Downtown

Yale Rep's "Escaped Alone" Lets Everyone Understand

by | Mar 15, 2024 10:10 am | Comments (1)

Joan Marcus Photos

Rosato, Shipley, Wolf, Borsay in the new play at Yale Rep.

A group of women are talking together in a garden, under the shade of a tree. In the patterns of their speech, their ability to finish one another’s sentences, it’s clear they’ve been friends for years. But their conversation is about nothing serious. It’s just a way to spend an afternoon. Suddenly there’s a piercing sound, a blinding light, and the stage is plunged in darkness, the tree suddenly a stark silhouette against a roiling background. From one of the women, we get a report of calamity, of mass death, utter mayhem. The lights blind again, and we return to the sunlit garden, the four women still just talking as though nothing has changed. But something has changed.

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Tech Philanthropist Buys Union League Building

by | Mar 11, 2024 5:54 pm | Comments (26)

Thomas Breen photo

1032 Chapel, now owned by Technolutions' Alexander Clark.

Technolutions photo

Megadonor Clark: "A young Beethoven on Red Bull."

A local tech CEO and ascendant patron of downtown New Haven” plans to undertake a multimillion-dollar renovation of the Union League Cafe’s historic home — after buying the Chapel Street property from Yale for more than $4.3 million.

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All-Ages Folk Punk Show Celebrates Community

by | Mar 11, 2024 10:25 am | Comments (1)

Leo Slattery Photo

A lone child in a Rubik’s Cube hoodie stood in the middle of the small black box space at Witch Bitch Thrift on Saturday night, trying and failing with a kendama, a Japanese wooden ball and stick toy. Around him, people trickled in in groups of two or three, ready to see folk-punk acts Apes of the State, Myles Bullen, and Lars and their Lilac Ukulele. 

The band members socialized, waving to the people they recognized and smiling and introducing themselves to those they didn’t. Everyone was dressed for the occasion: a sea of Doc Martens, work boots, and old sneakers. Pants, mostly black, usually dotted in patches of the wearer’s favorite bands. The magnum opus, an Apes t‑shirt from a previous tour. April, lead singer of Apes of the State, seemed equal parts flattered and fascinated by the appearance of her decade-old merch. The most diehard of fans wore battle jackets, a punk tradition of sewing handmade patches of bands onto a denim coat. The battle jackets at this particular show almost all had Apes of the State on them. It was standing room only, save for a chair left in the corner that people piled coats under. The chair itself remained empty, as if for Elijah the prophet.

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Film Archive Celebrates End Of The Art World

by | Mar 8, 2024 9:50 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Alexis Krasilovsky.

Thursday night the Yale Film Archive added two new jewels to their Treasures series: a new 35 mm print of Daisies, the 1966 Czech New Wave film directed by Vera Chytilova, and a new 16 mm print of End of the Art World, the 1971 documentary made by Alexis Krasilovsky while she was a senior at Yale. Celebrated with a free screening at the Humanities Quadrangle, the event was made even more special by the presence of filmmaker and writer Krasilovsky, who introduced the films and participated in a Q&A afterward.

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Protesters Host Their Own "Public Hearing"

by | Mar 4, 2024 9:20 pm | Comments (37)

Laura Glesby Photo

Hajyahia at City Hall protest: Gazans are not numbers, but "human beings with hopes, dreams, and aspirations for a better life."

As a Palestinian, I learned early what it means to fear for the safety of my family on a daily basis,” said local law student Alaa Hajyahia.

A hundred protesters who had gathered outside City Hall in support of a ceasefire in the Gaza war fell silent as she spoke.

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"Passages" Brings Filmmaker Back To Yale

by | Mar 4, 2024 9:20 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Ira Sachs and Brian Meacham in conversation at Yale.

My husband doesn’t want to dance with me,” filmmaker Tomas says to Agathe, who’s fresh off a breakup with her boyfriend. I’ll dance with you,” she says. She does. What comes after is a sort of dance between Tomas, Agathe, and Tomas’s husband Martin in Passages, the latest film from acclaimed writer and director Ira Sachs that was screened as part of the Yale Film Archive’s Treasures From the Archive series this past Friday night. 

It was another special occasion there for two reasons: One being that the film was shown in 35 mm — the only copy of it in existence, made especially for YFA — and two being that Sachs himself, a 1988 graduate of Yale, would be there for the screening and participating in a Q&A afterward. 

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City Hall Honors 50 Years Of Hip Hop

by | Mar 1, 2024 10:23 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

DJ P-Zo name-checks the crowd in the alder chambers.

New Haven hip hop pioneer DJ Terrible T had some pointed questions for his audience at the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St.

What are we going to leave behind? What is hip hop going to mean to this little girl right here?” he asked, gesturing toward an audience member. We can sit up here and talk about who we’ve been and who we DJed and how long we did it. But if we don’t leave a permanent, positive impression on our future — our children — what have we really accomplished?”

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WWJD? Church Tenants Form City's 5th Union

by | Feb 26, 2024 9:29 am | Comments (13)

Paul Bass Photo

Nora Grace-Flood Photo

Tenants Kenneth Naito, Alex Kolokotronis, James Blau celebrate formal recognition of their new union at the Emerson (pictured at top).

The city’s fifth tenants union has formed, marking the first time New Haven residents have organized formally to bargain with a property owner that isn’t megalandlord Ocean Management. 

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New Haven Theater Company Cries It Out

by | Feb 23, 2024 9:20 am | Comments (0)

Nicol-Blifford, Schuck, and Andersen.

New Haven Theater Company’s production of Cry It Out, by Molly Smith Metzler, is a finely tuned performance of a play about early motherhood that starts light and ends with surprising, affecting depth. It runs Feb. 23, 24, 29, and March 1, 8, and 9 at the company’s space inside EBM Vintage, 839 Chapel St.

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Ely Center Opens Window To Art Scene's Past

by | Feb 22, 2024 9:41 am | Comments (1)

A giant squid seems to erupt from the floor of the gallery. Not far away, another wooden figure, more abstract, takes on a shape that could be leaning into the wood’s natural form and could have deviated far from it; from the finished product, it’s hard to say. Close by, there’s an abstract canvas with the contours of a cityscape, the hulking buildings rising from streetlights into darkness, all of it reflected in water. Unifying these works — by William Kent and Leo Jensen — are both the aesthetic sense of the era in which they were created and a more universal spirit of exploration. They’re what happened when the artists making them tried new things.

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Hotel Might Come To Ex-Webster Lot After All

by and | Feb 16, 2024 2:54 pm | Comments (25)

Builder Clay Fowler (at center): Market's back, but construction costs rose too.

Paul Bass Photos

The vacant lot where a hotel is slated to rise.

A developer has revived the idea of building a hotel, rather than apartments, on the vacant lot that once housed Webster Bank. The city gave him some extra time to decide.

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CAW Displays Resilience, Collective Cultural Heritage

by | Feb 16, 2024 9:28 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

Shaunda Holloway’s Nature’s Children greets viewers as soon as they enter the second floor of the gallery at Creative Arts Workshop. Over the shoulder of that piece, Aisha Nailah’s HER stands ready, like an ally. From the doorway, it’s easy to see that the pieces in the show, by multiple artists, share affinities in form and color, as well as subject matter. The diversity of the voices is vast. But they’re all in the same cause together.

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"Embroidery Resistance" Meets Atticus

by | Feb 14, 2024 9:23 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photo

New Haven artist Sarahi Zacatelco.

On the walls of Atticus on Chapel Street, just above diners’ heads, is a row of mixed-media artworks that brighten and enrich the space, making it feel both more vibrant and more homey. But a closer look suggests complication, symbolism, layers of meaning. 

As accompanying labels explain, the pieces are loaded with significance. The first encapsulates a prayer from the culture of the Huichol in Mexico for health, home, and a long life. In the second piece, the flower — associated with the Aztec deity Huitzilopochtli — was used to remedy fever and burns. The third represents the Aztec and Mayan god Quetzalcoatl and his abilities as a seer. It only gets richer from there.

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Yale Cab Comes Out To Play

by | Feb 14, 2024 9:07 am | Comments (0)

Guevara, Stamm, and Ouf.

The 56th season of the Yale Cabaret, the audacious theater in the basement of 217 Park Street on Yale’s campus, is called Sandbox.” The Cab’s team for the 2023 – 24 season — co-artistic directors Doaa Ouf, a projection designer, and Kyle Stamm, a lighting designer, both in their second year at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and managing director Annabel Guevara, now completing her fourth year in theater management at DGSD — said the mission of Cab 56 is to create theater that invokes a sense of curiosity and playfulness, giving artists permission to dig and unearth treasures within themselves.”

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Artists Let In The Light

by | Feb 13, 2024 9:14 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

It’s not just the large paintings covering the walls that suffuse the gallery with color, though they go a long way toward transforming the space around them by themselves. The balloons making their way around the gallery floor help out a lot, too. Even if the gallery is quiet — has a party just finished, or is one about to start? — they encourage a different way of engaging with the art, a little less formal, a little more festive. Maybe, in another sense, they help us let our guard down, and be more open to what the art has to say.

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Unplugged Series Recharges At Three Sheets

by | Feb 13, 2024 8:58 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Qween Kong share the love.

While many were getting ready for the last big football game of the season this past Sunday, a local music series was getting restarted over on Elm Street, as Three Sheets welcomed back the first of its popular Unplugged shows in a long while. Presented by Booger Z. Jones in conjunction with series creator Sara Scranton, two bands — on this day, the New Haven-based Hell Fairy and Qween Kong — would present a selection of their songs in a more stripped-down fashion than usual, acoustic and accompanied by stories of how they were made and what inspired them. 

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James Ivory Shares His World With Yale Film Archive

by | Feb 12, 2024 9:05 am | Comments (2)

Karen Ponzio Photos

James Ivory and Brian Meacham

Friday night’s installment of Yale Film Archive’s The World of James Ivory series offered another type of double feature: a viewing of the 1965 film Shakespeare Wallah, followed by a Q&A with the series’ namesake, James Ivory. Fans of the legendary director, who gifted the Archive with selections from his personal film collection in 2023, were treated to the 35mm version of Shakespeare in all of its black and white glory, in the presence of Ivory himself. Afterward, they had the opportunity to hear Ivory discuss the film with managing archivist Brian Meacham, and ask him questions of their own.

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Yale Opera Plays Its Cards Right At Shubert

by | Feb 9, 2024 9:07 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

Suzu Sakai on the Shubert set she designed.

A member of the stage crew was doing some last-minute cleanup of the set at the Shubert, in preparation for a rehearsal of Yale Opera’s The Rake’s Progress, the opera by Igor Stravinsky set to run at the venerable College Street theatre Feb. 17 and 18. At first glance, it may have looked like he was vacuuming a vast Persian rug. A second glance, however, might show the design on the floor for what it really is: the back of an enormous playing card. More than just an arresting visual pattern, the scintillating floor is part of a set design decision that, for the opera’s director, was the key to opening up Stravinsky’s work to better connect with audiences.

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Americana Keeps The Room Warm

by | Feb 8, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photo

Dallas Ugly Wednesday night at Cafe Nine.

Cafe Nine on Wednesday night was the scene for delicate ballads, bright harmonies, and gritty rhythms as three bands — Pyramid Rose, Dallas Ugly, and the Split Coils — played sets with passion and commitment to the cause of country, rock n’ roll, and keeping live music rolling in the Elm City.

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