Tweets by Sonaite Debebe-Kumssa. Written by Bethany E. Larson. Video by Jason Fox Berger.

At the historic Dock Street Theatre, where both Flora: An Opera and Present Laughter are performed for this year’s Spoleto Festival USA, there are massive, elaborate sets that have to be torn down and set up between shows multiple times a day. To find out exactly how smooth–or not–this process is, Sonaite Debebe-Kumssa sat with Dock Street Theatre’s Technical Director Rhys Williams to talk about the logistics of changing the sets, while watching it all happen, which you can always watch happen, thanks to the time lapse video shot by Jason Fox Berger. Sonaite live-tweeted the entire conversation, which we have compiled for you after the jump.

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On today’s edition of Spoleto Today, new director Geoff Nuttall shares his vision for Spoleto’s chamber music future, front and backstage at the newly restored Dock Street Theatre. The fascinating Polish pianist Leszek Mozdzer – whose musical territory ranges from Miles Davis to Fredryk Chopin — stops by to play. And the Post & Courier’s Jack McCray outlines what’s hot — and not — at Spoleto.
Join hosts Marcus Overton and Jennifer Foster for Spoleto Today — every weekday at 11 a.m. — and Carolina Classics, weekdays at 1 p.m. Tune in on WSCI-FM Charleston 89.3 and visit SpoletoFest.org for live streaming, videos, podcasts and more. Brought to you by SCETV Radio and WDAV Classical Public Radio.

Written by Gemma Wilson

“Present Laughter” officially opened at the Dock Street Theatre last night, and with the brand new theatre comes a higher standard for audience behavior. Alan Stanford, the director of “Present Laughter,” sat in last night’s audience and was seen exchanging words with some fellow theatergoers about talking during the show.

After returning from intermission, Stanford and his seatmate requested that the couple sitting directly in front of them refrain from talking so much during the performance (and from this reporter’s vantage point, they certainly weren’t the only ones). After a dulled but seemingly contentious exchange the couple, which didn’t seem to find anything objectionable about their conduct, ended up leaving their seats for the second act of the show.

Charleston audiences take note: it’s time to raise the bar. Out of respect for the actors, director and entire creative team, hold your comments until the lights go up – after all, you never know who may be sitting behind you!

Look on the web or in Sunday’s The Post and Courier for your keeper print section - Spoleto 2010 - the complete calendar for Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo Spoleto 2010. It tells you day by day what is happening, litsing the times, venues, costs and where to get tickets.  If you forget to pull it out of the paper, you can download it here from postandcourier.com.

We also tell you about the Goldring Arts Journalism Program, a collaborative project with The Post and Courier, that brings 19 graduate student and two professors to Charleston to cover the festivals.

Hint: It’s orange, says Spoleto 2010 and has the much discussed Spoleto poster on the cover.

What would you say if your best friend brought a white painting with a couple of off white stripes for $200,000?

Would you tell him that understand the aesthetic of the famous artist or would you say that the emperor has no clothes and he’s been bamboozled?

That’s the beginning premise of Art which gave it’s last Piccolo performance to a packed Chapel Theatre yesterday evening.

Even though its title is Art, and a painting is the catalyst, the work is more about the complexities of friendship including the things we do to keep it going and what we do when a it all starts going wrong.

Art is  filled with lots of humor and sharp observations.  The interaction between the three characters: the owner of the painting, the sharp, sarcastic friend, and the eager-to-please, put upon friend were fast, furious, and enjoyable.

It’s all a thoughful and funny treatise on the nature and value of art and frendship.

Just as the appearance of  The Seed and Feed Marching Abominable Band heralds my Spoleto experience, the Felder Film Festival signals the end, and it’s rapidly becoming one of the events I look forward to the most.

Over the last several festivals, I’ve enjoyed the short (15 minutes or less) films and documentaries.

Some of the my most memorable ones have been about the Florence Crittenton Home, a store employee’s relationship with creepy mannequins, how Dance Dance Revolution completely changed a life, and a woman who wants to rename the Atlanta Falcons to the Atlanta Tercels.

And I’ll never forget Cupcake, The Killer Kitten.

The 6th Annual Fedler Film Festival kicks off this afternoon with family films from 1:30-3:30pm.  The documentaries start at 5:00om followed by the comedy and drama offerings at 6:00pm.

Come wind down from (or even start) your Spoleto experience with some fun–and free– film watching.

Update:  Saw 12 enjoyable shorts tonight.  My favorites were Une Vignette de Melancolie– an intriguing look  into a bi-polar mind, Worth–an object lesson on adding value, and Remote–a where the present and future meet with chilling consequences.

Oh, and I’ll always look at penguins differently after watching Hector Corp.

They mean justice.

I probably shouldn’t admit that I went to see The Last Five Years without knowing a thing about it, nor that I’m not crazy about musical theatre. When I realized, though, that that he was enacting a failed relationship from its beginning forward and she, backwards from the end, my brain came to attention. Then when I saw that the whole thing was going to be done without dialogue, my poet’s interest in formal mastery became engaged, with Jason Robert Brown’s formidable lyrics proving deceptively natural throughout. Finally, that the characters did not interact, except when they met in the middle for the betrothal, was so existentially authentic that I forgot it was a musical at all.

Oh yeah, and the music was terrific.  Eric Johnson’s keyboard accompaniment was nuanced perfection, supporting the actors in a wide range of idiom and emotion. Emily Wilhoit’s singing was virtuosic, demonstrating the actress’s considerable gifts and making her lack of success fittingly confounding. David Mandel’s voice was a little flawed at the top of his range, underscoring that this is not an actor but a writer, confidently willing to take artistic risks and persevere. At the heart of their tragedy is that he is lucky and resilient, and she is neither, and her professional anxieties come to breach the marriage. And this was supposed to be a musical about love—talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Again Pure Theatre, relentlessly adventurous in the pursuit of complex emotional truth.

Rodney Lee Rogers performs The Gentleman Pirate at the Powder Magazine.

By Dottie Ashley
Post and Courier Reviewer
When Joe Clarke as Bobby Darin belted out “Beyond the Sea,” I was once again 15 and dancing in someone’s living room.
This is a scenario may have flashed through the minds of a number of those who saw the production of “Splish Splash: The Short and Spectacular Life of Bobby Darin” written by Keely Enright and produced at the Village Playhouse as part of Piccolo Spoleto.

Even for those too young to remember Darin, Clarke and his co-star Paulette Todd, in the double role of narrator and singer Connie Francis, brought such energy to the show that it also seemed to enthrall the younger people in the audience.

Each of the more than a dozen songs performed came off with polish and pizazz. The octet comprised one of the best stage bands I’ve heard locally and was led by pianist Frank Duvall, who also did the arrangements.
Clarke portrayed a terrific and accurate Darin, performing “Mack the Knife” and “Splish Splash,” both of which made Darin a legend.
Clarke also showed why the folk-like protest songs, which he switched to in the late 1960s after the death of his idol Robert Kennedy, didn’t suit Darin’s style.
Todd worked well with Clarke as they sang two duets, she in the role of Darin’s true love Connie Francis.

Enright and Dave Reinwald were exceptionally inventive in locating old clips of Darin from television shows and movies, no easy task. The clips were shown on a screen located between two staircases draped in glittering blue cloth.
Julie Ziff, who wasn’t credited in the program, designed superb costumes perfectly, depicting the radical fashion changes from the late 50s to the early 70s.

It would have been fun to have had a few showgirls in the Copacabana numbers, but that’s a mere quibble in a first-class evening in Mount Pleasant’s packed theater.

As you no doubt read in today’s review by Carol Furtwangler of the College of Charleston’s production of “Quills” for Piccolo Spoleto, there’s more than an hour’s worth of full-frontal male nudity onstage there. That beats the blink-and-you-might-miss-it naked moment in the Big Festival’s production of “Don John,” although “Don John” has plenty of R-rated material. “Quills” is about the Marquis de Sade. “Don John” is about, you know, Don Juan. So … similar perversions abound.

So far, I’ve heard of no MORE  naked moments in Spoleto or Piccolo Spoleto productions. If you see one, quick, Tweet it to me. We were all a little disappointed  to find that the WOW! costume moment in the opera “Louise” was NOT a naked moment, but a costume made of (SPOLER ALERT!) lightbulbs.

Meanwhile, over at Chamber Music, cell phones have been going off … in quiet moments … in the middle of cello solos. Chamber maestro Charles Wadsworth  had to issue a reminder during one performance to turn off the jingle-jangler in your pocket. Only a few forgetful souls are to blame. This is probably not The End of Concert Etiquette As We Know It.

Overheard at King and Calhoun today: “It’s HOT here. Where’s that breeze that’s supposed to blow ALL the time?” Heat outside is one thing, but what is going on with the air-conditioning at Gaillard Auditorium? House air  is usually set to Arctic there, particularly in advance of a sellout crowd. It’s a well-worn Spoleto warning to wear a a jacket or take a pashmina to Gaillard Spoleto concerts; over the years, it’s been downright refrigerated. But this year I’ve heard several people say that all the performances of Alvin Ailey last weekend were uncomfortably hot and sticky.

Spoleto has said it ain’t them asking for the AC to be cut at Gaillard. But they might not 1) have a say or 2) know about it. Is the building trying to save energy and therefore money? Does it have anything today with today’s Page 1 story about the $105 million makeover that Gaillard needs? Spoletians are used to feeling like freshly sprayed spring vegetables in the cooler bins at the Piggly Wiggly. Is the lack of AC the city’s fault? Is this part of a Recessionista Conspiracy?

I’m just sayin’ …