Thursday, March 13, 2014
Theatre Kavanah, Burlington's Jewish theater company, brings an unusual day of live performances to the area on March 23 at Main Street Landing.
"It's kind of like Jewish theater meets 'American Idol,'" says founder and co-director Wendi Stein.
It also happens to be a semifinals event of the New Jersey/New York City-based Jewish Plays Project s annual playwriting contest. During the two-hour event, attendees will be treated to staged readings of 20-minute excerpts from three plays submitted from around the world and directed by JPP's executive director David Winitsky. Talented Vermont actors — including Karen Lefkoe, Paul Ugalde and many others — will perform the readings, and attendees will vote on a winner. The event (which has been dubbed "the Maple Edition") will also have food, trivia and live music by Brass Balagan.
The three plays to be performed are: God's Honest Truth ("Roberta and Larry have just purchased a miraculous Holocaust Torah for their synagogue. So why does the shul in the next town have one, too?"); Modern Prophet ("Deep in the Minnesota woods, a wayward brother and sister struggle with Elijah and an Angel"); and Clandestino ("When the federal government shut down Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, they also exploded a fragile, multilingual, multiethnic community.")
The winning play from the Maple Edition will go on to compete at a final event in Brooklyn against the winners from JPP's three other semifinals contests, which have already been held in Chicago, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Tags: theatre kavanah , theater , jewish plays project , main street landing , burlington , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
We might have bumped the clocks forward an hour and spring may technically be a mere week away, but you'd hardly know it from the snowpocalypse currently a-brewin' outside. But, hey, at least we've got an extra hour of daylight in which to shovel. Amirite?!
Sigh…
But warmer days really are ahead, and they're closer than you think. To help remind us of that, here are a bunch of updates and announcements released this week concerning some notable music happenings slated for the spring and summer months.
Tags: Burlington Discover Jazz Festival , Concerts on the Green , Frendly Gathering , festivals , Waking Windows 4 , Belizbeha , Tony Bennett , Kat Wright and the Indomitable Soul Band , Jatoba , Twiddle , Disco Phantom , Jennifer Hartswick Band , Image , Video , Web Only
I don't even smoke weed anymore. (Or rather, I do just often enough to remind myself why I don't smoke weed anymore.) But I defy anyone to watch the video and not be tempted to spark one up in a backwoods shack with Jimmy and, apparently, the Dead Presidents From Point Break. (RIP, Swayze.)
Thurston plays the Higher Ground Ballroom this Saturday, March 15, opening for his son, rising Nashville country singer Jamie Lee Thurston. He may be high.
)
Tags: Cannabeat , Higher Ground Ballroom , Jamie Lee Thurston , Jimmy T Thurston , video , weed , Image , Video , Web Only
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
In the past few years Vermont has seen Parenting 101: The Musical ("for anyone who's ever been a parent or had a parent') and Menopause: The Musical ("the hilarious celebration of women and The Change"). Last week, we heard from the Barre Opera House that a touring production of Assisted Living: The Musical this way cometh. Yes, really. Think an eccentric cast of coots at the Pelican Roost. Then, of course, there's Urinetown: The Musical (starting this week at UVM).
And speaking of coming, today the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington exclaimed the triumphant return of 50 Shades! The Musical ("a sexy, hysterical musical romp").
Which of course got us peeps here at Seven Days thinking about our own wacky, LOL romps. Only we don't have time to write musicals, so we just took a few minutes on a busy production day to spew a bunch of titles and tag lines. Naturally, we just have to share. Be warned, though, that some of the following are un-PC and likely to offend ... someone.
Here's a sampling:
Drug Addiction: The Musical — “Shot up with trippy near-death experiences! It’ll leave you wanting more!”
Viagra Monologues: The Musical — "The Centrum Silver set comes clean about getting up — or not!"
Hip and Hipster: The Musical — "An unemployed twentysomething rocker moves in with his elderly dad, who's fallen and can't get up. Or get down!"
Potty Training The Musical — "Pooh-pooh-pee-do!"
Driver's Ed: The Musical - "White-knuckle excitement set to your favorite road tunes!"
Heady Topper: The Musical — "Tickets on sale at select locations nobody will tell you about"
Vermont Health Connect: the Musical — "Spend two hours at the edge of your seat, only to be disconnected"
Last week, local rock trio Swale captured the bleak but beautiful expanse that is winter in Vermont with their new video, "Joyless." Continuing that seasonally effective theme, today, local indie-folk quintet Alpenglow unveiled a new video of their own, "Catskills," from their 2013 EP Solitude. Like Swale's midwinter opus, it's pretty freakin' Vermonty. The difference is that Alpenglow take advantage of perhaps an even more quintessentially Vermont season: fall.
Shot live at Windfall Orchards in Corinth, Vt., the video features the band playing amid the autumnal splendor of gently rolling mountains, rusty, rustling leaves dappled by warm, late-day sun and bearded dudes drinking microbrews in T-shirts. Honestly, it's enough to make us want to flash the calendar ahead to October and skip spring and summer altogether. Well, maybe not. But it's still a great video for an even better song. Enjoy.
Alpenglow: 'Catskills' from Paul Rosenfeld on Vimeo.
Tags: Alpenglow , "Catskills , " Swale , video , Windfall Orchards , Image , Video , Web Only
One career ago, I was a professor of film studies. I gave that up to move to Vermont and write for Seven Days, but movies will always been my first love. In this feature, published occasionally here on Live Culture, I'll write about the films I'm currently watching, and connect them to film history and art.
In preparation for an essay that I’ve been asked to write for a film journal, I’ve recently returned to a film that I’ve seen many times before, and it’s one that never fails to instill in me a mighty sense of “HUH?” It’s an animated version of Snow White, but not the famous Disney version from 1937; this one predates Disney’s epochal film by four years, and features Fleischer Studios’ sauciest leading lady, Betty Boop, in one of her weirdest star turns.
The occasion for my return to this film is that this particular journal will soon publish a special issue on “Bizarre Films,” and the 1933 Snow White is a gold-medal winner in bizarreness.
Informed that I could write about any bizarre film I wished, I thought for weeks about which to choose, rejecting such obvious options as Otto Preminger’s Skidoo, almost anything by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal’s rather remarkable 1971 film Viva la Muerte (a showing of the last was the occasion of one of my first dates with my now-wife; make of that what you will). I didn’t want to write about these or other films that seemed to cultivate strangeness, even as, generally speaking, I welcome that artistic gesture. Rather, I wanted to write about a “normal” film that has a current of strangeness coursing through it.
In animation circles, Fleischers’ Snow White is well-known as an oddity, so I’m not breaking new ground here. But it seems to me that this 80-year-old film has slipped through the cracks; even many lovers of animation don’t know about it, so it seemed ripe for revisiting. (I'm also happy to note that this is the first "What I'm Watching" film that is available on YouTube, so you can watch it below.)
Tags: snow white , betty boop. fleischer studio , bizarre , koko , bimbo , cab calloway , Video , Web Only
Friday, March 7, 2014
This Week in Movies You Missed: Two best friends take a shine to each other's hot sons in an arty drama that doubles as a virtual vacation for middle-aged ladies.
What You Missed
Lil and Roz (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright) have always lived virtually next door on an idyllic part of the Australian coast. They've always been BFFs. Their husbands and kids have done little to change the equation — conveniently, their sons are BFFs, too. After Lil is widowed, and Roz's husband leaves her for a job in Sydney, the foursome becomes inseparable.
Like, really inseparable. When Lil's son, Ian (Xavier Samuel), makes a pass at Roz, she's into it. Roz's son, Tom (James Frecheville), is weirded out by the relationship between his friend and his mom for a second or two. But he quickly decides that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and makes his play for Lil.
It all works amazingly well until Tom takes a jaunt to Sydney and realizes that other places and women exist.
Tags: Adore , Naomi Watts , Robin Wright , Anne Fontaine , melodrama , Nicholas Sparks , Sundance , cougars , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Stowe's 13-year-old West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park is expanding — again. It wasn't that long ago that co-owners Chris Curtis and Tari Swenson created the cozy Upstairs Gallery in their high-ceilinged quarters on the Mountain Road. Later this month, they'll reveal the latest addition: a wing for landscape painting.
Called, appropriately enough, "Landscape Traditions," the 630-square-foot area will open on March 22 with an exhibit of works by nine painters who are among the best in the genre: Garin Baker, Stephanie Bush, Julia Jensen, Susan Lynn, Gary Milek, Richard Sneary, Gabriel Tempesta, Kathleen Kolb and Tad Spurgeon.
While the works vary in style and medium, they have one thing in common aside from natural subject matter: "It's very skilled, and very soulful," said Curtis by phone from Stowe. "Some are very traditional scenes, but they're rendered so beautifully," he added.
So why is a gallery known for its contemporary paintings and sculptures, um, branching into a genre as old as art itself?
Two reasons, said Curtis. The first is sheer availability. "We get submissions coming in continually," he said, including "a lot of wonderful art that doesn't fit our contemporary gallery."
The second reason may sound esoteric but is actually backed up by science: looking at landscapes, whether real or painted, is soothing.
Tags: west branch gallery , chris curtis , tari swenson , landscape painting , stowe , Image , Web Only
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Writer Bryan Marovich contributed this dispatch from Newport, Vt.
A woman moves to Newport from a city with 12-lane freeways. She finds herself riding her turquoise beach cruiser along the shores of Lake Memphremagog, looking out toward Owl’s Head, and realizes that something special is happening to her.
After six months in town, she starts a Facebook group so her friends and family around the world can see what she’s up to. She calls it “I Heart Newport,” because she doesn’t know how to make the heart-shaped emoticon. She’s not sure how it happens, but someone in town sees the Facebook page, and then someone else does, and then others. Soon some 200 people in the area have joined, including Newport Mayor Paul Monette.
The woman is Beth Barnes, and she has quickly become a community organizer and Newport cheerleader.
Barnes started an open mic night at Newport Natural Market & Café. She has used I Heart Newport to organize cash mobs at local businesses. She found a part-time job as coordinator of Northeast Kingdom Learning Services’ “Fit and Healthy” program. One of her tasks is to promote alternative transportation, so Barnes recently hosted a forum to encourage walking and biking.
“I’ve worked in corporate health care, but I’m not a corporate animal at all,” she says. “I’d rather do something positive for a small community.”
And that she does.
“Beth is certainly passionate about having Newport become a place where people will want to visit or move,” observes Monette.
Tags: newport , lake memphremagog , swimming , Facebook , community , newport dispatch , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Point is, Swale move at their own pace, one that has often been glacial. It is fitting, then, that the video for the first song from the new record, "Joyless," almost looks like it was shot on a glacier.
In fact, "Joyless" was shot on a frozen Lake Champlain. It features the band pulling wobbly sleds overloaded with guitars, amps and drums though the snow, onto the ice and out to a mooring platform in Shelburne Bay. Artfully shot by videographer Shem Roose, Swale's new video captures the stark beauty of winter in our little corner of the world. Or, as our old frenemy and occasional 7D contributor Adam King put it on his blog, it is "the most Vermont as fuck video of all time." (For music videos, specifically, King might be right. But in the general VAF video category, we still think this one takes the cake.)
The song itself begins as a pretty duet between keyboardist Amanda Gustafson and drummer Jeremy Frederick that swirls into a whiteout of noise and closes on some epic shredding from guitarist Eric Olsen. Oh, and snowballs to the face.
The Next Instead is due out later this spring, digitally and on vinyl. For more on the record and/or to contribute to the band's ongoing Kickstarter campaign, go here.
JOYLESS by Swale from Swale on Vimeo.
Tags: Swale , Kickstarter , Shem Roose , Eric Olsen , Amanda Gustafson , Jeremy Frederick , Image , Video , Web Only