In 1914 Kathleen McEnery was a rising figure on the New York art scene when suddenly, at the age of 26, she disappeared. What happened? She got married and came to live in Rochester. A year earlier, in 1913, she had exhibited two paintings at the legendary Armory Show in New York. This was […]
Arts & Entertainment
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Lobbyists for theatergoing
by Herbert M. Simpson Kenneth Lonergan’s involving, small-scale play at Geva’s Nextstage is called Lobby Hero. It’s set in the lobby of a New York City apartment building, where three men and a woman struggle with their conflicting efforts to behave like a hero. So, heroism, or at least each character’s concept of what constitutes […]
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When art speaks louder than words
It’s hard to write about art that is just beautiful. Or perhaps I should say, mostly beautiful. The artists whose work is on show at the Visual Studies Workshop are variously able to elaborate on spiritual dimensions… philosophical connections… historical underpinnings. But I find most of it unnecessary. For me, the value of their work […]
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Remote views
As its title suggests, Naomi Iizuka’s 36 Views, currently playing at Geva Theatre Center, is a complex, richly layered drama.Actually, Iizuka’s title comes from the name of the early 19th-century wood-block prints of Mt. Fuji by the Japanese artist Hokusai. And Iizuka segments her play into 36 varying scenes, separated by the sound of striking […]
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Low level for Shipping Dock
Maybe it’s me. Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic has won respectful attention from English and Polish theater mavens as a potent drama. It also makes some lively and amusing comments on women’s sensibilities as they resist male-dominated society’s efforts to define them in pornographic terms. But I find the play incoherent, annoying, and sometimes tedious. […]
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Big voice, inspiring play
The Big Voice: God Or Merman?,by Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu, is completely original and utterly rewarding. A musical about two totally opposite, deeply religious, gay men falling in love, surviving AIDS, and finding success in showbiz could be camp or cliché. But we are truly indebted to Downstairs Cabaret Theatre for producing the East […]
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The big picture
Focusing on greatness: Gordon Parks’ “Muhammad Ali”, 1970. Gordon Parks has done a lot. Even before he picked up a camera in 1938, at the age of 25, he had tried his hand at “you name it, you know, just about everything.” He worked in a bar, washed dishes in a restaurant, played piano in […]
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Geva program up for grabs, maybe with food
They’re back! Well, sort of. Three years ago, The Neo-Futurists opened Geva’s new Nextstage with Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. New players from the same outfit are presenting the same nonsensical title on the Nextstage again, taking time off from their perpetual clowning in Chicago, at (where else?) the Neo-Futurarium. […]
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Sweet nothings
Pow! Roy Lichtenstein’s brightly colored enlargement of a fight scene from a comic strip in Sweet Dreams Baby (1965) smacks you right in the face. But the impact is purely visual. Pop Art rarely offers much more than this kind of immediate thrill, but that is its greatest strength. Sometimes you just don’t want to […]
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Nostalgia with a giggle at Geva
Neil Simon’s 1983 Brighton Beach Memoirsis an immensely pleasing balancing act. Our most popular playwright’s first major drama of serious autobiographical content, it deepens Simon’s previous 22 years of hit gag-fests, yet more than equals their charm and humor. In these memoirs of the summer when Simon’s extended family shared a beach bungalow, we get […]
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Creative cultivation
Artists can be solitary creatures. For many, shutting out the world with all its demands is an essential part of the creative process. Isolation though, has its downside and, as the saying goes, it’s good to get out once in a while. At some point, whether it be through exhibition, publication, or performance, the work […]
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Excavating the obvious
Andy Warhol once said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am.” If you want to know all about Joy Episalla, you’ll need to do exactly the opposite. You need to dig. The subjects of her photographs, […]
