If you happen to be out and about on Sunday, I'll be front and center stage as master of ceremonies for the very firstest Broad Appétit event that nonetheless is long in the tradition of Richmond's street parties. But we've not had one on Broad in the middle of town, quite like this, in a good long time.
It's a three ring circus of food and fun and I'll be in the middle of it; I may even eat a bug.
The shed-ule and other tasty morsels of information are available á la carte, here.
There's a big exhibition at the Quirk Gallery, and across the street at Art6, between 3 and 5 p.m. there's a poet and artist's salon called Bend Your Ear. The salon is free and open to the public.
The weather is calling for "isolated storms" at a 30 percent chance. So, carry a bumbershoot, just in case.
And if you don't have a good time, I'll eat my hat. Well. One of the old ones. OK. I'm lying. But I may eat a bug.
"It Is Impossible To Have Progress Without A Conscience." Robert Rauschenberg dead--The sordid sad mess of current politics
Still life with dancers: "One of the seminal figures of modern art, visual artist Robert Rauschenberg was resident designer for Merce Cunningham Dance Company for ten years. His piece Minutiae was his first stage design for the company and was created in 1954 as the set for the Cunningham-Cage dance performance." Via: Melbournefestival.com
Artist Robert Rauschenberg, 82, one of the few protean makers of art this nation has produced, died Monday at this home in Captiva, Florida.
The expected death of an old man is not a tragedy, but one is reminded that the generation of the Deperession and World War II --and Rauschenberg went through both -- is packing up and leaving, like those scenes of departing trains in the old movies, where the person remaining on the platform runs alongside in the steam, trying to glimpse the lover's/spouse's face one last time.
"One of the last, there is no art anymore today, just repetition, pose, people posing as artists," commented Fisch, from Germany, on the New York Times page announcing Rauschenberg's death. I dunno, Fisch, I think there is art today, but the gallery system can function like the music industry, which is to say the entertainment industry, which is to say that the young are both product and consumer. It's a damned difficult, wearying and even wretched business, and it is a business, and Rauschenberg came along at a time when something new was being sought. Not just new, but an altering of fundamentals. And he was versatile. And his talents were important.
Rauschenberg was part of not just art history, but contemporary culture, from Black Mountain College to Merce Cunningham and John Cage to designing a Talking Heads album cover. Eulogized the Times' Michael Kimmelmann, "A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked."
Unlike the Abstract Expressionist painters who painted the world in pieces, he took pieces of the world and put it back together through his Combines. If a painting is to be about the real world, it must be made out of the real world, he said. He lived long enough to go from being a kind of Peck's Bad Boy of art to an institution. That's a curious path to travel.
I'm still not sure how I feel about his white canvases that were more about how they were viewed than what was stretched in the frame. Or how his Combines, often built of flimsy, deteriorating materials, can stand up to art of the ages. Or even they are meant to. Rauschenberg spent much of his life in the shadow of nuclear annihiliation, which, as Gunter Grass once put it, renders ridiculous the baroque notion of timelesseness. If it's all going to end in a pfffftph!, what's the point of making art that's supposed to be eternal? But I'm not resolving that issue here.
From the Times: “I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”
The Chariot Race
Speaking of irresistible possibilities that can't be ignored, today the voters of West Virginia are supposed to vote in astonishing numbers for Hillary Rodham Clinton because...beause she's not Barack Hussein Obama. Thinking about this political mishigas makes me tired. I see no good coming out of any of it. Even if Barack wins, which, to me, would be better than any other outcome given the brute realities with which we are saddled. The appalling mess of our politics is a bit like a Rauschenberg Combine, all pasted together borrowed images and found objects, the meaning of which seems, at times, ambiguous.
In awful desperation she has so much as said that the Democratic party has to nominate her because non-white people are unelectable -- forgetting for a moment that Barack Obama is as much white as he is black.
As James Howard Kunstler puts it, in rather purjorative terms, as directed to West Virginia and Kentucky:
"The spectacle of Hillary's un-making has been pretty horrible to witness, the efforts to stage her as a lumpenprole Nascar mom drinking boilermakers while celebrating her latest hunting exploits. (How worried is Hillary about making her mortgage payments, or filling her gas tank?)
Naturally, the final act of this nauseating play takes place in Hillbilly Heaven, the states of West Virginia and Kentucky, where Hillary expects to make a big "statement" about exactly whom voters will go for. She'll win big and the effort will symbolically disgrace her.
...Whatever America's fate may be in these very trying times of peak oil and climate change, a consensus seems to have formed that we can't afford to leave the same old cast of characters running things."
Thing is, I don't think she is going to get symbolically disgraced. You can read his whole post here.
But, though members of the billion-eyed audience have probably already seen it, I happened across James Wolcott's current Vanity Fair column about the political to-ing and fro-ing in the Democratic blogosphere being symbolic of the rift in the party, offline. In "When Democrats Go Post-Al" he compares this dueling for the party's nomination, which wasn't suppose to go like this, as the final grueling stretch of the culminating chariot race in Ben-Hur.
As James Branch Cabell wrote, if it were not all so heart breaking, it would be side splitting. And Wolcott did make me laugh aloud in parts though, it was rueful.
He addresses the two versions of the candidates: "Hillary’s candidacy promised to make things better; Obama’s to make us better: outward improvement versus inward transformation. With Hillary, you would earn your merit badges; with Obama, your wings. Hillary’s candidacy was warmed-over meat loaf—comfort food for those too old or fearful to Dream."
And concluding:
"Democrats have pulled their punches for so long that they know only how to hit themselves in the face, earning the reputation for masochism that gives Dick Cheney a good chuckle each night at bedtime as he’s being packed in ice."
Art and Theater and Life A good weekend to be in either in St. Augustine, Fla., or Richmond, Va.
St. Augustine is the nation's oldest continually occupied, European-settled city (founded by the Spanish in 1565 (!)); and also near Florida's beckoning summer beaches. Thus, it is right and appropriate that my partner-in-art-for-life, Amie Oliver, and our friend, Ruth Bolduan, should have an exhibition titled "Drawing From History" opening there and that their work features the figure and often historical or classical settings. And you have almost the entire season to get down there to the Dow Museum and see the show.
Unlike Amie's and Ruth's work, the Firehouse Cabaret is in its last days. For members of the billion-eyed audience who think in terms of a 2 million number possible audience and a rotating cycle of bus tours, it's Richmond, and a smaller market, and we're a strained shoe-string non-profit. That all said:
Last Two Weekends! "The Firehouse Theatre Cabaret"
Better than Botox!*
Does The Firehouse Cabaret , directed by and starring Scott Wichmann, have magical properties? Can you actually leave this show looking years younger? Can you afford not to find out?!
Read the stellar reviews below and make up your own mind! (Then buy some tickets!)
"The sort of program Richmond can use more of." - Mary Burruss, Style Weekly, in her review, "Snacking on Actors".
Special Events: See Firehouse Theatre Fire Ball auction winners Caroline Gottwald (Thursday, May 15) and Debbie Walton (Friday, May 15) onstage in The Cabaret!
Short on cash? No problem! Sunday, May 11 is "Pay What You Will" matinee day! Doors open at 3:30 for a 4 p.m. matinee. First come, first served!
Tickets & Showtimes: General: $25, Seniors: $22. Students $10 with valid ID. Click here to buy tickets online, or call the 24-hour ticket line at 1-800-595-4TIX (595-4849) Showtimes: 8:00 p.m. Thursdays - Saturdays. Sunday matinee at 4:00 p.m. Doors open a half-hour before showtime.
Readers Theatre is Back!
Readers Theatre, Tuesday, May 13th, 7:30 p.m. - Free.Kerrigan Sullivan directs John Tyler Community College students performing this scaled-back, staged reading of Baby with the Bathwater by playwright Christopher Durang.
Mother is a frustrated novelist; Father's an unemployed alcoholic; and Nanny's a warped Mary Poppins who gives Baby rattles of asbestos and Red Dye #2. Durang's wicked wit sheds light on our foibles and follies as no one else in theatre can.
Do You Know Where Your "UGG" Is?
Hey, we know times are tight, and you'd support us if you could. Fret no more, dear Firehouse friend - Ukrop's Golden Gift program is in full swing, and for the price of a postage stamp, you can support your favorite theatre.
Your UGG certificate is lolly-gagging around the foyer, or lurking in the home office, waiting to be useful, so help it find a home! Drop it in the mail by May 31 to: Firehouse Theatre Project/UGG 1609 W. Broad Street Richmond, VA 23220
Lazy friends? Rescue their UGG certificates from the recyle bin, and send them on, too! Thanks for your support!
About The Firehouse Theatre Project
The Firehouse Theatre Project, a non-profit theatre company, was founded in 1993 to present important contemporary American theatre pieces with an emphasis on plays not previously produced in the metropolitan Richmond area. The company, which is under the direction of Carol Piersol, Founding Artistic Director, is housed in the former Richmond Fire Station #10 at 1609 West Broad Street. For more information about the Firehouse Theatre Project's 2007/08 season, please call 804.355.2001 or visit the website.
And this wonderful piece from a concerned journalist, via RVA Magazine in which it is revealed all the actors keep their clothes on. Fort this show, anyway.:
Firehouse Theatre Project: Cabaret - S.E. Parker
Firehouse Theatre Project Courts Controversy With Latest Production
Actors Remain Fully Clothed in ‘Cabaret’
The fingernails of Founding Artistic Director Carol Piersol have seen better days. She's nervous, and despite her calm exterior, her hands betray her.
"This is the most normal show we've done in years at the Firehouse," she says, over a cup of chamomile tea and a scone in a popular Fan District coffee house. The tea calms her nerves, she says, and the scone is a guilty pleasure. "I knew we might offend some patrons by doing this kind of show, but it was a risk I was willing to take. I think our audience can handle it."
She's talking about The Firehouse Theatre Cabaret, an entertaining assemblage of ten-minute plays and songs, accompanied by jazz music that opened April 24th and runs through May 17th. Unlike the generally expected Firehouse plate of edgy, thought-provoking drama however, "The Cabaret" dishes up a night of pure, unadulterated pleasure. "There's absolutely nothing to think about afterwards," Piersol says, "and that might disappoint some long-time season-ticket holders. But I've seen
The Catastrophe in Burma More than 100,000 thought dead
"Images from a NASA satellite show the impact of Cyclone Nargis on southern Burma. Before it hit, on 15 April (top image), features are sharply defined. In the aftermath on 5 May (bottom image), much of the Irrawaddy river delta region is clearly flooded." Via BBC. We cannot even imagine the immensity of this event. As horrendous as Katrina was to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, or hurricanes that pounded Florida in recent years -- those people perhaps have some inkling. But the rest of us can't fathom...100,000 dead. That's if I walked out into my neighborhood and all I saw was stacks of bodies. Like the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake that triggered incomprehensible tsunamis, killing some 225,000 persons through eleven countries, such death and devastation in such a short time--outside of war-- seems unreal.
In the meantime, a humanitarian crisis is piled upon an already desperate situation concerning food shortages that are affecting large swaths of the nations along the southern side of the globe. I thought of these rolling enormous disasters while watching the most recent returns on the shabby, pathetic horse race that is the present U.S. Presidential election process. And how, on the major news outlets, here wasn't much discussion of anything substantive. Not by the moderators and really not by the candidates, either.
I'm these days reading newspapers of a century ago, of a typhus epidemic in Italy during early 1909, and of earthquakes, volcanoes and floods, and thousands dying, with seeming appalling regularity. People desire explanations or reason or see in these occurrences symbols and signs from beyond. I don't know about any of that. What it is demonstrated with these history-altering upheavals is that Nature makes quick work of what we'd call civilization and proves just who is the guest here.
I recall how in 2002, during a visit to New York City, when Amie and I saw Albee's The Goat, a thunderstorm booming and rolling over the towers of Manhattan. And how people in that city still nervy from the 9/11 attacks, jumped, and some on the sidewalk near us said, "Woah," or inhaled with sharpness. Something was bigger than even New York.
Burma is called the Union of Myanmar by its military junta, in power since 1989. The Blue Raccoon noted the protest of Buddhist monks this past fall, and the human rights situation there is horrendous. Perhaps this horror will cause the government's collapse, but as it often goes with these things, what replaces the strongman rule may not be any better. Civil order--even in the best of circumstances--is often an agreed upon illusion.
Mourn for the Burmese people. Help if you can. And understand, billion-eyed audience, that none of us knows what could happen next to us, or anybody, anywhere.
The Firehouse Gets Style Appreciation On trying to make art and theater in Richmond, Virginia The Ensemble: Lisa Kotula, Jude Fageas, Scott Wichmann, Alia Basharat
Style Weekly's reviewer Mary Burruss gave the Firehouse a positive mention in this week's issue, on stands now, as they say.
Mary also interviewed TheatreIV/Barksdale's Bruce Miller about the recent kerfluffle about the Barksdale's production of The Little Dog Laughed and even TheatreIV's Peter Pan. How strange it is, to me, seeing a kind of role reversal. The Firehouse has had people naked on its stage, and produced plenty of plays with strong language.
Now, the Firehouse has on its boards a musical revue with short plays, directed by and featuring Scott Wichmann, that may have a total of four PG-13 words involved, no nudity, and one slinky spangly outfit with a pleated skirt. And Alia Basharat is a red head, with a powerful voice. She also wears the pleated skirt. There's also a clown nose and wig--Lisa Kotula dons those--and some frightening clown make up--Alia puts that on. A scary Ferris Wheel ride is simulated, with Scott and Lisa. And some rap is also presented by Jude that may jar some people, though the words have an ultimate positive message. And, among my favorites, a musical number in which the ensemble wears hats.
I recall how, way back in 1976, when what was then known as Virginia Museum Theatre presented Romulus Linney's Childe Byron and the word "damn" and caused a ruckus. Similarly, in Peter Pan the word "ass" is used, in reference to, well, a donkey. Horrors!
Which is why there wasn't a professional presentation of, for example, Glengarry Glen Ross until the Firehouse gave it in 2002 (!) That show did quite well, as did I Am My Own Wife, which also featured Scott Wichmann, and he performed most of it in a black dress. And between them both was Hedwig and The Angry Inch. And I could go on.
When Edward Albee visited the Firehouse a few years ago, he said in his remarks that it is the duty of a little theater like ours to not produce art that people think they want to see, but give them art they should see. So, the newspaper fulminated a few days later that Albee was an elitist who just wanted to insult people. Sigh.
I would argue, however, about what is more elitist than expecting all facets of art to resemble nothing more than watered-down entertainments that require no more thought or consideration that turning on the television and curling up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn? Sometimes, of course, this is what we want; to enjoy something, and sometimes what we seek is comfortable, reassuring or at least, familiar. And that's fine, but should we live in a city where that kind of theater (or art) was the only thing offered, it'd be like living where there's only one television station to watch, or one movie theater that only showed musicals.
Sure, we've had a few people walk out of shows in our 15 years. But mostly, they know what they're getting because the Firehouse is the Firehouse. And there is a certain amount of self-responsibility here; read the season brochure, for example, or a review. Some people in Richmond--and I really remember this from attending TheatreVirginia productions--would come to the show just so they could walk out in a cloud of indignation. That the Barksdale produced The Little Dog Laughed is to the theater's credit. But they're a big house, with overhead we don't have, and reactions like this in Richmond, Virginia, makes producing theater--or art--a challenge. Sometimes it feels like cultural mission work. But, we keep doing it because, well. Somebody has to.
The contrary view isn't new. In 1909, Richmond novelist James Branch Cabell's The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking was published by Doubleday. He'd intended to write a droll comedy of manners, as though Oscar Wilde was transferred to Williamsburg and Richmond, which in the book are rechristened Fairhaven and Lichfield.
At one point, the protagonist, Robert Townsend -- a snob, though on occasion amusing-- and his mentor, the novelist John Charteris, are attending a production of Romeo and Juliet at Fairhaven's Willoughby Hall. Afterward they encounter Mrs. Adrian Rabbet, wife of Fairhaven's rector. "A most enjoyable performance," Charteris says, not thinking anybody would say different. Not so, with Mrs. Rabbet.
"Such a sad play," she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris --Shakespeare's language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that safe. And besides, as I often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite depressed me all through the play of him hobnobbing with Dr. Johnson at the Tabard Inn, and making such irregular marriages, and stealing sheep--or was it sheep, now?" I said that, as I remembered, it was a fox, which he hid under his coat, until the beast bit him. "Well, at any rate, it was something extremely deplorable and characteristic of a genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was Ingomar or Spartacus that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they play Ten Nights in a Barroom on Thursday, and I shall certainly bring the children then, for I am always glad for them to see a really moral and instructive drama. And that reminds me! I absolutely must tell you what Tom said about actors the other day --" And she did....Mrs. Rabbet said toward the end that it was a most enjoyable chat, although to me it appeared to partake rather of the nature of a monologue. It consumed perhaps a half hour; and when we two at last relinguished Mrs. Rabbet to her husband's charge, it was with the feeling not altogether unakin to relief."
John Adams Better late than never critique; and what about John Marshall and "XYZ"?
Stephen Dillane (left) as Thomas Jefferson; Paul Giamatti as John Adams, in the episode "An Unnecessary War." Via ign.com.
You tell me: does Stephen Dillane, portraying Thomas Jefferson in the recent "John Adams" HBO miniseries sound and resemble more than a little his fellow countryman, Leslie Howard -- and especially as Howard interpreted Ashley Wilkes in "Gone With The Wind" ? You decide.
Leslie Howard.... .....Stephen Dillane, as Jefferson
Franklin, Adams and Jefferson discuss The Declaration of Independence:
Scarlett and Ashley in the library at Twelve Oaks:
My niggling notes:
• Holy Steadicam, Batman!
In an effort to wrest this period piece out of the category of "Disney animatronics" or "moving painting" the cinematography at times got in the way of the story. During establishment shots, in particular, the camera turned on these neck-craning "Dutch angle" positions that had me saying, "Meanwhile, back at Continental Congress Cave in Philadelphia, Adams and Jefferson, the Boy Wonder, hatch a plan for independency." Or, "Meanwhile, back at the not so stately Braintree farm, Abigail fights the bloody pox!"
The one scene in the final, "Peacefield" episode that actually turned the camera upside down while Adams went through his cornfield was a bit much. The over-indulgence used with these decisions runs the risk of making the series look "dated."
The reliance on the steadicam was also utilized to breathe life into what could've been a waxwork tableaux, but, you know, I started to feel like this was an 18th century version of "The West Wing." And, well, it was.
• Getting the buzz
The sound was excellent throughout the series, except that the humming of insects -- meaning flies as in piles of dung and filth and stench --never seemed to affect the people. Unless I missed a moment when somebody brought their hand down or slapped their cheek, "Got you, you sonofabitch!"
• "You, sir, are no Rubens." One of my favorite scenes wasn't accurate to McCullough's book. This was the viewing Adams had of Jonathan Trumbull's immense "Declaration of Independence" painting. I thought that Adams' annoyed criticism, accompanied by a comical jig, that it was a "shins and ankles" painting, sounded familiar--but he apparently didn't say it; and I'm wondering if somebody else's harsh words against Trumbull's effort were inserted into Adams' mouth. The series interpreted what Adams may have thought, but didn't speak, and turned it into a morose outburst more indicating his state of mind--perhaps--at the time than what he said at that moment, his wistful and sad statement, "I consider the ideals of our Revolution as lost."
According to McCullough, Adams didn't turn into an art critic. He gazed upon all those faces--most of them dead men by then--and just pointed to the right side of the picture, and explained how after he nominated George Washington for commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, "he took his hat and rushed out that door."
"Just go, John."
Laura Linney. Well, what can I say. She was amazing. And she and Giamatti complemented each other and seemed to have that kind of marriage-of-equals that made John and Abigail the perfect couple. Yes, he may have looked like a snapping turtle (especially as he got older), but he respected her opinions and acknowledged her intellect, and in the 18th century, that wasn't common.
One of my favorite scenes, for several reasons, was when she was down on her hands and knees, sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the floors of the Braintree farmhouse with a wire brush. She is trying to prevent the spread of "the bloody pox." And John is getting summoned away to Philadelphia, and not for the first time, and she's got to stay back and play Mother Courage with the children.
And he's standing in the doorway, watching her bent over next to the bucket, and trying to say good-bye -- he doesn't know when he'll be back. And there's a silence. She looks up at him. And the series of emotions playing across her face: frustration and anger that an illness she can't fight is laying siege to her house; resignation and annoyance that her husband has to go off and do Great Things, and while she loves him, she cannot find any affection their predicament in that particular hour. And she's just...beautiful. And she says, "Just go, John."
Oooomph! You kinda have had to have been married to know how to say that, and why, and shove into those three words the complicated sense of what they meant to Abigail in that moment.
• The theme music kept playing in my head.
I don't know why. Struck me as, well, sounding a bit like a Captain Morgan/Pirates of the Caribbean swash and buckle about the swelling of drums and fife skirls. But the music would start up on my interior iPod, especially when walking to work in the morning; in particular the passage beginning at about minute two, when "Executive Producers Tom Hanks Gary Goetzman" appeared, to the end. If this theme doesn't get used in some montage sequence pertaining to the current presidential election, I'll be surprised.
• "I suppose I must appoint you."
John Adams never appointed John Marshall as Supreme Court Justice. At least, according to the show. This is incredible and vital moment for U.S. history, as it set into motion an entire train of events that we're still talking about. Now, I give credit to the actor portraying Marshall, and those who took care to examine drawings and paintings of him at the time. He looked the part. But Marshall's family had been in Virginia several generations by then, and he wouldn't have had this hint of what sounded to me like a Scottish accent.
Then, the time comes, Adams is tossing documents into the fire during what is portrayed as his last night in the White House. Secretary of State Marshall comes to Adams and informs him that the balloting is over and that Thomas Jefferson is the new President. Though the history is a bit wobbly here, this would've been the time for Adams to hear how nobody either wants or can fulfill the duties of the Supreme Court Justice, and how, in almost off-the-cuff fashion, Adams makes his "midnight appointment" of Marshall. Instead, we get a joke of "I didn't mean to burn that," and Adams trying to stomp out a blazing paper.
Maybe in the re-cut, DVD version this occurs, but if it doesn't, then the utility for education of that particular episode is diminished.
Having said these things, I must underscore, that I don't know when we'll ever see a sprawling epic such as this set in the early United States during the late 18th and early 19th century. Seems to me what should happen is something akin to HBO's Rome. But--instead--track the development of Revolutionary themes up to and through, say, the 1835 death of John Marshall and the Liberty Bell cracking while heralding his demise. That's as dramatic an ending as you could hope for.
Marshall was a line captain at Valley Forge where he observed first-hand how a squabbling collection of states and their representatives couldn't make a decision. Somebody, he decided, needed to be in charge. He served in Congress, as special diplomatic envoy, and as a cabinet officer until his appointment to the court, where he sat for 35 years. He'd be a good major character for such an undertaking. The unrest that Marshall feared and predicted would arise from the Southern intransigence over the slave issue overwhelmed the nation 26 years after his death. In fact, one of the most fascinating periods of U.S. history is immediately after the Revolution and up to the Civil War, because during this time, the nation created its founding documents and grappled with the core principles of country, and what they meant. We're arguing about many of them, still.
Marshall, as a young man, cut quite a figure -- six foot two or so, dark haired, and "ruggedly handsome" as the saying goes. Women liked the look of him, ("Tall, dark, and I'll have some") then, and apparently, now, even when he's become a monument, rather than a man. As demonstated here via abovethelaw.com.
I'd like to see a theatrical treatment of "The XYZ Affair." Three unlikely and differing individuals, John Marshall-- leaving at home his beloved, pregnant and suffering Mary Ambler, "My dearest Polly"...Thomas Pinckney...Elbridge Gerry...Talleyrand...the gorgeous Madame de Villette, a protégé of Voltaire, said to be so beautiful, that even though the revolutionaries jailed her, they couldn't bring themselves to send her to the chopping block.
Marshall may have had some kind of love connection with her. And there was rumor that she was acting as spy. Secret negotiations...intrigues...personality conflicts...maybe espionage and certain sexual tensions, all in late 18th century costume in sumptuous rooms -- Prague sitting in for Paris.
Marshall returned home a hero, and the apocryphal phrase, "millions for defense but not a penny for tribute" enshrined on the public consciousness. This was supposed to be the U.S. representatives' reaction to having to pay a bribe to the French to get a meeting with Talleyrand. Pinckney is to have declared, "No, no, no, not a sixpence!" The statement doesn't possess the same dramatic ring, nonetheless, the French then understood with whom they were dealing. [The more powerful phrase was coined by Representative Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina during a Congressional dinner for John Marshall, just returned from France, at Philadelphia in June, 1798]
The story in good hands could be a romp of a play, or film -- just the title "XYZ" alone would raise curiosity.
There's a sexual subtext, too. Marshall, like Adams, almost stopped writing to his wife from Paris. A letter he sent, but didn't sign, mentioned a woman who spent company with the delegation and made their stay more bearable. This missive reached Polly while she was still recuperating from childbirth. "She immediately lost interest in everything," Jean Edward Smith writes, "including the new baby, and eventually had to be taken in by her sister..." Polly spent the next several decades holed up in her bedroom in Richmond unable to deal with even the slightest noise.
When Marshall each month held his famous "lawyer dinners"Polly went to stay at her sister's. But even a neighborhood dog barking at night could drive her up a wall, and John would have to, with great politeness, ask the person to do something about the mutt's noise. Polly was not made from the strong stuff of Abigail Adams. But John and Polly were married for 42 years and her death devastated him.
If you are late to the billion-eyed audience, you may not know that these two women, displaying the classic Greek tragedy/comedy duality, represent -- well, here at the Blue Raccoon, anyway -- the arrival of yet another First Friday High Art Hike throughout midtown Richmond. And the ladies will enjoy fine weather, suitable for their mode of dress.
If you know the story, please repeat along. The topmost image was taken, and not by me, at an opening several years ago at the vanished Three Miles Gallery and that this space, and an adjacent one, is now the busy Tarrant's Café.
Before you head into the Presidential-named streets of midtown, though, you need to check out two exhibits by friends of ours across the street from each other, Louis Poole at Page Bond, 1625 W. Main St. and Steve Hedberg's new work at the Glave-Kocen Gallery, 1620 W. Main St.
Both painters create environments in their pieces; Louis' houses verge on the abstract, Steve's buildings, streetscapes and landscapes are rendered with a realistic vision, but he also presents abstract elements.
The Poole here is via the Richmond Federal Reserve site.
As they say, the Glaves and the Kocens, on their site about Steve:
May 2 - May 31, 2008 Opening Reception,May 2, 2008 6:00 until 9:00
With his latest body of work, Richmond artist, Steve Hedberg continues to divide his time between two styles: realism and abstract. He takes a slightly gritter approach to his realism, focusing on Richmond's Fan neighborhood, old automobiles and local haunts as subject sources. His work in abstract furthers his exploration of a seemingly alternative universe, using compositions of geometric planes balanced by course texture and color.
By the way, A.d.a Gallery, 228 W. Broad St., turns five years old with this First Friday. Gallerist John Pollard has made a definite mark here, and come June, he'll will be hieing off to Scope Basel in Switzerland. This month, members of the collaborative FEAST are exhibiting.
Below are further directly ripped-off blurbs of some of the premiering events:
Quirk Gallery Chuck Scalin: Rush: Explorations in Glass
We’re SO excited to see what Richmond based (hum, legendary) artist Chuck Scalin will pull out of the kiln for his upcoming first solo show at Quirk. Kiln? Yes, kiln! Chuck has been working with local legendary artist herself, Jude Schlozhauer, learning the secrets of glass. Taking his exquisite collages to the next level, Scalin creates unique (yeah, you’ve heard it before, but it’s true here) works of art by fusing glass and found objects. Each one a mystery until it emerges from the heat, Scalin then works the surface with addition of objects and by working the surface with graphite or paint. This is a not to be missed show!
Exhibition Statement: The creative RUSH comes after the piece is removed from the kiln, with the challenge of where and how to take the piece to completion. Inspiration for these pieces is derived from the irregular textures, color alterations, and accidents that occur during the firing process and result in determining the direction of the final abstract composition.
Rush opens at Quirk on May 2 and continues until June 21.
VCU MFA Thesis Show! It’s May and that means a city filled with more art shows than you can shake a paintbrush at, thanks to the many end-of-semester shows presented by art students from across the City.
The VCU School of the Arts Department of Sculpture presents their MFA Thesis Exhibitions at two annex locations that are in the First Fridays area. We’re sure you won’t want to miss the works of these exceptional emerging artists!
Terminal: VCU Sculpture MFA Thesis Annex Exhibition Featuring: Sami Ben Larbi, Lily Cox-Richard, David Grainger, Eli Kessler
Opening Receptions: May 2, 6-9pm & May 9, 7-9pm 2 Locations: 5-7 West Broad St and 209 N Foushee Street Exhibition continues: May 2-18, 2008
1708 Gallery 319 West Broad St. Richmond, VA 23220 (804) 643 · 1708 1708gallery.org Tuesday - Friday: 11 am – 5 pm Saturday: 1 – 5 pm and by appointment First Fridays hours: 7 – 10 pm
Forgotten Constellations Artist Paul Cantanese presents projected installations
First Fridays: May 2, 7-10pm Exhibition: May 2-31 1708 Gallery was founded in 1978, and is a nonprofit exhibition and performance space committee to expanding the understanding, development, and appreciation of contemporary art.
Gallery 5 @ VA Fire & Police Museum 200 W. Marshall St. Richmond, VA 23220 (804) 644 · 0005 gallery5arts.orgThursday, Friday and Saturday 11am – 5pm, and other times by appointment First Fridays hours: 7 – 11 pm
Exintrinsic: The Art of Ebony Patterson, Lisa Kellner, Brooke Hine
An exhibition that embraces the fine subtleties and details of the surface and texture of the human body, Extrinsic features Ebony Paterson from Kingston, Jamaica, and Lisa Kellner from Richmond. Both artists create an exquisite visual dialogue about the body as a receptacle or vessel for passage while dissecting the discrepancies between what is perceived and what is visible. Lisa Kellner's work ranges from delicate drawings and paintings exemplifying the topographical qualities in the landscape of the skin to installations that explore the qualities of flesh and bodily structure, juxtaposed with the aspects of personal sanctuary. Ebony Patterson creates large scale mixed media prints that seek to reference specifically female objectification from an autobiographical perspective, while making cultural references to her own experiences with her own body.
First Fridays: May 2, 7-10pm; Featuring live entertainment Exhibition: May 2-28
Gallery5, one of Richmond’s newest and most innovative visual and performing art centers, is located in a National Historic Landmark known as Steamer Company No. 5. Gallery5’s mission is to help promote a new understanding of the arts in an interactive atmosphere by combining multiple mediums under one roof. Our monthly exhibitions include a collaboration of both visual works of art, live music, film and a wide array of performing arts.
Wednesday - Saturday 1 – 7 pm or by appointment First Fridays: 7-10pmFirst Fridays hours: 7 – 10 pm
Peter Fowler - Let the Paint Speak
Fowler is a prolific painter whose bravura brushwork and luscious use of paint convey a sense of joyful energy, whether his subject be impressionistic landscapes or romantic figures of women. Peter may be booked for portraits at his First Friday Opening.
First Fridays: May 2, 7-10pm Exhibiton: May 2-31
From the cutting edge to established International artists, non-traditional media to oil painting, Ghostprint Gallery synthesizes disparate elements in an enlightened perspective on art itself.
Jaurés And The Workers Who Wouldn't Unite Universal brotherhood didn't stand a chance against militaristic nationalism-- and the bullets of an assassin
Jean Jaurés inciting peace and understanding--crowds like this made him, and his supporters, think they were actually going to stop a European war. Image: Blog Leituras Favre
Jean Auguste Marie Joseph Jaures (1859-1914) was the symbol of the French Socialist Party prior to World War I, a leading advocate of peace and universal brotherhood, who believed in his heart that workers from Germany would not march in massive armies to go and slaughter French workers.
He never held a government position, though he had a few terms in the Chamber of Deputies without representing an actual party. Jaurés was more of a voice of conscious than a politician.
On this May 1, the traditional Labor (or, Labour, for those members of the billion-eyed audience who like their English pinkey-up), Day commemoration, is also the commemoration of the calling of an 1886 strike for an eight-hour work day in the United States. On May 3,1886, Chicago workers marching near the McCormick Harvester factory were fired upon and beaten. This became known as the Haymarket Riots.
The blowback from the Haymarket event crippled the socialist and anarchic movements in the U.S. The potential of these movements ever making inroads to the political philosophy of the nation underwent a massive deflation. Meanwhile, in Europe, a sense of true epochal change was in the air -- except it was the Wilhelmine Germans and Lenin who wanted the revolution. Thing is, Lenin, who commanded no armies and didn't wear funny hats, knew where the music was playing.
Lenin understood that if a true overwhelming of the present structures of government was to be accomplished, no sentiment could be spared, not a shred of the old way of conducting business could remain. A new methodology was needed to wipe away all that had come before.
Jean Jaurés participated in an international peace conference at Brussels during July 1914. He believed that the brewing war could be an opportunity to prove the righteousness of his cause. He advocated union between the Germans and French, who had much to gain and almost everything to lose if they chose conflict. This made him hated among French nationalists.
Then, on July 13, 1914, while sitting in a Paris cafe, he was shot and killed by a 29-year-old nationalist fanatic, Raoul Villain. His name is just too poetic and subtle; the villain Villain who killed Jaurés.
The very next day, posters went up throughout French town squares announcing the general mobilization in preparation for war, and all hell followed after.
Jaurés did not live to see his idealism gone to mud and gore in Flanders fields. The workers of Europe, goaded by national pride and the propaganda machines, killed each other in bloody heaps with numbed, dutiful, assembly-line precision for the next four years.
The tumult of war knocked the shoddy props from underneath imperial Russia. The Germans, seeking to incite Russian collapse, released Lenin from his Swiss box. The revolution he led would in the end pickle his body while Stalin perverted his concepts and through pogroms kill hundreds of millions. Throughout the Eastern Bloc of Europe, thousands of civilians in the "proletariat" were kept busy spying on their neighbors through the secret police apparatus: the fearful betraying the fearing. Notable malingerers from those "Stalinist" glory days are China, and North Korea and Cuba.
Villain was murdered in 1936.
His too-late end is reminiscent of the demise of Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, whose street name was Apis or "The Bee," and the polar opposite of Jaurés. Dimitrijevic was the Serbian officer who set up the state-sponsored terrorist organization called The Black Hand. Dimitrijevic was respected for his personal heroism and zeal, though he worked in the shadows, where Jaurés labored in the full light of assemblies and conferences.
Divided into covert cells that did not know of each other--a kind of early 20th century Eastern European Al Qaeda--they received their coded instructions from the committee headed by The Bee. Gavrilo Prinzip, a shabby man and a lousy terrorists except that his aim proved true, was sent by The Apis as part of a group whose mission it was to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand during a June 28, 1914, visit to Sarajevo.
This delivered probable cause to the Austro-Hungarians. The thudding timpani of Gustav Holst's "Mars" from his suite The Planets predicted what was to come. Written about the time of the war's eruption--but not completed or performed in public until near its end-- Holst brought a tonal metaphor to the sense of Europe at this discrete moment. His aesthetic attennae sensed the coming catastrophe, and he wrote the score. Holst was prescient in more ways, too; the music was for the Modernity and in the almost century since its premier, The Planets has been pillaged so often by entertainment that it strikes the contemporary ear as a soundtrack.
The Bee was squashed by the events he set in motion; as detailed in this overview from the site of Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library:
"In March 1917, Apis was arrested in a government crackdown on the Black Hand. Several theories exist for why. One, is that Prime Minister Pasic and the Prince Regent were preparing to negotiate a separate peace with Austria and that they feared Black Hand reprisals. Another theory was that Pasic wanted to eliminate Apis and the others because they could expose government involvement in the Sarajevo murders. Yet another theory is that Apis was actively subverting the government. For whatever reason, Apis and many others received a rigged trial before a military tribunal. Apis and three others were sentenced to death for treason. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic was shot at sunrise on June 24, 1917."
Jaurés the peacemaker, Villain the killer and Dimitrijevic the war-bringer all died by violence. Princip, history's trigger man, languished in prison while the world he helped push into the abyss flew to pieces around him. He died, his tiny body consumed by tuberculosis, on April 28, 1918 at a hospital in a town named Theresienstadt.
Due to his murderous act in Sarajevo--whether the exact or proximate cause of World War I has filled scholarship cluttered volumes--that village would become the site of an artificial ghetto created by the Nazis to contain enemies of their state.
Some Blathering Following A Quiet Does one ever recover from the Democratic primary malady?
• I'm reading Richmonder James Branch Cabell's early novel, The Cords of Vanity--A Comedy of Shirkingof 1909 (re-edited and republished 1920), to gain some understanding of the rarefied mindset of his social class to provide persepctive for this book I'm endeavoring to write. [The image above is via the Virginia Commonwealth University Special Collections site].
This, along with Ellen Glasgow's more realistic and far less self-conscious Romance of a Plain Man, are providing invaluable and insightful glimpses into this time and place.
Glasgow mentions the suffrage question, includes cruelty to animals, but even in her book African-Americas are tangential, uneducated people, lacking individual character. Cabell's Townsend character refers to his mammy. These two writers occupied the same city, though not a similar realm of existence as businessman and firebrand editor of the Richmond Planet,John Mitchell Jr. He was running weekly tallies of the lynchings of blacks, and the purported reasons for the crime. And none of them were sending checks to support the muckraker socialist Adon A. Yoder and his Idea.
Now, Cabell never needed to work, that is, in the time-clock punching way--he was descended of two storied Virginia families and his daddy married well. But he was the artist in the family, and as such, experienced the loneliness of loving a city that held him in suspicion and further expected him to accomplish something significant, and then after he built 52 books, forgot him.
Cords is, as his biographer Edgar MacDonald described, an almost painfully autobiographical novel. The protagonist Robert Etheridge Townsend is James Branch Cabell's alter ego. Richmond becomes Lichfield.
He strove to be an epigrammatic word smith, oh so witty and droll. For this reason, among others, he is a personal hero, though I shall never match Cabell's preciosity--I'm not by half as well-read or educated--I, instead, seek relevancy.
Townsend of Lichfield was sort of dating, with intention of marriage, a young woman of means named Rosalind Jemmett whom he kind of forgot about while writing his first and unfortunate novel. They patch up and take up. He spends the summer holidaying with Rosalind and her family's well-off friends. Here, he waxes proto-Fitzgeraldian.
"They were a queer lot. They all looked so unspeakably new; their clothes were spick and span, and as expensive as possible, but that was not it; even in their bathing suits these middle-aged people--the were mostly middle-aged--seemed to have been very recently finished, like animated waxworks of animated people just come from the factory. And they spent money in a continuous careless way that frightened me. But I was on my very best, most dignified behavior; and when Aunt Lora presented me as "one of the Lichfield Townsends, you know," these brewers and breweresses appeared to be properly impressed. One of them--actually--"supposed that I had a coat-of-arms"; which in Lichfield would be equivalent of supposing that a gentleman possesses a pair of trousers."
Then at one point he finds wealthy widow named Elena Barry-Smith -- (sounding like Cabell's wife, Priscilla Bradley Shepherd, though Elena has no children, and goes off to marry someone else due to Townsend's arty dawdling and protestations--and the chronology is too soon) -- who is acting as though she's not interested, and he woos her, making great and ardent claims, even that he'd become a prominent citizen and seek office. This comment leaped out considering the current season:
"I will even go into civic politics, if you insist upon it, and have round-cornered cards in all the drug-stores so that everybody who buys a cigar will know I am subject to the Democratic primary. I wonder, by the way, if people ever survive that malady? It sounds to me a deal more dangerous than epilepsy, say, yet lots of persons seem to have it -- " Firehouse Cabaret Reviewed
The writer still says you should go; despite quibbles here and there.
'Firehouse' Offers Change of Pace
By SUSAN HAUBENSTOCK
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
The modestly entertaining "Firehouse Theatre Cabaret" brings back the concept of a revue.
Like some shows done in New York in the 1950s and'60s, it's a mixture of sketches -- in this case, actual 10-minute plays -- and songs with a slightly skewed perspective.
This year's cabaret is in the hands of Scott Wichmann, who not only acts and sings in the show but also directed it.
There are few pleasures in Richmond equal to seeing Wichmann perform; he's like a cyclotron, full of energy and magnetism. His singing is especially skilled in this cabaret; he does wonders with Gershwin's "Sweet and Low Down" and Ray Charles' "Hallelujah."
There's a pleasantly loose jazz trio backing up the singer-actors, with a basic black set by Tad Burrell and well-executed lighting by Mike Mauren.
Wichmann has good supporting players to work with. Jude Fageas opens the evening with "But I Was Cool," an Oscar Brown Jr. song, and he uses his lanky frame and versatile voice to embody a geeky grace.
Alia Bisharat sings a soulful version of the Mack Gordon-Harry Warren "At Last," and Lisa Kotula ably joins Wichmann in the absurdly amusing "Date with a Stranger" by playwright Cherie Vogelstein.
But the other playlets are lackluster. Ellen Melaver's "Isabelle" is flat; Jamie Brandli's "Clowning Around" is silly; Jeffrey Sweet's "The Award" is just mildly amusing; and Mary Miller's "Ferris Wheel" echoes "Date with a Stranger" a little too much.
And while the playwrights are honored with full program bios, you have to wonder why there are no credits at all for the songwriters, including Rodgers and Hart, or for songs borrowed from the scores of "Brooklyn" and "Avenue Q."
Yet this is enough of a change of pace from the usual theatrical fare to make it worth seeing. Get to the theater early, buy a drink and snag a table. You'll feel like you're in a nightclub, you'll have some laughs and you'll enjoy some tunes. Not a bad night out.
The Best Parts of the Merlefest
• The Avett Brothers, their full-bore, fierce Friday night mainstage set. So earnest, energetic and entertaining, these boys from Concord, N.C. A mixed blood child of newgrass, The Proclaimers, Kurt Cobain and The Beatles. Dancing erupted up front, but without enough space, thus the audience began hefting chairs in fire brigade fashion, passing them overhead and out of the way, and for a while the plastic seats danced in the air, as though performing a blue grass-flavored peformance-art piece. • The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group of young African-American musicians playing as a string band in the tradition of Upper Piedmont Carolina's banjo and fiddle music. Joyful, wistful, spiritual, surprising-- their version of Blu Cantrell's "Hit'Em Up Style" gets the crowd roaring.
• The Waybacks, with John Cowan, presenting classic Led Zeppelin tunes, on the Hillside Stage, with intermittent rain. Who knew Jimmy Page played all that on an acoustic instrument? Yup, those are fiddles, a banjo, drums and guitars. Two words: A-mazing.
• And just meandering around, listening and watching as all types and sizes plucked, picked, and fiddled just for the fun of being among others who also enjoy the music.
We’re SO excited to see what Richmond based (hum, legendary) artist Chuck Scalin will pull out of the kiln for his upcoming first solo show at Quirk. Kiln? Yes, kiln! Chuck has been working with local legendary artist herself, Jude Schlozhauer, learning the secrets of glass. Taking his exquisite collages to the next level, Scalin creates unique (yeah, you’ve heard it before, but it’s true here) works of art by fusing glass and found objects. Each one a mystery until it emerges from the heat, Scalin then works the surface with addition of objects and by working the surface with graphite or paint. This is a not to be missed show!
