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The Goat Farm in West Midtown is undergoing a significant expansion, which will make it one of Atlanta's largest centers for contemporary art. The expansion includes three new buildings, art studios, live spaces, creative offices, and exhibition venues. The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia will also move to a new building on the site. The Goat Farm will house artists in residency programs and display permanent and rotating art installations. In addition, there are several art exhibitions and events happening in Atlanta, including a photography exhibition at Jackson Fine Art, a fashion exhibition at SCAD Fashion Museum, a photography exhibition at Booth Museum, and a drag queen performance at Atlanta Symphony Hall. Fernbank Museum is also hosting an immersive spider experience. The High Museum is showcasing ceramic objects created by enslaved men and women in South Carolina before the Civil War, along with work by contemporary black artists. This program is intended for a print-impaired audience and is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service, GARS. Welcome to Metro Arts for Friday, February 23, 2024. I am Kristen Moody for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Metro Arts is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. For our first article, we go to the creative loafing publication online for About Town. Art Center in West Midtown announces big expansion, plus comedy, art shows, photography, pottery, spiders, John Cusack, and a couple of hot couture icons by Kevin C. Madigan. The Goat Farm, West Midtown's cultural hub since 2010, has announced a significant expansion to its 12-acre campus that will begin construction in the spring, a press release announced, making it one of Atlanta's largest centers for contemporary thought, art, and performance. The growth plans comprise three new buildings, in addition to the 12 existing structures, resulting in half a million square feet of art studios, live spaces, creative offices, and various multidisciplinary and exhibition venues. A restaurant, bar, and cafe, as well as an art bookshop, are to be opened on the premises as well. The campus will house artists in studio residency programs and also present a collection of permanent and rotating exterior and interior public art installations from local artists, with a mix of sculpture, large-scale works, interactive new media, and an annual juried collection of small installations. In addition, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia will move into a new 26,000-square-foot building on the site once construction is completed in 2025. Placing a collecting museum amongst hundreds of local practitioners within a nexus of arts programming spaces and curators is a first in Atlanta. MoCA Georgia is already community-oriented, so the net results will be interesting to watch unfold over time, says Anthony Harper, the Goat Farms' original founder. Through Saturday, March 16, Larry Walker, Permanent Art Collection and Archive, Museum of Contemporary Art. The late Georgia artist, Larry Walker, is being celebrated with a new exhibition opening this month. It's curated from the MoCA Georgia Permanent Art Collection and accompanied by a selection from his archives, representing the scope of his extensive career, through which he reached so many, the museum announced, adding, he inspired future generations to push the boundaries of their materials and methods of making, while redefining how artists can activate creativity in the name of social justice. Walker taught students at Georgia State University for almost two decades and served as director of its School of Art and Design. Free entry, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, 75 Bennett Street, Atlanta, 30309, mocageorgia.org. Through Friday, March 22, Gail Albert Halliban, Mary Elizabeth Bartley, and Andrea Torres Ballagher, Jackson Fine Art. The work of photographers Gail Albert Halliban and Mary Elizabeth Bartley, whose architectural compositions and thoughtful geometry belie the intimate world contained within, will be on view at Jackson until March 22, and so will a selection of works from Spanish photographer Andrea Torres Ballagher. According to the JFA website, Halliban explores notions of intimacy, isolation, subjectivity, neighborly perception, and daily life, while Bartley is known for her quiet exploration of the printed book's potential for abstraction. Ballagher, on the other hand, explores themes of identity, memory, and the intersection of personal and collective histories, fused with traditional techniques and innovative concepts. Free entry, Jackson Fine Art, 3122 East Shadow Lawn Avenue, Atlanta, 30305, jacksonfineart.com. Through Sunday, June 2, Cristobal Balenciaga, master of tailoring, SCAD Fashion Museum of Art and Design. Cristobal Balenciaga was the preeminent 20th century fashion designer whose craft was admired by contemporaries such as Hubert de Gividinci, Coco Chanel, Pierre Balmain, and Christian Dior. The latter called him the master of us all, and Chanel deemed him the only couture in the truest sense of the world. The brand he founded more than 100 years ago remains an industry powerhouse to this day. Balenciaga mentored the likes of Oscar de la Renta and Paco Rabanne when they all started out, and his clothes have been the subject of numerous exhibitions in prominent museums around the world. Master of tailoring beckons viewers into the classical oasis of the Spanish couture's Parisian showroom to experience his habitude with hushed reverence. Immersed in his chapel-like salon frequented by the Hollywood starlets and royalty who dodged his creations, SCAD says in its introduction. Curated with rarely seen archival pieces from the 1940s to the late 1960s, many making their U.S. debut, the show affirms the prowess and breadth of the couture's work in an elegant display of his signature silhouettes with a touch of the unexpected. More details online, scadfashmuseumofartdesign, 1600 Peachtree Street, Atlanta, 30309, scad.edu. Through June 9, Death of a Valley, photography by Dorothy Lang and Purkle Jones, Booth Museum. This exposition chronicles the destruction of the Barissa Valley northeast of San Francisco as photographed by Dorothy Lang and Purkle Jones and is deemed a nearly 70-year-old story full of contemporary issues such as water policy, private property rights, land conservation and local governance versus state and federal jurisdiction. In the 1950s, the valley, which included the town of Monticello, was submerged by a dam and the creation of Lake Barissa to provide water for irrigation and for recreational purposes. Lang, famous for her social realist images during the Great Depression, and Purkle, a protege of Ansel Adams, had been commissioned by Life to shoot the project, but the magazine declined to publish their work once completed. Some of the photographs appeared instead in Lang's own publication, Aperture, and were then exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and later at the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection was largely forgotten until 2023 when the Booth Museum stepped in and organized the current display. It includes more than 80 images that are described by curators as historical and cultural documents, as well as fantastic 20th century photographs printed in vintage silver gelatin. $10 to $13, Booth Western Art Museum, 501 Museum Drive, Cartersville, 30120. Call 770-837-1300 for more information or visit boothmuseum.org. Friday, February 2nd, an evening with John Cusack and a screening of Grosse Pointe Blanc, Symphony Hall. Rescheduled from last November, actor John Cusack's appearance in Atlanta features a screening of the George Armitage crime caper, Grosse Pointe Blanc, 1997, in which Cusack starred alongside Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, and Hank Azaria. Cusack plays an errant hitman attending his 10th high school reunion with federal agents on his tail. The movie was notable for its stellar soundtrack, with songs by The Clash, The Specials, The Jam, Eels, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Reed, The Pogues, and others. After the screening, Cusack will take questions from attendees. The 58-year-old actor and producer is known for his strong political views, calling himself, in a recent tweet, an apocalyptic shit disturber and elephant trainer, and adding, justice for all or no one, peace in Israel and Palestine. Tickets are $39.50 to $120. That's 8 p.m. A limited number of VIP seats were available that included a photo opportunity with the actor. That was Atlanta Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree Street, Atlanta, 30309, aso.org, forward slash events. Opens Saturday, February 10th, Spiders, From Fear to Fascination, Fernbank Museum. How would you like a close encounter with a black widow? Fernbank is inviting people to hang out with a bunch of arachnids in what they're calling a fully immersive experience, allowing visitors to walk through hundreds of scattering spiders along a glowing forest floor, bringing animated spiders to life, and even competing in a mating dance-off with a jumping peacock spider. Spider anatomy, reproduction, and growth, webs, and silk, and spider senses will all be discussed. Tickets are $25.95 for adults, $24.95 for seniors, $23.95 for children. Ages 3 through 12 are free for children ages 2 and younger, and free for members. Fernbank Museum is at 767 Clifton Road, Atlanta, 30307. Call 404-929-6300 or visit fernbankmuseum.org for more information. Friday, February 16th through Sunday, May 12th, Hear Me Now, the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, High Museum. Sixty ceramic objects created by enslaved men and women in South Carolina before the Civil War are being put on display at the High in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Considered through the lens of current scholarship in the fields of history, literature, anthropology, material culture, diaspora, and African-American studies, these 19th century vessels testify to the lived experiences, artistic agency, and material knowledge of those who created them, curators say. Hear Me Now will also feature work by contemporary Black artists who have responded to or whose practice connects with the Edgefield story, including Feaster Gates, Simone Lee, and Woody D'Asello. Tickets are $18.50 for non-members. High Museum of Art is at 1280 Peachtree Street, Atlanta, 30309. Call 404-733-4400 or visit high.org for more information. Saturday, February 17th, Bianco del Rio, Dead Inside, Atlanta Symphony Hall. Often referred to as the Joan Rivers of the drag world, Bianco del Rio is the first and so far only drag queen to sell out Wembley Arena and also won RuPaul's Drag Race in its sixth season. Her show covers politics, pop culture, political correctness, current events, cancel culture, and everyday life. Born Ray Hoylecock in Louisiana in 1975, del Rio designed costumes for the New Orleans Opera before moving to New York after Hurricane Katrina. The world is on fire, but I'm not concerned. I'm dead inside and find humor in everything, del Rio says. If you're not easily offended and ready for a night of irreverent humor, get in, losers. We're going for a ride. Tickets are $39 to $125. That's 8 p.m. at Atlanta Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree Street, Atlanta, 30309. Call 404-733-4800 or visit aso.org. That was About Town, Art Center in Midtown Announces Big Expansion by Kevin C. Madigan from the Creative Lofan Publication. Next, we move to the Burnaway Publication for Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Imaginarians by Nathaniel Donat at the University Museum of Texas Southern Houston by Burnaway staff. For them, as for me, imagining is not merely looking or looking at, nor is it taking oneself intact into the other. It is, for the purposes of the work, becoming. Tony Morrison. The University Museum is pleased to present Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Imaginarians, Nathaniel Donat's first solo exhibition at Texas Southern University. The artist's multimedia work considers how people navigate space and time through nonlinear trajectories as they explore material and immaterial worlds and ask how abstraction reflects our realities while offering multiple ways to perceive them. Donat examines the role imagination plays in contending with obstacles in our lives that manifest as systemic limitations, but also constitute nuanced moments of discovery. The exhibition takes inspiration from the life of Ed Dwight, a former Air Force pilot who almost became the first black astronaut to enter outer space, but was denied because of sociopolitical interference and racial hostility. He later reimagined himself and became a sculptor. Following that path, Donat's works, textiles, sculpture, installation, sound, video, and importantly, community engagement in the form of a backpack exchange with students from historic black neighborhoods in Houston, Third Ward, Sunnyside, Acres Home, Fifth Ward, Combine the unknown and the embodied to search out black cosmologies and material constellations that act as poetics, prompts, processes, and presentations for lived transformation. Donat approaches his practice through the lens of dark imaginarians, a concept of art, everyday aesthetic theory, and notions of blackness that creates through abstraction and representation while forever remaining in flux and experientially poetic. The exhibition also reflects on theories concerned with fugivity, spatial understanding, and becoming. Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, which describes the house as a shelter and universe allowing for dreaming and protection. Fred Moten's notion of enclosure and the surround, a psychological entrapment caused by social precarity. And Michael Foucault's concept of heterotopias, an engagement with the plurality of space and time. For example, the centerpiece of the exhibition, Staring at Infinity Through the Corners of Asymmetry, 2023, uses reclaimed materials, foil, house, paint, fabric, earring studs, light, to recreate a home that references geometries, histories embedded in the architecture's exterior, and expansive galactic dreams on its interior. Donat's process is as much philosophical as it is musical, and concerned with how everyday actions and common materials hold memories and serve as witness to lived experiences. His recent work suggests the art studio is everywhere, and that the creative or imaginative mind is constantly active, yet not always recognized. They investigate tensions between the rational and the irrational, as a route for accessing generative ways of moving, thinking, and living, hidden within our subconscious that might help us reframe and redefine ourselves, and negotiate life's constraints. Dark matter, dark energy, dark imaginariance asks, what could happen if we changed our questions from, what is the sum of two plus two, to, what is the sum of two plus a spaceship, divided by earth, wind, and fire song devotion, multiplied by the first half of Andre Tarkovsky's film Solaris? Nathaniel Donat's, born Houston, Texas, interdisciplinary practice shapes and holds open spaces of phenomenological and metaphysical significance. Utilizing sourced and reclaimed objects, Donat approaches ideas of materiality through concepts of blackness, everyday aesthetic theory, and encoding strategies. Donat received his BA in Fine Arts from Texas Southern University, and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. He is a recipient of the 2024 American Academy of Rome Affiliated Fellowship, a 2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Dean's Critical Practice Research Grant and Social Justice Initiative Grant, both from Yale, 2020. And, his work has been exhibited at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, Virginia, Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the American University Museum in Washington, D.C., the University Museum at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, the Kemper Contemporary Arts Museum in Washington, D.C. the Kemper Contemporary Arts Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas, and the New Museum in New York, New York. Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Tiger Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, with additional support from Houston Endowment, the Office of the Provost at Texas Southern University, Houston Arts Alliance, and anonymous patrons. Additional support from Highland Heights Elementary School, Sunnyside Community Center, Fifth Ward Multi-Service Center, and Project Row Houses. That was Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Imaginarians by Nathaniel Donat at the University Museum of Texas Southern, Houston, by the Burnaway staff. Next, we move to the Atlanta Magazine Online for Atlanta United Unveils Its Most Atlanta-Inspired Kit Yet. The team partnered with the City of Atlanta to create the Resurgence Kit by Myrid Wells. Atlanta United has had a few kits that nod toward the team's home base. The King Peach Kit shouted out the Peach State, while last season's Mint Green Secondary Kit was a nod to Atlanta's nickname as the City in the Forest. Last year's third kit, the Graffitied 404 Kit, was sprung from a collaboration with Atlanta Influences Everything. But this year's brand new secondary kit has the most direct Atlanta connections yet. Called the Resurgence Kit, the jersey was created in partnership with the City of Atlanta and features an abstract phoenix on the front and the official city seal on the back of the neck. The piping on the sides also mimics the city seal featuring the word Resurgence along the dates 1847 and 1865, Atlanta's incorporation and reconstruction respectively. The blue and yellow color scheme resembles the city's flag. Sarah Kate Nossinger, Atlanta United VP and Chief Business Officer, says the decision to partner with the City for the kit was pretty much a no-brainer. While the phoenix is Atlanta's symbol of a literal rise from the ashes after the city burned to the ground during the Civil War in 1864 and endured an even more destructive fire in 1917, it has its own meaning for the club. Remember that until recently, Atlanta was often dismissed as a terrible place for sports. People doubted Atlanta United and soccer working in Atlanta, Nossinger says, of the days when the team was the first announced. So being able to lean into the phoenix, it's always rising. It's a story of overcoming. It's a story that's bigger than soccer. With the launch of the Resurgence kit, Atlanta United is also changing how they refer to their kits. Home or primary kits, such as the current 17's kit, will be called club kits, while away or secondary kits like Resurgence will be called community kits. This means you might see Resurgence worn more inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Oftentimes in sports, the home kit is worn at home and the away kit is worn away, Nossinger says. We wanted to make sure we took an approach where they were actually worn equal amounts, especially at home. She notes that the King Peach and Forest kits were also community kits because the stories behind them were not directly tied to the soccer team. So moving forward, she says, the stories behind community kits should transcend the sport and the club and celebrate the community in which we live. The kit was officially revealed to season ticket holders during a launch party at Pullman Yards on Saturday night, which featured an appearance from Mayor Andre Dickens. A matching Resurgence scarf, also shown off at the event, features a blue and white Atlanta 12 part on the one side and the words Atlanta United and the city seal in blue and gold on the other. Oh, and as for the Atlanta Hawks leak, Nossinger just calls it a happy accident. The Resurgence kit is available at the official team store at Atlantic Station and online for $159.99 for an authentic jersey and $99.99 for a replica. That was Atlanta United Unveils Its Most Atlanta Inspired Kit Yet, by Myrid Wells. Next, we move to the Arts ATL publication for Multi-Instrumentalist Sam Skelton Performs, Teaches, and Directs by Mike Shaw. The grandson of a jazz trumpeter who grew up hearing music from a wide variety of artists, Sam Skelton began playing saxophone in the 5th grade when a friend asked him to join the school band at Honey Creek Elementary in Conyers. I said, let's do it, and by 7th grade, it had become an obsession, Skelton recalls. Years later, he had graduated summa cum laude with a degree in jazz studies from Georgia State University. He'd also been a Montgomery Music Scholar and a two-time fellowship recipient to the Aspen Music Festival. Like many accomplished musicians, Skelton credits his early teachers for their support, dedication, and influence. My teachers played during the lessons. It was the oral tradition, that is, copy me, and all those teachers, until I got to grad school, played jazz. But a classical education is an absolute must because you have to know every aspect of the instrument, he said. You get all your dexterity from that, a solid foundation of the nuts and bolts of saxophone playing, and you can go everywhere from there. As a classical musician, Skelton has performed and soloed on saxophone, clarinet, and flute with the likes of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. When asked to name a favorite or two of his classical performances, he cited the Sonic Symphony, music from the video game franchise Sonic the Hedgehog, a full symphony orchestra fronted by a heavy metal rock band. He was also honored to be chosen by Auburn University professor and composer Lee Johnson to play all three instruments on London Symphony Orchestra's Abbey Road Studios recording of Johnson's Seaside Symphony, Symphony No. 4, Ora Pro Me. Skelton's grasp of jazz has netted him work with Quincy Jones and Michael Brecker, and his versatility has found him on stage with the widest range of celebrities, from Mel Torme to Kenny Rogers. Then there is the studio, more than 300 recordings from Elton John to the Gap Band, as well as a host of TV and radio theme songs and jingles. Through all his exposure to legendary artists, Skelton has been most impressed with how easy they make it to work with them. No airs whatsoever, he said. Such was the case with Jones one evening at the Fox Theater. His band was full of the greatest of the greats, and not a single attitude in the bunch. He added that working with so many legends has left indelible impressions. Most young saxophonists gravitate toward Michael Breckner, the finest saxophonist who ever lived. I played in the orchestra behind him at the Emory Jazz Festival in 2000. It took me three years to recover from what came out of that saxophone in front of me. Being that close to someone you have idolized was amazing. Beyond performing music, Skelton's other commitment is educating and guiding young musicians. A long trail of distinguished positions with local universities, including Georgia State, the University of Georgia, and Georgia Tech, has led to his current position as the Director of Jazz Studies and Senior Lecturer in Saxophone at Kennesaw State University. During the hiatus of live music during pandemic, and notably the closing of Churchill Grounds, there were few places in Atlanta to play jazz, even as live music became its comeback. Skelton had regularly been involved in productions at the Fox, and he shifted his focus there. Now, as director, he leads the Georgia Symphony Orchestra's Repertory Jazz Orchestra and Youth Orchestra. He describes the program as being modeled after jazz at Lincoln Center, and as the orchestra manager, he contracts the group for performances with City Springs Theatre Company. On stages with those orchestral groups is where you'll often find Skelton these days, with some of the finest musicians in Atlanta performing challenging music. The GSO Jazz Combo will perform the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David at Marietta's Canton Theatre on Friday, February 16th, and at Strand Theatre on Saturday, February 17th. On April 13th, they will play the music of Thad Jones' Mel Lewis Vanguard Orchestra at the Strand. That was Multi-Instrumentalist Sam Skelton Performs, Teaches, and Directs, by Mike Shaw. Next up, Art News, Color, Light, Sound in Woodruff Park, Atlanta Artists to Exhibit in Venice, by Arts ATL staff. A new light and sound installation, Prismatica in the Park, is now open in Woodruff Park downtown. The interactive installation comprises 25 prisms, each more than six feet tall, and each coated with a decorative film that reflects a spectrum of colors. The prisms pivot, and visitors are invited to manipulate them to change the light patterns. At night, projectors and musical chimes add another layer of interactive experience, creating a display of color, light, and sound. The unveiling of Prismatica at Woodruff Park highlights the transformative impact of public art on creating a vibrant urban center, stated Fredalyn M. Frazier in a press release. Frazier is Project Director of Planning and Urban Design at the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District. The Atlanta installation of the traveling exhibit is a joint project of Atlanta Downtown and Arts and Entertainment Atlanta. Through these types of collaboration, Frazier stated, we aim to do more than display art. We strive to forge immersive experiences that encourage engagement, spark creativity, and enhance downtown Atlanta's role as a hub of cultural innovation. Prismatica was originally conceived for the 2014 Lumen Therapy Competition in Montreal, Canada. Since then, it has been seen in Washington, D.C., Orlando, Florida, and the city of Niagara Falls, New York. The display is free and will be open to the public through March 17th. Three Atlanta artists, Saber Essler, Grace Kiesa, and Karina Sefora, have been selected to show their work in the European Cultural Center's exhibition, Personal Structures, Beyond Boundaries in Venice, Italy, this year. The exhibit will be at the city's Palazzo Bembo, April 20th through November 24th, in conjunction with the 60th Annual Venice Biennale. The prestigious Biennale Contemporary Art Exhibition invites artists from across the world to exhibit in Venice during that time. Annie Kammerer-Buttress, who is based in Birmingham, Alabama, will also have work in the Personal Structures show. In 2022, Atlanta-based artists Shaniqua Gay, Megan Mosholder, and Deanna Serlin will show work in the European Cultural Center's exhibition during the 59th Venice Biennale. The 2024 Personal Structures exhibition presents the third collaboration between Shannon Morris, principal of the Curator's Studio, and Atlanta-based artists. She curated Gay's Daughters of Metropolitan in 2022 and Cheryl Goldslager's Vast Scale Intimate Space in 2019. This group of artists began their journey to Venice in early November 2022, and it's been wonderful to witness them create new bodies of work that engage in broad conversations, Morris stated in the press release. That was Art News, Color, Light, Sound, and Woodruff Park, Atlanta Artists to Exhibit in Venice, by Arts ATL staff. Next, Review. Enthusiastic Cast and Catchy Music Make Jamie Worth Talking About, by Benjamin Carr. Everybody's Talking About Jamie, produced by Actors Express at Oglethorpe University's Cunnant Performing Arts Center through March 3rd, is a fun, lively musical full of heart and a strong message. There's a chance you don't even know about it. The musical by Tom McRae and Dan Gillespie Sells was a hit on London's West End in 2017, but never played on Broadway. A movie version of the show was also produced, but that went directly to Prime Video during the pandemic, so most audiences may still be unaware of it. The Actors Express production is one of the first staged in the United States, and the material is presented with great enthusiasm and style, by cast relishing this opportunity to introduce the show to the region. Based upon a true story, the musical, presented as a co-production with Oglethorpe and featuring many students in the cast, focuses on Jamie New, a 16-year-old gay student in Sheffield, England, who dreams of becoming a drag queen. Supported by his single mother and devout Muslim best friend, Pretty, Jamie pursues his dreams and connects with a community of performers. Along the way, he stands up to adversity from his teachers, bullying classmates, and his absent father. As Jamie, Noah Vega is terrific and has a beautiful voice. The role is physically demanding, requiring dancing, singing, and jumping on and off tables in high heels. And it's emotionally difficult, for the character has a blissful, naive, dreamy air most of the time. Yet Vega also turns on attitude, cattiness, and bite when it's needed. Shashi Yamada is excellent as Pretty, portraying a warmth and good humor that is almost instantly lovable. She steals many scenes and is responsible for the funniest moment in the entire show, which comes near the climax. Jill Haim's work as Margaret, Jamie's devouted mother, anchors the entire production. She is the heart of the piece, grounded, loving, beautiful. It is a remarkable performance, and her distinct vocal range evokes a Stevie Nicks vibe. Her 11 o'clock number, He's My Boy, brings down the house. It's a stunner. It is a genuine thrill to see and hear Ben Thorpe on stage, always. Thorpe's a delightful, charming actor with an incredible voice. As Jamie's drag mentor, Hugo, he is sweet and very, very funny, though it is a bit amusing to see the 30-something actor refer to himself like an antique. He makes it work, though. As the antagonistic teacher, Miss Hedge, Chloe Cordle is absolutely dynamic as well. She gives the character layers and a terrific edge, and she gets several kick-ass vocals, including an opening rap that was completely awesome. By and large, the show has an upbeat vibe. It's full of up-tempo numbers with amusing lyrics, kicking off with a terrific, and you don't even know it. During that song, the stage transforms the desks of a tedious, oppressive classroom into Jamie's personal runway. It's an effective metaphor the show utilizes often, that we exist with more freedom, beauty, and color when we are free to express every side of ourselves. Director Freddie Ashley and his team have a clear love for this material and understand its relevance to our area in this political climate. Among the design elements deserving of praise are the costumes from April Carswell, including the excellent drag pieces and prom dresses, and the props and set decor from Nick Battaglia. Musically, the show is excellent, featuring a five-piece band conducted by music director Ali Reinhart. The sound design from Zach Bennett is strong, though occasionally lyrics fall from the full chorus of singers, and they were muddy and hard to understand. Choreography from Precious West is also fun and energetic, performed well by both the students and the pros in the cast. A tonal shift toward the conclusion of the play, featuring a moment of anti-gay violence from characters we do not know, feels jarring when it happens and is resolved rather quickly, as though the writers wanted to raise the stakes for the characters but didn't want to deal with any lingering consequences of trauma. It leaves the audience with a bit of whiplash, but the show recovers. In comparison, an emotional argument between two characters we're invested in is effectively shattering because the moment feels more earned. Despite small imperfections, the show wins over its audience with great performances and catchy music. Above all, Jamie is worth seeing and talking about. That was Review. Enthusiastic cast and catchy music make Jamie worth talking about by Benjamin Carr. Next, Q&A. Poet Major Jackson talks about his new book and how poetry lit up his soul by Shannon Marie Tovey. Poetry might seem the exclusive purview of ivory tower types, those whose heads are up in the clouds when not buried between the pages of dusty books. Indeed, poet Major Jackson is an intellectual among intellectuals. He's a professor of English at Vanderbilt University. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review. The author of six books of poetry and editor of several more. The host of a podcast called The Slowdown, Poetry and Reflection Daily. And the recipient of a profusion of awards and fellowships. But to dismiss Jackson's work as irrelevant to the common person because it is esteemed by the lofty would be a mistake. Poetry, he reminds us, is for everyone. Jackson shared his poetry in a public reading at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on Sunday, February 18th at 3 p.m. The event was free, but registration was recommended. His latest book, Razzle Dazzle, New and Selected Poems 2002 to 2022, was available for purchase at the event. I read your poem at 14 to my partner who hasn't read a poem since high school. I watched the images you created slowly sink in as it dawned on him what you said and how you said it captured the way he felt at that age. It seemed to help him gain understanding of his own experience and, in a way, healing. Major Jackson, thanks for sharing that. It's always meaningful for me to hear when a poem, whether written by me or someone else, really impacts someone because I think that's the ultimate work. Sometimes I go to performances and I'm wowed by the technical ability or the virtuosity of a musician or even a virtual artist. But when the virtuosity lands inside someone as something truly felt, that connects them to a part of themselves or to other human beings that throws open the veil of the mystery. Maybe it has left them feeling a bit more affirmed or maybe even engaged to question. Arts ATL, poetry can be such a powerful thing. Why are so few people interested in it? Teachers have such an outsized role in how we either gravitate toward or repel against any work of art and yet we know poetry is all around us. Poetry is more than language, it's feeling and it is stepping outside and being attuned, being aware, having our senses open. If we just started to turn the dialogue to questions of perception and experience and being open to experience, then people would realize that poetry is not merely the assigned poems that they were forced to write a paper on. People get turned off in high school because what they're being taught is how to read the craft but they're not taught how to apply poetry in their lives. We're going to need as many tools as we can to understand this journey that we're on. Arts ATL, how did you get turned on to poetry? Jackson. To state it bluntly, poetry lit up my soul and saved me in a lot of ways. I read and discovered poetry early on with two books from my grandparents' library, Frost and Langston Hughes. I like to think of my teachers as anyone who has explored through some artistic craft what it means to be human. It's a dynamic conversation that we get to invest in as an artist. Language becomes the research lab by which we can refine our sensibilities and our sense of self and humanity and the world. Arts ATL. In Climate, one of my favorite of your poems, you write, the way you feel when she pulls her favorite lightened dress over her head, rivering her body, a fabric waterfall across the heart. What makes that image so much more evocative than just saying she puts her green dress on and I thought she looked beautiful? Jackson. What I'm about to say has implications for the language we use in politics. The public social problems we face are deepened by the fact that language gets rubbed down. It loses its effect. It becomes cliched. If you think of language as a landscape and that a thousand people have trampled on it, it becomes no longer identifiable. I feel like that's where we are with the state of our communication. So in a way, poets, anyone who commits themselves to being a writer, also commits themselves to reviving the language. Take a word like beautiful. It could mean many different things. Maybe polishing it a bit helps us to reinvest ourselves into what is beautiful. So yeah, I like rivering. I like the action of the dress falling down over a body and the rippling reminds me of a river. Arts et al. How does the disparate placement of words, phrases, and allegories that might not immediately make sense help us to refresh the meaning of language and to what effect? Jackson, it's the equivalent of a scientist taking two elements and bringing them together to see what the fusion or reaction is. There's something joyous about that. When we say refresh the meaning of language, we're also saying, and I'm really just starting to understand this, how do we refresh ourselves? How are we made or remade by the poems that we read? And in the most privileged sense, right? So yes, let's play with language. Let's revive forms. But let's capture the richness of our lives. Let's write poems that have people reconnect with themselves, reconnect with others, revive, refresh, even revise the self. Arts et al. Poets seem to balance language play and freedom with careful attention to form. It makes sense on a broader scale this could describe an approach to life. Jackson, yes, I absolutely see it as an amplification of one's freedom. We exist in form. We wake up in the morning and on the other end we're going to bed. We are born and we are going to die. That's the form. How do you improvise your day so that it becomes an expression of your selfhood? I think about the days as they string along and the act of writing a poem, the act of singing, the act of listening. It is an accretion and a shaping of our selfhood. Arts et al. We're all artists in some way working through this form that we've been given of being born and dying and everything in between. And we can be artistic and creative and beautiful within that. Jackson, I think that artwork becomes an expression of selfhood. Then it becomes a reflection of community. Then a reflection of culture. What trips us up is when we overly rely on previous tropes, images, idioms that no longer do the work of creating layers and textures and complexities. The effect of poetry and language and art on the world is that they make us aware of language. Arts et al. Poetry helps us to become the change we wish to see in the world. Jackson, some people will say that the natural order of the world is that we are defined by destructive forces. I think our consciousness is raised when we realize that we are better When we focus our attention on acts of beauty, creating opportunities to coexist, to enjoy, to celebrate those things that maybe escaped our attention. Poets point the way to how to experience and live and appreciate and see and feel and not have an existence that is cold and unfeeling. I want to believe that for every poem birthed in the world, we are shoring up ourselves against total extension and annihilation. That was Q&A. Poet Major Jackson talks about his new book and how poetry lit up his soul. By Shannon Marie Tovey. Next. Review. Shakespeare Tavern's Romeo and Juliet is a valentine for a new generation. By Benjamin Carr. No matter how old the rest of us get, Romeo and Juliet stay the same age. Because we as an audience evolve, our perspective on the doomed lover's tale can shift as every new version of the tragedy sparks different ideas. With Shakespeare Tavern's newest production of Romeo and Juliet on stage through March 3rd, the play feels energized, fresh and lively for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the casting is excellent and inventive. The direction by Olivia Dawson seems to underline moments and scenes in the script in a way that reads age-old moments differently. People familiar with the story may feel more inclined to protect those giddy, naive and doomed children from their fate. New audiences, meanwhile, will relate to the young lovers who are ably played by Tommy Sullivan-Lovett and Galbenu Setayesh. Here, the two characters seem younger and less prepared to face the harshness of the world. Though they are aware of their family's feud, which causes violence on the streets of Verona, young Montague and Capulet lead sheltered lives at the play's opening, him pining for a girl named Rosaline and her preparing for her 14th birthday. And love is dangerous, fleeting, passion has a price, and Romeo and Juliet are too eager for experience to begin. So they both go to that costume party and they flirt precariously on that balcony. And no one really tells them how much it can hurt if you fall. Sullivan-Lovett's Romeo is all adolescent frustration and eager pining in the fun first act. First, the character is heartbroken and sulking, his voice breaking through puberty as he romanticizes new love perpetually. Setayesh has an enthusiastic speed in her line delivery, an excited spring in her step. The effect of both performers' affections is amazing, providing the whole half with a glee that comes with youth. They are funny and lively. The roles feel new. This may emerge from the brilliant innovation of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company's casting. Sullivan-Lovett, a transgender actor, and Setayesh, a first-generation American of Iranian descent, embrace their opportunities to tell this tale with fervor. And the energy is palpable. The canon belongs to all of us, not just a privileged few. And young performers with new perspectives express feelings and ideas in diverse ways we all need to see. Shakespeare likely considered that in 1597, when he first appropriated this tale from its original Italian author and cast his team of white, cisgender male actors in every role on the stage. Innovation is the key to bringing new audiences to theater. Also of note among the performers, Mila Bolash is having a blast as the saucy nurse, more maternal and attentive to Juliet than the character's own mother. Patrick Tansor brings a booming voice and tenderness to Friar Lawrence, excited about his potions and experiments in a way that blinds the character to how bumbling and faulty some of his machinations are. As the chief confidants and most complicit conspirators, the pair farewell. Tyron Duncan's fresh approach to Mercutio is very fun, full of swagger and then bitter spite. His delivery of the plague curse is great. And Sarah Hack does good work as Benvolio, who encourages Romeo toward calamity in the name of romance. One scene of this production rings differently from other iterations, and it led to a new understanding of the character's stakes. After Romeo is banished from Verona in the wake of a bloody battle, Juliet is disowned by her brutal father, Lord Capulet, played by understudy O'Neill Della Fina in the performance attended for review, for not agreeing to marry the attractive yet silly Paris, Trevor Pulley. The way the scene played it, it underlined that the same ruinous punishments are delivered to the young couple after Romeo acts so impulsively. For a privileged young man to be destroyed, he must be cast from society, while a teenage girl can be just as destroyed by a whim. In the second act, as the violent end plays out, the emotional peaks occur early, which gives performers not much variation to play with, with weeping histrionics. But by then, we're already invested. The production is solid in its design, and the fresh faces in the cast, new to the tavern, infuse the show with a new energy. It feels urgent. Though the story has been told before many times, this show has new passion. That was Review. Shakespeare Tavern's Romeo and Juliet is a Valentine for a New Generation, by Benjamin Carr. Next, Review. Furlough's Paradise depicts how people cope, rebuild in the face of loss, by Alexis Haack. There's Been So Much Death Lately is a simple but important line early on in A.K. Payne's 2024 Alliance Candida Award-winning play, Furlough's Paradise. The Pittsburgh-rooted playwright's piece, which runs at the Alliance through May 3rd, focuses on two family members grappling with grief from wildly different places in life. But it also reflects a collective moment of grief as we continue to crawl out of the devastating three-year pandemic and as we get daily, minute-by-minute glimpses into the atrocities of war across the globe. Played straight without intermission, watching the play's two actors, Kai Heath and Asha Basha Danai, ride through waves of humor, joy, sadness and regret in concert with one another for 80 minutes straight is like witnessing the world's most beautiful and riveting chess match. It's a feat. Sade Heath and Mina Danai are cousins who have both recently lost a parent and, in turn, an aunt and uncle. The two grew up more like siblings as kids, but their lives have diverged radically as adults. Sade is back home on leave from a lengthy prison sentence. She still has seven years left, for what we gather was a serious crime she committed when she was very young. Heath imbues Sade with lived-in weariness and the conscious movement of someone who's used to having no privacy at all, except by retreating to her interior thoughts. She walks cautiously, never wasting a single step without deliberation and thought. As the play moves forward, we see her defenses begin to melt as she becomes more the version of herself that existed as a kid with her cousin and their family, back before all the permanent loss. Meanwhile, Mina is living a life that on the surface projects a high level of aspirational success. She's in a high-powered job at Google and commutes from San Francisco to Los Angeles to visit her actor girlfriend. As the show goes on, though, we hear the many ways in which, though they're clearly facing different levels of power and autonomy, Mina is also constrained by the weight of expectations and the limitations of her own privilege in a deeply inequitable system. Those who may not have experienced grief firsthand, at least the grief of losing someone core to your life and identity, may assume that it's something that brings people together automatically. And yet, it's something that most people experience as extremely isolating. When someone dies, you lose the potential of how your relationship with them might have changed or improved in the hope of what you can never know. For Payne, who uses a they pronoun, that grief becomes fodder for seeing how many intersections these two seemingly disparate characters may find in this strange island of time and space. As they put it in a Q&A inside the show program, grief opens us up in a way that nothing else does. Grief lays you bare. That's all the time we have for this article entitled Review. Furlough's Paradise Depicts How People Cope, Rebuild, in the Face of Loss by Alexis Hawk. That concludes today's Metro Arts program, which is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This has been Kristen Moody for GARS, the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Thank you for listening to GARS.
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