As you know, we here at KERA love documentaries, which is one of the reasons we are having so much fun at AFI. Here’s a post from Jason Daisey, our CFO, who introduced Crawford Friday night.It screens again Friday at 1 p.m. at the Magnolia. Did you see it? What’d you think?
After Friday evening’s screening of Crawford as a part of the AFI Film Festival, director/producer David Modigliani was asked whether the documentary had been shown to George W. given his role in the life of Crawford, Texas. He noted that a five minute rough cut had been provided to Bush through a connection with Condoleezza Rice when he was trying to gain access to the Bush ranch. However, the response he received was an emailed (previously unpublished) picture of Modigliani at an earlier Democratic National Convention. No further response was ever received. The theater audience laughed as the young filmmaker shirked his shoulders showing his belief that the film was not slanted with any particular political leanings – just the portrayal of a small town that got big and then small again. The story of Crawford isn’t what one would expect, and definitely a film worth seeing.
As presented by the Undermain Theatre, Neil Young’s Greendale is a hellacious piece of rock ‘n’ roll. This may be heresy, but music director Kenny Withrow and his band actually sound better than Young’s original recordings — crisper and richer. This baby kicks; you’re not likely to hear a livelier performance in any area theater.
But as a piece of theater, Greendale is often a thin, loose pageant. Young’s 10 songs offer us a half-dozen characters, most from the Green family, all living in a small, California town. There are four basic actions to the story: Caught with drugs in his car, son Jed (Jonathan Brooks) impulsively shoots a highway patrolman and is arrested. Grandpa is so angered by the resulting media onslaught, he has a heart attack. Earl, Jed’s uncle, sells out his art and becomes a more commercially successful painter. And daughter Sun Green (Kristen Campbell) turns into a radical environmental activist, protesting corporate plans for Alaska.
How the last two actions relate to the first two is never entirely clear. Greendale is apparently intended to be a snapshot of troubled American life, a “collective portrait” of thematically related stories — like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio – a form that doesn’t have a single, main narrative. But the cop-shooting and the environmental protest so dominate the show that Greendale really seems to have just two stories with a couple of character profiles attached. And the two stories aren’t satisfyingly fulfilled — except as a direct exhortation to the audience, a stirring call to protest. “Save the planet for another day,” the chorus sings at the end. “Be the rain, be the rain.” [Read more →]
Eddie Izzard (brilliant British comedian, star of the cable series, The Riches) is at the Majestic Theatre, hotshot young pianist Lang Lang is at Bass Hall in Fort Worth and the gallery show, “Unnatural Disasters,” is at University of Texas at Dallas: Not bad for a Monday.
The sixth time was the charm. Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde completed its run at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night with Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt finally together onstage. In contrast to the five previous performances, this one seemed to be (almost) trouble free. Read the New York Times‘ account.
The members of Gravitas Quartet (Wayne Horvitz on piano, cellist Peggy
Lee, trumpet player Ron Miles and bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck) each have
notable experience in both classical and jazz music and composer Wayne
Horvitz has created a unique repertoire for the band that combines a
chamber music approach with room for improvisation.
Horvitz has composed for Kronos Quartet, the Seattle Chamber Players,
the NY Composers Orchestra, among others and has played with improvisors
Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, and John Zorn as well as in his own jazz
ensembles. Peggy Lee is a member of Vancouver, BC’s foremost new music
ensemble’s Standing Wave as well as many jazz and other improvised music
ensembles throughout North America and Europe. Ron Miles has performed
and recorded with Ginger Baker, Don Byron, the Ellington Orchestra, Bill
Frisell, and others and is also an active performer and composer in
Denver. Sara Schoenbeck has played with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith,
Quincy Jones, Pauline Oliveros, Stevie Wonder, and on soundtracks for
numerous movies and television programs.
Gravitas Quartet is performing for two nights Friday and Saturday April
4 & 5, 2008 at the Cliburn Recital Hall at 330 E 4th Street in downtown
Fort Worth. Tickets are $25, $15 for students and seniors, available
from Bass Hall ticketing 817 212-4280 and at the door.
Say you want to be a documentary filmmaker, and you’ve been given the opportunity to make only one film in your life. What subject would you choose?
Fortunately, the world is vast, and so too the interests of the people in it. Sex, crime and politics are natural documentary subjects sure to draw a film festival crowd– bonus points if your subject has all three and great music too.
But if you wanted to get to the root of the passing show that surrounds us, to reveal something true and lasting about the human condition, where would you point your camera? For my money, local filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin of Carnivalesque Films have found an answer in their beautiful and profoundly moving film Intimidad, one of the documentaries in competition at this year’s AFI Dallas film festival. [Read more →]
… aren’t all that much better than American kids’. Teenage girl magazines, song lyrics and computer game “cheat codes” found online are top choices. But then, so’s C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
When the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, in its current form, was announced several years ago, one particular hitch was immediately apparent: how would a spanking new facility and presenting organization sit with the Dallas Summer Musicals? The DSM didn’t even join the founding organizations for the new center. Would the DCPA and the Summer Musicals actively compete for touring shows? Would Michael Jenkins, the Musicals’ president, be enticed to abandon the Musicals’ home in Fair Park Music Hall — or could he get the DCPA to join forces and let him present shows in both venues?
A WFAA story last night and a Dallas Morning News story this morning report that negotiations between the two groups have failed. Mayor Tom Leppert has been frustrated in his efforts at brokering some sort of compromise.
For now, both groups will compete for touring shows: The DCPA has hired Shorenstein Hays Nederlander as a consultant to bring touring musicals to the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House. Although DCPA spokeswoman Jill Magnuson is quoted as saying such competition will be healthy, Mr. Jenkins insists that there’s not enough stage product around for this to be a good situation. There won’t be more shows coming to Dallas, more theatergoers rushing to get seats. There’ll just be two groups splitting up what is available, “cannibalizing each other,” as Mr. Jenkins put it.
l to r: Kristen Campbell, Newton Pittman, Bruce DuBose, Kenny Withrow
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For Neil Young’s Greendale website — complete with town maps and family tree — click here
To listen to the on-air story, click here:
To listen to audio excerpts from the Undermain’s Greendale:
“Devil’s Sidewalk”:
“Double E”:
To read Glenn Arberry’s D magazine feature, click here.
_________________________________________________ Announcer: Neil Young’s music is coming to North Texas in a way it never has been before — in a way it never has been anywhere. KERA reporter Jerome Weeks has more about how Dallas’ Undermain Theater is adapting Young’s music.
[Katherine Owens and Robert Winn talking onstage.]
The Undermain Theatre is in a tiny basement in Deep Ellum. Before a rehearsal starts, director Katherine Owens and set designer Robert Winn are debating what to do with a wooden dresser onstage. Space is crucial. The Undermain is trying to figure out how to squeeze into its little concrete bunker an entire rock opera by Neil Young.
[music segue: "Carmichael"]
Five years ago, Young wrote a series of songs about a small town and its deteriorating environment, about the Green family and a shooting by one member that triggers a media circus. With his band, Crazy Horse, Young turned the 10 songs into a rock opera called Greendale. It’s kind of like the play, Our Town - with grunge guitars. It’s about a lost, idyllic place in America, but also a place where the Devil himself roams the streets. Young has felt deeply about Greendale. He toured a concert version of the show, and then even directed a low-budget film with friends acting out parts while lip-synching his songs.
But when Bruce DuBose, executive producer of the Undermain, heard the Greendale CD, he thought it could use a full theatrical staging: sets, actors, props. Dubose says that’s because Young’s songs often tend toward drama. They call out to be staged: [Read more →]
It’s Granbury Gallery Night in downtown Granbury, it’s Texas Ballet Theater’s Dracula at the Music Hall in Fair Park and it’s singer Diane Reeves at McFarlin Auditorium. And it’s Gini with more.
