Songs for a New World.

Some critics have labeled Songs for a New World as an abstract musical, given the fact the show by Tony Award winning composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown tells its collection of stories in sing-scenes with no over-arching plot and no consistent characters throughout the evening.

Yet the show has a very strong sense of unity about it that local audiences will witness when Uptown Players presents Songs June 21-July 7 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater.

In essence, Songs for a New World is a musical exploration of life’s emotions: risk, fear, hope, dreams, and love. As composer Brown said, “It’s about one moment. It’s about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.” It’s about those moments in life when everything seems perfect and then suddenly disaster strikes. But it’s even more about surviving those moments. It’s about the way we regroup and figure out how to survive in a new set of circumstances – a new world – even against seemingly overwhelming odds.

The Uptown show, which originally debuted off-Broadway in 1995, features Feleceia Benton, Jonathan Bragg, John Campione, Peter DiCesare, Danielle Estes, Walter Lee, Laura Lites, and Sara Shelby-Martin. The show is directed by Coy Covington, with music direction by Kevin Gunter. Covington took time out of rehearsals to discuss the production.

A+C: What attracted you to direct this show?

COY COVINGTON: I’m drawn to this show primarily for two reasons. First, because it is made of 16 independent songs that don’t directly relate to each other. So really, each song provides its own canvas. They’re not blank canvases but there is room to color and shade, so all of the creative team is looking forward to bringing fresh nuance to the piece. You can bet Uptown will add a new hue or two.

I am also drawn to this show because it demands masterful singing. Oddly, to me anyway, it shows up constantly in high school productions. A quick trip to YouTube will bear witness to the fact that high schools should not be doing this show. Painful. The tessitura of the songs range from basement to balcony and it takes polished, well-trained singers to make the score soar. Thank God, Uptown’s cast is all over it.

Coy Covington.

A+C: It’s not really a musical or revue, so how would you describe it?

CC:   It’s a theatrical song cycle – a set of songs with a unifying idea performed in sequence as a single entity. The unifying idea in Songs is that all the numbers center on “what if” moments. Moments where your life has changed and how you choose to deal with this “new world” in which you find yourself. Or in some cases, how you don’t deal with it.

A+C: Do you have any favorite numbers in Songs?

CC:  Well, there are two huge songs that come close to the end of the show that are both real barn-burners: The Flagmaker and Flying Home. They are emotionally charged and require full-tilt wailing. We’ve got that covered. But I also like the introspective Stars and the Moon (which over the years has become a staple of many a cabaret chanteuse). Another favorite, Just One Step, about a woman on the edge (literally) is hilarious and also treacherously difficult – verging on vocal gymnastics.

A+C: Why do you think the show resonates with audiences everywhere?

CC:  If you’ve ever felt fear, indecision, regret, ambition, hope, heartbreak – and I think we all have – then there are moments in this show that will punch you square in the heart. We plan to keep a defibrillator handy.

A+C: What’s the hardest part about directing this show?

CC:  A four-member cast usually performs Songs but we decided to enhance it to eight. As it turned out, over 150 people auditioned and the level of talent was astounding. Our final eight are staggeringly exceptional – but they’re so good that it made an equitable distribution of the songs nearly impossible. They’re all such powerhouses that any of them could have sung any song in the show. Guess that’s a nice problem to have.

– SCOT C. HART

A+C asked members of the Uptown Players production of Songs for a New World to tell readers what song or musical artist they hold closest to their heart:

Bono.

Jonathan Bragg (Cast Member): One, by U2 has always been a favorite of mine. When listening to it, you get the feeling that Bono is both pleading and demanding. I could listen to it 20 times and hear it 20 different ways. I think that ambiguity makes for a great song.

John Campione (Cast Member): Though nearly impossible to pick a “favorite song or artist,” I always gravitate towards I Don’t Wanna Be by Gavin DeGraw. Growing up, I found it difficult to be comfortable in my own skin and honestly accept that people could like and accept me if I took down my walls and really let them see me for who I am. Ever since the first time I heard it, this song has been a constant reminder and anthem for me to stand up for my own individuality.

Peter DiCesare (Cast Member): The song is In Whatever Time We Have from Stephen Schwartz’s Children of Eden. While performing that beautiful duet in a high school production, I experienced a feeling that my life would never be the same; I knew I had to spend my life on the stage. It’s been a wonderful adventure ever since then! “From this day forward nights won’t seem so black, from this day forward we will never look back. In whatever time we have.”

Danielle Estes (Cast Member): The song is Your Daddy’s Son from the musical Ragtime. It was August of 2002 and all I could think about was what I wanted to be when I grew up and where I should go to college. My senior year had barely started when the show choir went to the musical Ragtime at Music Theater of Wichita. After Sarah sang Your Daddy’s Son I felt a rush of emotion come over the audience. In that one moment, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in musical theater. I wanted the ability to make an audience feel deep emotions, whether they were moments of sadness, joy, gratefulness, or extreme happiness. In that moment, I made the choice to pursue my passion for music and the journey has been amazing!

Walter Lee (Cast Member): The artist that has touched my life is Beyonce Knowles. Growing up in a small town being a flamboyant black male wasn’t the easiest, especially with the intense amount of bigotry in my community. Beyonce’s music was my escape from all of that. She will always be #1 in my book because I truly believe that I would not be where I am, and who I am, today without her.

Laura Lites (Cast Member): I’m gonna have to go with You and I (reprise) from Chess. My senior year of college I had an amazing director, Jim Alexander, who taught me so much of what I know now. He passed away suddenly the week after the show closed. Turns out Jim’s next project was Chess. I had never heard more than a song or two from the show, but the music filled my soul. It moved me and also helped me grieve over my lost mentor. You and I (reprise) is at the end of the show and the music and lyrics were such a fitting farewell to him. I cry every time I hear it and hope more than anything I can play that role one day and make him proud.

Sara Shelby-Martin (Cast Member): The artist is composer Stephen Sondheim. The show was the original Broadway cast of Sweeney Todd. I was in high school and saw it with my aunt in NYC. I was DONE IN. After hearing A Little Priest, and how the audience reacted to it, I decided that being the comic relief as opposed to being the ingénue was where my interests lay. So I’ve opted to be the supporting character and have LOVED it.

Gavin DeGraw.

Coy Covington (Director): My song is In Buddy’s Eyes from Follies. It was my first of year to be a part of Broadway Our Way (Uptown’s renowned annual fundraiser) and tackling this difficult song had my knees knocking. It went over better than I had dreamed and the fact that I had pulled off my first Stephen Sondheim solo was something of a milestone for me.

Kevin Gunter (Musical Director): My “song” is Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto in D-flat Major. I spent the better part of a year memorizing it as a college student, won a major competition (along with the right to perform it with a live orchestra), and then found myself facing a potentially serious injury at the same time in my life. The recovery process lasted up until the night of the performance, and playing that fabulous piece with a full orchestra was one of the most heart-poundingly ecstatic, exhilarating, and triumphant experiences I had as a young person. I still find myself listening to it to get “pumped up” just before theater performances.

BJ Cleveland (Stage Manager): My favorite show song is Unusual Way from Nine because it speaks to an unrequited love that never came to be. Also, the first three chords of How Could I Know from Secret Garden can bring me to tears.

Suzi Cranford (Costume Designer): My favorite song is Wild Thing by the Troggs. It is my tongue in cheek anthem to my children, and it was my youngest child’s nightly lullaby. It makes me feel “groovy.”

Rodney Dobbs (Set Designer): Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin. As schmaltzy as Chapin can be, this song always served as a reminder of how fast my son was growing up and how I always needed to make time to share in his life and experiences. Now that he is grown and “moved away,” I hope he would be okay if he found that he’d “grown up just like me.”

Dennis Canright (Master Carpenter): The songwriter that hits home closest would be Cheryl Wheeler. Her writing has an almost perfect way of expressing emotion and life experiences. At a very difficult point in my life I heard her song Almost. The first two lines are, “I’m almost everything you have ever wanted. I’m almost your best dream come true.” Those words and the whole song really summed up several past relationships and made me aware of how short I was selling myself. Kind of opened my eyes.

Nancy Rubin (Patron Services Manager): The first song that came to mind was Ballin’ the Jack from On the Riviera starring Danny Kaye. My mother taught it to my sister and me when we were young because it was a favorite of her parents. As we got older we used to sing it while we were drying the dishes, folding the laundry, or whenever we wanted to make her smile.

Songs for a New World presented by Uptown Players, June 21-July 7, 2013.

Combining traditional acrobatic forms with street elements such as skateboarding and basketball, mixed in with some theatre and contemporary dance, “Traces” soars at Winspear Opera House.

You know what I like best about live theater? No CGI. The magic is real, as it was for the opening night of “Traces,” the edgy acrobatics show now soaring and tumbling across the stage at the Winspear Opera House through June 23.

It would be easy to say that this new show is just Cirque du Soleil stripped down or “Stomp” without the trash can lids. But “Traces” has more heart and soul than that.

“Traces” fuses the traditions of circus with the energy of street performance to create an explosive display of emotion and physicality set to the music of Radiohead, VAST, and Blackalicious. The seven spirited performers run, jump, soar, spin, flip, tumble, skateboard, glide, ricochet and plunge in a multi-discipline performance that is both intriguing and impressive.

Traces.
Bradley Henderson.

The purpose of “Traces,” according to the program notes, is to combine diverse performing forms into one magical new mix — the sort of “new form” that Chekhov saw as an imperative for every generation. On a stark stage, the performance is really a continuous flow of motion lurching into a series of 16 scenes– some solo, some duets, some ensemble.

Each number touches on a human emotion, some humorous, some thrilling, and others quite touching. One standout scene finds a girl reading a book in a big armchair, which she uses as a giant prop somersaulting in a wild mix of positions, all the while as she reads her story. In another inspired bit, the ensemble crisscrosses the stage on skateboards in a wonderful salute to the old Busby Berkely musicals, complete with overhead cameras so audience members have a clean view of the synchronized kaleidoscope of motion.

Traces.

Produced by 7 Fingers, a company from Canada, the entire production charges ahead to the beat of throbbing urban music, rap and piano solos of original composition. These performers not only fly through the air, but also play piano and do some singing too. But overall, it’s an ensemble effort with each artist sharing the spotlight. The members are not nameless or camouflaged in wild costumes. The six men and one women are real living and breathing artists, albeit mostly skilled in feats of athleticism no average person would dare to try.

“Traces” is spectacularly low-key, relying instead on the fantastic abilities and charisma of the performers, individuals who appear to be nothing more than a group of friends, just as easygoing, affable, and potentially clumsy as the guy next door—until they unleash an energy that lands them in a super-human category.

—SCOT C HART

The Audience.

The Queen is coming to Texas.

Helen Mirren reprises her Academy Award-winning role as Queen Elizabeth II in “The Audience,” a West End production that is being broadcast live from London’s Gielgud Theatre as part of National Theatre Live series.

For nearly three years, National Theatre Live events have been exhibited locally at the Angelika Film Center & Café in Dallas and Plano, and at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Though each live broadcast is filmed in front of a live audience in the theatre, cameras are carefully positioned throughout the auditorium to ensure that cinema audiences get the ‘best seat in the house’ view of each production. Satellites allow the productions to be broadcast live, without delay, to cinemas throughout the UK as well as many European venues. U.S. venues show the broadcasts “as live” according to their time zone, or at a later date.

David Sabel, executive producer of National Theatre Live, says the mission is to bring world-class theatre events to a wider audience.  “We have been thrilled to see the growing popularity of National Theatre Live,” said Sabel. “We aim to give audiences around the world the chance to see the very best in British theatre, both from the National and through partnerships with other great productions, captured at the very highest quality.”

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II.

Sabel says audiences have grown since the series began in 2010. At a broadcast of FELA! In January 2011, only about two dozen attended the showing at the Angelika in Dallas. But a later showing of a highly-touted production of Danny Boyle’s “Frankenstein” attracted well over 100.

This year’s performances begin on June 27 with a production of Stephen Daldry’s “The Audience,” reuniting playwright Peter Morgan and Mirren following their collaboration on the critically-acclaimed movie sensation “The Queen.”

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audiencebreaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.

The National Theatre is producing a major new production of William Shakespeare’s celebrated play about the destructive power of jealousy, “Othello.” Adrian Lester takes the title role, with Rory Kinnear as the duplicitous Iago. A broadcast from the National will beam to movie theaters in North Texas.

From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

In October, audiences can also enjoy “Othello,” William Shakespeare  celebrated play about the destructive power of jealousy. The production is directed by one of Britain’s leading stage directors, Nicholas Hytner, who guided Miss Saigon and The History Boys, and Henry V among others.

“We are seeing record sales for “The Audience” and there is tremendous buzz about upcoming shows, like the National’s current hottest ticket, “Othello” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Macbeth,” Sabel says. “We will soon be announcing some more very exciting programming and high profile shows, and the series is only going to grow more rich and varied.”

—RITA COOK

Undulating Hips by David Aylsworth.

David Aylsworth: Five, Six, Seven, Eight

David Aylsworth had me at the title of his show, “Five, Six, Seven, Eight,” a reference to the director’s constant countdown in the musical A Chorus Line.  Then I saw the work – seventeen non-objective paintings, one for each actor and actress in the Broadway musical.  It’s a stunner of an exhibition. Like a rehearsal, Aylsworth paints in stops and starts, painting over sections of the canvas, leaving underpainting so we can see his progress.

The surface texture in Aylsworth’s paintings honestly represents the toil involved in producing them.  In the production of the work is its’ spirit and shows the soul of the painter.  Aylsworth is a mature colorist. Most of the pieces feature just a few colors: pink on white; light pink, brilliant red, olive green, and white; blue, yellow, and white.  The restraint he shows by zeroing in on a few colors results in a cohesive collection of dreamy work.

There is a good deal of pink in the show, starting with the cover art from the pretty show catalog, Undulating Hips.  Here, two large pink orbs float on a white background and suggest, well, if not hips, certainly someone living.  Aylsworth lets us see his underpainting and how he eventually settled on the finished painting.  In other work, he plays pink off sea foam green, red, or olive green and yellow.  His paint is mixed on his palette – not on the canvas, but the geometry isn’t so rigid that we don’t see an untidy line here and there.  There’s a humanity in that which makes these very agreeable paintings – art to be enjoyed.

Ecdysiast by David Aylsworth

One of the larger pieces, Somerset Maughamwise, looks like sheet music with its combination of circular shapes against straight lines.  It reminded me of those wonderful mid-century cut paper music animations. In this one, Aylsworth uses a deep eggplant color to fool the eye into thinking it’s black at first glance.  Complimented by orange, green and a wonderfully buzzy sea foam/pink passage – this painting sings.

My favorite piece, Ecdysiast, is a simple square painting of yellow, blue, and white.  What’s cool about this painting (other than the title, which means stripper) is the way it showcases Aylsworth’s fascination with positive and negative space.  He is genius with manipulating the viewer’s eye – mostly in his use of white – to question spatial relationships in the paintings.  The shapes in this painting are lyrical and organic and they literally dance on the canvas.

This is a sparkling performance of a body of paintings with quirky titles and show biz metaphors.

—KENT BOYER
Kent Boyer is a graduate student in the arts and humanities, an educator, and writer.

David Aylsworth: Five, Six, Seven, Eight
Holly Johnson Gallery
May 18-August 10, 2013

“Afghan Girl Hiding Face” by Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry: The Unguarded Moment

One look at his iconic portrait of a 13-year old Afghan girl and you recognize the name of internationally known photographic chronicler Steve McCurry.  It’s likely just reading that sentence conjures up her image – she has become a part of humanity’s collective consciousness.

Imagine a gallery full of these photographs printed at almost 3 by 4 feet – this is the treat waiting for you at Dragon Street newcomer Laura Rathe Fine Art.  A part of the exhibition is a video telling the story of McCurry returning to Afghanistan almost 20 years after shooting that young girl’s portrait in an attempt to find and thank her.  As you already might know, he did find her and photographed her again, recapturing those wise and melancholy eyes.

The iconic photograph is exhibited as is another one taken that same day, but you’ll also see over a dozen other McCurry prints at that breathtaking scale.  There are photographs from exotic locales including India, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Japan.  McCurry is genius at capturing the soul of a culture – the unlikely bright red clothing of three children climbing on an ancient monumental golden ochre pagoda being reclaimed by the lush green of the Burmese jungle (Mingun Pagoda, Burma 1994); a procession of nuns dressed in pink against a light blue, red and chartreuse building (Procession of Nuns, Burma 1994); the surreal juxtaposition of a dirty archaic steam locomotive pummeling past the glorious backdrop of the crisp white on white Taj Mahal (Taj and Train, India 1983); a little Indian boy running away from the camera through an alley of blue and yellow walls decorated with painted handprints (Boy in Mid-Flight, India 2007).

“Burma” by Steve McCurry

One of my new favorites is a photograph of Times Square before the Giuliani cleanup began, Times Square, USA 1994.  A dusting of snow temporarily beautifies the seediness of the street and the pre-neon theater signs announce Guys & Dolls, Damn Yankees, and Miss Saigon.  The huge Coca-Cola sign is timeless. Geisha in Subway, Japan 2007 is a captivating genre scene you don’t see every day – a fully made-up, costumed geisha walks matter-of-factly up the stairs in a white-tiled subway station.  She unintentionally coordinates with yellow signage and a yellow step tread in the spectacular photo.

The Laura Rathe Houston gallery, which represents emerging and established artists, opened a Dallas presence on Dragon Street in February.  It’s an open and airy two-story loft style space featuring some pretty avant-garde artists, judging by the pieces on display surrounding the McCurry show.

— KENT BOYER
Kent Boyer is a graduate student in the arts and humanities, an educator, and writer.

Steve McCurry: The Unguarded Moment
Laura Rathe Fine Art
May 18-June 22, 2013

Gruesome Playground Injuries.

They say love hurts. In playwright Rajiv Joseph’s love story, Gruesome Playground Injuries, love indeed leaves scars.

Romeo and Juliet have nothing on the often funny, possibly tragic, and always gripping, tale of Kayleen and Doug. They’ve suffered life’s slings and arrows, its heartbreaks, its electrocutions, and its blunt force traumas. Now, about to hit 40 and no more certain than ever of their place in the world, they spin the yarn of two lives that began with a meeting in a school nurse’s office, and crisscrosses through decades of injuries and mental illness.

It’s a web of emotions not lost on Joel Ferrell, who directs Gruesome Playground Injuries for Second Thought Theatre, opening June 6 at Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphreys campus in uptown Dallas.

“I have had a number of relationships that really were cemented at moments of great pain or trauma,” said Ferrell, Dallas Theater Center Associate Artistic Director. “But most importantly, these two characters know each other for years and years, even though they are not around each other all the time. They have serious history. I think we all have someone we will always feel weirdly connected to because of some childhood trauma or incident.”

Gruesome Playground Injuries.

We see Doug and Kayleen at various points in their lives, flashing back and forth in time, from ages 8 to 35. It’s a story about the wounds we collect over time, both interior and exterior. And how the pain we’re forced to endure either tears us apart from the ones we love, or drives us closer together. And sometimes, pain can show a funny side.

“It’s definitely a dark comedy,” said Steven Walters, co-artistic director of STT. “It’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic. But that’s just like life, I guess. And I suppose that’s why the story is so compelling. Gruesome is hilarious because it’s speaking to a larger truth. We can recognize it. The play touches on something so incredibly human, and so universal, it strikes you to the core. Sometimes with profound sadness, other times with gut-busting laugh lines. It’s a roller-coaster in the best possible way.”

The play originally debuted in Houston in 2009, but has been produced nationwide, including New York City, where it received generally favorable notices. Joseph said he got the idea for the script after a casual conversation with an old friend who began telling him about all the terrible and insane injuries he’d endured over the course of his life – as if time markers in life.

Artistic Director Steve Walters.

“Rajiv Joseph has an astonishing ability to write about damaged people in a constant state of turmoil succinctly and directly,” said Ferrell. “This makes his characters approachable and familiar.”

Walters thinks the connection is easy for audiences, as it was for him when he first read the script.

“We all have someone in our lives who we deeply love who, at the end of the day, might be bad for us. But because of some inexplicable bond, we can’t sever ties, no matter how hard we try. Plus, we’ve all been hurt, physically and emotionally. I broke my arm when I was six. And I think the only pain I can remember that badly was the first time I lost a close friend. My broken arm healed, but the pain that derives from the loss of human connectivity, and the damage we inflict on ourselves and onto other people throughout our lives, that kind of pain has a way of sticking around. I guess that’s the part of this play that speaks to me the most.”

Joseph has plenty of cred in his relatively short career. His Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama and was awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. He penned Gruesome as his follow-up production, although his latest is a new musical based on the story of Peter Pan, which Dallas Theater Center is mounting as their big summer production.

Director Joel Ferrell.

“(Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director) Kevin Moriarty approached me last year about doing a Rajiv Joseph play around the same time as DTC’s production of Fly, which Rajiv penned,” said Walters about his decision to produce Gruesome Playground Injuries at Second Thought Theatre. “The play had already been on my radar for a couple of years; I just hadn’t found the right director yet. Luckily, Joel was sitting in the room when I met with Kevin. Once I knew Joel was on board, it was a no-brainer.”

–SCOT C. HART

Gruesome Playground Injuries presented by Second Thought Theatre June 6-22, 3013 at Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphreys campus.

Anne Ferrer.

The work of French artist Anne Ferrer falls somewhere between the living and unliving. To put it more precisely, her works on paper, wearables, and large-scale pneumatic sculptures are at once material and immaterial, made from stuff as tough and memorable as a shiny polyester tarp patterned in pink and red argyle and evanescent and conditional as electricity and blown air. Her pieces shift, stagger, and catalyze the imagination in their status somewhere between the biological and artificial, transforming the large white orthogonal space of Red Arrow Gallery into a temporary carnivalesque of tickling pressures, soft walls, and erect bulbous sacks.

Ferrer locates a wealth of performativity in this in-between: the possibility that art can invite touch, be relational and interactive, and come to life as a conduit of communication between people. Ferrer’s watercolor renderings of coats that might double as sea creatures, pudendas, or talking flowers are vibrant with the fantasies of as yet unseen nature. Since framed and hung on the wall, they are still within the precincts of conventional art – readymade for the museum. They are ideas painted and drawn in deep, rich hues, so many sketch-ups for their realization in three-dimensional livable form. Yet, Ferrer is not interested foremost in ‘Art’ for the museum; rather, she is inspired by the everyday life of street events. “I have to admit that my first influences don’t come from the unchanging static work of the museums but more from Catalan (south of France where I was born) – Easter, joyful processions where the statues are all dolled-up, or the carnivals which are everywhere so interesting for their performative qualities, alive, evolving while bringing the community together.”

Anne Ferrer.

As for personal origins, Ferrer is both French and cosmopolitan, of her country and in the world. Ferrer grew up in a family of seven in which, with typical French perspicacity, attention to detail, and perfectionism of craft, the “children learned to do everything with their hands – cook, sew, build shelves, [and] repair the younger kids’ toys…” While currently living in Paris, Ferrer is no stranger to the middle of America, having attended the University of Oklahoma, from where she launched into the American Northeast, receiving an MFA from Yale University. Ultimately, this patchwork world has given her a sharpened sense of the body as multiplicity and felt experience as boundless.

She combines the gritty liveliness of street theater and the carefully honed forms of fashion in her inflatable sculpture and costumes. The soft whir of wind blows from fans into the sprawling candy-striped body of “Hot Pink,” the largest piece by Ferrer showing at Red Arrow, making it alive with the energies of mechanized airflow and handmade couture. It droops and bobs, floats and pushes outward, inviting touch and movement inside. But there are no entries, only a plastic circular window to see the undulating and intestinal curves of the entrails of “Hot Pink.” Without a doubt, this piece, like the others, is visionary, reminiscent of pneumatic art and design both past and present, such as Ant Farm, Haus-Rucker-Co., and Jean-Paul Jungmann’s inflatable nomadic living units of the late 1960s and Claire Ashley, Michael Rakowitz, and Ana Rewakowicz’s wearable inflatables of the present.

Anne Ferrer.

These works of pneumatic art –including Ferrer’s – are interconnected by the shared symbolism of the Rabelaisian carnivalesque. For literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin the age-old carnival was defined by its heady crowd and motley collectivity, the grotesque and base, the open and exotic. Writing about François Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, the 16th-century French picaresque of father and son giants, Bakhtin gave name to a materialist utopia – the what-if having come to life – in the raunchy, stinky, ever-so-lively carnivalesque coalescing in the late medieval streets of France. Though couched in the tidy open space of Red Arrow Gallery, the spirit of Ferrer’s creatures is the hedonistic and corporeal carnivalesque.

When it comes to the finesse of design within Ferrer’s fashion-pneumatic venture, one might look to another realm – architecture – for an originating source of influence. “I was born not too long after these artists/designers,” Ferrer says referencing the avant-garde forces behind pneumatic architecture circa 1968. Growing up “in a family of architects, I surely was aware of their work…I always loved plump and round shapes. They are reassuring, maternal, and [suggestive of] the idea that we can be children again.”

Though the air of utopia circulates within Ferrer’s pieces, there is, in fact, a far more practical force behind their ballooning form. They take up less space in her studio than the stuffed sculptures of her prior body of work. While sailing on the Mediterranean in 2005, Ferrer became inspired by the sail on the ship, its potential to billow out with gusts of wind and dangle flaccidly in motionless air. After her sailing experience, “the work change dramatically,” she says. “I could dare to build in any scale, any shape, with the most vivid colors, and transport the work in a simple suitcase, giving it a performative quality.”

Anne Ferrer.

Ferrer’s works are, while playful and upbeat, expressive of a full existential spectrum. They are witty, cheerful, and lighthearted while also weird, perplexing, and eldritch. They tell of another world within our very own, bringing the extraterrestrial of life on Mars and deep terrestrial of the sea anemone together in the white walls of the gallery.

—CHARISSA N. TERRANOVA

Scenes from the touring show of Traces.

Candied peanuts, popcorn, clown cars, and flying ladies. That’s the circus. Or is it?  That antique thought is one that the Montreal-based group 7 Fingers intends to break down.

Founded in 2002, 7 Fingers’ initial goal was to bring circus to a human scale. They began as artists on stage, creating collectively, and soon branched out, expanding their creative talents to a new generation of circus artists. Call them the circus for the Facebook generation.

The group brings its mind-bending acrobatic show to the Winspear Opera House stage for a two-week run beginning June 11. Traces takes place in a makeshift shelter, an unknown catastrophe waits outside the doors of tarp and gaffer tape for the seven characters. In the face of this impending disaster, they determine that creation is the only antidote. Through music, song, dance, speech, illustration, and high-risk acrobatics, they live out their last moments, leaving behind only a trace of their talents, lives, and their bond.

Shana Carroll,
show choreographer and founding member of 7 Fingers theatrical group.

Founding member and choreographer Shana Carroll speaks with Art+Culture’s Danielle Georgiou about her circus dreams and the meaning of Traces.

A+C: How did all of this happen? I always wanted to join the circus! But you really did it!

SHANA CARROLL: It just sort of happened! I was 18 years old and I had grown up doing theater. I wanted to be an actress…but my dad, who was a columnist in San Francisco at the time and was writing about the Pickles Family Circus’ 10th anniversary, suggested that I go and work and learn what the art world was like out of school.

So, I starting working for Pickles administratively, but I was always ten feet from a performer and every day I would see this trapeze artist, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I watched her and I saw myself; she moved me emotionally.

Everybody is always looking for that right metaphor to describe the circus, you know, like “they’re really flying,” or “I’m going to run off and join the circus, I’ll be free!” And they are. I saw it. They’re human, but they’re doing what we wish we could do, fly. I fell in love with it.

A+C: How did you move from “girl behind the desk” to “trapeze artist?”

SC:  Oh, it was under the most dramatic of circumstances, but I did start by joining the Pickles’ Apprentice Program. I knew from the moment that I auditioned that I wanted to do the trapeze. There wasn’t a specific trainer, so I taught myself. I watched videos, and after working the shows, I would just play.

At the end of my first year, we were preparing for a show, and the current aerialist skipped town. Just disappeared! So with no warning, no real prep time or training, I had to fill in. I was the only one.

Scene from Traces.

A+C: It’s kind of like a movie!

SC:  It does sort of seem that way! But it was great. I’ll never forget that feeling. And my love for trapeze just grew after that. I went off to Montreal to train, then to Paris, and then found Cirque.

A+C: What was it like working for Cirque du Soleil?

SC:  It was great. I mean, that’s a hard question to answer, because they are my family. I met my first husband there, and my second! I met Gypsy (Snider, her partner at 7 Fingers) and so many of the performers that I’m working with. We lived on that stage; it was our lives. I developed a comfort there; it really broke me in. I was a part of Cirque for about ten years, on and off.

A+C: What prompted you to start 7 Fingers?

SC:  I always had this desire to create. But it’s really hard to go and knock on other people’s doors; it’s much easier to do it on your own. 7 Fingers came out of that desire. There are seven founders and we all had similar goals and were in similar places in our lives when we began. We were a group of longtime friends who wanted to make our own work.

A+C: Traces has been a project in the works since 2005, what was the inspiration for it?

SC:  We had been watching these five artists (four boys and one girl) grow up in our world, but they had something special. There was a sense of rebelliousness in their performance; they were pushing the limit of human possibility. They were young and so full of energy, and Gypsy and I wanted to capture that. 2005 was a tough time; there was a lot of upheaval socially, and we saw their youth as a remedy. They say that creation is the antidote to destruction. When we create we leave a trace of our passion behind, and we can rebuild from there. For that idea, we had Traces.

Scene from the touring show of Traces.

A+C: This is the first time 7 Fingers is coming to the Winspear Opera House, a large-scale performance hall. Is location a huge factor with this production?

SC:  It can work in any space. It is an intimate show, so a smaller space suits it. But it also works in a large space because it forces the performers to project and pull the audience in. It’s an ever-evolving show, so each space makes it a new experience.

A+C: What does “choreography” mean in this context? I know what it means for dance, but how does it change for the circus?

SC:  I don’t have an intensive dance background, and neither do these performers. But they are agile and expressive in their movements, and it’s my job to find the genius there and create a structure. I’m creating a skeleton of the show, designing transitions and fine-tuning their craft. There’s a lot of freedom in my choreography; but then again, there’s a lot of freedom in their movement. They are dancing in the air.

–DANIELLE M. GEORGIOU
Danielle M. Georgiou is the Artistic Director of DGDG (the Danielle Georgiou Dance Group), and directs the dance department at both Eastfield College and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Installation view of Steel and Light
by Michael Christopher Matson.

Houston artists Karin Broker and Alfredo Scaroina join Dallas sculptor Michael Christopher Matson at Kirk Hopper Fine Art this month for a celebration of diverse media.

Matson creates large monolithic steel sculptures lighted from within.  For this show, he exhibits three new works in the gallery’s outdoor courtyard space.  These pieces use long, ribbon-like steel segments to produce the sculptural structure rather than his more typical solid but perforated steel skin.  The daylight effect of these three is a more linear, streamlined statement.  Lighted from within at night, however, they take on a lyrical, ship-like metaphor and appear light as the wind.  As a fan of Matson’s monumental relic sculptures, I was surprised at what a different vocabulary results from this particular use of the same material.  The scale, the color, and the consciousness that his work represents are always impactful.

Scaroina’s paintings are non-representational textural mixed media pieces with a flair for color.  Using a wide variety of media – including junk mail, synthetic polymer, and newsprint – Scaroina produces bright statements reminiscent of German Dadaist Kurt Schwitter’s Merz paintings – but taken to the next level.   Like a community bulletin board where decades of posters have been affixed and removed one on top of another, Scaroina carefully builds up his surface using these various elements and then subtracts the surface by sanding to produce a colorful, street art sensibility.  One of my favorites, I’m Sick of Your Shit, is a large narrow yellow painting with a horizontally slatted surface and the reminders of red and blue showing through.  His titles are provocative – another is Crazy People Go to Heaven.

The third artist in the show is mixed media artist Karin Broker.  She exhibits imaginative, whimsical but satirical work as both constructions – sculptures – and wall art.  The constructions feature found objects:  lamp bases, gaudy costume jewelry brooch-like elements, plaster eggs, cages, and glass-domed wood structures.  The intricacy of workmanship and the imagination of her material choices are coordinated with their titles – From Princess to Pea, A Stilled Specimen, or Empty Nest – and wouldn’t be out of place in a dusty Victorian museum of eccentricities.  Broker’s wall art is primarily two-dimensional nailed metal “paintings” – like modern tin retablo mosaics.  Some of these use old advertising art imagery; in others, she’s created a sort of mosaic effect by combining various sizes and colors of patchwork metal.  These works create quite an interesting foil to the constructions.

The three artists’ work couldn’t be more different, but somehow Kirk Hopper Fine Art always seems to manage disparate artists together in a show that complements all their statements.

—KENT BOYER

Karin Broker: trouble in paradise
Alfredo Scaroina: Quid Pro Quo
Michael Christopher Matson: Steel and Light
Kirk Hopper Fine Art
June 1 – July 6, 2013

Jeff Swearingen and Brad Mcentire with Audacity Theatre Lab will be performing at FIT this year.

Celebrating its fifteenth season this year, the Festival of Independent Theatres has a unique history of showcasing new talent, encouraging innovative risk taking and premiering new works by local playwrights. Over the last decade and a half, some of Dallas’ most prominent artists have honed their early skills on FIT’s stages with many frequently returning to participate in the festival. Many works have also advanced from the festival to be adapted into short films or remounted on the main stages of other theaters.

Once again presented at the Bath House Cultural Center on the edge of White Rock Lake, this year’s line-up includes many audience favorites including Churchmouse Productions, WingSpan Theatre Company, and One Thirty Productions. There are several debuts, including solo performance artist John Michael’s provocative new show, Like Me, and the first-ever dance troupe, Rhythmic Souls.

Arts writer Lauren Smart highlights some of the top performers of this year’s festival, which presents one-act plays paired in two show blocks May 31-June 22, 2013.

Katelyn Harris.

Katelyn Harris

Rhythmic Souls breaks ground this year as the first dance troupe to perform at FIT with the show Play It By Ear. Led by the local instructor and life-long dancer Katelyn Harris, this tap dance ensemble was a festival favorite at WaterTower Theatre’s Out of the Loop festival earlier this year, due to the infectious hoofing and live music. In that show she performed with her collaborator Keira Leverton, but for this year’s FIT, Harris takes the stage with new performers, some of whom were previously students.

“Our show combines the auditory and the visual aspects of tap dance,” says Harris, an ebullient smile crossing her face. “Audiences respond to tapping because it engages them on multiple levels.”

Harris and Leverton have made it their goal to introduce performers and audiences in Dallas to this indigenous art form. In addition to the performance troupe, they started The Drawbacks Youth Tap Ensemble for the younger generations, where they teach both the technique and history of tapping. The professional shows usually have an educational aspect as well.

“There’s a lot of support for ballet and for jazz, but there isn’t enough tap dance out there,” Harris says. “Developing that community is what I’m passionate about. It’s what I love.”

Jeff Swearingen

“It’s been a lifelong goal of mine to play a dinosaur,” local funnyman and theater teacher Jeff Swearingen says about his performance with Audacity Theatre Lab at the festival. “Seriously, ask anyone who knows me well.”

In the middle of Black Forest Coffee next door to Half Price Books, he’s stopped speaking to imitate a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Just a minute later he untwists his head and stretches his arms out to explain the plot of Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train.

Playwright and Audacity Artistic Director Brad McEntire’s festival entry has a dinosaur (Swearingen) and a robot (McEntire) from the future converge in the present day. The audience meets them at a press conference where the odd duo attempt to explain how they unwittingly arrived in the 21^st century and what they will do now.

“The play has aspects of vaudeville about it. It’s a very funny play that uses clever wordplay,” Swearingen says. “It’s the perfect show for FIT because it’s original and experimental.”

Swearingen’s relationships with both the festival and with Audacity span roughly a decade. In a quick count, he’s performed in seven seasons of FIT, one year acting in three shows. This man stays busy.

Rite of Passage Theatre Company.

An in-demand theater instructor, Swearingen also founded Fun House Theatre and Film with marketing aficionado Bren Rapp in 2011. In less than two years, he’s adapted or written eight-nine plays, which he then directs with a cast of all children. In the company’s early years he garnered critical acclaim for his adaptation of The Little Prince and more recently his version of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, in which he recast the salesmen as Girl Scouts (this show is scheduled for a return engagement June 5-8).

“I’ve always believed that kids are smart, they just need someone to challenge them,” Swearingen says. “I’ve been so lucky with Fun House because I will never get tired of teaching kids to really go after the things they want

But what does he want? Well for starters, you could come see his show at FIT, in which he’ll fulfill his lifelong dream in bright green, dinosaur footie pajamas.

Ian Ferguson

Although I’d never met him before, I instantly recognized Ian Ferguson when I walked onto the patio at Ascension Coffee for our interview. He’s performed a variety of roles in back-to-back shows all over town from Present Laughter at Theatre Three, to Echo Theatre’s The Lucky Chance, to On the Eve at Nouveau 47 Theatre.

“You could call me a chameleon,” Ferguson laughs, after I’ve asked him to list his recent shows. “I must not have a type, because I’ve played different characters in almost every show.”

An Amarillo native, Ferguson launched his career with a degree in theater performance from West Texas A&M University. He spent a few months in New York City before moving back to Texas with his wife Aubrey, who is also an actress.

“Dallas has been a very welcoming place to work as an artist,” Ferguson says. “I’ve worked with incredible directors and actors.”

At FIT, Ferguson plays a high school English teacher who is involved with a student in Rite of Passage Theatre Company’s production of Ask Questions Later, which will be directed by Kelsey Ervi. One of the more topical plays on the festival line-up, this new work by Meggie Spalding explores the subjects of inappropriate relationships and gun violence.

This follows Rite of Passage’s wildly successful festival entry last year, My Name is Rachel Corrie, in which Barrett Nash tackled a one-woman show about the peace activist who was killed during the second Palestinian intifada. The company – comprised primarily of Baylor University theater alumni – is committed to developing new work that challenges its audiences.

“Ask Questions Later addresses the topic of gun violence, as well as student-teacher relationships,” Ferguson says. “But it does it in a thoughtful way. I think theater should ask questions rather than try to answer them for people, and this show does that.”

Following his performance at the festival, Ferguson will jump into rehearsal for The Winter’s Tale at Shakespeare Dallas, in which he will play Autolycus, a roguish pedlar.

Festival of Independent Theatres May 31-June 22, 2013 at Bath House Cultural Center.