Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Gallery@FOUND welcomes artist Nance Boyce for the month of February. Her show New Year’s Revolution features a series of rotating paintings in acrylic and opens Wednesday, February 4th. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, February 5th from 4-6pm.

Boyce paints on glass, metal, wood, cloth, and ceramic surfaces. Bright colors and repetitive patterns are hallmarks of her painting along with various ethnic and fashion influences. She graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in fashion illustration and spent a year abroad in London studying at Chelsea School Of Art.

SMART TALK SMART TALK

by Dr. U. R. Fulamalarchi

GUESTS: As a visiting therapist the the Center for English as a First Language, I notice oddities in English that I never learned from formal study in my native Italy.

When I arrived here in Underbelly, Texas, I stayed at the Hotel Inn, where they called me a guest. I thought Wonderful, either the hotel or the Center wants me to feel at home while I find a long-term residence. Where I come from, a host would never treat a guest so badly as to expect money at the end of a visit, so I was shocked. A customer, yes, but I would never expect my guests to reimburse me. They’re my guests.

The Center did pay my hotel bill, which made me feel better.

But I keep seeing this sinister use of “guest.” Burger King advertises a promotion saying, “When we first offered our guests this value back in October, they went crazy for it.” So when I eat at Burger King, I’m their guest? Then why do they charge me anything? Even if I pay a special price, I’m their customer. Their customer, not their guest.

And when I went to a Target store, I learned that the staff were team members, and customers were guests. This was starting to sound like 1984. In that novel, the government, called Big Brother, gave happy names to programs that brought yet more suffering. Rather like your President G.W. Bush’s Clear Skies Act, which allowed industries to pollute even more.

I wonder if that’s when the meaning of guest turned upside down.

 

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Civic Ensemble will present a staged reading of A More Perfect Union by Vern Thiessen, which follows two Law Clerks at the U.S. Supreme Court who have very different backgrounds and opposing political views.  The reading will be performed Sunday, January 25 at 7:30pm at the Kitchen Theatre.

Maddie (Jennifer Herzog) is a white Jewish conservative from Cleveland who calls the conservative male justice she works for 'the wise one.' James (Ryan Hope Travis) is an African American liberal from a wealthy Atlanta suburb who calls the liberal female justice he works for 'the enlightened one.' Their budding love affair challenges their ethics and careers and threatens to expose a dirty little secret about the Highest Court in our land.

A new play for a new year! Kitchen Theatre Company will present the latest work written by and starring Kitchen Theatre Company's Artistic Director, Rachel Lampert (Soup Comes Last, Tony and the Soprano, Bed No Breakfast, In the Company of Dancers, and many others). A search for forgotten friends and memories leads to reunions of all kinds in this heartwarming new play filled with music, dance, and Lampert's singular wit. Count Me In begins previews on January 14, with opening night on January 17. The play runs until February 1.

Joining Lampert onstage for Count Me In is a cast with extensive credits on and off Broadway and in film and television. Lydia Gaston's Broadway credits include Miss Saigon; The Red Shoes; Shogun, the Musical; the King and I; West Side Story; South Pacific, and The Joy Luck Club. Keith Pillow's credits include over 70 television episodes, with guest appearances on The Mentalists, Glee, The Goldbergs, Law & Order L.A., The Closer, Nip/Tuck, 24, and many others. Playing a younger generation of dancers are choreographer/dancer Tucker Davis (national tours of Cats and The Music Man) and recent Ithaca College graduate Avery Sobczak. Also joining the cast is Rachel's real life husband, David Squires, the recently retired Finance Director of Tompkins County.

Physics fun for the whole family comes to Kitchen Theatre Company this month!   KTC collaborates with Xraise (the outreach arm of Cornell University's Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences and Eduction) and young actors from Running to Places Theatre Company to present two performances of the original musical, Physics Fair by Rachel Lampert and Lesley Greene. Performances are Saturday January 24th and Saturday, January 31st at 1:00 PM. Physics Fair is appropriate for ages five to ninety-five.
 
What do you do if your middle school is so ordinary, so humdrum, so boring that nothing ever changes? Even the school's motto celebrates the fact that 'one day's like the other in every way!' Well, if you are in Mr. Mundani's (root word: mundane) sixth grade class, you stand up and ask for something new! You introduce the school's first ever Physics Fair, promise not to ring the bell in the bell tower, and turn Mildweather Middle School upside down.

After many years of teaching art, Lansing High School retired art teacher, Patricia Brown, now focuses her creativity on painting in her Wild Spirit Art Studio in Lansing.   She is a new member at State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca and is part of the 'New Work from New Members' show running December 31 through January 31 at the Gallery.

The first painting on display, 'Transition', for which her part of the show is titled, is from the Straight From the Hip Series.  It shows spirits passing through the pelvis, the place of their birth, into the next realm.

Mention the arts in Lansing and the first thing that comes to mind is the anual high school musical.  But the arts scene is much broader, and it took a big leap this year with the formation of The East Shore Arts Council.

The new arts council hit the ground running with a Fall concert season.  On January 10th their Winter season opens with holiday-related concerts on the second Saturday of January through April, and open mic nights on the fourth Saturdays.  The winter festival will feature Marty & Shannon for the January New Year's concert, The Dean's List for February's Valentine's Day concert, Dan Veaner, Celtic Harp for the Saint Patrick's Day concert in March, and Bob & Dee for the March Spring concert.  In 2015 5h3 council plans more arts events and classes.  Stay tuned!

These indoor concert series dovetail with the Lansing Parks and Recreation Departments summer concert series, which had an extremely successful year, bringing in huge audiences to the Myers Park bandstand, and continuing to bring more acoustic offerings to Ludlowville Park.

What's an ESFOTA?  If you don't know you have been missing out on one of the top events of the season.  This May marked the 5th annual East Shore Festival Of the Arts exhibit at the Town Hall and the Lansing Community Library.  Each year the festival kicks off with a grand opening party that spans the art spaces in those two buildings as well as the Lansing Community Center, plus opens a major Lansing Historical Association exhibit in the Historical Records Building and the Field School House, effectively using the entire Town Hall campus.  if you missed the first five, don't worry.  Organizer Robin Schuttenberg is planning number six!

• New Arts Council, New Concert Series
• Concert In The Park Series Have Great Lineups
• Lansing Arts Festival Opens May 2

If we tried to list every arts event the Lansing schools conduct we'd have to rename the newspaper to The Lansing Schools Arts Star.  We know the events we did cover in 2014 were just the tip of the iceberg that showcases our amazing, talented Lansing kids year after year.  Music, Theater and Fine Arts abound in all three schools.  Here is a small taste of last year's offerings.

• Lansing High School is Footloose!
• 'The Little Mermaid Jr.' at Lansing Middle School
• Much Ado At Lansing High School
• The Lansing Middle School Presents 'Alice @ Wonderland'
• Cookies and Carols 2014 in Pictures

In addition to the various artists and galleries sprinkled around town, Lansing has an Opera and Dance performance space in the CRS barn Studio on Triphammer Road.  The quality of the erformances is world class, but it may not be as stuffy as non-opera fans might imagine.  After all, it is hthe home of Opera Cowpokes.  A beautiful vista of Cayuga Lake is the backdrop for many of the outdoor performances there, and there is an indoor venue as well.

• Summer Opera At The CRS Barn Studio

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SMART TALK SMART TALK

by Dr. Ced Riley




CHAI TEA:  Like most spoonerisms, chai tea is something silly; this time, redundant. Commit a spoonerism with 'tai chi,' and you get tea twice. Chai means tea in several languages.

The joke gets even sillier: The linguistically impaired among the crowd in the beverage business have embraced chai tea and actually use it as a legitimate name. Reminds me of Yogi Berra’s hilarious faux pas 'deja vu all over again.' Many now use it without a clue to how ignorant they sound.

Chef Ptomaine offers chai tea with great pride at his restaurant, Eat Here Diet Home. The waitress, Shirley R. Slowe, will bring it to your table as she always does, a little stainless steel pitcher of rapidly cooling water that never boiled to begin with, a cold, empty cup, and a bag of chai tea on the side.

But we at the Center for English as a First Language are not surprised. We located here in Underbelly, Texas, because we could see the need right there in the town’s name. Not to be outdone by Mexicali and Calexico, across the California-Mexico border from each other, here we have Underbelly and Overback, across the River Rio from each other. On our side, we also have Summit Peak, so we’re inspired every day.

And we don’t serve chai tea in the Fowler Lounge. We’re trying to set an example here.

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The Hangar Theatre announced its 2015 Mainstage Season.  Opening the summer season is GOD OF CARNAGE by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton. This 'comedy of manners...without the manners' runs June 11 - 20.

Waldman explained, "This is the perfect play to open our 41st season. It is a fast, furious, and very, very funny comedy. When I saw this play in New York, I literally doubled over with laughter. I kept thinking to myself, 'I can't believe they just did that!'"

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, State of the Art Gallery (SOAG) partnered with Ithaca’s Fine Arts Booster Group (FABG)  in a fundraising raffle to benefit Ithaca City School District (ICSD) students in the arts. On November 7, twenty two winners took home art donated by SOAG artists.  The 369 raffle ticket buyers helped raise over $3,500 for arts education and the SOAG.

Ileen Kaplan, SOAG Raffle Coordinator, noted, “We are honored to have partnered with the Fine Arts Booster Group during our 25th Anniversary fundraising raffle.   The hard work and dedication of FABG members and State of the Art Gallery members made the raffle a great success, and we look forward to working together again in support of the arts in the schools and in our community.”

Next up on Kitchen Theatre Company's Kitchen Sink Series is a staged reading of the brand new play The Stars Are All Imposters by Jenni Kuhn, one of KTC's artistic interns. The Stars Are All Imposters inspects the maddening world of perpetual human curiosity and our inability to accept that we cannot know all of the answers to all of life's questions.

Heather, a curious and reckless young artist, stumbles into a bathroom during a house party feeling sick but suddenly finds herself feeling perfectly well and standing in a dingy white room. The two other occupants of the room, Shi and Savi, are alarmed by Heather's sudden appearance in their existence. Shi, a harsh and seemingly unfeeling man, is eager to preserve his daily routine and get rid of Heather, ignoring her pressing questions about the strange room.

Coming up next on Kitchen Theatre Company's 24th Main Stage Season is Dominique Morisseau's explosive, uncensored Sunset Baby. A secret cache of letters brings together a 1960s revolutionary, his estranged daughter, and her drug-dealing boyfriend in this story of family and activism, revolution and estrangement. Sunset Baby begins previews on December 3rd, and opening night is December 6th. The play runs until December 21st.

Nina is a fiercely independent hustler and her boyfriend Damon is dealing drugs, but they both are dead set on breaking from this life and finding a way out. When Kenyatta, her estranged father and former Black Liberation leader, shows up on her doorstep, her life plan is thrown askew. Nina is in possession of a cache of love letters written by her father and her late mother, Ashanti X. Kenyatta is desperate to see them, but he is not the only one with eyes on the letters. Academics and historians around the world are itching for new insight into the relationship between Kenyatta Shakur and Ashanti X. Nina could sell the letters to the highest bidder--helping Damon and her to make their escape--or she can share them with her father. Or does she have another choice? Sunset Baby considers the personal cost of social progress and what it means to be a father, and it forces us to ask ourselves what we would be willing to give up in order to have the life we know we deserve.