Kate Campbell will perform her story-driven songs at the Center For Southern Folklore on Saturday, March 29th. She has recorded with the best of the Muscle Shoals scene and has sung with the entire neo-folk scene. Her songs are thought provoking, and her voice is strong enough to keep you involved. Have a listen below.
Kate Campbell at Center for Southern Folklore Saturday
The tattoo on the shoulder of Megan Fox quotes from it. The classes headed by Kenneth Adelman are inspired by it. And ad men everywhere continue to play off it — “it” being the work of playwright William Shakespeare.
No matter that Fox’s tattoo doesn’t quote quite correctly (or borrow meaningfully) from King Lear, that it’s odd to think of Hamlet as a lesson in crisis management (though Adelman thinks otherwise), and that “2B or not 2B” isn’t exactly existential. (It’s actually the clever tag line to an airline ad: Reserve your seat electronically!)
What does matter, in this day and age: You want an all-purpose cultural upgrade? Shakespeare, after nearly 400 years, is still your go-to guy — or guys. And Kenneth Adelman knows it. His teaching company is called Movers & Shakespeares. “Shakespeares” is right.
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“Shakespeare is in a way always two playwrights, not one: the playwright of his time … and the playwright of our time, whatever time that is. The playwright of now,” writes Marjorie Garber in the introduction to her major study of the plays, Shakespeare After All. But that one book certainly isn’t all.
Garber, professor of English and of visual and environmental studies at Harvard, is the author of, so far, 17 books, and those books do more than examine Shakespeare and his works, in his time or our time but always brilliantly. They consider, for example, The Use and Abuse of Literature, Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, and Academic Instincts. And in the closing chapter of another, Loaded Words, she considers the humanities as taught and as to their future.
Which brings us to the immediate future and “Occupy Shakespeare: Shakespeare and/in the Humanities,” the title of the lecture, free and open to the public, that Marjorie Garber is delivering inside Hardie Auditorium at Rhodes College on Thursday, March 27th, at 7 p.m.
Garber is Rhodes’ 2014 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, a visit co-sponsored by a number of the school’s departments and programs, including its Pearce Shakespeare Endowment and Phi Beta Kappa chapter (a chapter recently rated, for the second year in a row, one of the top chapters in the country).
Scott Newstok, associate professor of English and Shakespeare scholar, is also president of Phi Beta Kappa at Rhodes. And not only does he know the work of Marjorie Garber well, he knows her well too. She was his graduate school adviser, and he first taught under her guidance. “She’s a dynamic speaker, I can gladly attest,” Newstok wrote in an email. And he added in a later email:
“While Marjorie Garber is widely recognized as a prolific writer and public intellectual, I also know her as a thought-provoking teacher. Herself a graduate of a small liberal arts college (Swarthmore), Garber has always cherished the intellectual intensity of the seminar.
“Her commitment to what I’ve taken to calling ‘close learning’ was evident not only in her courses but also in her work as director of Harvard’s Humanities Center, where she was an incisive interlocutor in dozens of crossdisciplinary seminars. She modeled what it means to be restlessly questioning — a trait that also characterizes her writing.
“This semester I’ve had the pleasure of assigning her Shakespeare After All to my Rhodes students. This volume takes me back to Garber’s teaching, for her essays on the plays were based on her popular lecture series — the first course for which I taught in graduate school.
“When Newsweek magazine named Shakespeare After All one of the five best nonfiction books of 2004, they praised it as ‘the most exhilarating seminar room you’ll ever enter.’ To invoke Garber’s own praise of the humanities, she is ‘good to think with.’”
Her writings are also a pleasure to sit down with and seriously think through. But little did I know until I learned it from Marjorie Garber: the Shakespearean ties to Megan Fox’s tattoo (described in Garber’s Shakespeare and Modern Culture), to Kenneth Adelman’s coursework in corporate leadership (in Loaded Words), and to an in-flight airline magazine’s “2B” campaign (in Shakespeare After All). There’s even some Shakespeare to go with Garber’s pet project, Dog Love. That’s also where you’ll read of a stray named Bailey. His onetime owner: former Tennessee governor Don Sundquist. •
A new group has formed to halt parking on the historic Greensward at Overton Park.
“Get Off Our Lawn” (GOOL) was founded earlier this month, according to its Facebook page. The group’s sole purpose is to
protect Overton Park’s Greensward, the flat green space on that surrounds Rainbow Lake and the park’s new playground. The area, they say, is “being destroyed by overflow parking.”
GOOL says the city has allowed the Memphis Zoo to use the field for overflow parking and that the damage done to the public park is “unacceptable.”
“We want the Overton Park Greensward restored as a calm public space, not a chaotic private parking lot,” says the group’s Facebook page. “We are sick of the noise, dust, fumes, and destruction. We want the cars and trucks to get off our lawn now and forever.”
The group says they would also like to see an ease of traffic in the park overall. To do this, they suggest either running shuttles from parking garages at Crosstown and Overton Square or building a new parking garage close to the zoo’s entrance.
Joey, the 120-pound horse puppet at the heart of the play War Horse, has become a worldwide superstar. The many people who’ve climbed inside and brought him to life, however, remain largely anonymous.
Matt Acheson, the associate director of puppetry for the show’s North American tour, says there’s nothing more exciting about his job than introducing a newly hired group of puppeteers to the horse when it’s just hanging lifeless in its storage rack. “You see the look on the faces of these people who know a little bit about what’s ahead of them, and they are so in awe,” he says. Acheson describes the grueling, sometimes exasperating work that follows as a labor of love.
Intermission Impossible: This British import has brought a lot of attention to the art of puppetry. And you grew up in a museum family, and always having access to puppets obviously. But can you maybe tell me a little bit about puppetry traditions in America?
Matt Acheson: It exists in pockets and communities and is made up mostly of people who stick to one style or another. But it’s always quietly there in the background, and every now and then it pops through and is thrown into the spotlight again. I think now is one of those times. It’s definitely being highlighted again. War Horse has a lot to do with that and the beautiful horses that have been created for that show are again raising the bar what puppetry can be, and how it can be used, especially in theater.
Intermission Impossible: Audiences don’t relate to puppets the same way they relate to human actors, do they?
Matt Acheson: For me the most exciting and powerful thing about puppets and witnessing s puppet show as an audience member, is that puppets are such a pure character. They don’t ever leave the theater really. They are always embedded in the show and are always that character you are seeing. It actually engages a different part of the brain when you are watching it than if you were watching a live actor. The first couple of minutes you’re, “yeah, that’s made of wood or foam. It’s not human, it’s not alive. Then you sit with it longer and all of a sudden the puppeteers disappear. It has its own skin. It’s breathing. It has its own thoughts. And that’s the audience member putting all of these ideas and emotions into the puppet. You become so connected to the puppet that you sympathize with it in a different way. Possibly even more deeply than you would for an actual human because you are doing so much work to make that thing come to life. The puppeteer is giving you these points of reference and familiarity that you are connecting with but the audience member is doing all the work. So, when there’s a death scene, as there is in War Horse, it rips you apart. Because you’re seeing something that you’ve created die in front of you. It’s pretty special in that respect I think.
Intermission Impossible: Theatrical choices always make a stronger impression than literal representation, don’t they?
Matt Acheson: Any production that asks the audience to come halfway. We all want to participate in the — I hate to say magic, but…
Intermission Impossible: What does an associate director of puppetry do all day?
Matt Acheson: I’ve been working on War Horse for almost four years now, since it arrived in the states. I audition puppeteers, hire puppeteers, train them, maintain the choreography, and help develop new ideas new choreography, organize the team structure. And then there’s a lot of team building and damage control. And keeping the team healthy and happy.
Because it’s hard to be, day after day, strapped physically to another person, and letting go of what you want a scene to do as a singular person, and trying to come up with a group consensus without talking to each other. It’s physically demanding, clearly. But it’s also emotionally demanding on the puppeteers. And they are a great group on the road. They have been amazingly resilient and strong.
Intermission Impossible: Where do your puppeteers come from?
Matt Acheson: A lot of people come from— I don’t want to say circus world. But we’ve found people working in physical theater like Blue Man Group-type folks. There are a lot of actors and dancers that end up there. But there are specific things we are looking for when we are auditioning. There are three positions in the horse. The positions have different personalities and needs to create the one singular personality of the horse. The person on the outside is usually a little more graceful with their body. They know how to disappear in plain sight. They’re more like a partner dancer, so they work with the object. The person on the inside up front in usually has a fiery personality and is very physical and quick, and has a lot of stamina. The person in the back is usually really grounded to the Earth and counters the personality of the front puppeteer. All of a sudden you have the personality of the horse. And each horse is different, which is fun to watch.
Intermission Impossible: Is the choreography entirely by the numbers or does each puppet’s team develop its own personality?
Matt Acheson: In certain scenes you have to go by the numbers. You have to count so many steps or somebody’s going to get hurt. But many scenes where we talk a lot about horse psychology and being a trained animal and what kind of energy and body language would be appropriate so we can keep the movement pure and authentic to a real horse.
War Horse at the Orpheum March 25th-28th. $30-$125.orpheum-memphis.com
Leonard Gills tells the long and winding tale of Memphis poet Heather Dobbins.
Memphis has inspired the latest neckwear line by NBA star Dwyane Wade.
Wade and online neckwear company, The Tie Bar, will release their second line of bow ties and pocket squares Thursday at the company’s website. Inspiration for the new line comes from Memphis, Harlem, New Orleans, and Chicago.
The Memphis collection is “diverse and dynamic,” according to the company. The collection’s “melodic patterns, motley color, and unique textures” is Wade’s acknowledgment the “city’s musical roots and soulful heritage.” The collection also features designs inspired by the “Memphis-Arkansas bridge.”
“Memphis is known for its influence of musical genres such as blues, soul, gospel and rock n’ roll,” Wade said in a news release. “Artists and musicians such as Al Green, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, and Elvis Presley all made their mark here.”
The Harlem collection is “bold and graphic” inspired by the mosaics and art that “fill the streets.” The New Orleans collection was inspired by the “lush flowers and vines” of the city. The Chicago line “mimics the industrial sensibility of the Illinois city.”
Tennessee and Memphis aren’t high on a survey of “well-being,” which makes us feel even worse.
Memphis scored low in the annual ranking of well-being from national health care information company Healthways and national polling firm Gallup.
The 2013 rankings were based on surveys from community residents in categories including emotional health, work environment, physical health, and more. Two thousand people in the Memphis area were surveyed for the new ranking, according to Gallup-Healthways.
The community rankings are the newest data from the State of American Well-Being report. State rankings were published in February and Tennessee ranked near the bottom.
Memphis was ranked 135th of the 189 largest communities in the country that were surveyed for the poll. This landed the city right in between Tulsa, Okla. (134) And Pensacola, Fla. (136) Other cities ranked close to Memphis were New Orleans (120) Wilmington, N.C. (126), Knoxville (150), Las Vegas (144), and Modesto, Calif. (151).
Provo, Utah was ranked as the top community in the country for levels of well-being. The worst was the Huntington, W.Va. area. Nashville landed in the 72nd spot. Little Rock was ranked 154th. Jackson, Miss. was ranked 167th.
Tennessee came in at 44th place among the 50 states. The state was ranked in between Missouri (43) and Arkansas (45). Tennessee scored out of the bottom 10 only in the categories of work environment, healthy behaviors, and basic access to health care.
The top state for well-being is North Dakota, according to the ranking. West Virginia is at the bottom of the list. Mississippi ranked 48th.
The ranking is more scientific and meant to be taken more seriously than other national polls that rank cities on, say, their manliness or sweatiness (as Old Spice deodorant used to do), for example. Healthways and Gallup produce the report for community and business leaders to make decisions about their communities.
“For an individual, high well-being means a life well-lived—all the things that are important to each of us, what we think about, and how we experience our lives,” said Healthways CEO Ben Leedle. “In the aggregate, high well-being means healthier populations, more productive and profitable businesses, and more economically vibrant communities.”
Kevin Lipe reports on the Grizzlies’ convincing win over Minnesota at FedExForum, Monday.