Shaffer got it right: The mediocre human is audiences’ way into understanding this story. That’s why the obsessively envious Salieri, and not his titular bête noire with the hideously annoying laugh and the peerless compositional brilliance, is the protagonist of Amadeus.
It works like this: Founder, editor and producer Ed McCann announces an open-ended “theme” meant to prompt writers of every background, professional and amateur, young and old, to address that theme in as many as 650 words – maybe four, five minutes of reading time.
Set in the 1960s, it follows the adolescence of a girl called Li’l Bit in flashback as her alternatingly supportive and abusive Uncle Peck exacts a high emotional price for driving lessons on the rural roads of Maryland.
“Jailed nine times before her 15th birthday, Lynda Blackmon’s stirring tale lets audiences of all ages experience the courage it took to help change American history.”
Since 2003, Vassar College has held an annual festival dedicated to exploring and celebrating the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s called Modfest, and it brings together students, faculty members and outside artists (such as Pulitzer Prizewinning composers Yehudi Wyner, Steve Reich and David del Tredici) for a week-and-a-half of residencies, performances and exhibitions, all free and open to the general public.
Kicking off its “Pulitzer Series” of four plays exemplifying the Golden Age of American drama, this weekend and next, the Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck will stage one of the most beloved works of 20th-century theater: Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece, Our Town.
“Raising Voices” is the theme of Modfest 2017, and anyone who was energized by the politicized acceptance speech delivered by Vassar alumna Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes Awards may want to check it out.
On the surface, A Monster Calls looks a CGI-heavy thrill ride for the YA crowd, and the elaborate special effects involved in bringing one of Great Britain’s ancient yew trees to terrifying life are indeed impressive. But this is no conventional monster movie. It’s a powerfully emotional, intimate parable about the internal struggle between denial and acceptance in a child whose beloved parent is dying of a slow, wasting disease.
Upstate Films in Rhinebeck will host a film screening of Our Man in Havana (1960) on Sunday, January 15 at 12:30 p.m. Those planning to attend are invited to read the book on which the film is based beforehand, sign up for Oblong’s book group, then stay after the screening for a book-versus-movie discussion.
Eva Hesse’s sculptures were different: Though mainly employing latex, fiberglass and plastics as materials, they were messy, complex, organic, out-of-control. Art critic Arthur Danto described her work as “full of life, of Eros, even of comedy.” She died too young of a brain tumor – in 1970, at age 34 – to enjoy the level of critical regard that would eventually attach to her oeuvre, but today she is seen as a pioneer of Post-Minimalism.