The Story of John Henry - According to Artists, Historians, and Neuroscientists
One great thing about programming across Arts & Ideas is that Ideas events can often take advantage of the presence of artists involved in Festival performances.
This year, I knew that with the programming of the play Steel Hammer I would be able to feature Julia Wolfe, the composer, and Anne Bogart, the director, in respective events. I was excited to think about how to engage them to drive panels that related to Steel Hammer. One aspect of show I so admire is how the music, composed by Julia, and the dramatic text, written separately by four different playwrights, tells much more than the...
Funk Buzz
Since announcing Festival 21 a couple of weeks ago it has been so much fun for me to walk around New Haven, show up at events, or grab a cup of coffee, and hear the reactions to everything we have coming to town. Everyone has their favorites, whether it be the world premieres or the return of some familiar names. It is so nice to feel the enthusiasm from all.
One thing that has been a lot of fun has been when people hear or see the artists joining us at the Festival on the radio, television, or Internet and let us know about it. Last week when George Clinton performed on The Late Show with...
Re-defining "Home Turf"
Given the heat of presidential primaries, the word “immigration” is in the air these days. It’s attached to candidates’ views on safety, jobs, education, and more. It brings voters together and just as strongly divides them. You can become so used to hearing this word on politics podcasts and reading it in newspapers that it can become abstract.
You might forget that this is an issue about people, many of whom already live in this country. That was the impetus for this year's Ideas event “Writing Home: Narratives of Place and Displacement in the Americas.” I knew that I wanted to focus on...
Arts & Ideas on the Air: Listen In!
Festival Director of Development Tom Griggs and I had the opportunity to go “live” on the air with Steve di Costanzo, General Manager of WPKN for his monthly General Manager Report to the Listeners and share some of the happenings of Festival 21. No worries if you missed it, you can check it out HERE.
Prior to our on air time, Steve gave us a tour of the WPKN studios and music library. For me, I was swept back in time to my days as a radio disc jokey spinning music on both college and commercial radio stations. WPKN's 50,000+ albums are organized not by genre or artist but chronologically and...
Festival Partner JUNCTURE Co-Presents Yale Symposium April 7-8
Festival partner, JUNCTURE, will be part of the Robert L. Bernstein Human Rights Symposium, at the Yale Law School Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8.
JUNCTURE: Exploration in Art and Human Rights is a year-long initiative housed under the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, and its director James Silk and its deputy director/curator David Kim are building and participating in a panel at the Festival on June 22 entitled “A Duty to Look? Imagery and Human Rights” to be co-presented with JUNCTURE.
This week's symposium at Yale features...
Festival 21 In the News: Have you heard? Read all About It!
News is spreading about Festival 21!
Both Joe Amarante at the New Haven Register and Christopher Arnott of the Hartford Courant joined us Tuesday for the season announcement member party and got word out immediately! We're grateful for the support of our Connecticut arts writers.
The Hartford Courant
"Arts & Ideas has the funk. Not to mention the Polish jazz, the political documentaries, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, and dozens of other cultural happenings.
The International Festival of Arts & Ideas announced its full 2016 line-up Tuesday night during a reception at The Study at Yale...
Arts & Ideas Still Evolving, 20 Years In. by Lucy Gellman of the New Haven Independent
When Mary Lou Aleskie took over the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in September 2005, she didn’t know that much about New Haven. She’d moved to the Elm City from San Diego for the position, so everything was new to her. Neighborhoods sprang up, full of possibility, performance venues popped out of the woodwork. She was greeted by a local arts scene that, for a city of just over 130,000 people, was more “jam-packed” than she ever could have anticipated.
Aleskie hasn’t stopped trying to nail down the rhythm of New Haven, or satiate its hunger for local and international arts. Over 11...
‘Prudencia Hart’ returns to New Haven Wednesday. By Joe Amarante, New Haven Register
When National Theatre of Scotland brought The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart to America and the Elm City in June 2012, the musical play’s stage was the Wicked Wolf, the 144 Temple St. bar that has also had incarnations as Russian Lady and Playwright.
Now it’s back for a limited run of six shows, ahead of the Scottish theater company’s new offering at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in June called “Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour.”
In 2012, Register reviewer E. Kyle Minor called Prudencia a “modest, imaginative piece of old-fashioned storytelling” and “a wonderful diversion”...
“Prudencia Hart” Roars Back into Town!
The National Theatre of Scotland's tour of The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart makes its rollicking return to New Haven - and sole stop on the East Coast this spring - to Yale's GPSCY (Graduate and Professional Student Center at Yale) March 30 - April 3 to kick off our 21st Festival season. They've been selling out shows around the world, so pull up a chair and wet your whistle in a fabled Yale pub for an inventive and entertaining piece of anarchic theatre, live music, and strange goings-on...
One wintry morning Prudencia Hart, an uptight academic, sets off to attend a conference in Kelso...
Childless theatre directors to share their experiences onstage
Parenthood is branded on social media as the accessory of the moment: hoards of people posting perfect pictures on social media of their perfect families and perfect lives. But what about the couples for whom having a child raises an entire debate? In Ad Infinitum’s No Kids, a real-life couple will share their deeply personal journey to answer the question: as a gay couple, should they have children?
Performers, creators and directors of the show, George Mann and Nir Paldi, created the show from their discussions, memories of the past, and visions of the future, spinning around the “kids or no...
Arts & Culture: The Gateway to International Business Development
All the stars lined up.
For many years the Festival has been a leading presenter in the U.S. of Quebec’s most outstanding performing artists, especially in the world of new circus, which has become a signature of Montreal’s cultural sector. Add to that a much anticipated new development in downtown New Haven at the former Coliseum site from the Montreal-based developer Live Work Learn Play and a little bit of money available for upgrades and restoration of the New Haven Green and Mayor Harp said “Road trip”! Well, she didn’t say that exactly--- but it was clear that a visit to our inspiring...
Human Rights Activist WuDunn Receives Festival's 6th Annual VLA
The Festival honored award-winning author and journalist, accomplished business woman, and women's and girl's rights activist Sheryl WuDunn with the 6th Visionary Leadership Award on January 26, 2016.
Named one of the "150 Women Who Shake the World" (Newsweek), it has been WuDunn’s goal to raise awareness and affect change on issues that face the voiceless, such as poverty stricken women and girls forced to turn to prostitution and the lost generation of girls resulting from China’s One Child Law.
The Visionary Leadership Award honors a leader whose trailblazing work is changing the world...