Author: Jon W. Sparks

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

New Moon Keeps On Being Creepy

A scene from "Shockheaded Peter" at New Moon Theatre Company (Photo by Gene Elliott).

Ten years ago, New Moon Theatre Company started its annual foray into producing thrills and chills for the Halloween season.

“Everybody involved with the company just loved Halloween,” says Gene Elliott, executive producer at New Moon. Look Away (A Civil War Zombie Tragedy) by Memphis playwrights Zac Cunningham and Stephen Briner had been staged by New Moon a couple of times before the 2011 production that started the annual scare fare.

Elliott says they company has been on the watch for something both odd and beautiful. A mix of plays from creepy to screamy were staged in subsequent years, including Bug, Frankenstein, The Woman in Black, Titus Andronicus, Cuddles, Buried Child, Lizzie the Musical, and The Pillowman.

This year offers, if you can imagine, one of the weirdest yet.
Shockheaded Peter (runs tonight through November 14th) is a musical version of an 1845 German children’s book of short stories and poetry about the consequences of misbehavior. The program describes it as a “tale of a childless couple that has their fondest wish granted in the most delightfully dreadful way imaginable, accompanied by songs, puppetry, and vignettes in which the hilariously horrible fates that befall naughty children everywhere are brought to darkly comedic life.”

Elliott, who has been involved in all the productions, says when he first encountered it, “I was kind of gobsmacked just watching what videos were available. And I read about it, everything I could. And it was just so wonderfully bizarre and just asking for no forgiveness.”

In other words, perfectly weird.

“It’s not an overly long play,” he says, “but it has so many moving parts. There’s little vignettes — it’s a vaudeville-feeling show. There’s little scenes that happen, but there’s puppets and people doing quick changes into bizarre costumes and it’s just nonstop. There’s 15 people in the show and every one of them are running backstage. It’s chaos and I just kinda sit back and laugh and watch them just running in circles. It’s so cool.”

But if it’s dark and weird, is it OK for children or not?

“It’s kind of like watching Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner,” he says. “Those are just cartoons. We have puppets. The violence is absurd and we’ve had a couple of older children watch it and they were laughing their heads off.”

Get tickets here.

Categories
Art Film/TV Music News News Blog Theater

ArtsMemphis Awards Nearly $1 Million in Grants

ArtsMemphis grants will help organizations and individual artists. (Photo: Jon W. Sparks).

ArtsMemphis has awarded $900,000 to 45 arts organizations for operating support and another $70,650 to 26 groups through the Arts Build Communities (ABC) grant program.

The operating support grants have long been central to ArtsMemphis’ mission of helping to grow a sustainable arts community. The unrestricted funding comes from local individuals, foundations and corporations, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Organizations are assessed on their capacity to meet mission and goals, impact in the community, the level of their board’s engagement and support, financial need, and accountability.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the arts community hard. ArtsMemphis reports that grantees experienced a collective $24 million reduction in revenue, primarily earned income from ticket sales, classes, and workshops. It likely would have been worse if not for relief funding such as Payroll Protection Program, TN CAREs, and Shuttered Venue Operators Grants. ArtsMemphis estimates a 62 percent reduction in local and state government revenue generated by the arts.

Although arts groups added virtual and outdoor and socially distanced events, community participation in such events is down 41 percent.

ArtsMemphis says that data shows a 53 percent reduction in staffing, most of which is contract staff. ArtsMemphis will reopen its Artist Emergency Fund on Monday, September 27th for another round of funding for individual artists in Shelby County across arts disciplines. This new round brings ArtsMemphis’ Artist Emergency Fund total distribution to $640,000 since the onset of the pandemic.

A list of the operating support recipients is here.

The ABC program is done in partnership with the Tennessee Arts Commission, and directly supports arts projects that broaden access to arts experiences and aid in the sustainability of the organizations.

The ABC recipients can be found here.

ArtsMemphis has also named Julie Wiklund as its new Chief Financial Officer. In addition, Kathy Gale Uhlhorn is now chair of the Board of Directors, and Dr. Russ Wigginton, president & CEO of the National Civil Rights Museum, is Vice Chair. Kera Wright, senior vice president of finance for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is the newest member of the board.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

The Show Will be Delayed: Ostranders on Hold

It was a tough call in a time when so many are making tough calls.

But the Ostranders — that annual celebration of Memphis theater — has been postponed. It had been scheduled for this coming Sunday but, thanks to a resurgent Covid pandemic, could be set back to October.

“We really, really debated going ahead with it, but we weren’t sure if anybody would want to come,” said Elizabeth Perkins, the event’s program coordinator. “And the whole point this year, since we had not judged any shows last year, was really to see each other and reconnect, and then honor Andy Saunders as our lifetime achievement. And if we couldn’t do that, then what was the point of doing it right now?”

Perkins is hoping to do it in October, but that all depends on availability of a venue and if the pandemic numbers have improved. The Ostranders have long been at the Orpheum, but depending on the situation, they may go for an outdoor location or a smaller celebration.

Whenever and wherever it happens, Saunders, as was announced last month, will be given the 2021 Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement, an annual honor for a notable contributor to local theater.

In a typical year, awards are given in numerous categories along with special awards. Since there were far fewer productions in the last year, Perkins said there wouldn’t be the usual voting by judges for best actors or best screenplays or best sound or best design or any of the usual competitive categories.

“The idea was going to be it was a party with no judgment,” Perkins said. “So we had no judgment last year. And if you wanted to wear a ball gown, there would be no judgment. If you wanted to wear your pajamas, no judgment.”

She said that Jason Eschhofen, the resident sound designer at Playhouse on the Square, is putting together production numbers. And the special awards will be given. But Perkins is really hoping to be able to say, “We’re kicking off this next season of theater and Memphis and life is normal and won’t it be so great to go back to the theater!” But, as she ruefully admits, “Of course we can’t say that.”

The Ostranders ceremonies are sponsored by Memphis magazine, ArtsMemphis, and the Orpheum.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Gavin Wigginson Named to Lead PRIZM Ensemble

PRIZM Ensemble’s board of directors has selected Gavin Wigginson as executive director of the music education nonprofit.

He will oversee operations and strategic direction for the organization that elevates chamber music education opportunities for youth in the Greater Memphis area. Wigginson will manage development, drive programming, recruit mentors, and foster community partnerships to support PRIZM’s youth outreach efforts.

Major programs that Wigginson will handle are the PRIZM Music Camp and International Chamber Music Festival, a two-week summer program for area youths to immerse in intensive musical training by day and performance by night, and the PRIZM in the Schools program, which provides high-level introductory music classes and orchestral instruction at various schools.

Wigginson is the director of concert choir and a voice instructor at LeMoyne-Owen College. He previously served as a fellowship coach for Memphis Music Initiative, where he partnered with dozens of local schools and managed a team of music fellows who taught more than 750 students each semester.

Wigginson has a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in vocal performance from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Wigginson’s predecessor, Roderick Vester, stepped down as PRIZM’s executive director at the end of July 2021 to join Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia, as director of contemporary music.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Documentary About the Faithful Brings a New Look to Pop Culture Icons

(Courtesy A Fish in the Hand Production).

For those of us who have covered the Elvis Presley phenomenon over the years, it’s always a challenge to find something fresh. His life and contributions have been documented to a fare-thee-well, and yet we sometimes encounter an angle that allows us to see him in a new light.

So it is with the work of filmmaker Annie Berman, whose remarkable documentary The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess is a fascinating examination of three cultural icons and how they are remembered.

The film, more than 20 years in the making, evolved as Berman got interested in how and why Elvis, Pope John Paul II, and Princess Diana became objects of obsession and who are still revered by the true believers.

Her journey began in 1999 when she visited a friend in Rome. She was studying photography and pondering the reproduction of imagery when she took in the souvenirs relating to the pope. “When I went to the Vatican and saw what was for sale with Pope John Paul II’s image on it, it kind of blew me away. There were certain things I’d expect, like rosary beads and prayer cards, but to see ashtrays and snow globes and lollipops — that was a whole other level.”

Berman’s curiosity was piqued about the image of the pope’s face that was included in the wrapping of the lollipops — “it was reproduced many times and blown up. It wasn’t the original photograph, but it didn’t seem to register at all for somebody who loved the pope, you know, it was his face. They weren’t looking for this pristine image.”

The adoration of the fans of John Paul II reminded her of what she’d seen with Elvis devotees, so she booked a trip to Elvis Week years ago. “When we arrived, there was just so much more than I even imagined. It really solidified that there was a film, although I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, and maybe it took me 20 years to figure that out.”

But Berman kept up with it, taking still photos and using various video cameras to capture the events and the faithful who regularly showed up.

Later on, she realized that Princess Diana was another iconic presence who drew legions of fans even years after her death. “It seemed logical now that we had three different countries and three different realms of being: religion, monarchy and music.”

Crucial to the documentary are the interviews with those faithful. There was a man at the Diana memorial sites who would take the flowers that people left and tie them to the nearby fence, giving the place a more reverent feel. For Berman, the involvement of the fans changed her assumptions.

“I was really so grateful for the openness and generosity of fans. When I started out as a 21-year-old, I was much more cynical and didn’t really understand, but they invited me in so easily really, and quickly, that the cynicism disappeared pretty fast.”

Outside of Graceland, Berman met two women, Jerry and Annie, who embodied that. “I feel like that was one of those moments where they just got so emotional, but in a sincere way, and really direct, and really helped me understand how much this meant to them and affected them.”

As Berman’s quest went further, she realized how deeply the loss of these pop culture icons was felt by fans. “I was saying to a friend the other day that the words we express for grief, or the messages you see written on the wall of Graceland or in messages to Diana, can sound very cliché. Like ‘We’ll never stop loving you,’ ‘We’ll never forget you,’ ‘You’re always in our heart.’ But in that moment when it’s happening to you, it’s not cliché at all. It just feels so true, and it means so much more.”

But more than interviews with the faithful, Berman’s documentary delves into the quality of perceptions of fame. There are insights into how these global figures appeared to the public, the things they said, the expressions on their faces in unguarded moments. You may believe you know who they were, but it takes an artist like Berman to show you something you hadn’t imagined.

The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess will screen in-person at Crosstown Arts in partnership with IndieMemphis. Showtime is 7 p.m. August 14th at Crosstown Concourse. Info and tickets here.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Andy Saunders to Receive Theater Award

Andy Saunders (photo by Alan Howell).

Andy Saunders has given much of his life to the local theater community and people are taking notice.

The performer, designer, director, and teacher has been part of the scene since coming to the then-Memphis State University as a graduate student in the 1960s. That half-century-plus of devotion will be recognized at the upcoming Memphis Ostrander Awards when he will be given the 2021 Eugart Yerian Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The Ostranders primarily recognize a year’s worth of excellence in local theater productions and this year’s winners will be announced on Sunday, August 29th, at the Halloran Centre. The exception to next month’s big reveal is the lifetime achievement honor named for the director of the Memphis Little Theatre (now Theatre Memphis) from 1929 to 1961.

The announcement from the Ostranders organization said Saunders has been “an indispensable presence in the Memphis theater community. … Onstage, Saunders is celebrated not only for his nuanced and charismatic acting style but also for his beautiful, operatic singing voice.”

Saunders has directed shows around town and was at Memphis University School where he taught science, speech, religion, astronomy, photography, mechanical writing, and theater production. He also produced more than 135 shows at the school during his 38-year career before retiring in 2010.

Since his retirement, he’s designed and built dozens of shows at Germantown Community Theatre. GCT executive director Brian Everson says Saunders is the “ultimate volunteer, professional, artist, and friend. GCT, in so many ways, would not be possible without Andy.”

Tickets for the Ostranders are on sale here.

Categories
Music Theater

Grants Boost Opera Memphis Performances

30 Days of Opera on Beale St. (Credit: Opera Memphis)

Opera Memphis will soon offer more public performances throughout the year, expanding beyond its traditional schedule of three to four operas per year plus 30 Days of Opera, its month-long series of free shows throughout the city. The expansion is a result of a $500,000 grant from The Assisi Foundation of Memphis, Inc., and a dollar-for-dollar matching gift from Miriam and Charles Handorf.

The money will be used to endow the Handorf Company Artist Program, which brings emerging artists from across the country to Memphis to perform throughout the city. The opera company will continue to present its masterworks at venues like the Germantown Performing Arts Center, Playhouse on the Square, and the upcoming Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, but Opera Memphis can now present more performances annually and in additional locations as part of its effort to bring opera to every ZIP code in Memphis.

“At Opera Memphis, we pride ourselves on making opera that belongs to everyone,” said Ned Canty, Opera Memphis’ general director. “We know everyone can’t come to us, so we’ve committed to bringing opera to them – to every ZIP code in Memphis, and that requires singers with talent, charisma, and drive. The Assisi Foundation and the Handorfs are ensuring that we can always have access to singers who are true citizen-artists.”

Expanded opera performances will range from large-scale staged productions, to intimate chamber recitals, to free pop-up events in public spaces across the city. These community-focused activities fuel Opera Memphis’ goal, removing as many of the barriers to experiencing opera as possible, a process that began with the launch of its nationally recognized 30 Days of Opera series in 2012.

“Opera Memphis is an essential resource, not only in presenting professional operatic performances, but also in enriching people’s lives through music,” said Jan Young, executive director of the Assisi Foundation. “We’ve been amazed by how they’ve increased accessibility to the arts, especially during the past year, and we look forward to all the new creative and inspiring performances Opera Memphis will bring in the months to come.”

In addition to more performances, part of Opera Memphis’ expansion plans includes the company moving from its current headquarters, the Clark Opera Memphis Center at 6745 Wolf River Parkway, to a new, more centralized location in Memphis that is solely dedicated to rehearsal space and small performances.

The Assisi Foundation grant matches the first half of a $1 million matching pledge made by the Handorf family in 2019. The remaining pledge is yet to be matched, and opportunities for naming rights to various aspects of the program are still available.

Categories
News Blog Theater

Collage Dance Collective Lands $3 Million Grant

A $3 million contribution from author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and educator and philanthropist Dan Jewett has been given to Collage Dance Collective.

The gift follows the successful completion of two major efforts by the dance nonprofit: an $11 million capital campaign launched in the summer of 2019, and a $9 million center for dance that opened in December 2020.

Marcellus Harper, executive director and co-founder of Collage Dance, said, “We are indebted to our community for investing in us and preparing us for this moment and grateful to Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett for trusting organizations of color to be leaders in the equity and inclusion work we know and understand on a cellular level.”

Collage has trained more than 3,000 students in the organization’s 12-year history. The nonprofit’s internationally touring professional company launches its 12th performance season in September and was recently invited to perform on the Kennedy Center stage in Washington D.C. in June 2022.

Kevin Thomas, Collage’s artistic director and co-founder, said, “Not uncommon to organizations led by people of color, much of our work these last 11 years has been bootstrapped and built from the ground up with rarely enough financial resources. This generous gift from Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett helps us to focus more on the work and a little less on how we are going to pay the bills. It allows us to grow in our creativity, further refine our artistic product and take some artistic risk, which Black arts organizations rarely have the luxury to do because of funding inequities.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Drivers Ranked 5th Best in the Nation. Really!

(Photo by Ezequiel Garrido from Unsplash)

You read that right. But who says so? QuoteWizard is an online site for consumers to research and compare insurance. Analysts at the company do an annual survey of which cities have the worst drivers in America and which have the best.

They look at two million car insurance quotes from drivers in America’s 70 largest cities. Cities are evaluated on four factors to determine overall driver quality: accidents, speeding tickets, DUIs, and citations (running a red light, using a cellphone while driving, etc.).

Cities with the fewest dangerous driving incidents are rated as the best. To those of us routinely navigating the Poplar corridor or the shooting gallery interstates or just trying to get into and out of suburban neighborhoods, this seems out of touch with reality.

But here’s what the report says about our fair city: “Memphis is famous for the blues and rock ‘n’ roll but it’s the city’s drivers that are music to our ears. This Tennessee city didn’t make our good drivers list last year, so moving all the way up to number five is impressive. Memphis ranks as one of the 10 best in both speeding and citations and in the top 15 for the lowest numbers of accidents and DUIs.”

So much for our long-held traditions of rolling our eyes and muttering “Memphis drivers!” as we witness the tomfoolery and witless piloting all over our streets.

And who could be even better at this driving business than we are?

How about Birmingham, Alabama at No. 1, followed by St. Louis, Little Rock, and New Orleans. And we’re well ahead of Nashville (14th) and Knoxville (16th).

But what we all want to know is, which city has the worst drivers? Who has usurped the crown we all thought was ours?

Omaha, Nebraska, had more DUIs than any other city and ranked in the top 15 in every dangerous driving category. Yeah, Omaha.

Categories
Book Features Books

Jay Myers’ Rounding Third

Jay Myers lives, learns, and teaches by example. And he loves to tell about all that knowledge he’s accumulated running his own successful business.

He’s just published his third book on his adventures as a company man, first for other firms and then running his own show, a production that became so successful that he sold his business (even though he resisted, a little).

The book, being launched this week, is Rounding Third and Heading for Home: The Emotional Journey of Selling My Business and the Lessons Learned Along the Way, and the grist for his tales are the obstacles that came at him like wild pitches — yes, he loves his baseball metaphors — and how he managed to use skill and a bit of luck to turn them into hits.

Myers founded Interactive Solutions Inc. (ISI) in 1996, an “audio-visual integration firm” that developed expertise in the swiftly evolving field of videoconferencing.

He recounts that in nine months, beginning with the day he got fired from his job, he put together his business starting with no money, secured/lost financing on the way, got a melanoma diagnosis, and endured a supplier embezzlement.

It did get better. He got ISI into distance learning and telemedicine and grew the company. Still obstacles found their way. In 2003, the accounting manager embezzled $257,000 and nearly killed the business. Then the Great Recession came along and messed up everybody’s plans.

Yet Myers — now a member of the Society of Entrepreneurs — was not going to suddenly turn risk averse. When the recession hit, he doubled down and doubled sales, coming out stronger than ever. He was deft at pivoting and reinventing.

And he wasn’t planning to sell the business. There were plenty of inquiries, but when one of the top companies in the field came courting, he had to listen, and he liked what he heard.

The process was both profound and instructive for him. “Selling the business is way more than a financial transaction,” Myers says. “It is a life-changing event.” After going through it, he decided he had another book in him. “I thought, ‘How did we get here? Why us?’ And that’s when I started reflecting on the lessons learned.”

The book is as much an encouragement from a mentor (he loves doing that) as it is a how-to when it comes to selling a company. The people he wants to reach are “working so hard every day to build their business and grow it. I want them to understand how you build value in that business.”

And that could be to eventually sell it, or maybe to hand it over to the next generation or the employees.

Rounding Third is an easy read, told in Myers’ engaging voice and chock-full of insights that have value whether you want to sell a business or just run a business well or even if you aren’t in business. Life presents obstacles no matter where you are and these are adaptable tips.

“I think one of the advantages I had in writing this is that I went into a fairly good amount of detail,” he says. “I got educated about this process because I had to understand what the endgame was.”

His first book, from 2007, was Keep Swinging: An Entrepreneur’s Story of Overcoming Adversity and Achieving Small Business Success. In 2014, he published Hitting the Curveballs: How Crisis Can Strengthen and Grow Your Business.

“I feel like I’ve stepped up my game considerably with this book because it’s so instructive. The other ones were storytelling and fun and inspirational, but this one, you can take notes and a small business owner can be helped with some options.”

Meanwhile, Myers is plenty busy now that he’s not in the CEO’s chair. He’s continuing to write for an industry magazine, he’s a volunteer mentor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, and he also mentors through the Fogelman College of Business & Economics at the University of Memphis where he’s the executive in residence.

And he’s started a podcast interviewing business executives, including local luminaries such as Duncan Williams, Dr. Scott Morris, and Carolyn Chism Hardy. The podcast is titled Extra Innings, but the content is all business. Again, the die-hard New York Yankee fan loves his baseball metaphors.