When Don Stevens was hired as the Rochester Americans’ radio broadcaster in the summer of 1986, his wife asked how long they would be there. “Two years, max,” Don said. Stevens had his eyes on a career in the National Hockey League and thought Rochester would be the final minor-league stop on that journey. “The […]
Arts & Entertainment
Posted inTheater
REVIEW | ‘Wife to James Whelan’ at MuCCC
It would not be surprising if you haven’t heard of Teresa Deevy, a Deaf Irish playwright whose robust career in the 1930s has given way to obscurity. In 2010, the Mint Theater Company in New York City kicked off an initiative to reintroduce Deevy to the public, but her work is still rarely produced. Through […]
Posted inDance
A sweet sendoff for Thomas Warfield
College can feel like an alternate universe. Surrounded by strangers and pushed out of their comfort zones, students encounter experiences they may have never imagined. In the Performing Arts Department at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Institute for the Deaf, students with varying backgrounds in the arts come together to create and experiment. Professor Thomas […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
RIT unveils new performing arts center
It includes a 747-seat theater with two balconies, an outdoor amphitheater, a large rehearsal hall, costume and scene shops, as well as a box office, an operations office and an area for food service.
Posted inNightlife
Queer nightclub Flora takes root as a gathering place
On a gray afternoon in Rochester, light filters through the tall windows of Flora on Monroe Avenue, catching blue-tinted glass and clay-toned walls. The room feels warm, almost unexpectedly so. In one corner, someone reads quietly with a drink. At the bar, a small group chats with the bartender. Later, the music will get louder […]
Posted inLiterature
A new posthumous collection adds dimensions to poet Lucille Clifton’s profound catalog
Though she died in 2010, Lucille Clifton remains one of the most consequential poets in American literature. It requires only a few lines to understand her power. Clifton, a Buffalo native who spent years in Baltimore, chose clear, distilled language to articulate her meanings. “(T)hey ask me to remember,” she wrote in a 1987 poem, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Using a hot sauce IV and a broken table to process grief
Sports fans often feel like their team’s stakes are life or death. Even the vocabulary of “die-hards” reinforces this, and as any Buffalo Bills fan can affirm, elimination from the playoffs initiates a period of actual grief. It is in this way that sports fandom and personal experiences of loss — through illness and even […]
Posted inArt
Haudenosaunee art show marks America’s 250th with a living vision of peace
What if the most radical way to commemorate a war … was peace? As the United States gears up for its 250th anniversary in July, the usual pageantry is already taking shape: fireworks, reenactments and the familiar theater of patriotic memory. But a few miles east of Rochester, at Ganondagan State Historic Site, the celebration will […]
Posted inTheater
REVIEW | ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ at RBTL
A teenage girl lounges in bed, writing a letter to Make a Wish Foundation punctuated with smiley and frowny faces. She refers to documentation of her short life expectancy, then trails off into a musical “do do do do.” It’s a little moment that catches you off guard – this girl knows she’s going to […]
Posted inArt
An unlikely friendship between a local artist and a family in Gaza
Heather Layton sat cross-legged in a big armchair off her living room. This is where she calls her friend, Baher. “We talk until our batteries run out on our phones,” she said, laughing. Sometimes the call goes unanswered, and Layton worries Baher and his family are dead. On this particular day, he answered. “I didn’t have wi-fi at my place,” he explained. It was […]
Posted inArt
Peer Bode’s video art exhibition at VSW recalls the 1970s and ‘80s
Abstract shapes of shifting colors dance over an otherwise mundane video of a cup of coffee, recorded with a handheld Portapak analog camera and displayed on three projectors. Actually it’s two videos; a lagging copy hovers over itself like a ghost, a polychromatic distortion, following the actions of its original, trailing behind the pouring, the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Children’s lit magazine ‘Magic Dragon’ looks to its future in an uncertain financial landscape
There’s a dragon in Joanne Andrews’ basement. He’s a few feet tall, brilliant green and clad in a wizard’s hat and a wand. He’s also made onto a foam board. Andrews created him as the mascot for Magic Dragon, the children’s literary magazine she assembles in her Pittsford home with editor Patricia Roesch. Andrews is […]
