Culture
Theater Review - A World Apart Article
In Horizon Theatre’s one-woman show The Syringa Tree, Carolyn Cook doesn’t just give one of the best performances of the year, she gives 24 of them. In Pamela Gien’s autobiographical play based on her South African childhood, Cook transforms into two dozen characters: children and adults, women and men, English and Afrikaans, white and black.
Cook disappears so completely into each role that...
| more...Visual Arts - The Kids Are All Right Article
Book Review - Ode to the Insurance Salesman Article
Fifty years ago, an executive with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company named Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Many of his colleagues weren’t even aware he wrote poetry.
Ted Kooser, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, also spent most of his life working for an insurance company - this one in Nebraska - but his colleagues were very much aware of his other gig....
| more...Baby Fresh Article
Natural Selection Article
Scott Dupree, organizer of You Can’t Fool Mother Nature at B-Complex, is a diplomat when he should probably be a dictator.
An artist himself (whose work appears in the show), Dupree clearly wants to show support and offer a forum for his fellow creatives in this exhibition of more than 60 artists.
In theory, it’s a noble endeavor. In practice, it’s a gut-busting Shoney’s buffet, with the...
| more...Theater Review - Passion play Article
Offscript - Location 3 Article
Arts Agenda - Perdue pulls the plug on DHR board chairman Article
In the end, the stink of controversy around Bruce Cook may have gotten a tad too fragrant for Sonny to stand.
Cook, the embattled board chairman of the state Department of Human Resources who garnered criticism for using his public post to promote his private business, was recently - and quietly - yanked from his appointed duties by Gov. Perdue. Cook held the post for a year-and-a-half....
| more...Arts Agenda - Task force will examine courthouse security Article
Barely a month after Brian Nichols allegedly killed four people in his escape from the Fulton County Courthouse, changes are afoot. According to the Fulton Sheriff’s Office, deputies are now transferring no more than 225 inmates a day from the jail to the courthouse, compared to as many as 400 before the Nichols incident.
Freeman also has added another 40 deputies to beef up security, and has...
| more...Dance - Into The Woods Article
Dance - Milonga All Night Long Article
Tango has about as many casual dancers as crystal meth has casual users. In Atlanta, the community either scares people off with the fanaticism of its members’ devotion to the dance, or it seduces them with tango’s sensual passion, forever ruining them for the superficial sugar buzz of salsa. But as with most recreational addictions, it’s usually the addicts who throw the best parties.
Angel...
| more...Theater Review - From ‘Schmo’ to ‘Show’ Article
Theater Review - Atomic Fallout Article
As dense and charged with energy as a sample of plutonium, Actor’s Express’ The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer goes inside the head of the father of the atomic bomb. As the director of the Manhattan Project during World War II, Oppenheimer (John Ammerman) shepherded the first nuclear weapon from New Mexico to Hiroshima.
The title riffs on T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,”...
| more...Shelf Space - Almond Chows Down Again Article
For Art’s Sake - When Worlds Collide Article
Tell A Yarn Article
Yarn has visited some genuine horrors upon the planet: god-awful afghans, the kind of scarves you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, toilet paper cozies.
But in Annie Greene’s outrageously charming works on view in The Farm in Yarn at the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, yarn evokes the artist’s memories of her childhood summers in the ’40s on her grandparents Adel, Ga., farm. A kind of crafty...
| more...Theater Review - Honeymoon’s Over Article
In the first scene of ART Station’s melancholy romance See Rock City, newlyweds Raleigh (Geoff Uterhardt) and May (Barbara Cole) declare themselves to be the luckiest people in the world. Audience members wait for a shoe the size of Lookout Mountain to drop.
Having its world premiere at ART Station, See Rock City serves as a sequel to playwright Arlene Hutton’s Last Train to Nibroc, which...
| more...Book Review - The Many Phases of Jane Article
Offscript - Nothing can go Wrong Article
Shelf Space - Grapes, Soured and Saved Article
Theater Review - Marital Discord Article
Theater Review - Miscarriage of Justice Article
Unfortunately, everything you are about to see is true, director Jon Tyler Owens announces in the curtain speech of The Exonerated. “Unfortunately,” because Jack in the Black Box’s production of The Exonerated chillingly exposes the flaws and abuses of America’s capital punishment system.
Comparable to The Laramie Project’s examination of the Matthew Shepard murder, The Exonerated recounts the...
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