1) Alejandro Escovedo plays Eddie’s Attic.
2) Parkgrounds hosts a free screening of 50-50 for Indie Wednesday.
3) Richard Pare discusses and signs The Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922-1932 at Jimmy Carter Library & Museum.
4) The Five Spot holds an art show and silent auction to benefit the Express Yourself School of the Arts.
5) True Colors Theatre kicks off its Spring Play Reading Series.
(Photo by Mick Rock)
November 5 may have been either the most or the least opportune night for the Atlanta premiere of True Colors Theatre’s Swimming Upstream, a star-studded evening of stories, songs and spoken-word poetry about Hurricane Katrina and the women of New Orleans.
Everyone in the 14th Street Playhouse seemed charged with excitement over the previous day’s election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. In the curtain speech, True Colors artistic director Kenny Leon said “I’m glad we’re all here the night after we’ve elected a new president” before adding, of Swimming Upstream, “This is probably the most important, best written show I’ve ever worked on.”
The way was developed by African-American theater True Colors in partnership with New Orleans’ Ashé Cultural Arts Center and the V-Day movement opposed to violence against women, organized by The Vagina Monologues‘ Eve Ensler. Ensler teared up during her introductory remarks and said, “Welcome to the New World. I can’t believe we’re opening this play on this night. It’s too perfect.”
Despite the thrill over the prospect of the new White House, Swimming Upstream demands the audience shift some emotional gears to revisit arguably the lowest moment of the current administration.
I saw the Sunday matinee of True Colors Theatre Company’s The Amen Corner, but artistic director Kenny Leon was not there to introduce it with his typical effervescence. It had somehow escaped my attention that, Leon had been directing Flashdance: The Musical, which just opened at England’s Theatre Royal in Plymouth.
After an esteemed stint as the Alliance Theatre’s artistic director, Leon has become a director of Broadway and national stature, most recently with his Emmy-nominated TV movie of A Raisin in the Sun. He has certainly directed musicals in the past, but the genre never seemed like his first love, making him a surprising choice for the musicalization of the 1983 Jennifer Beals movie. Just imagine the costume budget for leg warmers in numbers like “She’s a Maniac.” If you need your Flashdance memory refreshed, here’s a clip of the final dance number, as interpreted by a Boba Fett action figure. (Be sure to watch it to the end.)
The only aesthetic connection that I see between Leon and Flashdance is so tenuous that it can’t possibly be correct, but here goes:
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