Culture Club

Something new here at Culture Club. Instead of a weekly column, I'll be updating this regularly. So be sure to subscribe via RSS or email so you won't miss previews, news and reviews. For the week ahead, here's what's up....


WHERE I’M GOING….


    Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep is probably the great American film classic you’ve never heard of. Made as a student project in 1974, it’s one of the grittiest and most honest examinations of African-American life ever made. A favorite of cinephiles for a few decades, it finally made it into wide release two years ago. Burnett will be here as part of a weekend mini-festival sponsored by the Community Media Project. African Beyond,” features films by Kevin J. Everson, Iverson White, and Burnett, including Killer of Sheep and his latest, Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation.

   

And if you’re looking for a one-two Pulitzer Prize punch, be ready for the first two events of the Milwaukee Book Festival - readings by Richard Russo (Empire Falls, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2002) and Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2008). Stick around for the rest of the fest, which includes evenings dedicated to Milwaukee’s Poet Laureates, Wisconsin writers, and 'how-to" chats from agents and other players of the lit-rah-chur game.



    And dance fans won’t want to miss Gone, Gone, Gone, an evening-length duet by Monica Rodero and Dan Schuchart, veterans of the Wild Space Dance Company. A witty and inventive meditation on the nature of relationships, the piece was a big hit at the Minnesota Fringe Festival over the summer, and will certainly play well for the hometown crowd. For more info, visit our friends at Danceworks.

 
WHERE I’VE BEEN….

   There are no Karl Roves or Lee Atwaters in the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production of State of the Union. There are party bosses and king makers, sure. But in light of the political skullduggery of more recent decades, the machinations of Lindsay and Crouse’s 1946 play seem almost quaint. Grant Matthews (Lee Ernst) is an aviation tycoon who isn’t afraid of speaking his mind, and political operatives see in him a fresh new face. From that premise, the play tells a pretty familiar story: Matthews navigates the seductions of power, the ordure of corruption and the spirit of his convictions, which are bolstered by his no-nonsense, estranged wife (Laura Gordon). In the end, the couple end up in a hazy spotlight, delivering some inspirational rhetoric that today, would be perfect voice-over for a convention video introducing the next great candidate. 
       State of the Union is gorgeously produced (Rachel Healey’s costumes are delicious) and acted with the usual Rep competence and verve. But Michael Halberstam’s direction is sluggish in the first act, and never rises to the screwball comic fizz for which the script calls. When I interviewed Halberstam on WUWM’s Lake Effect, he was very taken with the play’s political implications - that political wheelin’-dealin’ was not new to the 21st century. The Rep was obviously interested in making a similar point during election season, but in light of real events, and the more cynical and biting satire we’ve become accustomed to - from Wag the Dog to Stephen Colbert - State of the Union seems hopelessly old-fashioned.

   
    I was pretty cynical, myself, about the Milwaukee Art Museum’s new show, Act/React, where I expected whiz-bang gimmickry at the expense of truth and beauty. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There is certainly techie wizardry here, but it is in the service of truths, beauty, elegance and, yes, fun. Installations by a half dozen artists fill the museum’s main galleries, some in their own darkened rooms (Janet Cardiff’s To Touch, Liz Phillips’ Echo Evolution), some spreading out over vast gallery floors (Brian Knep’s Healing #1) and walls (Camille Utterback’s projected abstractions and Scott Snibbe’s Deep Walls), and some hanging demurely in a nook, just like an old-fashioned painting (Daniel Rozin’s stunningly simple Peg Mirror).
    Curated by Milwaukee native George Fifield, known as the mind behind the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Act/React feels surprisingly organic and warm-blooded. With a spare palette of dark and light, Snibbe’s pieces hearken back to minimalism, and Cardiff’s soundscape, which is activated by people touching a table, has the Art Brut feeling of a Beckett play. But most of the show is almost voluptuous in its embrace of color, light and rich texture.
    It most certainly will be popular, but its often simple delights coexist with the heftier questions it offers: these are environments in which nothing is static. They are four-dimensional, existing in real time with all the risk and potential that entails. This is art that is full of play, both for the artist and for everyone who steps into the world of the exhibit.