A&I Gives Sneak Peek At 2024 Festival

Shakespeare in circus, choral fusion, climate activism and optimism talks, making your own empanadas: this eclectic mix of events and more is part of this summer’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which is returning with a full schedule of programming that covers just about anything an arts and culture lover would have a taste for — and maybe something they have never tasted before.

The festival community gathered last night at 195 Church St. for a 2024 sneak peek and reception, where patrons mingled and chatted up the new season’s events as they snacked on tasty tidbits such as polenta bites and orange lavender fairy bites provided by Claire’s Corner Copia. 

Posters hung throughout the room advertised a few of the events before Shelley Quiala, A&I’s executive director, came to the front of the room to address the crowd. Kevin ​“RevKev” Ewing, chair of A&I’s board of directors, gathered everyone together to get the evening started and to introduce Quiala.

“I’ve been around the festival for about 15 years and I’ve always looked forward to the day that we announce what’s coming that year,” said Ewing, adding that he was ​“excited about everything that’s on the ticket.”

“If I only just met you this year, it’s because I started in the middle of a pandemic,” Quiala said, noting how she experienced the festival in 2020 online from her home in Minneapolis. She recalled how her first festival in person had the Green fenced off ​“not because we wanted to, but because we had to.”

“And now we’re back,” she added with a smile. This year will be A&I’s 29th festival, and they were already starting the ​“momentum” toward next year’s 30th celebration.

A two-minute video of some of the highlights of this year’s festivities included a few words from some of the festival’s performers, such as jazz vocalist Samara Joy, who will be performing at College Street Music Hall on Wednesday, June 26; Brazilian bossa nova artist Caro Pierotto, who will perform a free show on the New Haven Green on Thursday, June 27; music director Perry So, who will conduct a free show with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra on the Green on Saturday, June 15; performers from Contra-Tiempo’s dance theater, who will perform at the University Theater on June 27 and 28; and a cast member from The 7 Fingers arts collective, who will perform at the University Theater from June 21 to June 23. 

There will be over 150 events, and 85 percent of them will be free.

“What you just saw is a big chunk — not all of it, but a big chunk of what’s happening June 14 through the 29th,” Quiala said after the video ended, adding that ​“that’s not all we do.” Events have already begun and will continue through until June. One of those is the Big Read Program, in partnership with the New Haven Public Library. The book for this year is The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, which Quiala described as a ​“story of migration” of the author’s Cambodian family.

“It’s also a story that’s intrinsic to who New Haven is,” she added. ​“We’re using that opportunity as a starting off point to talk about migration beyond that book,” noting that she was talking about all migration: ​“The Great Migration, stories about Cambodian residents who live here in CT, and other families who have come from different parts of the world: Italian families, European families, South African families, who found their way to Connecticut for a multitude of reasons.” Migration is a theme that, according to Quiala, we will see throughout the entire festival’s programming.

May 1 through May 5 will find Compagnia TPO, an interactive theater company from Prato, Italy, offering an interactive show that will be held at The Legacy Theater in Branford ​“for young people and their grown-ups,” with the young ones being invited up to the stage to dance with the projections that they use to create an imaginary city in a piece called Erba. The show has an environmental theme, which Quiala noted will be another theme that runs through the festival.

“The rest of May is all about our neighborhoods,” said Quiala as she spoke about the neighborhood festivals that will occur during that time. Quiala said they have had five such celebrations in the past 10 years, in West Rock, West Hills, Newhallville, The Hill, Fair Haven, and Dixwell, but will be adding Long Wharf this year as the sixth. They received support from the National Endowment of the Arts’s My Town program to help them create a documentary about ​“all of those neighborhoods and the process of creating festivals and community with them.” That documentary will be shown on the Green.

Quiala then spoke about the June events that will kick off on Friday, June 14. They will begin celebrating Juneteenth that weekend, since it lands in the middle of the following week. Compagnia De’Colombari’s production of King Lear also kicks off that night for three days of performances at The University Theater. An ensemble of ten actors ​“of all races, of all genders, of all identities,” will play Lear. 

The Ideas summits — ​“daylong explorations of content” — also start that weekend, and are all free this year. Saturday, June 15 will focus on environmental voices. The week after, on June 22, the events will focus on how we live and the basics of everyday life: loneliness, aging, and happiness. Summit Day Three, on June 29, explores intersections in the arts.

Perry So’s conductorial debut on the Green on June 15 will be a show called Celebrate New Haven, featuring New Haven artists. Earlier that evening, Yale Choral Artists will perform Malhaar: A Requiem for Water at Albert Arnold Sprague Memorial Hall.

Another New Haven-based group of artists, the Regicides, will have a show on Sunday, June 16 that will be framed around ​“funny and not so funny” dad jokes, since that day also happens to be Father’s Day. That night, a Celtic band — Cecelia, from Montreal — will be performing, as well as The Ebony Hillbillies, an African American string band that has performed at the festival previously. 

Quiala walked through the rest of the programming, including films, photography exhibits, food tours, cooking demonstrations (including the ever-popular Grand Avenue Gastronomy Tour that this reporter still remembers fondly from a couple of years ago), concerts on the Green — including an ​“R&B blowout” with Stokley Williams on June 21 — and the return of circus to the festival. 

She said people wanted circus back, and this year they will get exactly that from Montreal’s 7 Fingers arts collective, who will perform their take on Romeo and Juliet, called ​“Duel Reality.”

Speaking of comebacks, the recently reopened Peabody Museum will be the setting for renowned author Amy Tan’s talk with WTNH’s Ann Nyberg about her new book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, on June 18.

Other special events that will be celebrated during the festival are World Refugee Day on June 23 — that will include a World Food Bazaar on the Green — and Caribbean Heritage the last weekend of the festival, as June is Caribbean Heritage Month.

Add to the mix Italian folk music, Brazilian samba, Inuit soul, bomba, and that College Street show with Samara Joy — the announcement of which garnered shouts of joy from the crowd — and so much more. Quiala said she did not mention every single event, but she did say that the website will continue to be updated. As her presentation ended, she encouraged everyone to keep checking it as more information is added and to join in where and when they could.

“We can’t wait to start this journey with you all,” she said. ​“It doesn’t mean anything unless there are people to experience it. It is your co-creation, it is your participation in making events we can talk about.”

Please visit the Arts and Ideas website for a calendar of events, as well as information about any and all programming.