I'm the Charleston City Paper's Arts and Entertainment Editor. This is my fourth year as chief Spoleto overview critic for the City Paper. I won't bore you with my professional credentials, but I promise I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. Just trust me, okay?
I'm charged with at least peeping in on every major Spoleto performance (within reason -- I won't be at all 11 chamber music presentations, for example, and scheduling conflicts make getting to all the jazz performances unlikely, barring an out-of-body experience.) In addition, I'm filling in the gaps in my Spoleto schedule with Piccolo performances, giving special attention to special events, the three theatre series, and making a point of dipping into the little festival's many dance, literary, and music series downtown.
During the rare moments between shows, I'm jotting down my thoughts on the whole experience here for you to follow, which the City Paper will be excerpting in each issue of the paper for the next two weeks.
The kinds of things I'm writing about here are as much about what's happening off stages around town as on them -- the people in the festival, the chatter, the gossip, the streets, the lobbies, the bathrooms (within reason), the clubs, the bars, the restaurants, the press rooms, the dressing rooms, the bedrooms, etc. In short, I'm writing about The Buzz: the singular energy that comes over Charleston for the two and a half wild weeks of Spoleto Festival USA.
If you're looking for more straightforward reviews, the City Paper will have other critics writing about each of the major Spoleto productions and many of those in Piccolo, which you can find in the paper for the coming weeks, as well as on the City Paper's website here.
Feel free to post any and all comments about my Buzz Blog here on the site, and also don't hesitate to contact me with suggestions, observations, philosophical musings, propositions, rumors, and goatee-twiddling of all kinds. (But please keep in mind that I'm awfully busy, so don't expect a reply right away. Or ever, necessarily.)