ANTI-APARTHEID PLAYWRIGHT
SARDINA BAY, South Africa _ To fathom playwright Athol Fugard, look beyond apartheid. Go back to his origins in the South African thirstland called the Karoo, where hardy things like aloe lilies thrive.
Fugard once said: "That's space. That's silence. The eye of God. Unblinking."
In the plays of Fugard, words are as rare as raindrops in his beloved semi-desert. Some critics rank him among the best stage authors writing in English and he is South Africa's only playwright with an international reputation.
Interviewed at his home near Port Elizabeth, the Mozart lover said, "In exactly the same way that the Karoo is a very, very spare landscape, I, myself, in the course of the 14 or 15 plays that I've written, have become sparer and sparer...."
OL' BLUE EYES
THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD CHATS WITH REPORTERS
SUN CITY, South Africa _ Frank Sinatra did something he rarely does.
He got together with a group of reporters for a rehearsal land then offered a glimpse into his private life.
Wearing a baseball cap and sitting on the steps of an auditorium stage at this gambling casino, the 65-year-old crooner chatted amiably with reporters who halfway expected him to bite their heads off.
Asked if he had an immediate concernings troubling him, ol' blue eyes said, "No. I'm pleased. We've got a couple of grandchildren and I'm hoping for a couple more. I think my life is quite marvelous. I have good friends, good musicians. People seem to be appreciative of what doing in my work. And I don't think I could ask for any one damn thing more."
Sinatra has had many clashes with reporters. His PR man said he would never agree to talk with US but was overruled by the man. During an Australian tour he compared newswomen to prostitutes. But in the interview here Friday night he didn't even blanch when asked if he was concerned about the political implications of appearing in this South African tribal homeland, which Pretoria has deemed an independent nation. Smiling, Sinatra said, "I play to all people, any color, any creed, drunk or sober."
PLAY CONFRONTS COLUMBINE HORROR
DENVER _ Five years after the Columbine High School massacre, a theater group is confronting the horror with a play that suggests what went through the minds of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold once the shooting stopped.
"It is by far the most challenging thing I have had to do," says actor Brian Lewis, a 27-year-old veteran of a dozen shows at Denver's LIDA Project who plays Harris. Mike Holzer, 24, portrays Klebold.
"I could sense the discomfort of the audience when we came close to them," he says, referring to a scene in which the teens play a video game on the front edge of the stage. Audience members turned their eyes away from the actors.
Such lines as, "I don't feel any different. It wasn't enough," uttered by Lewis as Harris, did little to endear him to the audience.
"Bingo Boyz Columbine" moves forward and backward through time and attempts to re-create what happened before Columbine, the day of the April 20, 1999, massacre, and afterward. The play's name was drawn from reports that the teenage killers said "bingo" as they killed.
 STUNNING NEW DENVER ART MUSEUM
DENVER
-- Architect Daniel Libeskind has upstaged the Rockies with his new
wing of the Denver Art Museum, as jagged as the nearby peaks that
inspired it.New condominiums facing the museum sold faster than units
with mountain views, something developer George Thorn had never seen in
his 35 years in the business. The homes were built as part of the
museum project and some are almost close enough to reach out and touch.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON MELLOWING WOODY CREEK, Colo. _ Could it be that Hunter S. Thompson of gonzo journalism fame is mellowing like a fine bourbon from his native Kentucky? There's an elk liver marinating among the clutter of bottles atop his refrigerator, but no Wild Turkey. "I gave it up. It's vicious." What of the legendary stories of his drug use, many of them products of his best-selling books? "That's a curse," said the 56-year-old writer. Yet he still passed a joint. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a longtime friend, said, "I think he's mellowed. I think we all have." For Braudis, much of what makes up Thompson's reputation has been just part of the act. "He is a consummate gentleman. He stands when women enter the room. He's very generous. He's a damn good friend." But to the targets of his newly awakened political activism, he's downright scary.
STILL'S WIDOW GIVES PAINTINGS TO DENVER DENVER _ By most accounts, the late Clyfford Still was a difficult customer – a grumpy, self-imposed isolationist who hoarded his paintings, told collectors which works they would be buying and once took back one of his paintings from a patron by slashing it out of its frame. One reviewer dubbed him the Unabomber of abstract expressionism. Contemporaries remember how Still for years refused to exhibit his work in New York because it was “too corrupt” before agreeing to a 1980 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – after it allowed him to hang his own work and curate the show. “I can’t think of another time that has been done,” said Lewis Sharp, the director of the Denver Art Museum who was working at the Met at the time. Still died later that year. Even after his death he is getting his way. For all of his attitude, though, there is no questioning the wonder of his jagged-looking, mural-sized works filled with bold colors and heavy strokes. Jackson Pollock once said: “Still makes the rest of us look academic.” Yet it seemed the full scope of Still’s work would never be seen by the public. Of his 975 paintings, 750 remain in his estate along with 1,300 pastels, and his will says they can be shown only in a museum built exclusively for his work. Now, 24 years after his death, the city of Denver has agreed to build such a museum under a deal negotiated by Mayor John Hickenlooper, who traveled to New Windsor, Md., to speak with Still’s widow, Patricia, about terms and conditions. “It will be one of the few opportunities to commune with a true genius,” the mayor said. “When they unrolled the paintings I was in awe.”
IN VAIL THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH LIGHT VAIL,
Colo.-- Even Don Quixote didn't try tilting at windmills in the dark.
Denver artist Patrick Marold has installed 2,700 mini-windmills along a
Vail mountainside, each powering lights inside tubes the windmills are
perched on - creating a tableau dependent on the stirrings of the
breeze.
"If
there is a statement in my art it is that I try to completely release
it. Nature takes control," Marold said, his hands covered with cuts
from gouging holes in the mountainside for the past week. The project
took three months. "My hands are off now. I just let it happen."
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF OPERA CENTRAL CITY, Colo. _ At almost 8,500 feet in the Rockies, it can take a few breaths to walk up Central City's steep granite hills lined with Victorian homes, souvenir shops _ and an opera house that has served 19th-Century gold miners as well as modern day visitors.
 AVANT GARDE THEATRE DECIDES DENVER SHOW HAS MERIT DENVER - When a show about John Denver was first pitched to Donovan Marley, artistic director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, he passed. "I said that will be a whole bunch of ballads - how boring," Marley recalled recently in an interview. Marley's award-winning theater was known for taking chances on shows such as the epic-like "Tantalus" or "The Laramie Project," about the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. Yet after listening to a demo CD of the show, Marley realized the arrangements by Jeff Waxman were nothing short of brilliant. They comment on each other ironically, Marley said. And that was how "Almost Heaven" came to life.
ALAN PATON'S FIRST NOVEL IN 28 YEARS AT AGE OF 78 KLOOF, South Africa _ Alan Paton, who at 78 might be called the critic emeritus of apartheid, has just finished his first novel in 28 years and says it pulls no punches in relating the deep racial divisions in South Africa. This is the man whose "Cry the Beloved Country" is a classic, with the lead part played by Sidney Poitier in 1951. The book was first used for a Broadway musical by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, "Lost in the Stars." Explaining the long gap between novels, the author of the South African classic, Cry the Beloved Country, said in an interview: "I had become very impatient of novels. I didn't even like to read them." But poring over the proofs of his latest work, his bushy white eyebrows furrowed in concentration, Paton clearly was proud of the new work, "Ah But Your Land is Beautiful." "I follow an Indian family and a white Afrikaner and an African family," he said. "It's a pretty thorough account of what South Africa was like from 1952 to 1958 and doesn't pull any punches."
 SCULPTURE REPLACES SUGAR BEETS LOVELAND, Colo. _ For almost a century, Loveland was just a sweet little town built by farmers growing sugar beets. By the time the industry faded in the 1980s, farmers were replaced by artists, mostly sculptors. There are some $6 million worth of sculptures in Loveland's parks, along its tree-lined streets, near its lakes and in front of its buildings.
FORMER PILOT RAISES DISTURBING QUESTIONS IN PLAY ABOUT IRAQ TORTURE DENVER- There's hardly an issue in the Iraq War that doesn't come up in "Rendition," a play written by Ryan Kelly, a former Black Hawk pilot in Iraq. And there are just as many voices. Torture is Kelly's overriding theme, and it is taken to an extreme with an ending not unlike Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus." Kelly, a former Army captain who served as a company commander in Iraq, admits he doesn't know what he would do if he had to choose between torturing a captive or losing a loved one.
CENTRAL CITY, Colo. _ Tissues are a must for “Gabriel’s Daughter,” anew opera about a freed slave who spent her life searching for the daughter sold at auction, but William Luce’s witty libretto also brings many laughs. Henry Mollicone’s eclectic music helps establish the mood as the story swings from the ante bellum south to a wild Rocky Mountain mining town and back again in flashbacks, and there is at least one song, “Sweet Apple Wine an’ Dreams,” that could stand on its own. Mollicone has served as music director and conductor throughout the San Francisco Bay area. The opera, the third commissioned by the Central City Opera, like its two predecessors, “The Ballad of Baby Doe” and “The Face on the Bar Room Floor,” focuses on local history. Clara Brown made a small fortune as a laundress in Central City during its mining boom in the 19th century and is recognized as one of Colorado’s founding pioneers.
|
|
