Atlanta’s arts scene is vibrant and exciting, and Encore Atlanta is proud to be a part of it. Here you’ll find news bits about and ruminations on The Scene.
Who says there’s nothing to do in Atlanta?
AtlantaPlanIt.com, a service of Public Broadcasting Atlanta, is leading a campaign to educate Atlantans about the region’s arts and cultural offerings. Over 40 organizations have signed up to help.
Arts organizations face a number of challenges that have created the need for such a partnership, including weak pubic funding for the arts and a decrease in local media coverage.
The campaign, which will launch in January 2011, will leverage the existing individual marketing efforts without diminishing each organization’s unique message. AtlantaPlanIt.com is expecting to feature offerings from more than 400 arts groups. They also will help broker discounted (or donated) ad space from media outlets interested in partnering in the launch of this collaborative campaign.
For more information or to participate in the campaign, please contact Nicole Jones at PBA at njones@pba.org or (404) 733-0945.
Crafts ‘n’ laughs
Amy Sedaris – actress, comedian, author, and … crafter?
Sedaris, who studied and performed with Chicago’s Second City and appeared in film, television and stage productions, demonstrates that crafting is a “pleasurable and constructive leisure activity” in her new tongue-in-cheek book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People. Anyone with some spare time can undertake simple, popular craft projects like crab-claw roach clips, tinfoil balls and crepe-paper moccasins.
The funny lady will be appearing at the Atlanta History Center on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. Tickets, which include an autographed copy of Simple Times, are $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers.
To RSVP, please call (404) 814-4150 or visit their website.
What’s happening, Charleston?
Charleston’s keeping busy this fall with event after event. From a professional golf tour to an annual vineyard celebration, the city has something for everyone’s niche, which is a great reason for a roadtrip.
What could draw 20,000 people to the picturesque Daniel Island in October? How about the Nationwide Tour Championship, one of three PGA events offering a $1 million prize. Just a 15-minute drive from downtown Charleston, the tournament starts on Oct. 25 and ends with the Card Ceremony on Oct. 31. Visit the tour’s website for tickets and more information.
Bibliophiles unite at the Capital BookFest on Nov. 6. More than 60 writers, poets and children’s book authors will be at the free one-day event that celebrates literature with storytelling, readings and panel discussions. The activities will be held multiple locations, including Marion Square, the Charleston Public Library and Gaillard Auditorium, between the hours of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The first 1,000 guests will receive a free bag and the children’s book Indigo and the Garden City by JahSun and Donna Maria Smith. For more information, go to CapitalBookFest.org
Grammy Award-winning guitarist Earl Klugh brings the 1st Annual Weekend of Jazz to The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort from Nov. 11-13. The three-night event includes music from chart-topping musicians like the group Fourplay, saxophonist Boney Jones, bassist Kyle Eastwood, Latin-jazz musician Jessy J and composer Joe Gransden. For more information, visit the event’s website.
So you’re a food aficionado? Then An Evening With Anthony Bourdain is for you. On Nov. 12, the executive chef and bestselling author, most famously known for his Travel Channel show “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations”, returns to Charleston with his wry sense of humor and no-holds-barred attitude. For tickets, visit the venue’s website. And to read Encore Atlanta’s interview with Bourdain, click here.
And of course, there’s wine! Irvin House Vineyards welcomes the public to its The 8th Annual Blessing of the Vines on Nov. 13. The 48-acre winery, which blends sweet muscadine grapes into five varieties of wine, will be open for a day of picnicking with live music and wine tasting. For more information, visit CharlestonWine.com.
Now that’s funny …
The cast of The Second City: Miracle on 1280 Peachtree Street is filling the Twittersphere with some funny 140-character musings. Join the conversation by using the Twitter hashtag TSCATL2010. Or follow the real-time chat in on the twitterfountain below:
Travel through time at the High
Forget about traveling to Europe to see great works – the art is all here at the High Museum. Until early January, the High will be home to three special exhibitions.
From the Renaissance period comes Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting, which showcases 25 masterpieces from the Venetian Renaissance collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. Never before shown in the United States, Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon” and “Diana and Callisto” are the exhibition’s main highlights, though paintings and drawings by Tintoretto, Veronese and Lotto will be on display, starting Oct. 17.
Enter Salvador Dali nearly five centuries later, with the exhibition Dali: The Late Work. The exhibition presents the artist’s works from the last half of his career, including more than 100 drawings, paintings, prints and film. It explores Dali’s transition from being a surrealist to a classicist, following his sudden embrace of Catholicism. It also spotlights his relationships with other notable artists of the time, like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein and Willem de Kooning. The exhibition will be on display until Jan. 9.
Venture back to the Great Depression, when Danish-born Peter Sekaer documented the effects of the economic slump in America in the exhibition Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer. This is the first major exhibition dedicated solely to his work and features 75 vintage gelatin prints, several which have never been on public view. The photographs range from 1935 to 1945, when Sekaer worked for government agencies like the United States Housing Authority. View the collection until it closes Jan. 9.
For more information about these exhibitions, related lectures and other events, go to the High Museum website.
Fun and free Atlanta Opera events
The Atlanta Opera’s season officially begins Oct. 2 with La bohème, but in the weeks prior, the opera’s offering a couple of free events open to the public.
Longtime opera supporter Bob Edge will offer witty commentary and brief overviews of the opera’s upcoming season at the Cobb Energy Centre on Sunday, Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m.; highlights of La bohème, Porgy and Bess and Cosi fan tutte also will be performed by Atlanta Opera singers. And on Monday, Sept. 27, learn more about the history, background and storyline of La bohème at 7 p.m. at the Atlanta Opera Center Rehearsal Hall.
Reserve your spot by calling 404-881-8801. For a schedule of free pre-show talks, visit the Atlanta Opera website.
High offers half-price tickets to Dali
Through Aug. 31, adults will only pay half-price ($9) to see exhibits at the High on Tuesdays, all day. From Sept. 7 through Oct. 29, half-price tickets will be available for lunchtime visitors between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Discounted tickets are available to walk-up visitors, although $9 tickets for Thursday evenings (4-8 p.m.) are available online or to walk-up visitors. Groups of 10 or more interested in visiting during lunchtime hours can receive two additional free tickets by calling 404-733-4550.
Currently on display is “Dali: The Late Work,” which features 115 works, including large-scale paintings, rarely seen portraits and jewelry. “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland” will open on Oct. 17.
He’s quite a character, that Bill Murphey!
By Kathy Janich
In A Confederacy of Dunces, now at Theatrical Outfit, 16 actors play more than 25 characters. Among them is William S. Murphey, who, for my money, is the best character actor in town.
He plays two roles in Dunces: Mr. Claude Robichaux, a befuddled, irascible old man with an unusual mustache, and Mr. Clyde, an enthusiastic hot dog vendor wheeling a full-service weenie-shaped cart. His aren’t the biggest roles, but they are among the most memorable. As he’s done for a long time, Murphey breathes humanity into even the smallest slices of character.
“If they weren’t important to the show, and they didn’t have some sort of spark of life in them, they wouldn’t be in the script,” he says. “If [I] can find that spark of life, it’s much more rewarding for me to play and much more rewarding for the audience to watch.”
He’s being modest.
Murphey, a Decatur native who goes by “Bill,” has been acting in Atlanta since finishing grad school at the University of Mississippi in 1986. He’s an affable guy with a dry wit, 732 Facebook friends (at last count), and an annual Christmas open house that attracts throngs. He likes the Beatles, Green Day and the Three Stooges. He’s been reading Hemingway, Salinger, Bradbury and Steinbeck lately. And if you need a house- or pet-sitter, he’s your man. Such gigs help supplement his income as an actor, one who’s been on almost every professional stage in metro Atlanta. His legion of credits include:
- The unemployed actor named Sam, a society matron, a Hannibal Lecter-like chef, and a gangster who wants his parents serenaded with “The Lady Is a Tramp” – a few of his 40 roles – in the one-man dining satire Fully Committed at Theatre in the Square.
- The warmly funny, Irish-accented Catholic priest in The God Committee, a medical drama about organ transplants at Theatrical Outfit.
- The quick-stepping campaign manager (to a dead candidate!) in the political satire Lying in State at Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell.
- Detective Fix and “a huge number of smaller characters” in the Outfit’s stage version of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.
- Doc Gibbs in GET’s Our Town; and Constable Warren, funeral director Joe Stoddard and history-spouting Professor Willard in a multiculti interpretation of the Thornton Wilder classic at True Colors Theatre Company.
For Murphey, doing Detective Fix and the rapid-fire arsenal required in Fully Committed stand out, as does his work as ever-patient son Boolie Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy at the Outfit.
GET Artistic Director Robert Farley calls Murphy a “comic genius”; in his Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of Around the World, the notoriously tough critic Bert Osborne wrote: “Who can resist the versatile, ubiquitous William S. Murphey? Put him in an opium den, give him a hookah and some throw pillows, and sit back and enjoy.“
Murphey is at the Outfit with Dunces through Sept. 5, then returns to Theatre in the Square for A Tuna Christmas, which opens Nov. 16. He did Greater Tuna, the first of the Tuna plays, at the Marietta playhouse in June and July. In both he’s one of two actors, both radio announcers, who portray – with loving care and to hilarious effect – the multitudinous inhabitants of quirky Tuna, Texas. Murphey does the straight-man, radio announcer Thurston, as well as big girls Bertha Bumiller and Aunt Pearl, Tastee Crème waitress Inita Goodwin and frustrated theater director Joe Bob Lipsey, among others.
In the Christmas chapter, he manhandles a dozen roles, including Bertha, who returns with her kid and husband troubles, and Aunt Pearl, a “mean, old Texas woman who loves her chickens. If she has to kill a dog or two with her bitter pills, it’s OK with her. Just so those chickens are protected.”
Murphey hasn’t killed any dogs, or chickens, that we know of, but he’s killed for plenty of audiences. If you get a chance, check out his work. And, if any directors are listening, he’s available again as soon as A Tuna Christmas closes Jan. 2.
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Kathy Janich is an Atlanta theater artist and freelance writer. After years in daily newspapers, she’s found a joyous second career at Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theatre. She’ll be blogging regularly about the metro arts scene for Encore Atlanta.
New award from Emory to honor community-centric artists
By Kathy Janich
The Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts has announced a new awards program intended to raise the profile of Atlanta artists and arts organizations. It will recognize contributions made in Fulton and DeKalb counties as well as the Emory University campus.
The Community Impact Award is open to any artist, administrator, educator, activist, supporter or group in any artistic discipline. Nominees must be current or former DeKalb or Fulton residents, and can come from any area of the arts, from grass-roots community engagement to broad-based activity. Nominees should have made an impact in the region, on the Emory campus or beyond. No self-nominations are allowed. The program has similar awards for Emory’s faculty, staff, students and alumni, and an arts campus volunteer. For details, visit Emory’s website. Nominations are due by 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 20 and can be made online.
Winners will be celebrated Sept. 10 (4-7:30 p.m.) at the third annual Creativity & Arts Soirée at the Schwartz Center. The casual, drop-in event — which is free and open to the public — is Emory’s art season kick-off party. It will feature theater, dance and music performances, as well as contributions from the creative writing, film, visual arts and poetry departments. Parking in the nearby Fishburne deck is also free that night.
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ASO Songster competition down to 3 finalists
By Kathy Janich
Two Georgia singers and one from Ohio have been named finalists in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s “American Idol”-like Songster 2010 amateur vocal competition. The winner, who will be named during an Aug. 14 ASO concert, will receive round-trip airline tickets to New York to see the symphony perform at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 30, concert tickets, a hotel room and a Turner Classic Movies gift basket full of books and DVDs.
Joseph Brewer of Columbus, Rebekah Dossou of Lilburn and Christina Lewis of Cincinnati will each sing “Over the Rainbow” with the symphony before the Aug. 14 concert at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park in Alpharetta. The concert is a screening of The Wizard of Oz, with the ASO providing live accompaniment. The competition (not the concert) will be streamed live on UStreamtv.com, and audience members will be asked to choose their favorite by text message or online voting. The winner will be announced at intermission. The second- and third-place finishers will receive free ASO tickets and more.
The finalists’ YouTube.com video entries can be seen on the ASO website.
