WGBH - Caught in the Act RSS

Lincoln the Man

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:24 PM +0000

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln (DreamWorks)

In the arts right now, this is very much a Lincoln moment. Wrestled free of his many marble monuments, the 16^th President is portrayed as humanistic, relative to his pursuit of equality. Local author William Martin’s novel, The Lincoln Letter, finds modern day treasure hunters on a race to find a reported Lincoln diary detailing his most intimate thoughts about ending slavery. And Steven Spielberg’s majestic new film Lincoln focuses on the president in the final months leading up to the passage of the amendment abolishing slavery.

Less myth and monument, the Lincoln portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis is a tall, sensitive figure with a high-pitched voice. He’s not above churning the politically charged waters of Washington for ideological gain, all the while contending with his complicated family.

This Lincoln is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book Team of Rivals—which also brought the Lincoln administration’s machinations and maneuvers to a palpable level. They are works that exalt Lincoln, but from the flesh and not carefully sculpted stone.

Mario Testino: In Your Face

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:29 PM +0000

Carmen Kass (Mario Testino)

BOSTON — Famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour doesn’t attend just any party. When the Museum of Fine Arts recently opened a new show featuring the work of photographer Mario Testino, she was there. Just as Wintour has been pushing the boudaries of fashion for decades, Testino has been doing the same for photography

Life for photographer Mario Testino is a whirlwind of diving into the glitz—shooting ad campaigns for high end fashion houses, shooting stars for splashy magazine spreads and documenting the super-select soirees.

His new show at the MFA is best described as shock and awe, with explosions of grandeur, waves of sex, and a shimmering poolof celebrity.

“I wanted to parallel my life to the exhibition,” Testino explained. “I guess all of the girls in here, the actresses, the models, in one way or another they helped define either what I look for or what I search or what I live or what I would like to live. I would love my life to be just like this rooms. I mean, it’s an impossibility because nothing lasts forever and nothing is built forever, but I as soon as I can, I want to live—to be close to them.”

The show is called Mario Testino: In Your Face, and it’sthe first-ever U.S. museum show for the Peruvian-born Londoner. It spans the last 15 years of his 30-year career, when he began training his lens on celebrity and playing up his insecurity to get past their own.

“I did a performance because they had to see that I could behave like an idiot or make a fool of myself in order for them to let go. And I did that a lot to break the ice to make them feel more sure of themselves,” Testino said.

Kate Moss, London 2006 (Mario Testino)

And it worked, giving Testino unguarded glimpses, access and even vulnerability.

“The interesting thing is that there is a sort of superficial connotation that can go to that beauty. Sometimes it’s considered bland. And that’s why some photographers, I guess, try to show other sides a weakness. But what I’ve realized that I manage to get— and it’s the only way a photo can really bring that extra thing—is bringing the inside of a person out,” Testino said.

But Testino also toils in provocation. His work is often sexually charged and raw. His subjects are often fierce, seductive and nude.

“Nudity has been important in my work in order to push, I guess, my skills as a photographer,” Testino confessed. “You know when you train as a painter, drawing nudes is one of the first things that you learn. And I find that in my work, it’s important because it’s like the bare person. It’s like there are no excuses, no frills. There’s nothing. It’s just how you are.”

In some regard the show is vindication for MFA Director Malcolm Rogers.
“Well you could say that the exhibition is a hymn to the female form, couldn’t you?” Rogers asked.

Fresh into his tenure 16 years ago, Rogers drew a firestorm of controversy for giving a show to the equally splashy and celebrity indulgent photographer Herb Ritts. A show that now ranks among the museum’s most well attended. He agrees that tastes have changed.

“Definitely, and you know one of the reasons I organized the Herb Ritts exhibition was to change the museum. It has changed now. It’s a different place, a livelier place. I have a passion to find beauty and excitement in areas that are sometimes neglected by museums. And to me, someone who creates images of this strength, who can create style, recreate taste, is a creative genius in your generation.”

Albeit one with a largely commercial pedigree.

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Mario Testino)

“I’m very suspicious of that word, ‘commercial.’ It’s usually only unsuccessful artists who can’t sell their work,” Testino laughed. “I think it’s wrong to use it as a term of abuse.”

It’s when Testino is at his least commercial, when photographing the British royals, that his work can be most alluring. In the MFA’s companion show, British Royal Portraits, the works are almost defined by serenity in regal pictures of the Queen, his official engagement portrait of Prince William and Kate Middleton and especially in this photograph of Princess Diana, which is among her last.

“The biggest treat I could give people was to make them feel like they were sitting next to her in an intimate moment. So the idea behind it was that I would have them act like we just came back from a party, which sometimes are my favorite times, with my friends when you have been to a party and you’ll go back and you’re standing in the same place and you comment on the party all night long and you laugh,” Testino said.

It’s the spirit that pervades Testino’s work—from the raucous to the reverent.

Film Review: Skyfall and Lincoln

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:18 PM +0000

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Skyfall (MGM)

BOSTON — Hear Jared's review on Morning Edition about what's happening in Boston that you shouldn't miss this weekend.

Madama Butterfly
At the Shubert Theatre through November 11th

Director Lillian Groag chose one of Puccini’s most compelling works to open the 2012/13 Season. The performance is full of passion and takes a brand new look at one of the most devastating love stories ever told on the stage. The geisha's tragic story is beautifully sung and the staging features some new design elements that punctuate the production in new and poignant way.

Skyfall
In theaters Friday

Daniel Craig is back as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 in Skyfall, the 23rd adventure in the longest-running film franchise of all time. This is the best Bond film in years, absolutely excellent from beginning to end. Craig has finally settled comfortably into the role, fitting as well as he does in his Tom Ford suits, and Javier Bardem as the film's villian is just phenomenal.

Lincoln
Opens in theaters on Friday

To some degree, Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln", starring Daniel Day-Lewis, gets a start by plodding along—it is very methodical and deliberate. But as Day-Lewis becomes the man facing a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, the film grows to be more and more engaging, with a perfectly stunning end.

Film Review: The Sessions

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:09 PM +0000

October 25, 2012

Helen Hunt as Cheryl in The Sessions. (Fox Searchlight)

BOSTON — In The Sessions, a new film based on the true story of Dorchester-native Mark O’Brien, stricken with polio since childhood, embarks on a quest for something he’s longed for much of his life—sex. Behind the scenes, filming it wasn’t an easy process.

O’Brien, played by John Hawkes, was largely confined to an iron lung, but at age 38, having never had a sexual encounter, he elects to lose his virginity with a sexual surrogate, played by Helen Hunt. Their meeting gets off to a bumpy start.

“Although the aim is for us to have sex, I’m not a prostitute,” Hunt says in the film. “You don’t have to pay me up front. I have nothing against prostitutes. There’s a difference but we can talk about that later.”

John Hawkes talks about the depth of the character he plays. “Mark had a romantic soul. He was a poet. And I think that he wanted to love and be loved by someone in a way that he hadn’t experienced yet.”

Hawkes poured over O’Brien’s own writings on the experience, spoke with his surviving friends and repeatedly watched a documentary short about him. The hard part though, was filming the sex scenes.

“Sex scenes by nature are awkward and unfamiliar and often humorous as you’re shooting them. And then they’re usually edited and music is added to make them look like a perfect fantasy. Well we didn’t want that,” Hawkes said.

To keep the relationship between Mark and Cheryl, the surrogate, as organic as possible, director Ben Lewin kept his stars apart.

“They didn’t really know each other. And their contact prior to filming was very scant, very minimal. But we didn’t rehearse those scenes. There was a kind of spontaneity about the awkwardness of their first meeting,” Lewin said.

“A lot things you’re seeing are happening for the very first time, and it is difficult,” Hawkes said. “As an actor, you want to throw the ball back and forth. Acting is reacting. And when—let me put it this way—it was very difficult. Mark is a character who has no movement from the neck down. It’s very difficult when Helen Hunt is undressing you not to want to help somehow.”

The complexities work. For as unconventional as they may be, The Sessions sex scenes rank among the most emotionally resonant ever committed to film.

Rory Kennedy On Her New Film: Ethel

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:47 PM +0000

October 17, 2012

Ethel Kennedy at the JFK Library and Museum (Greater Boston/WGBH)

BOSTON —Ethel Kennedy has not granted an extended interview in decades. Last year, she made one exception and sat down with her Emmy-winning filmmaker daughter, Rory. The result is a new documentary film called Ethel, which debuted this week on HBO.

Asked by HBO to shoot a documentary about her mother Ethel, filmmaker Rory Kennedy expected her mother would answer with a resounding “No”.

“And then she said yes,” Kennedy said. “I think in part because I had asked her. But in any case she said yes and I’m really happy that she did because even though I was resistant to telling this story, mostly for personal reasons, I do feel that it’s important to be out in the world. [My mother’s] life has really been on the front lines of the most important historical events of the 20^th century.”

The film largely spans the duration of Ethel’s marriage to Robert Kennedy before his assassination in 1968.

“I have a deeper appreciation of the relationship between my mother and father, how close they were. The role she played in his life and what they were and what he was able to accomplish—alone, but also what they were able to accomplish really together,” Kennedy said.

Theirs was also a marriage of political passion, the film reveals, with Ethel doubling as mother to an ever-expanding brood and as a campaigner at times better than her husband.

“Even though she was comfortable giving speeches, she was definitely not on the forefront. Their dynamic worked really well in those times and at that place in our history. There are insights and contributions that women make over the years that are hard to necessarily compare in today’s standards, but to look back and to see the difference that they made in those times and how they contribute to where women are today, I think, is sort of the important lens through which to see that,” Kennedy said.

Theirs was also an energetic, madcap family. From tales of racing through the White House on John F. Kennedy’s inauguration day, to managing a veritable home zoo, including 19 dogs and a seal. Those are the times that balance the family’s overwhelming moments of sadness.

“I think that she was able to go through those more difficult moments in part because she was thinking of something other than herself. Some combination of the social justice that she was focused on as well as having eleven children, at the end of the day you gotta pick ‘em up from school and change diapers, and do the daily routines that children demand. I think that gets you out of your own headspace,” Kennedy said.

For all the sensitive topics, however, it was Ethel as the subject who could be most difficult of all, Kennedy says.

“She’s feisty,” Kenney exclaimed. “And she doesn’t necessarily answer all the questions in the conventional way. You know, she was great and it was so much just to spend that amount of time with her. She’ll answer a question, but not in the way I want her to answer it. Twenty years of documentary filmmaking, and all the techniques—throw them away when you’re with your mother.”

Ethel Kennedy remains a reluctant subject. At a recent screening of the film at the JFK Library and Museum, she confessed her uneasiness as the focus of the film, but sounded confident in her daughter’s skills.

“[Rory is] great company and just to be with her is really fun.” When asked how it felt to go public, Ethel Kennedy said, “A little uncomfortable, but she’s so great and tells it so well.”

Watch Jared's interview on Greater Boston.

Definitely Outside the Box

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:55 PM +0000

BOSTON — Jared Bowen takes a look at an unsual delivery of presidential history and learns there is such a thing as sex after life in an iron lung. Hear his review on Morning Edition.

Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson
Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company
Through November 17 at the Calderwood Pavilion

‘Old Hickory’ gets a reinvention—the story moves from Jackson's humble beginnings on the Tennessee frontier to his days as seventh Commander-in-Chief of the US. An emo-rock score sets the tone for an irreverent presentation of America’s first maverick president, who kicked British butt, shafted the Indians, and smacked down the Spaniards, all in the name of these United States. Excellent costume and staging makes this show pop.

The Sessions
Opens in theaters Friday

Based on the poignantly optimistic autobiographical writings of journalist Mark O’Brien, The Sessions tells the story of a man who lived most of his life in an iron lung who is determined—at age 38—to lose his virginity. With the help of his therapist and the guidance of his priest, he sets out to make his dream a reality. You can bet on seeing The Sessions mentioned at the next Academy Awards.

Bold and Courageous

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:45 PM +0000

BOSTON — Through performance, photography and film, consider those who fight for love, for peace and for family.

The Lily's Revenge
Plays through October 28 at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon

A thirty-person ensemble weds dance, film, theater, and music into five unique acts that span over four hours and explores how love should transcend all differences. Become immersed in the event from the seats in the audience to the intermissions, where actors spend time in the crowd and offer tours through backstage. This is a new way to experience the theater.

Kennedy to Kent State
At the Worcester Art Museum through February 3rd

See some of the most powerful American photographs of the 1960s, collected by Howard G. Davis, III and now part of the museum's permanent collection. The images reflect upon Davis's memories of the era with images from 1958 to 1975, including the presidency and assassination of John F. Kennedy, as well as the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War.

Read about Jared's recent visit to the Worcester Art Museum.

Ethel
Premiers tonight on HBO

The life and times of Robert F. Kennedy have been well documented. But it's his wife Ethel who has always been the backbone of the family — raising 11 children and carrying on a tradition of activism. Now her youngest child, Rory Kennedy, has made a documentary, "Ethel," telling this lesser-known story. It's an intimate view of a family that lived through (and sometimes created) historic moments.

Read excerpts of WGBH's Bob Seay interviewing Rory Kennedy.

VIDEO: Company One Artistic Director Shawn LaCount

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:19 PM +0000

Company One Artistic Director and co-founder Shawn LaCount is reliable on two counts. He is always well capped in what's become his trademark hats and his theater company will always take audiences in fresh and uncharted directions. As a director this summer, he turned the Roberts Studio at the BCA into a real wrestling ring for his intensely sharp "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity."

Later this month he directs the regional premiere of "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," which starred Robin Williams on Broadway last year. Here he's Caught in the Act with Jared Bowen talking about what propels him…including "Little Shop of Horrors."

Spies, Puppets and Lies

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:51 AM +0000

The cast of the national tour of War Horse. (Broadway.com)

Listen to Jared on 89.7 WGBH's Morning Edition.

Whether you try film or theater this weekend, an array of talented stars and performers will transport you back in time and conjure up the scenes, the intrigue and drama that occurred in some of the darker hours of our past.

Argo
Opens in theaters Friday.

Based on true events, “Argo” chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis—the truth of which was unknown by the public for decades. On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, a CIA “exfiltration” specialist named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) comes up with a risky plan to get them safely out of the country.

>>Read Jared's interview with Ben Affleck.

War Horse
Plays at the Boston Opera House through October 21st

As World War One begins, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped from England to France. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to find him and bring him home. At the heart of this plae are simply astonishing, life-sized puppets created by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company. As a rider myself, I was amazed at the puppeteers ability to capture every nuance of horse behavior. It gave me goosebumps. ?

The Paperboy
Opens in theaters on Friday

The Paperboy is sultry, campy and tension-filled. It’s like a modern-day Tennessee Williams play, sexually and racially charged. Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels (Precious) takes audiences on a wild ride through the backwaters of steamy 1960s South Florida to uncover a web of lies and a murder that has one man heading to the electric chair. An explosive chain reaction pulls everyone involved into a quagmire of evil as dark as the Everglades themselves. Inspired by a true story, The Paperboy’s tale of obsession, violence and ambition earned a nomination for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s highest prize, the coveted Palme d’ Or.

Argo is Another Success for Ben Affleck

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:05 PM +0000

October 10, 2012

Jared Bowen interviewing Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck’s latest film foray as director and star opens in theaters tomorrow, and he recently confessed to me that he tends to find directing agonizing.

When it comes to directing, Ben Affleck is not a confident man. His new film Argo tells the madcap, real-life story of a mission to rescue six Americans during the 1979 seize of the US Embassy in Tehran.

“I think that you have to have a lot of fear. It's like running a marathon,” Affleck said. “You know, you've done it once now at least you know that you can finish. So some of the fear is about why even complete this. Will it even be comprehensible? Or get pushed aside?”

So far, it’s a fear unfounded. His first two films as a director, Gone Baby Gone and The Town were critical and commercial successes. Now Argo is already drawing mountains of praise.

“But you know every director I talk to talks about, talks about the fear. Talks about halfway through the movie where they think this whole thing is a disaster, you know? It's really hard to do and I think if you don't have some of those feelings pushing you and driving you, at least if I don't, I wouldn't do as good a job,” Affleck continued.

Argo is test of Affleck’s confidence and boundaries. This is his first non-Boston based film—a thriller in which he plays a CIA specialist drafted to sneak the six Americans out of Iran at a time when anti-American fervor is at its bloodiest.

When asked about the filming of Argo as it coincided with the Arab Spring in the Middle East, Affleck said the uncertainty conveyed by the actors in the film started to feel quite real.

“As we were getting ready to make it, the Arab Spring was happening, these unintended consequences of revolution, these people that we had been kind of in bed with, and then they had this democratically-fueled revolution, but then there's fear about well, what will happens after this revolution. It seemed to be, you know, almost identical to what happened in Iran,” he explained.

John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Ben Affleck in Argo (Claire Folger/Warner Bros.)

Affleck, a Middle Eastern studies major in college, is a master of tension here as Iranian revolution forces close in on the CIA operation. You almost need a bottle of Pepto Bismol to cope with the amount of stress in Argo. Affleck’s methodology for achieving that rhythm is to give the audience more information than the characters are working with.

“Yeah, I think the way of accomplishing stress, you know, anxiety in an audience has to do with, you know, the way I've had success with it is setting up things that the audience knows that the characters don't know. It always has a sort of good tension to it. And making sure that it's grounded. Like, I think I check out of a movie when I start thinking ‘this isn't real.’ Or ‘this is a video game. I could just put another quarter in and have another life.’”

But for all its suspense, Argo is also superbly funny. To make its rescue mission credible, the CIA put a fake science-fiction film called Argo into pre-production, allowing them to claim the six Americans were part of the production team scouting locations in Tehran.

Then you’re gonna sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal and you’re gonna walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world?

“I think humor is really critical to tension,” Affleck said. “You can't hold it in the whole time. People’s face turns blue and they get tired, and then the mind wants to stop. If you give these release valves, it gives you arcs, you know, that you can use. You build the tension -- [sighs] – then let it out.”

Back to that confidence issue: Affleck says he’s perfectly happy to coast along as a director without buying the hype.

“You know what, I'm very cynical about good reviews or good notices. I know that these things come and go. I try to keep my own perspective. In terms of my own ego, I've been around this business long enough to see it come and go. The work that you do is the only thing that matters,” he said.

Go to Worcester for the Art

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:30 PM +0000

October 10, 2012

Inside the Worcester Art Museum

There was a time that the Worcester Art Museum was considered one of this country’s best, but as that city’s luster faded, so did the museum’s. Now it’s coming into prominence once again, however, as a new director with ties to one of the world’s greatest museums takes hold.

It is a shame that for so long, praise for the Worcester Art Museum has gone unsung. It is, without question, world class. The Roman Mosaic in its Renaissance Court is the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Its colonial portraits are by far the oldest. It has the second largest Paul Revere silver collection and a first rate assemblage of European masters.

Matthias Waschek, Director of the Worcester Art Museum (

“We are one of the first museums, if not the first, to have a Gauguin. We’re definitely the first museum at the beginning of the 20^th century to buy – in America – to buy a Monet,” said Matthias Waschek, the museum’s director.

The Gauguin that Waschek refers to was once owned by Degas, and many of the museum’s works, like those by Monet, Hassam and Whistler, were purchased while the canvas was virtually still wet.

“Museums are always the expression of civic pride, and Worcester was an incredibly wealthy manufacturing town. The museum reflects that,” Waschek said.

Sadly though, the Worcester Art Museum has been a sleeping giant—its reputation swallowed up by the city’s economic decline over the last several decades. Attendance took a nosedive. Museum staff was cut down to four-day work weeks and the front doors were shuttered. That’s what the museum’s first new director in 25 years discovered when he arrived.

When asked how much work is this, he agreed that it’s fairly overwhelming. “Yes, but that’s also exhilarating. I mean, what I found exhilarating from the beginning was all the potential,” he said.

Waschek comes to Worcester from the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. Before that, he was at the Louvre in Paris, where he was director of Academic programs. He arrived here with a splash—this summer he reopened the museum’s front doors and announced two months of free admission. Attendance exploded.

“It went from 5,000 over two summer months — which was pretty lame — to 14,000, and we got a lot of visitors who had never been to a museum. Which was fascinating,” Waschek said.

Image from the Kennedy to Kent State exhibit. (Worcester Art Museum)

His internal focus is just as thunderous. He’s intensifying marketing and fundraising efforts. And he’s placed Worcester Art on a high-profile exhibition schedule starting with the unfailingly gripping photography show Kennedy to Kent State. Longer term, though, he wants to reconfigure the museum’s entire collection to present it more by chronology and less by nationality as mostmuseums do.

“You just say Whistler should be next to all the great French painters that we have. Whistler and Rodan are very good bedfellows, if you will. Or you have some of the American Impressionists, put them together with Monet, and you see that they’re actually in a very interesting league,” he said.

When asked how big a risk it is to introduce very unconventional ideas, he isn’t concerned. “I think the risk is actually not so high because we have to tell a different story from the Met and the MFA. The very moment we tell the same story with less depth of collection, why would you want to go to Worcester?”

There is a definitive buzz here—awakened from its slumber and with new lifeblood. At the moment, the Worcester Art Museum certainly looks the picture of promise.

Review: Sequence 8

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:28 AM +0000

Oct. 4, 2012

Maxim Laurin and the cast (ArtsEmerson)

Hear Jared's reviews of performance, music, film and art around Boston on 89.7 WGBH's Morning Edition, and take notes on what you shouldn't miss this weekend.

SEQUENCE 8
Presented by ArtsEmerson at the Cutler Majestic Theatre through October 7th

Set not in a specific time or place but rather on a vertical canvas of sorts, this acrobatic dance and theatre piece contemplates the role of the "other," and how we define ourselves through and against it. Just when one thinks it isn’t possible to find any more evolution in circus acts, Les 7 doigts de la main will leave you stunned.

Itzhak Perlman and The BSO’s 132nd Season
Symphony Hall, Boston

Renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman recently opened the BSO’s 132nd season as both performer and conductor for an all Beethoven evening.

This weekend, BSO assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger leads a program pairing the Romantic with the ruminative. American violinist Joshua Bell is soloist in Bernstein's Serenade inspired by Plato's "Symposium", a dialogue on the nature and value of love. Also on the program are two audience favorites: Tchaikovsky's emotionally charged fantasy-overture "Romeo and Juliet", and Dvorák's bucolic Symphony No. 8.

>> Listen now to Itzhak Perlman's all Beethoven evening on Classical New England.

Watch Jared's interview with Itzhak Perlman.

Watch Sept. 27, 2012: Legendary Violinist Itzhak Perlman on PBS. See more from Greater Boston.

Funny Thing About Fate

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:57 PM +0000

Nancy E. Carroll, Johanna Day, and Karen MacDonald in Good People

Hear Jared Bowen on Morning Edition.

BOSTON — How people respond to situations is the fodder for both hilarity and contemplation. Here are three very different ways to observe those moments of decision that can make matters worse, or prove that sometimes we humans are capable of doing what's right.

Good People
Playing at the Huntington Theatre Company through October 14

In South Boston, this month’s paycheck covers last month’s bills, bingo is a night on the town, and sharp-tongued single-mom Margie Walsh has just been let go from yet another job. Scrambling to make ends meet, she looks up an old flame, hoping he’ll help her make a fresh start in this humor-filled drama from Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire about how twists of fate determine our path.

The Mikado
Playing at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston through October 13

Three little maids from school, a wandering minstrel, a pompous government official, and the Lord High Executioner are just some of the hilariously absurd characters in Gilbert & Sullivan’s most beloved satire of social mores and politics, The Mikado.

Trouble With the Curve
In theatres Friday

Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams are father and daughter in a film that takes advantage of Eastwood's gruffness to explore aging and family relationships. Not a film that features Eastwood at his best. Also starring Justin Timberlake and John Goodman.

PLUS: Philanthropist and Emerson alum Ted Cutler has just announced plans for a Theater festival in Boston next summer. Jared Bowen will bring you the latest.

Interview with Spiro Veloudos

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 04:22 AM +0000

Spiro Veloudos, the Producing Artistic Director of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, has a personality as giant as any of his lavish productions. Now in his 15th season at the Lyric, Veloudos is offering up a very disparate season currently underway with "The Mikado" updated for modern political times.

Here Veloudos chats with Jared Bowen about his love of theater and the one show that best represents his own life.

New Shows on Stage

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:04 PM +0000

Sept. 13, 2012

BOSTON — Hear Jared and Morning Edition host Bob Seay talk about some of the new theater performances coming out this season.

The Kite Runner
Playing at New Repertory Theatre through September 30

Based on the 2003 best-selling novel, this epic drama follows boyhood friends Amir and Hassan in 1970s Afghanistan. After witnessing terrible brutality and betraying Hassan, Amir immigrates to the U.S. with his father, his regret, and his shame. This beautiful and complicated story shares an inside view of Afghani culture, while exploring the price of loyalty and friendship, the desire for integrity, and hope for redemption.

Marie Antionette
Playing at the A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center through September 29

The barbed and brassy tragicomedy Marie Antoinette provides a peek into the life of everyone’s favorite representative of the 1% — the infamous Queen of France and cake enthusiast. Watch as times change and Marie finds her sparkling and sheltered world turned upside down by the Revolution.

Watch Jared Bowen's interview with the cast and crew for Greater Boston, and see the A.R.T.'s new take on the cake-eating queen's behavior.

Watch Sept. 18, 2012: Marie Antoinette at the A.R.T. on PBS. See more from Greater Boston.

Ori Gersht: Seductive Art with a Statement

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:40 PM +0000

Watch Jared's interview with Gersht on Greater Boston.

In the Museum of Fine Arts' newest contemporary art show, beauty is taken from the eye of the beholder. In this case it’s the artist Ori Gersht who determines the very definite bounds of beauty.

At first blush, the works of Israeli artist Ori Gersht are pieces of painstaking beauty—an elegant cherry tree branch, a verdant Spanish landscape and a traditional still-life. MFA curator Al Miner describes how Gersht’s work has a siren’s call.

“Beauty is what pulls us all into this work. It’s seductive. We can’t help ourselves. But it’s also like a little lullaby. It sort of lures you in, but then when you least expect it, he does bring in comments about violence,” he said.

The Cherry Tree branch is actually a photograph of a tree growing in Hiroshima’s irradiated soil. Look more closely at the landscape and you’ll find the carcass of a dead dog. Notice the still life of the flower arrangement and you’ll soon see it is lifeless. It is all painstaking work imbued with pain, said Miner.

“There have been four world wars in Israel since Ori was born. His whole life has been in the middle of an ethnic conflict. He’s been a witness to so many moments in that nation’s situation. It’s hard for us to think as Americans to understand what it would be like where so much history is embedded in everything and violence really is around every corner. It makes Ori and others more sensitive. They notice things. He sees violence in places where we might not even recognize it right off the bat,” Miner said.

The Museum of Fine Arts’ newest contemporary art show, Ori Gersht: History Repeating is a vastly intriguing and revelatory perspective. It’s the first comprehensive museum survey for Gersht, featuring 17 photographs and eight films dating to 1998.

“What I’m interested in is a kind of tension that exists between attraction and repulsion,” Gersht explained.

In his photographs, it’s a more quiet tension, a sadness brought on by sudden understanding. Much like the cherry blossom, his landscapes, while gorgeous, are pointed. The serene lake in “Boatman” was actually a hiding place for Jews during World War II. The same for a spot in the Pyrenees. It’s something you can only learn by reading the wall text.

“I’m interested in these moment where the viewer become aware what it’s actually looking at and the affect it has on them. From the moment the words are coming into the equation, the experience can never return to its pure, almost innocent initial relationship between the eye and the image,” Gersht said.

Ori Gersht, Far Off Mountains and Rivers, 2009. Courtesy Angles Gallery, CRG Gallery, Mummery + Schell, and Noga Gallery. © Ori Gersht.

Gersht’s moving images force a more direct response. In this play on an 18^th century French painting, the bird suddenly drops into an abyss. A coin and its history harshly melt away. And in Hebrew the word for pomegranate is the same as grenade. We see that disturbing definition unfold.

“Our bodies are constantly dying and new cells are emerging. And so sometimes we will experience, will have personal experiences, which will have great affect on us. And the shift between feeling untouchable and very vulnerable and hopeless is so fine,” Gersht said.

In all of Gersht’s work, in the obvious and in the more ambiguous, he harkens back to the old Masters. Their DNA is part of his own, he believes.

“It’s a questioning of the past in terms of what were these artists doing? What were these moments in history? Why were they important? Why did they create ripples of time that they did,” said Miner. “But it’s also an admiration.”

The Masters rendered life. Now, Gersht adds a modern voice.

Sparkle: Whitney Houston's Last Role

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:04 PM +0000

Jared Bowen reviews the film Sparkle on Greater Boston (WGBH).

Part of the fan photo mosaic tribute to Houston on the Sparkle website.

This review aired on Greater Boston just before the August 16th premiere of the new film Sparkle, starring Jordin Sparks and featuring the late Whitney Houston.

Sparkle is about a group of girls growing up in 1960s Motown, trying to get together their own singing group and give the reigning Supremes a challenge. It's the last film that Whitney Houston completed before her tragic death. She plays the single mother trying to raise these three girls to walk along the straight and narrow.

Remaking the 1976 film Sparkle was Houston's vision, and a project that she had worked on for more than a decade. The disparate elements of the film don't come back to form a complete whole, but perhaps that's fitting, as the anchor to the film left a void as well.

Meanwhile, Jordin Sparks, winner of the 2007 American Idol competition at age 17, is coming into her own as an actress. She shines as the composer and leader of the trio who can't let go of the music.

Still, it's seeing Houston as a healthy, maternal figure who delivers one number of her own, that finally gives the film its poignancy. Houston fans have already ensured that this film will get some buzz regardless of its flaws.

To recognize Houston's passing, the Sparkle website features a special tribute to Houston, inviting fans to add their own photos to an interactive mosaic, along with messages to the belated pop star and those who continue to miss her.

Tanglewood: The Music Mecca of Western Mass.

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:16 PM +0000

August 24, 2012

It took a determined Russian, an insatiable audience and one very fierce storm to create the New England music festival that now ranks among the world’s greatest. Located in the foothills of the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, the site's vistas are sublime, the pace is a slow tempo and there is literally music in the breeze. For 75 years, this has been the home of Tanglewood, America’s summer musical oasis.

“To be able to come here in the summer and hear the crickets at night and the wind in the trees during the day and think about music is a dream,” says laureate conductor and famed composer John Williams.

During the summer of 2012, Tanglewood celebrates its 75^th anniversary and a legacy that has evolved from a simple summer music festival into what Williams calls “the spiritual home of music in America.”

“It is a precious spot in our country. It is one of those magical places where you can come sit….and music one is writing is more than conducive. It’s very, very helpful,” Williams said.

Tanglewood was created in 1937 by Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Serge Koussevitzky. It was composed out of a promise and a problem, says BSO managing director Mark Volpe.

Koussevitzky "wanted a place to train the next generation of musicians," Volpe explains. "Another reason for Tanglewood is much more pragmatic. You had this orchestra which at that point was very gender-specific (it was all men), and the men would all go back to Europe because they were almost all European. Then they’d meet a fraulein and they wouldn’t come back, so you never knew in October what orchestra you’d have." So Koussevitzky wanted a way to employ the musicians year-round so he could keep and build an orchestra.

So Koussevitzky made Lenox, Mass., the BSO’s summer home. It had already been a literary retreat for writers like Hawthorne and Melville, and on that first summer season, well-heeled concert-goers were bowled over — almost literally.

“We had a tent up here and the tent got blown away by a big storm and hence within a few months they raised enough money to build a shed,” Volpe says.

The Shed, as it’s affectionately known is the centerpiece of the Tanglewood campus today, a complex that features stately homes, rehearsal “huts” and the majestic Ozawa Hall. But the Shed is where hundreds of thousands of people settle into seats or on the sprawling lawn every summer — as drawn to the place as to the staggering array of international artists who’ve insisted they appear here for 75 years, says Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart.

“From the very first couple of years when Koussevitzky was here and young people by the name of Copeland and Bernstein were studying with him, it really has become something beyond a music institute where people come and hear a bunch of concerts. It stands for an approach to music that’s grounded in a place of great natural beauty that is away from the rapid-fire way in which our urban lives tend to work,” Lockhart says.

“I do walk the grounds often,” says Williams. “Since I’m writing music, I’m sitting down all the time, and to get up and walk for an hour or so everyday is something that I’ve found is essential for me.”

Many of Williams’ historic Hollywood scores were composed at least in part on the campus. It is also fertile ground for young 20-something musicians who train and perform here each summer as part of the Tanglewood Music Center, a prestigious fellowship organization directed by Ellen Highstein and founded by Koussevitzky.

“There’s something to be said for the fact that if you have people who are really excellent and really devoted, something will continue. They’ll make it continue because they have to express it,” Highstein says.

“The best of what we are you can see in [the young musicians],” says Williams. “And the best of what we can become we see in these kids that come here and study. They have the same idealism in them.”

Tanglewood truly is its own symphony: a blend of dreams and conviction, of talent and beauty. It is an American music mecca whose pilgrims and preachers are unwavering.

Watch Jared's broadcast on Greater Boston

PEM Curator of Chinese Art Moves to MFA

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:20 PM +0000

August 10, 2012

Dr. Nancy Berliner (MFA)

In museum circles this is pretty big. Not "I-found-a-da Vinci-behind-the-furnace" big, but a major change in the art world, nonetheless. Dr. Nancy Berliner, curator of Chinese Art at the Peabody Essex Museum and an absolute treasure herself, today was named the new Curator of Chinese Art a the Museum of Fine Arts.

At PEM, where she'd held the same position since 2000, Berliner was the force behind the aquisition of the Yin Yu Tang House, moved from a Chinese village to the museum where it now resides, just off the courtyard. Even more striking was her 2010 exhibition, The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City. Regarded with high esteem by the Chinese government for her scholarly work, she was given the unprecedented opportunity of curating a show of Forbidden City artifacts and was allowed to exhibit them outside of China for the first time ever. It was on view here before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and it would not have happened without her.

It is monumental then, that Berliner is moving over to the MFA and leaving a tremendous legacy at PEM. It's also very interesting in light of the fact that PEM disclosed last fall that its ongoing capital campaign had already brought in $550 million. That is considerably more than the $504 million the MFA netted with the close of its own capital campaign in 2008. Stakes are high and the quest for talent seems to be getting a little bruising.

Read the piece about finding art in surprising places that Berliner contributed to our Go Straight to the Art page earlier this summer:

"I have walked into humble houses in remote Chinese villages and seen dynamically-composed patchwork bed covers and door curtains made from old clothes by the women of the house. I’ve blown away dust in the Forbidden City to reveal intricately inlaid mother-of-pearl patterning in black lacquer." Read more....

Arts Weekend Rundown: Big Dreams

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:06 AM +0000

August 9, 2012

BOSTON — A variety of arts on exhibit this week make us take notice of what it means to follow a dream, from the hard work to make it onto the stage, to quiet reflection, to dealing with the aftermath of dreams that are crushed

Billy Elliot
Plays at the Boston Opera House through August 19

Set in a small town, the story follows Billy as he stumbles out of the boxing ring and into a ballet class, discovering a surprising passion that inspires his family and his whole community. With the creative input of Tony-winning legends director Stephen Daldry, choreographer Peter Darling and writer Lee Hall, and with music by Elton John, Billy Elliot will enchant the dreamer in all of us.

Ansel Adams: At the water's edge
On view at the Peabody Essex Museum through October 8

Ansel Adams' appreciation for water was never far from the surface. He was drawn to the subject in all its forms, from rain, fog, mist and clouds to crashing waves and waterfalls. At the Water's Edge combines famous images with extraordinary but lesser-known examples, expanding knowledge of Adams' work and building appreciation for the artist as an important and innovative modernist.

>>See Jared's interview at the Peabody Essex Museum.

The 79th Annual Craftsmen’s Fair
On view at the Mount Sunapee Resort (Sunapee, NH)
through August 12th

The Annual League of NH Craftsmen’s Fair is a nine-day event that showcases the work of more than 350 craftspeople’s items made by hand. Meet and talk to the craftsmen, learn about their techniques, and purchase from them. Find creative and practical gifts at over 200 craft booths and The Shop at the Fair. Do-it-yourselfers (adults and children) can sign up for workshops -- including basket weaving, tools for kids, and glassblowing -- and make their own handmade treasures.

Queen of Versailles
Now playing in area theaters

Filmmaker Lauren Greenfield shows us the construction of the biggest house in America, inspired by Versailles, and documents the life of a billionaire family and their financial challenges in the wake of the economic crisis. With the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy, The Queen of Versailles follows billionaires Jackie and David's rags-to-riches story to uncover the innate virtues and flaws of the American dream.