Thursday. March 28, 2024

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Kalamazoo arts events over the next two weeks include several theatrical/musical productions, radio theatre, indie films, classical music, multiple ongoing visual arts exhibits, and Art Hop. Decide what you don’t want to miss, before it’s too late.

Theatre

The Wolves – WMU – January 25 to February 10

Atomic power drives this extraordinary new play about a girls’ indoor soccer team blasting its way through life. In this dizzying, tightly wound ensemble drama, a pack of adolescent warriors brave the challenges that have nothing to do with sports and everything to do with survival.

Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical – Civic/Parish Theatre – January 11-27

From a humble Midwestern childhood in Northern Kentucky to topping the charts for nearly five decades, the story of Rosemary Clooney’s remarkable journey offers a fresh, remarkably personal, and poignant picture of the woman whose unparalleled talent and unbridled personality made her a legend.

The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) – Civic – January 25 to February 9

Three actors, (or actresses!), one dead playwright, and 37 plays, all in under two hours!  An irreverent fast-paced romp through the Bard’s plays, this fast-firing comedy parodies all of the Shakespeare plays (plus the sonnets!) with only five performers in two acts. This play is full of energy as the characters run across the stage and keep you guessing how they will pull off the next play.

 

Film

If Beale Street Could Talk – Film Society/Celebration Cinema – January 11-24 2018

Film based on James Baldwin’s book. Directed by Barry Jenkins. Based on the novel by James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk is the story of Tish, a newly engaged Harlem woman who races against the clock to prove her lover’s innocence while carrying their first-born child to term. It is a celebration of love told through the story of a young couple, their families and their lives, trying to bring about justice through love, for love and the promise of the American dream.

On the Basis of Sex – Film Society/Celebration Cinema – January 11-24

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a struggling attorney and new mother who faces adversity and numerous obstacles in her fight for equal rights. When Ruth takes on a groundbreaking tax case with her husband, attorney Martin Ginsburg, she knows it could change the direction of her career and the way the courts view gender discrimination.”  Starring Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader.

 

Radio Theatre

Erie Street Painted Lady – All Ears Theatre/First Baptist Church – January 26

A young, newly married couple have bought a Victorian home that they plan to restore themselves.  What they don’t know is that there are three fun-loving ghosts who also call the place “home”.  What do they think of their plans to remodel the home? An original play written by Mark Savage.  Directed and produced by Jeff Mais.

 

Music

Stulberg Gold Medalist & the Kalamazoo Symphony – Miller – January 26

The Stulberg International String Competition and the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra welcome 2018 Gold Medalist Charlotte Marckx (violin) back to Kalamazoo for a performance with the KSO under the direction of Maestro Julian Kuerti on Saturday, January 26 at 8 p.m. at Miller Auditorium. The concert will feature her performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Anna Clyne’s “Night Ferry”.

WMU Chorale Ensemble – WMU/Dalton – January 30

The first half of the program features works that frame the concept of mortality in different ways, including Rautavaara’s Suite de Lorca, Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard, and movements from Howell’s Requiem. An unexpected pairing of David Lang’s oh graveyard (lay this body down) and Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory’s Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down previews the struggle between death and life found in the second half of the concert. The second half of the program features Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden(BWV 4).

 

Visual Arts

Yew Jumped Too Deep, You Buried the Lede – WMU – January 17 to March 17

Merging formal dexterity with nuanced approaches to race and gender and the experience of “living in the body,” Los-Angeles based artist Christina Quarles’ intimate drawings and lush canvases present worlds brimming with desire and discomfort, as well as profound suggestions about the psychological reach and physical limitations of mark-making. Drawn from two private collections, this unique exhibition create an unmistakable through-line from the artist’s earliest work to her present-day paintings.

Watanabe: Japanese Print Envoy – KIA – through March 10, 2019

Japanese publisher Shozaburo Watanabe started his business in the early 20th century, studying the traditions of Japanese woodcuts and hiring printers who could master the old techniques. To distinguish his prints, he hired designers capable of combining traditional subjects with the new style. Like the prints of the previous century, his were colorful images of Japan's people and natural beauty, but with a fresh, western-influenced style to appeal to European and American art-lovers. His leadership established a new aesthetic in the print market.

do it – KIA – through March 3

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, do it began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation about how exhibition formats could be rendered more flexible and open-ended. This discussion led to the question of whether written instructions by artists, as a point of departure, could be interpreted anew every time they were enacted. Nearly 20 years later, do it has been featured in at least 50 different locations worldwide. Each do it exhibition is uniquely site-specific because it engages the local community in a dialogue that responds to and adds a new set of instructions, while it remains global in the scope of its ever-expanding repertoire. This open exhibition model has become the longest-running and most far-reaching exhibition to ever take place, giving new meaning to the concept of the "Exhibition in Progress."

What We Carried: Fragments and Memories from Iraq And Syria – Kalamazoo Valley Museum – through April 14

Photographer Jim Lommasson created a project that showcases the significant personal items that Iraqi and Syrian refugees brought with them when they immigrated to the United States. Along with their mementos, these refugees share their stories, telling us what it really means to have to leave one's homeland forever. In their search for a better future for themselves and their families, these small objects, images, and memories represent what they left behind.

 

ART HOP - FEBRUARY Art Hop – downtown and surrounding neighborhoods – February 1

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