“The Pink Opaque,” the fictional mid-1990s television series at the center of “I Saw the TV Glow,“ will feel instantly recognizable on a visceral level. If you’re the target demographic for this film, you have had some parasocial connection to a piece of popular culture echoed in this effective pastiche. With the visual scanlines calling to mind VHS tapes of Nickelodeon’s “Are You Afraid of the Dark?“ and an opening credits font mirroring that of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,“ the show feels like a hazy memory of one’s youth. The outline of an immediately familiar shape, even if the details aren’t quite so clear.

The film centers around teenagers Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and the friendship they form over their mutual obsession with “The Pink Opaque.“ The show follows Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), two friends who share a psychic connection they use to fight monsters, both in baddie-of-the-week stories and more profound mythology episodes surrounding the show’s big villain, Mr. Melancholy. For Owen, an isolated boy uncomfortable in his skin, and Maddy, a young lesbian with a toxic family life, the show’s protagonists represent strength and resolve neither can find within themselves in daily life.

As the two friends share VHS tapes and printed episode guides, the inner life of the show becomes inextricably bound with their real lives, to the point that Maddy’s eventual disappearance begins to feel as supernatural as the fiction emanating from the bright, striking pre-flat-screen-era televisions that feature in the film so prominently. How much TV is too much?

But there is a crucial moment in the film’s final act some folks seem to be placing too much emphasis on, causing them to miss the deeper portrait being painted. Late in the movie, an adult Owen finds himself revisiting the “The Pink Opaque” as a streaming show which is presented as looking sillier and more childish than it is through the rest of the picture. If earlier, to us, it mirrored “Buffy” and other more “mature” YA bait, here it feels decidedly “Sesame Street”-adjacent.

Out of context, it reads like a pointed, damning critique of the perpetually stunted millennial generation and our borderline concerning addiction to fictional media as a form of medicinal escapism. While this scene, within the context of the larger picture, is gesturing at the truth that there is a hard limit to the efficacy of media consumption as self-care, it is not the fulcrum on which the film’s story rests. For that, one must look much earlier in the film for a more nebulous but no less impactful sequence. 

When we first meet a younger Owen (Ian Foreman) in 7th-grade gym class, he is wandering under the umbrage of one of those giant parachutes teachers would use for easy group activities. While Yeule’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” plays on the soundtrack, it’s difficult to overlook the parachute’s pattern, which is coded to match the colors of the transgender flag.

Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun is nonbinary (as is Lundy-Paine), but the film’s depiction of gender dysphoria seems to be going over some cis viewers’ heads mainly because the film artfully refrains from making its exploration of trans epiphany within the more explicit language viewers might expect from modern, queer cinema. Owen never comes out and claims any gender identity. The tells are sporadic, from the brief image of a repressed memory involving Owen presenting femme, to his stepfather (Fred Durst), refusing to let him stay up late to watch “The Pink Opaque,“ by asking if it’s for girls. But there’s no broadly telegraphed scene where he tearfully pours his guts out to a friend or loved one and spells it out.

“I Saw the TV Glow” is a heavy rumination on an element of being trans that ought to speak to plenty of cis folks, too: having the sense that something about your life is very wrong, but being trapped at the precipice of doing anything about it. 

Few films in recent memory house visuals that express this specific a sense of unsettling wrongness to the world it captures. Schoenbrun and cinematographer Eric K. Yue name-check “Batman Forever” as an aesthetic inspiration to present a haunted, neon-inflected mid-’90s, something that calls that era to mind, but diffused through disquieting layers of fog and implied malice. Coupled with a powerfully curated soundtrack full of original songs inspired by the film,

everything about this picture captures a unique vibe that feels entirely unto itself, despite the influences it shows freely on its sleeve. (The stars of Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” both make cameos, as does Amber Benson from “Buffy.”)

The film’s emotional climax is one of the most startling and transgressive developments. After Maddy has reappeared into an adult Owen’s life, her explanation of where she has been is terrifying from a horror movie perspective but strangely comforting within the confines of this narrative and Owen’s predicament. Without spoiling the particulars, it poses a quandary that tickles the hero’s journey, which viewers will cry for throughout such an experimental and challengingly paced picture. In the moment, it collapses a film’s worth of difficult thematic ideas into a straightforward solution. But the “easy out” the film offers is anything but. In the film, as in life, real change has a cost, and the choices it requires can be too much for some. The final act trudges on as Owen and the audience have to wrestle with these revelations. At this point, a happy ending seems so unlikely that they’re left to ponder whether one is even possible.

Though the film ends on a down note, there is a lingering image that cuts through the dirge. It’s not coincidentally the first image in the film’s official trailer. It’s the chalk graffiti outside of Owen’s house, big and bold in bright pastel lettering: “there is still time.” 

“I Saw the TV Glow” plays exclusively in theaters but will be available onVOD next month.

The post ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is transcendent appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

In the world of lucha libre, the unique brand of professional wrestling from Mexico, fighters are primarily split between two warring archetypes. There are the tecnicos, masked “good guys” who look like superheroes and move with a graceful, technically impressive style. On the other side are rudos, brutish, brawling “bad guys” whose primary job is to draw the crowd’s ire. 

These matches are very physical and taxing on the human body. They are also brief morality plays with predetermined outcomes designed to assert a comforting status quo. But the central figure in “Cassandro” is perhaps the most iconic example of a third option for these grapplers: the exotico.

When we meet Saul (Gael García Bernal), a diminutive, bleach-blonde wrestler who works under a mask as “El Topo,” multiple colleagues suggest he shift his career trajectory by becoming an exotico. Night after night, he plays a scrappy runt of a rudo who gets the snot beat out of him by the titanic wrestler Gigantico, while fans cheer at his pain. 

But exoticos are a different type of wrestler. They’re flamboyant, drag queen-esque performers who parade around like a prejudiced police sketch artist’s approximation of homosexuality, their maskless faces covered in makeup so broadly drawn it could be mistaken from afar for clown paint. They are, in practice, little more than a pair of homophobic keys to jangle in the faces of the drunk audience members who chant slurs at the ring with Pavlovian consistency. 

Becoming an exotico could, in theory, provide Saul with the change he’s been looking for. But this career advice does not come from an earnest place. Saul is openly gay. His less-than-accepting co-workers assume it would be an easier job for him, given they believe that cartoonish stereotype is how all gay men are. But Saul’s not against working as an exotico just because he doesn’t want to exploit his sexual identity for a crowd. He wants to be a star, and exoticos always lose. 

But through a series of setbacks and circumstances, Saul does choose to take off the mask and trade it for lipstick, but he does it his own way. He invents the persona “Cassandro” and, through it, expands the limits of what an exotico can be in and out of the ring. 

For a better idea about the real life and storied career of this influential lucha figure, you would do better to watch “Cassandro the Exotico,” a 2018 documentary exploring his history. While entertaining, this sensationalized tale, by writer/director Roger Ross Williams, surrounding the broad strokes of his story feels like a missed opportunity on multiple fronts.

Williams seems largely uninterested in exploring the rich complexity of lucha libre culture beyond the absolute bare minimum necessary for Saul’s story to make sense. For anyone familiar with the world of professional wrestling, seeing Saul’s arc unfold between the ropes is a thing of beauty. 

Saul is able to transform Cassandro from a figure who is booed and met with hateful vitriol to someone who wins over the crowd through his balletic movement and charm. But for a more casual viewer who is given little to go off of concerning the scripted and choreographed nature of the fights, the true breadth of Saul’s gifts is lost. 

While all biographical films have to take liberties with facts to make for enticing fiction, “Cassandro” reorders so many vital points and fudges so much of the timeline that it may as well have been a wholly original story “inspired” by the man it seeks to mythologize. The many departures from reality would be more acceptable if they led to a sturdier screenplay with a clearer structure. Often, filmmakers make fictional adjustments to the facts purely for the unavoidable reason that real life doesn’t always follow the three-act structure. But to make a biopic that still struggles with narrative even after this much revisionism, why change so much to begin with?

So much is left on the table here. It would have been fascinating to see a better exploration of the relationship between the homophobia in Saul’s life that strains his otherwise loving relationship with his mother (Perla de la Rose) and the vitriol from the crowd. Or to better highlight the thematic convergence of luchadors hiding behind a mask to play these larger-than-life characters with the very different duality experienced by Saul’s closeted lover (Raul Castillo), whose wife and children know nothing about his true self. These criticisms don’t even get into the literal crime of casting megastar Bad Bunny in the film only for him to play a flat, barely present side character who occasionally sells Saul cocaine.

For all its missed opportunities, however, “Cassandro” is one of Bernal’s career-best performances. It’s a feat how well he expresses a tortured inner life through physicality and his gaze. Every bit of the tragedy in his origins comes off through the heavy lifting Bernal does. And what Williams may lack as a screenwriter, he luckily makes up for with a patience for filming the spectacle of the ring alongside the more languid side of Saul’s home life.

Aficionados of lucha may get more from “Cassandro” than the uninitiated will. However, it’s still an endearing and engaging portrait of otherness and the way the things about ourselves that hold us back in life can be what propels us forward to the life we’ve always wanted. It’s hard to gripe about a message that is that inspiring.

“Cassandro” is streaming on Amazon Prime.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, “Cassandro” wouldn’t exist.

The post ‘Cassandro’ is an exhilarating, if messy, biopic. appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

André De Shields, 77, is striking. He has brown skin, chiseled cheekbones, and a perfectly sculpted afro streaked with white, gray, and black. In his Broadway performance of “Death of a Salesman,” which completed a limited run on January 15, he skulked, crept, and glided across the stage as the character of Ben Loman. I can’t imagine that he’s ever taken a bad picture in his life.

De Shields will be honored by Baltimore City leaders on September 21 with a ceremonial street dedication. It’s part of several days of festivities encircling the return of Artscape. The southwest corner of the 1800 block of Division Street, the street where he grew up, will be known as André De Shields Way. Mayor Brandon Scott will also declare the day André De Shields Day.

“I left Baltimore in 1964,” De Shields told me when we met up for an interview last May. “It’s always been essential to what I do in my life and in my career that people understand that I am who I am because I was made in Baltimore.”

It has never been easy to make a life in the arts, but things seem especially hard for born-and-bred Black artists from Baltimore right now. Everything is expensive, and it’s harder to make ends meet. There are not a lot of places where they are welcome to perform and put on exhibitions (although venues like Blakwater House and Black Artist Research Space do a great job of meeting the need). Given these tough times, the fact that De Shields — a veteran and legend on stage, on screen, and in music — is being honored matters very much. It’s important that he loves Baltimore the way he does, and it’s important that the city loves him back.

De Shields has an extensive resume. He became famous for Broadway performances in “The Wiz,” “Ain’t Misbehavin,’” “Play On!”, and “The Full Monty.” He’s received countless honors and awards, including a Tony award in 2019 for his role as Hermes in the musical “Hadestown.”

He’s also been a tireless advocate for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and for people living with HIV and AIDS. 

He was born in Dundalk and reared in West Baltimore in a family of 11 children. He graduated from Baltimore City College in 1964.

De Shields told me that he remembers Pennsylvania Avenue as the “cultural spine of Black Baltimore.” 

“Black folks would come from all over the place. Of course, in ’64, we didn’t go beyond North Avenue. But when we were looking for entertainment, when we were looking for good greasy finger-lickin’ food, cinema, there was no other place to go but Pennsylvania Avenue.”

He remembers watching his first Motown Review at The Royal Theater.

“Marvin Gaye, Little Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, the Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Temptations — this is all one concert,” he says. “And this is where I began self-actualizing. What do I want to be? Do I want to be what I do? Or do I want to be who I am?”

His career has taken him all over the world. But he’d always return home, where his family remained. On these visits, he said, he noticed a change. 

“I saw that the avenue was disappearing,” he said. “Our cultural spine was disappearing.”

De Shields is a Black star in the same tradition as Cicely Tyson and Sidney Poitier. He is always well-dressed, composed, and regal. He sees his work as a form of activism by educating, illuminating, and uplifting. He wants people in Baltimore to see him as a reflection of themselves.

“It is embarrassingly expensive to live in New York, and it gets more expensive every month,” he told me. “So, I wanted to dispel that image about if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I want to make it in Baltimore. I want to make it in Baltimore so that people can say, ‘that’s what we produced.’”

De Shields says he would like to have more of a guiding hand over Baltimore’s arts community, but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet. Speaking about whether we can and should restore Pennsylvania Avenue to what it was when he was younger, he says there’s no need — because there’s room to make something better.

“I don’t think we want to get back. I think we want to create a new cultural spine so that we are evolving.” 

“I was just dumbfounded by how elegant he is, how he moves. How everything is very intentional,” says Tonya Miller, senior advisor of the Office of Arts & Culture. Miller brought De Shields to Baltimore in 2019 to have then-Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young give him the key to the city. She’s also the reason he’ll be honored on September 21. 

Over the last few months, De Shields has traveled back and forth to Baltimore — recording a song with rapper and activist Eze Jackson and produced by Mateyo. The song is titled “Keep Climbing.” 

“The song is a Baltimore Club/House music dramatization of his 2019 Tony Awards acceptance speech,” Jackson says. 

The acceptance speech Jackson is referring to, delivered after his “Hadestown” win, went viral almost as soon as De Shields delivered it. 

“Baltimore, Maryland. Are you in the house,” De Shields asked the crowd. He was gleaming in a gold bow tie and a black suit sparkling with gold embroidery. 

“I am making good on my promise that I would come to New York and become someone you’d be proud to call your native son,” he says. He goes on to share his three cardinal rules:

“One, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming. Two, slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. And three, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.”

The song is due out later this year through Jackson’s label EPIC FAM.

“I’ve worked with so many artists who solely do music, but André brought the Theater to the studio. He, Mateyo, and I have been like children in a toy store working on this. I can’t wait for people to hear him like this,” Jackson says.

De Shields said he hopes his words permeate the listeners’ consciousness. He said he hopes it’s a hit, not for himself, but for the city.

“If while you’re dancing, you are allowing the philosophy to sink into your heart, into your soul, into your mind, then my work is done,” he said.

The post Made in Baltimore appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Thursday, Sept. 22

Bromo Art Walk: Experience the Bromo Arts District during a night of artistic performances, exhibits, and open studios. Artwork will be available for purchase throughout the event at galleries, artist studios, and pop-up markets. 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Bromo Arts District (Multiple Locations), 218 West Saratoga Street. (Free) RSVP recommended. For more information, go to: www.bromodistrict.org/bromo-art-walk or call 410-244-1030 ex 713.

Bromo Art Walk After Party: After the Bromo Art Walk, keep the party going at Current Space’s outdoor courtyard. This event will feature a performance from Eze Jackson and a live DJ set by Trillnatured. Current Space’s Garden Bar will be open with late-night food available from Vegan Juiceology. 9 p.m. at Current Space, 421 North Howard Street. Registration required. For more information, go to: www.currentspace.com.

The Stoop Storytelling Series: Hidden In Plain Sight: The Stoop Storytelling Series and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in partnership with Enoch Pratt Free Library, present “Hidden in Plain Sight: Stories about the powerful—and often invisible—public health forces that shape our lives.” 7 p.m. at Enoch Pratt Free Library Central Branch, Wheeler Auditorium, 400 Cathedral Street. (Free) In-person and virtual. For more information, go to: www.eventbrite.com/e/hidden-in-plain-sight-tickets-379954372757 or call 410-396-5430.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson presents “Eating While Black”: Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of the leading thinkers about food in America. In her new book, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. 7 p.m. at Red Emma’s, 3128 Greenmount Avenue. For more information, go to: www.redemmas.org/ or call 410-601-3072.

Brandi Collins-Dexter presents “Black Skinhead”: In “Black Skinhead,” Brandi Collins-Dexter explores the fragile alliance between Black voters and the Democratic Party. Collins-Dexter will be in conversation with Lisa Snowden, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Baltimore Beat. 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Greedy Reads Remington, 320 West 29th Street. For more information, go to: www.greedyreads.com/ or call 410-878-0184.

Friday, Sept. 23

It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues: From African chants and Delta spirituals to the urban electricity of a Chicago nightclub, from dusty backroads bluegrass to the twang of a country juke joint, “It Ain’t Nothin But the Blues” is a stirring retrospective of blues classics that summon the true soul of African American music. 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Arena Players Incorporated, 801 McCulloh Street. For more information, call 410-728-6500.

Saturday, Sept. 24

BLK ASS FLEA MKT 106 + BLK: Gather to experience a day of blackness, music, culture, and vibes, all while circulating the black dollar, The BLK ASS FLEA MKT is a radical movement of BLK JOY. Expect some of the hottest DJs from Baltimore and the DMV. Noon to 7 p.m. at Eager Park, North Wolfe Street. For more information, go to www.eventbrite.com/o/blk-ass-flea-mkt-39175813423.

Baltimore Boiler Room X Dark Room: The international live music showcase returns to Baltimore, this time featuring the sounds of Amy Reid, Feroun, Jordan Pope, Karizma, Life on Planets, and Pangelica. 10 p.m to 2 a.m. at Le Mondo, 406 North Howard Street. For more information, go to boilerroom.tv/session/boiler-room-x-baltimore. 

Gwynn Oak Food and Music Festival: Tell your family and friends to bring a blanket or chair and come out to enjoy good music and the region’s best food, retail, and service vendors. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Gwynn Oak Park, 6010 Gwynn Oak Ave, Gwynn Oak, MD. For more information, go to houseofotem.com/gwynnoakfoodandmusicfestival.

Remfest 2022: The third annual RemFest is taking over Remington Avenue with more bands, more vendors, more food, and more family-friendly fun. Featuring Dave Heumann, RoVo Monty, Manners Manners, Bali Lamas, Josh Stokes, Leisure Sport, Wifty Bangura, Kotic Couture, darsombra, Midnight Sun, Tionesta, DJ Mills, and more. Noon to 9 p.m. at Remington Avenue. For more information, email info@remfest.org or go to: www.remfest.org.

VERSION, A Queer Dance Party: VERSION is back with sounds by Trillnatured, hosted by Kotic Couture, and documented by Sydney Allen. 10 p.m. at The Crown Baltimore, 1910 North Charles Street, second floor. ($10) Tickets must be purchased at the door. For more information, email thecrownbaltimore@gmail.com or call 410-625-4848.

Sunday, Sept. 25

Juke Joint: A summer day party featuring live music, vendors, and good vibes. It’s a networking event celebrating house music and medical cannabis. What more could you ask for? 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Sound Garden, 1616 Thames Street. For more information, go to: www.crucialculture.net/ 

Thursday, Sept. 29

Adult Back To School Nite Fundraiser: A night of stationary, fun, and drinks. Come grab a desk supply list for those returning to the office or living the remote life. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to support adult education. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at The Paper Herald, 702 Saint Paul Street. 21+ with ID. For more information, go to: www.paperherald.com/ or call 443-835-1402.

Artists Talk: Tawny Chatmon and Stephen Towns: Artists Tawny Chatmon and Stephen Towns will be in conversation with Molly Warnock, historian and critic of the visual arts, and Joaneath Spicer, The James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the Walters. The speakers will discuss themes in the show Activating the Renaissance, and how each artist draws from the past to comment on the present. 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Walters Art Museum, Graham Auditorium, 600 North Charles Street. Registration is required. For more information, go to: www.thewalters.org, or call 410-547-9000.

Friday, Sept. 30

Creative Mornings/Baltimore with Evan Woodard: Salvage Arc’s Evan Woodard speaks on this month’s topic, Depth. Woodard is a Baltimore-based historian and relic hunter who has worked with countless homeowners and local organizations to preserve historical artifacts buried in privies beneath the city. 8:30 a.m. at Open Works Baltimore, 1400 Greenmount Avenue. For more information, go to: creativemornings.com/talks/evan-woodard.

Station North Art Walk: An evening of exhibits, performances, and special events in the Station North Arts District. This is the final Station North Art walk of 2022. 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 1400 Greenmount Avenue, multiple locations. (Free) Eventbrite registration recommended. For more information, go to: www.stationnorth.org/news/2022/7/6/station-north-art-walks-2022 call 410-244-1775.

First Annual Kotton Klub Gala: Dust off your flapper dresses, zoot suits, and your finest party attire, and come experience the roaring ’20s with the Kappa Alpha Psi Foundation of Metropolitan Baltimore. Pay homage and party with a purpose. There will be a VIP open bar, general admission cash bar, a buffet, and dancing. DJ set by DJ Tanz with performances by Ms. Larzine and Dr. Phil’s Big Band. 8 p.m. to midnight at Martin’s West, 6817 Dogwood Road. Must be 21+ to attend. ($80 – $150) For more information, contact Wayne Pulliam at 443-690-9146 or Chuck Harris at 410-917-4090.

The Vibes: SYS Fundraiser Event Series: Welcome to the SYSMVMT. Come vibe with Share Your Soul at our first Night Brunch fundraiser event. Music, raffles, food and drinks. Vibes produced by DJ Sole, performances by Anwvr, Jarreau Williams, TheNasa8, and Kente! Proceeds are to raise funds for SYS’s first commission-free silent disco art gallery on 10/21. 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Cahoots Brothers, 300 West 29th Street. For more information email sharde.hoff@sysmvmt.com.

Saturday, Oct.1

Birthday Fundraiser to Benefit Sankofa Children’s Museum: Enjoy African cuisine, traditional African dance, raffles, music, and more. You can support the Sankofa Children’s Museum of African Cultures by purchasing your ticket today. 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Sankofa Children’s Museum of African Cultures, 4330 Pimlico Road. ($70) 

Hilton’s Private Stock Plant Sale at Green Neighbor: Hilton Carter has said the unimaginable: “I have too many plants.” With the arrival of his beloved daughter and the need to make necessary space in his home, he has decided to give you the chance to own plants that he has personally cared for and styled in planters that are ready for you to bring into yours. 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Good Neighbor, 3827 Falls Road.  For more information, go to: goodneighborshop.com/ or call 443-627-8919.

Youth Leadership Cohort Kick-Off Party: Join Afro Charities and New Generation Scholars for a free open house and launch party hosted by Legacy Scholars Naima and Kyan. This event marks the 15th year of Muse 360’s New Generations Scholars program and will include: activities, music, and brunch. Parents & youth are welcome to come to learn about the program and to apply. 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at NoMüNoMü, 709 N Howard Street. For more information, go to  https://www.afrocharities.org/events or email diamon@afrocharities.org.

Read Street Jam: After 37 years, the Read Street Jam is back, continuing its history as a free and welcoming event for all. Celebrating all the artists, musicians, vendors, shops, and cafes who make Mt. Vernon special. The Jam will feature a local house band, vocalists, street performers, and DJs. Noon to 8 p.m. at 200 West Read Street between Tyson Street and Park Avenue. For more information, email ReadStreetAssociation@gmail.com or call 443-255-5497.

Sunday, Oct. 2

One Maryland One Book 2022 Author Naima Coster at the Lewis Museum: The award-winning author of “What’s Mine and Yours” will discuss her novel, answer questions, and sign books. This event is coordinated in partnership with the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland State Department of Education, BMORE Me, and Baltimore City Public Schools. 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 East Pratt Street. For more information, go to: onemarylandonebook.org/ or call 443-263-1800.

The post Baltimore Arts and Culture Listings 9/22/22-10/5/22 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

“Animal Farm.” A stage adaption of George Orwell’s allegorical story of a group of farm animals who revolt against man. March 1-April 1, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

BWC’s Gin & Jokes Presents: Drew Michael. Actor and former writer for “Saturday Night Live” Drew Michael headlines Baltimore Whiskey Company’s recurring comedy night. Hosted by Umar Khan. March 1, 8:30 p.m., Joe Squared, 33 W. North Ave., (410) 545-0444, pros.brownpapertickets.com, $7.

“Count Down.” As part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theatre Festival, The Stand present Dominique Cieri’s interdisciplinary piece about girls growing up in the child welfare system. Through March 4, Strand Theatre, 5426 Harford Road, (443) 874-4917, strand-theater.org, $10-$25.

Drunk Shakespeare. Single Carrot Theatre and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Associate Artistic Director Lizzi Albert present the first installment of the new Drunk Classics series. Actors will perform fully rehearsed scenes from the Bard, but wasted. March 3, 8 p.m.; Single Carrot Theatre, 2600 N. Howard St., (443) 844-9253, singlecarrot.com, sold out (standing room tickets available for $5).

“Gertrude Stein and a Companion.” The love story of writer Gertrude Stein and her life partner and Parisian avant-garde member Alice B. Toklas as told by Win Wells. March 2-25, Fells Point Corner Theatre, 251 S. Ann St., fpct.org, $19-$24.

“Hand to God.” Stillpointe Theatre presents Robert Askins’ Tony-nominated play about a grieving widow who runs a Christian-ministry puppet club, her teenage son, and his possessed puppet. March 2-17, St. Marks Lutheran Church, 1900 St. Paul St., stillpointetheatre.com, $20.

Huggy Lowdown and Chris Paul. The Tom Joyner Morning Show personalities co-headline. March 4, 6 p.m., Magooby’s Joke House, 9603 Deereco Road, (410) 252-2727, magoobys.com, $20.

“I Hate Hamlet.” An actor who hates “Hamlet” takes on the title role and encounters the ghost of John Barrymore. Through March 4, Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul St., (410) 752-1225, spotlighters.org, $10-$22.

Jeanne Robertson. The veteran performer and former Miss North Carolina performs family-friendly comedy. March 3, 7 p.m., Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave., (410) 685-5086, modell-lyric.com, $31-$51.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama spans one day in the life of a family troubled by addiction and the inability to let go of the past. Through March 4, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $43-$65.

Nephew Tommy. The co-host of the nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show performs. March 1-3, Baltimore Comedy Factory, 5625 O’Donnell St., (410) 547-7798, baltimorecomedy.com, $30-$40.

The Peking Chinese Acrobats. The internationally renowned troupe performs gravity-defying feats. March 6-7, Goucher College, Kraushaaur Auditorium, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, artsonstage.org, $10.

“The Pillowman.” A writer becomes the focus of a police interrogation when his macabre short stories are linked to a series of actual child murders. Through March 18, Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway, (410) 563-9135, vagabondplayers.org, $10-$20.

Prim and Proper. Alexa Sciuto hosts an all-women comedy showcase featuring Kristy Belich, Alyssa A. Cowan, Robin Hazel, He He, Diana Keating, and Cristina Payne. March 2, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“Skeleton Crew.” In the third play in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, four workers at the city’s last exporting auto plant face down an uncertain future. Through March 4, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

Slapstick Jukebox. Happenstance Theater presents a physical comedy mash-up inspired by  19th Century European Circus entrées, Vaudeville, silent film, and early television. March 1-4, Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., (410) 752-8558, theatreproject.org, $15-$25.

The post Stage: Feb. 28-March 7 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Bald & Boujee. Comedy duo Malik S. and Torrei Hart (Kevin Hart’s ex-wife) perform. Feb. 22-24, Baltimore Comedy Factory, 5625 O’Donnell St., (410) 547-7798, baltimorecomedy.com, $20-$40.

The Beanie Bros Tour. L.A. comics Pete Buchbauer and Chip Nicholson perform with support from local comedians including host Nikki Fuchs. Feb. 27, 7 p.m., The Crown, 1910 N. Charles St., (410) 625-4848, facebook.com/TheCrownBaltimore, $10.

BIG Time with Jen Marsh. Baltimore Improv Group performs a totally made up and unprepared tribute to Baltimore Beat’s associate publisher, Jen Marsh. Feb. 23, 8 p.m., The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St., (888) 745-8393, bigimprov.org, $5.

Camp Adventure. Alexa Sciuto hosts a night of improv, stand-up, and sketch from Silversmith, Bad Karaoke Experience, and OLGA, followed by an improv karaoke jam. Feb. 23, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“Count Down.” As part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theatre Festival, The Stand present Dominique Cieri’s interdisciplinary piece about girls growing up in the child welfare system. Through March 4, Strand Theatre, 5426 Harford Road, (443) 874-4917, strand-theater.org, $10-$25.

“The Death of Walt Disney.” The regional premiere of Lucas Hnath’s biographical play about the megalomaniacal mind of Walt Disney. Through Feb. 25, Single Carrot Theatre, 2600 N. Howard St., (443) 844-9253, singlecarrot.com, $25-$29.

Demetri Martin – The Awkward Tour. The stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and director performs. Feb. 23, 8 p.m., Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St., (410) 837-7400, baltimorehippodrome.com, $58.

“A Disappearing Act.” Single Shoe Productions presents a memorial tribute to the deceased fictional magician Philip Winterbottom. Feb. 22-25, Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., (410) 752-8558, theatreproject.org, $15-$25.

“Everybody.” Theatre Morgan presents a modern riff on the 15th-century morality play following a character named Everybody (played by a different cast member each performance) as he or she travels down a road toward life’s greatest mystery. Feb. 22-24, Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center, 2201 Argonne Drive, (443) 885-4440, murphyfineartscenter.org, $5-$15.

Everything Will Be Okay (A stand-up comedy show) [#39]. Chris Hudson hosts a night of stand-up featuring Bryan Preston, Pete Musto, Sahib Singh, Michael Furr, and Natalie McGill. Feb. 22, 8 p.m., The Crown, 1910 N. Charles St., (410) 625-4848, facebook.com/TheCrownBaltimore, $5.

“I Hate Hamlet.” An actor who hates “Hamlet” takes on the title role and encounters the ghost of John Barrymore. Through March 4, Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul St., (410) 752-1225, spotlighters.org, $10-$22.

Katt Williams. The veteran comedy icon returns to Baltimore, having most recently co-starred in “Father Figures.” Feb. 23, 8 p.m., Royal Farms Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St., (410) 347-2020, royalfarmsarena.com, $55-$128.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama spans one day in the life of a family troubled by addiction and the inability to let go of the past. Through March 4, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $43-$65.

More Laughs: The Annual Big Fred Birthday Comedy Show. Baltimore native Fred “Big Fred” Watkins, best known as a member of “The Empire” on Oxygen TV’s “Last Squad Standing,” performs stand-up. Feb. 25, 8 p.m., Baltimore Soundstage, 124 Market Place, (410) 244-0057, baltimoresoundstage.com, $20-$35.

“The Pillowman.” A writer becomes the focus of a police interrogation when his macabre short stories are linked to a series of actual child murders. Feb. 23-March 18, Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway, (410) 563-9135, vagabondplayers.org, $10-$20.

“Red Velvet.” The biographical play from Lolita Chakrabarti tells the story of the 19th century African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Through Feb. 25, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 7 S. Calvert St., (410) 244-8570, chesapeakeshakespeare.com, $16-$43.

“Skeleton Crew.” In the third play in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, four workers at the city’s last exporting auto plant face down an uncertain future. Through March 4, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Baltimore Concert Opera presents a two-nights-only operatic production of Stephen Sondheim’s horror musical. Feb. 23, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 25, 3 p.m.; Baltimore Concert Opera, 11 W. Mount Vernon Place, Suite 307, baltimoreconcertopera.com, $29.50-$71.50.

Talkin’ S%\T: A Roast Battle. A comedy tournament in three rounds to find the champion of being nasty, featuring “The Legend” Sonny Fuller, Mike Storck, Kim Ambrose, Leeland Clayton, “Sweet Sweet Baby Boy” Matt Brown, Ian Salyers, Rose Vineshank, and Ben Broedel. Feb. 25, 6 p.m., Magooby’s Joke House, 9603 Deereco Road, (410) 252-2727, magoobys.com, $10.

Totally ’80s, Totally Murder Interactive Dinner. The Murder Mystery Company in Baltimore presents an interactive, ‘80s-themed production alongside a three-course meal from Blue Agave. ‘80s concert attire encouraged. Feb. 21, 6-9 p.m., Blue Agave, 1032 Light St., (410) 576-3938, blue-agave.ticketleap.com/totally-80s-totally-murder-interactive-dinner, $60 or $115 for two people (includes show, meal, and pre-show cocktail).

The post Stage: Feb. 21-28 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Crisis exists where answers do not. From there, it grows, chewing at the fixtures that keep you in place till they’re so far apart it’s impossible to piece them together, and you’re left with nothing to hold onto. The old tools—effort, resilience, hope—stop working. “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s ordinary, monumental drama now being performed at Center Stage, excavates crisis as it expands.

“I feel like nothing’s familiar anymore,” says Faye (played by Stephanie Berry), a veteran auto factory worker staring down joblessness in Morisseau’s Detroit. She once saw herself as a warrior woman, but that foundation is wavering. She’s had some time to sit with the knowledge that the plant is going to be shut down, that she and her fellow workers for whom she’s responsible as union rep will join the casualties of the 2008 recession. In this moment, she says to Reggie (Sekou Laidlow), the plant’s foreman—he and Faye go way back—she recognizes no before and foresees no after. She offers this confessional in the employee break room, where the entire play is set, surrounded by lockers accented with HOPE-era Obama campaign stickers.

In “Skeleton Crew,” the final installment of Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy (a nod to August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle) after “Detroit ‘67” (which appeared in Center Stage’s 2015/2016 season) and “Paradise Blue” (set in 1949), crisis has consumed the industry that once made Detroit the Motor City. The play’s title refers the bare-bones assembly line keeping the city’s last exporting auto plant afloat, while also gesturing toward the demise of their livelihoods. All familiarity has disappeared—or become unrecognizable—and that hits particularly hard for this crew, whose labor is based in routine.

At the center is Faye, the workplace matriarch who’s put in nearly 30 years at the plant. She has loved and lost, survived cancer, and as a single parent raised a son who would grow up to reject her as she started dating women—Faye doesn’t hesitate to remind her coworkers that she’s seen it all, or a lot anyway. She wears her conquered hardships as a badge, and the fact that she’s made it through everything in one piece gives her license to gamble constantly on the little money she has and keep up a chain smoking habit while she’s at it, despite her health record and the notice Reggie’s posted in the break room that reads “NO SMOKING FAYE.”

Then there’s Dez (Gabriel Lawrence) and Shanita (Brittany Bellizeare), both younger factory crew members who share Faye’s skill and enthusiasm for the work. A second-generation autoworker who, by the way, is visibly pregnant, Shanita in particular loves the craft and takes pride in knowing her handiwork will go on to bear witness to important moments in the lives of everyday people. She’ll shut off the boombox playing Dez’s pump-up anthem (‘Get Dis Money’ by Detroit rap crew Slum Village, who have also endured plenty of attrition) so she can listen to the steadying music of cranking and clanging on the line: “Sounds like life happening.” Dez too takes pleasure in the grind but aspires to run his own car shop. It’s not even finished yet and he’s already haunted by the “ghosts” on the assembly line. Despite his practical optimism— “better to wait till the last possible minute to start worrying,” he says—fear commands him; he packs a gun in his backpack every day, which inevitably gets him into deep shit.

Morisseau builds up the chemistry between Dez and Shanita—he knows how she takes her coffee!—and, at times, it’s undeniably heartwarming. But the charm is unfortunate: Here we have another representation of a meant-to-be pair that begins with incessant sexual harassment (at the beginning of the play, Dez is at strike number 5,062 by Shanita’s count) and ends with the harasser getting what he wanted and his target realizing this is want she wanted all along, despite resisting all those times before. A tired, toxic trope that mars Morisseau’s otherwise thoughtful storytelling.

In this intimate reckoning of the modern era’s greatest financial crisis, Morisseau pays no mind to the suits responsible for and complicit in the devastation; they’re not worth any time on her stage. They appear only though the battles fought offstage by Reggie, who is charged with the impossible task of pleasing everyone. He comes from the same world as his employees, the same neighborhood; a high school dropout who’s since pulled himself up into white collar comfort more or less, but only to find himself isolated. He identifies with neither his employees, some of whom—Dez in particular—figure he’s rejected where he came from; nor his own employers, who understand nothing of those origins.

Under the incisive direction of Nicole A. Watson, the cast delivers the rhythm in the script’s lyricism while cutting deep into the tension that breaks it up. Morisseau tells each character’s story lovingly—the most notable divergence from her muse and fellow social observer Wilson, who offered just a sliver of redemption to his great tragic hero Troy Maxson. For people inching closer toward rock bottom in a city depicted here as thoroughly “desperate,” all four characters remain true to themselves and to each other, even as they must reassess what all that means. They don’t slump under the weight, although that doesn’t mean they follow the increasingly irrelevant rules keeping them all in line: Among other transgressions, someone has been stealing parts from the plant for resale.

As all this unfolds, a mountain of crumpled car scraps peaks from behind the break room walls, a shadow looming over the brightly-lit, well-loved gathering spot. In the play’s final moments, the factory floor is revealed in full, barren except for the piled remnants. It’s a chilling image, but there’s a sense that this is only a graveyard for the industry; the assembly line ghosts of Dez’s imagination are all but absent. The experiences that took place here—the identities forged, the bonds strengthened—can be taken apart and put back together beyond the factory.

“Skeleton Crew,” a part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, continues through March 4 at Baltimore Center Stage.

The post Motor City on the line in “Skeleton Crew,” an intimate reckoning of the 2008 recession at Center Stage appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Aran Keating is trying to get three humans to realize they’re immortals.

The Baltimore Rock Opera Society artistic director is helming one of the two musical shorts in BROS’ “Constellations & Crossroads” double bill that opens Feb. 9. On this Tuesday night, 10 days prior to that opening, he wants to run entirely through “The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing,” an allegory of blues legend Robert Johnson’s Faustian pact to acquire his guitar virtuosity, written by veteran BROS member Nairobi Collins.

“Blue Apple” castmates Charence Higgins, Valerie Lewis, and James Watson worked with the show’s five-piece band and have the songs down. Now, Keating wants to get everybody in the right headspace for the show. He explains what the set is going to look like, with a giant tree over there and its roots and branches sneaking out over here, here, and here. Watson swings around the prop axe he’s going to be using onstage. They only have digital recordings for musical accompaniment, so Keating’s going to voice all the other sound effects so they can tighten up their blocking and cueing. The cast needs to become their characters onstage, and Keating tells them: “Embody the gods that you are.”

Gods, axes, imaginative sets, rock ‘n’ roll—just another night in the maximum-everything world that BROS creates with such wanton enthusiasm. Except, with these restagings of “Blue Apple Crossing” and “Determination of Azimuth,” two shorts that first debuted in 2015 as part of the company’s “Six Pack,” BROS is intentionally trying to address one of its self-admitted shortcomings. “Blue Apple” and “Azimuth,” which imaginatively recounts NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson’s calculations that brought the Apollo 11 mission home in 1969, are African-American stories. And BROS knows it is an overwhelmingly white organization. For “Constellations & Crossroads,” BROS, one of the few rock opera companies in the country, is collaborating with Baltimore’s Arena Players, the oldest, continually running African-American community theater in the country.

This Tuesday night rehearsal takes place inside Arena’s intimately epic McCulloh Street theater, that wonderfully singular building off Martin Luther King Boulevard just above Seton Hill. Higgins, Keating, Lewis, and Watson, along with stage manager Liz Richardson and vocal coach Charles Armstrong, run through “Blue Apple” in the nearly 300-seat theater. In a second-floor rehearsal room, Lola B. Pierson is working with the cast of “Azimuth,” which she is co-directing. In the lobby, Arena artistic director Donald Owens is rehearsing “Praise the Lord and Raise the Roof,” which opens after “Constellations.” And wandering around the building is Arena’s associate artistic director David Mitchell, who is working on “Hoodoo Love,” which opens in April.

Arena and BROS see the production as a mutually beneficial partnership; a different kind of programming for Arena, a different talent pool of actors for BROS, and, ideally, exposing Arena audiences to BROS and vice-versa. A $5,000 Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts is helping to cover artist stipends. Arena is providing its theater and rehearsal space. And both organizations are going to split ticket sales 50-50.

The very fact that this collaboration is happening voices something theater artists of color know from experience: that the local theater community is as segregated as everything else in Baltimore. But 10 days before opening, such macro discussions of how to desegregate local theater take a backseat to the micro concerns of rehearsal. Tech runs are coming up, actors need to be microphoned and EQ’d, sets installed. Stage manager Richardson sits in a front row with a production binder, cell phone with digital recordings of “Blue Apple” music, and a small speaker. Notes, scripts, and sheet music from both musicals spill out of her binder, and she jokes that she should carry a three-hole punch around with her. Then she kinda hums something to herself for a second as she jots down a few notes, and laughs.

“I see every show more than anybody who isn’t in it,” she says. “So lately I’ve been running around humming songs about rocket science.”

“I’m Jesus,” Valerie Lewis says, tilts her head slightly, and smiles. “You know, typical typecasting.”

Lewis is one of the “Constellations & Crossroads” cast members who may never have been in a BROS production if not for this collaboration. Trained as an opera singer, she started getting into musicals and acting through Arena, auditioning for “Dreamgirls.” She was cast as Deena, the Beyoncé role for all y’all who only saw the movie.

She’s been involved with regional stage performance ever since, with Arena, Fells Point Corner Theater, the interactive troupe Dance & Bmore, and others. When Arena put out the casting call for “Constellations & Crossroads,” the “rock opera” part had her intrigued. She’s a “Jesus Christ Superstar” fan.

“It’s totally my favorite musical,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be Judas because I think he’s got the best songs, but being a girl, you only get offered Mary. She’s only got a few songs. When this [opportunity] came up, I didn’t know what it would entail, but I saw ‘rock opera’ and immediately thought ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ and, yeah, I want to try that. Who doesn’t want to wail onstage?”

She was less familiar with BROS. A friend of hers worked on one of BROS’ Artscape performances, which she saw. BROS “seemed like this wild, outside the norm group,” Lewis says. “That’s kind of cool, but I thought I could never do that.”

Lewis, a born and raised Baltimorean who attended School for the Arts and the Peabody Institute, has a voice that can stop traffic. She’s starring in both “Blue Apple” as Jesus, and “Azimuth” as Katherine Johnson.

“She’s fucking incredible,” says Lola B. Pierson of Lewis. Pierson directed the original “Azimuth” in 2015 and returns for this remount, which has been updated and changed slightly. Co-creator Heather Graham added some more biographical details and is co-directing this version; the approach is more adventurous (there’s two Katherine Johnsons in two different timelines). The score is also completely new. Horse Lords’ Andrew Bernstein composed the original, but he didn’t have the time to update it for the new parts. Cellist/composer Zack Branch wrote the new score, which has a more minimal, Philip Glassian vibe that changes the production’s entire mood.

At the first rehearsal for “Azimuth,” Pierson says Lewis arrived with an idea of her character in mind, and was able to deliver lines and sing in character, the same way, through multiple runs.

“I was just, like, ‘Well, you’re done,’” Pierson says with a laugh, adding that, for her, directing means trying to do something impossible and getting a bunch of really talented people to figure out how to do it. “I never have the best ideas, I’m just good at saying, ‘That’s the best idea.’ So, for me, the actors are changing [this ‘Azimuth’] a lot.”

Every BROS member I talked to for this piece remarked on the quality of the performers that Arena brought into their orbit.

“We’ve always tried to get more people of color in [BROS] but it seems like what we offer is not something they generally come rushing to,” says Nairobi Collins, who wrote “Blue Apple.” “So we’d have like two or three and me. But the auditions for this, we had so much black talent coming in. There’s just like a cornucopia of people who can do everything. They’re so A-list.”

The whiteness of what’s called Baltimore’s DIY/community theater scene is part of an ongoing racial discussion local artists have been trying to have since even before the 2015 uprising. And BROS members recognize that they haven’t done enough work to address those shortcomings in their own organization.

“We know that a lot of our audience, our volunteers, our actors, musicians, directors, and designers are primarily white and in a city like Baltimore we think that that’s not the right way to go about things,” says Debra Lenik, BROS’ production director, who first suggested the Arena Players collaboration. She says she knows BROS historically hasn’t, say, put out enough casting calls or even advertising outside the neighborhoods where many BROS volunteers and audience members live, such as Station North, Charles Village, Hamilton/Lauraville, and Hampden. And just the nature of being a volunteer company can be a barrier to participation. Meetings, rehearsals, and set or prop building often happens at night and on weekends, which can be difficult to manage if you work a job that isn’t 9-5 or have childcare needs.

“I want to make sure that we can do more to reduce barriers to entry to BROS for everyone,” Lenik says, acknowledging that a collaboration like this one is but a small, first step toward that goal. The next steps will involve finding ways to sustain the working relationships made through this endeavor.

“One of the advantages of this collaboration is that it’s been a very good working relationship,” says Donald Owens, Arena’s artistic director, who adds that when BROS approached him with the idea of doing these two productions, he felt they complimented Arena’s audience and talent network. “I’ve tried to collaborate a couple of times before, but it wasn’t a good working relationship. Theater is very segregated, so there was not that much collaboration done, black or white.”

Owens is a veteran actor, director, and theater educator who has worked with Arena Players since the 1970s, after he first moved to Baltimore. He came to Arena classically trained, and working with the company gave him a richer appreciation of contemporary black theater.

“Arena Players was formed because blacks had no place to perform unless you want to be a servant, butler, or something like that,” he says, noting that Arena is one of the few companies in Baltimore consistently producing works by black playwrights.

And if the people who make theater aren’t being exposed to the wider range of plays, playwrights, and roles, the audiences they reach aren’t, either. So the very process of making art that speaks to an artists’ identity can end up segregating artists and audiences by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.

“I know artists don’t like to hear that said about them because they believe they can get together as artists and celebrate, [tell each other] ‘I love you guys,’ but we often have no association outside of that process,” Owens says. “How can you love me? You don’t know me yet.”

Both “Blue Apple” and “Azimuth” debuted as part of the BROS “Six Pack” over the weekends of May 21-24 and 28-31, 2015, about a month following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody and the protests and uprising that followed. May 2015 also ended up being the deadliest and most violent month in the city’s history since the 1970s. BROS were working on those productions during that time, and Pierson recalls that, of course, the tensions of the city at large were seeping into the rehearsal space.

“That was a very specific time in Baltimore’s history and now, two years later, we’re at another very specific time in our history,” Pierson says. As a Baltimore native, she attended city public schools, and she probably saw her first play ever during a class trip at Arena.

“I have complicated feelings about working on this show,” she says. “I’m a white woman directing this show about a black woman, written by another white woman, and I feel unresolved about it. And yet I’m super grateful to be doing this, to be working at this theater that I admire and think is a really big deal.”

Additionally, “there’s been this thing going on, which I’ve totally benefitted from over the last five to 10 years, where politicians and publications are embracing the white artist movement, saying, ‘There’s something really exciting going on in Baltimore,’” she continues. “I mean, I’ve done that. And yet Arena’s been here the whole fucking time. So this [production] really feels like a synthesis of two companies. It genuinely feels like people who don’t know each other are getting to know each other.”

Pierson’s zeroing in on what, thus far, is making “Constellations & Crossroads” such a quietly radical process. While it is entirely possible that an Arena and BROS collaboration could have happened without the ongoing dialogue about race relations in Baltimore and the art community post-uprising, I don’t think the self-examination of whiteness that the artists involved are pursuing takes place without the activism, advocacy work, and public and social media discussions of the past two years.

So while BROS recognizing that as a majority white theater company it’s not equipped to produce two black stories in a black theater on its own can feel like a no brainer in 2018, remember: This year we also saw Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the Chicago-based boutique advertising firm Highdive, and the Intellectual Properties Management company that licenses the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. sign off on using a King speech from 1968, one that includes warnings about the lies of capitalism, to sell Dodge trucks.

“We want to be more diverse and inclusive,” BROS artistic director Aran Keating says. “It’s a good thing to have that desire but it’s a meaningless gesture just in its own right, you know? BROS is super ambitious as far as what we’re trying to accomplish onstage, and this process is about setting a different bar higher. It’s not just important that we push ourselves to do the bigger, crazier productions. Let’s also set a high bar for how we can improve our community.”

Of course, calling anything “our” community makes assumptions about who is and isn’t included in the first-person plural.

“That’s the tough part of integration, we have different missions with our theaters,” says Collins, BROS member and “Blue Apples” creator. “I’m a Navy kid, so it took me a while to come into my blackness and understand that my taste in music comes from all that stemmed from the theft of black rock’n’roll. But I also feel like I don’t see that many black rock operas. I see a lot of soul musicals. And I see a lot of gospel musicals. I don’t know what else happens in black theaters because it seems to be so insulated from me. I’m trying to find a way to grab them and say, ‘We do rock opera, too—and I would really like to see more of us doing it.’”

Collins’ desire to see more blackness in BROS is what initially inspired “Blue Apple.” He liked the idea of the Robert Johnson’s crossroads tale, but not the 1986 movie starring Ralph Macchio that was inspired by that legend. In the film the guitar “battle really bothered me because it’s two white guys playing guitar, and the winner plays a Bach fugue or something,” Collins says. “I thought that fundamentally wrong and that’s what originally sparked me to write it. Then I started asking, what happens to souls of black folks? Like, why would we subscribe to Christianity when clearly it’s been nothing but bad for us the whole time? So I started thinking about what is it like to be alive and worry about pandering to a hereafter, especially if you’re black.”

“Azimuth” stemmed from a different effort to add more African-American stories to a space lacking them. Co-creator Heather Graham works in the the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory in the Astrochemistry Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt; one of the projects she works on is the Mars Science Laboratory on the Curiosity rover. When she was in grad school, she participated in the National Science Foundation’s GK-12 that placed STEM grad students in at-risk schools. Graham spent two years with a majority African-American middle school in Harrisburg, Pa., helping with curriculum and coming up with ways to teach science through hands-on experiments. And for Black History Month in 2010, she suggested focusing on black scientists. The teacher she was paired with told her that the school already had a teaching unit on George Washington Carver, who admittedly came up with farming advancements a century ago, but it wasn’t exactly current.

“I just really felt like kids in that classroom had no connection to the fact that people with their backgrounds and skin color are doing great science right now,” Graham says. She put together a 28-day February calendar that included black scientists dating from the Revolutionary War era to the present, including Katherine Johnson, whose story resonated with her.

When BROS put out a call for ideas for the “Six Pack,” Graham pitched the Johnson story. At the time, neither writer Margot Lee Shatterly’s 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” nor its commercially and critically embraced film adaptation of the same year had come out, and Graham researched some of the same resources that Shatterly turned into such an informatively gripping book: Langley Research Center historians and NASA’s Apollo archives. Graham even reached out to Shatterly about her manuscript.

For Johnson’s dialog in “Azimuth,” Graham used things the mathematician actually said in interviews with media over the years. And all the lyrics in the opera are taken from papers Johnson co-authored, including the one that gives the musical its name: “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position.” In Johnson’s computations “there’s all these things that I think of as being deeply meaningful,” Graham says. “She talks about the idea of pushing against the environment, how the only way to enact change [in rocket trajectory] is to push hard enough against the environment. And that’s what she does in her life.”

“From a female perspective and certainly from an African-American perspective, people always make you feel like women can’t do science, can’t do numbers, can’t do any of these things and that’s absolutely not true,” Valerie Lewis says of her character’s story. “If more people knew about [Johnson], don’t you think more women would be encouraged to go into that field? That’s an interest to me. Plus, this was written by a woman who is a scientist for NASA, and I thought that was cool.”

Pierson admits that she typically finds overcoming obstacles narratives a little cheesy; it’s not the kind of story that she usually directs. “So much of my stuff deals with existentialism and the human condition,” Pierson says. “As a white artist, I don’t personally think it’s appropriate for me to be delving into black existentialism or black questions of the human condition.  But I do have a really strong emotional reaction to this [‘Azimuth’]. I’m mean, she’s a black woman scientist who says I want to be in the fucking briefings in the 1960s, and what she’s doing, she’s doing it backward and in heels. That to me is existentialism right there. That’s the human condition. How far can we push ourselves, because human beings are endlessly capable.”

Pierson also appreciates something Graham’s told her: It’s not genius that put people into space.

“It’s hundreds of people working together as a team that put people into space as part of the Apollo program,” Graham says. We may remember the astronauts by name, but that team included many “African-American women who sat with slide rules and really archaic calculators the size of a microwave making calculations. That’s how science works. Advances in science are about 95 percent incremental and 5 percent visionary. That’s actually a good ratio, because you have to have enough support for any crazy idea so that you can ensure that you can do it again.”

A whole bunch of support and a little bit of crazy—that’s how theater works, too.

“All BROS shows start with an idea that’s like a thrill,” Keating says. “I think that that thrill is the most important thing. It’s often the hardest thing to keep in mind because you get caught up in trying to tell the story and sometimes those things get in the way of you making somebody fucking feel something and walk out of that theater just amped up, blood rushing, feeling alive and inspired. That is why I’m part of this company, because I want to touch people in a way that gets them inspired to go out and make their own art, to go out and expect more from the art that they that they do and want to see. And you have to get to keep that vision in mind all the time. Why are we here? What are we trying to accomplish?”

With “Constellations & Crossroads,” BROS and Arena Players are trying to stage two amazing pieces of theater and make a small step toward desegregating two small corners of Baltimore theater. They’re trying to reach new audiences and figure out how to work together in different ways. They’re trying to stay true to who they are and become better versions of themselves.

So they’re putting in the work. After Higgins, Lewis, and Watson run through “Blue Apple” once, Keating calls them to the front of the stage where he and vocal coach Armstrong go over some notes they made. Armstrong says they’re going to have a flourish session later in the week so they can practice some vocal variations they can use in the gospel song that closes the play. Keating compliments Lewis on how she’s finding her Jesus power. They all offer Watson different ways for not saying the lone “motherfucker” in the libretto. Keating reminds Watson that when he’s addressing the tree, he’s speaking to the souls of people. Keating tells Higgins that as the Devil, she commands respect, and when Jesus tries to push her around she should feel OK about embracing her rage. The cast asks about the sequence of a certain special effect, and Keating thinks for a second and rattles off: lighting bolt, big thunderclap, wind, more wind, big crack, wind, silence.

Rehearsals aren’t mere practice, they’re feats of imagination to summon what reality is going to look and feel like when it’s time to perform in front of an audience. So cast and crew imagine what the theater is going to look like when the auditorium is full. They imagine what the stage is going to look like when it’s dressed. Imagine what Baltimore could look like when its theater companies break down barriers that might be keeping them from becoming more diverse and inclusive. Imagine what kind of effect art can have on the people it touches. Imagine harder.

“OK,” Keating says, checking the clock. “Let’s run through this one more time.”

“Constellations & Crossroads” continues Feb. 16-18 at Arena Players.

The post Arena Players and Baltimore Rock Opera Society collaborate on a biomusical double bill—and one small step toward creative desegregation appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

American Soil: A Tribute to Blackness. Spoken word, dance, and live music celebrating Black History. Featuring Mari Andrea Travis, Christine Jenkins, The Concord Jazz Project, and more. Feb. 18, 3 p.m., Terra Cafe, 101 E. 25th St., (410) 777-5277, eventbrite.com/e/american-soil-a-tribute-to-black-history-tickets-42701890504?aff=efbeventtix, $8.

Badass Comedy. Adam Long hosts a night of improv, stand-up, and sketch from Bear Trap, Silversmith, and Becca Lundberg, followed by a bonus open improv jam. Feb. 17, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“Count Down.” As part of the 2018 Women’s Voices Theatre Festival, The Stand present Dominique Cieri’s interdisciplinary piece about girls growing up in the child welfare system. Feb. 15-March 4, Strand Theatre, 5426 Harford Road, (443) 874-4917, strand-theater.org, $10-$25.

Centurion – 100 Minutes Of Stand-Up Comedy. Josh Kuderna, Umar Khan, Ivan Martin, and Violet Grey perform. Ian Salyers hosts. Feb. 17, 9 p.m., Atomic Books, 3620 Falls Road, (410) 662-4444, atomicbooks.com, $5.

Champions of Magic. Five world-class magicians perform mind-reading and illusions in a large-scale, family-friendly production. Feb. 15-18, 7:30 p.m., Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St., (410) 837-7400, baltimorehippodrome.com, $51-$124.

Club 1727: An Open Musical-Improv Jam. Learn musical improv games and song formats. No experience necessary. Feb. 14, 7 p.m., The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St., (888) 745-8393, bigimprov.org, free.

Commit to the Bit. Chicago’s Dylan Scott, Heather McLaren, and Tyler Ross stop in Baltimore on their Commit to the Bit comedy tour. Feb. 20, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com.

BROS & Arena Players Present: Constellations & Crossroads. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society and Arena Players team up for a double feature: “Determination of Azimuth” about NASA pioneer Katherine Johnson and “The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing” about bluesman Robert Johnson. Feb. 9–11 and 16–18, Arena Players, 801 McCulloh St., baltimorerockopera.org, arenaplayersinc.com, $20.

“The Death of Walt Disney.” The regional premiere of Lucas Hnath’s biographical play about the megalomaniacal mind of Walt Disney. Through Feb. 25, Single Carrot Theatre, 2600 N. Howard St., (443) 844-9253, singlecarrot.com, $25-$29.

Elegant Filth. Burlesque featuring MC Mindi Mimosa, Jacqueline Boxx, Tempete La Coeur, Lottie Ellington, Scarlet Starlet, Glam Gamz, Hell O’Kitty, Fiera Foxx, and Cherie Nuit. Feb. 17, 9 p.m., The Crown, 1910 N. Charles St., (410) 625-4848, eventbrite.com/e/elegant-filth-a-baltimore-burlesque-delicacy-tickets-42609327646, $12-$15.

Exploring the Artistry of the Male Dancer. All-male repertory dance company 10 Hairy Legs makes its Baltimore debut. Feb. 17, 8 p.m.; Feb. 18, 3 p.m.; Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., (410) 752-8558, theatreproject.org, $15-$25.

F*CK Your Work Week. After School Grandman and two other improv troupes perform a workplace-themed show. Feb. 18, 7 p.m., The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St., (888) 745-8393, bigimprov.org, $5.

Godfrey. The actor and comedian has appeared in the films “Zoolander,” “Soul Plane,” “Original Gangstas,” and more. Feb. 14, 16, and 17, Baltimore Comedy Factory, 5625 O’Donnell St., (410) 547-7798, baltimorecomedy.com, $22-$50.

“I Hate Hamlet.” An actor who hates “Hamlet” takes on the title role and encounters the ghost of John Barrymore. Through March 4, Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul St., (410) 752-1225, spotlighters.org, $10-$22.

Kyle Dunnigan. Dunnigan is best known as a writer, producer, and performer on “Inside Amy Schumer.” Feb. 15-17, Magooby’s Joke House, 9603 Deereco Road, (410) 252-2727, magoobys.com, $10.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama spans one day in the life of a family troubled by addiction and the inability to let go of the past. Through March 4, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $43-$65.

Mucking About. Ivana Greene hosts a night of improv and stand-up featuring Bandicoot, BEST PARTY EVER, Mulletproof, Cosmo, Elizabeth Fulton, and Seth Payne. Feb. 16, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“Red Velvet.” The biographical play from Lolita Chakrabarti tells the story of the 19th century African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Through Feb. 25, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 7 S. Calvert St., (410) 244-8570, chesapeakeshakespeare.com, $16-$43.

“Skeleton Crew.” In the third play in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, four workers at the city’s last exporting auto plant face down an uncertain future. Through March 4, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

Sputniks Cabaret. Baltimore and D.C. artists participate in a night of slam poetry, comedy, music, sideshow, and burlesque. Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m., The Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., (410) 662-0069, theottobar.com, $8.

Steve Martin and Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest of Your Life. Two comedy legends hit the stage together for a night of stand-up, film clips, musical numbers, and conversations about their lives in show business along with performances from pianist Jeff Babko and bluegrass band Steep Canyon Rangers, with whom Steve Martin frequently performs. Feb. 16, 8 p.m., Lyric Opera House, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave., (410) 685-5086, modell-lyric.com.

Totally ’80s, Totally Murder Interactive Dinner. The Murder Mystery Company in Baltimore presents an interactive, ‘80s-themed production alongside a three-course meal from Blue Agave. ‘80s concert attire encouraged. Feb. 21, 6-9 p.m., Blue Agave, 1032 Light St., (410) 576-3938, blue-agave.ticketleap.com/totally-80s-totally-murder-interactive-dinner, $60 or $115 for two people (includes show, meal, and pre-show cocktail).

Umar Khan. The Baltimore comedian who has opened for the likes of Todd Barry, Hari Kondabolu, Hasan Minhaj, and Judah Friedlander makes his live recording debut. Feb. 18, 7:30 p.m., Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave., (410) 276-1651, creativealliance.org, sold out.

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BROS & Arena Players Present: Constellations & Crossroads. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society and Arena Players team up for a double feature: “Determination of Azimuth” about NASA pioneer Katherine Johnson and “The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing” about bluesman Robert Johnson. Feb. 9–11 and 16–18, Arena Players, 801 McCulloh St., baltimorerockopera.org, arenaplayersinc.com, $20.

Chippendales. The all-male strip revue returns to Baltimore on its About Last Night Tour, just in time for Valentine’s. Feb. 7 and 8, 9 p.m., Baltimore Soundstage, 124 Market Place, (410) 244-0057, baltimoresoundstage.com, $35-$50.

Club Orbit. Improv, stand-up, and sketch followed by an all-comedy open mic. Feb. 9, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“The Death of Walt Disney.” The regional premiere of Lucas Hnath’s biographical play about the megalomaniacal mind of Walt Disney. Through Feb. 25, Single Carrot Theatre, 2600 N. Howard St., (443) 844-9253, singlecarrot.com, $25-$29.

Godfrey’s Valentine’s Day Special. The actor and comedian has appeared in the films “Zoolander,” “Soul Plane,” “Original Gangstas,” and more. Feb. 14, 8 p.m., Baltimore Comedy Factory, 5625 O’Donnell St., (410) 547-7798, baltimorecomedy.com, $25-$50.

“I Hate Hamlet.” An actor who hates “Hamlet” takes on the title role and encounters the ghost of John Barrymore. Feb. 9-March 4, Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul St., (410) 752-1225, spotlighters.org, $10-$22.

Jeff Dunham. “America’s favorite ventriloquist” stops in Baltimore on his Passively Aggressive Tour. Feb. 10, 5 p.m., Royal Farms Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St., (410) 347-2020, royalfarmsarena.com, $54.50.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama spans one day in the life of a family troubled by addiction and the inability to let go of the past. Through March 4, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $43-$65.

Mortified Baltimore: Doomed Valentines. Everyday adults read from their most cringe-worthy adolescent love letters, poems, locker notes, and diary entries. Feb. 10, 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., The Ideal Arts Space, 905 W. 36th St., (443) 529-5937, mortifiedbaltimore-feb2018.eventbrite.com, $17-$20.

My So Called ‘90s Comedy and Trivia. Seven comedians and seven rounds of trivia celebrating nostalgia. Feb. 8, 8 p.m., The Crown, 1910 N. Charles St., facebook.com/TheCrownBaltimore, free.

“Out of Darkness: Two Remain.” The Peabody Chamber Opera presents Jake Heggie’s 2016 opera with a libretto by Gene Scheer inspired by the true stories of two Holocaust survivors. Feb. 8-11, Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., (410) 752-8558, theatreproject.org, $10-$25.

“Red Velvet.” The biographical play from Lolita Chakrabarti tells the story of the 19th century African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Through Feb. 25, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 7 S. Calvert St., (410) 244-8570, chesapeakeshakespeare.com, $16-$43.

The Second Saturday S#!t Show. John Conroy headlines Ottobar’s monthly stand-up show hosted by Mike Quindlen. Featuring Alexx Starr, Maria Sanchez, Carlos Garcia, Scott Seiss, Kim Ambrose, and Brock Snyder. Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m., The Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., (410) 662-0069, theottobar.com, free.

The Short Cutz Show: V-Day Edition. A short form oral storytelling slam and party jam starring professional African-American barbers. This month’s story theme is “A Love Supreme,” featuring celebrity storyteller Ladawn Black (from New York’s 107.5 FM WBLS). Feb. 12, 7 p.m., Motor House, 120 W. North Ave., (410) 637-8300, motorhousebaltimore.com, $10.

“Skeleton Crew.” In the third play in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, four workers at the city’s last exporting auto plant face down an uncertain future. Through March 4, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

“The Sleeping Beauty.” The State Ballet Theatre of Russia performs the Grimm fairytale choreographed by famous choreographer Marius Petipa. Feb. 9 and 10, 7:30 p.m., Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St., (410) 837-7400, baltimorehippodrome.com, $61-$83.

Sputniks Cabaret. Baltimore and D.C. artists participate in a night of slam poetry, comedy, music, sideshow, and burlesque. Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m., The Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., (410) 662-0069, theottobar.com, $8.

Tassels & Champagne: Love By Any Other Name. Gilded Lily Burlesque brings an evening of classic burlesque and variety featuring Oca O’Leary, Maria Bella, Nona Narcisse, Mourna Handful, Ruby Spruce, Gigi Holliday, Sophia Sunday, and Valeria Voxx. Feb. 10, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave., (410) 276-1651, creativealliance.org, $22-$28 for single ticket, other ticket packages available.

When ___ Met ___ : An Improvised Romantic Comedy Starring You. Baltimore Improv Group stages a fully improvised Valentine’s Day rom-com with two leads played by audience volunteers. Feb. 10, 8 p.m., The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St., (888) 745-8393, bigimprov.org, $6.27.

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