You might treat her like dirt. But when the romance ends, she’s gonna write and deadpan-chant the following lyrics about you:
The silver hoop on my finger was a noose Emotional suicide whenever I was with you Why would you date me if you fucking hate me? And why would you fuck me if you think that I’m ugly?
I hope it hurts when you think of me I hope you know that you sicken me … I’m choking on all the breath I waste while blood and vomit’s all I can taste
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Jisu Sheen |
Mar 21, 2025 10:26 am
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Cover art for "What a Guy."
SB Khi, a multi-genre star of the younger, post-pandemic-onset generation of musicians in the New Haven scene, made a stop at a dive bar in Pennsylvania when he had an encounter that would end up inspiring his newest single.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 21, 2025 10:25 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
The Year of X Book Club selections at Possible Futures.
“Through individual agendas that battle oppression and in the uniting of efforts, Black women have found a way, even when seemingly impossible, to give life,” writes author Anna Malaika Tubbs in the opening paragraph of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation.
Tubbs’ book is the third to be discussed this year in Kulturally LIT’s monthly series, “The Year of X Book Club.” It had a major impact on the readers who came to Possible Futures to discuss it Thursday night with its insight into the lives of three women — Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin — who birthed, shaped, and influenced three of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 21, 2025 7:00 am
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Jack Quaid stars as Nate in Novocaine.
Novocaine Apple Cinema Xtreme Hartford March 19, 2025
Bank assistant Nate (Jack Quaid) is a typical everyday guy, except that he suffers from a rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain and anhidrosis, or CIPA. He hits it off one day with his coworker Sherry (Amber Midthunder), and after a great date, the next day the bank is robbed and Sherry is taken hostage. It’s up to Nate and his small but stalwart group of allies to save her from the murderous bandits.
That’s the standard plot in the new comedy Novocaine. There are one or two twists to keep things interesting, but nothing major. Instead of plot machinations, Novocaine relies on the charisma of its stars, and a genuinely funny script.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 19, 2025 1:54 pm
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Clayton Stephenson informs and entertains during Notes and Narratives at the Artists Collective in Hartford.
Notes and Narratives with Clayton Stephenson The Artists Collective Hartford March 18, 2025
I ventured back to my old stomping grounds in the North End of Hartford for a classical piano concert featuring Clayton Stephenson, and got so much more than I was expecting. Founded by the world renowned saxophonist Jackie McLean in 1970, the Artists Collective is one of the premier arts institutions in the state, and trains Black and brown children from Hartford in music, dance, theater and more. I went there when I was a kid, and so did my son when he got old enough.
So it made sense for the Collective to host Clayton Stephenson, the Joyce C. Willis artist in residence at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The residence program supports Black artists and aims to increase diversity in the arts community.
Unlike at a regular concert, Stephenson turned his performance into an educational experience. He began by showing the audience how Franz Schubert took one musical passage in his Impromptu and built an entire song around it.
Lise Davidsen as Fidelio, the courageous wife in disguise and role model for standing up to autocrats.
On our drive on toward Milford and the Connecticut Post Mall, I fiddled with the car radio, turning off the drumbeat of distressing news out of the nation’s capital.
165 Years of House, the documentary that New Haven teacher and filmmaker Raven Mitchell is carefully constructing, describes concentric circles of community working together to support young people’s development. Mitchell uses this lens, based on a model called Bronfrenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, to describe the importance of Hillhouse High School over its 165 years of existence.
From interpersonal bonds in the family to parent-teacher relationships, connections to media and beyond, according to this model, each circle of community has an impact on the other levels and, ultimately, the child at the center.
On Saturday afternoon at NXTHVN art gallery in Dixwell, several of these circles were at play as Mitchell presented a sneak peek of her documentary-in-progress to a room full of intergenerational love, support, and family of all kinds.
Gallery co-owner Inger DaSilva, art framers Jonathan Peterson and Libby Boyd, and gallery co-owner Gabe DaSilva.
Miami is Coming to New Haven DaSilva Gallery Through March 25
At Miami is Coming to New Haven, the current group show at DaSilva Gallery & Frame Shop in Westville, you can tell the pieces are full of stories, seeming to whisper among each other about who will get your ear, your eye, first.
You can also tell the show is in a working frame shop and busy gallery, with the active energy of a system that never stops.
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Aster Aguilar |
Mar 17, 2025 2:06 pm
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Sameer Copper photo
Syncopated Ladies Live! Shubert Theatre 247 College St. March 15, 2025
Two-thirds of the way through Syncopated Ladies Live!, Emmy-nominated lead choreographer Chloe Arnold led the audience in a tap dancing lesson. She dictated heel/toe touches until they went fast enough to be mistaken for a drumroll.
My attempt sounded more like an engine starting. I looked around the audience, and an unspoken consensus passed between us: Damn, this is a lot harder than she makes it look!
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Jisu Sheen |
Mar 17, 2025 10:05 am
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Jisu Sheen Photos
Milk, then cereal; Flores Zaldívar disagrees with the kids these days.
At the “Bad Cereal & Cartoons” event at Best Video Saturday morning, the Looney Tunes characters getting into television mischief might have seemed to be for the kids’ benefit. There were certainly many sets of young eyes up front enchanted by Tweety Bird, Tom, and Jerry, while adults hung back and chatted over iced lattes at their tables.
A closer look revealed that several of the older attendees were enjoying the on-screen high-jinks, too, perhaps just as much as the children. Some even had bowls of Lucky Charms and milk next to their grown-up drinks.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 17, 2025 9:52 am
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Sesame Street Live! Say Hello Shubert Theatre March 14, 2025
Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Friday night, it was on College Street. The Shubert Theatre to be exact. It was the place to greet and get playful with the iconic children’s show’s crew of monsters and other lovable birds and beasts in their newest Sesame Street Live! stage production, aptly titled Say Hello. This reporter, a lifelong fan, and her husband made a date to dive back into some core memories while watching a captivated and super cute crowd party with their fuzzy faves.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 17, 2025 9:33 am
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Thin Lear.
Matt Nilsen, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon Never Ending Books March 14, 2025
There was a microphone set up, but Matt Nilsen dispensed with it, instead forgetting about the stage and standing on the floor right in front of the audience. He strummed his guitar a couple times, just to test the room.
“There’s no graceful way to do this except to just do it,” he said, and started his set. In doing so, he set the tone for an evening of music on Friday at Never Ending Books — featuring him, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon — that brought musicians and audience closer together, literally and figuratively.
The annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade filled New Haven’s streets Sunday with music, spectacle, and high stepping, including from LBS Spinnerz Arts fire breathers (top photo), Penny Farthing bicycle riders from Freewheeling Connecticut (middle), and (at bottom) Woodland String Band, which was founded in 1926 and made it all the way up from Philly.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 14, 2025 12:55 pm
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Timo Fahler
it's happening, can you feel it (my inheritance).
The plaster hand protrudes from the wall, dangling the gun from its trigger guard. It’s a precarious situation. Were it a real gun, there’d be a danger of it going off. But the gun is actually fashioned from glass; as a symbolic gesture, the gun is dangerous to others, even as it is also in danger of being broken. With a flick of that finger, a bullet could fly, or the gun could fall to the ground and shatter — or both.
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Aster Aguilar |
Mar 14, 2025 12:15 pm
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Joan Marcus photo
Samuel Douglas and Nomè SiDone in The Inspector.
The Inspector Yale Repertory Theatre 1120 Chapel St. Through March 29
When you walk into the Yale Repertory Theatre for its production of The Inspector, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the giant streetlamp. Perched just behind orchestra left, the lamp holds up a vast clothesline above the audience’s heads, connecting to an identical streetlamp deep within the whitewashed facade of the stage. The floor itself is covered in a couple inches of poly-fill snow that you just know is destined to get everywhere.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 13, 2025 1:55 pm
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Karen Ponzio Photo
The Neighborhood Watch Party Committtee: Travis Carbonella, Lizzy Donius, Noe Jimenez.
While the conversation about needing a new movie theater in New Haven continues ad infinitum, three Westville friends have been busy converting a beloved neighborhood space into a temporary theater to help bridge the gap left by the closing of the Criterion and to foster community by gathering and watching a film together on a big screen.
Their project, Pop-Up Cinema, presented by The Neighborhood Watch Party, screened its inaugural film in its newest series at Lotta Studios Wednesday night, the first of six different films that will be shown over the next seven days.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 13, 2025 8:00 am
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Two Mickeys? Double the trouble.
Mickey 17 Apple Cinemas Xtreme Hartford March 11, 2025
I finally made it to the theater to see Mickey 17, a sci-fi comedy written and directed by Bong Joon Ho of Parasite fame.
For those who want a spoiler-free mini-review, Mickey 17 is a messy movie with many different layers that don’t always mesh perfectly together, and the third act betrays the more philosophical movie that comes before it for a (somewhat) standard action ending. Still, Robert Pattinson and Naomi Ackie are wonderful together, and the sci-fi premise is at least an entertaining thought experiment, even if it doesn’t all come together.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 12, 2025 11:15 am
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The Igneous Element, 2024, by Frantz Patrick Henry
Echoes and Collisions Widener Art Gallery Austin Arts Center Trinity College March 10, 2025
The Widener Art Gallery at Trinity College has a unique exhibition on display. Called Echoes and Collisions, the exhibit pairs the art of F. Patrick Henry, an artist of Haitian origin, with the Edith A. Graham Collection of Haitian Art, which was donated to the school in 2008. The purpose is to put the artworks “in conversation” with each other; it served to give me a new look at a place I know very little about.
Sometime in the ’90s, a woman in cracked, green crocodile skin, gold booty shorts, and a hat of crocodile heads and rolls and rolls of red tickets posed as the camera snapped. Decades later, New Haven artist Edwin Gendron would pick up the black-and-white photo he took, hand-paint the colors in, and make it into something new.
The piece was among several, all transformations of some kind, that Gendron had on display at a pop-up event Saturday afternoon at Fussy Coffee in Science Park.
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Chris Randall |
Mar 10, 2025 10:49 am
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Chris Randall photos
When the apizza is so good, you have to sing about it! Ruben Ortiz, artistic director for Broken Umbrella, serving up both drama and slices.
A Broken Umbrella Theatre kicked off their upcoming production, Family Business: (A)Pizza Play, with a lively and fitting preview party Sunday at downtown’s BAR Pizza. The special event brought together theater lovers, pizza enthusiasts, and supporters of the arts for an afternoon filled with delicious food and engaging performances.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 10, 2025 9:46 am
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Maya McFadden Photos
Drawing partners Omar and Rosa Gonzales with finished renditions of Pikachu and Sonic characters ...
... in a class that brings Cross art students together with East Rock kindergartners.
Wilbur Cross sophomore Rosa Gonzales and East Rock School kindergartener Omar put pencils to paper to draw Sonic and Pikachu — as part of a monthly class-to-class collaboration focused on cartooning and literacy.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 10, 2025 8:00 am
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Real Wall: Bethani Blake
Real Wall: Bethani Blake Real Art Ways Hartford Through March 17
Real Wall: Bethani Blake features the artwork of the titular artist, Bethani Blake, who works additionally as a curator and educator in Hartford. I enjoyed her overall exhibit, but there was one piece that especially spoke to me, in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 10, 2025 7:58 am
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Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) dons the red, white and blue in Captain America: Brave New World
Captain America: Brave New World Apple Cinemas Xtreme Hartford March 7, 2025
I intended to go to the theater and watch Mickey 17, but I misread the schedule and arrived just in time for a showing of Captain America: Brave New World. I decided to go with it; one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing reviews has been the happy surprises I discover along the way.
