Abby and Nancy enjoy Martinis while Don Draper falls.
Photo by Mark Wozny with Abby Koenig.

Abby & Nancy Dish on Mid-Season Mad Men

The Abby and Nancy Show (the one in my head) is back, this time for some high level analysis of the sixth season of Mad Men, or at least some low level analysis of the ketchup campaign, Joan’s undergarments and Peggy’s fashion/men/work problems.

I had planned to hire an animator and have Abby and me worked into the opening sequence, where we fall from the sky with Don, ending up sitting on his lap. But alas, that didn’t happen, so you will have to settle for us gabbing and gulping Martinis.

A + C:  The opening sequence captures the era in every way. I just hang around for what comes after it. What’s your excuse?

Abby Koenig: I adore advertising in general, and I love the 1960s just as much, so the combination of the two grabbed me from the start. It doesn’t hurt that Mad Men is so well written with complex characters and.. Jon Hamm.

A + C: Well why don’t we start right there, with downer Don, my fave mid-century melancholic in mid-life crisis free fall. Don’s running on fumes in these first episodes, fueled by an occasional fix of Vitamin A, as in adultery, with his hi-rise Italian sky neighbor. But really, even the ketchup account isn’t exciting him.

AK: I think that Don has finally come to the realization that he honestly hates life. He was in a miserable marriage, and he cheated to escape, but then he found something good in Megan. There was this invigoration and sense of hope. He gave “happiness” the old college try and it didn’t work out for him. He might as well Scotch it up and hit up the Doc’s wife.

A + C:  I find something poetic in his relentless sullenness. He reminds me of Bobby in Company: the exquisite loneliness of the New York male. Consider his idea for selling Hawaii. It seemed like he was suggesting that it was a great place to commit suicide. Hawaii: Your Death Wish Destination.

AK: And if you recall, he was reading Dante’s Inferno on the beach. Literally, the guy is in hell, a very self-made hell, filled with good looking women and cocktails. I don’t know how I felt about the flashback of Don’s childhood and the brothel he lived at.

A + C: That scene didn’t work.

AK:  It was almost too Freud-in-your-face. Sometimes I think show’s creator, Matthew Wiener, likes to dust off the text book from the Intro to Psych class he took in college. Maybe the guy just can’t handle love?

A + C: Speaking of love, free love has reared its frisky head in this season. I just loved the Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice moment over dinner with Meghan’s soap buddies. Don’s not into swinging. Who knew? Even Joan gets her free love on, as best she can in that industrial strength girdle. Joan, like Don, seems slightly tired of being alive.

AK: The last season episode, where Don and Joan have a moment in the bar about life and how they never got together, was one of my favorites of last season. I was praying that they would finally have an affair. Joan is an old soul and she’s had a tough time. I do think she and Don are kindred spirits; they can’t keep up with the new world.

A + C: Enough about this clan of fabulously good looking depressives, can we talk about ketchup? Team Peggy or Team Don?

AK: I’m always on Team Peggy. She is the best character on the show. How she got the ketchup opportunity, ehh. I don’t know if I agree with the ethics of it, but if this is a “man’s” world and she needs to be a man about it all, then hell ya, Peggy deserves it.

A + C: Peggy is totally rocking that green eye shadow, too. She’s caught in a world that doesn’t quite know what to do with her. Where’s Sheryl Sandberg leaning in when you need her?

AK: There was this amazing moment in the MLK episode when Peggy is talking with her boyfriend about living in the Upper East Side and he says that he pictured them raising their kids somewhere else, and it was like, BAM, she’s all smiles and demure looks. As successful and as powerful and as rich as she can become, she still just wants a guy to tell her that he “wants to settle down and have kids.” That’s really all she wants. It’s such an amazing character point.

A + C:  And, I bet she lost the apartment because the banking industry didn’t always grant mortgages to women back then. The fashion choices for Peggy are curious, no Mary Quant minis for her.  Hemlines are going up, Nancy Sinatra’s gogo boots are everywhere, there’s a clearer delineation between mod style and old school. Plus, it’s always fun to see dresses that I owned as a middle schooler on TV.  My mom’s china made Episode 4. Any nostalgia for you?

AK: I wanted to be Twiggy.

A + C: Joan is the anti-Twiggy. Her undergarments are a metaphor for Don’s mental state. He’s poised to explode like the streets of the late sixties. But didn’t we see a glimpse of the old Don in Detroit?

AK: Yes, his entire personality lights up at the prospect of a challenge or breaking the mold. He finds delight in reinventing the wheel, which makes sense since he has reinvented himself multiple times over his life.

A + C:  How true: the many faces of Don. How will the season end? If he doesn’t win over Detroit, I see Don falling in the opening sequence for the full hour. You?

AK: I see Don getting caught by the doctor and maybe Megan, and spiraling even further downhill. Maybe the Don/Joan affair we’ve all been hoping/dreading. Something huge has to happen with the merger of SCDP and CGC and the whole Chevy thing, and I don’t think they have given too many obvious clues as to what that will be yet. But I cannot wait!

Photo by Simon Gentry.

Recked Productions Up For Air

Imagine you are strolling around Hermann Park and you notice a gaggle of enchanting dancers around the perimeter of the gigantic Jones Reflection Pool. You may have to look twice to make sure what you are seeing is real, and it is. You have just stumbled upon Recked Productions latest creation.

Recked Productions founder and choreographer Erin Reck is no stranger to creating dance in non-traditional locales. She once choreographed an entire show with harnessed dancers hanging off of a rooftop in New York City. So, while putting together a show that was created exclusively for the Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Reflection Pool at Hermann Park may not be the biggest production she has tackled, it is certainly her largest endeavor in quite sometime. Up For Air, will take place on May 18, with two performances at 2 and 6 p.m. Reck’s dancers will take over the 60,000 square-foot reflection pool for the site-specific performance.

Reck has been piecing together the idea behind Up For Air for quite some time. The concept came out of a project that she had done at The Photobooth on Montrose, which is the polar opposite of the vast open space of Hermann Park. Reck saw the small confinements of the Photobooth as a desire to do something large and outdoors. But creating a piece for the park came from more than just a desire to “go big.”

Reck has always had a “thing” for reflection pools. “They are these colossal powers, but at the same time very serene,” Reck muses.

The performance aims to comment on the nature of space and the dichotomies found within the natural world and within us. She describes some of her inspiration for the piece as a commentary on society; in a world of chaos, death and destruction, beauty emerges from the rubble.

Reck was inspired by the William Yeats poem “The Second Coming,” in which Yeats alludes to the rebirth that comes from anarchy. Reck hopes to show some of this duality in her production. While the performance won’t take place literally inside the pool, the dancers will meander alongside it, their bodies will illustrate the “other worldliness” of the massive reflection pool. Reck may have the dancers reciting lines from the poem threaded throughout the piece.

Because of the nature of creating something site specific, the final work will come out of the rehearsal process and even Reck isn’t quite sure how it will all look in the end. There are physical challenges when creating a piece for an open, highly slippery and wet outdoor location, but thus far Reck has embraced them all as a part of the process. Rehearsal has been nothing short of uncommon.

“Something that has proven to be really interesting is that people are watching us during rehearsals,” Reck says.

When you are performing in a public venue having on-lookers is inevitable. But Reck sees this as a beneficial part of the process. During the actual performance, Reck has invited non-dancers, family, friends, and community members to be a part of the production. Bridging the gap between performer and audience member was one of Reck’s fundamental ideas in creating the piece for this space.

But what does that mean exactly? “I’m not sure just yet,” laughs Reck. “I want to push the envelope a little bit and continue the beauty of the space with the human form.”

The production will take audience members and dancers all around the pool, with different stanzas taking place in different locations in the space, integrating the human figure with the natural world, and if an audience member just happens to be in the way, all the better. It is about human forms coexisting.

What surprised Reck most of all when creating this piece was how open Hermann Park was to the idea. Reck assumed that she would be inundated with paperwork and legalese, but the experience has been a pleasure. “I thought maybe it was just too crazy to have this performance there, but they have been amazing to work with.”

But seeing 40-plus people, the dancers and the community members Reck hopes to include, careening about the reflection pool is sure to attract attention, which is the intention.

Reck is doing all she can to get the word out such as teaching master classes at Rice to generate buzz around the show. She also hopes that people stumble upon the performance by chance. Reck sums up her project, “It’s about bringing art to the masses, literally.”

Up For Air will take place on May 18, 2013 at 2pm and 6pm at the Hermann Park Jones Reflection Pool. Audience members are asked to meet at the north end of the pool and follow the dancers into an exploration between the perceptions of nature and the self. The performance is free.

-ABBY KOENIG
Abby Koenig is a playwright and a writer for Houston’s Arts + Culture magazine and the Houston Press, among others.

REPRINTED FROM DANCE SOURCE HOUSTON.

Andy Coolquitt, this vitrine don’t work, 2012. Tennis balls, steel, plastic, wood, light bulbs, duct tape, carpet, fiberglass, bronze and steel cable. Courtesy of the artist.

Andy Coolquitt’s Sculptures and Tableaux Use Urban Materials to Evoke Domesticity

Andy Coolquitt has a steadfast interest in domestic spaces. So much so that the Austin-based artist, who has a solo exhibition opening soon at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (May 18-August 24), literally lives his philosophies surrounding notions of comfort, domesticity and interior architecture.

This is reflected in his home, which he conceived of as part of his thesis project for the University of Texas at Austin back in the 1990s and where, for nearly two decades, he has continued to live and work. A multi-structure communal space, it consists of a shared central kitchen, an art studio, and private buildings along the perimeter where seven people currently live.

Parts of the home are decorated with found, repurposed things and care has also been taken with the interior design. Furniture arrangements can be seen as studies in psychology, inspired by small acts that Coolquitt witnessed: the conversational way that chairs were left positioned after a party; the organic pathway that a dog took through the home. In fact, Coolquitt considers the continued creation of the home’s interior to be a performative action and the place itself an official work of art, simply titled A House.

Coolquitt’s sculptural work similarly centers on domestic preoccupations, although here he more obviously engages with the history of found art and the readymade, finding inspiration in improvised “furniture” and other homey things that people — often the homeless and/or crack users — have patched together and left outdoors in public spaces.

Sixty of his discrete sculptures and tableaux, made between 2006 and 2012, will be on view in Houston as part of his first solo museum exhibition, arranged by the Blaffer and presented there following the show’s first run at the AMOA-Arthouse in Austin.

Claudia Schmuckli, director and chief curator at the Blaffer, described Andy Coolquitt as a comprehensive exhibition in the sense that it surveys what is available of Coolquitt’s work, explaining that many earlier creations were ephemeral in nature and no longer physically exist. A full-color monograph, co-published by Blaffer Art Museum and University of Texas Press, gives a complete overview of the artist’s practice.

The works that will be on view are created from a plethora of collected materials. Leaning against gallery walls will be gritty and colorful pipes which the artist found and altered only by cutting and rearranging. Some sculptures feature tubing and light bulbs; others use discarded lighters.

The collection of the lighters reveals some of the artist’s process. Coolquitt first picked them up off the ground casually, following a party at his house, and then began noticing them everywhere and collecting them more intensively, even altering his commute via foot or bike throughout the city to places where he was seeing them more —eventually discovering sites where homeless people lived or where people had been smoking crack. At these places, Coolquitt was fascinated by the ways that people created home-like comfort outdoors, from cardboard used as seating to avoid the wet ground and milk crates arranged chair-like under the protective canopy of a tree to the makeshift storage solution of a sleeping bag stuffed in a tube. Quick snapshots of these sites can be found on his website, www.Coolquitt.com, under the link for “ccCraaCkK.” The allure of these scenarios seems to have translated into other Coolquitt artworks.

Within the exhibition, Schmuckli described arranged accumulations of objects as three-dimensional tableaux, stating that these “often allude to conditions of homelessness but also create situations of interiority … reconfigured into groupings that imply a sense of domesticity, sometimes through association, sometimes through actual function such as providing light and warmth.”

“It seems like the social and the personal are always linked,” Coolquitt said in an email. “A House best illustrated this idea. It presented all these contradictions between my individuality and the social space it was providing … I was very interested in confusing assumptions of public and private, of experimenting with this idea of community comfort … For a guy growing up in the wide open spaces of Texas, with an out- weighted notion of comfort through isolation, the conflict was a natural part of that world … Maybe this will begin to explain my obsession with the relationship between the discrete object and the environment … how it’s always such a delicate balance. There’s a sculpture, and then there’s something next to it … and that something gets sucked into the world of the sculpture, or vice versa.”

Given Coolquitt’s fascination with the little design solutions that organically unfold both inside and outside the home, and the connection between art and environment, it is no wonder that Coolquitt seizes on the installation of his solo exhibition as a chance to forge a relationship between his sculptures and the gallery space.

In the Austin version of the show, for instance, a moveable wall allowed him to create an “alley” that invoked the place where he found his art materials and, through the use of the narrow display space, forced visitors to closely encounter the artworks housed there. The 60 works in Houston will be uniquely reconfigured — there won’t be an alley — but viewers can expect drastic divergences in the concentration of artworks, with some areas very densely populated and others quite open.

In addition to the works that make up the official checklist, the artist will also add objects to the display that he has termed “somebody-mades” and “in-betweens” — the former being unaltered found objects and the latter merely art material, such as a pipe, that has potential to turn into an artwork or to be left as-is.

The addition of these objects may clue the audience in to the context in which the finished sculptures were created; specifically, that these museum-quality works are made from cast-offs that Coolquitt found in the street or purchased from unglamorous places like eBay or the Salvation Army. These additions also play with the notion of museum spaces as revered places where rubbish is discarded and the intended is curated in, instead evoking a studio environment where art co-exists with an artist’s cherished junk.

— DANA MATTICE
Dana Mattice is a writer and artist who lived in Houston for seven years and continues the love affair from the wilds of Northern Minnesota.

Andy Coolquitt
Blaffer Art Museum
May 18-August 24

Todd Meehan, Andre Raphel and Matthew McClung with members of River Oaks Chamber Orchestra.
Photo by Jeff Grass.

With the Houston premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra and TwoPercussionists by Jonathan Leshnoff as its centerpiece, the season finale for the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) lived up to the promise of its title and gave the orchestra an opportunity to go out with a “Big Bang”.

Percussionists Matt McClung and Todd Meehan made their jobs look remarkably easy as they navigated their separate, carefully organized batteries of percussion instruments with casual ease and grace and, in some instances, a touch of athleticism. The new work proved to be much less intimidating than its title might imply, with — among other things — a second movement that was especially lyrical and sonorous.  The duo offered a favorite prelude and fugue from J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as a delectable encore to their performance, which was also remarkable for its wide range of color, texture and sound.

Conductor Andre Raphel’s reserved and somewhat heavy-handed approach was perfectly suited for Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture which began the evening with drama and excitement but, less so for Ottorino Respighi’s Gli Ucceli and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.4 in A-Major. The strings of the orchestra labored their way through Respighi’s music in a way that paid a slightly robust, if not too brawny, homage to the delicacies of several great renaissance and baroque masters, including Jean-Philippe Rameau, whose La Poule figures prominently in Respighi’s arrangement. The ensemble’s reading of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony was on par with any performance I have heard and seemed to struggle in all of the usual ways. It often lacked motion and the orchestra’s crisp yet muscular articulation was more appropriate for the dark and stormy nature of Beethoven’s overture than for the light exuberance of Mendelssohn’s symphony.

As the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra begins to look towards its 10^th Anniversary Season in 2015, the organization is no doubt looking back with delight and satisfaction at the tremendous growth, both artistic and financial, and innovation in programming that have elevated the ensemble to national attention. Having now firmly established themselves as an orchestra with something important to say, one hopes that the next few years will be devoted to elevating the ensemble’s technical and artistic prowess to a level that is more consistent with its savvy  programmatic vision.

—CHRIS JOHNSON

River Oaks Chamber Orchestra: Big Bang Encore
April 21, 2013

Diotima Quartet – image courtesy of Da Camera Houston.

In acknowledgment their commitment to modern and contemporary music, the Diotima Quartet takes its name from Luigi Nono’s work, “Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima.” The French ensemble’s concert at Houston’s Menil Collection was presented by Da Camera Houston, in keeping with its  legacy of introducing Houston audiences to up-and-coming ensembles of the highest artistic integrity.

The program for the evening lived up to the adventurous audience’s expectations for the very best in new music with heavy Bayou City connections:  It included the Houston premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano and the world premiere performance of the String Quintet: Afterimages by Richard Lavenda, (Both composers are on faculty at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.)

Bookended by the premieres, the heart of the program was the Diotima’s sumptuous rendering of Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No.2, “Intimate Letters”. The group’s playing is studied and thoroughly rehearsed, but with a panache that makes for an edge-of-your-seat experience. Janáček’s writing is a tour de force of color and texture and served as an apt vehicle for the Diotimas to showcase the depth and breadth of their palette of color, texture and blend.

Pierre Jalbert’s trio, written in 2011, is an attractive work and was an occasion to witness violinist Maureen Nelson of the Enso Quartet unleashed from the confines of that most excellent ensemble, and instead opposite her husband, clarinetist Richie Hawley and pianist Timothy Hester.  The blending of their sounds was remarkable and the piece gave Hawley ample opportunity to effortlessly move between a somewhat percussive, bell-like accompaniment with the piano and several ghostly and delicious duets with his wife. There were moments of unison playing that were reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen’s seminal work, Quatuor pour le fin du temps.

Lavenda’s new piece was commissioned specifically for the concert, and in celebration of Da Camera’s 25^th Anniversary Season, and was somewhat less appealing. However, it was an opportunity for violist James Dunham to join the Diotima Quartet and to be spotlighted in a piece that, at times, hinted at being a concerto grosso for viola and string quartet. Dunham’s rich bass baritone was the perfect compliment to the tenor sound of violist Franck Chevalier and proved an excellent compliment to an evening of music making noted for it’s attention to blend and color.

—CHRIS JOHNSON
Chris Johnson is a radio host and producer, a violinist and a 2008 fellow of the NEA Institute for Arts Journalism in Classical Music and Opera.

Diotima Quartet
Da Camera Houston
April 9, 2013

Artists of the Houston Ballet in Jerome Robbins’ The Concert.
PHOTO: AMITAVA SARKAR

Houston Ballet Brings The Concert Back

Wrong seat? Bickering couples in the row in front of you? Enormous hat blocking your view? Just about all of that has happened to me as an audience member, which is why Jerome Robbins’ comic masterwork, The Concert, resonates with me and anyone who has ever been to theater. Robbins’ seminal ballet will be performed as part of “Journey with the Masters,” a Houston Ballet program that also includes Jiří Kylián’s Sinfonietta, a tribute to the Czech choreographer’s homeland, and Ballet Imperial, George Balanchine’s homage to St. Petersburg.

Comedy and ballet are on my mind in part because  Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, affectionately known as “The Trocks”, recently strutted their sublime brand of silliness across Jones Hall thanks to Society for the Performing Arts. What a reminder that a holy tradition like ballet is a pratfall in the form of a funny fish dive away from a belly laugh.

Ballet isn’t usually funny, except when it is. There’s something primal about the body in motion. We laugh at a full range of physical comedy, so ballet has every right to join the fun. If you dig deep into ballet’s history, you can see humorous antics all over the place. Houston Ballet will bring back The Merry Widow next season, with one of the most hilarious drunk scenes in all of the ballet canon. Dance Salad fans are still giggling over Christian Spuck’s grand satire, Le Grand Pas de Deux, which featured a bespectacled ballerina with a pocketbook.

Houston Ballet’s artistic director, Stanton Welch, names La fille mal gardée, Kylián’s Symphony in D and of course, The Concert, as the funniest ballets. “I was lucky to perform The Concert many times,” adds Welch, who himself has a savvy knack for dry humor. Consider the outrageous step sisters in Cinderella, the cheekiness in Brigade, the wild theatrics of The Core, and the sly wit of The Three of Us and Divergence. Welch readily admits to including a little levity in his work, but never start to finish. “The Core is definitely influenced by Robbins’ musical theater approach,” says Welch. “My tongue is always in my cheek; I’m more about the droll smirk. I’ve yet to create a work where people are crying from laughter like Robbins.”

Created for New York City Ballet in 1956, The Concert reveals Robbins as a highly a skilled musical theater choreographer, demonstrating his genius in  character development. According to Deborah Jowitt, author of Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, his Dance, this was period of creation that centered on the life of artists.

Yet, it’s never a one-joke-gag with Robbins. “The ballet has such a broad range of comedy, from slapstick to a very subtle and sentimental form of humor,” notes Jowitt. The “Mistake Waltz” is a perfect example, the six dancers never quite get it right, but the way in which they mess up is simply brilliant.

Principal Simon Ball is playing the cigar smoking husband for the second time. “I admire Robbins’ craft for storytelling. Not many choreographers have the talent to create a ballet which requires so much nuance,” says Ball. “This ballet is a timeless study of human psychology.”

Artists of the Houston Ballet in Jerome Robbins’ The Concert.
PHOTO: AMITAVA SARKAR.

About that, Ball is spot-on:  Robbins’ scenario could happen today, except cell phones would be involved. The premise is simple: a group of people gather together to see a piano recital. Things don’t go exactly as planned. Ball sets the scene. “Each vignette features different characters who allow themselves to be lost in the music, and fantasize about the people that they truly want to be,” explains Ball. “My character, The Husband, imagines being able to free himself from his oppressive wife and follow the Ballerina, the object of his desire.”

Principal Karina Gonzalez performed in The Concert while she was at Tulsa Ballet, and is looking forward to dancing the role of The Ballerina for the first time. “At Tulsa, I danced the role of the person in the wrong seat, and that really happens all the time,” admits Gonzalez. “Robbins has a way of bringing genuine human circumstances to life.” Although Gonzalez claims comedy is new to her, she started her Houston Ballet career dancing Kate in John Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew, showing off her comic chops to great effect. “It has to be honest,” she says.  “He really plays up the character, which is perfectly embedded in his choreography.” Welch concurs, “The dancers have to play it authentically and sincere, that’s how the humor comes through.”

For Ball, comedy is about timing: “We are used to performing choreography on counts, but being an effective comedian is an art unto itself,” he says. “A slightly longer pause for effect or raise of an eyebrow can mean the difference between success and failure. One can begin to imagine why standup comics can be addicted to the pursuit of a laugh.”

Be it spoof or satire, The Concert is not only a chance for Houston Ballet’s dancers to show off their well-honed acting chops, but yet another glimpse into the genius of Robbins’ vast choreographic imagination. He holds up a mirror to the audience, and we get rare pleasure of laughing with and at ourselves.

—NANCY WOZNY

Journey of the Masters
Houston Ballet
May 30-June 9

Guy Roberts and Jessica Boone in Main Street Theater and Prague
Shakespeare Company production of Shakespeare’s Henry V.
PHOTO: KAITLYN WALKER.

After a successful run in Houston, Henry V, a joint production of Main Street Theater and Prague Shakespeare Company, heads to Prague for an October  run. Main Street also launched the public phase of its capital campaign to purchase and renovate its Rice Village facility, where the theater has been creating nationally recognized productions for more than 30 years.  The Board of Directors made the decision to purchase the building and renovate it, bringing the physical theater up to the quality of the work onstage.

Opera in the Heights’ 2013-14 season includes La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang A. Mozart, and Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti.

Da Camera’s 2013/2014 season highlights include completion of its two-season Shostakovich string quartet cycle; world premieres by pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and celebrated composer Charles Wuorinen; a concert featuring the Houston premieres of recent works by John Adams, Louis Andriessen and Steve Reich; the Houston premiere of David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion; and the jazz series, featuring Wayne Shorter Quartet 80th Birthday Tour, ACS Trio and Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society.

Highlights of Stages Repertory Theatre’s 2013/2014 season includes The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, Gideon’s Knot by Johnanna Adams, Failure: A Love Story by Philip Dawkins, Veronica’s Room by Ira Levin and the Broadway hit, Xanadu.

The Alley Theatre’s 2013-2014 season includes The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht, Never the Sinner by John Logan, Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, Venus in Fur by David Ives, Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain, Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire, Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, and You Can’t Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. The Alley Theatre also unveiled plans to enhance its artistic product and complete the first extensive renovation of its facilities since its opening in 1968 through a $73 million capital campaign.

Still from Medium, live performance at Art Palace, August 2012.
PHOTO: MATTHEW WEEDMAN.

Mildred’s Umbrella Theatre Company’s next season includes Foxfinder by Dawn King, Carnival Round the Central Figure by Diana Amsterdam, and Rome by John Harvey.

Classical Theatre Company’s 2013/2014 season includes Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, the literary journal based at the University of Houston, merged with Art Lies, one of Texas’s most respected visual art magazines. The merger brings additional regional, national, and international exposure to the literary and visual arts culture of Houston.

Diaz Music Institute, DiverseWorks, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Institute for Culture, Inprint, Mercury, Musiqa, Nameless Sound, Community Design Resource Center at UH, Blaffer Museum, Rice Design Alliance and Writers in the Schools have been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Bridge Club performance collective has been selected to perform in the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Carolyn Hays is the new Business Volunteer for the Arts manager at Houston Arts Alliance. Hays has worked at Washington National Opera, Washington Performing Arts Society and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo.

Sixto Wagan has been appointed the inaugural Director of the Center for Arts Leadership at the University of Houston. Wagan steps down as artistic director of DiverseWorks since 2011, after 11 years with the organization.

Ana Calderon Lemes has joined Houston Ballet’s corps de ballet. A Grand Prize winner from the Princess Grace Foundation of Monaco, Lemes has   been a member of Zürich Ballet and Barcelona Ballet.

Editor Nancy Wozny.
PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN.

There’s something about Sean Shim-Boyle’s Project Row House installation, Salt House, that speaks to the moment. A second fabricated chimney bisects the room, altering the interior just enough to wake us up to its reconfigured space.

We’ve all had our share of “keep calm and carry on” in recent weeks, all of which winds us back to what sustains us. Art, like salt, plays a part. And if you don’t believe me, head on over TEDxHouston and listen to Jane Weiner’s fierce dance/rant Salt. I hope you will find something in this issue to interest, or perchance, to sustain you.

Nancy Zastudil lends her insight to Marcelyn McNeil’s spacious canvases now on view at Anya Tish Gallery. We welcome Marene Gustin back to A + C’s pages in her preview of the Houston Palestine Film Festival.

In his Loose Ends column, Devon Britt-Darby sheds a tear for the Pollock that got away, channels the late Robert Hughes on Jeff Koons and ponders the relationship between Forrest Bess’s life and his art.

From Jerome Robbins’ mirror-holding humor in The Concert at Houston Ballet to Catastrophic Theatre’s reprise of Mickle Maher’s word fest, There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, to Shen Wei’s minimalist The Rite of Spring, you can see that the arts soldier on in this city.

As always, A + C writers are a busy bunch. Our own Britt-Darby kicks off part one of his Art League Houston exhibition, appropriately titled Art Criticism and Reporting, with an artist talk at 7 p.m. May 17. Zastudil has organized The Fourth Dimension was Ha-Ha, in Other Words, That it is Laughter at the Blaffer Museum. The show opens May 31 at 6:30 p.m. and runs June 1 – July 20. Abby Koenig’s work, Back At Day One, Again, is included in Vox Feminina IV at Pandora Theater, May 3-11.

May’s Art/Ad Bomb comes courtesy of Houston artist Alexandre Rosa. Check out more of his work at www.alexandrerosa.net.

Here’s to carrying on, artfully and otherwise.

Nancy@artsandculturetx.com

Amy Bruce, Troy Schulze and Kyle Sturdivant in
Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is.
PHOTOS: ANTHONY RATHBUN.

The Catastrophic Theatre’s Mickle Maher Connection

If you missed The Catastrophic Theatre’s production of Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, don’t stress, it’s coming back, May 10-27 at their new digs on the docks. Catastrophic has quite an impressive track record with Maher, starting with The Strangerer, followed by Spirits to Enforce. In the fall, Catastrophic will premiere The Pine, a Maher play created especially for Catastrophic, funded from a grant from The MAP Fund.  A + C editor Nancy Wozny chats with artistic director Jason Nodler about the Maher connection.

Arts + Culture: How did you happen on Maher’s work?

Jason Nodler: When my partner, Miki Johnson, was performing in Mr. Marmalade at Stages, we went out one night with her director, the very talented Alex Harvey. After we talked for a few hours he said, “Getting to know you a little, I have a play that you should really read.” That play was The Strangerer and it came in a book with Spirits to Enforce. I knew immediately that I had to produce both of Mickle’s plays and we did produce them back-to-back and to great acclaim.

A + C:  As someone who has seen all of these plays, a few of them twice, I’m a Maher fan-girl. What draws you to his work?

JN: I was immediately struck by how funny Mickle’s work is, how moving it is, how musical the writing. Spirits to Enforce was like a symphony of voices and percussive props and his new work for us, which will have its world premiere this fall at Catastrophic, is all in verse just like our May remount of the sold-out run of There is A Happiness That Morning Is.

Perhaps more than anything, Mickle’s ability to mash up unlike things into a coherent and astonishing whole surprised and excited me as it is unique to any other writer. With the Strangerer, for example, it was Albert Camus’ existential classic, The Stranger,  and the 2004 presidential debate. In it George W. Bush was cast as the existential hero, an impressive thing, pulled off with spirit and grace. With Spirits to Enforce, it was The Tempest, telemarketing, and superheroes.  The Pine counts as its influences Dante’s Inferno, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and Neil Gaiman’s popular graphic novels such as Sandman. Nobody else of whom I am aware has ever had such success in writing for the theater this way and making it simultaneously moving and hilarious.

A + C:  There is A Happiness That Morning Is was performed in your űber- intimate former office space the first time around. Will there be any changes now that you are in a significantly larger theater?

JN: We were very happy with the original production and we’re bringing it back due to popular demand, not in order to make any significant changes. The intimate nature of the micro-theater productions was very lovely, but each of our productions provides for an intimate audience experience. We’ve almost never performed in spaces that are larger than 100 seats, even with our most popular shows, and we never intend to do that. The new space is a very intimate one. The drawback to the tiny theater we made out of the living room in our old office was that capacity was so limited. Although we ran for eleven sold-out weeks in 2011, we had to turn a lot of people away, and we hate having to do that. We’re bringing it back to remedy that situation and of course too because we love the play.

Troy Schulze and Amy Bruce in Mickle
Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is.
PHOTOS: ANTHONY RATHBUN.

A + C: Even though you have been performing out of the DiverseWorks space for years, it has to be different to call the space your own now.

JN: It feels great. The nomadic nature of our company during its first five years was less a thing to let go of and more a thing to be rid of; being an itinerant company held no advantages whatever. Being in our own space offers exponential benefits with regard to audience development, efficiency of operations and the quality of the work we put on stage.

A + C: Walk me through the commission process. Were there any limitations? Would you describe the experience as collaborative?

JN: Though it’s not uncommon to do so, we don’t place any limitations on the commission of new work. The play Mickle is writing for us employs a large cast and it is, to the best of my knowledge, his most epic work to date. So it will be expensive to produce, but making new work is always expensive. And I don’t believe one can put a price on the honor of premiering a new work from such a special writer.

The writing process is not collaborative and I wouldn’t want that, but I do read drafts and respond to them. I don’t make any suggestions but I let him know what I think and I ask questions when I have them. The production of the play will be collaborative and, as it is with most new plays, it’s likely that things will change to some degree during rehearsals. I think that the freedom that we gave Mickle to write anything he wanted to write is yielding a very beautiful play and I can’t wait to do my part, along with the cast and crew, in bringing it to Houston audiences.

There Is a Happiness That Morning Is
Catastrophic Theatre
May 10-27

Joan Hall
Would You Swim the Ocean to Ease My Pain, 2007
Mixed Media, print on paper and Mylar.
105 x 151 inches.

Delving into the uncharted area between printmaking and sculpture, Uncharted Waters presents an alternative use of printmaking by integrating prints and found objects into wall-dependent sculptures. Both, Hall and Booker, draw their inspiration from the patterns found within nature that is reflected in their works of juxtaposing dimensions: Booker’s intimate objects alongside Hall’s monumental installations.

Joan Hall has long been concerned with the advanced deterioration of our natural environment. An avid sailor, Hall uses her vast nautical knowledge as inspiration for her large, wall-spanning sculptures that combine the beauty of nature with the elements that threaten to devastate it. Mixed media composed of resin, plastic and marine debris collected from the ocean is intertwined with digital prints on Mylar in an arduous process – occasionally requiring the hacking of materials.

The intimate sculptural pieces of Paul Booker, although initially appear as architectural structures, recall organic origins within nature’s choreography: flocks of birds, swarms of ants and schools of fish. Booker begins his process by printing hand-drawn designs onto individual strips of transparent Lexan. These strips are held together in a complex layering process using hundreds of pins traditionally used for the preservation of insects. Each completed work is a visual dichotomy of fluid motion projecting from the wall with a two-dimensional shadow cast through the transparent material it is constructed from.

Opening Reception:

May 31, 2013
6 – 8 PM

On View:

May 31 – June 30, 2013

For more info visit anyatishgallery.com