Hot it was on Thursday night -- hot off the presses, that is. The Fresno art scene doesn't usually boast a gallery opening that includes a printed catalog, but that's what greeted visitors to Gallery 25's "Alchemy" show. (OK, so it was bloody hot, too, but what else is new?) Beehiver Felicia Matlosz was anxious to see "Alchemy," and she says it was worth the wait. Here's her take:
The buzz about the new "Alchemy" exhibit at Gallery 25 turned out to be true. It is a plush, strong, marvelous display of some of the area's most creative talent. With a showcase of 29 artists, there is plenty to visually devour. Make sure you carve out ample time to breathe in the scope of this show.
First, why the title "Alchemy"? The catalog introduction, written by one of the featured artists, Trude McDermott, states: "The contemporary use of the term alchemy is frequently a reference to a mysterious synthesis or fusion of different elements into a new form." From that premise, these artists forged visions from that concept.
The moment you walk through the gallery's front door, you will briefly ponder which way to go. But I think you'll be pulled to the right. On the wall hangs one of Robert Weibel's large-scale gunpowder works of bison. This one is a multiple image, in a lighter, golden-brown tone, that gives the work an ethereal feel, as if aiming for transcendency. To the left is a huge, vertical, three-panel painting by Nanete Maki-Dearsan, called "The Abilities of Butterflies." It's a dramatically dark, textured work, with whiffs of white seemingly struggling from submergence for a separate plane of existence.
Wednesday, Aug. 27
Good Company Players rehearsal hall
Things are a little tense tonight. Not major-league tense. Director Fred Bologna doesn't display the I'm-going-to-bite-your-head-off-and-feed-it-to-the-booster-club swagger that a ticked-off football coach, say, might launch into when a complicated play has just gone awry. But as I watch Bologna rehearse the dancers for the tap dance scene in "Springtime for Hitler," I start to feel the pressure of the approaching opening night. Suddenly it seems to be looming a lot closer than it was just a few weeks ago.
"Don't bend from the waist," Bologna tells the tap-dancers. "It's all about military precision. That's why it looks awful. Even though it's a tap dance, 50% of the audience will be looking from the waist up. It has to be PERFECT. Those of you who know me know that we're going to do this until it looks good for stage."
He says more, but I'm stuck on just one word: audience. Yes, there will be an audience. In just a matter of weeks. Hanging out in a rehearsal hall as I have these last couple of weeks, playing to a bunch of empty blue plastic chairs, it's easy to make all this an academic exercise. It's easy to forget that real, live, people are soon going to be sitting in front of me. One of my favorites lyrics in the musical "Billy Elliott" is when the hardened but still kindly dance teacher tells her hapless students, "We only have seven and a half months to rehearse this, so for Christ's sake, concentrate!"
We don't have seven and a half months.
For the very first time in this entire endeavor, I feel the tiniest wingbeat of a butterfly in my stomach.
About this blog series: The tables are turned on The Bee's theater critic as he joins the ensemble for one number in "The Producers." He'll go through the rehearsal process and will make his Good Company Players debut at the final dress rehearsal.
Wait till you see our story about the Washington Monument
Our favorite reader complaint of the morning comes from a woman who called to say that the following Associated Press photo in Wednesday's Life section is pornographic:
The reason for the offense? That big, upright baguette, which evidently for this reader carries with it such strong phallic connotations that even those innocent cherry tomatoes look vaguely complicit.
I'm no Heather, but as the interim deputy assistant to the secretary of gossip here at the Beehive, I thought I'd pass along this charming tidbit (courtesy of In Touch Weekly's publicists, who relentlessly fill my in box each morning) of one more example of Madonna's uppity ways:
Madonna is still the reigning queen of pop, so it's not surprising that she's picky about her thrones -- especially when it comes to public toilets. Before her concert at the Palais Nakaia concert hall in Nice, France, on August 26, the singer had all of the commodes, showers and sinks removed, scrubbed down and then reinstalled. "Everyone thinks she did this because she hates the thought of dirty and germy things," an insider tells In Touch. The self-disciplined star has even admitted to her controlling ways. "Guy [Ritchie, her husband] tells me to loosen up," she has said. "My friends do, too, but I can't. I've always been this way." And it's not the first time the Material Girl has been occupied with lavatory troubles, the insider notes: "During her tour last year, a man stole some of the toilets from the Madonna tour and sold them on eBay for nearly $8,000!'' Madge kicked off her Sticky & Sweet tour on August 23 in Wales, where the latrines were presumably spotless.
Just think if Madonna had lived back in the 17th Century. She would have demanded a NEW chamber pot at each tour stop.
Pictured: a toilet from the world-famous Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Get it? Madonna toilet? Hey, that's what I get for using Google Image.
Thank you for asking. Unfortunately, all of the concurrent events at the amphitheater have been distracting to some degree for those acting in and watching Hamlet. Interestingly, we have gotten the most outpouring of audience comment about the cage fighting but we cannot really say that it was louder or more distracting than the amplified music and the often enthusiastically screaming crowds that attracts. So the more vocal Hamlet audience objection to the fighting may have other motivations. Obviously, it also depends on the sensitivity of the particular audience member. On the night of the blues concert I talked to several friends, all of whom can be quite particular about their theater experience. None mentioned any displeasure about the sound although the songs were often loud enough to sing along. I was out of town this weekend so I cannot really compare the experiences.
Campbell says that Woodward Shakespeare is working collaboratively with the parks department to develop a solution for next year. He describes some possible solutions on the jump.
My good read of the week: Are we taking too many photos?
How many digital pictures is enough? I've been known to take 300 in ONE DAY. With no worries about paying to process film, it's easy to adopt an attitude of "take so many shots that your subject wants to kill you."
In many ways, taking lots of pics is a good strategy. It's certainly improved my photos. I've able to learn a lot through practice. And the more shots you take, the better your odds are of coming up with a real winner. But I've been trying to cut down on my tendency to want to document EVERYTHING, no matter how mundane. As Ivor Tossell asks in an astute piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail, has digital-photo taking become compulsive? He writes:
It is as if people fear that moments won't exist unless they've been reduced to bits. No transgression goes undocumented, no inebriation goes unpublicized and no child goes un-camcorded ... It all gets posted to YouTube and stuck on Flickr, filling up giant, remote server farms like the one Google built on a river in Oregon. It's not just family snaps any more, it's every square inch of populated turf, every spare moment of carousing, the combined detritus of Facebook friendship, artistic impulse and wish-you-were-here idleness.
The world is so redundantly well-documented, it's as if you could reconstruct a virtual reality out of it.
Let's see. I've got something like 18,000 photos on my hard drive. (In a completely gratuitous attempt to show him off, here's one below of my 5-year-old nephew Connor getting autographs from cast members Tami Cowger and Max Debbas at the performance of "Annie Get Your Gun" I took him to at Roger Rocka's Dinner Theater.) Do I need to join a support group or something?
What a weird Labor Day weekend. I'd like to say that I spent the entire three-day holiday splashing in the sun, or communing with nature, or drinking myself to oblivion. (From the aftermath of the afternoon scene at Starline Grill, where I ate dinner Monday night, it seemed as if a fair number of folks took the drinking route.) But I actually frittered a lot of the long weekend away glued to my computer screen following national news developments: the aftermath of the Dems convention, the McCain VP pick, the path of Hurricane Gustav, the bizarre Sarah Palin fake-pregnancy rumors and the announcement that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.
Such issues have been thoroughly covered elsewhere online, of course, and it isn't my intention to get into a partisan back-and-forth about Palin, for example, here on this thread. (You have plenty of opportunities elsewhere: for the conservative side, try Redstate.com and nationalreview.com; for the liberal side, some of the big players have been Dailykos.com and andrewsullivan.com. And there's always the Bee's Opinion Blog.) However, there are several bigger-picture things that struck me about the whole scenario:
1) We are in a different age in terms of how quickly rumors/news/developments travel. I've realized that for a while, but it really hit home this weekend. I didn't even turn on the TV to track Hurricane Gustav. Updates were much faster online. As far as the Palin story goes, the major developments actually seemed to move of their own accord online. One site would pick up a rumor, then another, and all the while hundreds of commenters issued forth a steady stream of opinions, conspiracy theories, personal memories and outright vitriol. Occasionally someone would contribute an actual tidbit of news. The bloggers themselves just fought to keep up. And the more mainstream outlets were playing continual chase-up, with even the august New York Times relying more on its Caucus blog comment string to advance the story than anything its reporters could provide.
One week after the controversy of Shakespeare in Woodward Park playing at the same time as a big Mixed Martial Arts match across the way at the amphitheatre, another potentially very loud competitor rolled into the same venue: a Timmy T concert. I'm curious from people who attended last night's "Hamlet": Did it go OK? Or did the noise level interfere?
The shiny new road sign on display Thursday night in the lobby welcomed folks to "William Saroyan Country." I'm not sure what the famously grouchy author would have thought of this. You have to remember that he made it very clear that he didn't want anything named after him. And now there will be signs with his name posted all over a special downtown district.
Then again, his birthday party was being held in the lobby of the William Saroyan Theatre. If he's in a position to care about such things, he's already come to terms with the name thing.
The celebration marking the 100th anniversary of his birth was a festive night: lots of Armenian delicacies, a clown named Scruffy, a memorabilia auction that included a bottle of Marilyn Monroe merlot, a stage flanked by two old-fashioned bicycles just like the one that Saroyan used to tool around on downtown. Lots of glammed-up members of the local Armenian community sipped wine. Larry Balakian, chairman of the William Saroyan Centennial Committee and a devoted disciple to the preservation of the author's memory, was seemingly everywhere in his crisp summer suit, chatting with sponsors and making sure the evening flowed smoothly.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BILL: Yes, the official day of celebration is here: For a year, the city has been celebrating the 100th anniversary of William Saroyan's birth, and now it's time for the party. The William Saroyan Centennial Committee has put together a program tonight at -- where else? -- the Saroyan Theatre celebrating the favorite-son author. The program includes a concert with the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia and performances by Edna Garabedian, Rhonda Grove and the Fresno Choral Artists.
Pre-concert festivities start at 6 pm. The concert starts at 7:30, and birthday cake will be served at 9:30. Tickets are $25-$50.
I talked to organizer Larry Balakian this afternoon, and tickets for tonight's event are still available. (Pictured: A watercolor from Pat Hunter's book ""William Saroyan: Places in Time.")
LAST WEEKEND:Children's Musical Theaterworks closes out its summer season with "Once Upon a Mattress." There are four performances left: 7:30 p.m. tonight and Friday, and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. I haven't yet had a chance to catch this show, but I'm going to make an effort. Do CMT patrons recommend it? Let me know.
If you need any more encouragement to see Woody Allen's new film "Vicky Christina Barcelona," one of his best in recent years, you can add this to your list of reasons: Fresno's beloved Juan Serrano has two songs featured in the movie. The soundtrack is now available. According to the label:
As might be expected from a collection of Spanish music, instrumental guitar pieces make up the lion's share of the soundtrack. Guitarist Juan Serrano, whose reputation as a flamenco virtuoso spans six decades, delivers the churning and complex "Gorrión" early in the set, followed much later by the equally intricate closer, "Entre Olas."
If you recall, Serrano appeared at the Tower Theatre in July as part of the California State University Summer Arts festival.
I learned all sorts of interesting things in today's Bee:
CONDUCT THIS: As a Tower District resident who is periodically yanked from a deep sleep by the blast of a train horn -- on foggy nights it sounds as if the railroad crossing arm is in my living room -- my heart jumped when I read Denny Boyles' story headlined "Fresno plans to silence trains":
With the current crossings, engineers are required to use their horns as a warning as they approach intersections. The quiet zone project will cost just over $1 million and will make improvements to many of the downtown rail crossings. Work will include new concrete medians and improved crossing signals.
Yes! At last, an attempt to rein in the heavy-handed horn madness! (Have you ever heard the train engineer who replicates the "Jaws" theme?) I excitedly read about the effort to create a railroad quiet zone between Olive Avenue and Ventura Avenue.
Then it hit me. I live north of Olive Avenue. So I'll probably be just in range when the horn-ready engineers, momentarily silenced through downtown and just itching to make some real noise, get to let loose with a blast.
ABOUT THAT CAGE MATCH: Folks continue to express their displeasure with the juxtaposition of a Mixed Martial Arts match and the performance of "Hamlet" on Saturday night at Woodward Park.
Hello: I have a not so friendly argument with a co-worker......He says that he and his wife got to talking and could not come up with ANY ACTRESSES worth their salt in movies today. Nothing, they say, like the Bergmans, Davis', Crawfords, Turners, etc of the 40's to 70's. I disagreed with him and he said no professional critics would have any of the last 20 years in their top ten of actresses.
Some of my faves/opinions.......Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore......and those come to mind..... What are your thoughts?
My response: First off, George, I hope you've completely ruled out a duel with your coworker. No amount of movie supremacy in an argument is worth a 3/4-inch musket ball embedded in your shin.
I'm on your side on this one. I really do believe that some of today's best actresses are smokin' good.
[Pictured: Meryl Streep in 'Sophie's Choice,' Joan Crawford in 'Female On the Beach']
A pleasant man left a message saying nice things about my Sunday Spotlight "Producers" column, but he had a bone to pick with one of my "facts." I had written:
The last show I performed in was in high school (I was the second sharecropper in "Finian's Rainbow"), and that was so many years ago that I'm pretty sure there was a glacier where Roger Rocka's Dinner Theater stands today.
My caller chided me, saying: "I want to correct something. That used to be an old Sprouse-Reitz department store."
OK, so just to be clear here: First an ice age back in Donald's distant past, THEN the Sprouse-Reitz. Gotta get the chronology correct.
Back in July, I wrote a column about a terrific art exhibition at Gallery 25 titled "Assemblage." One of the pieces in that show was by noted Fresno artist Nancy Youdelman, who likes to use found objects in her art. She had stumbled upon a fascinating cache of old letters that she ended up using as the basis for the piece, which she titled "Letters to Allen," pictured above.
Youdelman found the letters on eBay, which is a common place these days for people to unload old family heirlooms. (What to do with a stash of letters found in an attic? Put them on eBay.) The man had passed away at an advanced age. When Youdelman stumbled upon the letters and plowed through their beautiful calligraphy, she discovered an intriguing, if one-sided, view of a charismatic young man named Allen H. Watkins living in Greensboro, N.C., in the 1930s. From the letters that he had saved, which came from a number of women, a portrait emerges of an engaging young man with a country-club lifestyle and a bevy of lady friends who were obviously interested in him as romantic material.
After that story ran, I got an email from a local gentleman named Howard Watkins who was interested in the last name of the subject for obvious reasons. He put a link to the column on a Watkins family genealogy site. And, lo and behold, he got a call from none other than the son of Allen H. Watkins. Could he put her in touch with the artist?
I immediately called Youdelman. You can't blame her for being a little nervous for hearing that the son of the man whose intimate correspondence wound up in her assemblage piece wanted to talk with her.
Sounds like Woodward Park was a pretty lively place on Saturday night, what with a capacity crowd of 4,000 fans jamming the amphitheatre for "Rumble in the Park" and a smaller group of devoted Shakespeare fans gathering across the street at the Theater in the Glen for a performance of "Hamlet." Fans started lining up 90 minutes in advance for the "Rumble," an evening of mixed-martial arts that had a starting ticket price of $30. More than 1,500 people were turned away, Bee writer Denny Boyles reported. It's safe to assume that the audience for Shakespeare, which was free, was significantly smaller. Wonder how many of those disappointed 1,500 fight fans walked across the street for "Hamlet" instead?
You can be lighthearted about the contrast between the two events -- whatever makes folks happy, right? -- and can actually get historical about it. Bear baiting was a big deal in Shakespeare's time, of course, and the Bard was keenly aware of his competition. But I did hear from some "Hamlet" fans about the noise from the fights and how it bled into the play.
And on this weekend's Mindhub, Craig Scharton weighed in:
The people who put on Shakespeare in the park seem to be a good natured group, a group who obviously receives little support from anyone with the keys to the treasury to bring entertainment to our community. Tonight's play was their 100th. It should have been a celebration. Instead it was bombarded by AC/DC, Ozzie Osbourne and System of a Down. All good bands, but not in a bird sanctuary and not on a night when the local Shakespeare company was putting their collective hearts into a performance.
Thursday, Aug. 14
Good Company Players rehearsal hall
You could walk right past this storefront studio and never realize what's inside. The space is tucked in the corner of an innocuous strip mall that sits on the curvy part of Wishon Avenue, just south of Olive in the Tower District. (Babylon is at the other end of the building.) The unmarked rehearsal hall is almost invisible from the street. A screen blocks the view from the door. To a shopper walking by on the way to the thrift store a few storefronts down, it's impossible to tell that on the other side of the screen, 25 people are singing and dancing like mad.
Well, that shopper might hear something out of the ordinary.The walls are thin. Next door to the rehearsal hall is a church. At 7 p.m. on Thursdays, the worship service lumbers into gear. On one side of the wall there's the rumble of an organ and the bark of the minister. On the other, a line of actors hunched over like little old ladies singing a song from "The Producers." It's quite a combination.
I've been in this rehearsal space before conducting interviews for advance stories on GCP productions, but on this night, it's in a slightly different capacity. I am in a number from "The Producers" -- at least through the final dress rehearsal.
I AM one of those little old ladies.
As I write in my Sunday Spotlight column introducing this blog series, all those Fresno theater fans out there who are used to me as the dignified critic slouching in the dark may now pop their eyeballs back into their heads.
Proving once again that there is a blog for absolutely everything under the sun, this baby-shower dessert is featured on Cake Wrecks, a site devoted to "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."
On the jump: three more of my faves. (Warning: Avoid if you're eating lunch, especially McDonald's french fries.)
OPENINGS: The last Children's Musical Theaterworks production of the summer, "Once Upon a Mattress," pictured above, opens Friday at the Fresno Memorial Auditorium and runs for two weekends. This production is for the 11-to-14 year old crop of actors, and unlike "Sweeney Todd," it's appropriate for all ages. So many kids in that age range wanted to be in the show that CMT has two completely separate casts, 35 each, alternating the show. Normally in a CMT show, the principal roles are alternated, but the ensembles remain the same. I'm curious to hear what audience members (which includes parents, of course) think of the arrangement.
SECOND WEEKEND: "Hamlet" and "Doubt" continue their runs at Woodward Shakespeare Festival and 2nd Space Theatre, respectively. The "Hamlet" review, which is capsulized in Friday's 7 section, is here. (It's generated quite a volume of comments already, including a fascinating one Thursday from the cast member playing Ophelia talking about her character.) The "Doubt" review is here.
And speaking of made-up funny stuff: Maureen Dowd's latest column about John McCain and Hillary Clinton plotting against Obama -- which is getting a lot of play online -- is immensely clickworthy.
ART REVIEW: September ArtHop
Hot it was on Thursday night -- hot off the presses, that is. The Fresno art scene doesn't usually boast a gallery opening that includes a printed catalog, but that's what greeted visitors to Gallery 25's "Alchemy" show. (OK, so it was bloody hot, too, but what else is new?) Beehiver Felicia Matlosz was anxious to see "Alchemy," and she says it was worth the wait. Here's her take:
