With Spoleto wrapped, I’m left with a blur of memories, impressions and observations on the festival. Here are just a few of them.
An audience member filming Harvard Sailing Team’s opening night with her cellphone, distracting the people sitting behind her (including me) as she emailed the hilarious sketches to her friends…
Oversized patrons at the Chapel Theatre, trying to squeeze into the small seats. Some of the grossest guests had to ride side saddle.
Rodney Lee Rogers sitting patiently behind a small curtain for 45 minutes, the audience gathering around him before The Tragedian.
Two old dears I met at the first performance of A Devil Inside who’d been to so many shows that they couldn’t remember what they’d seen the night before, and started arguing about it. The festival had been running for two days.
The miserable actors in This War is Live who were fed up with the show and its technical hiccups… one complained about his simplistic character, while another called the whole experience “torturous.” He should have counted himself fortunate – he wasn’t sitting in the audience…
Sitting next to two of the playwrights of Under the Lights: 10×10 – and trying to make mental review notes without making them feel uncomfortable…
Jay Clifford courageously performing at the American Theatre despite suffering from some debilitating lurgy. After the first night, he conked out in his truck… on the second night, his manager Vance McNabb picked up his bug. They put on a great show, they’re both feeling better now and they’re no longer contagious (I hope).
Watching rehearsals with Chen Shi-Zheng, director of Monkey: Journey to the West… and being invited to look at the aftermath of The Great War after Hotel Modern’s show was over. I witnessed chaos on a model train scale.
One of my favorite elements of the festival, though, was bumping into the various local and national theatre performers, artists and filmmakers who collaborate to help make the festival function. Without their hard work and the overwhelming enthusiasm of the audience, there’d be no festival… thanks to them all.
There’s two more videos from Geoff to come, here’s one of them - some quick clips from the Piccolo closing ceremony on Saturday.
Sometimes we amaze ourselves — as with today when we manage to talk about nearly all things Spoleto, even though it’s coming to a gradual end. But we’ve had fun, right - huh? Of course we have.
The awesome Janet is back in the SpoStudio with regular BritBoy Geoff hosting.
So I hung out for a couple of hours at the Reggae Block Dance on a night that turned surprisingly cool. It was a big crowd and seemed a happy one. Estimates from officials put attendance at about 2700 around 9:30 p.m. I was chatting with the staff of the Office of Cultural Affairs, who all were looking at a long day: From the Children’s Festival that started at 9 a.m. to the dance, which started at 7 p.m. and all the set-up and take-down that goes with it. There’s an awful lot that goes on behind the scenes to put on such massive events. Parks department personnel, according to Floyd “Ray” Swagerty, Jr., production manager of the city’s office of Cultural Affairs, worked almost around the clock to set up the opening ceremonies, Marion Square, the Sunset Serenade at the Custom House and then take most of it back down in two days.
Cultural affairs director Ellen Dressler Moryl stopped by with the latest logistical headache, trying to find a possible replacement for an ailing artist for a Sunday event. Warnell Berry the tenor/baritone slated to sing at Afternoon of Porgy and Bess was under the weather. “We’ll just start with ‘My Man is Gone,’ ” Moryl quipped. I was impressed that she still had a sense of humor. My guess is it’s a required survival skill in her position.
I had a wonderful, serendipitous meeting with members of Henry Turner Jr. and Flavor from Louisiana. The band drove up from Baton Rouge, a mere 17 hours by car. Apparently MapQuest made it look a lot easier than it turned out to be. They arrived about 4 a.m., says singer Nukie Miller. This was her first trip to Charleston, although the band played Piccolo a couple of years ago. The buzz on Miller is that she’s a rising star. 225BatonRouge.com calls her a “local soul tigress.” She’s no diva, though: down-to-earth and oozing soft-spoken charm. It’s a shame she won’t get to see the city, but here’s hoping she gets a chance to come back.
“Monkey: Journey to the West,” this year’s Spoleto talker, is a visual feast. It gets the kitchen sink treatment in the numbers and kinds of Chinese performance arts thrown in. I saw Friday night’s performance. A few thoughts …
Supertitle translations show that Monkey is quite funny. The 500-year old folk story of a spiritual quest is full of natural and supernatural people and beasts.
It’s 2 hours with no intermission, the anime is great, costuming outrageous (and sometimes scary … plus, Monkey looked like he’d just played basketball), painted sets interesting, and physical performances … martial arts, sword fighting, gymnastic aerials, high wire flying, plate-spinning, silk panel aerials, bamboo pole acrobatics, body contortion, fire stick twirling, umbrella spinning … amazing. Your eye doesn’t know where to go, and if you drink any alchohol before the show you might get dizzy. For me, it was a preview of some of the things we will see in opening ceremonies for this summer’s Beijing Olympics … on a smaller scale of course. For the Olympics, there will be hundreds of acrobats, scores of plate-spinners, thousands of singers …
The orchestra is amplified and so are the singers, so if you have a sensitive ear, take earplugs. The performance is not that loud but Chinese music’s forms and some of the rock repetition of rhythms, plus the squeals the monkey makes (I wanted to wring his neck) and the whanging of sticks on the stage floor (amplified by the wireless mics) can be jarring to a Western ear. (My ear is so sensitive that those things made me feel like I was losing my mind.) Mandarin itself, in fact, can be jarring to a Western ear.
The jazz boat was rocking on Monday night when the Piccolo Spoleto Festival’s Harbor Cruise launched from the Fountain Walk Dock, and it wasn’t just the lively winds, which eventually died down.
Former Broadway pit band pianist Maida Libkin (musical director of “Urinetown” at the Village Playhouse) showed up with her husband, singer Bill Schlitt, who is one of the city’s premiere show singers and directs “The Good Time Variety Hours” at at the Village Playhouse. Read the rest of this entry »
I know you think they are already doing show with their podcasts and videos - and they are - but they will hit the public airwaves on NPR at 9 a.m. Monday morning as guests on the program of the same name - “Spoleto Today with Marcus Overton” - at 89.3 FM.
There’s no relationship to the program and the blog other than once upon a time both the newspaper and Marc jumped on the name at about the same time. Believe me - there will be a lively discussion about it.
In case you don’t know it, Marc once ran Spoleto Festival USA, so he’s an insider and knows what he’s talking about.
He also rode his motorcycle in the storm over the weekend to Georgia and back to see elderly relatives. He said he felt like a drowned rat by the time he got back to Charleston this afternoon. There’s more to this man than a great radio voice.
Janet and Dan, along with intrepid videographer Geoff Marshall, plan to talk with him about this grand new blogging frontier for The P&C, otherwise known as how to learn to podcast and videoblog in five easy lessons. It should be fun - if they are awake, that is.
Here’s a mea culpa - it’s Saturday I think, and the halfway point of the Festival.
Since I edit Spoleto Today for the ‘dead tree edition’ (as Dan likes to call it), I’m now a night owl. I tend to hum Eliza DoLittle’s song to Henry Higgins under my breath (Words, words, words …) Because I work straight through the 17 days, I lose track of time, a point my husband reminded me of when I asked him for the third time what day it was. I liken the festival to going on diet of chocolate cake: There are so many sweet things to do, that it’s hard to know when to stop and take a slice of daily life.
Tonight is the night I usually do that by watching something atrocious on television - like staying up to 2:30 a.m. to watch the HGTV series Clean House. (I do that instead of actually CLEANING the house, while I try to separate the cats from the dust bunnies).
It takes some endurance to keep up the pace, as glorious as it may be. Even Joshua Rosenblum said, when he turned in his column tonight, that he had stayed up last night watching “The Empire Strikes Back.” No classical music in that unless you count the opening credits, which is a modern day icon of sorts.
So I’m not the only one. Dan and Janet have been partying harder than I have, and they have teens at home, so … need I say more.
Here’s my theory: If you live on chocolate cake, eventually you will go nuts, or crash after the sugar high, but it sure is delicious while it lasts. I’m headed to Harris Teeter at midnight. I hear they might have a discount in the darkened bakery aisle and I need a rush to keep me going.
Charleston Ballet Theatre’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival production of ‘Under the Angel Oak: CBT Xposed with Christine Kane,’ scheduled to be performed today on John’s Island was canceled because of the rain.
However, the show will be performed at 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday at the CBT black box theater, 477 King St. All tickets, which are $25, will be honored.
Many of us who walked out after the Tribute Concert for Gian Carlo Menotti found ourselves touched by two things, the excellent singing of Karen Huffstodt, who sings the role of Begbick in the opera ‘The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’ and Mayor Joe Riley’s impressive tribute to Menotti’s vision.
In case you don’t know it by now, Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and Spoleto Festival USA, but the two festivals split over whether Menotti’s adopted son would take over Menotti’s role as impressario in Charleston, a point Joe made during his speech. Joe said it could never happen here. Menotti died in February and this is the first festival that could honor him in some way.
Riley was tactfully honest and quoted from a letter he sent the Maestro last fall prior to Menotti’s death. As he pointed out, they were still arguing, but Joe’s conclusion to the letter in which he wished Menotti well was enough to bring many in the audience to the edge of tears. Joe’s sincerity about the contribution of the man to our city was fitting and balanced the problems with the festival split with respect for the difficult, funny, artistic man who shared his vision for Charleston as a player on the world stage. Walking down the street afterward, Joe said he remembered his first phone call to Menotti, when he couldn’t even pronounce his last name, and the visit to the city when Menotti saw something that others in Charleston didn’t - that Charleston is a beautiful, unique place.
Huffstodt proved that she can hold a stage with her stunning presence and her voice, working through an aria that challenges the singer’s range. With her sweep of red hair and stunning purple dress, she was an impressive diva at her best. I heard at least one person say that she sung the aria as if she were acting it on stage, which is of course the highest compliment. She is also the best advertisement to go see The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny that there is.
Bill Struhs needs some credit, too. He’s been photographing the festival (almost for free in the early years) since 1977, and had an impressive archive of photos that were shown on a screen above the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. It was amazing to see faces from so long ago, many of whom are gone now. They all looked so happy.
Whatever you may think of Menotti - and he was always provocative so you had to have an opinion - the tribute concert was an appropriate way to remember him. I’m glad I went.
Sometimes we amaze ourselves — as with today when we manage to talk about nearly all things Spoleto, even though it’s coming to a gradual end. But we’ve had fun, right - huh? Of course we have.
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