the stage, a slow emptying that at least helped us focus our attention as the lights came up again.

While this might have the effect of suggesting that these stories were part of the same story, the cluttered stage also left a couple of pieces unfocused—almost literally because you couldn’t see what was going on. The shortest scene, “Self Esteem,” for example, was pushed far back stage left. As the only scene without the “dear diary” voiceover, and the only piece centered on symbolic action rather than language, the piece had more felt emotional weight than others. No monologue, just a woman sitting at a mirror, wrapped in a robe. But from where I was sitting, I couldn’t really tell what she was doing. Sliding inserts in her bra? The script says, “lights on Veronique as she picks up a silicon breast and places it in one bra and then the other.” Was this scene about plastic surgery—as someone sitting behind me suggested? (The script calls for a slide show of images, including a teenage girl stuffing her bra.) Or was it about mastectomy? (The scene is preceded by an old woman who refuses to get a breast reduction, despite her debilitating back pain—refuses the surgery despite medical need.) Given the extraordinary importance of the stage action, this scene should have been performed downstage. The actor then picks up the phone to make an appointment with a doctor. Lights down, and we move quickly and jarringly to the exotic dancer sitting prominently front stage left.

The play’s final scene was moving, in part because the voiceover and pre-performance publicity insists it’s based on a real story. But even then there was a kind of awkwardness to the scene, as the woman diagnosed with breast cancer slipped out of character to deliver some educationese about statistics (perhaps more appropriate for the program than performance). Indeed, despite the emotional power of the story, the whole scene moved erratically through kinds of speech, the effect of which was a kind of discursive whiplash, as the primary character moves quickly in and out of dialogue, impassioned prayer addressed to God, monologue addressed to the audience, health education discourse, to a final bit of unbelievable sloganeering—“If you or someone you love are having a difficult time dealing with a diagnosis just know that you have to keep fighting forward. Support research. We’ve come so far in healing and care. With early detection the battle is that much easier to win. Don’t give up.” This mishmash of languages—educational, devotional, performative, political—suggests, perhaps, the play’s unclear impulses.

As if to emphasize the human story at the heart of this project, after the play ended, the stage manager asked cancer survivors to raise their hands, asked anyone diagnosed to raise their hands, a moment that felt heartbreakingly awkward and wrong.

~~~~

The day after, I went to see The Brothers Size at Trustus. One play troubled me, the other crushed me. One set cluttered with furniture, the other evoking bayou, carshop, and home with ritualized action and the simplest of props. One script depending on a junkshop of stereotypes to tell a deeply human story, the other developing a deeply human story out of myth and type. Unfair, I know, to compare community theatre to professional, a new unfinished play to an award-winning play, unfair to juxtapose these aesthetics. But something about that juxtaposition clarified for me the importance of getting the human story right, emphasized for me the potential of theatre to create empathy and understanding. Clarified for me why I wanted Dubas’s play to do something more.

We like to say that Columbia is a writers’ town, but I wonder if that’s true across all kinds of writing? Is it a town for playwrights? Do we have workshops for playwriting—workshops that would offer aesthetic and political critique, blocking suggestions, proofreading, as well as friendly support? I don’t know. I know that I love to see vibrant and scrappy and interesting theatre and performance culture developing outside and beyond the main stages. I know that a lot of what I say here would probably come up in a workshop critique or a staged reading with feedback. I know that Jasper is working on a playwright’s workshop.

I also know that I would love to see more work by Dubas. There’s an energy and cultural importance to this play, an ambition and riskiness, despite its problems.  In a culture in which breasts are insistently eroticized, in which cosmetic surgery is becoming common, in which pop stars sport beach-ball-sized bosoms, and in which breast cancer is so oddly part of mainstream thinking that a local bakery slathers pink icing on everything, we need a play that makes us stop and think about what our culture tells us about breasts. This isn’t yet that play. Yet.

Ed Madden is the literary arts editor for Jasper Magazine and the director of Women's and Gender Studies at USC.

Viva España! The music of Spain comes to the Koger Tuesday, November 17th

USC Symphony Orchestra and guest artists Beijing Guitar Duo and mezzo-soprano Janet Hopkins take to the stage

The University of South Carolina’s premier orchestra plays the music of three Spanish composers and transports you to Spain for an evening at the Koger Center for the Arts on Tuesday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m.

The Beijing Guitar Duo joins the USC Symphony Orchestra for Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto madrigal. The composer, who was blind since age three, got his inspiration for the work from a 16th-century Italian madrigal, “O felici occhi miei” (Oh happy eyes of mine).

The Beijing Guitar Duo has performed throughout Europe, Asia and North America, racking up accolades along the way. The San Francisco Examiner described the duo as “Particularly skillful in fingering of rapid passages...uncanny synchronization.” The South Florida Classical Review wrote, “They capitalize on the rich palette of sounds the two-guitar medium is capable of, approaching the music with deeply felt expression.” Their debut CD Maracaípe, received a Latin-GRAMMY nomination for the titled piece, which was dedicated to them by renowned guitarist/composer Sergio Assad. Their second CD, Bach to Tan Dun, has been widely noted for the world-premiere recording of Tan Dun’s Eight Memories in Watercolor, specially arranged for the duo by Manuel Barrueco. Meng Su and Yameng Wang came to their partnership with exceptional credentials, including a string of competition awards. Ms. Su’s honors include victories at the Vienna Youth Guitar Competition and the Christopher Parkening Young Guitarist Competition, while Ms. Wang was the youngest guitarist to win the Tokyo International Guitar Competition at the age of 12, and was invited by Radio France to perform at the prestigious Paris International Guitar Art Week at age 14. Both artists have given solo recitals in China and abroad, and had made solo recordings before they formed the duo.

Metropolitan opera veteran Janet Hopkins sings Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo (Love, the Magician), which draws on the rich heritage of Andalusia with roots in the folk tradition. Ms. Hopkins debuted as a soprano at The Metropolitan Opera during the 1991-1992 season in The Ghost of Versailles, returning during the next seasons for Siegrune in Die Walküre, Parsifal and the Overseer in Elektra. While on tour with The Met in Japan, she sang a series of solo recitals in Tokyo, garnering extensive critical acclaim. As a mezzo-soprano, Hopkins sang Cosi fan Tutte with the Eugene Opera and served apprenticeships with the Michigan Opera Theatre and Des Moines Metro Opera. While making her vocal change, Ms. Hopkins was awarded grants and prizes from The Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition, the American Opera Auditions and the Wagner Society Grant along with a study grant from the Singers Development Fund of The Metropolitan Opera. In addition to touring extensively with The Met, Ms. Hopkins has performed in Japan, throughout Europe and the U.S. and has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the opening ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY.  Ms. Hopkins is associate professor of voice at the University of South Carolina.

Also on the program is Joaquín Turina’s La oración del torero (Prayer of the Bullfighter). The work combines conventional music forms with the composer’s Andalusian, particularly Sevillian, heritage in a style that also absorbs Romantic and Impressionistic elements.

Tickets on sale now Tickets: $30 general public; DISCOUNTS: $25 senior citizens, USC faculty and staff; $8 students. Call 803-251-2222 or Koger Box Office, corner of Greene and Park Streets (M-F 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) or online at kogercenterforthearts.com.

Film Review: Steve Jobs - by Wade Sellers

by Film Editor Wade Sellers

There was a time that being allowed to see backstage at a concert, movie set or a performer’s personal life for those not in the entertainment industry was a magical and special moment. Just hearing the words “behind-the-scenes” brought chills. We were getting to see the “real” life behind the show. Now, it is a marketing must-do. The magical, never-seen moments don’t exist anymore. A tour of a home is a promotional tool, footage of models changing or dancers stretching part of the marketing package. Every live concert event offers, at an insanely steep cost, the opportunity to take part in this exclusive backstage, one-on-one experience.

Since the death of Steve Jobs, there have been many fictional and non-fictional attempts to offer the world a glimpse behind-the-scenes of his life. Many books and movies that offer us a look at the “real” world and history of a man who was the leader of late 20^th century cultural and technological change. So when Danny Boyle read Aaron Sorkin’s brilliantly written script Steve Jobs, he must have experienced simultaneous ecstasy and panic at the chance to tell this story of Jobs’ life.

Sorkin loves dialogue. His career highlights such as The West Wing, A Few Good Men, and The Social Network are known in most casual conversations as really good television and film. But each has a lot of dialogue. A lot of words are an actor’s dream and sometimes a director’s nightmare. These Sorkin scripts had directors who knew how to wrap their creative arms around Sorkin’s words, keep it focused, understand its cadence and let the actors have their fun. Danny Boyle wraps his experienced and well-versed arms around Sorkin’s screenplay and delivers a solid film from what on the page must seem dangerously close theater. Boyle’s personal bridge of experience in theater and filmmaking is the film’s greatest strength.

The film takes place in three acts. Each act directly precedes three product launches that Jobs was responsible for; the Mac (1984), NEXT (1988), and the iMac (1998). These three vignettes are blocked backstage, behind the curtains of the venue each product is being launched in. There is constant movement backstage. Stress is high and each movement and line delivery of the actors is kinetic.  We feel the energy and movement as if we are there at each venue. Each act is filmed with cameras that are appropriate for the time; heavy grained film stock, cleaner film stock and digital. It is a choice by Boyle that seems a bit self-gratuitous. The transitions between each act are separated by appropriate historical news clips and voice overs that hurriedly transition us from the previous year to the present. This is not the most original of creative options, but at least it wasn’t a spinning clock. The real directorial strength comes from Boyle’s willingness to trust a certain playfulness with his cast.

Michael Fassbender (X-Men, Inglorious Basterds) takes on the role of Jobs. He embraces all of the characteristics that we have been told about Jobs—the lack of empathy, the narcissism, the incredible creative focus—and mixes them with his own interpretation of the man. Jobs was a very visible person. His speech and mannerisms are well-known and Fassbender has no interest in mimicry. Always at his side throughout the film is Kate Winslet (Titanic, Revolutionary Road) playing Job’s confidant Joanna Hoffman. It is the perfect role for Winslet, taking full advantage of her talent for dialect and maturity as actor, as evidenced in the film’s final act with her matriarchal ultimatum to Jobs. Winslet stands out in a crowded field of talent. A narrative thread binding each act is the appearance of Job’s daughter Lisa and her mother backstage during each launch. Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardin play Lisa at the ages of four, eight and nineteen, with each young actress capably taking on the character’s growth. This narrative is an interesting choice for the film. The tepid relationship he has with his daughter seems to exist as a manifestation of Job’s struggle with his own adoption, to humanize him. Early on Jobs denies that he is her father, but the relationship grows over the course of the film to suggest that Lisa has been Job’s muse throughout. That Jobs’ inspiration for each of the devices he designed were in parallel with Lisa’s own growth, finally ending with Jobs looking at her before the iMac launch and stating that he “will put 500-1000 songs in her pocket,” replacing the worn Walkman she has been listening to the entire film. Jeff Daniels stands out as the former handpicked-by-Jobs Apple CEO John Sculley. Daniels (The Newsroom, Dumb and Dumber), just seems to get Sorkin’s words. His talents have always been underrated because he is natural and inviting, no matter the temperament and compass of the character he plays. Seth Rogan takes on the role of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. This must be the hardest role to cast in recent history because no actor I have seen in any the Wozniak portrayals has been inviting.

Steve Jobs is an original look into three small moments in the life of a worldwide cultural icon.  One can imagine that it must be much easier to portray someone as powerful and wealthy as Jobs as a complete narcissist without fear of direct litigation. When he is on, Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue is a gift, and he is dead on in Steve Jobs. In the end, the problem is not with the film. It is an overwhelmingly entertaining and stylistic biography that touts an incredibly talented cast and helmed by one of a few directors who could capably tell this story. But when the lights come up after our tour behind the curtain, it doesn’t seem as special because we have been allowed behind this curtain too many times already.

Steve Jobs plays at the Nickelodeon Theater today through October 29^th. Showtimes and tickets can be found at www.nickelodeon.org.

Rosewood Arts Festival, After the Rain, Celebrates 5th Year This Sunday, Oct. 25th

by: Jasper Intern Jake Margle

After a necessary rain check, the Rosewood Arts Festival will be back at Rockaway’s this Sunday, October 25. Hurricane Joaquin may have put a damper on spirits, but with the return of the sun comes Columbia’s much-loved, family-friendly arts festival, back for its fifth year and better than ever.

This year’s festival will have all of the familiar elements that made past festivals such a hit. With around 100 artists booth expected to fill the Rockaway’s parking lot, there is sure to be an eclectic mix of work to view and purchase, all the while keeping the intimate feel that has put the Rosewood Arts Festival at the top of local arts supporter’s favorite annual events.

New for this year is a literary section set to feature 15 authors, including the work of Robert Ariail, a prominent political cartoonist whose work is featured regularly in The State.

The festival makes good on its promise to features artwork of all types. This year the Columbia Children’s Theatre will be performing Pinocchio, sure to keep those performing arts lovers in the crowd happy.

Festival regular and Lexington local “Abstract” Alexandra will be returning once again with her unique brand of contemporary paintings and sculptures. She’s been featured in the festival since its first year and is pleased to see it stick to its roots while also growing.

“I love how every year they get new collectors and performances to come,” she said. “There’s always something new to see.”

In five years the festival has grown steadily out of the single parking lot behind Rockaway’s, where they had just a few booths and one stage. The growth has been far from explosive, but Festival Director Arik Bjorn thinks that its small size is part of the allure.

“The point of the festival has always been to be a family-friendly, pro-artist, pro-patron festival,” Bjorn said. “We’ve got a community that really likes art. We’ve got Shandon right over here and other neighborhoods that really aid in that community feel.”

Patrons and artists alike benefit from the intimacy of the event. Entering a booth in the festival only costs the artist $30, less than half of what other festivals charge. The public pays nothing to enter, an aspect that Bjorn thinks inspires more people to attend and may increase the likelihood that they will purchase a piece.

“They do a very good job at organizing,” Alexandra said. “Artists, we’re marathon runners. We have to create the art and then set up this little retail outlet and fix that up, we do so much work already. Arik and all the volunteers pick up any slack and offer so much help, and that means a lot to the artist.”

The question on everyone’s mind is, will the festival expand past its current state?

“Oh no, it will always be here,” Bjorn said. There are plans to make room for more booths in the surrounding areas, but Rockaway’s will always be its home.

“We do this so artists can showcase their wares and make it worth their while,” Bjorn said. “We’re very content right now just to grow at the speed that we are.”

REVIEW: The Brothers Size at Trustus Theatre – by Jennifer Hill

There’s something beautiful happening over in the Trustus Side Door Theater right now, and I’m afraid you’re going to miss it. Director Chad Henderson skillfully brings us The Brothers Size, part two in the Brother/Sister plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney. Part One, In The Red and Brown Water, was performed on the mainstage at Trustus last season and also directed by Henderson. Each play in the trilogy is linked, but can also easily stand on its own. This particular production is a gem, the kind of show that leaves you feeling like you’re a little bit better off for having seen it; your eyes now wider and your heart a little more open. It’s theater at its best and it’s happening in your city.

From the moment I walked into the intimate Side Door Theater, I felt like I was transported to the Louisiana Bayou. The sound of cicadas fill the air, and butterflies in illuminated jars (tap on one and you’ll get a surprise) rest on simple but effective stage pieces designed by Kimi Maeda (a JAY visual artist nominee for 2015). The lighting design by Chet Longley and the sound design by Baxter Engle effectively complete the scene.

The seating is in the round and in this case that means you are part of the stage. There is something magical about being so close to the performers. The energy exchange between the actors and the audience takes things to another level, especially with actors as talented as these. The characters in the play are named after and based off of deities in the Yoruba religion, which originated primarily in southwestern Nigeria. Ogun Size (Jabar K. Hankins) is a hardworking mechanic who shows tough love to his troubled younger brother Oshooi Size (Christopher “Leven” Jackson) who has recently been released from prison.  Oshooi’s friend and ex-cellmate Elegba (Bakari Lebby) is the unknown quantity that sets the play in motion. All three actors are skilled, passionate, and do excellent work here. The raw emotion in Hankins' eyes broke my heart in such a beautiful way, another benefit of being in such an intimate space. The actors tell a highly relevant story to our contemporary moment, examining confinement, freedom, loss of innocence and family.  As I stood to leave I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Henderson has created a very physical, very alive piece of work. He has a unique perspective and a talent for creating moments where music and movement come together harmoniously. He and his cast create a story rich in rhythm and beauty.

I urge you to go see this show, not only because it is good but because if we support it then we can have more things like it. And I, for one, want more things like it. Get your tickets now; the show runs through October 31^st.

Exciting Stuff at City Art Gallery - Dan Smith takes on the Civil War

For Randy Hanna at City Art Gallery in the Vista, art is his life. A none-too-shabby visual artist himself,  Hanna has a proverbial eye for art that stands out above the rest due to anything from its color palette to it execution. Once in a while, Hanna will reach out to let us know that something special is going up on the walls of the spacious turn-of-the-century railroad warehouse where he and Wendyth Wells have been showing art and selling art supplies for years.

We've learned to listen.

When Hanna contacted us yesterday to make sure we knew about Dan Smith's exhibit opening tonight with a reception from 5 to 8 and running through January 1st, he not only said that he hoped I'd get to see this exhibit, he continued with,  "I don't think we've ever shown anything like it."

The title of the show is “US: A Civil War, Artwork by Dan Smith” and here's some more about Smith and his work that Hanna was good enough to share with us so that we could share it with you:

Smith’s new body of work includes mixed media paintings, as well as photographs and installations inspired by the American Civil War. On May 15, 2014 the artist began his Civil War Travels throughout the United States visiting specific Civil War sites. Many of the sites presented 150 year-old re-enactments. Along with extensive reading, the sites became inspiration for Smith’s artworks. Sites like Ft. Fisher in Wilmington, NC, the Shenandoah Valley of VA, Columbia, SC, Andersonville, GA, and Lookout Mountain, TN, inform much of the work.

In 1986, Smith received a graduate fellowship from the University of South Carolina and moved to Columbia to earn his MFA in Painting. The US: A Civil War show is a component of a larger collection of works organized chronologically under what Smith calls his Extended Sites collection, which incorporates the dichotomies of nature and man into an ‘art ecology’. Previous exhibitions under the Extended Sites moniker were based on the English colonist John Smith of Jamestown, VA, fame, and the frontiersman Daniel Boone. “My art is about death and life packed in with stories. Mathew Brady's story and work are woven into the US: A Civil War exhibition. Ultimately the show is about me and my associations with the Manland thesis I began at USC almost 30 years ago”.

The artist will continue his research for two additional Civil War exhibits in Newton and Sherrills Ford, NC, in 2016. Partial funding for these and his City Art Gallery exhibition were provided by a grant from the United Arts Council of Catawba County through the North Carolina Art Council with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts which believes a great nation deserves great art.

Smith’s art has been featured in numerous exhibitions during the past 35 years including NYC, San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, Washington, DC, TX, FL, NM, VA, NC and the recent Artfields competition in Lake City, South Carolina. His artwork is included in collections throughout the US.

City Art Gallery is located at 1224 Lincoln St. in the historic Congaree Vista area in Columbia, South Carolina.  Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday 10:00 a.m. until 6 p.m., Friday 10:00 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  For more information contact Wendyth Wells, City Art Gallery, at 803-252-3613.

ArtFields' Call for Visual Arts is Open -- Here's Why You Should Give it Another Try

We know that a lot of people are frustrated with ArtFields based on some of the better quality art they have denied and the lesser quality art they have accepted. It's easy to say that someone doesn't know what they're doing -- which is entirely possible.

That said, there are a few things to keep in mind.

One, everything has a learning curve -- let's give the folks at ArtFields the benefit of the doubt that they are trying and learning from their mistakes and they will get better.

Second, some truly brilliant art has been accepted. (See Jim Arendt's work above,for example.)

Third, participating allows for challenge; attending allows for inspiration.

Fourth, what other opportunities do our artists have for this kind of potential exposure and monetary take-home?

The bottom line is that we should support most any large-scale arts event in SC and work to be a part of making it into something that represents the arts in our state and that we can be proud of.

Here's the info on entering:

ArtFields^® Call for Submissions

Artist from across the 12 Southeastern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) are encouraged to submit artwork for the competition and their chance at a share of $100,000 in prizes. These life-changing prizes will be awarded as a Top Prize ($50,000), a Juried Panel Prize ($25,000), a People’s Choice two-dimensional ($12,500), a People’s Choice three-dimensional ($12,500) prize and ten $1,000 The Citizens Bank Merit Awards during ArtFields 2016. Emerging and established artists at all levels of recognition and education may submit one original 2-D or 3-D work or art. Artwork is submitted online to be reviewed by a jury of visual arts professionals. The jury will select 400 works of art to compete in Lake City for the prize money. Artists will be notified no later than January 4, 2016 of acceptance into ArtFields 2016.

For more information check out Artfields' comprehensive website.

Five Questions for Chad Henderson - Director of The Brothers Size Opening Friday Night at Trustus

 

From "The Brothers Size"

The Brother/Sister Plays

OSHOOSI SIZE:

            I know I am still on probation!

            I know Og.

            Damn!

            I know I was once in prison.

            I am out and I am on probation.

            Damnit man.

            I ain’t trying to drive to Fort Knox?

            I ain’t about to scale the capital…

            I want a ride.

            I want to drive out to the bayou…

            Maybe take a lady down there…

            And relax

There's a new play opening at Trustus Theatre on Friday that caught Jasper's attention for a handful of reasons. We know that it's part of the Brother/Sister trilogy written by Tarell Alvin McCraney and set in the Louisiana Bayou  exploring Yoruba mythology -- an African belief system, which some claim to be the oldest practiced religion. We saw In the Red and Brown Water last year and were pretty much overwhelmed by this playwright's ability to merge the worlds of the oldest of old Africa, probably what eventually became Nigeria, with something like a new world Louisiana. McCraney's career has been blowing up over the past 7 or 8 years and he is set to be one of the top playwrights around given that he's only 35 years old and everything he touches seems to turn to gold. We'd heard that The Brothers Size was another example of this phenomenon.

We also learned that this unique and promising play is being presented in Trustus Theatre's intimate Side Door Theatre, one of our favorite places to enjoy live theatre in the state. There is an intimacy that comes from being one member of a small audience in a relatively small theatre space with actors who are at full throttle sharing their art, whether the art is theatre, music, dance, whatever. Audiences always (hopefully) become another player in a live performance as they feed back and respond to the energy being offered on stage. (This is why people old and young continue to go to Phish concerts, I finally understand. Yes, there are drugs and herbal pleasures, but the energy itself acts as a drug, as well.) And being in such close communion with both the actors and the other audience members can be a rush and sometimes even a cathartic experience. To say the energy is palpable when you're locked (not really) in the room with a few dozen friends and three intense actors, as you will be in The Brothers Size, is an understatement. Opportunities like this are precious and yet another example of the quiet and unassuming way in which Columbia is an arts nerve center.

Finally, were also were excited to see what new magic Trustus Artistic Director and interim Managing Director Chad Henderson had up his sleeve. We really like Henderson for obvious reasons. (Full disclosure: Henderson is the son-in-law of this writer.) But long before the first flirtation, Henderson, as an artist, had the eye and growing respect of this writer, the Jasper Magazine staff, and pretty much anyone with a discerning eye in the area. In the past few years he has brought us such stellar theatre opportunities as Spring Awakening, Assassins, Next to Normal, Ragtime, and other shows of the kind of quality that make your Columbia, SC ticket price and not having to leave town a bargain. Henderson studied under Robert Richmond at USC, another Columbia treasure. (Richmond spent fourteen years as the Associate Artistic Director of the Aquila Theatre Company in New York and during his tenure there he directed over 50 productions that toured across the US, Off Broadway and Europe.) Richmond's influence on Henderon can be seen in a number of ways, but probably no greater way than in Henderson's confidence in his own ability to take his productions in innovative directions. Henderson looks only for exceptional scripts to which he knows he can add his own signature touches and, in doing so, improve upon an already excellent play. Given that, like McCraney, Henderson is also young, it's safe to say we haven't seen the best of him yet.

That's why we wanted to pin Henderson down on a few questions we had about this extraordinary theatre experience opening on Friday night at Trustus and running through Thursday, October 29th. Here's what we got.

Jasper:  This play is a little different from other performances at Trustus in that it is part of a series, right? Can you tell us how The Brothers Size fits in as the second in a three part series of plays?

Henderson:  The Brothers Size is the second part of a trilogy called The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney. Trustus produced the first part (In the Red and Brown Water) last season, and because it was such a wonderful success we knew we wanted to commit to the whole trilogy. These shows introduce the audience to a pantheon of characters derived from the Orishas of the Yoruban cosmology that are living in the “distant present” and the fictional projects of San Pere, Louisana. The plays are a brilliant mix of poetry, prose, music and movement that explore the universal truths of modern life filtered through a very specific world that the playwright has gifted to the audience and artists who tell his stories. Truly, Mr. McCraney is a voice all his own in modern theatre – and that’s what Trustus is constantly celebrating: the new powerful voices of American Theatre. These scripts are singular due to Mr. McCraney’s writing style that has won many awards over the years. These plays are here and now. Columbia deserves to have this type of fresh and modern theatre at its doorstep, and Trustus is happy to oblige.

The Brothers Size examines the power of family, the fight for survival, the consequence of circumstance, the contradiction of incarceration and freedom, and the deep roots of brotherhood. This production explores human truths through an imaginative production that will leave audiences spellbound – perfect theatrical fare for the Fall.

There are a host of elements that make this production a continuation of this trilogy. The language play is still very present because of Mr. McCraney's style of writing with these plays. The playwright also continues to celebrate the ritual of theatre with his ceremonial proceedings that give The Brother/Sister Plays so much vigor.We get to tune back in with Ogun Size and Elegba, who were characters in the last production. We're introduced to Ogun's brother Oshoosi. Scenic designer Kimi Maeda is bringing the set of the last production into the intimate Trustus Side Door Theatre - audiences will feel like they're exploring the last set they saw as they sit among the houses of San Pere in this production.

But don't worry - if you didn't see In the Red and Brown Water, you can still enjoy The Brothers Size - the story stands on its own legs just fine.

Jasper:  You also have a smaller cast than typical and you’re performing in the smaller Side Door Theatre. It sounds like a very intimate experience. Is it, and how so?

Henderson:  While the scale of the show is much smaller than the last play, I actually feel like this production feels like a bigger show than the Side Door than our patrons are used to. We're utilizing more sound and lighting equipment than we ever have in the Side Door. There's a broader use of the space with plenty of exciting motion.We're also performing this show in the round. This is nothing new as far as theatre conventions go, but in this circle we're able to become part of the community of San Pere. Much like the traditions of West African dance and drum circles, this circle is a safe place for experience and exploration.

Jasper:  Tell us what special gifts or talents each of the three gentlemen in the play bring to this project.

Henderson:  Jabar Hankins is undeniably genuine - relatable. Bakari Lebby will charm the pants off of folks even though his character is full of mischief. Chris Jackson is effortless in his struggle. Together, they are a powerhouse ensemble that courageously battle each other every night to gain unity.

Jasper:  Do you have a favorite scene or line that we can look for?

Henderson:  I'm particularly fond of the 4th scene of Act II where the phrase "You f**ked up!" Is yelled repeatedly. However, each scene is well sculpted by our playwright -Tarell Alvin McCraney. There are surprises around every corner.

Jasper:  Without giving anything away, tell us what you think will be the most surprising aspect of The Brothers Size for the audience.

Henderson:  I expect the experience of seeing a show in the round in the Side Door will be surprising. This show also gives you plenty of opportunities to engage your imagination. We hope that audiences get a chance to play and use their own creativity as they discover the story of Oshoosi and Ogun. Its truly a rich theatrical experience, and audiences get to live inside of it.

PREVIEW: Stop Kiss at USC's Lab Theatre by Rebecca Shrom

What do you want?”

“Sara asks this question repeatedly throughout the show, and I think it is important to ask that now and again,” explains Liz Houck, senior Theatre and Psychology major at USC, who is directing Stop Kiss in USC’s Lab Theater. Stop Kiss is a play about love. Not just the romantic love between a man and a woman, or the romantic love between two women, or two men, but the kind of love that builds from friendships, and all the fluidity that can be found in between.

Stop Kiss, by Diana Son, is a play, set in New York, which centers around 2 women, Callie (Jasmine James) and Sara (Imani Hanley), and their blossoming relationship. One fateful night, when Callie and Sara share their first kiss, they are both assaulted in the park. Callie remains physically unharmed, but Sara is beaten into a coma. The play then continues to jump back and forth between two timelines: the time before the accident and the recovery process. The play explores Callie and Sara’s relationship, their relationships with others, and how many different ways there can be to love someone, whether romantically, platonically, or otherwise.

“Stop Kiss is such a poignant, powerful play that says so much about systemic oppression and broken systems,” Houck explains. She is hoping that will bring back the question of “What do you want?” to the forefront of the audience’s brain. But not only that, she is hoping it will be a catalyst for discussion. She states, “… It’s even more productive to ask more specific questions such as ‘What do you want to change in the world in order to help people like Callie and Sara exist without fear?’ and ‘What do you want to do about the current system?’”

Stop Kiss, despite being published 17 years ago, still remains extremely relevant.  Freddie Powers (George) shares, “[The play] was an important message about violence against queer people when the play was published in 1998 and it's almost shocking how easily adaptable it is to 2015. We didn't have to make any changes in the script because nothing sounds out of place today; the message is still just as relevant.” Houck goes on to explain, “Considering the current social climate regarding race and sexuality especially, there is a call to action to be taken from the show, especially in a state where marriage equality happened in the same year as the Charleston Nine tragedy. How does that happen, and what does that say about us?

Houck also states that the production is going to use glitch art to address the issue of oppression visually. With the help of USC Media Arts MA alum OK Keyes, the cast was led in a workshop, took images from the media, and broke them in order to creat something new.  Houck says, “We are using glitch art as a means to break the systems which oppress the charcaters in the world of the play, which mirrors the world in which we live. Glitch involves breaking the image: the actual code is bent or broken, which distorts the image.”

But in the end, it really all comes back to the idea of love. Everyone should be free to love, and let others love in whatever fashion they desire. Abi McNeely (Mrs. Winsley/Nurse) shares, “There are so many different types of love: romantic, sexual, friendly, combinations of all three... and nowadays, these different types are even more prominent, especially with young people. There will always be people against these different kinds of love, but people love anyway. And that's important. It doesn't matter; love anyway.”

Stop Kiss will be performed in the Booker T. Washington Theater (1400 Wheat St.) on October 15-18 at 8 pm each night. Tickets are $5 at the door. For more information about Stop Kiss or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, contact Kevin Bush by phone at (803) 777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu.

 Stop Kiss contains adult language and content 
that is not suitable for children.

South Carolina Musicians Band Together For Flood Relief Compilation

Despite what you’re told when and if you call up a state office, it’s not a great day in South Carolina. In fact (and at the risk of severe understatement), the Palmetto State hasn’t exactly been having what you might call a banner year. But in the wake of the recent flooding and the devastation it’s brought to many of our friends and neighbors, a group of artists, musicians, organizers, and big-hearted citizens have pooled their talents and resources to bring us the SC Flood Relief Compilation. Featuring over 70 tracks—some previously released, some brand new—from homegrown acts (Say Brother, ColorBlind, She Returns From War, Abacus, Post-Timey String Band, Shallow Palace, E.T. Anderson, Ivadell, The Fishing Journal, Those Lavender Whales, and tons more), the compilation represents not only the massive amounts of talent we’ve got in this state, but the sense of community we share and the reassurance that we’re all in this together. The SCFRC has raised $750 as of Saturday afternoon and 100% of all donations are going to the Central Carolina Community Foundation. The music is available at http://scfloodrelief.bandcamp.com and any artists interested in donating their music can contact stereoflycollective@gmail.com. -Michael Spawn

Announcing the Jasper Artists of the Year (JAY) Finalists!

Jasper is delighted to announce our 2015 Finalists for Jasper Artist of the Year in music, theatre, dance, literary and visual arts. Winners in each category will be announced on Thursday, November 19th at the 2015 JAY Ceremony and Fundraiser at the Big Apple. Find your voting link at the bottom of this page.

Congratulations to all our 2015 JAY Finalists!

Literary Arts

Al Black

A lynchpin and ringmaster of the spoken word and open mic community in Columbia, Al Black produces and hosts Mind Gravy Poetry, a weekly poetry and performance venue that has been going now for five and a half years.  When Mind Gravy celebrated its anniversary in April, Black told Jasper that unity in diversity was his goal. “Going in, I was disheartened with what I saw as a fractured poetry scene that was divided in every way possible. . . . Publically they said many of the right things about each other, but privately it was condescension and purposeful segregation.” With Mind Gravy, he said, “I feel we have created a community.” In addition to Mind Gravy, Black produces and hosts three monthly performances: Poems: Bones of the Spirit, a monthly reading and discussion by three published poets, focused broadly on spirituality; Songversation, a monthly dialogue performance with a singer-songwriter; and Magnify Magnolias, a monthly poetry reading featuring female guest host. In the wake of the Charleston tragedy, he also started and coproduces with Len Lawson the Poets Respond to Race tour, which has included readings in three states. Finally, Black hosts a live band every First Thursday in the courtyard of Tapp’s. He also started and cohosts Non-Sequitur, a monthly poetry workshop.

Black published his first book of poetry, I Only Left for Tea, with Muddy Ford Press in August 2014. This year he has also seen work published or displayed in a number of local venues, including the chapbook The Collective I: Selfies, Real or Imagined; a collaboration with Susan Lenz for the Arts from the Ashes show; and poems to appear on the Comet this fall. In October 2014, he coproduced a poetry, music, and visual arts event and exhibition with Anastasia Chernoff and Bonnie Goldberg in conjunction with Domestic Violence Awareness Month. He also organized two performance fundraisers for automated external defibrillators (used in case of heart attack in a public space).

Ray McManus

In an interview with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal last year, Ray McManus admitted his career path wasn’t always clear: “I’ve driven a dump truck, landscaped, been a logger, a stocker, and a merchandiser. I’ve laid bricks, carpet, linoleum; cut beef, pork, and chicken; framed houses; worked on small engines; and painted barns. I’ve loved every job I’ve had but one.”  He doesn’t say which one, but presumably it’s not poetry, as he not only published his third book and an edited collection within the past year, he has also devotes his summers and spare time teaching poetry to young writers and equipping public school teachers to use poetry in the classroom.

McManus says his third book, Punch, published by Hub City Press, was the “book I was born to write,” grounded as it is in manual labor, and “inspired,” he says, by every boss and supervisor he ever had. Punch was awarded the Gold Medal for poetry in the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Ray also published an edited collection in September with USC Press, Found Anew: Writers Responding to Photographic Histories, co-edited with R. Mac Jones. The collection includes 32 writers from South Carolina—including Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, John Lane, Bret Lott, and George Singleton—responding to historical photos from digital collections at USC’s South Caroliniana Library. In the past year, McManus has published poems in a number of journals, as well as locally in Art from the Ashes and Fall Lines (with work forthcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry), and his essay “Ruts,” a paean to the dirt roads of the rural South, appears in The State of the Heart vol. 2. Readings this year have included the NC Blue Ridge Book Festival, the Upstate Literary Festival, Emrys Reading Series in Greenville, among others.

McManus directs workshops on creative writing for elementary, middle, and high school teachers across the state in the Arts in the Basic Curriculum Program, as well as conferences, such as the 2014 SC Alliance for Arts Education conference, the 2015 Curriculum Leadership Institute in the Arts at Converse College. An associate professor of English at USC Sumter (where he was named 2015 Professor of the Year), McManus also directs the creative writing program for TriDAC, the Tri-District Arts Consortium, a summer arts program for middle school students (www.cwtridac.com), and teaches in the USC Adventures in Writing program for high school and middle school writers. McManus describes the past year as “Busy. Crazy. Lucky. Stupid. Blessed.”

Julia Elliott

Julia Elliot describes the past year as “exhilarating and exhausting.” In addition to releasing two books since last September (with the continuing travel and book promotion), she turned in her tenure file in November, “all while rearing a headstrong toddler.” Her debut short story collection, The Wilds, was released in October 2014 to rave reviews. Reviewed by the New York Times last fall and recipient of a starred review in Publishers Weekly, The Wilds was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice at the end of 2014—along with being chosen for the 24 Best Fiction Books of 2014 by Buzzfeed Books, the Best Fiction Books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, The Best Books of 2014 by BookRiot, Electric Literature’s list of the 25 Best Short Story Collections of 2014, and featured on Salon in The Ultimate Literary Guide to 2014. Kirkus Reviews said of this “genre-bending” collection, “This book will take you to places you never dreamed of going and aren’t quite sure you want to stay, but you won’t regret the journey.” In August, she was included in LitReactor’s list of “5 Female Short Story Writers You Should Be Reading RIGHT NOW!”

Elliott follows up her award-winning short story collection this fall with The New and Improved Romie Futch, published in October by cutting edge press Tin House. An early edition was released in April as a Powell’s Indiespensable Exclusive. In September the novel was featured on LitHub’s Great Bookseller’s Fall Preview in September, and Elliott was highlighted in an interview-review on Kirkus Reviews. Elliott’s short story “Bride” was selected by T.C. Boyle for Best American Short Stories 2015, and her essay “On Whoredom, Demonic Possession, and Penitence” was published in August on the New York Times Opinionator blog.

 Music

Craig Butterfield

An associate professor of bass and jazz studies in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina, Craig Butterfield has had an unusually prolific year even by his standards. He’s released two CDs over the past 12 months: Pilgrimage, a classical contemporary collection with guitarist Matthew Slotkin featuring five new compositions commissioned by the duo and released by Summit Records, and Stickerfoot, a duo recording with mandolinist Jesse Jones featuring nine original compositions. He’s given dozens of solo recitals and concerts, including a seven-date Midwest tour with Slotkin, along with a variety of lectures, including one on vibrato for string instruments at the American String Teachers Association convention in Salt Lake City and one on recording solo double bass with electronics at TEDx in Columbia.

Jordan Young

Young, a recent MA graduate from the Media Arts program at the University of South Carolina, had a busy year blending his visual and audio production skills together in a variety of ways. Along with musical partner Chris Tollack, his experimental electro-pop duo We Roll Like Madmen released Hermetic Vol. 1 in October on Post-Echo records, and since then the two have toured steadily throughout the Southeast. He co-founded Fort Psych Media Events, a production group specializing in AV design and production, was a video performer and lighting designer for the Southeastern Piano Festival Opening Gala as well as the Ebb:Flow Music Collective, completed and showed his thesis installation Faceless, an audiovisual ecosystem exploring collaboratively using new musical instruments, at Tapp’s Art Center, and had his music with We Roll Like Madmen featured at the semi-annual Spork in Hand Puppet Slam.

Heyward Sims

While Sims, a talented guitarist in now-defunct bands likes of Parlour Tricks, Bolt, and Death Becomes Even the Maiden, has, when not busy slaving away as the designer and art director of Jasper, been plying his considerable production and songwriting skills under the Devereaux moniker. Last year’s Pineapple Flex, his debut full-length, showcased an uncanny blend of 80s pop, krautrock, EDM, and French disco that won rave reviews, and his music videos have been picked up by noted publications like Noisey, Vice, Under the Radar, Pop Matters, and other national publications.

Visual Arts

 

Kimi Maeda

Puppet Master extraordinaire, Kimi Maeda was selected as Tapp’s Artist in Residence, August-November, 2014, culminating in “ephemera” exhibition and premiere of new performance piece Bend.

She was awarded grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, Arkansas Arts Council, Arkansas Humanities Council, Alternate Roots, SC Arts Commission and the Japanese American Citizens League to perform Bend ” at the International Sonoran Desert Alliance Gathering in Ajo, Arizona, Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, a/perture cinema in Winston-Salem, NC, The Carrack Modern in Durham, NC, ROOTS Week at Arden, NC, Mechanical Eye Microcinema at Asheville, NC, Maiden Alley Cinema at Paducah, KY, Ron Robinson Theatre in Little Rock, AR, McGehee High School in McGehee, AR, Puppets in the Green Mountains Festival in Putney, VT.

Kimi developed “Occupation/Reconstruction” with choreographer Martha Brim for the Burning of Columbia and ArtFields – February, 2015 and designed the set for “In the Red and Brown Water” at Trustus – January 2015. She spoke on a panel about “Immigrant and Refugee Communities and the Changing South” at ROOTS Week – August 2015 as well as on a panel about “Generations of Otherness in America” at the Puppets in the Green Mountains Festival – September 2015.

Kimi helped organize Future Perfect art installations and the Spork in Hand Puppet Slam for Indie Grits – April 2015 and created live visuals for The Prairie Willows  “Guilty 2” at their CD release party – June 2015. She performed “The Homecoming” and “Guilty 2” at Norfolk, VA’s Mid Summer Fantasy Festival – July 2015, created shadow puppet workshop for teens for the Richland Public Library and St. Andrews Library – July 2015, and designed the set for “Marie Antoinette” at Trustus – September 2015.

Eileen Blythe

Visual Artist Eileen Blythe’s work appeared in Volume II - Women Bound by Art at Columbia College in November 2014, at Vista Lights/Gallery 80808 in November 2014, in Less is More, a Carolina Gallery Group Show in Spartanburg, SC in November 2014, in  "No Title/No Name," a group show in Kaiserslautern, Germany during the Winter 2015, and in "Drawing the Line," a solo exhibition at  Gallery 80808 in February 2015.

Her work also was also exhibited during Artista Vista/Gallery 80808 - April, 2015, Artfield's - April 2015, in the American Japanese Art Exchange - Tokyo - June 2015, at a Public Art Installation - Mayors Council of Art - Gillette, Wyoming - June 2015, a Group Exhibition - Art & Light - Greenville, SC - August 2015 in the 701 CCA Biennial - September 2015, the Broadside Project at Columbia Museum of Art - Group Project - Summer 2015, and in the "Big" group show - Anastasia & Friends - April 2015.

Russell Jeffcoat 

Photographer Russell Jeffcoat was selected for the prestigious Cassilhaus exhibition and auction benefiting the photography program at the Penland School of Crafts in Raleigh, North Carolina, in March 2014. In October 2014 he was a finalist in the International  “The Heart of Steinbeck Country”  exhibition in  Carmel, California, and was a selected nominee in the International Black & White Spider Awards, Los Angeles, California, the industry’s most important event in black and white photography. This selection places him “among the finest photographers in the world” by an international jury consisting of the heads of The Royal Photographic Society (London), The Stockholm City Museum (Sweden), and The Fratelli Alinari (Italy).

In Spring 2015 he was selected for The Photographic Nude, another internationally juried exhibit, this time in Astoria, Oregon, which celebrates the timeless elegance of classical,  alternative, and provocative styles. In May 2015 his photography was featured in Blur magazine (Blur is an international European magazine dedicated to the best in fine art photography). This fall he was also featured in "The Photography of Seven" exhibit at Gallery West in West Columbia, South Carolina.

Dance

William Starrett

Columbia City Ballet executive director William Starrett organized and presented the Body and Movement Explored evening inviting and facilitating 12 new works by 9 guest choreographers and choreographing a new dance of his own with music by Josh McCaa. He represented the company at the International Ballet Competition, in Jackson Mississippi, and as a and mentor to the competitors. He created the choreography for the world premiere of Santa Clause is Coming To Town an Educational Outreach children's program to support anti-bullying and was the first to bring this program and the Nutcracker performance to Hartsville through an invitation by the mayor  and the city where William directed and choreographed the performance. In addition to Hartsville he also continued and took it to 6 other cities.

William directed a number of ballet shows including Dracula, Nutcracker, The Lion King, Off The Wall, and Cinderella. He brought an excerpt of Off The Wall and Onto the Stage: Dancing the Art of Jonathan Green to Georgetown, SC for the first time and artistically directed the largest performing arts organization in the state, coordinating, hiring, managing and directing the most performing artists in the state of South Carolina last year.

Martha Brim

Martha Brim has been Professor of Dance at Columbia College from 1998-present. She is the Interim Director of the South Carolina Center for Dance Education and the Artistic Director of

The Power Company Collaborative. In February, Martha choreographed in collaboration with artist Kimi Maeda and musician Bill Carson, a solo public art performance installation, Occupation/Reconstruction, as I breathe I hope which was performed as part of the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Burning of Columbia. This piece was commissioned by the Historic Columbia Foundation and One Columbia for Arts and Culture. The work was 20 minutes in length and explored the parallels and distinctions between disease and war. She also choreographed Navigating Fallout in February 2015, which was performed by eight members of CCDC at Cottingham Theatre, Columbia, SC. Occupation/Reconstruction, as I breathe I hope was selected for Artfields, a juried art exhibition held in Lake City, SC.

Dale Lam

Columbia City Jazz executive director Dale Lam Received a 2015 "Dance Teacher Award" by Dance Teacher Magazine for being one of the top private studio/conservatory owners in the country. She was named an active Ambassador to the Dance Teachers Summit in Long Beach California - July 2015. For Columbia City Jazz, Lam directed and provided the majority of choreography for The Two Claras, a contemporary retelling of The Nutcracker story as well as A Beautiful Place – a contemporary duet, Never Forget – also a contemporary duet, and Clarity for the JazzGroup as well as Every Teardrop is a Waterfall for a Contemporary group for Danz Studio, Costa Rica. She has also choreographed and taught master classes for the following:  Center Stage in Asheville, NC, Dance Productions, Charlotte, NC, and Renee's Dance Floor, St. Louis, MO.

Theatre

 

Jennifer Moody-Sanchez

Jennifer made her Broadway debut this summer at Lincoln Center as Lady Macbeth in the Psittacus Production of, A Tale Told By An Idiot. She also was cast in a video game doing voice over in Los Angeles for 343 Industries (the creator of Halo) as one of the soldiers in their upcoming series. Jennifer just finished playing the title role of Marie Antoinette in Trustus Theatre's production,  Marie Antoinette, directed by 2014 Jasper Artist of the Year Finalist, Robert Richmond and will start rehearsals for Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, SC for their touring production of Hamlet and star as: Gertrude, Guildenstern and the Grave Digger. Jennifer has been seen this past year in, The Other Place, directed by Jim O'Connor playing three different characters at Trustus Theatre.

She was also in, Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays directed by Elena Martinez-Vidal, playing again ... three completely different roles also at Trustus.

Jennifer also performed in an original 10 minute production for the Lenten Drama series. She is also a drama teacher at Timmerman School here in Columbia.

Dewey Scott-Wiley

Dewey Scott-Wiley was co-Artistic Director of Trustus Theatre, September 15, 2014-August 31, 2015 and played Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Trustus Theatre, September 12-27, 2014. She directed The Actor’s Nightmare, USC Aiken, November 20-23, 2014, received recognition for faculty achievement in directing from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She directed Godspell, Trustus Theatre, March 20-April 11, 2015, recognized as “The Best Local Theatre Production” by the readers of The Free Times.  Dewey also directed Bill W. and Dr. Bob, Trustus Theatre, May 29-June 13, 2015.  This historically accurate account of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous was sponsored by Favor SC (Faces and Voices of Recovery).  The Side Door Show sold out before we opened. She directed Big City (World Premiere), Trustus Theatre, August 14-22, 2015, winner of the 2014 Trustus Playwrights’ Festival. She was the voice of Gladys the Grasshopper, Columbia Museum of Art, September 15, 2014-Present and served as Professional Division Chair of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, September 15, 2014-March 5, 2015. She was the Coordinator of Directing Initiatives – Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, September 15, 2014-Present and has been a Trustus Ensemble Member – August 1993-Present.

Kendrick Marion

Kendrick performed the following roles over the past year:  In a Christmas Carol he was Man 5 at Trustus. In In the Red and Brown Water, he was Shango at Trustus. He was the House Band singer in the Henderson Bros. Burlesque at Trustus and was the host of Link Up's The Orchestra Rocks for the SC Philharmonic at the Koger Center. Finally, in Dreamgirls, he played the role of  Jimmy Early at Trustus Theatre.

To vote for your favorite JAY 2015 nominees, click here.

If you have any issue with voting, please email kpetersen@jaspercolumbia.com. Voting closes at midnight on October 25th. Thanks!

Tamara Finkbeiner wins Audience Award at Jasper's 2nd Act Film Festival

 

Congratulations to Tamara Finkbeiner whose film Eva's Plug, won the Audience Award at Friday night's 2nd Act Film Festival sponsored by Jasper Magazine. Selected via audience ballot, the 2nd Act Film Festival Audience Award includes a check for $250, a First Draft editing program, and a one-of-a-kind trophy designed by Columbia artist, Matthew Kramer. According to film festival director Wade Sellers, "With any short film fest there are many films that could win an audience award, that was the same with this year's 2nd Act Film Fest. There is usually a film, however, that just connects with an audience in that room at that moment and that was the case with Tamara's film Eva's Plug. You could feel the energy and enthusiasm for the film build as it played. That experience is what 2nd Act is all about."

This was the second 2nd Act Film Festival (the first was in October 2013) which played once again to a capacity house at Tapp's Arts Center and included the films of 10 adjudicated filmmakers from South Carolina including Lucas Sams, Brian Harmon, Jason Stokes, Bessy Adut, Phyllis Jackson, Caletta Harris-Bailey, Bradley Wagster,  Dustin Weibel, Jordan Young, and Tamara Finkbeiner. The selected filmmakers, who applied to participate earlier this season, were chosen over other applicants based on their abilities and the freshness of the voice the jurors thought they would bring to the project. Jurors included Lee Ann Kornegay, Lee Snelgrove,  Caitlin Bright, Wade Sellers, and Cindi Boiter. 

"This year we put more pressure on ourselves to assist the filmmakers," Sellers says. "We offered script notes, production advice and assistance, and editorial suggestions once the films were turned in. As a whole the films were more diverse in voice and just better as a whole than our first event." Sellers is the owner and director of Coal Powered Filmworks, a three-time Emmy nominated filmmaker, and the film editor for Jasper Magazine.

In keeping with Jasper's efforts to foster a multi-disciplinary arts community, both visual artists and musicians played a part in the festival and its presentation.  Visual artist Michael Krajewski created an original painting which was used for the festival poster and program; visual artist Matthew Kramer created the Audience Award; and Pedro Ldv entertained festival attendees both before the event and during intermission. In addition, original music from several Columbia-based musicians, including Stan Gardner, Daniel Machado and more, was used as background music during the films themselves.

Columbia-based writer Don McCallister also served as a consultant on the first and third acts of the screenplay which was given to the filmmakers with the challenge that they write the second act and create a film, six minutes long or less, using all three acts. Participants in the 2013 2nd Act Film Festival including Ron Hagell and OK Keyes lent the knowledge of their experience to this year's filmmakers by consulting on films and screenplays.

In the aftermath of Columbia's devastating flood last week other artists including Michael Krajewski,  Bonnie Goldberg, Kara Gunter, Nancy Marine, and Sean McGuiness voluntarily stepped up and offered the fruits of their labors to benefit flood victims through a silent auction which generated $1060 which will be delivered to the Central Carolina Community Foundation. Two large bins of children's arts supplies was also collected from audience members for distribution to children effected by the flood.

The festival staff would like to thank Precision Overhead Garage Door Service, the Mouse House, Coal Powered Filmwork, and Bourbon Columbia for their sponsorship funds and services.

"It was exciting to see these ten filmmakers create these films," Sellers says, "and it only makes us more excited for the future of the event."

Art to Benefit Flood Victims at 2nd Act Film Festival

Everyone has a role to play as we, as a community, keep making our way through one of the strangest and trying times in our city's history. Our role, on Friday night, will be to go ahead with the 2nd Act Film Festival and offer everyone the opportunity to sit down for a while and enjoy some art. We thought long and hard about whether to postpone the festival and this is where we landed.

We have 10 exciting 6 minute films created for you by 10 different South Carolina filmmakers. While each film is decidedly different, each filmmaker and her or his team sought to solve a common problem.  Each filmmaker was given the first and third acts of a screenplay and charged with writing the 2nd act and making the film with all three acts. This year's theme is consciousness. From a time-traveling Richard Nixon to a wife whose man has cheated for the last time and suffers the altered penis to prove it, each film brings its own unique perspective to the challenge.

We have a couple of announcements though.

First, we'd like to invite everyone who attends and is up for it (and even if you can't attend you can still do this) to bring a donation of children's arts supplies that we will be sure gets to local children who have lost their supplies in the flood. Crayons, coloring books, colored pencils, sketch pads, markers, craft kits -- everything is welcome. If you'd like to go ahead and drop your donation off at Tapp's Arts Center (1644 Main Street) Caitlin Bright has set up a collection bin for us there and is open from 10 am until 6 pm daily.

Next, thanks to the generosity of visual artist Michael Krajewski and the gorgeous framing by Susan Lenz and Steve Dingman at the Mouse House, we will be (silent) auctioning Krajewski's second painting in a series of art he has created specifically for Jasper and the 2nd Act Film Festival. This beautifully framed painting (above) is valued at more than $1000 - we hope to make a generous donation to our local flood victims.

So, please come out and see us on Friday night at 7 pm at Tapp's. A special VIP champagne reception to meet and greet the filmmakers -- with snacks generously provided by Bourbon -- will take place at 6 pm. Tickets are available via http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2304300 -- we sold out of even our SRO tickets at the last festival, so please keep that in mind when planning your Friday night rest for the weary.

Jasper Goes to Hopscotch, 2015 Edition

In some ways, returning to Raleigh for Hopscotch 2015 felt like catching up with an old friend. This was the festival’s sixth year, and Jasper’s fourth year attending, so much of what the astoundingly dynamic and eclectic festival offered felt comforting, familiar. The convergence of noise artists and rappers, EDM ravers and folkies, metalheads and indie rock tastemakers is what makes this festival tick, with the diversity of its booking and venues locations (ranging from the seedy dive of Slim’s to the posh intimacy of Fletcher Opera House to the, well, festival-esque City Plaza) giving it the kind of distinct character and vibe such undertakings count on.

While talking about the event from year to year is always going to center on a few things focused primarily on the music itself. How did the headliners fare? Godspeed You! Black Emperor delivered a predictably swollen, cinematic head trip of a set that was a welcome counterpart to the opening night’s rain; TV on the Radio proved to be a phenomenal live band adept at bringing art rock to the masses; and Dwight Yoakam was a straight shooter who lets his songs bring the heat.

Who blew the roofs off? Phil Cook & Friends at Fletcher felt like a celebration of everything that makes Hopscotch great as they played his new solo LP Southland Mission from start to finish (check out the amazing video our photographer Thomas Hammond shot below); Working with a dramatically different sets of tools, Lincoln Theater headliners Battles and Pusha T closed out Friday and Saturday nights respectively by putting on workshops on how to own the stage when compared to just about anybody; and Waxahatchee’s  last minute solo set proved just how entrancing some simple, heartbreaking songs and a voice can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6hfxGs7wQ&feature=youtu.be

What new discoveries had us buzzing? The haunting collection of traditional folk tunes by Jake Xerxes Fussell’s debut on Paradise of Bachelors is destined to end up on my year-end favorites list, and I’ll eat my shoe if Raleigh’s electro-R&B act Boulevards and/or upcoming rapper Ace Henderson aren’t making waves nationally by the end of 2016.

But part of what makes Hopscotch great is also what stays mostly the same—the day party traditions that range from the Trekky Records-centered lineups on Saturdays at Pour House to the noisy, avante-garde acts that fill Friday afternoon at King’s, the sprawling outdoor markets and official Hopscotch block parties, and the wonderful vendors and venues in Raleigh that team up to make the festival great from year to year.

What made this year especially memorable for South Carolina attendees, and what will hopefully be added to the list of traditions, is the collaboration between Stereofly, SceneSC, and Free Times that led to two day parties on Thursday and Friday that brought the first significant South Carolina presence to the festival since its inception.

While there have been some token inclusions from the Palmetto State in recent years—acts like Shovels & Rope, Say Brother, and Brian Robert’s Company have all been played official sets in the past, and Keath Mead got an early slot at Tir Na Nog this year—the bounty of North Carolina acts and the dearth of folks from our own music community has always given us pause, particularly when those NC acts benefit from national coverage of Hopscotch. This year was a welcome change.

Settling into the cool, dimly lit confines of Deep South on Thursday for an imitate, story-laden set from JKutchma followed by the haunting songs of She Returns from War and the electrifying country-rock of Say Brother at their sloshy best, even with their mid-afternoon start, was a great start to the festival; even better was the sprawling eclecticism of Friday’s day party at Legends Nightclub. Packed to the gills with mostly-SC acts, highlights included a grand opening from Charleston’s The High Divers, a classic rock-minded indie rock act with impeccable harmonies and a debut LP out 10/9, a fiery, mathy set from recent Post-Echo signees Art Contest, who recently moved from Columbia to Athens, GA, and a seasoned performance the Justin Osborne-led alt-country act Susto, which has been touring hard in recent months, including some opening slots for Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, and Moon Taxi. Recent Jasper centerfold Danny Joe Machado’s performance was another standout, provided a fascinating window into how an unfamiliar audience dealt with the acerbic persona The Restoration has created as a solo act.

More than any one performer, though, what struck me the most about these day parties was a sense of pride in South Carolina, as well as a rare sense of home community in a Hopscotch world where Jasper has always felt like an outsider before. Whereas in prior years “hopping” from set to set would be the norm for day parties as much as it is for the evening sets, we were happy to camp out at Legends all day on Friday, content to revel in our hometown riches before taking in the official schedule.

We can’t praise the folks and bands who put this on enough. It can be hard to see or sense forward movement for a scene, but those few hours on Thursday and Friday felt like something.

Below are some selected photos from the festival by Thomas Hammond:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashammondphotography/sets/72157659157764610/

PREVIEW: Exhibition John D. Monteith and Everyone Gets Atrophy - TONIGHT

There is a curious beauty to the art of John D. Monteith—his models overly made-up in unnatural eye shades, lacquered lips across bared or parted teeth, breasts just so perfectly presented whether freed or restrained with what you know must be silken sashes from kimonos that at first smell of sweet woodruff or bergamot but, ultimately, when the base notes kick in, smack of ambergris. It is this kind of intrigue and promise of intoxication that crooks a cherry finger toward the viewer in Monteith’s new exhibit opening tonight at Tapp’s Arts Center as part of the city’s long-lasting First Thursday gallery crawl and celebration.

In Everyone Gets Atrophy, a provocative title that fits the exhibit only oddly, Monteith offers luscious and lustrous portraits of a half dozen or so models, going back over as many years, who appear burnished both in visage and presentation. Monteith accomplishes the effect—the sense of a fine skin on his paintings—via his use of oil on Dura-lar matte, a technique he uses almost exclusively now. “Its limits are its virtues,” the artist says of the technique, citing an appreciation for the resulting flatness and fluidity.

“These pieces are somewhat experimental,” Monteith says. “I like creating problems and solving them.” One problem that he recognizes, though not of his own creation, is how to create contemporary figurative work that can be provocative and reticent at the same time. How to find “infinite nuance within a finite set.”

Tonight’s opening suggests that he, in fact, knows the answer.

It is rare for Monteith to exhibit in Columbia, but a quick look at his recent exhibition history will find his work up and down the east coast. The artist is represented by Stephen Romano Gallery in Brooklyn. Joining him in the festivities tonight for their debut performance in the Skylight Room will be James Wallace and Rob Cherry as safe_space, “an ambient industrial synthesizer percussion duo” with local band Space Coke performing in the Tapp’s Park Courtyard.

Tapp’s is located at 1644 Main Street.

- Cindi Boiter

PREVIEW: USC's Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera, written by Bertolt Brecht and directed by Steven Pearson, is back at the University of South Carolina. This production brings about USC’s first musical Mainstage production since another of Brecht’s works, Mother Courage and Her Children, was performed in April of 2009!

The Threepenny Opera follows the deeds of the charming, but innately vile, Macheath (Josh Jeffers). Macheath is a notorious criminal who is widely admired by beggars and thieves of Victorian London, and is known for thousands of heinous crimes, including thievery, adultery, and murder. Macheath only sees wild success in all of his endeavors until he takes the young, and naïve, Polly Peachum (Candace Thomas) as his wife in secret. For when Mr. and Mrs. Peachum (Benjamin Roberts and Rachel Kuhnle), discover that Macheath has ‘stolen’ their daughter away, they vow to have him arrested and hanged.

“[The play] was radical when Brecht first introduced it as a sort of anti-opera, anti-establishment sort of theatre,” Pearson explains.  “It has a sociopolitical bent which says, ‘Look at what is going on the country and in society, at thieves and beggars and the commodification of people.” Threepenny is Brecht’s adaption of John Gay’s 1728 satirical ballad opera entitled The Beggar’s Opera. Both plays take a socialist standpoint to make social commentary on the inequality of the classes in capitalist societies. “Brecht was talking about the same things that are happening now, and even though the play is set in the 19th-century, it has a very contemporary feel,” says Pearson.  “It all keeps coming back, people wanting to cut funding that supports the poor, the discrepancies between the haves and have nots…  Really, nothing has changed.”

By placing such a self-serving, ironic-hero in a role that one is intended to sympathize with, it forces the audience constantly question who in the play they should be identifying with or fighting for. Even Mr. Peachum, who is the strongest supporter of traditional morality, still only gains income through the exploitation of others and only truly has selfish intentions. “The play centers around beggars, thieves, and whores, or “the poorest of the poor”, trying to lift themselves from their current socioeconomic state,” explains Josh Jeffers (Macheath).  “…Not a single character has the luxury of remaining incorruptible, nor bears shame because today, not only is the financial gap between the poor and the wealthy significantly wide, but we’ve become profoundly desensitized to corruption.  If our audiences feel confronted with this theme in either capacity, then I think we’ve succeeded. “

And being a Brecht production, which focuses on the alienation of the audience, or verfremdungseffekt, Threepenny should be considered less a ‘musical theatre production’ and more ‘a play with music’. “The audience plays a major role.  We use music and, occasionally, direct address to include them in this story because the themes are so universal,” Josh Jeffers explains, “…The music in a Brecht piece is a tool used to comment on the theme of the moment, rather than advance the plot or reveal characters’ intentions.  Brecht’s music isn’t necessarily as melodic as we’re used to.  It’s rough and messy because the characters and themes are rough and messy. “

Mack is back! Show times for The Threepenny Opera are 8pm Wednesdays through Saturdays, with additional 3pm matinees on Sunday, October 4 and Saturday, October 10.  Tickets for the production are $12 for students, $16 for USC faculty/staff, military personnel and seniors 60+, and $18 for the general public.  Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling 803-777-2551 or by visiting the Longstreet Theatre box office, which is open Monday-Friday, 12:30pm-5:30pm, beginning Friday, September 25.  Longstreet Theater is located at 1300 Greene St.

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill English Translation by Robert MacDonald Original German text based on Elizabeth Hauptmann's German translation of John Gay's The Beggar’s Opera

Directed by Steven Pearson Musical Direction by Matthew Marsh

Preview by Rebecca Shrom

Just say no to Facebook

This week started out great. Lots of exciting stuff on the calendar, interesting meetings, tasks that I absolutely love to do. Looking ahead and all the way through Saturday morning's game, I was psyched for what the third week of September held in store. My Facebook calendar was full and I was happy!

Monday was a bit of a chore, though. For the fifth day in a row I was still working on a 2nd Act Film Festival project that should have taken less than two days to finish.

Tuesday was a little tougher. It was the last day for Jasper Artist of the Year nominations which means the beginning of a lot of sorting and stuff and I was continuing to work on last week's merciless mess of a project. I ended up forgetting about one meeting and rescheduling another.  I did make it to the Nick to see Grandma that evening and didn't feel too guilty about that since I reviewed it for the blog.

Wednesday meant day seven of the same old project, day two of the JAYs, and only two meetings, both about very exciting stuff.  By the end of the day one meeting got pushed back 30 minutes and the other two full hours, but that was OK because that night was the first night of ARTS101, our much anticipated series of arts history and appreciation presentations from esteemed members of our arts community. I remember when we first announced this series -- so many people were happy about it! And the Facebook event racked up 19 yeses and 19 maybes almost immediately. With a possible 38 people (no, I never expected the maybes to show up but I don't believe in being unprepared) coming out, the mag staff and I, along with two eager interns, were ready to greet our crowd with carefully prepared and reproduced copies of the ARTS101 calendar, a primer on John Constable, who was the subject of Mary Gilkerson's fascinating presentation, a slideshow loving prepared by our buddy Shige at Tapp's, a bar set up by Daniel, and a plate of assorted cookies. Three different kinds.

I'll just cut to the chase. No. One. Showed. Up. No, the maybes didn't show up, of course, but neither did the yeses. None of them. We did have a gentleman come in from off the street but I don't know if he knew he was coming in for a presentation or not. We were glad he was there. And we were glad we were there. It was a casual and informative presentation enjoyed over cold Coronas and cookies and I am thrilled with the knowledge I now have about landscape artist John Constable. (Primer below for your enjoyment and edification.)

Now, we're at Thursday and by the end of the day my buddy and Jasper film editor Wade has ably taken the cursed week-old project off my crippled hands.  I'm still working on the JAYS but the end is in sight, and I've turned my attention back to the next issue of the mag as well as the bones of the non-profit that's at a steady boil on the back burner of my life, waiting patiently to be moved up front and served. I wanted to go to the closing reception for Figure Out at Tapp's, one of my all-time favorite shows in town. In fact, I wanted to blog about the reception and appeal to the powers that be--in this case gallery owners and operators in the city-- that we must not relegate figurative and nude shows to one event a year held behind warning signs on closed doors. We must make the human body, clothed or unclothed, a part of our everyday art experience. As an arts community we can no longer be afraid of breasts and penises! But, of course, I didn't have time to go to the show or write the blog and only sneaked out to the Trustus fundraiser at The Whig (63 yeses and 24 maybes -- I don't think so) because I love Trustus and I love The Whig and I knew my kids would be there. I came home and went back to work.

So here it is on Friday afternoon. I'm tired, it's been raining for the past two days, the temperature is fall-ish, and new episodes of good TV started this week and are waiting on my DVR.

But wait, according to Facebook I have six events to go to tonight. Six different exciting events. Six events that would enlighten me, make me a better person, and allow me to enjoy the company of all the other yeses who want to go to these events and see each other.

You all know how this is going to turn out. I've already taken off my bra, smudged my makeup by rubbing my eyes, and poured myself a glass of wine. I ain't going nowhere.

But on Wednesday night of this past exciting and life-affirming week, in addition to learning about John Constable I learned something else. I learned about the power of the yes and I learned about the power of the no. (Maybes never really count.) So before I poured that vino and unsnapped that brassiere I visited the pages of all the fun events I will not be going to tonight and I changed my status. Yes, I could have done it earlier, had I been more honest with both Facebook and myself. But I'll take credit for doing it at all and I challenge myself to be better about it next time.

And I challenge you. Just say no to Facebook unless you really are planning to attend an event. But if your enthusiasm gets the best of you and you really believe you can make it to all those openings and receptions and concerts and presentations that you want to go to, do what I'm going to try to start doing. (I admit to being the worst about this in my life prior to this evening.) See where Facebook expects you to be and, if you're not going to be there, don't pretend. Change your yes to no and, if you must, leave a little message. You're tired, you're drained, you have a date with Olivia Pope. Doesn't everyone's head hurt a little? Just be honest with Facebook. Change it to no.

--Cindi

And here's that John Constable primer I promised you:

John Constable

• Born June 1776 – died March 1837
• English Romantic Painter
• Landscape artist known for his paintings of Dedham Vale in the Essex-Suffolk area of England, now known as “Constable Country”
• Most famous works – ‘Dedham Vale’ (1802), ‘The Hay Wain’ (1821), and ‘Wivenhoe Park’ (1816)
• Inspirations include Thomas Gainsborough, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Van Ruisdael, and Annibale Carracci
• Known for the sense of realism and vitality that he imbued in his art
• Known for taking landscape painting in a new direction
• Believed his paintings should come as directly as possible from nature
• Made hundreds of outdoor oil sketches, capturing the changing skies and effects of light.
• Happiest painting locations he knew well, particularly in his native Suffolk. He also frequently painted in Salisbury, Brighton and Hampstead, making numerous studies of the clouds over the Heath.
• Received little recognition in Britain in his lifetime, but was much better known in France.
• In 1824, ‘The Hay Wain’ won a gold medal at the Salon in Paris and Constable had a profound influence on French Romantic artists.

Show Alert: Capital City Playboys CD Release This Saturday, September 26th at Art Bar

On Saturday, September 26, local lounge-rock trio the Capital City Playboys will release their first full-length LP, Bad Bad Man. The album’s lead single and title track is a kinetic burst of ominous, surf and blues-influenced rock and roll based around clean guitar lines and tight, unflashy rhythms. With guitarist Mary Fort’s deep-bellied croon leading the charge, one is almost reminded of Glenn Danzig and his early work with fuzzy doom-punkers the Misfits. The unrelenting gloom in his voice makes for an interesting contrast with the waves you can almost hear crashing somewhere in the background. This song belongs over the opening credits of a Tarantino flick. Don’t believe me? Just listen here. -Music Editor Michael Spawn

REVIEW: Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type at Columbia Children's Theatre by Melissa Ellington

Longtime fans as well as newcomers to the children’s book Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type by author Doreen Cronin and illustrator Betsy Lewin will be enchanted by the marvelous production at Columbia Children’s Theatre. Through songs like “Music To My Ears” and “Electric Blankets Feel Like Home,” the musical by James E. Grote and George Howe invites audiences into the amusing and often surprising world of Farmer Brown and his animals.

When the barn residents discover a typewriter, their newfound ability to communicate with the farmer develops into a dramatic standoff: no milk or eggs until the animals get electric blankets. As Farmer Brown protests, “Cows that type. Hens on strike! Whoever heard of such a thing?” Farmer Brown is played by talented performer Julian Deleon, who brings the beleaguered character to life with engaging charisma. Jackie Rowe sparkles in the fierce and funny role of the Hen, while Paul Lindley II charms the audience as Duck, serving as both narrator and participant in this farmyard tale. Frances Farrar and Georgie Harrington excel as the title characters: Cows 1 and 2 are vibrant individuals with impressive commitment and loads of personality. At certain shows, Taylor Diveley (Duck), Brandi Smith (Cow 1), Imani Ross-Jackson (Cow 2) and Erica Cooper (Hen) will perform.

Cast members capitalize on the physical comedy made feasible by a remote control feature with humorous “rewinding” and “translating” from animal speak. The script retains key elements from the beloved book while also opening up inventive possibilities. For instance, while Duck is presented as a “neutral party” in the book, the play suggests a more complex (and hilarious) situation. Guided by accomplished director Jerry Stevenson, the production team has crafted an appealing farm experience with a touch of whimsy and a whole lot of creativity. Just wait till you see the clever take on a duck pond as realized by set designer Robert Michalski. Costumer Donna Harvey evokes animal characteristics while also suggesting distinct identities, especially with the cows’ outfits. Courtesy of expert choreographer Cindy Flach, the tap sequences provide energy and flair. My tap-dance-loving daughter was star struck by the spiffy tap number that enlivens the title song. Music Director Lindley guides adept singers through the enjoyable score, while stage manager Crystal Aldamuy and sound/light technician Jim Litzinger ensure that top-notch quality emerges in every aspect of Click, Clack, Moo with gratifying attention to detail.

My kindergarten child was overjoyed to see one of his all-time favorite books come to life on stage. “Oh, wow! That was great! Hooray!” he cheered while clapping vigorously. Hooray, indeed. Hooray for this extraordinary cast and crew, hooray for a community that supports local theatre for families and schools, and hooray for a brilliant launch to Season 11 for Columbia Children’s Theatre.

Click, Clack, Moo will be performed on Saturday, September 26 at 10:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 7:00 p.m. as well as Sunday, September 27 at 3:00 p.m. (There will also be an adults-only “Late Night Date Night” version of the show presented at 8:00 pm on Friday, September 25). For more information, call (803) 691-4548 or visit www.columbiachildrenstheatre.com.