Arts Week

Gregory Lenz, Provincetown Photographer
Posted: February 13th 2014 @5:09 PM
I knew that I was in love with Gregory Lenz’s work from the first moment I saw it on Facebook. Other artists in Provincetown talk about the light; Gregory captures it. His photographs call to a dreamland where light is engulfing and hope is possible. So I was delighted when he accepted my invitation to be on the show.

I was even more taken with him once I read his artist’s statement: “Well said by Pablo Picasso: ‘The meaning of life is to find your gift, as the purpose of life is to give it away.’ I take no credit for my gift of artistic talent, as I believe it comes from a higher source of the Universe. Artists are merely the bodies chosen as tools to fulfill the world’s need of art and to help others see life from a different perspective. The direction of which I find most pleasing is that of peace and gentleness. If, through my writing and photography, I can help someone see the ‘soul’ of the earth, the soul of an animal or of another human being in a more peaceful manner, than I have fulfilled my expected duties as an artist.”

But even after all that, I was unprepared for the gentle unassuming soul who was lurking politely in the corridor waiting to be ushered in to the studio. Gregory is everything that his work and his statement led me to expect, and more. He seems unaware of his own talent. He confessed to nervousness and then interviewed like a veteran. He spoke of joys and disappointments, the dark side of his being as an artist and the ways that he’s been able to be true to his calling. If you can, take the time to seek out and listen to the podcast of the interview. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time.

More than anything else, spend some time here and at G. Lenz Photography on Facebook and see if you don’t agree!

Bio: At age 52, local artistic photographer Gregory Lenz made Provincetown his permanent home nearly two years ago. Hailing from Baltimore and growing up along Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Gregory has spent his past 18 years as an executive chef for several well established restaurants in Maryland. A long ago student at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) where he studied graphic design, Gregory has also worked as a resident scenic designer for several dinner theatres in Baltimore. However photography has always been his number one passion since childhood. Giving up the hectic and stressful routine of restaurant life was what brought Greg to this area in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong dream of writing and photography. The natural and historic enchantment of Provincetown was exactly what his soul was yearning for.

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Jeannette de Beauvoir is the host of Arts Week on WOMR, a contributing writer to Provincetown Magazine, and a novelist, editor, and marketing writer. More about her at linkedin.com/in/jeannettedebeauvoir
Peter Hutchinson
Posted: February 4th 2014 @8:12 PM
I was thrilled to have Peter Hutchinson on my show last Thursday! We have been friends for several years, and I’ve always admired many things about him—his vast knowledge of arcane subject matter, his writing, his reading, his music, and of course his visual art. So it was very exciting indeed to welcome him to Arts Week.

One of the first things one notices about Peter Hutchinson’s art is the color: could anyone look at any of his pieces and not find one’s heart and spirit lifted? I rather think not.

The Artist Statement: “My work, while quite varied, is about nature, ecology, beauty and is often self-referential in regards to my life and experience, which I often use in the written attachments under the photo-collages. These collages while mostly photo, often contain some drawing and water-color or oil stick. My most recent show was last March with Freight and Volume Gallery, NYC run by Nick Lawrence who used to have the DNA gallery in Provincetown and with whom I have worked for at least twenty years. Other galleries who show my work are Bugdahn und Kaimer in Dusseldorf and Blancpain Gallery in Geneva.”

A little about him: Peter Hutchinson (American/British, b. 1930) is a conceptual artist, and one of the pioneers of Land Art. Hutchinson was born in London and grew up in the English countryside. In 1953, he moved to the United States, graduating in 1962 with a BFA from the University of Illinois. After his time at university, he moved to the East Coast, first to New York, where he lived until 1981 and created various Land Art installations.

Hutchinson was inspired by early landscape painting and garden art, due, in part, to his English roots. Hutchinson’s Land Art tries to intervene through less intrusive interventions in nature, attempting to integrate itself into its surroundings. Hutchinson examines processes and changes, as well as decline and decay in nature, and always integrates part of the existing landscape into his art.

During his travels around the world, Hutchinson collects found objects, which he then incorporates into his artistic assemblages. In addition, the artist deals with photo collages. He arranges selected objects from his travels, as well as elements from his own garden, creating new, colorful, ideal landscapes. In some of these compositions, he includes oil pastels, gouache, and colored pencils.

All of his art works contain a handwritten note from the artist.

Learn more about this fabulous Provincetown artist and Renaissance man at www.peterhutchinsonartist.com. His works are represented in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Jeannette de Beauvoir is the host of Arts Week on WOMR, a contributing writer to Provincetown Magazine, and a novelist, editor, and marketing writer. More about her at linkedin.com/in/jeannettedebeauvoir
Book Review: The World Wreckers (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
Posted: January 28th 2014 @5:12 PM
My friend Dianne Kopser is an avid reader—a woman truly after my own heart! So I invited her to do a guest post here and talk about one of the few genres I don’t read—science fiction:

“Darkover, a cold planet with a bloody red sun is located at the junction of two spiral arms of the galaxy, a stopover point for interspace travel and commerce. It hosts at least three non-human intelligent races, and a small human population. They’re agricultural, feudal, and they wish for nothing more. That is, until World Wreckers attempt to destroy the planet’s ecology and economy. Like the Lower Cape and its rejection of chain stores, Darkover treasures its own special beauty, and rejects the technology of the Terran Empire. The reason Darkovans can afford to do so is that they host a special caste of telepaths who serve and direct the human population in many ways.

“At Darkover’s minimal spaceport town of Thendara, scientists embark on an experiment to harness or at least begin to understand the powers of telepaths, both Darkovan and off-worlder. They send out a request for telepaths to gather and share insights. When they do, mayhem ensues among the wildly uncontrolled talents. Within a mix of sexual dysfunction, gambling, tortured souls and wizened crones, our scientists attempt to quantify and explain what’s going on.

“From the hills, a creature out of legend appears and volunteers to join the study group. Keral is one of only a handful of the mythic Chieri, godlike ancestors of the telepathic Comyn caste on Darkover. Contributing greatly to the scientists’ study, Keral’s vanishing people have virtually lost hope for a solution to their dwindling numbers.

“Some of the talents brought in from faraway planets find community and solace, while others cannot handle the intense scrutiny of their peers after a lifetime among non-telepaths. But Regis Hastur, leader of the Comyn needs all the telepaths he can find to stop the insidious World Wreckers from destroying his planet. From castle and tower, farm and forest, anyone with a scrap of talent is recruited. They gather in their hundreds, to create something infinitely stronger than the sum of their parts, but their very togetherness makes them uniquely vulnerable.

“As a result of a particularly Darkovan tradition-dancing beneath the four moons- Darkover’s telepaths find several solutions to their common problems, and end a tale well worth reading.”

So… check out Darkover and the World Wreckers, and stay tuned for more book reviews here at Arts Week!
Book Review: Trans-Siberian Express
Posted: January 12th 2014 @12:20 PM
I’m a sucker for trains, so I was attracted to the Trans-Siberian Express by its title alone. But Adler—best known for his examination of the inner working of human nature—shows here that not only can he handle thrillers, he’s able to combine the genre with his insights into people for a great read that goes deeper than many other similar stories.

It’s the cold war again, and the protagonist holds a secret that could change the geopolitical balance of the world—and cost millions of people their lives. And the protagonist is being watched by—you guessed it—a beautiful and seductive KGB agent, with whom he—yeah, you guessed it again—falls in love. So the story itself is predictable, but the twists and turns the narrator takes to get you there will make you forget the plot predictability.

And the train itself is a major character: I finished reading and immediately looked it up to see whether it is still running (it is) and whether it’s affordable (it’s not). Any author who can give you that kind of atmosphere is doing something very right indeed.

Trans-Siberian Express, by Warren Adler
‘Tis (Almost) The Night Before Christmas
Posted: November 29th 2013 @5:07 PM
Want to get into the spirit of the season? It’s easy to do at the Harwich Junior Theater, where, starting December 5th, you can see a wonderful dramatic version of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, playing through January 6th.

It’s four days before Christmas, and the New York Evening Post needs a holiday feature story—but writer Clement Moore has writer’s block. Besides that, he must work at home amongst his five children who are, needless to say, very anxious for St. Nicholas to arrive.

Clement’s frustration mounts—but then, unexpectedly, the magic begins. The sounds of bells, moving toys, and visions of Sugar Plum Fairies all conspire to help Clement as the events from the classic poem come to life.

All this is interwoven with carolers, a song to St. Nicholas, dancing fairies and much more, including, of course, a visit from the old elf himself. The musical concludes with the complete original poem set to exquisite music. This fresh telling of the most popular Christmas poem ever told will delight audiences of all ages.

Call the box office at 508-432-2002 or get your tickets online at hjtcapecod.org.
Ruby Tuesday… Still I’m Going to Miss You
Posted: November 24th 2013 @8:21 PM
And in fact, if you haven’t yet seen Cape Rep’s production of Gip Hoppe’s Ruby Tuesday, make sure that you don’t miss it … it’s a wonderful evening out and a great performance.

The time is the not-too-distant future; Paul and Janine Carter live in the best of smart homes designed—and monitored—by iDisney, a kinder, gentler version of George Orwell’s Big Brother, along with their baby son, Paul Jr.

No, it isn’t an original premise … but what lifts Ruby Tuesday above every other dramatic dystopian vision is Hoppe’s Ionescu-like stream-of-consciousness monologues in which both Paul and Janine each indulge: the language is gorgeous and the delivery spot-on. Paul speaks of the “white-water feel of a finely tuned commute” and rhapsodizes about his “sperm of wonder, sperm of gold,” while Janine admits that she “takes refuge in the emotional turmoil of others” via television and wonders “why do I feel so alone when there are so many voices and faces in the air?” These monologues tend to be a little longer than they need to be, but Hoppe is easily forgiven as the audience drinks in the wry humor lurking in nearly every sentence.

As is consistently the case at the Cape Rep, the set design is original and wonderful, with a futuristic design that melds present decorative trends with a 1960s reliance on bright colors.

The storyline is predictable—but, again, that doesn’t seem to be the point of the play. The couple cannot talk to each other in an environment where telephones, tablets, television, and the house itself keep talking to them. They eventually come to admit—through the intervention of a third character—that religion is more than an archaic concept (“God doesn’t live in a post office”) and that at the end of the day the convenience of their lives may not justify the fear their controlled world generates.

Alison Weller and Matt Sullivan are excellent choices to play the Carters. Sullivan is goofy—and poignant when he is given the opportunity to reflect on his situation. Weller’s Janine walks a fine line between who she is and who she wants to be, and allows the audience to believe in her self-realization.. Darlene Van Alstyne is elegant and cool in her role as the disruptor of the Carter household, and Susan Winslow vibrates with energy.

Hoppe’s talent both as playwright and director are evident in Ruby Tuesday, and the Cape Rep has another winner with this off-season hit.
Next to Normal is Next to Amazing
Posted: September 24th 2013 @11:27 AM
When you think “musical,” you’re probably thinking about something uplifting, especially when we’re talking about the Cape Rep Theatre, where shows like Avenue Q and Spamalot have been recent musical successes.

Next to Normal? Not so much.

The action opens as wife Diana (Nikki Van Cassele) prepares her family—husband Dan (Matt Ferrell), daughter Natalie (Chesley Jo Ristaino), and son (Matthew Corr)—for a seemingly ordinary day. It’s only when Diana, giggling, starts making the family’s sandwiches on the floor that the audience gets the idea that All Is Not As It Seems.

And that was one of the play’s lighter moments.

Diana has a long history of mental problems, triggered by a trauma that occurred 16 years ago. When her condition worsens despite her pharmacopeia of Mother’s Little Helpers, her new psychotherapist, Dr. Madden (Marty Brent), suggests ECT.

Meanwhile, the couple’s “invisible” daughter Natalie, worn out by her mother’s thoughtless neglect, slips into her own depression despite the rather adorable efforts of her new boyfriend Henry (Christopher Sheehan) to engage her in love and life.

Tom Kitt’s music—winner of the 2009 Tony for best score—and Brian Yorkey’s book and lyrics are an impressive collaboration, as the Pulitzer Board acknowledged in its remarks that the show “expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.” And the songs are extremely clever, there’s no getting away from that—but, honestly, there was a sense that this might have made an absolutely terrific 90-minute musical; by the time the second act came around, things were starting to feel a little redundant and one found oneself thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Two hours and twenty minutes is too much time for this particular story to be told.

None of that, of course, is the fault of Cape Rep, and the actors/singers delivered their lines and numbers with energy and—occasionally—inspiration. Chesley Jo Ristaino’s Natalie is close to perfect, a teenaged girl caught in the throes of her own hopes and fears, trying to be the good child to two parents who barely notice her, and taking her own hesitant steps forward—and back—on her way to figuring out her place in the world. Ristaino never overdoes, never falls into pathos or too much drama, and her voice is clear and pure and exceptionally beautiful.

Matt Ferrell has a challenging task: to humanize a nice guy who lives in denial and whose life revolves mostly around his crazy wife. His codependency to her illness could easily make him into a caricature, but Ferrell resists and his Dan is fully human, baffled by his inability to make everything all right for his family, trying to do the right thing while having no idea what that might be. His voice is grand by itself but even better when blending with others and doing tight harmonies.

Van Cassele and Corr, as Diana and Gabe, have the most obviously dramatic roles in the play, and one can forgive them both a tendency to go a little over the top with their characters. What that means, of course, is that they’re not always emotionally and vocally in synch with the other actors, but the power and intensity they both project is impressive and just this side of overwhelming.

And as is often the case at Cape Rep—perhaps in a nod to its typically older audiences—the musical accompaniment is just a shade too loud.

Those issues aside, Next to Normal is next to fantastic. The stage direction is brilliant; the sets are perfect—that’s another Cape Rep staple—and are used cleverly and unobtrusively; and the moments of laughter serve to underscore rather than alleviate the exceptional difficulty of living with a mental illness.

Go see it!

Next to Normal plays at the Cape Rep Theater, Brewster, until October 13; find out more and reserve tickets at caperep.org. Photos courtesy Robert Tucker, Focal/Point Studio.
From Cape Town to Cape Cod: Kingdom of Earth at the Provincetown Theater
Posted: September 23rd 2013 @11:22 AM
One of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known plays, Kingdom of Earth is a powerful indictment of racism, classism, and a whole bunch of other -isms, while maintaining the playwright’s keen ability to stay just this side of caricature in his characters. And you can see it right now at the Provincetown Theater, thanks to South Africa’s Abrahamse-Meyer Productions, who brought it here last year as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival and are presenting it again in a longer run this year.

So: the story. As reviewed by Lawrence Bommer,

Though the playwright put parts of himself in all his great characters (most notably Blanche DuBois, Brick Pollitt, and Tom Wingfield), he must have been at his most masochistic when he imagined himself as Lot Ravenstock, a self-described “impotent, one-legged sissy with one foot in the grave.” Lot is dying of TB and desperate to cling to any legacy–if not a child of his own, then the land he grew up on. But death threatens (or promises) to take it away. Haunted by the memory of his dead mother, the only woman he’s loved, Lot naively believes that female devotion will free him of his fears. The woman he hopes will provide that loyalty is Myrtle, a blowsy show girl he married two days before, after meeting her on the set of a TV show: she was being crowned “Queen for a Day.”

He returns with his bride–it’s 1960–to his family’s Mississippi farm just as it’s about to be flooded: heavy symbolism here of the destruction that precedes fecundity and renewal. Lot wants Myrtle to inherit the estate, but the land already has an owner–Chicken, Lot’s half-brother, a brutal loner who’s part black and all fury. Chicken holds a will Lot signed when he was desperate for someone to tend the land after his mother died. Lot wants Myrtle to destroy the agreement so she can take the property (a plot device he’s unashamedly borrowed from A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).

Predictably, Chicken will own not only the home but Myrtle. Weak and helpless, Lot self-destructs in his death chamber upstairs (summoning just enough energy to don his mother’s clothes, Psycho-style) while Myrtle succumbs to the attractions of muscular, loutish Chicken–who also promises to save her from the flood. Finally, in the play’s rhapsodic conclusion, Chicken praises the power of a man’s love for a woman. After making Myrtle promise to breed him a son, he takes her to the roof as the music swells in triumph.

Well, okay. That’s the essence, sure, but Bommer is obviously missing a lot of the nuances of Williams’ play, which certainly cannot be said about the Abrahamse-Meyer Productions’ version that we’re seeing in Provincetown.

Director Fred Abrahamse is very clear about what lies beneath Lot’s obsessions and Chicken’s ultimate triumph: the reason, perhaps, that it took a South African production to help American audiences understand the play is because the two countries have so much in common. “There is a close connection to deep-seated racism,” he explains. “That’s our connection to the play. We’ve all grown up with it.”

Actor Marcel Meyer—who plays Chicken—agrees. “It’s very dark, but the end is positive,” he says. “The flood will purge the land and the old racism—represented by Lot and his mother—has to die so that the new multiracial family can start with Chicken and Myrtle and a new order can come after the flood has purged the land, and I think it’s happened in ’94 in South Africa when Mandela was freed, and how far our countries have come … this is our play, we know these people.” Director Abrahamse nods. “I mean, you go into the middle of South Africa, you could be in Mississippi almost, it’s the same kind of feeling.”

But what about the—um—accents? Actor Nicholas Dallas, who plays Lot, took a straightforward approach: “I watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and just practiced being Kevin Spacey!” he laughs.

It is a powerful play being given an extraordinarily powerful production and one of the true highlights of this year’s festival. Make sure you get over to the Provincetown Theater to see it.

Kingdom of Earth continues at the Provincetown Theater throughout the Tennessee Williams Festival; tickets are available online at provincetowntheater.org.
Book Review: Art Held Hostage (John Anderson)
Posted: September 12th 2013 @7:33 PM
Publishers frequently send me books to review, and sometimes one of them really stands out as a jewel… that’s the case for Art Held Hostage: The Battle Over The Barnes Collection. I remember the privilege of seeing the Barnes back when it was still housed in its original space–a phenomenal collection to be sure–and so I was particularly interested in hearing what had happened since then.

Albert Barnes made two fortunes, one in pharmaceuticals, the other in art, and it’s for his art collection that he’s remembered today–his collection when he died included 69 Cezannes (more than in all the museums in Paris combined!), 60 Matisses, 44 Picassos, 18 Rousseaus, 14 Modiglianis, and 180 Renoirs. He left his collection in the care of Lincoln University, the oldest historically black college in America. In 1989 (38 years after Barnes’ death) Lincoln gained majority control of the foundation board–and the plot thickened.

Philadelphia attorney Richard Glanton embroiled the Barnes in an ego-driven saga of legal wrangling and bitter infighting that kept the collection hostage. In 2002 the trustees announced their intention to move the collection into a new building… and the plot thickened even more.

This is a work of nonfiction that reads like a legal thriller, and I recommend it heartily. Check it out!
Cape Cod Festival of Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema
Posted: September 12th 2013 @7:00 PM
And now for something completely different… this weekend, consider checking out the second annual Cape Cod Festival of Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema, which begins tonight with the Iranian-American film Jerry And Me at the Water’s Edge Cinema and continues on Friday and Saturday with five films from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.

In Where The Desert Meets The Dunes in this week’s Provincetown Magazine, I explore the reasons curator Rebecca Alvin wanted to bring such a festival to a place like Cape Cod that has, admittedly, a negligible Arab population:

The weekend is meant to open eyes—and perhaps minds and hearts as well. “When the revolutionary Arab Spring kicked off, I found myself immediately wondering how filmmakers in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and other countries in the Arab world were responding to it,” says Alvin. “This is the second year [of the festival], but in the first year the title was different. This year, I expanded it to include Middle Eastern as well as Arab cinema, because I wanted to open it up a bit.”

I’m reminded of the words of a very wise friend of mine, who says, “the problem isn’t finding what to call them; the problem is thinking of them as them.” You’ll leave these films with a better appreciation of the myriad cultures represented–and, hopefully, less of a sense of them as the Other.