December/January 2010

Films ° Performances ° Lectures
and other events in December and January 2010

Through December 12
SpeakEasy Stage Company presents Reckless, a new play from Craig Lucas (The Light in the Piazza). This dark comedy tells the tale of a modern-day Alice in a perilous winter wonderland. When Rachel jumps out of a window on Christmas Eve, she embarks on a series of outrageous and harrowing adventures that test her belief that it is indeed a wonderful life. Directed by Scott Edmiston. Call for times. SpeakEasy Stage Company, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA. 617.482.3279, www.speakeasystage.com

January 7–31
Harriet Jacobs, a collaboration between Underground Railway Theater and The Providence Black Repertory Company, brings to the stage Harriet Jacobs’ astonishing true story, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Lydia R. Diamond, this play about human oppression allows Jacobs to reach out to us from her own era and compel us to reflect on our history in her beautifully poetic coming-of-age story. Call for times. Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA. 617.576.9278, www.centralsquaretheater.org

January 7–February 14
John Cariani’s play ALMOST, MAINE has become one of the most popular shows in regional theaters across the country. The story takes place on a cold, clear night in the mythical town of Almost, so-named because the locals, as they put it, “only almost got around to gettin’ organized.” The residents fall in and out of love in unexpected and hilarious ways. ALMOST, MAINE aims for the heart by way of the funny bone and hits them both. Call for times. The Majestic Theater, 131 Elm Street, West Springfield, MA. 413.747.7797, www.majestictheater.com

January 15–February 13
A love letter to musical theatre and to the joy of collaboration, [title of show] is a charming new musical about two struggling young writers writing a new musical—about two struggling young writers writing a new musical. The pair, aided by two friends, write and perform their show-within-a-show at a musical theater festival, and along the way learn lessons about themselves as people and artists. Music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen; book by Hunter Bell. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Call for times. SpeakEasy Stage Company, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA. 617.482.3279, www.speakeasystage.com

January 29–31
Friendships often happen in the most unexpected places. In Jeff Baron’s Visiting Mr. Green, when an elderly dry cleaner walks into the path of an oncoming yuppie's car, a judge with a sense of humor requires the young man to pay weekly visits to his victim. What starts out as an Odd Couple-style comedy becomes a surprising story about the dangers of intolerance and isolation as each man discovers a profound and uplifting lesson from each other's mistakes. Call for times. The Public Theatre, 31 Maple Street, Lewiston, ME. 207.782.3200, www.thepublictheatre.org

December 11 & 12
John Marin: Let the Paint be Paint! (2009) tells the story of one of the most important artistic figures of the first half of the twentieth century, and the undisputed father of American modernism. Utilizing more than sixty paintings, drawings, and etchings, filmmaker Michael Maglaras tells the story of Marin’s life, from his beginnings in New Jersey, and his early experiments in watercolor, to his days at Cape Split in Down East Maine, where he established himself as one of the preeminent masters of American art. The director will be available at each screening to answer questions. Call for times. Portland Museum of Art Auditorium, 7 Congress Square Plaza, Portland, ME. 207.775.6148, www.portlandmuseum.org

December 6
Music from East Asia features diverse styles of Chinese classical and contemporary music, the traditional drumming and dance of Korean Pungmul-Nori and Taiko drumming of Japan in a variety of traditional contexts. All of these music genres are presented by the Wesleyan East Asian music ensembles. The audience is welcome to look at the instruments and talk to musicians after the concert. 7 p.m. Crowell Concert Hall, The Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, 343 Washington Terrace, Middletown, CT. 860.685.2330, www.wesleyan.edu/east

December 12
The Bridgeport Symphony presents Seasonal Sensations, with Harolyn Blackwell, soprano. Guest conductor Mark Shapiro is the music director of Cantori New York and the Opera Company of Middlebury. The lively programming of this well-known conductor and radiant voice of the Metropolitan Opera star promises to result in an evening full of holiday cheer. 8 p.m. Klein Memorial Auditorium, 910 Fairfield Avenue, Bridgeport, CT. 203.576.0263, www.bridgeportsymphony.org

January 21
As part of their “Avant Gardner” series, Music at the Gardner presents Hot Butterknife Knight, an evening of music from today’s freshest creative voices, including the premiere performance of a collaborative work created by Adam Roberts, Nicholas Vines, and Lei Liang. 7 p.m. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 The Fenway, Boston, MA. 617.278.5156, www.gardnermuseum.org

January 23
The Springfield Symphony presents an evening of Rachmaninoff and Brahms. Rising Russian star Alexander Ghindin will perform Rachmaninoff’s youthful and vivacious first piano concerto. Maestro Kevin Rhodes will lead the orchestra in Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, a pastoral work inspired by his trip to the Austrian Alps. The concert will open with the overture to Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux. 8 p.m. Symphony Hall, 34 Court Street, Springfield MA. 413.733.2291, www.springfieldsymphony.org

December 4–6
The fall performances of Hartt Dances features choreography by Katie Stevinson-Nollet, ballet excerpts re-staged by Hilda Morales and Alla Nikitina, works of original choreography by Miguel Campaneria, and a modern piece by a guest choreographer, to be announced. Call for times. Millard Auditorium, Fuller Music Building, 200 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford, CT. 800.274.8587, harttweb.hartford.edu

January 15 & 16
The Flynn Center presents Miguel Gutierrez’ Last Meadow. Borrowing movements and text from various James Dean films (East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant), Last Meadow creates a non-narrative patchwork that describes an America where the jig is up and the dream has died. The piece explores the iconic and misunderstood image of James Dean as a symbol of the ways we project unrealistic and outsized expectations onto each other and our identity as a nation. Last Meadow is about the space of waiting, where what you need never comes. This new work is sure to dazzle and provoke with unexpected images and startling recognition. Call for times. Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, 153 Main Street, Burlington, VT. 802.863.5966, www.flynncenter.org 

January 20
Robert D. Mowry, the Alan J. Dworsky curator of Chinese art at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, will give a lecture entitled Numbered Jun Ware: An Introduction to the Problems of Connoisseurship and Dating, where he will discuss scholarly controversies related to these exquisitely glazed and beautiful forms, which are prized as some of the most compelling ceramics ever made. Presented by the Pottery and Porcelain Club. 1:45 p.m. RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI. 401.454.6500, www.risdmuseum.org

December 2
In conjunction with the exhibition Gerry Bergstein: Elements of Style (on view through December 19), the artist will give a talk entitled Painting Broke my Heart. 2 p.m. Gallery NAGA, 67 Newbury Street, Boston, MA. 617.267.9060 , www.gallerynaga.com

December 2
A gallery talk will be given in conjunction with the exhibition Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England (on view through January 17). This exhibition features one hundred drawings of houses selected from the rich collections of historic New England. The drawings are all of domestic buildings, ranging in date from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, and they depict an array of building types—estates, modest single-family houses, summer cottages, and even a typical Boston multi-family dwelling known as a three-decker, plus designs for buildings that were never constructed. 4 p.m. The Stone Gallery, College of Fine Arts, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA. 617.353.4672, www.bu.edu/art/

December 10
In conjunction with the retrospective exhibition The Matrix Effect, (on view through January 3), the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art presents A Conversation: Christian Jankowski and Nicolas Baume. In his 2000 show at the Matrix Gallery, Janowski presented a video entitled The Matrix Effect (where the current exhibition gets its name), in which he interviewed Jim Elliott, Matrix’s founding director, curator Andrea Miller-Keller, and eight artists whose former Matrix showcases form the current exhibit. Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator of the Public Art Fund in New York, will join the conversation, mediated by Patricia Hickson, the Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art. 7 p.m. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main Street, Hartford, CT. 860.278.2670, www.wadsworthatheneum.org