This weekend's Pahokee Heritage Music Festival will feature a diverse lineup of performers that ranges from jazz, R&B, rock and blues to soca, Latin, country and pop. There’s also a gospel music competition, an array of seafood, barbecue and Caribbean food vendors, plus some of the area's prominent visual artists and authors -- all along the Lake Okeechobee waterfront at the … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2012
Theater’s Ingham bestows love of drama, language on students
By Tom Tracy With the aid of his daughter Francesca, who was assisting him on a recent Monday by queuing up the DVD player, Barrie Ingham introduced his students to a series of films clips from movies based on the writings of George Bernard Shaw. For Ingham, a veteran stage and television actor and Royal Shakespeare Company honorary associate, understanding great texts means … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 18-21
Theater: In 2002, Chicago director Mary Zimmermann won a Tony Award for her adaptation of Ovid’s Greek myths, Metamorphoses, set in a swimming pool. Dreyfoos School of the Arts theater instructor Bruce Linser now wades into the play -- sorry, without the pool -- with an expanded cast size, which becomes a movement ensemble, albeit on dry land. Linser is putting his emphasis on … [Read more...]
Principals make FGO’s ‘Rigoletto’ do justice to Verdi
Florida Grand Opera’s third production of the season, Verdi’s Rigoletto, closes tonight at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, and if you can catch it before it leaves, you’ll catch a really fine operatic evening, and see a young soprano on her way up. FGO produced this 1851 Verdi classic only six years ago, and the current mounting is the ninth in the company’s … [Read more...]
‘Pina’ a masterpiece about why we make art
I hate that perennial disclaimer, “It’s not for everyone.” Because after all, few great works of art really are. To criticize an artwork solely because it doesn’t satisfy some litmus test of all-encompassing accessibility is fallacious. A lot of people – a number surpassing its admirers – won’t be able to sit through Wim Wenders’ Pina, a 3D movie for patient grown-ups about … [Read more...]
Tacita Dean show offers artist’s more predictable work
An artist considers found images as important as the images she creates, and now we do not know when and where to give her credit. From now through May 6, the Norton Museum of Art is presenting a rare exhibit with such characteristics. Tacita Dean, which opened last week, focuses on the photographic work of this British artist, now living in Berlin, who is perhaps best known … [Read more...]
‘Thin Ice’ a smart look at your friendly neighborhood sociopath
“He lies artfully and constantly, with absolutely no sense of guilt that might give him away in body language or facial expression. If charm, sexuality and role-playing somehow fail, [he] uses fear, a sure winner. His iciness is fundamentally scary. -- Psychologist Martha Stout, in her best-seller The Sociopath Next Door The person described in this quote is a composite … [Read more...]
Maltz Jupiter Theatre celebrates decade, looks to endowment
All in all, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s 10th anniversary season is shaping up to be a milestone for the largest regional theater in South Florida. The Maltz recently passed the 7,000-subscriber mark, counts 70,000 theatergoers annually, and earlier this month announced the launch of a $10 million endowment campaign. Last month, the theater received 25 Carbonell nominations, … [Read more...]
Koch’s collection an unequaled Western treasure trove
You know an exhibit is extraordinary when the woman standing next to you, who happens to be Elizabeth Broun, the Margaret and Terry Stent director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwich Gallery, says this: “I’m blown away. We have a wonderful collection, but this puts it to shame.” That was how it was during a recent preview for Recapturing the West: The … [Read more...]
Sunday Comment: Why we (Americans) can’t get enough of ‘Downton Abbey’
By Tom Tracy Last year, a parody film short appeared on YouTube offering a send-up of the hit TV period drama Downton Abbey, with mock scenes of the show, faux-interviews with the cast and writers, and a scene recalling the ironing of morning newspapers. The latter was a reference to a brief scene in the opening episode of Season One of Downton Abbey (apparently newspapers … [Read more...]