Chuck Boyd, better known as SpoJo Chucker, and jazz man Jack McCray are in the studio with Janet for a great podcast about music around town, monkey shenanigans and more.

Hear today’s podcast direct by following this link, or why not subscribe permanently here throughout the duration of the festival and get it fed to your MP3 player automatically. There’s also our guide to podcasting here.

The Geoffless Janet overcomes technical difficulties with help from stunt Brit Nick Smith (and a desperate phone call to Don Lewis) to record Charleston Academy of Music faculty members EunJoo Yun, Irina Pevzner and Susan McAdoo talking about their students’ performances during Piccolo, the angst of turning pages, playing with passion and other good stuff.

Hear today’s podcast direct by following this link, or why not subscribe permanently here throughout the duration of the festival and get it fed to your MP3 player automatically. There’s also our guide to podcasting here.

PURE Theatre: Episode 1 from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

I met the founders of PURE Theatre about four years ago through a newspaper assignment and I’ve been an admirer of their work ever since. They’ve got four plays in this year’s Piccolo Festival (Eurydice, Vaud Rats, The Tragedian, and Cloud Tectonics), and that’s a lot for any small company, but there’s one thing that makes that number even more remarkable: PURE Theatre no longer has a theater.

I bumped into Rodney Lee Rogers outside the Gaillard a week ago and asked him how they were handling the logistics of running a homeless theater company with a busy schedule… on top of running an enormous family (Rogers is married to PURE co-founder Sharon Graci, and they have two young children in addition to her three teenagers from a previous marriage). One thing led to another, and on Tuesday I showed up on James Island a little after 8:30 to begin following Rodney and Sharon through their day.

It’s a glimpse of what it means to make demanding professional theater work in a small market, but it’s also a fairly funny glimpse at a talented family that’s adapted to an unusual life on the run.

I have a lot to say, but you will be spared because I’m making my television debut in the morning and, trust me, I need my beauty sleep. “La Cenerentola” was thoroughly enjoyable. A bit long, and I had to ditch plans to attend a chi-chi party, but it was a wonderful experience. I’m a Rossini fan and a complete devotee of fairy tales, so perhaps I went with some prejudice.

Cinderella is an interesting tale with plenty of permutations. I could go on forever on the value of such stories (Bruno Bettelheim’s Uses of Enchantment was seminal for me): I’m even a huge fan of Tanith Lee’s When the Clock Strikes that has Cinderella as a very bad lady.

This version puts gets a slightly religious spin, with the eyes of heaven taking pity on the plight of poor Angelina, La Cenerentola. The fairy godmother is a wise old man; the evil stepmother is replaced by a prideful stepfather; and the moral of the tale is that virtue and innocence always win out. There are some very funny moments and a marvelous use of moving backdrop that strikes me as inventive and bold.

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Elite New York sketch comedy group Harvard Sailing Team are planning a couple of writing workshops while they’re here for Piccolo.

The inventive youngsters don’t do many workshops, and this is an experiment for them to find out how many people in Charleston are hungry for comedy writing knowledge.

There’s just one problem: the classes aren’t in the Piccolo program and information about the Sketch Comedy Writing Classes has been thin on the ground.

I do know this much: the workshops are at Theatre 99 (home of the Have Nots!). They encompass live and video formats, they’re scheduled for May 27th & 28th from 12 to 3 p.m., and both workshops cover the same principles of idea-building and sketch development.

The two classes may be amalgamated depending on the number of sign-ups, so nothing’s set in stone yet. But this is definitely a good opportunity to find out how the team consistently comes up with its nuggest of comedy gold.

To sign up contact 843-853-6687 or email TheHaveNots2000@aol.com

- Nick Smith

Get out your cameras because SpoletoToday and Lowcountry Live of WCIV-TV Channel 4 are teaming up to sponsor a video contest. The rules are simple: The video cannot be more than 3 minutes; it must have a Spoleto and/or Piccolo tie-in; and it must be finished by June 4.

For more shocking details (OK, not really shocking, I just always wanted to say that) tune in at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 27, to see Geoff Marshall and Janet Edens Conover talk about SpoletoToday on Lowcountry Live with Ryan Nelson.

You do have to make a video even your mom could watch. There is a $200 prize and the winner will be featured on Lowcountry Live. It can be funny, serious or inspiring. It doesn’t have to be perfect: Just shoot it, post it and send us the link (with an embed code) to SpoletoToday@postandcourier.com. We will check it out and, if it meets all the content criteria, we’ll put in on SpoletoToday and in the running for the prize.

Celebrities who have agreed to judge so far include Mitchell Davis and Farrah Hoffmire of Organic Process Productions. They just wrapped up the surfing documentary “Finding Pura Vida” in Costa Rica. Nick Smith, our own Spojo and Charleston filmmaker will also be taking a look-see at the videos. Learn more about what he’s been up to at his Cat City Online blog. As always, if you’ve got any questions, give us a shout at SpoletoToday@postandcourier.com or comment here.

An Afternoon of Porgy and Bess

Today, I took in An Afternoon of Porgy and Bess. The program, which played to a capacity crowd, featured selections from the Heyward/Gershwin opera by soprano D’Jaris Whipper-Lewis and tenor/baritone Richard Blakeney. Robert Rosen provided a excellent overview of the history surrounding the work with his A Short History of George Gershwin in Charleston.

Both Whipper-Lewis and Blakeney, accompanied by Chamber Music Charleston thrilled with their beautiful renditions of Summertime, Oh, I Plenty O’ Nuttin, and It Ain’t Necessarily So. I found Whipper-Lewis’s Strawberry Woman especially beautiful.

If you can, do catch this gorgeous program of history and music time next around. It’s a lovely way to spend an hour.

Seeking A Landscape

Next, I headed to the Gibbs to see the exhibitLandscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art.

Dan’s post about race and art got me thinking about my own skittishness on the subject of slavery and plantation life. My maternal grandparents were sharecroppers in Marlboro County, SC, and my mother would tell my siblings and me how she picked and chopped cotton for $2.00 a day, how she hated it, and what she did to avoid it.

She also told us about how my grandfather picked 1000 lbs of cotton in one day, and how proud he was of that. I thought about how difficult that must have been and how determined he was to excel at something. For my grandparents, “smart” implied more industriousness than intelligence, and my grandfather was known as especially smart.

As I toured the exhibit which, had art ranging from the pastoral to the provocative, I thought a lot about my mother, grandparents and other sharecroppers and slaves who worked those fields with the hope of a better life.

I thought the exhibit well done and thoughtful. Some of the works, a photo of the charred remains of a lynched man and a photo of a slave woman stripped to the waist were a bit jarring, but it’s all part of a journey that our country is still traveling.

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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.

Here’s Dan’s latest video:

The Big Switch from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

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I went to the meet up … by myself … at Marion Square and the Children’s Festival. Maybe next time I should tell people where to meet. But it was a beautiful day: quite warm, of course, but with a nice breeze every now and again, and I then bumped into Geoff shooting video …

There’s an energy about this year that I love. Music spilled out and crossed over; there was vibrant color every where you looked. It was that glorious slice-of-life chaos that I find personally very satisfying. Moms, dads, kids, dogs, couples, lone adventurers going about the business of enjoying a festival on a pleasant day. Or being tired and cranky and just needing a cup of coffee. Oh. Wait. That was me…

Seriously, it was great fun. I watched the crowd being drawn like magic to the main tent once the Irish fiddlers began to play. I talked with Piccolo Spoleto staff members Elease Amos-Goodwin and Francina Smalls-Joyner, whose memories of the past and ideas about the future of the now 30-year-old festival are a treasure. I realize that I am waxing poetic, but there is a depth to this place and a richness to the fabric of it that is powerful and seductive. I think it’s the difference between just residing somewhere and inhabiting it. So many people inhabit this place until there’s a mingling that makes it hard to separate one from the other.

I found Harriet and Vera, eventually, before I had to head out to the press luncheon (yes, yes, I know, la ti da!) And actually, it was. Very. Festival general manager Nigel Redden, cast members of “La Cenerentola,” Festival Music Director for Opera & Orchestra Emmanuel Villaume and “Amistad” Director Sam Helfrich, whom I immediately dissed by mistaking him for someone else. Oh, dear. Not that he wasn’t gracious about it … Hostess Judith Moore, the brains behind Charleston Cookie Company, was charming. The house was gorgeous and the garden made us all wish we had our own shady little hideaways. Frankly I’d like mine complete with an incredibly polite staff and a fabulous chef serving silver cups of sweet potato fries.

Tonight, who knows? There is so much this year, I feel like I’m a case of Stendhal Syndrome just waiting to happen.

Today’s noon opening of Spoleto Festival USA 2008 at Broad and Meeting was the usual great mix of Italian ices, paddle fans, St. Michael’s bell ringers watching from the steeple, speeches, horn fanfares and smiling (if sweaty) faces. The bell ringers and the presence of Mayor Riley’s mother’s blooming oleanders across the railing of City Hall’s balcony are only a couple of the Opening Ceremonies traditions.

I was standing to the side near the wrought iron gate of Washington Park, so I could not make out the speeches (except for the prayer, which really isn’t a speech) other than those by the mayors — Mayor Joe Riley of Charleston and Mayor Massimo Bruninin of Spoleto, Italy, both of whom have voices that carry.

Bass Herbert Perry, a member of the cast of “La Amistad,” sang a stirring “Star Spangled Banner.”

SpoletoToday was right a couple of posts ago about confetti replacing balloons this year. After Riley made his “let the dancers dance, the singers sing, the children play …” proclamation of the opening of festivities, the all-white confetti shot out of a gun very near me and scared me half to death.

I got my wish for Chinese acrobats from the cast of “Monkey: Journey to the West.” Whoa. The contortionist was … spectacular. I have no adjectives for those who are able to bend over backward and put their face between their ankles … except amazing, talented, wow. The acrobat who did one-handed handstands on her hip girdle, which faced skyward, was also pretty … spectacular, amazing, stunning, mind bending.

Best of all … maybe … was that the brass band (sorry, I did not get a program, or a paddle fan) broke into “Saints” at the close of the events and paraded through the crowd, N’awlins-style.

Want to see a video? Of course you do. That’s why Geoff was there …