ARTS NEWS FLASHES
DISTANCE RUN Zimbabwe is a long way to go to perform a play. But for Brooke Ciardelli, artistic director of Northern Stage, and Kevin Loreque, who starred in the White River Junction company's production of Doug Wright's one-man play I Am My Own Wife, the trip to an unsettled nation was worth it.
In the first week of May, Northern Stage brought Wright's Pulitzer-winning play to Zimbabwe's Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) for three performances.
COMIC ART (05.23.07)
Comics are ubiquitous. Most of us read "the funnies," and many of us grew up reading comic books. Nowadays, we can watch some of those superheroes fight bad guys on the big screen and bask in the glory of a lucrative franchise. Even their animated cousins on television have merch deals. Whether drawn or digital, animated or molded in plastic, comic characters compose a significant part of popular culture.
ART (05.23.07)
Burlington artist Wes Disney passed away in December 2000 at age 54. Seven years later, he's being commemorated in a retrospective exhibit and in an aptly artful magazine. The latter, 05401, has been irregularly published since 1995 by Burlington architect Mannie Lionni. It's usually devoted to heady prose and poetry about his primary interests: "architecture, planning, food and sex.
When opposites reach out, they often merge: male and female, yin and yang, East and West. And where they come together, a remarkable alchemy occurs. Something like that is evident at the West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Garden in Stowe. Its owners are Chris Curtis and Tari Swenson, 56-year-old husband-and-wife artists whose creative endeavors could hardly be more different, yet occasionally entwine.
ARTS NEWS FLASHES
VOCAL POINT Mi mi mi mi . . . Soon that will be the sound of music at Elley-Long - voices warming up, that is. Yes, voices. Last week, the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association announced a brand-new program: the VYO Chorus, which will be open to Vermont students in grades 8-12. The goal is to accept every qualified student who auditions; practically speaking, the final chorus might number about 100, suggests VYO Marketing Director Lisamarie Charlesworth.
FILM (05.16.07)
The Bosnian film Ovo Malo Duse (A Little Soul) opens with a grumpy grandfather explaining that women aren't to be trusted. As he and his companions take strong swigs of sljivovica, he tells the story of Adam and Eve. When he gets to the punchline - where Eve ruins everything, in his opinion - a drinking buddy pours another glass and gives his two cents: "Bitch.
FILM (05.16.07)
Sometimes, in today's world of on-demand entertainment, it's nice not to know what you're getting. At the Key Sunday Cinema Club at Merrill's Roxy in Burlington, cinephiles get the bimonthly surprise of an offbeat film that hasn't yet hit local theaters. "Secret Movie Night," a weekly event at
FILM (05.09.07)
Any science-fiction fan worth his or her popcorn salt has seen classics of the genre such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner - many probably own the DVDs. But how many younger fans have seen these films the way they were intended to be viewed: on a big screen? In an age when repertory movie houses are few and far between, rare are the opportunities to step into a dark room and be dwarfed by the image of a circular space station floating on a field of stars.
BOOKS (05.09.07)
"When pigs fly" means, of course, "never," and in the past few decades, successful independent bookstores have been almost as rare in the Burlington area as airborne swine. So the Flying Pig Bookstore's name is appropriate, even as it evokes fanciful images from the kids' books that have been the shop's mainstay.
COLLECTING (05.09.07)
Bruce Lee action figure with Game of Death suit? A Scooby-Doo tissue box cover? An Executioner High Performance bug zapper? You can find just about anything on eBay. And at the Shelburne Museum this summer, you'll be able to see what eight "celebrities and art-world experts" collected from the wildly popular online auction site in an ingenious new exhibit that opens May 20.
