From The Flipside Facebook Page:
This weekend, Eisner Award nominated cartoonist Bosch Fawstin joins The Flipside!! Don’t miss it! If you have not found where to watch in your local area, check the website. If it is not carried, be sure to contact your local station and ask them to carry The Flipside with Michael Loftus!
Also read his interview at Cap Mag: Art Against Jihad: An Interview with Bosch Fawstin Creator of The Infidel and Pigman!
MZJ Music is proud to present the world premiere of the BOSTON TEA PARTY OPERA at the 18th annual New York International Fringe Festival – FringeNYC, a production of The Present Company:
New love blooms – and old loyalty dies,
as Sam Adams leads a rebellion
against an Empire’s high taxes, heavy-handedness and invasions of privacy.
A mythic, modern version of the moment Americans discovered their identity as a people.
This epic but accessible music-drama rides the line between traditional opera and modern musical theater. The show features an interracial cast, and touches upon the controversial yet ever-evolving meaning of the term “Tea Party.” The Boston Tea Party Opera invites the audience to compare the patterns of injustice and oppression suffered by the American colonists leading up to the Revolutionary War—and similar patterns unfolding in America today. The comical and satirical elements of the show are directed not at the scrappy Americans, but at those who kneel to the King’s Empire.
Portions of the show were recently presented at StageFest 2014 in Jersey City, and at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum in Boston.
The show is created and directed by Matthew Zachary Johnson, faculty at Mannes College the New School for Music. Johnson is the composer of a body of often-performed works for saxophone, including Scherzo, Grand Sonata, and the instrumental soliloquy Serenade. According to About.com classical guide Aaron Green, “If this is the direction classical music is heading, well, I’d say the future will be full of wonderful music.”
Choreography is a significant part of the show, with poetic gestural dance used to communicate the major events including the Boston Massacre and the culminating Tea Party itself. Choreographer Karen Gayle—an alum of Toronto Dance Theater and Alvin Ailey American Dance Center—serves on the faculty at Steps on Broadway, Ballet Hispanico, and the New Dance Group. She is also the choreographer and host of Deante Dance, a series of modern dance based fitness videos, and Street Fusion, an instructional street jazz and hip hop DVD.
The Boston Tea Party Opera will be premiering at: Venue #13: Sheen Center – THE LORETTO, 18 Bleecker St (at Elizabeth). Show Times: Sat 8/9 @ 8:15pm – opening night! Wed 8/13 @ 4:15pm (talk back following this performance); Sat 8/16 @ Noon; Mon 8/18 @ 4:45pm; Fri 8/22 @ 5:15pm. Tickets: $18 on sale starting July 18. For tickets visit www.FringeNYC.org. For more information about the show, go to www.bostonteapartyopera.com
Jimmy Fallon’s Surprising Centrist Style – The Daily Beast
From slow jamming the news with Obama to playing musical instruments with Palin, Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show has become the late night destination for red and blue alike.
[…]
When Jimmy Fallon took over six weeks ago, the fear was he would join the chorus and pick a side—one that skews younger and more liberal—thereby closing the only avenue conservative politicians trust to appear on in the late night realm. But Fallon and those advising him are far too savvy and smart for that line of thinking. The new Tonight Show host—who has gotten off to as good a start as anyone could have imagined—has embraced the Johnny Carson mantra of being an equal opportunity offender in an effort to not potentially alienate half his audience.
[…] what Jimmy Fallon has accomplished in terms of political perception is nothing short of amazing: Being embraced by members of both parties as a non-political, non-partisan host who can make even the most polarizing politician appealing—funny, in some cases—even to his or her biggest detractors.
In the nasty world of Letterman/Stewart/Colbert — Jimmy Fallon, like Johnny Carson, is a class act.
From Anthem the play: Spread the Word:
ANTHEM is a futuristic story of a young man who asserts his individuality in a world of total conformity. Based on Ayn Rand’s best-selling novel, ANTHEM will be staged this fall in a major professional, Off-Broadway production to run at the Jerome Robbins Theater at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.
Austin Shakespeare developed this successful, 2011 production of Ayn Rand’s ANTHEM, which was adapated by Jeff Britting. Playing to sold-out audiences in Austin, we added performances with people coming from around the U.S. and aboard. Austin Shakepseare, a professional theater entering its 30th year, is taking ANTHEM to New York, with previews beginning Sept. 25, and running through Dec. 1.
Get Ayn Rand’s ANTHEM into the center of culture — New York City — this fall in time for the novel’s 75th Anniversary. You can help us get people outside of New York City interested, too!
Link: Indiegogo
From Lisa VanDamme:
Two of the greatest pleasures, greatest revelations, of my teaching career have had to do with the arts.
The first – that reading classic literature need not be an academic, didactic, spiritless chore. Given my own education in literature (and most of yours, I wager) how could I have believed otherwise? If literary analysis is no more than a discussion of the profound symbolic value of the green light at the end of the dock, or the finger-counting composition of a sonnet or haiku, or the unearthing of incipient feminist themes in Shakespeare (yes, really) – what’s the point?
I learned the point. The point of literature is to captivate you with enthralling, carefully crafted, tension-building conflicts, distinctly drawn and timelessly memorable characters, unique and penetrating insights about life and man – so that when you open the cover you enter a universe that is brightly-lit, and when you close it you find your own life illuminated.
The students at VanDamme Academy have learned the point. Had you seen them the day I walked in to class to read the conclusion of Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three and found them sitting at attention, watching eagerly over their shoulders, having placed a box of tissues next to my desk (and many of their own) you would know just how well.
Now you can too. How? http://www.bringingtheartstolife.com/
The second – that visiting a museum can be more that just a stroll through a gallery, looking cursorily at work after work, forming some superficial, unexamined response (“that’s pretty”), and after hours of surveying the collection, coming away drained. Yet that is how most people recall the experience.
I learned from Luc Travers, VDA Literature Teacher and author of Touching the Art (www.luctravers.com), how to be immersed in, enraptured by, and moved to tears admiring a work of visual art. He has taught me, and years of lucky VDA students, what it truly means to appreciate art: how to stand before it giving it due attention, noticing every little detail, integrating all the elements, arriving at an understanding of the “moment” depicted in the work, and connecting that moment to my own life.
There was a time that that Millais’ Hugeunot Lovers on St. Bartholomew’s Day (http://tinyurl.com/millais) adorned the school’s walls as decoration, and I admired the lovely couple, their rich attire, and the creeping green vine. Thanks to Mr. Travers’s method, now when I pass by it I am moved by a portrait of momentous decision, the aching fear of losing a loved one, and the calm reassurance of a man of profound integrity. What a change.
Now you can undergo the same transformation. How?
www.bringingtheartstolife.com
For years, Luc Travers and I have worked hard to turn our students into passionate art devourers. Now we want to count you among our converts.
The conference will include:
- A 2 ½ hour poetry course with Miss VanDamme
- A 2 ½ hour art course with Mr. Travers
- A guided tour at the beautiful Getty Center
- A banquet at the Getty restaurant, with breathtaking views of the LA basin
- A rare opportunity to observe a VanDamme Academy art and literature class
- And more!