October, 2011

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Sweet Charity by the Red Mountain Theatre Company

Friday, October 21st, 2011

“I’m a poetical virgin.”

They’ve got some new chairs at the Red Mountain Theatre Company.  (And apparently, Theatre Downtown has gotten a parallel seating makeover.)  For the recent production of Sweet Charity, my backside got to enjoy the sweet seats on the side of the stage.  My cheeks give ‘em a non-raspberry, hopetimistic bravo.

“I hope his tight Italian pants choke him to death.”

It probably says a lot about me that – if it’s an option – I often prefer sitting off to one side of the stage.  Draw your own conclusions.  One reason is that it gives me a good angle (and a good excuse) to look back at the audience before and during the performance.  I’ve said it before: the audience is a big part of any show.

“For a weirdo, he’s very nice.”

One thing you can notice from this perspective is that audiences are usually deadishly sedate as compared to the action on stage.  In particular, Sweet Charity requires boatloads of energy.  Morgan Smith (Charity Hope Valentine) had every bit of the effervescence required for this part.  I’ll bet she collapsed into bed every night and prepped by running marathons.

“That girl’s built for everything but conversation.”

Is that a big reason we like watching theatre and dance?  Because they involve “acting out” in a way that we can’t?  Most people’s daily lives are one kind of drudgery or another.  Maybe yours isn’t.  Maybe it is.  But I’ll bet it’s not the exuberant kind of six-year-old running around the room fun.  I’m not usually a brass band.  What do most adults do that involves the same kind of explosive energy expended by dancers, singers, and actors?

“We defend ourselves to music.”

So if I don’t get to spend that kind of energy, it’s at least fun to get to watch it.  It’s one part of the release.  It must be strange for hard-working performers to look out and play against a reserved audience.  I read or heard the other day that watching a person do something can stimulate the same part of the brain as if you were doing that thing yourself.  Most people’s days involve some eating, some hygiene, some commuting, some paperwork, and some sitting.  Possibly running or biking or yoga for fad people, but otherwise we don’t get any long periods of extended bounce and sparkle.  Maybe this is the secret of the arts – capitalizing on our ability to use others to empathize an experience or a feeling?

“Without love, life has no purpose.”

I like to imagine that there are real world couples out there that are constantly meeting cute.  Making eyes at each other.  Dancing in elevators.  Singing quietly in her ear.  Gentle fingertip drumming.  Drawings on napkins.  Adorable texts.  Planning appreciable outfits.  Appreciating those outfits.  Nothing but a Sweet Charity-ish bounce and sparkle all day long.  But probably not that many.  The rest of us are the audience.

“You’re lucky to have someone worried about you all the time.”

Regarding the meet cute, I’ve got to praise Isaac Lamb (Charlie/Vittorio Vidal/Oscar Lindquist).  Terrific on his own and especially in any scene where he was allowed or encouraged to move – notably as Oscar Lindquist.  I’m not positive who would be most responsible (Stephanie Lang?), but the quality of the movement at Red Mountain Theatre Company is second to none.  Darien Crago (Helene) was another notable standout.

“What the hell was up with all that hand kissing?”

Here’s to Nicole Smith and all the future Red Mountain Theatre Company audiences who get to enjoy the new chairs.

Posted in Birmingham, Dance, Music, Theatre | Comments Off

2011 Alabama Ballet @ Home

Friday, October 7th, 2011

Catherine Garratt & Jennifer Ferrigno

Again, everyone was warned.  It’s a visual age.  If your organization doesn’t have pictures of your performance available, then I’m forced to make them myself.  The results aren’t nearly so pretty.

***

Perpetually single, people often ask what qualities I’m looking for in a girl.  A difficult and stressful question.  Ever-evolving, I’ve got to rethink it every time.  It’s not like I keep a “must have” list on my wall.

Curiously, whatever I say first always ends up seeming superficial and unimportant.  Good hair?  No, that’s not really it.

But if I skip right to the real answers, it comes across as evasive.  Compatibility?  Magic?  A good sense of humor?  What does that even mean?

In college, my non-linear path started out in engineering and ended up in philosophy.  Along the way, I took what might’ve been the single most interesting and useful class of my undergraduate experience: Mate Selection & Marital Relations.  Obviously elective, the class was all about dating and relationships.  If I could remember the teacher’s name, I’d compliment him here.

One of the lessons that stuck was that people are drawn to mates like themselves.  We may say that opposites attract, but that’s not how it generally works out.  People tend to be attracted to others of similar looks, social status, intellect, and world view.  Since I’m still single, this must mean I’m fairly unique, right?  (Just like everybody else.)

“No one I think is in my tree.  I mean it must be high or low.”  – Strawberry Fields Forever

So that’s the fundamental problem with asking about someone’s potential mate: You’re indirectly asking for an intimate, personal self-assessment.

  • Who are you looking for?  A nice, quiet Christian girl.
  • Who are you looking for?  I dunno, but she’s got to be hot.
  • Who are you looking for?  A friendly girl with a big smile.
  • Who are you looking for?  Women that have their stuff together.
  • Who are you looking for?  Somebody amaaaazing.

Nukri Mamistvalov & Tatiana Ledovskikh (two names that are fun to type)

In choosing other people, you’re inadvertently revealing a lot about yourself.

So let’s swing this discussion around to the Alabama Ballet.  I went and saw their recent @ Home performance.  It’s still probably my favorite ballet event in Birmingham because the audience gets to watch and listen to the dancers from right up close.  They performed three pieces: Lilac Garden, the Swan Lake Act II Pas de Deux, and Be Major (by Roger Van Fleteren).

I’m always hoping this group expands, but my favorite two dancers at the Alabama Ballet are still Jennifer Ferrigno and Catherine Garratt.  I know embarrassingly little about the technical side of dance, but I do know that these two seem to have mastered the technical stuff well enough to focus on the qualities that I’m more likely to watch for: an apparent warmth along with emotion and expressiveness.  Beautiful is more than just a smile.

Here’s where I tie a nice, neat bow: I think those choices may reveal more about me than they do about the Ballet.  I’m an unusually expressive guy.  I think I’m pretty good at getting a point across even if (God forbid) I had to do it without using language.  I’m also sensitive to subtle changes in other people’s affect and mood.  I’d be pretty decent at charades or Pictionary.  So of course I’m attuned to similar qualities in the artists and art I like.  What I’m not so good at in my real life – or at least it’s something I have to work at – is technical protocol and perfection.  Remembering to “point my toes” and “maintain my lines”, so to speak.  But that, I’m not so good at.

I’ve visited the Alabama Ballet with other people, though, and they will regularly pick out other dancers as their favorites.  For example, I can remember breathless and enthusiastic compliments on both Lindsey Sara Barber and Tatiana Ledovskikh.  So it’s not like I’ve got any monopoly on taste.  I remember one visit where my date talked about watching a dancer’s hands the whole time.  That’s just not something I would think to do.  It makes me wonder what focusing on hands (or feet or toes or hair or costumes or any other darn thing) might reveal about the watcher.  Any audience, seeing dance or art, may find that their most fundamental qualities and characteristics are reflected back at them.  People see what they know how to see.

No wonder being a dancer is so hard – you’ve got to seem good at everything.

So what do you watch for?  Does that reveal a little about who you are?  Maybe next time, I’ll make it a point to watch hands – and learn something.  Go visit the Alabama Ballet and pick out your own favorites.

Thanks again to Katy Olsen and the Alabama Ballet.

Posted in Birmingham, Dance | Comments Off

2011 Sidewalk Film Festival (in Prose)

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Without

I did a couple of earlier poetry pieces about this year’s Sidewalk Film Festival (here and here).  Here’s a quick one in prose.

They give awards at Sidewalk, sorta like the Oscars.  There’s a list of the 2011 awards on their website.  The awards for narrative features went:

  • Without by Mark Jackson (jury winner)
  • The Dish and the Spoon by Alison Bagnall (jury runner-up)
  • A Bag of Hammers by Brian Crano (audience choice)

Not me.  I didn’t see The Dish and the Spoon or A Bag of Hammers (you can’t see everything), but Without wouldn’t have been on my list.  If you forced me, my list for narratives would be something like:

  • Kidnapped by Miguel Angel Vivas
  • The Robber by Benjamin Heisenberg
  • Sahkanaga by John Henry Summerour

Guilty Pleasures

The Sidewalk awards for documentaries were:

  • Guilty Pleasures by Julie Moggan (jury winner)
  • Where Soldiers Come From by Heather Courtney (jury runner-up)
  • Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story (audience choice)

I didn’t see any of those, sadly, but my list might be:

  • Project Nim by James Marsh
  • Puppet by David Soll

Mr. Happy Man

Lastly, I’m not going to fret too much about the awards for short films, because I didn’t see that many:

  • Terrebonne by Jeremy Craig (jury – short narrative)
  • Mr. Happy Man by Matt Morris (jury – short documentary)
  • An Inconvenient Youth by Slater Jewell-Kemker (jury – student film)
  • The Dancer by Seth Stark (audience choice – documentary)
  • Annie and Her Anger by Tam Le (audience choice – narrative)

An Inconvenient Youth

I will say that I really liked Mr. Happy Man and An Inconvenient Youth.

Thanks to Rebecca Pugh, Rachel Morgan, and everyone responsible for one of Birmingham’s hidden gems – the Sidewalk Film Festival.  There seemed to be a bunch more attendees in 2011 and I hope the pattern keeps up in 2012.  Better and better.

Posted in Birmingham, Theatre | Comments Off

Sharon Blackburn and the Northern District of Alabama

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

About a month ago, I posted a copy of a letter I wrote that suggested that Chief District Judge Sharon Blackburn might be prejudiced against non-Caucasians.  Then last week, she bent over backwards to ratify Alabama’s new and racist immigration law.  Don’t believe me?  Here is the reprinted text from a September 30 editorial by the Washington Post.  (EDIT: Also in accord, the October 3 New York Times.)  Something is seriously wrong with our federal courthouse and the federal judges at the Northern District of Alabama.

***

THE CLEAR INTENT of Alabama’s viciously xenophobic immigration law — and the likely effect, now that most of it was upheld by a federal judge this week — is to hound, harass and intimidate illegal immigrants into uprooting their lives and moving elsewhere.  The law aims to do this by various means, but none is more pernicious than a provision requiring the state’s public schools to collect information on every student’s immigration status, starting in kindergarten and going to 12th grade.

In a ruling that tortures plain words and logic, U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn wrote that Alabama’s law does not create a state-specific registration scheme applicable to illegal immigrants, nor does it attempt to register anyone.

In fact, that’s precisely what it does and is meant to do.  The law sets out procedures whereby schools must determine if enrolling students were born outside the United States or are the children of illegal immigrants.  Any student whose parent or guardian does not provide that documentation will be automatically assumed to be an illegal immigrant and classified as such by the schools in the state’s records.

In turning the schools into immigration registrars, Alabama’s new law flies in the face of good sense and settled law.  The Supreme Court has specifically prohibited such registration schemes by the states aimed at immigrants, legal or illegal.  And, in a ruling almost 20 years ago, it conferred on undocumented students an unfettered right to a public education through high school.

The court did so for sensible reasons.  It noted that there is no legal precedent in America for punishing children for the actions of their parents.  Writing for the court in a 1982 decision squashing Texas’s attempt to exclude illegal immigrants from public schools, Justice William Brennan said, “It is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime.”

Apparently, Alabama didn’t get the message.  By forcing schools to collect and report data on the immigration status of students and their parents, the state will frighten kids away from attending school.  The day after Judge Blackburn’s ruling, the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., reported that 58 of 223 Hispanic students at a local elementary school either withdrew from school or were absent.

Most likely, illegal immigrants will simply go further underground, or move to more hospitable parts of the country — leaving Alabama bereft of the labor it needs to pick crops, wash dishes in restaurants and do landscape and construction jobs.  Indeed, Alabama farmers are already warning that the law will leave them badly shorthanded at harvest time.

By vilifying and victimizing schoolchildren and their families, Alabama lawmakers are mounting an end run around Supreme Court precedent in hopes of cleansing communities of what they see as the scourge of illegal immigrants.  But the real legacy will be a wave of fear, bitterness and desperation in hardworking minority communities .  In Alabama, the nation’s ugly fight over immigration policy just got uglier.

Posted in Birmingham, Miscellaneous, Writing | Comments Off