Culture
Offscript - I, critic Article
Shelf Space - Atlanta Traffic Article
Call her an embedded author: Suzanne Kingsbury braved the mean streets of Atlanta’s crack-addled neighborhoods researching her new novel. Over three years she interviewed hookers, addicts and cops, and even handed out clean needles and condoms in an outreach program.
The Gospel According to Gracey (Scribner) describes one day in the life of the city’s heroin trade, from the Bluff in Vine...
| more...Cultural divide Article
Dance - Down to the river to pray Article
Every year at about this time, the city of Osogbo in Nigeria’s Osun state more than doubles in size as a half-million worshipers and tourists gather for the Osun Festival. They bathe in the river Osun, dance in the Sacred Groves, listen to the talking dundun drums.
Osun is the orisa (goddess) of fertility, abundant life and generous love. She inhabits the river and the Sacred Groves. Her...
| more...Theater Review - Black box social Article
Theater Review - Lost in a good book Article
The bookworm turns in Underneath the Lintel, a delightful oddity playing in repertory with Talley’s Folly at Actors Theatre of Atlanta. Glen Berger’s monologue play takes the form of a lecture by an absent-minded Dutch librarian (Steve Coulter), whose story begins the day he checked in an overdue library book, only to learn that it had been checked out 113 years earlier. The overdue fine is...
Shelf Space - Crying at the discotheque Article
Call it Studio 54 for the ’90s or murder with a bassline. Either way, former Village Voice reporter Frank Owen’s Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture (St. Martin’s Press) is the juicy result of more than five years of investigation about the behind-the-scenes illicit dealings of nightclub owner Peter Gatien.
Over the last 20 years, Gatien’s decadent clubs became...
| more...For Art’s Sake - Where’s the party? Article
Advertising meets activism Article
In the name of progress Article
Theater Review - Head games Article
Just how seriously can we take The Tale of Cymbeline? Shakespeare’s seldom-produced late period play incorporates enough plot for five operas, and features a headless body, a bodiless head, a life-sized deer carcass and a deus ex machina. It would be laughable if it had any punchlines, or tragic if it had a tragic hero.
Director Nancy Keystone shrewdly turns the Georgia Shakespeare Festival’s...
| more...Offscript - Abby’s date with Suzi Article
Shelf Space - The last laugh Article
How many dead authors does it take to make folks drive to Madison?
Organizers of the Georgia Literary Festival hope the answer is three.
The event started five years ago as the Eatonton Literary Festival, a celebration of luminaries Flannery O’Connor, Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker. But Brer Rabbit and peacocks only go so far before wearing out their welcome.
“After three years in...
| more...Rhythm of the road Article
Up against the wall Article
Fish food for thought Article
In her solo show at Youngblood Gallery, recent Atlanta College of Art graduate Mimi Hashimoto offers some of the more bizarre and distinctive self-portraits to rear their heads in recent memory.
Blood-red and decorated with both English and Japanese text, Hashimoto’s portraits feature the artist as a thin, defiantly naked, edgy young thing gazing back at the viewer. The mixed-media works are...
| more...Theater Review - Island of lost souls Article
Shelf Space - Bigfoot needs a hug Article
It worked for the Wicked Witch of the West, and for Beowulf’s nemesis, Grendel. Now, the legendary Sasquatch becomes the latest misunderstood monster to tell his side of the story. Graham Roumieu’s In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot (Manic D Press) casts the legendary North American ape-man as a disgruntled everyman who’s sick of folks stalking him.
Unlike Gregory Maguire’s Wicked,...
| more...For Art’s Sake - In search of museum peace Article
Dance - Destiny’s dancers Article
Theater Review - Fula’s errand Article
Theater Review - Hoop dreams Article
You don’t have to know the difference between basketball player Kobe Bryant and Kobe steaks to get a lift from The Kobe Bryant Project at Dad’s Garage Theatre. Although the improv show casts the L.A. Laker (played by Spencer G. Stephens) as its leading man, it plays less like an NBA tribute than a match-up between a John Hughes movie and corny TV sitcom.
Conceived and directed by Christian...
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