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The Arts Connection for April 17, 2008

Learn more about Central Florida's arts community at The Red Chair Project, Central Florida's official guide to arts and culture.  Also, follow the link above for Cultural Links to many arts organizations and county arts councils.

 

audio_icon_pos Click here to listen to Part 1

The Bach Festival presents The Waverly Consort in concert, Friday night at Rollins College

The Asian Cultural Association presents The Legacy Tour - a concert featuring two father-son teams of Indian sitar and tabla players, paying tribute to a master sitar teacher, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee. It's Saturday night at 7:30pm at Rollins College


 Johnny Guitar the Musical

 

Johnny Guitar, voted off-Broadway's Best Musical in 2004 by the Outer Critics Circle, comes to the Plaza Theater. This comedy, featuring an eclectic score that mixes doo-wop and Southwestern sounds, is based off the classic 1954 western that starred Joan Crawford. It tells the tale of a feud between Vienna, a sultry saloonkeeper, and her jealous nemesis Emma, the town's tycoon. Johnny Guitar, the handsome stranger with a secret past, stirs up enough trouble to create a showdown with Vienna's lover, the hot-headed Dancin' kid. The show utilizes Fifties-style movie acting, melodramatic romance and rough- and-tumble cowboy action.

 Brian Minyard, who performed in the original company, will be directing a cast of Broadway performers, including Broadway veteran Melissa Minyard (Cossette from Les Miserables), and local Orlando performers.  The Gala Opening on Friday, April 18, will feature the shows creators, a preview of possible future shows and a post-show cabaret.



audio_icon_pos Click here to listen to Part 2

John Hemmingway and Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir
  

Irene Zabytko talks to John Hemmingway, who has written a memoir  about his father and famous grandfather, Ernest Hemmingway. The memoir, titled Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir, uncovers and examines the strange and heart-rendering dynamics between Nobel Prize winning writer Ernest Hemingway and his youngest son Gregory. Gregory, who is John's father, struggled all of his life to live up to Ernest's manly reputation, while himself living as a cross-dresser and (eventually) a transsexual. Gregory was obsessed with having both masculine and feminine characteristics and was never able to live up to the expectations of his famous father. John Hemmingway will be at the Orlando Pubilc Library on Saturday at 2 for a reading and discussion of his book. 

audio_icon_pos John Hemmingway reads an extended excerpt from Strange Tribe

audio_icon_pos Listen to Irene's complete conversation with John

 

 

audio_icon_pos Click here to listen to Part 3

Orlando's Comma Gallery is in "uptown" Orlando, on Virginia Avenue near Mills. Owner Karen Carasik offers a variety of exhibits plus studios for artists-in-residence. Currently on display are paintings by well-known sculptor Grady Kimsey.

Persian Visions

We'll take a look at the Persian Visions exhibit at the Southeast Museum of Photography with the museum's director, Kevin Miller, and author Afshin Molavi, who recently gave a lecture on the politics, culture and history of contemporary Iran. This exhibition, from the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, features more than 60 works of photography and video installations by 20 of Iran's most celebrated contemporary photographers. Persian Visions is a complex and layered view of contemporary Iran. The perspective of these artists contradicts the way many foreign photographers use the medium— which is to represent Iran and its people as purely exotic. In expressing their many different visions of their world, the artists offer a look at both private and public realms. The artists represented in Persian Visions cannot entirely surmount the cultural distance between Iran and the United States, but nevertheless this exhibition builds a visual bridge that allows for differences even as it leads viewers to become aware of other ways of being and seeing. 

Listen to extended audio with Afsin Molavi---
audio_icon_pos 1 -Afshin's perspective of the Iranians he met
audio_icon_pos 2 - Changes in Iran since late 1990's
audio_icon_pos 3 - Molavi says Iranians want to know what's happening in America

 

 CASTING CALL -
Auditions and other artist opportunities can be found at the Arts & Cultural Alliance website.  

Auditions are also listed on Elizabeth Maupin's blog, Attention Must Be Paid.  Elizabeth is the theatre critic for the Orlando Sentinel