Growing up in Los Angeles, John Rosenberg had a fist-pumping, Rambo-inflected pro-U.S. stance on the Vietnam War. “I was super-Mr. America,” Rosenberg recalls, “and then I grew up and stopped being an idiot.”

In 2009, Rosenberg and his “ladyfriend” traveled to Vietnam, where her sister was a journalist in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, before relocating to her native Philadelphia. (“Maybe she was preparing me for what the East Coast was like by taking me to Vietnam,” Rosenberg jokes.) While there, the couple visited Reunification Palace, the home of the president of South Vietnam during the war. Rosenberg’s attention was captured by the gambling room, where the powerful would gather to unwind.

“It’s a very beautiful, comfortable place where powerful people made decisions about life and death,” Rosenberg says. “Something about it really captured my imagination. I really wanted to do a play that took place in the room, but then I realized that there was something strange about an American dude writing a play that took place in a Vietnamese palace.”

Instead, he wrote “The Gambling Room,” the story of two brothers in the U.S. diplomatic corps attempting a coup d’etat in South Vietnam in 1963. “I usually write plays that take place somewhere historically, but they’re all very personal stories,” he says. “So within a story that takes place during these coups and backstabbings and betrayals, there are beautiful things about families or relationships that I was able to dig into and discover and play with.”

The play premieres this Saturday at the Papermill Theater, Rosenberg’s intimate space in the Papermill Arts Collective, a five-story warehouse in Kensington which also features artist workspace, a gallery and a community library. Maintaining the space allows Rosenberg to premiere his own work on a DIY level.

“I don’t want to write plays and send them out and hope they get produced at some point,” Rosenberg says. “If I’m going to put that much work into writing a play, why not fully develop it? I’m just some dude; I can’t expect other people to put on my bullsh— work, so I might as well do it.”

If you go

“The Gambling Room”
May 18-June 9
Papermill Theater
2825 Ormes St.
$10, 510-292-6403
www.hellafreshtheater.com

The post Life and death decisions in ‘The Gambling Room’ appeared first on Metro.us.

The Philly arts scene is progressive enough that when you hear about a trapeze show that delves into the world of queer culture and gender blurring, it sounds like any other Thursday night. Enter “Invert!,”  an aerial-arts show being put on by Tangle Movement Arts, a women’s circus arts organization, that pairs impressive physical feats with feminism.

With just two little syllables and an exclamation point, the performance’s title provides a fair amount of insight. “’Invert!’ connects a nod to queer history — ‘invert’ being a 19^th-century term for gender non-conformitism — with the basic shape of circus arts: a body upside down,” says Tangle Movement Arts founder Lauren Rile Smith. “‘Invert!’ presents an evening of upended expectations.”

For those who believe circus arts to be just a bunch of spinning and dangling from ropes, your expectations will not only be “upended,” as Smith says, they will be shattered. Along with glitter and sequins you’ll see fire, power tools, and according to Smith, “drag-inspired diva fabulousness.” As for the auditory experience, you’ll hear are monologues, duets and violin solos courtesy of the Carnegie Hall-playing, Julliard-attending wunderkind Caeli Smith.

The topic of gender, with all its political branches, is boundless, and that’s what makes trapeze a great venue for discussion. Sure, there’s the drastic juxtaposition between flames or power tools and silk ropes and physical flexibility, but the nuances are there, too. Pay close attention to the interactions — the back and forth — between performers, and the difference in their individual presentation. “In a Tangle show, performers display a wide range of body types, gender presentations, and relationships — whether those are relationships of support, antagonism, flirtation, or partnership,” Smith says. It’s obvious that this performance will be no exception.

Look familiar?

You may not realize it, but it’s possible that you’ve seen these performers before. Tangle Movement Arts has put on several free outdoor acrobatic shows under the name “tinycircus.” They’ve performed at craft fairs and community events throughout the city, with a focus in West Philly.

If you go

May 16-May 18

The Rotunda

4014 Walnut St.

The post Flips, kicks, and gender bending appeared first on Metro.us.

Playwright Robert O’Hara sums up his play “Bootycandy” with the tagline “Everybody is welcome, no one is safe.” Which should serve as fair warning to audiences to expect something that will delight in both embracing and offending their sensibilities.

“You deserve what you get if you come to a play called ‘Bootycandy’ and you’re not prepared for something outrageous,” O’Hara says. “I think theater is like a bus; you get on and you can’t tell the bus driver, ‘Go faster,’ or ‘Drop me off at my door,’ or ‘Stop so I can pick up some food.’ You’re on this bus and it’s going to go at this pace down these routes and you’re here to experience it and get off when you need to. There’s a stimulating danger.”

The show ranges from the pulpit to the street corner, and references pop culture icons from Michael Jackson to Jackie Collins. However, the audacious title comes from O’Hara’s childhood. “It’s one of those little silly names that parents make up instead of saying the explicit names for your private parts. My parents and grandparents used to say ‘bootycandy.’ My mother claims they said ‘boo boo candy,’ as if that makes more sense, but I think her memory has lapsed.”

On a more concrete level, O’Hara, who will direct his play at the Wilma starting Wednesday, describes “Bootycandy” as “a variety show based around the themes of sexuality, family and hilarity.” He likens the series of interlocking sketches as akin to watching “Saturday Night Live” or “In Living Color” or, perhaps more accurately, attending an old-fashioned vaudeville show.

“In vaudeville you would go and see strippers and magic acts and animal acts and a little bit of blue humor. I’ve seen people watching the show get offended, and then out of nowhere they’re rolling on the floor because there’s such silliness involved. There’s no huge statement that I’m trying to make, no message — just enjoy yourself.”

The post ‘Bootycandy’ will have you chuckling along to blue humor appeared first on Metro.us.

And, thank the gods of comedy and Internet buzz, it looks like it’s still funny. (What is also funny is how few people gave a crap about this show while it was on the air and how many, many, many people became invested in it once it was gone. But such is the way of these things.)

The gang’s all here in this trailer that looks like it picks up right where it abruptly left off seven years ago — Gob, Buster, Lucille, George Michael and co. haven’t missed a beat in their knack for dysfunctional hilarity and talent for non sequiturs. Plus, the awesome Judy Greer is back as Kitty Sanchez. It’s safe to say we’re as pleased about this as the rest of the world.

Now if only the cast of ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ would make good on those long-standing prequel rumors…

The post VIDEO: Arrested Development trailer is live and, oh good, it still looks funny appeared first on Metro.us.

Even if you’re not gifting mom with hot sex from a young mustachioed stud today (your dad might not be so into it, you should check with him first) you should still call her up let her know she’s appreciated.

Because, no matter what maternal flaws she might have, she’s still probably a better mom than these ladies.

Because your mom probably let you use whatever hangers you wanted.

Because your mom probably didn’t try to kill you before the big dance.

Because your mom…well, actually, Kathleen Turner as “Serial Mom” is just awesome.

The post [VIDEO] Happy Mother’s Day from two mother lovers and three moms much worse than yours appeared first on Metro.us.

Imagine tying a string to all the nostalgic souvenirs of your past and looping the whole mess around the present day.

Artist John Y. Wind is doing just that with his assembled keepsake collages that simultaneously reflect on the past and mirror modern day. In his upcoming solo show, The Making of a Modern Man, Wind will explore masculinity, the passage of time, and how outside pressures like the media and societal expectations can decide what it means to be a man.

Busts of influential men, like Beethoven, are adorned with necklaces of handheld appliances and tangled wires. A sculpture of David is decked out with pearls, watches and Elvis paraphernalia.

Wind’s creations highlight found objects, whether they are vintage baubles or the artist’s old toiletries. “It’s the stuff of my life, and this is an attempt to encapsulate my journey,” he says. “These are things found during my travels, objects from my past, pictures from magazines. The objects become stand-ins for the passage of time.”

His day job involves a different type of art: Wind is a jewelry designer. His company, Maximal Art, sells necklaces and bracelets with charms and monogrammed lockets.

Wind, who was born in Israel but moved to Philly in first grade, says that he fell into jewelry making accidentally, when he went to the Slade School of Art in London after graduating from Penn, in the early ’80s. “I became a club kid, a party animal by night. The scene was just so dynamic there, everyone was being creative in a different way,” says Wind. “I was making jewelry for my friends — crazy brooches we would wear. By the time I graduated, I was supporting myself on the jewelry I was making.”

The Making of a Modern Man is his first public fine arts exhibit. “It’s like I’ve stepped into a time capsule,” Wind says of setting up the show. “Suddenly I’ve picked up and it’s London in ’85.”

If you go

“The Making of a Modern Man”
James Oliver Gallery
723 Chestnut St., fourth floor
May 17-June 26 (opening reception May 17)
267-918-7432
www.jamesolivergallery.com

The post John Y. Wind’s new exhibit looks at what goes into being a man appeared first on Metro.us.

To hear Youngblood Hawke’s Sam Martin talk, you might imagine him some kind of environmentalist, rather than the frontman of a swiftly rising indie-pop outfit. “I think it’s important to conserve nature and take care of our earth, because we’re blessed and fortunate to have it,” he says. “I feel like one day we’re going to look, and it’s going to disappear on us, and we’re going to wish that we had lived a little bit differently.”

He’s talking about the inspiration for the music video for the band’s single “We Come Running,” which was filmed entirely underwater and features the band members swimming alongside live sharks. “At the time there were a lot of shark attacks in California and we wanted to shed light on these animals because they were getting slaughtered by the millions,” he says. “We wanted to show people that they weren’t these man eating killers. They attack surfers occasionally because they think they’re fish … but once they know what you are, they’re not evil manhunters. We can’t keep slaughtering these animals at the rate we’re doing it because we’re going to completely wipe them out. And the ocean would die.”

Indeed, Martin says that if he weren’t making music he’d probably be working in the great outdoors, “maybe a tour guide in a national park or something.” Luckily for Martin (if not visitors to Yellowstone) he’s otherwise employed — making infectious, up-tempo electro-rock with one of his best college buds, producer Simon Katz.

Martin and Katz have been collaborating musically ever since the two decided to move from their college town of Boulder, Colo., to L.A. and start their first band, Iglu & Hartly. The band enjoyed moderate success, scoring a Top 5 hit in Europe, before dissolving suddenly — and painfully, says Martin — due to strained relationships with the other band members. “Simon and I felt like we didn’t really have a voice in the project … and it wasn’t a happy environment for us to be in anymore,” he says. “When you’re making music, but it’s not the music you want to make, there’s really no point. We felt like we could no longer express ourselves, and everything just fell apart.”

The two took the considerable angst of that loss and channeled it into the songs that would become Youngblood Hawke’s debut album, “Wake Up.” “We were really in a dark place and I think, looking back, we really wrote these songs to cheer ourselves up,” he reflects. “We were sitting in our living rooms, dead broke, trying to figure out what to do with our lives. We’d invested eight to 10 years of our lives [in Iglu & Hartly] and then one day it was completely gone. I think it was important to lift ourselves up, I think it was a cathartic experience. We were writing to make ourselves feel better. Definitely the songs have kind of an upbeat feel but I think that if you listen to the lyrics it gets really dark at points.”

When asked to describe the band’s sound, Martin hesitates. “I feel like describing music is like trying to describe a color,” he says. “There’s rock, there’s dance, there’s definitely synth, and there’s some pop elements to it, definitely. But I think what separates us is that we have some weirder lyrics that we balance out with the pop choruses.”

Martin might find their genre difficult to define, but he clearly articulates the band’s unofficial mission statement. “We’re all kind of excited about life,” he says. “In a live show we just like to give people a great experience. I feel like, they come to a show and buy a ticket, they should walk away feeling like we gave all of our effort to entertain them. We walk offstage and we have nothing left. We like to leave it all on the stage for the audience.”

When asked if he ever fears the specter of the one-hit wonder, a fate that befalls many young bands who burst onto the scene with that one catchy hit single and just as quickly fade away, he’s quick to dismiss it. “I feel confident in our album and our songwriting abilities. I think we’re just fortunate to be in this position right now, we’re taking it one day at a time,” he says. “Some bands don’t even get a song. We’re going to continue to write and evolve and get better, so I don’t think that’s something that really freaks me out at all.”

Youngblood Hawke stops in Boston and New York on a club tour before hitting the festival circuit this summer.

NEW YORK
May 13, 8 p.m
Santos Party House
96 Lafayette St., New York
$13-$15
ticketweb.com

BOSTON
May 14, 9 p.m.
Brighton Music Hall
158 Brighton Ave., Allston
$12
ticketmaster.com

The post Youngblood Hawke soars high and swims in the deep appeared first on Metro.us.

Steve Hofstetter comes right out and says what he feels. He sees himself as more social critic than comedian — but please keep buying tickets to see his act, which will be at the Hard Rock Café on Sunday.

“I do not hold back,” Hofstetter told Metro. “I research my stances enough to know that my facts are 100-percent accurate and my opinions are reasonable. And if anybody gets offended by anything, it’s their fault, and frankly I don’t care.”

Hofstetter’s brand of comedy doesn’t appeal to everyone. It can be offensive, insulting, even somewhat vindictive — as evidenced by his “Cure for the Cable Guy” CD/DVD that pummeled popular blue-collar comedian Larry the Cable Guy.

Some people can’t handle that; others relish it. Hofstetter’s fans adore him because he insists on interacting with them. On album release dates, he promises a “million free downloads” on his website. He responds frequently to Twitter messages and loves replying to fan mail, something he credits to his love of baseball.

“I wrote to [baseball player] Paul Molitor when I was growing up,” he said. “I wasn’t a Brewers fan, but I always liked Paul Molitor, so I sent him a baseball card. Not only did he send it back with an autograph, he sent it back in a self-addressed envelope. So once people started writing to me, I realized that it might not mean that much to you, but it means that much to them.”

And while Hofstetter, a lifelong New York Mets fan, still loves sports — he writes for Sports Illustrated — he promises he’ll take it easy on Philadelphia fans.

“This is the same city that had a courthouse built into the stadium, that threw snowballs at Santa Claus, that throws batteries at opposing players and your own players. Philly is bad a—. If there’s a city I’m not getting to mess with, it’s you guys.”

That’s not to say he won’t mess with the audience. Sunday is Mother’s Day. Heckle at your own risk.

“Hopefully, it’s not a bunch of people with their mothers there, or they are going to feel very awkward.”

Steve’s best heckling moment

Hofstetter isn’t afraid to call unruly crowd members out. While he doesn’t set out to embarrass people, once someone starts jawing, all bets are off. He once told a Denny’s waitress she was boring. Another time, at a show in Port Charlotte, Fla., he had to put a drunk woman who was insulting him in her place.

Hofstetter bet her $100 that she couldn’t do five minutes of stand-up and get a laugh. As she trotted onto the stage he produced a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and asked her to do the same. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. She was broke.

“I told her, ‘Not only are you not good enough at my job to make $100, you are not good enough at your job to make $100.’ Man, I wish I had that one on tape, the crowd exploded.”

If you go

Steven Hofstetter
Sunday, 8 p.m. (sold out); 10 p.m. (few tickets left)
Hard Rock Café
Market Street in Center City
$20 (18+)
www.stevehofstetter.com

The post Steve Hofstetter brings comedy without apology to Philadelphia appeared first on Metro.us.

John Lithgow feels perfectly comfortable in women’s clothing. Over the course of his 40 years on stage and screen, Lithgow has done his fair share of acting in drag. “That’s one of my various stocks in trade,” Lithgow says. “In ‘Raising Cain’ I was in drag in order to scare people; in ‘The World According To Garp’ I was intent on making people cry, it was such a sweet character; and in ‘Carnival of the Animals,’ it’s flat-out farce. If people don’t laugh I’ll be deeply embarrassed.”

Lithgow has performed his narration for Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet “Carnival of the Animals” more than 20 times since its 2003 premiere with the New York City Ballet, the latest being this weekend’s performances with the Pennsylvania Ballet. He has yet to be embarrassed when he enters as Mabel Buntz, the school nurse and “scourge of each virus and germ,” who is transformed into an elephant in the dreams of the story’s young hero.

“I came up with the notion of a little boy running away from a field trip as a practical joke that goes awry,” says Lithgow, who was invited to create the story by Wheeldon, who had choreographed “Sweet Smell of Success,” the actor’s first Broadway musical. “He ends up being locked in a natural history museum overnight and dreams that everybody in his community is an animal. The boys on the wrestling team are the jackasses, the girls in the hallway are the twittering birds in the aviary, his piano teacher is the baboon.”

Despite his vast experience in a wide range of performing arts, “Carnival of the Animals” marked Lithgow’s first experience with ballet. “It was really a very exciting and brand new work experience,” he says. “I have vast admiration for ballet dancers, having experienced the rigor of their lives and work. They work so quickly and they do such daring things in no time at all.”

Best known for his roles on TV shows like “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “Dexter” and movies ranging from “Terms of Endearment” to “Harry and the Hendersons,” Lithgow has been writing, recording, and performing stories and music for children since the late 1990s.

“I’m in the business of suspending disbelief,” Lithgow says. “You never completely suspend an adult audience’s disbelief, but you can totally suspend a child’s disbelief. It’s a wonderful thing to take them to a different place, to a magical world. I love entertaining children.”

The post John Lithgow, ballet star appeared first on Metro.us.

We’re suckers for a good photobomb.  And we’re even bigger suckers when it’s awesomely irreverent Jennifer Lawrence doing the bombing. Add Sarah Jessica Parker in a ridiculous freaking hat (that’s not “punk,” by the way. We’re talking to you, Sarah Jessica Parker’s stylist) to this frothy potion of awesome photobombery at last night’s Met Gala in NYC and we. are. SO INTO IT.

One of our fave celebs who just DGAF, Lawrence did her best to blow the feathers off of SJP’s misguided headgear at the punk-themed gala — an event that, in our opinion, far too many celebs take far too seriously. Not this gal. (Check out how much Marion Cotillard over there, stage left, is digging this.)

And, incidentally, not Joshua Jackson a/k/a Pacey from ‘Dawson’s Creek’ a/k/a one teen actor who grew up into a major babe. He had a photobomb of his own:

WE ARE ALL FOR THIS. Sorry, sorry — we know Anne Hathaway is a totally legitimate actress and totally killed it in Les Miz and is most likely a totally pleasant and likable gal, a peach even — but she really just irks us. Ruffles our headfeathers, you might say. (See what we did there?)

Bravo, you two. Y’all should get together and make beautiful photobombing babies.

The post Jennifer Lawrence photobombs SJP at Met Gala, reaffirms awesomeness appeared first on Metro.us.

What do you ask a woman who interviews others for a living? A woman who has forged a lengthy and venerable career out of posing often tough questions to strangers, who have included the likes of Lynne Cheney, Tracy Morgan, Bill O’Reilly and Jay Z, to name just a varied few. Well, to start, you ask her what it feels like to have the tables turned. Does she feel compelled to lead the interview or direct the conversation? “No, no,” says Terry Gross, producer and host of NPR’s “Fresh Air.” “I let the interviewer do the driving.” You’re relieved because, frankly, you were a little worried that you were going to end being the interviewee in this scenario. Tables thusly leveled, you proceed.

(Terry Gross stops in Boston on Friday as part of the Celebrity Series for “Terry Gross: All I Did Was Ask.”)

You’ve been the host of ‘Fresh Air’ for some 30+ years. Does it ever become routine, interviewing people?

Well, you know, although I’ve been doing interviews for a very long time, the people I’m interviewing always change. So it never gets tired, it never gets old for me, in the way that having friends or talking to new people — it’s just like how people never get tired. There are always new people to talk to and the conversation is always changing, the subject matter is always changing. There are always new movies and TV shows and music and books that I’m exited about. There’s always important — and often terrifying — things happening in the news to talk about. It doesn’t get old.

How do you choose your subjects?

Well, we have several producers who work on the show and they spend their days just poring through things, looking for good ideas. They often call people up and talk to them just to see what they would be like as interviewees. We have these super long meetings on Fridays in which we go over all the potential guests we’ve been thinking of and narrow down the list.

Do you do a lot of the research yourself?

I don’t gather the research; the research materials are given to me. So I’m not, like, on the Internet looking for things that I should read, but I’m the one who does the reading. I watch the movies, I listen to the music. I think that if I don’t have a firsthand knowledge of the material myself that I can’t do it. I have to feel some commitment to the subject matter and to the person, and I have to know as much as I can about it.

Can you think of anyone you talked to recently that you were particularly excited about?

Okay, several! I interviewed Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men.” I love the series so it was a lot of fun to talk with him and talk about why things were happening to Don that are happening to Don. (laughs) I interviewed Matthew McConaughey and he is just really smart and interesting and funny, so that was a lot of fun.

He is? I always had the impression that he was sort of … a surface-level type of guy.

No, no, he’s really very interesting. And very funny. Oh, and I interviewed David Sedaris recently, that was a lot of fun. We had had a drink together a long time ago and then we went out to dinner afterwards. … Actually this is a long story, it’s too long to tell.

How about a bad interview, do you ever have one that’s failing horribly?

Yeah, we kill interviews sometimes. By that I mean we record them and then decide not to run them. Our interviews are prerecorded and edited, but if something is especially confusing, or boring, or we don’t trust the facts in it, we won’t run it. And then sometimes guests walk out on me. I mean Lou Reed, who I’m a big fan of, many years ago just walked out on the interview. I don’t think he really likes being interviewed in the first place, and then I was talking about some early recordings and he said he really hated talking about old music of his. And I think he was in a cranky mood.

Have you ever found yourself at odds with an interviewee or had the whole thing devolve into a fight?

I try not to argue with my guests. I try to let them have their say and ask them challenging questions when I think that’s appropriate. My interview with Gene Simmons is probably a good example of him saying kind of crude things to me and me accusing him of being obnoxious, and then it devolving from there.

How do you handle a bad interview like that?

I don’t take it personally. If someone is being crude, or obnoxious, or insulting to me, I don’t take it personally. Because usually when that happens it’s somebody who doesn’t know who I am, and they don’t know the show, and they’re just working with some stereotype in their heads, some stereotype of what NPR is or who I am. So I just hope that it’s going to sound like good radio. (laughs) Because sometimes when things are going really bad, it’s actually good theater.

Have you ever had to interview somebody whose philosophy or morals were just totally oppositional to your own? I ask because we recently ran an interview with a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, during which our reporter remained very calm and objective, and I’m not sure I, personally, could do that.

Well, you know, I’ve interviewed somebody from the Klan and I can’t remember whether I pointed out to them that I was Jewish or not, but they didn’t say anything anti-Semitic to me, to my face. I’ve interviewed people who I totally disagree with, and I’ll ask them totally challenging questions, but again I won’t take it personally. Even if they’re insulting me, I won’t take it personally.

I imagine you’ve had to develop a thick skin over the years. Did it take a long time?

Yes, yes. I think it took, I don’t know … Well, say Lou Reed had walked out on me early in my career? I think I would have just been heartbroken. And so upset.

What about the best interview you’ve ever had?

I kind of prevent myself from thinking that way because if I had a best interview I’d ever done, then I’d listen to it and I’d go, ‘Really? That’s the best interview you’ve ever done?’ So I don’t. Wait, I’m looking up Matthew McConaughey

I’m on IMDB now too. It’s not ‘Tropic Thunder’ is it?

No, no.

‘Killer Joe’?
‘Killer Joe,’ yes! That’s it. It’s a weird movie, kind of not to everybody’s tastes, kind of a perverted movie. (laughs) He plays a very perverted character, let’s put it that way, but he plays it quite well. It’s a side of him I had no idea was there.

Have you ever been really scared or anxious about interviewing somebody?

Yeah. An example I often use is Stephen Sondheim because I admire him so much and he’s very critical of the interviewers, I think. So it’s not a breezy, relaxed conversation. But I just love his work so much. But I always get a little edgy before interviewing him.

So did it end up being as scary as you thought it would be, the first time you interviewed him?

Well, I’ve interviewed him several times and sometimes I’ve thought it went very well and sometimes I’ve thought he’s been very unhappy with it. Or he’s moderately unhappy with it. There have been times he’s been more forthcoming than others.

I think the way interviews go just depends on people’s moods too.

Yeah, yeah. I think it does. And some people are more often in that mood than others.

Who are some people who you really admire, who do what you do?

I really love Jon Stewart’s interviews. I think he does terrific political interviews. And he manages to be kind of gracious and charming and funny and hold people’s feet to the fire at the same time. And he manages to have pretty big disagreements with guests but still do it in a very friendly, respectful way. I think he’s amazing. I think Ira Glass is a terrific interviewer. I mean he does more hosting, but I think when he does do an interview it’s fantastic. I think Scott Simon is a terrific interviewer.

What would you be doing right now, if you weren’t doing this? In a dream world.

If I could do anything else in the world? OK, I like what I’m doing, I feel so lucky to be doing what I’m doing. Because I wanted to fall in love with work. I wanted to find some form of work that I could love. And I was afraid that it wasn’t going to happen. You know how some people are afraid that they’ll never get married? I was afraid, like, I’m never going to find work I really care about, that’s meaningful to me. So when I found it, I developed a pretty monogamous relationship with it. But if I could make a fantasy come true? I’d be able to sing really well.

Do you ever find your work slipping into your social life, interviewing people at parties, that kind of thing?

Well, first of all, I don’t go to parties often. (laughs) Usually if I’m at a party, it’s like a benefit or a station event or something like that. I go to very few parties outside of official events. But when I’m at an event and I’m being introduced to people I’ve never met before, I feel really lucky that I know how to talk to people now, because I’ve talked to so many people and I know how to get a conversation going. Because I used to be really shy and would have been very uncomfortable doing that.

As a formerly shy person, what made you think that this was the career for you?

Well, actually, it’s a good position for a kind of shy or formerly shy person because the spotlight isn’t on you. It’s on somebody else. And, in fact, in radio, there isn’t even a spotlight. No one is seeing you and what you’re doing is asking questions. You’re not holding forth and you’re not the one who’s the storyteller. Mostly you’re listening and asking questions. So, eventually over time, people get to know who you are and people can read things into the questions you ask and intuit things about who you are, and what you may think, and so on. But when I started in radio I was still pretty shy, but it suited me just fine. And I was used to reading a lot and being curious about what I’d read and so on. And I was always interested in movies, books and television, so having a natural curiosity about that and then wanting to learn and read more, that came really easily. And now, I think, I think it would be wrong to describe myself as shy now — I’d say I was self-conscious describes me now. Because I’m used to making speeches and going to meet-and-greets and things like that, I’ve learned how to do all that and I’m comfortable doing all that. But it took me a while to learn. I’m still a very self-conscious person.

What’s one great interview question, if you were only ever allowed one?

There’s no generic one question to me. It would depend who the person is. I think one of the things about interviewing is that you don’t ask the same thing of everyone. The exceptions to that rule are things like the Proust questionnaire in Vanity Fair, which I really enjoy reading. It’s fun to see all the different answers that people you’re really interested in give to those same questions. But that’s different. It would really depend. Is that person a painter? Are they an avant-garde jazz musician? Are they a politician, a priest? Who are they? Do I want to know about life and death, do I want to know about the cure for cancer? Do I want to know about what they believe the afterlife is? It just really depends.

Who’s on your bucket list of dream interviews?

I kind of no longer have that list in my head because we’ve gotten a lot of the big “gets.” When we first became a national show we had our list of, you know, the 10 people we most wanted. And we’ve gotten them. And Lou Reed was one of those people. And he walked out on me. Robert DeNiro was one of those people. And he’s never been on the show, but I don’t think he’s a great interviewee from what I’ve seen. I think he’s hard to get because I don’t think that’s where he really shines. I think he’s a great actor — I don’t think he’s a great guest. So, at this point, a lot of what’s exciting is finding, you know, the actor that’s just emerging and becoming really wonderful. Or somebody who’s a character actor and you’re realizing how great they are. Or, like, Matthew McConaughey. During his romantic comedy period — I tend to not see a lot of those films — I wasn’t paying attention to him, but he’s gotten so interesting lately.

Well, what about if you could interview anybody, alive or dead, what would your dream interview look like then?

If I could bring back people from the dead, and do a series? Yes, the series I would do would be a series of songwriters, mostly people who did the American Popular Songbook. And they’d be at the piano while I interviewed them. So it would be like the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Harold Irwin, Duke Ellington would be there. You know, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein. I would be asking them about their lives and their songs and they’d be performing their songs as I talked to them. Don’t you think that would be fun?

My professor, on the very first day of journalism school, told us all that, well, you know you’re never going to make any money…

Was that the right thing to say? Well, it might be a way of discouraging people who aren’t really serious about it. You know, so many music teachers and acting teachers say that unless you really, really want this, don’t do it. It’s going to be too hard, it’s not going to pay well … unless you’re really super lucky and really super extraordinary.

And sometimes not even then.

Yeah, exactly. Talent is not always recognized.

Well, as you said, I guess you consider yourself lucky if you get to do something you enjoy every day.

Oh, I feel so lucky. So lucky.

If you go

Terry Gross: All I Did Was Ask
Friday, 8 p.m.
Sanders Theatre
45 Quincy St., Cambridge
$30-$40
celebrityseries.org

The post Turning the tables on NPR’s Terry Gross appeared first on Metro.us.

The post VIDEO: Andrew the Pizza Guy [deep] dishes on Daft Punk in Funny or Die spoof appeared first on Metro.us.

Festivals

Come Together: Koresh Dance Company’s Spring Dance Festival
Through May 12
Suzanne Roberts Theatre
480 S. Broad St.
$25-$35, 215-751-0959
www.koreshdance.org
Twenty-seven choreographers and dance companies are coming together for “Come Together,” a nine-day festival celebrating all kinds of dance: ballet, hip-hop, jazz, gymnastics, aerial, modern and more. We recommend Friday’s performance with local favorites Rennie Harris PureMovement and Brian Sanders’ JUNK. They’ll make you get up out of your seat and groove to the beat.

Tides of Freedom: Africa Presence on the Delaware River
Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Independence Seaport Museum
$13.50 for adults, $10 college/military/children
211 S. Columbus Blvd.
www.phillyseaport.org
The first exhibit in the Seaport Museum’s River of Freedom explores the concept of freedom through the evolution of the African experience along the Delaware River. Saturday is the opening celebration, with lots of family-friendly activities.

Strawberry Festival
Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Peddler’s Village
Free, 215-794-4000
www.peddlersvillage.com
This annual festival isn’t just for strawberry lovers. (But who doesn’t like strawberries?) Visitors can stroll through the craft fair while listening to live music. For the kids, there’s a pie-eating contest! Strawberry pie, of course. Don’t worry, parents, plenty of strawberry treats, like strawberry butter and zeppoles, will be available for you.

Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festival
Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Germantown Ave. between Rex and Willow Grove Aves.
Free
www.chestnuthillpa.com
Does your home need a little sprucing up? Head to Germantown Ave. to pick up plants, flowers and furniture from more than 150 home and garden vendors. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Elmwood Park Zoo will be on hand along with live music. Don’t leave the kids at home — yoga, amusement rides and face painting will keep them entertained.

Music

Atlas Genius
Radio 104.5 Summer Block Party
Saturday, 3:45 p.m.-7 p.m.
The Piazza at Schmidt’s
1050 N. Hancock St.
Free
www.radio1045.com
Back by popular demand, the first of five summer block party concerts kicks off with headliner Atlas Genius, making it’s return to Philly after a rockin’ show at the Electric Factory back in February. Family of the Year and local band Jackson Kingsley will also be performing, and the Miller Lite Beer Garden will be flowing. Free music, beer and warm weather? Sounds like the perfect spring day.

Latino in America with Soledad O’Brien
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
$25, 215-893-1999
www.kimmelcenter.org
As part of VOZ! Congreso, a collection of intimate conversations with acclaimed Latino celebrities and intellectuals, the popular CNN host will cover many topics featured in her show, “Latino in America.”

Curtis Symphony Orchestra
Sunday, 8 p.m.
Kimmel Center
300 S. Broad St.
$5-$45, 215-893-5262
www.curtis.edu
This is your last chance the beautiful sounds of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra —Sunday is their Season Finale Concert. The show features Curtis alumni and rising Metropolitan Opera stars Eric Owens and Heidi Melton.

Art

Snyderman-Works Gallery
Saturday, 4 p.m.
303 Cherry St.
Free, 215-238-9576
www.snyderman-works.com
As part of First Friday, Snyderman-Works Gallery is going all out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the zipper, (yep, the zipper), by throwing an innovative zipper fashion show. Nearby boutiques will also be participating ,including Three Sirens and Scarlett Alley. And you can’t have a celebration without food! Cuba Libre, Wedge and Fig, and more will provide food and drinks to make it the best zipper celebration ever.

The post The scene: where to go and what to do this weekend in Philly appeared first on Metro.us.

The 2012 film “A Late Quartet” traces the rifts that form in the relationships between the members of a long-running string quartet as its senior member (played by Christopher Walken) decides to retire. The members of the Tokyo String Quartet didn’t face such personal conflicts when founding member Kazuhide Isomura and violinist Kikuei Ikeda, who joined in 1974, decided to call it a day. But the remaining members made the no less dramatic decision to end the 43-year-old quartet with their departure.

“In the end, we felt it would be very hard to find two members that would have a unity of vision between the two of them, let alone with the remaining members from the previous incarnation of the group,” says cellist Clive Greensmith. “I think we both felt that it would be stretching just a little too far.”

The Tokyo String Quartet was founded in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music by four musicians who had been influenced by Professor Hideo Saito at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo. “A quartet should evolve in different ways but always has to remember its roots,” says Greensmith, who joined the ensemble in 1999. “I always found that our group had a nice balance between heart and head and that the individual expression of each member was well balanced with the corporate vision of the group. It was and still is very much a cultural attribute that I’ve observed in Japanese people. There is an objectivity and a sense of allowing the music to speak for itself.”

Greensmith and violinist Martin Beavers, the quartet’s newest member, having joined 11 years ago, will continue to work together. Both are joining the faculty of Los Angeles’ Colburn School of Music, and plan to begin a new piano trio. But their current tour is a bittersweet farewell to the places and repertoire that the quartet has performed for more than four decades.

They’ll perform in Philadelphia for the final time on Sunday, with a program featuring Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Bartok.

“We played our last-ever Ravel quartet yesterday on Long Island,” Greensmith said when we spoke early this week. “So we’re saying goodbye to the music, familiar pieces that we’ve lived with and played regularly over the last 43 years. It’s tinged with a little melancholy.”

The post The Tokyo String Quartet says farewell appeared first on Metro.us.

“Seinfeld” fans might recall the episode where Kramer is tasked with portraying a gonorrhea-riddled patient in front of a group of medical students. The character took some liberties with his role, but in real life there are behind-the-scenes folks writing out detailed scripts to guide mock patients through faking a convincing illness. Around here, that person is Tina Brock.

Brock is a case developer with the National Board of Medical Examiners. She’s also, perhaps fittingly, co-founder of the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, a theater company devoted to Theater of the Absurd with the tagline: “We bring good nothingness to life.”

The IRC is collecting cash for their fall FringeArts show with a boozy fundraiser that brings the beloved satire mag The Onion to life. The event, “Onion de Mayo,” is this Sunday — Cinco de Mayo — at L’Etage, the bar above Beau Monde. Brock recruited some of the “patients” she knows from her day job to read selections from the Commentary section of The Onion. One recent entry: “I’ve Been Having Some Pretty F—ed-Up Bread Thoughts Lately, By A Duck.”

But they’re not all that absurd, Brock says.

“About 10 years ago, a bunch of us were experimenting with what happens when you take written editorial information and try to make it dramatic. Try to put it on its feet,” she says. “We looked at the Commentary section — there’s a lot of ‘real’ people in there, like Obama, just ranting and raving. It played really well. We were howling.”

By “real people,” Brock doesn’t mean the POTUS is actually using a satirical, irreverent online publication as a sounding board. But The Onion writers have no problem guessing what he might say if he did. Fortunately for Brock, they agreed to let her use their work in the show.

“For the most part it’s pretty ridiculous stuff. Some go father than others in terms of how offensive they are,” she says. “We go through and select ones we think are relevant and timely.”

But the quest for timeliness doesn’t trump everything. “One of the commentaries last week was about the Boston Marathon, and it just wasn’t suitable for this show,” Brock says. “It was too close.”

If you go

“Onion de Mayo”
Sunday, 6 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.
L’Etage, 624 S. Sixth St. (side entrance – second floor)
$10-$20
www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org

The post Celebrate the absurd with ‘Onion de Mayo’ appeared first on Metro.us.

Whether glued to the television during the pursuit of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects or moved by the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, most of us can sympathize with Makoto Hirano’s feelings as he watched the March 2011 disaster in Japan unfold from half a world away: “There’s something huge and sad happening in the world right now and I can’t do anything about it, but I can totally watch it in HD.”

The ability to experience the world’s calamities in real time is at the root of “JapanAmerica Wonderwave,” the new comedic dance-theater show from Team Sunshine Performance Corporation. The company consists of Hirano, Benjamin Camp and Alex Torra, who all met while working with Philly’s Pig Iron Theatre Company — and who share that company’s love of physicality and blending the cerebral and the silly.

“We challenge each other just right,” Hirano says. “We push each other’s buttons, but we’re really just three sensitive dudes in a room making art and within 10 minutes of getting into a super-heated fight, we’re thankful that we got into that fight. Somehow it works.” Team Sunshine’s core trio rotate taking the lead on projects, and Hirano’s turn came just as Japan was thrust into the headlines.

For Hirano, who was born in Japan but left for the States when he was only four months old, the tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown felt both terribly close and impossibly distant. “This thing was happening that I’m so connected to yet feels so far away,” he says. “With digital media, we can see tragedies happening on the other side of the planet and feel worse, but we have no tools to make ourselves feel better.”

One tool that Hirano found was dance, which enabled him to find some joy in a show about profoundly dark themes. “Dancing is fun, dancing is beautiful, and dancing is something that can save the world,” he says, laughing. “I would never say that out loud in a large group, but it’s something that I secretly believe. In our age, art-makers can’t look at anything without irony shades on, so it makes me feel great to believe that someone can go around the planet and dance and make people happy.”

If you go

“JapanAmerica Wonderwave”
May 2-12
Christ Church Neighborhood House
20 N. American St.
$10-$60
www.teamsunshineperformance.com

The post Team Sunshine makes comedy from tragedy appeared first on Metro.us.

There are things that everyone knows about Mike Tyson. The weird stuff. The frightening stuff. The flat-out insane stuff. The stuff of legends. Holyfield’s ear. Years of domestic strife. Bouts of volatility and violence (an occupational hazard, perhaps). That face tattoo.

But there’s also other stuff. Like an inexplicable fondness for pigeons, arguably the most common bird in the aviary hierarchy. You’d have guessed maybe peacocks. Or bald freaking eagles. But no, Iron Mike loves pigeons. He also loves theater. All kinds of theater. He digs Porgy and Bess and cites the little known (among non-theater heads, at least) Cuba and His Teddy Bear – the Reinaldo Povod-written play starring Robert DeNiro that enjoyed a 53-show Broadway run in ‘86 — as one of his favorites. The dude is a little bit enigmatic. He’s also a known hot-head, though not these days, as both recent behavior and self-testimony indicate that Tyson is a changed man, maybe even a bit of a Zen man.

Still, when you’re tasked with calling Mike Tyson up on the phone to interview the champion heavyweight boxer-turned-actor about his one-man play Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (directed by similarly legendary Spike Lee) — for which he’s currently wrapping up a 19-date tour with a stop at the Kimmel Center in Philly and a penultimate stop at the Wang Theatre in Boston — you’re a little nervous.

This writer was tasked with just that. The following are excerpts from a conversation held over a very bad connection on an iPhone, from the cafe car of a southbound Amtrak. Excerpts because the other thing Iron Mike is known for is that signature lisp. If you’ve ever tried to talk to anybody on a cell phone with a bad connection on an Amtrak cafe car, you’re likely aware that it is….difficult. (A seventh listen to the recorded transcript of this interview revealed that Mike Tyson did not, in fact, tell this writer that he once watched Ben and Jerry perform A Bronx Tale. Though that would have been amazing.)

Mike Tyson on deciding to do a one-man play.
Me and my wife was watching [not Ben and Jerry] do a Bronx Tale onstage and it was just so amazing, you can’t even imagine. Inspiration is an understatement. We was hanging on every word they said and I said ‘Baby, I think I can do this.’ Because, I mean, when I’m in Europe, and in Asia, I’m onstage talking about myself. People ask me questions from the crowd. But when I do it in America, I feel like it’s coming from an artistic point of view. And so we did it for two weeks at the MGM Grand and sold out every night….mostly foreigners. Every night, foreigners! And then Spike Lee called me when I was in Poland and asked me to take it to Broadway. And now we’re on a nationwide tour.

On pre-stage ritual.
I make sure I’m in the best physical and spiritual shape I can possibly be in. I just think of myself as being, like, one of the great stage performers. Like, you know, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Julie Garland, and all those guys. Frank Sinatra. I’m talking about real entertainers, I’m talking about really explosive entertainers. The dancers! That kind of stuff.

On a bomb threat that got called in to his New York show.
Yes, there was a bomb threat. But they caught the guy, they caught the guy. But that’s okay. And they’re going to do that to me? Can you imagine me dying on a Broadway stage?! Holy Moley! Well they got the guy…I think it was fake. He wanted to do another, um, Colorado movie theater shooting….online….and that helped the FBI catch him.

On his favorite story to tell onstage.
When I had my street altercation with Mitch Green. I had a street fight with Mitch Green — a boxer – and I’m explaining to the crowd what happened. Oh, amazing. It’s not meant to be, but it gets a lot of laughs.

On the suggestion that that’s good, because isn’t his show meant to be half-comedic and half-serious?
No! I don’t want to be anything comedic. Nothing comedic! But sometimes people laugh.

On his favorite city on the tour.
I’ve been to….man. I’ve been to St. Louis, I’ve been to San Francisco, San Diego, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Where else? San Diego. Where else? San Jose, Atlanta, North Carolina, Mississippi, Miami, Tampa, all over the place.

On his favorite city on the tour to hang out in, though.
Hey, I don’t do no hanging out. But I did like Durham, North Carolina, that was a nice town.

On whether he had to read Fifty Shades of Grey to “research” for a scene in Scary Movie 5.
My wife reads that stuff, I don’t read that stuff. They just told me what to do. I don’t listen to my wife about no Fifty Shades of Grey. Yeah, I don’t want to read that stuff.

On stage versus screen acting.
I love stage acting, I don’t love anything more than stage acting — that’s instant gratification right there. You have people breathing, you have instant gratification.

On his favorite sports movies of all time.
Gentlemen Jim and Raging Bull.

On the best Rocky movie.
Big time Rocky fan. The one with Mr. T in it was the best.

On the one question he never wants to be asked again.
I don’t know…I’m so accustomed to answering any question anybody asks me. I’m not afraid to answer any questions.

On Zach Galifianakis.
He’s a really good guy. I think he’s a good guy. He’s a very normal person. He’s more normal than I am! He’s real normal, a good guy.

On the funniest actor in The Hangover.
Zach was the funniest. Zach. Zach. Zach. Zach. Number one, Zach. Zach was funnier than everybody.

On pets.
I just love animals, you know. They need people to take care of them. It’s a cold world out there. They live longer under the care of human beings than they do in the wild, in the care of the nature. Nature is harder on them.

On pigeons.
That’s just what I do. That’s my culture, that’s where I come from. You do that.

On his favorite pet pigeon.
No favorites, I have a lot of pigeons I like.

Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth        

PHILADELPHIA
May 2 @ 8 pm
Kimmel Center, 300 S Broad St.
$20-$500
tickets.kimmelcenter.org

BOSTON
May 4 @ 8 pm
Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St.
$33.25-$503.75
citicenter.org

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  VIDEO: Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, and Sugar Ray Leonard on the Arsenio Hall Show

The post Mike Tyson’s Truth: Iron Mike talks pigeons, ‘Rocky,’ Zach Galifianakis, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ and other stuff appeared first on Metro.us.

Carol Wisker has been what she calls an “obsessive sew-er” since she was a teenager: The patterns on the fabric, the endless details in the fibers, and the feel of the textures under her fingers are still a form of rarefied bliss to her. And, now at 62, she’s attempting to share that simple pleasure with her audience.

Her latest collection of fabric sculptures, “Densities,” will open this week at 3^rd Street Gallery.

“I wanted to make sculpture with form, but almost more important to me is that they’re sensual to touch,” she says from her home in Bala Cynwyd. “I love things like velvet. Or moss. Just take a second to consider all the things that are floating in a body of water. I love how tangible these things are to us.”

The 12 pieces in the show range in size from about three feet in diameter down to 12 inches, constructed – somewhat obsessively – down to the microfiber of the material. Among Whisker’s favorites are hand-tufted furniture piping and recycled T-shirts. There is a circular quality to these freeform sculptures, and – although the themes of environmental destruction are present – Whisker has discovered a distinctly feminine quality in this collection. She’s not shy about it, either. When describing the title piece of the collection, she says:

“Well, it’s like a vulva, but I’m not sure your readers want to read about that,” she says with a big laugh. “But I try not to think about any specific object when I’m working. I’m more about dealing with the surface and textures, as opposed to recreating an object. It just happened to take that shape.”

At the PMA

Before her retirement in 2002, Carol Wisker curated numerous exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art featuring artwork by incarcerated Pennsylvanians. And, for over a decade, she led the PMA’s effort to make the museum more accessible for people with disabilities.

If you go

“Densities”

May 1–June 2

First Friday reception:

May 3, 5–9 p.m.

Artist reception:

May 5, 1–4 p.m.

Free, 215-625-0993

www.3rdstreetgallery.com

The post Carol Wisker is obsessed with fabric appeared first on Metro.us.

When artist Glenn Ligon welcomed five Penn students into his Brooklyn studio last October, he felt it was just as important for them to see his failures as his successes. “I showed them work that you’ll never see,” Ligon told a small crowd at the ICA, “things that were about to go into the trash. It’s interesting to realize that an artist makes whole bodies of work that just don’t work. An artist’s process is an intellectual inquiry, it’s about making connections and failing sometimes, but those failures lead to other things.”

Those five students, all enrolled in Penn’s Spiegel Contemporary Art Freshman Seminar, followed the leads suggested by Ligon during that studio visit, resulting in their curation of the ICA’s new exhibition “Each One As She May: Ligon, Reich, & De Keersmaeker.”

Penn professor Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw and ICA curatorial fellow Jennifer Burris designed the year-long seminar to engage with Ligon’s 1998 ICA exhibition “Unbecoming.” The artist wasn’t sure what to expect when the students – Alina Grabowski, Chloe Kaufman, Andrew McHarg, Vincent Snagg, and Iris-Louise Williamson – made their visit. “I didn’t know anything as a freshman,” he said. “I was painting still lifes. But when they came to the studio, I realized that the questions they were asking and the research they had done about my work was really thorough and interesting.”

The ICA show deals with influences and echoes, as one artist’s work inspires or communicates with another, in this case in the work of three artists intrigued by repetition: Ligon, composer Steve Reich, and choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker.

Ligon’s coal dust and oil stick studies for “Negro Sunshine” feature that phrase (taken from Gertrude Stein’s story “Melanctha”) stenciled repeatedly until it blurs into a dense abstraction. The piece was the result of exactly the sort of failure he’d spoken to the students about.

“I was trying to make very perfect letters with oil paint and plastic letter stencils,” Ligon explained, “and after a frustrating six months I realized that oil paint and plastic stencils don’t make perfect letters. And that’s actually more interesting than what I was trying to do. That smearing and smudging and disappearance of text through the act of stenciling with this material that doesn’t want to stay solid and whole was what the work was about.”

The post Creating failure as an artist at the ICA appeared first on Metro.us.

“Memories are made of this,” sang Dean Martin, star of stage, screen and song.

A few memories of Martin with local connections are the foundation for the new show “DINO! An Evening with Dean Martin at the Latin Casino,” which previews tomorrow at Walnut Street Theatre.

The action takes place on the stage of the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill with Martin and a pianist. The rest of the band is stuck elsewhere in the midst of the Blizzard of ‘78.

“This event I kind of imagined in order to fit this idea that interested me,” says South Philly playwright Armen Pandola, who brought “The Prince” to the Walnut in 2010. “So many people like him have to reinvent themselves. When people become famous, there’s a public version of themselves and a private version. Martin was a very private person for such a huge star.”

What a star. In 1947, he teamed with comedian Jerry Lewis in Atlantic City to become the biggest showbiz draw of the era.

“They were huge,” Pandola says. “When they played the Paramount in New York, they broke records that were set by Sinatra.”

When Martin and Lewis broke up in 1956, the news rocked the nation. Martin was considered the lesser of the two talents, but he thrived out of Lewis’ shadow as a singing star (“That’s Amore”, “Everybody Loves Somebody”) and a movie star (“The Young Lions,” “Rio Bravo”).

Along the way, Martin’s public persona of the urbane ladies man with a penchant for drink was created. His Las Vegas appearances with the Rat Pack — Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop — cemented the image. In later years, the guise became a bit more boozy and womanizing on “The Dean Martin Show,” which ran from 1965 to 1974 on NBC.

It was all an act.

“The one thing I try to get into is the side of Martin where he was kind of a brooding guy, he had things in his life her regretted,” Pandola says. “He loved kids, he loved his children, and he was a devoted husband.”

So there was more to Martin than meets the eye.

“What interested me about the guy, is that like so many people I grew up with in South Philly, he’s the child of immigrant parents,” says Pandola of Martin, who was born Dino Crocetti in Ohio. “He had one foot in the old world, and one foot in the new world.”

The post Playwright imagines Dean Martin is stuck in New Jersey appeared first on Metro.us.

Prepare for a shaken, not stirred, Philly Pops.

The orchestra, with Michael Krajewski at the helm, will perform “Bond and Beyond” this weekend at the Kimmel Center.

“We have everything,” Krajewski boasts. “We start with the very first film, 1962’s ‘Dr. No,’ all the way up to the most recent film.”

The music of the Bond series has become iconic, from Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” to Adele’s Oscar-winning “Skyfall.” Everyone from Paul McCartney to Madonna has recorded Bond themes for the 23 films in the franchise.

So varied, yet similar in a way.

“When I was getting this together, I did notice that there are themes,” Krajewski says. “There’s a sort of five-note dah, dah, dah, dah, dah sequence in the James Bond themes. There are commonalities in the sounds even though the songs are different. Even ‘Skyfall’ works in a few notes of the original Bond.”

The music always has an orchestral flare. And being a secret agent with a license to kill does have its perks.

“It very much is sounding on the exotic side and that matches up with all the exotic locations that you see and all the beautiful girls and the handsome men,” Krajewski says.

Soprano Debbie Gravitte will be the featured vocalist for the show. The “Beyond” part of the program includes renditions of Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” and music from the Austin Powers and Pink Panther movies.

As for Krajewski, he’s filling in for the late Marvin Hamlisch on the Bond show. He’s the principal pops conductor of the Houston Symphony, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and he’ll be taking over as musical director of the Philly Pops when Peter Nero steps down next season.

“I hope I’m not forgotten like George Lazenby,” said Krajewski of the overlooked star of the 1969 Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

“I hope I’m more like Daniel Craig.”

If you go

“Bond and Beyond”
April 26-28
Tickets start at $30
Kimmel Center
1500 Walnut St., Floor 17
www.kimmelcenter.org

The post Philly Pops take on 007 with ‘Bond and Beyond’ appeared first on Metro.us.

The same year that Jennifer Childs’ daughter celebrated her seventh birthday, her mother turned 70. Spending time with two of them, Childs noticed that both made her laugh, only in entirely different ways.

“My mom is funnier at 70 than she ever was in her whole life,” says Childs. “Mostly because she owns herself now and cares less what people think, so she has the freedom to say what she feels and be who she is. In the meantime, my daughter was trying to figure out how she’s funny, what makes people laugh and what makes people go, ‘OK, settle down.’ I was watching her imitate other people’s humor in an attempt to find her own.”

With those polar opposites in mind, Childs began noticing how the humor she shared with her own female friends was changing as they moved into their mid-40s and early 50s. “All of a sudden we’re Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’ — where did that come from? Women are very transformative creatures, and I became fascinated with the question of whether our humor transforms and ages as we do.”

So Childs, the artistic director of Philly’s all-comedy theater company 1812 Productions, began exploring that question with a wide variety of women from diverse backgrounds, from journalists to individuals served by domestic abuse services and prison transition programs to Lucie Arnaz, daughter of perhaps the most famous comedienne of them all, Lucille Ball.

The result of the ensuing three years’ work is “It’s My Party: The Women and Comedy Project,” which will premiere at Plays & Players Theatre, 1812’s home base, beginning this weekend. The show’s three acts travel through the three ages of comedy that Childs discovered in her own family.

Visiting with community partners like Women Against Abuse, Transition Network and Why Not Prosper, Childs found herself mining comedy from very unfunny territory. “Most of the women who I talked to told me stories that were really difficult: angry, sad, tragic, violent stories,” she says. “But they told them with such incredible humor. We use humor to make our way through the world. I want to make you laugh, but the secret mission is I want to change your life.”

If you go

“It’s My Party: The Women and Comedy Project”
April 25-May 19 (Opening night May 1)
Plays & Players Theatre
1714 Delancey St.
$22-$38
215-592-9560
www.1812productions.org

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Not to throw the phrase “musical genius” around, but pianist Jonathan Biss made his Carnegie Hall debut — to rave reviews — while he was still in his teens. Now 32, Biss is taking a break from teaching music to collaborate with the Philadelphia Orchestra for a series of performances this week.

Biss studied piano at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music under the legendary Leon Fleisher and is now on the faculty of the prestigious school.

“Teaching enriches my music,” he says. “Practicing is often a solo task. Teaching allows me to share my love of music with others.”

Biss is a third-generation musician. Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto, which won the New York Critic’s Circle Award, specifically for Biss’s grandmother, Raya Garbousova. Biss recently performed with his mother, the renowned violinist Miriam Fried, at the Kimmel Center, and his father, Paul Biss, is also a violinist of note.

“My parents just wanted us to play music,” says Biss. “They did not care what instrument it was. My brother chose the piano and I followed his footsteps. I’m glad that I chose a different instrument than them because I am independent and was able to make my own mistakes.”

The multi-talented Biss has the distinction of being the only classical musician Kindle has ever asked to write an e-book. “Beethoven’s Shadow” was ranked the No. 1 music offering on Amazon for several months.

He’s turning to a different musical master for his Philadelphia Orchestra gig, playing Mozart’s rarely heard Concerto No. 13.

“Many people find it comfortable to go to a concert to hear something that they have heard before. I think there is something magical about introducing the audience to something that they have not,” he says.

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When playwright Ain Gordon gets a grant to create a play, he travels to the city of the granting institution and wanders the streets for a while, in search of a “personal sense of the place.”

It didn’t take long in Philadelphia. Just blocks from the Painted Bride Art Center sits the Arch Street Friends Meeting House, an early hub of the abolitionist movement.

Gordon’s latest piece – “If She Stood” – will debut at the Painted Bride this week. It’s based loosely on historical documents and journals from women in the 19th-century Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society.

“I got very interested in the fact that it was an interracial body and all women and that, at the same time they were fighting slavery, they were inventing the women’s movement,” says Gordon.

Many of these women either were Quakers or attended meetings regularly, leading Gordon to re-imagine the Painted Bride’s theater as a Quaker Meeting house, with the audience arranged on three sides of the stage.

With Quaker-esque simplicity, the women will rise from the past and address the audience directly.

“I went to some Quaker meetings, and I was very taken with that notion of not standing to speak until truth compels you to,” says Gordon. “That’s what these women practiced in their political work. And that’s exactly what an actor is supposed to do: Truth is what propels an actor to say their lines.”

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Even for those ultra-curious kids who love soaking up knowledge, sitting in the classroom can be a chore. This summer, enroll your kids in camp programs designed to take education away from the blackboard — and make it fun.

“Camps can provide the opportunity to learn new skills and knowledge, or to help maintain and strengthen the skills and knowledge [children] already have,” says Rhonda Geyer, director of non-credit programs at Temple University. Many educational camps, like Temple’s Summer Education Camp programs at the Ambler campus, are organized into a series of one-week sessions so campers can sample a variety of topics — both those they’ve already had some exposure to, and others that will let them explore something new.

“You want to find topics that will be fun, interesting and educational,” Geyer says. Camp is not summer school, though, so “the program should also provide recreation and other downtime, so kids can have some fun,” she adds. “It is summertime, after all.”

At Temple, programs range from creative courses in drawing, cartooning and writing to computer-based technical challenges. Some combine both, like website design and robotics. Kids who prefer being outdoors can learn geocaching or study wildlife.

Students who need a boost maintaining or strengthening basic skills in math or reading and writing also have access to camps that emphasize fun. Temple offers the Jumpstart! series, which helps kids through individual and group games and activities. It’s structured with the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) in mind.

“Practicing learning skills in a camp-like environment can be fun and also help students return to school without the ‘mental cobwebs’ that sometimes collect over the summer,” Geyer says. “Hopefully they will have a new positive perspective concerning their own skill strengths, abilities and interests.”

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The right camp can turn summer into an exciting time filled with discovery and adventure. Kids should be learning about themselves as they delve deeper into the things that interest them. Thankfully, Philadelphia has a day camp for nearly every interest, hobby and talent. So while the grownups continue their regular work schedule, youngsters can embrace summer vacation.

Camp can be pricey, but many programs have scholarships available to help with the cost. Others offer a week-by-week option rather than full-term enrollment. Some even have a bulk purchase discount. Be sure to check a camp’s website for alternate payment options. Here are a few of the nearby camps that we recommend.

Young Performers Theater Camp
If you have budding thespians at home, the Young Performers Theater Camp is their calling. “Last year we had about 480 kids at the camp — each year it gets bigger,” says Tom Dignam, performing arts coordinator for Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. The program, which is open to ages nine to 18, is divided into dance and musical theater. Each group auditions for and rehearses a specific performance, which is put on at the end of the season.
Camp runs July 1–Aug. 12
$320 – $470 for a six-week course
Annenberg Center
3680 Walnut St.
www.performingartspdpr.org

Discovery Camp
The Franklin Institute offers kids in pre-K through eighth grade the opportunity to learn about space, experiment with science and explore the messy world of slime. Each week features a new track, all centered around education through fun.
Camp runs June 17–Aug. 30
$300 – $375 per week
The Franklin Institute
222 N. 20th St.
www.fi.edu

Young Journalists Summer Camp
Junior reporters can give the Metro news staff some competition with the help of WHYY, Philadelphia’s public radio station. High school students will be assigned a neighborhood beat to report about. The campers will be taught how to pitch their stories, research topics, conduct interviews, and present the information through text, audio and video.
Camp runs June 24–July 5 and Aug. 5-16
$1,200 – $1,350 per course
Hamilton Public Media Common at WHYY
150 N. Sixth St.
www.whyy.org

Summer Camp at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
PAFA provides a creative outlet for little Van Goghs ages 5 to 15. “There is a huge range of options,” says Cari Freno, manager of family programs at PAFA. “For the younger students the camps have themes like superheroes and imaginary places. For the oldest group the classes are more skill-based, like urban and graphic design. And the two age groups in between have a mix of the two.”
Camp runs July 1–Aug. 16
$235 – $300 per week
PAFA Cast Hall
128 N. Broad S.
www.pafa.org

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“Prima! Rufus! Judy!” may sound like an odd name for a Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts show, but it’s a pretty straightforward description of what audiences can expect. The two-part concert starts with sopranos Melody Moore and Kathryn Guthrie, along with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, performing selections from singer-composer Rufus Wainwright’s opera, “Prima Donna.” Then Wainwright himself will reprise excerpts from Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.

Wainwright, the son of folk singers Katie McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, first fell in love with Judy Garland when his family gathered around the television set to watch “The Wizard of Oz” at Easter.

“Watching ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was a big event in my house,” he says. “This was a time before VHS, DVRs, and movies on television. I wasn’t that familiar with her concerts or records.”

When the country was at a low point after 9/11, Wainwright went back to Garland.

“The country had just suffered a gaping wound inflicted on us by Middle Eastern terrorists,” says Wainwright. “This coincided with the Bush-Cheney years. I wanted to listen to music from a more hopeful, effervescent time. It was really about my love for America.”

Wainwright would initially only perform Garland’s songs at parties. He finally was persuaded to sing them at Carnegie Hall in 2006, during two sold-out concerts.

Wainwright clarifies that he “does not impersonate Garland, but sings in her style.”

“Garland was all about the voice,” he says. “’Prima Donna’ is about an aging opera diva, who is dealing with her declining physicality affecting her voice. I was inspired to write the opera by a series of interviews that Maria Callas gave in the ’70s. Then I decided to make it more anonymous.”

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For years Bruce Graham wanted to write a play based on his cousin’s car repair shop. But he had to get hoppin’ mad first, before he found a story amidst the grease, metal and profanity.

“I would hang around the garage, meet the guys from the neighborhood. We would just sit there and laugh our asses off. The whole time I’m thinking, ‘oh my God, what great characters.’ Once I figured out what I wanted to use the set for, the play just wrote itself,” says Graham. “Anger seems to inspire my plays, especially the funny ones. And, to me, the average lower middle class and middle class people in this country are getting royally screwed. When I was growing up [in Philly] your dad worked at Boeing, GE, Westinghouse, or the Navy Yard… That’s just not here anymore, and people are peeved by that.”

“North of the Boulevard” begins previews this week at Theatre Exile’s Studio X in South Philly. Directed by Matt Pfeiffer, the play features longtime Philly actor Scott Greer as a mechanic presented with a get-just-enough-richer-quick scheme.

“It’s ‘Can I get north of the [Roosevelt] Boulevard?’ It’s not like you’re trying to get to nirvana or something,” says Graham. “It’s just like, ‘I want to get three miles away from here to a better school district for my kids, which is a pretty realistic goal in life, I think.”

An appropriate venue

Originally scheduled to debut in a Center City venue, “Boulevard” was moved to due to a scheduling conflict. As luck would have it, Theatre Exile’s South Philly rehearsal space is a converted auto repair garage. Award winning set designer Matt Saunders was brought in to reconvert the space into a garage again, and expand the seating capacity of the venue.

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Plays & Players is going surreal with “The America Play.” The show tells the tale of an African-American man who looks an awful lot like Abe Lincoln — and is willing to get shot, for a small fee. That’s until he slips down into the Great Hole of History.

Two short related plays, both titled “Other American Cousins,” open the performance.

Director Suzana Berger, a Penn grad and artistic director of Dragon’s Eye Theatre, tells us about the mix of comedy and tragedy audiences can expect.

“The America Play” is described as “an experimental examination of the missing side of American history.” What history are we talking about?
Stories of people and experiences that have often been ignored in the history books: African-Americans, women, people who feel they have to choose between family and pursuing a dream, single parents raising families on their own, children growing up without a father — stories that are deeply woven into the fabric of this country.

So, a black Abe Lincoln charges a fee to get shot — is that a show he puts on? Or can anyone shoot him?
The Lesser Known, as he calls himself, invites the public “to pay a penny, choose from a selection of provided pistols and shoot Mr. Lincoln.” In the play, we meet several people who’ve chosen to spend part of their Sunday afternoon on this unusual activity. The audience is left to consider what motivates each of them, what they get out of re-enacting the assassination.

Does the whole thing take place in the past?
Yes, but there are a lot of anachronisms. I interpret that as a wink to the audience that this family’s struggles could really be happening at any time, and that history isn’t as neatly set and in the past as we think it is.

The storyline is pretty out there. Would you call it a drama? A comedy?
This play is constantly putting tragedy and comedy on top of each other, mixing them with invented history and jazz musicality. It’s a play about America, in all its complexity, so like America, it can’t be pinned down to just one category.

What were some challenges that came up when you were directing?
[Playwright] Suzan-Lori Parks leaves plenty of room for interpretation in her script — a lot of hints in the dialogue about what the actions might be. We experimented with many different possibilities in rehearsal. With a team of such creative actors and designers, the challenge was often choosing between several exciting options for the same moment that all served the story.

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Kelli Moshen, artistic director of the dance company Project Moshen, is going to prison. On stage, at least.

“Trapped” will debut April 20 at the Performance Garage on Brandywine.

“I like a lot of action movies and I always wanted to bring that to the stage,” Moshen says. “I’m into the whole mystery of why is this person is in jail. You make your own story within the story. We start with a women being thrown into jail and you don’t know why she’s there.”

She’s either very misunderstood or very bad.

“The audience can make up their own story alongside my own story,” Moshen says. “I like to get the audience involved and feel that what’s happening on stage is happening to them. You’ll feel like you’re locked up.”

Mind you, this isn’t a campy “Reform School Girls” prison Moshen is talking about.

“It’s more of an Alcatraz kind of feel,” says Moshen, a  graduate of the University of the Arts. “It’s inside a type of military prison. She’s in there for a hardcore crime and she’s in there for life. You have to pay your dues.”

Life in this case is the 45 minutes the jazz dance program runs. It features the cinematic mood-setting music of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

“Trapped” will be performed by the five members of the all-female Project Moshen, plus two guest dancers. The company has been around for three years, performing in local  showcases and experimental FringeArts shows.

“I like my audience to take in what they see and make their own plotline,” says Moshen. “We like to keep it opened ended.”

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