Tag: TheatreWorks

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Cover Feature News

Winter Arts Guide 2023

While creating this Winter Arts Guide, compiling this long (yet not even comprehensive) list of exhibitions, shows, and various other arts events, I had the pleasure to speak with Ned Canty, Opera Memphis’ director, whose interview you’ll find in this guide. At the end of our conversation, he remarked, “Some things are worth leaving the house for.” And indeed, whether it’s an Opera Memphis show or an artist talk at the Dixon, this arts guide is here to remind you that some things are worth leaving the house for.

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Marquita Richardson will perform in January’s concert. (Photo: Courtesy Opera Memphis)

Opera Memphis’ Variations on a Theme

This year, Opera Memphis introduced a new concert series to bridge between the gap the opera-curious and the opera-enthusiast. Called Variations on a Theme, the series explores “all kinds of vocal music, not just opera,” says Ned Canty, Opera Memphis’ general director. “The goal is to move beyond [opera] into other genres of music and … to look at connections between, say, jazz and opera, blues and opera, hip-hop and opera — all of those things, which we’ve historically either done as one-offs or as online things. The idea here is to now kind of graduate to doing them live.”

Each concert, Canty says, revolves around a different theme, complementing concurrent programming by other local arts organizations. In October, Opera Memphis’ first Variations on a Theme incorporated musical pieces inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to coincide with Ballet Memphis’ run of the ballet version. The organization also partnered with Memphis Symphony Orchestra in November and will partner with Theatre Memphis in April. “We’re trying to rebuild some of these connections that were so robust before the pandemic that I think we almost took them for granted,” says Canty.

For January’s Variations on a Theme, Opera Memphis will partner with TONE for an “In the Words of Langston Hughes”-themed performance, which will include spoken word and Hughes’ poems set to music. Unlike Opera Memphis’ collaborations with the aforementioned arts organizations which focus on coinciding programming, this concert will look to a future project with TONE. The objective, Canty says, is for Opera Memphis’ January show to inspire TONE artists to create new music. “We have some money and we will choose the number of artists who are part of TONE’s mission and pay them to create new works, new sort of short songs, that reflect their experiences and the experiences of Memphis.” The hope is for Opera Memphis to then use these new works in future performances, such as its 30 Days of Opera.

Overall, Variations on a Theme, Canty says, is “a compact, enjoyable experience to maybe meet some new music, maybe hear some old favorites, maybe meet some new people. Having an intimate musical experience that you’re sharing with other people, that really is, at its base, what we’re trying to remind people of and how special that is.”

Variations on a Theme: In the Words of Langston Hughes, Opera Memphis Headquarters, 216 S. Cooper St., Saturday, January 27, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, January 28, 3 p.m., $25.

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A NewWorks winner, Don’t Hydroplane opened Playhouse’s season. (Photo: Courtesy Playhouse on the Square)

NewWorks@TheWorks: Greater Illinois

In January, Memphis will be treated to the world premiere of Greater Illinois, thanks to Playhouse on the Square’s NewWorks@TheWorks Playwriting Competition. The play, written by Steven Strafford, is set in a near future Chicago. “In theory, it’s dystopian,” says Savannah Miller, director of NewWorks. “It’s a play basically about what happens if we turn a blind eye to injustices, and how far those justices can go.”

Strafford’s play was one of two winners of 2022’s competition, with Bryan Curtis’ comedy Don’t Hydroplane being the other, having premiered in July. Both of them received a prize of $750 and premieres in Playhouse’s season. “And they’re billed in our season right next to the regional premieres of Catch Me if You Can and Your Arm’s Too Short to Box with God,” Miller says, “so that’s kind of special in and of itself.”

For the NewWorks competition, established in 2013, Playhouse solicits submissions beginning in January, and a “panel of local directors, actors, and designers carefully select six plays to be part of a staged reading series. Of those six plays, two are chosen to be fully produced as part of an upcoming season to be presented onstage and streamed nationwide,” reads the submission guidelines.

“It’s pretty open compared to other playwriting competitions,” Miller says, “so it kind of gives a lot of newer playwrights a chance to get their work out there. … A lot of times once you’ve had that first production you can apply for publishing and for other opportunities, as well.”

Already, Playhouse has announced the two winners of 2023’s competition: LaDarrion Williams’ Coco Queens and Dianne Nora’s Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin. This year saw a historic number of submissions, with over 500 works entered for consideration.

Yet, the playwrights aren’t the only ones who benefit from the competition. Memphis does, too. “It’s great to have something like this in Memphis, in the Mid-South,” says Miller. “We’re bringing these cutting-edge plays that have stories that people need to hear and narratives that people may not always get exposed to, especially in the South.”

For the competition, Miller says, “We try to choose scripts that are important narratives and that uplift historically underrepresented narratives. Memphis is a very diverse city. We want works that speak to that and speak to the Memphis experience.”

The upcoming play Greater Illinois, for instance, touches on themes of gentrification, sexuality, race, and intersectionality. “I think that’s a very good question for folks nowadays to be thinking, so I hope people learn a lot from it or leave the theater with questions.”

Greater Illinois, TheatreWorks@TheSquare, 2085 Monroe, January 12-28, $25.

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Kaylyn Webster, Light Show in July, 2023; Oil on canvas; Courtesy of the artist

“Kaylyn Webster: Commune (verb)”

Just a year after earning her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Kaylyn Webster has celebrated her first solo exhibition at a museum. Her show, titled “Commune (verb),” opened in October at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens.

“I remember like it was just yesterday, coming to field trips here,” she says. “I went to Overton High School and Colonial Middle, and we would come up here all the time and look at other people’s work, and now it’s mine up here. It’s insane to me.”

The pieces in the show, Webster explains, are portraits of her family members and close friends. “I want to humanize the figures that I painted and hopefully to also humanize people of color in general,” she says. “I want [viewers] to want to know more about these people and their stories.”

For her paintings, Webster shares intimate moments with her loved ones, from the jubilant with her nephews playing horns, clad in Nikes and Jordans, to the more vulnerable with her mother recovering from Covid at the height of the pandemic. The paintings themselves are large in scale, practically larger than the artist herself. “I really want you to feel like you’re a part of these intimate moments,” Webster says.

In composing her works, Webster channels the styles and techniques of the art she learned about in her Western art courses, the very art that historically excluded Black men and women. “I love the style of it, the realism,” she says. “I love the symbolism and the deep narratives and the scale of it. I just wanted to represent people of color using those techniques.”

Yet she adds, “I always want at least one figure looking out at viewers to engage them more in the piece, and to challenge that trend that I saw in art history of Black servants and maids just not being able to look out. It’s almost like a tool to dehumanize them, so I want the stares to re-humanize the figures.”

Only one painting in the show features a person Webster does not know, a woman who upon meeting her in her studio space at Arrow Creative handed Webster a photograph of herself. “She wasn’t going to do anything with the photo, so she allowed me to paint it,” Webster says. “I feel like you can get to know her through her smile, the wrinkles in her face, her hands. I don’t know this woman, but I was able to connect with her. I guess that’s an example of myself participating in the effect that I want to have on other people as they see the show. … I just hope people can feel the emotions for these figures that I feel for them in real life and take that empathy and respect that they have from this exhibition and extend it to people they encounter in everyday life.”

“Kaylyn Webster: Commune (verb),” Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 4339 Park, on display through January 7.

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ON DISPLAY

“Welcome In”
Sheet Cake’s inaugural exhibition.
Sheet Cake, on display through January 6

“Black American Portraits”
The exhibition chronicles the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, on display through January 7

“Black Artists in America: From Civil Rights to the Bicentennial”
The exhibition considers the ways in which Black American artists responded to the issues of the 1950s to 1970s.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, on display through January 14

“The Molasses Man & Other Delta Tales”
An anthology of stories based on Ahmad George’s life and experiences.
Crosstown Arts, on display through January 21

“Days”
Exhibition of Noah Thomas ​Miller’s work.
Crosstown Arts, on display through January 21

“Hued”
Exhibition of Rachelle Thiewes’ vibrant jewelry.
Metal Museum, on display through January 28

“China Blues: The World of Blue & White Ceramics”
Spectacular works of Chinese art, including jades, paintings, textiles, and ceramics.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, on display through May 2024

“Marking Time”
Bold landscapes by Remy Miller and sensitive and introspective paintings by Joe Morzuch.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, January 14-April 14

“It’s a Memphis Thang”
New works by Anna Kelly and Calvin Farrar.
Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s Episcopal School, January 19-March 7

“Everyday People: Snapshots of the Black Experience”
Exhibition showcasing Memphis artist Eric Echols’ photo collection of twentieth-century African Americans.
Museum of Science & History, January 20-July 14

Paul Wonner, Model Drinking Coffee, 1964; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

“Breaking the Rules”
Paintings, watercolors, and drawings by Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, January 28-March 31

Curtis Arima’s Shifting Hierarchy Royal Blue Brooch (Photo: Radical Jewelry Makeover)

“Radical Jewelry Makeover: The Artist Project”
Ethical Metalsmiths’ innovative community mining project repurposes jewelry to create sustainable art.
Metal Museum, February 4-April 14

ON STAGE

Company
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s groundbreaking musical comedy.
Orpheum Theatre, January 2-7

Viva Elvis Birthday Pops Concert
The Memphis Symphony Orchestra presents their annual concert featuring the King’s music.
Graceland Soundstage, January 6, 7 p.m.

ABBA Revisited brings ABBA’s ever-catchy songs to BPACC’s stage. (Photo: Courtesy BPACC)

ABBA Revisited
Kick off 2024 with the music of ABBA.
Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center, January 13, 3 p.m., 7 p.m.

A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play.
Theatre Memphis, January 19-February 4

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Journey through Willy Wonka’s factory in this fantastical musical.
Playhouse on the Square, January 19-February 18

Iris Collective: Small Business Series
Music Box instructors and Iris musicians present a lively evening fusing classical and popular music.
Music Box, January 19, 6:30 p.m.

The Children
Lucy Kirkwood’s play presents a very real, post-nuclear world.
Germantown Community Theatre, January 19-February 4

Guitar Ninja Trace Bundy
Internationally acclaimed guitar virtuoso Trace Bundy must be seen, not just heard.
Buckman Arts Center at St. Mary’s Episcopal School, January 26, 7 p.m.

The Lehman Trilogy
The rise and fall of one of the most influential families in modern finance.
The Circuit Playhouse, January 26-February 11

A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams’ postwar drama.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company, February 1-18

Confederates
Dominique Morisseau’s exacting new play explores the reins that racial and gender bias still hold over American educational systems today.
Hattiloo Theatre, February 2-25

Les Miserables
One of the most celebrated musicals in theatrical history.
Orpheum Theatre, February 2-11

Rise
Collage Dance’s hallmark ballet.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, February 3-4

The Glass Menagerie
A Southern classic favorite.
Theatre Memphis, February 9-25

Memphis Songwriters Series
Discover your next favorite local artist.
Halloran Centre, February 15, 7 p.m.

A Bite of Memphis
Lone Tree Live delves into the heart and soul of Memphis by exploring the vibrant food culture of our city.
Evergreen Theatre, February 16-March 3

The Squirrels
A boundary-pushing, darkly satirical look at wealth inequality.
New Moon Theatre Company, February 16-March 3

Orchestra Unplugged: Mozart’s The Magic Flute
A 45-minute version of Mozart’s most fun and fantastical opera with Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Opera Memphis.
Halloran Centre, February 22, 7:30 p.m.

Afro-Latino Night Fiesta
Las Bompleneras Unplugged will showcase Afro-Puertorican Bomba and Plena music.
Memphis Music Room, February 23, 6:30 p.m.

Succession
Succession explores the world of Black theater.
Hattiloo Theatre, February 23-March 24

Winter Mix
Ballet Memphis’ repertoire production.
Playhouse on the Square, February 23-25

Trinity Irish Dance Company
A performance that will redefine what is possible for Irish music and dance.
Germantown Performing Arts Center, February 24, 8 p.m.

The Sound Inside
This play explores the limits of what one person can ask of another.
Quark Theatre, March 1-17

Awadagin Pratt: Piano Prowess
An unforgettable evening with the renowned pianist.
Germantown Performing Arts Center, March 2, 7:30 p.m.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Don’t Hydroplane at TheatreWorks

Don’t Hydroplane explores mundanity in the wake of tragedy. (Photo: D’Angelo Connell Photography | DC The Snapper)

The intimate play, Don’t Hydroplane, written by Bryan Curtis, held its world premiere at TheatreWorks @ the Square on July 7th. Like almost any opening night, the production stuttered a few times, but the heartfelt performances from the cast made this show one worth seeing. Curtis’ script quietly highlights how families navigate grief and, less quietly, how grief can be pushed aside by societal customs and matters of practicality.

Martha Jones plays Annagram Woodard, the more reserved of two sisters who have just lost their mother. The other sister, Betty Queen Petty (often referred to as “BQ”), played by Sally Stover, is a woman people in the South might refer to as a “pistol.” She has a lot to say and expects everyone around her to be ready to listen. The play opens with the two sisters meeting at the local funeral home, where the eccentric and loquacious funeral director Karry Matlock, played by Curtis C. Jackson, explains — eventually — that there is an issue with their mother’s burial. There’s no room for her in her originally planned plot.

Most of the play centers around this conflict: Where should Annagram and BQ lay their mother to rest? The actual dilemma lies under the surface: Annagram is a people-pleaser and BQ is a bulldozer. Don’t Hydroplane follows their struggle to unpack decades of entrenched family dynamics and drama while also trying to solve a problem with no clear-cut solution.

Director Cleavon Meabon IV said in a statement, “Don’t Hydroplane is a family piece. It’s a comedy, but it’s comedy alongside drama, and I think we all can relate to how much we all need to laugh as a family.” Much of the comedic relief within the main familial unit of the show comes from Jesse Woodard, played by Cary Vaughn. Jesse is a showboat and has been doted upon to such a degree that he carries in every movement the self assurance of being adored. Alternatively, his sister, Laura Leigh, played by Lena Wallace-Black, seems to be somewhat of a black sheep of the family, not that she appears to mind in the slightest. Vaughn and Wallace-Black artfully balance the tone of a sibling rivalry, yet it’s a rivalry without animosity. Every brother/sister scene carries with it the warmth of familiarity.

Much of the play is composed of simple conversations, with the occasional heightened emotional outburst providing levels of both hilarity and very real depictions of the many facets of grief. These moments lift the play out of what could be an occasionally contrived slice-of-life piece and bring it into the territory of something more poignant.

Jones’ performance as Annagram is quiet and unassuming — much like the character herself — until the final act, where both the character and actor suddenly come alive in a burst of color. Annagram finally makes her stand, insisting, “I do care,” and Jones’ delivery of this pivotal moment was flawlessly executed.

Don’t Hydroplane is a play that almost everyone should be able to relate to. Grief affects us all, and part of becoming an adult is realizing that mundane things like wills and funeral arrangements will insist on being taken care of even in the midst of the incredulity of loss.

Many of the characters portrayed in this show feel like people the average rural resident will recognize. The neighborhood busybody, or your high school English teacher’s wife, or even your obstinate family member who insists they’re “nothin’ if not open-minded.” The normality of the characters is balanced by the interchangeable Creek Chorus, who frequently switch between side characters in another element of comedy that breaks up the tension of the heavy subject matter.

The final note is thankfully one of peace. There is catharsis for anyone who has experienced loss, and the simple joy of seeing death and grieving tackled in an uplifting manner. Meabon said, “I really want people to walk away with a sense of comfort.” This hope comes through in the overall spirit of the performance.

Don’t Hydroplane runs through July 23rd at TheatreWorks.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Listen Up: Lavendear

Lavendear perform at a Halloween show. (Credit: Dalton Miller)

Lavendear kept Joseph Baker from having the blues during the 2020 quarantine.

“It started as a solo project I had been working on during Covid while I was staying at home,” says Baker, 18. “It was just the result of me being in my room and needing to write songs during that time period we had.”

That project blossomed into an indie rock band, which, in addition to Baker on guitar and vocals, includes Olivre Heck, 17, on bass and guitar, and Joey Eddins, 16, on drums.

Acting, not music, was Baker’s first creative outlet. Instead of a guitar, Baker carried a staff in his favorite role as “Little Bog Man” on stage when he was 11 years old.

His parents were part of the Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe at TheatreWorks, so Baker was exposed to theater at 3 or 4 years old.  “Little Bog Man,” a character in an original production Attorney/Joker: Part Sign, was a “very peculiar character. Lived in the woods in the bog. He came into town and caused a ruckus. I loved that character. He was like Mr. Tumnus from Narnia. I had a beard and I was dressed in very nature-driven clothes, a wreath around my head. I was barefoot.”

Baker got into music at the Rock and Romp summer camp. “They had local musicians just teaching kids how to play instruments.”

He loved it. “Playing drums was exciting to me. And the idea of being with a group of people and putting a song together and playing it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Baker was a die-hard David Bowie fan at the time. “I would carry my David Bowie CD around with me even if I wasn’t listening to it in the car. [The Rise and Fall of] Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I would just open it up and look at the lyrics. I just loved David Bowie as a kid. He was definitely my favorite. I love that he was just all about putting on a show. And every Bowie era and album was so distinctive and masterfully crafted into this cacophony of sound and visuals.”

Baker’s first Rock and Romp show was playing drums with a “makeshift” band at Young Avenue Deli. “I think it went fine. We played one song. And the crowd made some noise. So, it must have been OK for some 12 year olds on stage.”

He was hooked. “After that, music was everything.”

Baker began going to Goner Records and Shangri-La Records on weekends with his parents. “I would just get Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, and all those old hardcore punk band records. I was in love with that scene.

 “I was totally in love with Dischord Records, that really hardcore and post-hardcore scene. All those great bands doing it all themselves. They were the definition of what punk is: People getting together, making music, and making it happen. They were pressing their own records, starting their own labels, making their own merch. No big record labels influencing their art.”

His parents, who were more into Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, were supportive, but they “weren’t really into this weird punk scene I was into,” Baker says, adding, “I was making my own T-shirts for bands that weren’t around anymore. I was taking Sharpies and making my own Bad Brains shirt in my room.”

That summer before he went to White Station Middle School, Baker “so desperately wanted to be in a band and playing music with people.”

He wanted “that hunger for the feeling of pure happiness when you’re playing music and you look out and you see people smiling. Which is a feeling I didn’t really get to feel until this last summer. But the idea was so wonderful. My young mind just needed it.”

Baker made posters saying he was looking for a drummer. “And I put them up everywhere. All over Cooper-Young, Goner Records, Shangri-La. I put up these posters everywhere saying I was looking for a drummer who wanted to do punk and metal music.”

(Credit: Joseph Baker)

He only got one response, but it didn’t work out. “He was definitely more interested in doing progressive rock.”

Baker began writing songs at the beginning of sixth grade. “I know I wrote some songs about Star Wars just as a writing exercise.”

But, he admits, “I’m a huge nerd. That was familiar material when you’re 12. You don’t have many experiences. Unless I want to write about ‘I don’t want to do my homework.’”

He described those songs as  “punk songs with a pop sensibility,” Baker says. “Almost power pop. Elvis Costello meets Bad Brains.”

He began working on a song project that he called “Guilloteen,” he says. “With the added irony I wasn’t a teen yet. I was still 12 years old. I so desperately wanted to be this punk rock teenager. Ian MacKaye is who I wanted to be. I was a funny kid.”

Baker recorded four songs on his Tascam dp-008ex eight track recorder. “I emailed them to myself and burned them to a CD and made five copies and gave them to my mom and my dad and a few friends.”

“One Punk Rock Jesus” was about MacKaye. “It’s the only one I can still kind of remember how it went.”

Baker then joined “this weird internet community of kids that just liked metal music. It was a Google hangout chat called ‘Metal.’ We all met in a YouTube comment section and all commented on our emails and created this group chat.”

He and a member, Theo Charlesworth, “would listen to songs together and talk about them. He introduced me to pretty much all my favorite music now. Bands like Alcest and Dance Gavin Dance.”

They recorded Ephemeral Eternity, an EP of songs they wrote. “It was definitely a very post-hardcore kind of like a concept EP about that transitional period between middle and high school.”

And, he says, “We used a lot of imagery and words that made it seem a lot more whimsical and magical than it actually was. That was my first band. It was the first time I really sat down and wrote songs with somebody else. It taught me a lot about working with other people and taught me how much I love writing music with other people. Telling stories with other people.”

During his freshman year at Crosstown High School, Baker formed a Christian metalcore band, Victimless Disconnect. “We only played one gig at Visible Music College. It went pretty well.”

He was in church camp at the time. “The other members of the band were also Christian, so it made sense to follow that direction.”

The band broke up six months later when one of the members moved away. “I took a little bit of a break from  playing music. I would sit in my room and learn songs I liked, but I didn’t really write until quarantine happened and I had nothing to do.

“I originally wanted to do a five song EP kind of like Shoegaze dream pop songs. I was a big fan of bands like Ride and Alcest. I love pretty-sounding music and that’s the kind of music I wanted to make.”

He knew he wanted “Lavendear”  as the name of his project. “The smell of lavender is one I’ve always associated with comfort because in my house we had lavender candles or lavender soap, lavender laundry detergent. That was what I was used to. This tranquil scent of lavender.”

Baker thought “Lavendear” sounded cool and “read” very well. “And kind of reminded me of bands like Hopesfall. It had a very nice ring to it.”

He wrote five songs, but “Meet Sleep,” an instrumental, and “Balloon,” are the only two songs Lavendear now plays.

“Balloon” is about the “disjointed summer” he went through that year, Baker says. “Things are all over the place. And we’re all young and not really sure what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Adolescence was a beautifully confusing time.”

He asked Eddins, who he met last April at Society Skatepark & Coffee, if he wanted to play drums. “He instantly came up with a brilliant drum part. I was like, ‘Now, we would just be a band. No point in being a solo project.’”

Their first gig was at Society Skatepark & Coffee. “It was more just hanging out and playing music on the little mini ramp.”

But, he says, “After the first show Joey and I were like, ‘This can be something real.’ So, we decided to just start working really hard on writing songs.”

Baker wanted Heck, who went to school with him, in the band, but, he says, “I was nervous to approach him. This guy is so talented and cool. I texted him, ‘Hey, man. You want to come jam with us?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ Just very joyful and excited. “

The jam was a success and Heck joined the band. “It worked out phenomenally. It felt like there was a lot of magic going on in that room.”

“I had heard about them on social media,” says Heck, who also goes to Crosstown High School. “Some of my friends had seen them already.”

He was impressed when he saw the band perform at a house show. “It was just different. It was new to me. Joseph was someone I hadn’t really talked to much at school in the year and a half I had been going to school with him. I didn’t realize he had written all these cool songs. And some of them he had even sent me a couple of months before and I blew them off a little bit.”

He didn’t have time to listen to them at the time. “I didn’t realize what they were.”

The jam session went great, he says. “It was really easy to play bass to the other guitar parts Joseph wrote.”

And he found he was compatible playing bass to Eddins’ drumming.

Heck also writes songs for Lavendear. His song, “Older,” will be released December 10th. “It’s kind of a personal song about being cast out of someone’s life for wronging them. And thinking you’ve changed over time. But you haven’t done anything to actually make that change. You’ve just gotten older.”

Eddins, the youngest member of the band, likes the fact Lavendear plays to a wider audience than some other young bands. “All the bands we’re friends with are older,” he says. “They’re all in college. We’re all in high school. I’m 16. A junior in high school. Christian Brothers High School. That brings a whole different audience, which I think is really cool.”

And, he says, “I love the music we make. We make a variety of music. So, we have some faster songs to some slower songs. A ton of different music.”

Lavendear currently is working on a full-length album. The group has released three singles, including “Pitch Perfect Penguin Mirror,” which Baker describes as “a catchy little power pop song about I guess, not to sound cliche, but just standing up for yourself and not letting whatever people say get to you.”

Making music was something Baker never had to justify to anybody.  “Everyone was just very excited. Whatever negativity there was I never listened to.”

Listen to “Pitch Perfect Penguin Mirror” and “Shadow Man” on Spotify.

Lavendear will perform at an all ages show December 6th at Hi Tone at 282-284 North Cleveland Street. Doors open at 7 p.m. Cover is $10. Also performing are $2030M and Beneviolence. Public Strain is headlining.

Lavendear also will perform at an all ages show December 10th at Society Skatepark & Coffee at 583 Scott Street. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 8 p.m. Also performing are Hotel Fiction and headliner Arlie.

Lavendear (Credit: Dalton Miller)

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Way the Cookie Crumbles: Melissa Walker’s Macaronagerie Memphis

Photo: Justin Fox Burks

Nomadic attorney and thespian in risk management bakes her mama’s love into every bite at Macaronagerie. Or so the story goes as Melissa Walker, owner of the Macaronagerie Memphis bakery, explains it.

By the time Walker was in high school, she had lived in four states and a baker’s half-dozen cities. Her family moved around a lot when she was young. The constants in her childhood home — wherever that might be — were that her dad went to work and her mama was an amazing cook.

“Mama showed me how to cook and bake for as long as I can remember. I have never taken her for granted. Growing up, I just presumed that everyone’s mama was an amazing cook.” Walker’s smile turns to a grimace as if remembering an instance to the contrary. “I discovered that was not the case,” her smile returns, “and I learned to appreciate her even more if that is possible.”

Melissa Walker bakes a menagerie of sweets. (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Pie in the Sky

One of the items Walker learned to make with her mother early on was custard for a coconut cream pie, her dad’s favorite. Avoiding making a sweet scrambled egg pie was a sacred task in her home. She learned to whisk a smooth custard unlike anyone else, save Mama. She remembers that Southern Living magazines and annual cookbooks filled the shelves in her childhood kitchens and were used frequently for new ideas, recipes, and just for the fun of reading. She recalls sticky notes, bookmarks, and handwritten notes sticking out of them, many of which she claims are still there today. Often, the end result of a recipe would not be as sleek and beautiful as the glossy photo in the cookbook, but the taste test always passed with flying colors.

It was in the kitchens of her childhood where she learned how much love and stress goes into preparing special treats for those you love, those you do not yet know, those you barely know as acquaintances, and even perfect strangers you will never meet.

After leaving home, Walker graduated from the University of Memphis as an English major where she found one class in particular suited her taste for learning like no other, a “Food in Literature” class.

“Babette’s Feast and Like Water for Chocolate, along with other literature related to food, gave me another insight into how personal food is,” Walker remembers.

But the energetic English major decided to table her love of food for the moment and attend law school at Ole Miss University. Walker not only graduated law school but also passed the Tennessee and Mississippi Board of Law bar exams at the same time. She worked as a practicing attorney for two years with a small firm in Hernando before realizing that being an attorney is about as miserable a job as you can possibly hope for. She decided to look for a non-law firm career where her education and skills could be utilized without having to maintain billable hours. This decision led her to the risk management field. She found it a great fit dealing with insurance claims, safety policy issues, litigation management, and “attorney wrangling.”

“All this really means,” says Walker, “is that I translate property management to attorneys and translate tort claim legal proceedings to property managers.”

Out of the Frying Pan

Finally, an old itch needed to be scratched — or rather, baked from scratch, as in cakes and cupcakes. Walker took a cake-decorating class to satisfy her appetite for the culinary arts. A longtime admiration of the artistry in making beautifully decorated cakes and a fascination with tricks of the trade led her to the class during a time when the cake and cupcake industry was growing exponentially.

Instead of being a way to manage stress, it became a source of stress.

“I realized that there was only so much I could accomplish with my skill set and resources,” said Walker. “It was entirely too stressful of a side hustle to happily maintain.”

In the presence of her overflowing effervescence, it is hard to imagine Walker as ever being stressed. But after working so hard to get a cake just right, she found herself fervently, incessantly praying that no one would run into her car during transport. Piddling along at five miles per hour so every bump in the road does not jostle the cake apart was too much stress. Now Walker says that every time she gets behind someone driving unreasonably slow, she does not get frustrated. Instead, she imagines that maybe they are transporting a cake and drives carefully behind them as cover so no one else will come along and rear-end them.

Once again, Walker tabled her aspirations for baking.

Crumbles

That was many years ago, and she has since returned to Memphis, her city of origin. Walker considers Memphis her home and has always lived here, even when she didn’t physically live here. In fact, she has hung her apron continuously in Memphis since 2001. She now thrives in risk management and has battered up for baking — again.

The inspiration for her path back to the kitchen was the one thing Mama always said about food, “So much love goes into loving the world with the food you make for them.”

This time, she started making macarons and cookies as a challenge when she found herself looking for a creative outlet as recently as two years ago. Her boyfriend, Kinon Keplinger, was working 20-hour days as a restaurant manager helping to get a new store open. She found herself with a lot of free time to look up recipes and make desserts for him to eat when he got home. Then she filled more hours by watching more Food Network and reading more social media posts about finding one’s passion. It was then that she decided her passion was to learn how to make something difficult in the realm of baking.

As it turns out, macarons are pretty much at the top of the difficult-to-make cookie list. Recalling the aspects of cake making that proved to be enjoyable, she realized that macarons also lent themselves to be amenable to a more artistic and creative path than your average cookie. And without the colossal stress of a cake.

She has folded her mama’s words about food into her own expanded version, “Preparing food is such a deeply personal endeavor. Your feelings of love, your feelings of stress/anxiety, your sadness, your resentment, your anger, your excitement, your passion, all manifests itself somehow in your cooking, whether you realize it or not. Your cooking is you.”

Perhaps her expanded beliefs are from her favorite college class, Food in Literature. From where hardly matters as Walker’s fervor is now insuppressible.

She continues, “The food you prepare is an expression of love and made with the intention of filling the people you care about with the sustenance you created. You are giving them something that will become a part of their bodies; something that will uplift their souls and bring them happiness and joy, something that will become them. That is a great personal undertaking and responsibility that should be handled with the utmost care.”

(Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Selling Like Hotcakes

Walker tested and honed her home recipes for macarons and cookies. But it was through weekend work as a hostess at Restaurant Iris that her fringe familiarity with a commercial kitchen put her on the path to retail sales. She gives that credit to Chef Kelly English, owner of Restaurant Iris, and his trout amandine recipe. English shelved the popular entrée prior to the 2018 renovations to his upscale restaurant. His decision to place it back on the menu once Iris reopened was the inspiration for the magic ingredient Walker added to her cookies.

Intoxicated by the aroma of the brown butter being made for the dish, she experimented with the brown butter technique on her own. Then added it to her cookies. She was blown away at the first taste and kept making more. She brought them to the restaurant on weekends when she worked for everyone to try. Everyone loved them. The cookie-baking side-gig blossomed from there. English was so impressed, he asked if Walker would like to sell the cookies at Fino’s.

Currently, Fino’s is the only retail outlet where Walker sells her treats under the name Macaronagerie Memphis. In addition to chocolate chip cookies, Walker keeps the corner deli stocked with edible cookie dough and seasonal macarons of various sorts throughout the year. Almost every item has the intoxicating brown butter component. Though she keeps Fino’s stocked as best she can, Walker says that custom orders are coming in regularly. In fact, the bulk of her business now comes from custom orders and events, which can get in the way of keeping Fino’s stocked with her confections.

Confectionary Curtain Call

In addition to holding a law degree, working in risk management, baking, hostessing on weekends, and always looking fabulous like a modern June Cleaver, Walker is active in theater. She even has a few commercials under her apron belt. Because of this tie to acting and theater, she did pre-pandemic custom orders for opening night festivities of theater performances. Fully edible ink pots and quill pens were custom baked for the February 2020 opening performance of Quills at TheatreWorks and the subsequent opening performance of The Book of Will performed at Playhouse on the Square. Walker even created custom chocolate raspberry macarons for Quark Theatre’s opening of What Happens to the Hope at the End of the Evening. The lockdown last year put a crimp in that plan as well as Little Shop of Horrors opening at Playhouse on the Square last May. Walker had planned to create some edible Little Audries. For those not familiar, the irony is that Little Audrey is the people-eating plant in this musical. Tables turned.

(Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Piece of Cake

Back on track, trolley tracks to be specific, Walker is making custom confections for the upcoming opening of Hello Dolly! at Theatre Memphis. The production opens on August 27th and will run through September 19th. It will be the first performance for Theatre Memphis with a live audience since the Covid lockdown in March 2020.

Walker and Keplinger — who, along with being her boyfriend, is a fellow thespian — landed roles in an upcoming production of Clue at Bartlett Performing Arts Center. The performance is based on the popular board game of the same name and will run November 19th-21st. Both thespians will play suspects, Mrs. White and Professor Plum, respectively. Though it seems custom confections may be in order, Walker is just not sure she will be able to bake and perform, adding, “We shall see.”

According to Walker, this fairly steady stream of corporate events, weddings, baby showers, and custom orders all run smoothly largely in part due to “tremendously supportive friends who make the execution of this venture possible at all and my boyfriend who is also talented in the kitchen, knowledgeable about the restaurant/food industry, and so supportive of me being successful.”

She also credits Todd English, who manages Fino’s, and Chef Kelly English with providing the foundation for growth that she needed to expand. Their belief in her treats and their trusted, candid feedback is invaluable to her, and she is grateful for their support and encouragement. Kelly English even cleared a path for Walker to make macarons with Priscilla Presley for an Elegant Southern Style event at the Graceland complex.

Though it has been said to never trust a skinny chef, in this case, it is perfectly acceptable to do just that. Walker comes by her fine fettle through hard work. Her secret? She’s been going to the same boot camp fitness program for over 15 years. Staying busy with a dizzying amount of interests doesn’t hurt either. She got the over-achieving gene from her mama who, in addition to being a great cook, mother, and homemaker, also worked as a nurse.

Now it all makes sense, right? Nomadic attorney and thespian in risk management bakes her mama’s love into every bite at Macaronagerie.

For custom orders, Walker can be reached through Facebook (Macaronagerie Memphis), on Instagram (macaronagerie_memphis), and by email, macaronageriememphis@gmail.com.

Categories
Cover Feature News

2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

OMGWTF: Sister Agnes is Back and Bleeding All Over Theatreworks

CREDIT: Chase Yarwood-Gustafson

Chase Yarwood-Gustafson

Susan Brindley, Mariah Chase and Kim Justis Eikner

To understand Agnes of God, a “psychological/supernatural thriller” from 1979, maybe it’s helpful to look a little harder at the more ancient and epic battle it represents. On the surface, John Pielmeier’s drama seems to be a psychobabble-laden tug-o-war between believers and a damaged, analytical mind fallen away from the church. Structured primarily as a series of arguments between a nun with secrets and a shrink with secrets, Agnes of God may not be about the innocent, simple-minded young sister who appears to have murdered an unwanted baby. Sure, that’s the show’s sensational hook, but this highly actable, if frequently problematic script, wants to grow into a full throated Platonic dialogue rehashing the 500-year-old grudge match between empirically verifiable “facts” and that which was once determined by the church to be “truth.”

Even with all the news about “fake news” we take the primacy of facts for granted these days, but all in all, they’re a relatively new concept. As emerging sciences elevated empirical knowledge during the Renaissance the very idea of fact-based learning challenged and chipped away at the church’s supreme authority. Progressive minds were often imprisoned or excommunicated or worse for subverting “truth” but little by little all absolutes buckled under the terrible weight of relativism and “facts” emerged as the frequently assaulted measure of everything that matters. To this end, Agnes of God seeds its struggle between faith and scientific inquiry with doubt, bias, and a great deal of manipulative woo-woo! A critic writing for The Chicago Reader once called it the “anti-Inherit the Wind,” and while I might be a bit more charitable, the description’s not so far off base that I’m not going to appropriate it. And like the American criminal court system, the script’s apparent aim isn’t to prove that divine miracles can happen, only to insert a gore-spattered habit’s worth of reasonable doubt.

More frustrating: As the play’s ancient polemic reveals itself, the more apparent it becomes that Agnes, a helpless creature who’s been raped by her author if by nobody else, has little meaning to either side of this debate outside of how she might serve self interest or self-preservation. To that end she’s both the title character, and a walking, talking McGuffin. This makes it exceedingly difficult to like anybody in this play enough to care about who wins the fierce debate. It’s pretty evident from the beginning that whether Agnes is declared competent to stand trial or not, it’s certainly not going to be this doe-eyed and free-bleeding jumble of ignorance and anxiety who may or may not be a virgin mother and saint.

What Agnes of God does that we can all be thankful for is provide three women with some extremely showy acting opportunities. New Moon Theatre’s cast and crew delivers all the fireworks you could possibly hope for. It’s a remarkable convergence of talent with Kim Justis stepping into the part of Dr. Livingston, Susan Brindley as Mother Miriam, and Mariah Chase as Sister Agnes.  Bringing these three strong performers together under the direction of Pamela Poletti, is a special occasion to be celebrated, even if the material’s more sensational than satisfactory.

That’s a fact. 

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

New Comedy Takes Us “Back When Mike Was Kate.”

Astrid and Kate

There’s a specific Chicago train platform where Howard goes to connect with his past. That’s were he meets Mike and, after first mistaking him for a panhandler, it’s where Howard learns that this bearded transit stop vagrant is the same person who broke his heart four years ago. Only back then Mike was a woman named Kate.

Filled with questions, Howard becomes immediately desperate to rekindle romance where there was never more than friendship in the first place. It’s awkward for a number of reasons, but primarily, because he’s theoretically cis/hetero and already married to Astrid, an unsatisfied artist with a “stripper name” and a history of dancing her problems away. Howard’s basically a nice, confused doof of a guy, who wants to make his fantasy crush work out for everybody without hurting anybody, or making things weird for the people close to him. He does both of the things he doesn’t want to do pretty quickly.

How weird does it get, you ask? Aprons and fuzzy handcuffs weird.

Back When Mike Was Kate is a promising little play that might be better as a quirky little film with art direction bordering on OCD and a vintage indie rock soundtrack. Ben Kemper’s script whips elements of mystery, suspense, coming of age, and farce into a kind of romantic comedy with easy charms that almost make up for stiff expository dialogue and plot points that test belief. Also, Astrid’s not very likable, Howard is either clueless or selectively insensitive, and while Mike’s presented as something of a pleasant cypher, Kate’s so cool and complete it’s hard to imagine why he might want to enter/re-enter these evidently unhappy lives. 

Howard and Kate

In keeping with past POTS@TheWorks premieres, Back When Mike Was Kate contains top notch  performances by a tight ensemble comprised of Joshua LaShomb (Mike), David Hammons (Howard), Brooke Papritz (Astrid), and Ronnie Karimnia (Cameron the transit guy), with a terrific performance by R. Franklin Koch,* whose Kate is the grounded “old soul” tying the whole play together.

Mike/Kate may be the titular character but Howard and Astrid are the play’s dueling protagonists. It may even be Astrid’s play, ultimately, though she’s also the least developed among principle characters. 

Director Claire Rutkauskas’ production doesn’t draw hard lines between present action and things that happened four years ago. It’s only a short temporal span, sure, but a disproportionately big leap forward in terms of where all the characters are in life. This huge juxtaposition of time-versus-change brings a faintly surreal and potentially lovely edge, like something by Sarah Ruhl, minus the flights of poetry. These possibilities are unfortunately never rigorously explored in a show that tidies up and refines threads that might want to be woolly and teased out.

Following deliberately provocative scripts like Crib, extraordinary productions like All Saints in the Old Colony, and well-crafted plays like Evan Linder’s Byhalia, Mississippi, this latest winner of Playhouse on the Square’s New Works@TheWorks series feels a little undercooked. It knows where it wants to go, but not always what it wants to say or how to accomplish its goals believably. New works are often still works in progress — even after the “world premiere.” It could be that the script remains a draft or two away from done or maybe there were some finer points glossed over in this finely acted but often chilly production. Maybe it just needs enough warmth to mistake for heat. Either way, it’s nice when playwrights find new wrinkles in old storylines, and nicer still that POTS is identifying nifty new scripts with potential to grow and go places outside the 901.

And I do hope this romcom makes it to celluloid eventually, where it can build past relationships out of something other than words and recollection.

Mike

*UPDATE: R. Franklin Koch was originally identified as Rebekka Koch per the cast list on the Playhouse on the Square website. Intermission Impossible sincerely regrets the error. 

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Intermission Impossible Theater

You Can’t Go Wrong With “Once,” “Fences,” or “Sunset Baby”

I’ll have fuller reviews of all these plays available shortly. In the meantime I just want to encourage everybody to take advantage of an opportunity to go to the theater on a weekend when you’ll have to try extra hard to see a bad show. The mix of musicals, dramas, classics and world premieres makes for an especially rich spread. So if you’ve got a hole in your schedule this weekend, fill it. If you’ve got plans, cancel at least one. Whether you’re already a theater lover or just a little bit curious any all of these pieces will satisfy.

Once at Playhouse on the Square

Take a peek at this seconds long video. I’ll wait.

You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’

That clip’s from the pre-show. You know, the half-hour or so after audience members are allowed into the theater but before the show actually starts. It’s the (mostly) full cast of Once having a fiddle-sawing, guitar-picking, mandolin-strumming, box-beating, foot-stomping, tin whistle-tooting jam session. It’s fantastic and they carry the joyful Celtic momentum into this bittersweet Irish ballad of a musical that invests far more in the power of live music and honest theatrical performance than it does in Broadway spectacle.

Once is the story of a depressed young songwriter who lives with his old Da above the shop where they make Hoovers that don’t suck suck proper again. His girl’s left him for New York, and nobody’s listening to his music except for the struggling Czech immigrant who becomes his muse and chief motivator.

The ensemble’s amazing but the secret star of this Once is  simple wooden stage that looks like it was designed not to impress visually but to maximize the warm sounds of acoustic instruments and lightly amplified human voices. It’s a little like hearing guitars played inside a bigger guitar. It’s hard not to get swept up in the songs, and swept away by the story.

Highly recommended.
Sunset Baby at The Hattiloo

You want to see one really great performance? Oh baby. Decked out in fuck me boots and the war paint of a woman who lures Johns into her car in order to rob them Morgan Watson’s Nina is as hard and multifaceted as cut diamonds. It’s hard to eclipse actors as strong as TC Sharp and Emmanuel McKinney, and they both hold their own as Nina’s long absent father and gangsta boyfriend respectively. But whether she’s rolling her eyes and saying, “I love you,” or holding forth on what it really means to be “children of the revolution,” it’s hard to take your eyes off Watson long enough to look at anybody else in a tight, terrific ensemble.

Sunset Baby’s set after the death of a one time Civil Rights icon named Ashanti X who had struggled economically, becoming a less than inspiring crack addict in later years. Now that she’s dead her papers are worth more than she ever was and Nina’s long-estranged father shows up looking to get back into his daughter’s life. And for letters Ashanti X had written to him while he was in prison.

Sunset Baby is a GenX story looking at lives shaped by a stalled  Civil Rights movement, when protest gave way to politics, and old heroes became fringe figures and outlaws. It’s a little play telling a big story.

Highly recommended.
All Saints in the Old Colony at TheatreWorks

Here’s an excerpt from my review of a great fookin’ world premiere launched right here in Memphis.

All Saints in the Old Colony feels like Homokay’s New England-flavored answer to Katori Hall’s housing project drama Hurt Village. The Old Colony, Boston’s second oldest housing project, has changed quite a bit in recent years, but was once a dense cluster of brick towers populated by poor Irish families. As with Hurt Village, All Saints is set against a backdrop of gentrification and change. It tells the story of Kier, an Irish-born immigrant and disabled dock worker who, in the absence of parents, raised his siblings as best he could, making hard decisions that still haunt his malnourished, whiskey-soaked brain.

Carla McDonald

All Saints in the Old Colony: real people, real problems

More specifically, it tells the story of an attempted intervention where the whole family comes together — including sister Fiona who was given up for adoption at an early age — to help Kier into a healthier lifestyle. But, in the words of playwright Sam Shepard, whose work is also reflected in All Saints, there’s no hope for the hopeless. Opportunities for temporary escape abound, but for these siblings normalcy will always be relative, and there’s no hope that these four — five, counting an offstage brother too unforgiving to appear — will ever find peace, let alone happiness.

Highly recommended. 

Fences

Theatre Memphis’ second production of Fences is another good opportunity to revisit favorite topics like exceptionalism and how badly our legacy playhouses serve Memphis’ communities of color, and how productions like this first-rate go at an August Wilson classic are the very thing we talk about when we talk about exceptions proving the rule. But I’ve buried the lead, so put those thoughts on hold long enough to consider this: No matter how overexposed Fences may be relative to some of Wilson’s consistently strong oeuvre this perfectly cast and lovingly-staged production is something you’ll want to see. Maybe more than once.

Highly recommended.

You Can’t Go Wrong With ‘Once,’ ‘Fences,’ or ‘Sunset Baby’ (2)

Perfect Arrangement

This is the only one of the bunch I haven’t seen yet, but it sounds awfully intriguing. Here’s how the folks at Circuit Playhouse are describing it.

It’s 1950, and new colors are being added to the Red Scare. Two U.S. State Department employees, Bob and Norma, have been tasked with identifying sexual deviants within their ranks. There’s just one problem: Both Bob and Norma are gay and have married each other’s partners as a carefully constructed cover. Inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, madcap classic sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two “All-American” couples are forced to stare down the closet door.

Verdict: We’ll have to wait and see, but it better be good because the competition is stiff.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Moon Vine at TheatreWorks

Fresh off the Vine

”Nothing grows in a bed of lies.” Ken Zimmerman quotes from Moon Vine, the new play he’s mounting at TheatreWorks. “I asked Teri [Feigelson] what she wanted audiences to take home with them, and she refers me to this line in her play,” he says. “She calls it a Southern gothic. And it is.”

Moon Vine‘s a winner of Playhouse on the Square’s second annual NewWorks@TheWorks play-finding contest. It’s a repeat performance for Feigelson. Her rural fable, Mountain View, a 2013 co-winner, also won an Ostrander award for best new play.

Zimmerman has done just about everything there is to do in the theater. He’s turned in notable performances in shows like Hairspray, Urinetown, and Les Miserables. He spent decades as the artistic director for Playhouse on the Square, and after 16 years teaching at UT Martin, he’s finally hung up his academic robes. Until last year’s production of Mountain View at TheatreWorks, Zimmerman had never worked on a new play.

“She thought it was her play, and I thought it was my play,” he says, remembering creative conflicts between the two first-timers. “This time it’s ‘our’ play,” he says, thrilled to be working on something new and collaborating with Feigelson again.

“The story takes place in the Mississippi Delta in 1970s,” Zimmerman says, setting the scene. “Farmers were going under. Agribusiness was taking over. It all boils down to one single woman. It’s about her fight to keep the family farm going. And it’s about her loss, with themes of abandonment and lost youth. And there’s some mysticism about it, too. Like I said, it’s gothic.”

“Moon Vine” at Theatreworks July 8th-31st. playhouseonthesquare.org

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Intermission Impossible Theater

“Film” and “NotFilm”: Buster Keaton & Samuel Beckett visit Brooks Museum

Buster

It should have worked. It should have been amazing. 

What could be better than a team up between absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett, and cinema’s great clown Buster Keaton? Add to that, a story that’s nothing more than a chase scene boiled down to essence? What could have possibly gone wrong?

The rather preciously named Film— screening at the Brooks Museum this week — should have been a spectacular cinematic event, not some footnote and fascinating curiosity. But Beckett had no idea how to make a movie. His friend and longtime collaborator Alan Schneider didn’t either. Worser

Sam

  still, neither of these grand men of the theater knew how to talk to the poker-faced (and minded) Keaton, a certifiable master of the form.

Beckett and Keaton couldn’t have been more different. The former was a heady, experimental philosopher, the latter more interested in technical details and visceral pleasures. Keaton had previously turned down the role of Lucky in the American premiere of Waiting for Godot, because, like so many American theatergoers, he just didn’t get it.

Ironically, Beckett described Keaton as impenetrable. 

Keaton didn’t understand Film either, and said so publicly. He took the gig because he needed the work. 

Visual essayist Ross Lipman tells the story of Beckett’s struggle to understand the language of film and of his difficult relationship with collaborators like Keaton and award winning cinematographer Boris Kaufman in the documentary Notfilm, also screening at the Brooks this week. Lipman’s digital feature (not film) is narration-heavy, and contemplates itself into some un-cinematic corners. It also contains fantastic interview footage with actress Billie Whitelaw, who’s widely regarded as the definitive interpreter of Beckett’s work.

As a teenager, Leonard Maltin visited the movie set hoping to meet Keaton, whom he idolized. With starry-eyed fanboy zeal the popular film critic recounts his story of an uneventful meeting that, nevertheless, made a lasting impression. He knows Beckett was probably on location too, but Malton only had eyes for Keaton.
 

‘Film’ and ‘NotFilm’: Buster Keaton & Samuel Beckett visit Brooks Museum

Beckett regarded Film as a qualified failure, and strong evidence that his peculiar brand of performance didn’t translate well to the big screen. Still, the curious artifact functions as a kind of movie trailer, teasing images and themes the playwright explores more thoroughly in plays like Endgame and Rockabye. It does so with lots of stark visual appeal thanks to Kaufman’s cinematography.

NotFilm, by contrast, is a qualified success that could take a lesson from Beckett’s show-don’t-tell ethos. 

On a side note, Kaufman was the younger sibling of Russian film pioneers Dziga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman. He worked as cinematographer and director of photography on a number of Hollywood features including Tennessee Williams’ gorgeously-shot The Fugitive Kind. That was the story’s third title. It had originally been staged as Battle of Angels, then rewritten and staged as Orpheus Descending. 

New Moon Theatre Company’s solid production of Orpheus Descending is currently on stage at Midtown’s Evergreen Theatre.