New Haven Independent

Arts

Laughter At Auschwitz

by Allan Appel | Apr 24, 2007 5:02 pm | Comments (1)

Why would a distinguished and lofty—he’s six-feet-eight-inches tall—scholar of early American history, tenured in his department, a published non-fiction writer, the father of three and the husband of one, settled and accomplished in his life in New York and in New Haven, sit down in the midst of late middle age to write a play about the holocaust? And, to boot, create a drama that risks using a great deal of humor on subject matter generally considered if not sacrosanct, then at least off limits to jokes?

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A Little Read, Thai Style

by Allan Appel | Apr 20, 2007 10:20 am

Tom Wellington’s copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is that old 60-cent Dell paperback that many of us remember from college or high school. He was putting it to good use Wednesday night, when one of the Big Read‘s Mockingbird discussion groups gathered among the aromas of cardamom and curry at the Rice Pot Thai restaurant on upper State Street.

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Arts & Ideas Lineup Unveiled

by Melissa Bailey | Apr 18, 2007 4:02 pm | Comments (5)

Ushered in by Spike Lee, the 15-day bonanza of summer fun called Arts & Ideas will feature, among other attractions: A floating concert boat designed by Louis Kahn, individualized dance performances for an audience of one, and a tap dance show on the Green.

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Movie Night

by Linda Cuckovich | Apr 16, 2007 8:45 am

Korean artist Jeuno JE Kim (pictured at center) showed her video “Janitor” on Saturday night at a reception in a tiny detached garage on Lyon Street in Wooster Square. Despite the cold, much of New Haven’s arts community turned out to see the poetic narrative piece that Kim shot earlier this year in Korea.

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Irm Wessel Remembers

by Melinda Tuhus | Apr 15, 2007 9:41 am | Comments (2)

In Morris and Irm Wessel’s decades of married life, it has often been Morris—famous pediatrician and progressive activist—who has overshadowed his wife, a social worker and progressive beacon in her own right. But Friday night, at Congregation Mishkan Israel, it was Irm in the spotlight as she described her experience on the kinder transport that took her and other German Jewish children safely out of the Nazis’ grasp.

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Poetry New Haven

by Allan Appel | Apr 13, 2007 2:16 pm

April is definitely not the cruelest month, at least not in New Haven, and not only because it’s the occasion of the launch of the Big Read, our municipal shared reading of the inspiring prose of To Kill A Mockingbird. April is also National Poetry Month; the Beinecke is sponsoring readings by prominent poets like Ron Padgett, who this week let us in on the similarities between helmets and woodpecker heads.

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A Former Child Soldier Speaks

by Melinda Tuhus | Apr 11, 2007 10:31 am

It’s hard to believe that a young man with such a beatific smile lived in a hell of child soldiering in Sierra Leone’s civil war. Ishmael Beah came out the other side to tell the tale to a transfixed audience of more than 200 adults and young people at the New Haven Free Public Library.

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What a Lulu at Yale Rep

by Allan Appel | Apr 6, 2007 2:47 pm

Why, when in the middle of an hysterically funny orgy scene at Thursday’s opening performance of the Yale Rep’s bravura Lulu, which turns into a food fight, with whipped cream being smeared over at least five semi-clad men and one desperately mascara-ed lesbian countess, who are all Lulu’s current, future, or ex-lovers, and most entirely ridiculous in their narcissistic idealizing of her . . .why, when she wipes the Redi-Whip out of her big, brown eyes and turns to soliloquize to the audience, “This is the most beautiful moment of my life,” do we suddenly burst into the release of laughter or feel a deep belly ache of tragedy, and perhaps both simultaneously?

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33 1/3 RPM

by Paul Bass | Apr 6, 2007 1:14 pm

Congratulations to Susan Smith, Clare Morduch and Whendi Cook. Their names were drawn from among the names of solvers of cyrpotgram puzzle posted on this website to obtain two tickets apiece to The Blue Album the show currently at Long Wharf’s Stage II. Smith, Morduch and Cook are in for an evening of 22 vignettes (stories about being ostracized as “the other”: gay, black, “frigid,” poor…) arranged as “tracks” like on an old-fashioned 33 RPM, with two “sides,” lots of music, a variety of pacing, all hanging together in the end around the mood of “blue.” The winners will see and hear the chorus in “A Walk on the Wild Side” as never before performed, with a darker edge. Two writer-actors, Dael Orlandersmith (pictured) and David Cale, wrote and perform it (the second such show this year in New Haven). “The past is gone,” one of the actors concludes. But the show proves otherwise. It proves that the past remains amid the old LPs on the wall, amid other memories, to be retrieved periodically, revisited. It still hurts. But it can be heard in a new way.

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