SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

It’s nearly over. Only today’s finale remains yet to be experienced, and I’m feeling exhausted, relieved, and more than a little sad. Over at Dan Conover’s Spoletoblog, he reports that Blair Tindall writes in today’s Post and Courier, in a festival retrospective, that she attended 37 events over the course of Spoleto’s 17 days. That’s particularly impressive in light of the fact that Tindall’s never tackled this job before. Following in Robert Jones footsteps would have been a difficult task for anyone; when I spoke with Tindall in the Spoleto press room at one point mid-festival, she mentioned that the process had been one big learning curve for her, and she was still feeling her way into the best process for managing her time. My hat’s off to her for taking on the challenge at all. My feeling is she did as good a job as anyone could have asked for.

My own count on events attended is somewhere between 59-64; I’ve tried to go back and recall every single performance and festival-related event I made it to, but several of them were spontaneous decisions not on my schedule, and others I only ducked into to get a feel for what was happening before I cut and hightailed it to something else. Still others were events that were of neither Piccolo nor Spoleto: the Domain magazine launch party, for example, and my own performance and work in the A Perfect Ten short play showcase last Thursday night.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to write here about everything I saw or experienced, much as I wanted to. This often happened when I saw four more more events in a single day; finding the time to write (often in the Spoleto press room at the Gaillard or in Port City Java at King and Calhoun, both boasting wireless internet signals) was sometimes too difficult between shows. By the time I’d caught up, it was often a day or two later and I had other things to cover, if this blog was to remain timely. (A perfect example: last Friday night I saw Heather Grayson’s Solo Turn production After the Storm, the last in Spoleto’s three-part series. Had much to say about it, but it was over at 10:30 pm, and I had some drinks with friends afterward. The next day, I wrote about three of the events I’d been to on Friday but didn’t get to writing about that one before it was time to see the Japanese dance troupe Miyagi Ryu Nosho Kai at the Gibbes Museum at 2 pm. From there, it was to the Piccolo Finale, and, later, to Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the Spoleto Soiree. Which brings us to this point.)

In any event, I’ll spend the rest of this afternoon and probably a good deal of Monday morning putting together my own festival retrospective for next Wednesday’s City Paper. Until then, thanks for reading, and see you at the finale.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, Charleston, here’s what the sky looks like. You can see it yourself by looking out your window right now. (Note: this is a time-sensitive blog.)

Even with all the rain of the past week and a half, Charleston’s buskers have still managed to find dry places on the street to set up their instruments and play for the pedestrian passers-by. One of the most popular is just outside of Millennium Music at the corner of King and Calhoun Streets. Last weekend, multi-instrumentalist Clarence McDonald serenaded the footbound traffic from the spot that, earlier in the day, Dave Easlick and Kevin Taylor (known as La Callé) had worked. (Taylor, incidentally is also a widely shown professional artist who had a hand in crafting the two huge statue-esque masks that adorn Spoleto’s production of D0n Giovanni.)

Earlier Friday, between the Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade shows (by the way, Bill Davis says last night’s opening performance from Baby Wants Candy is far and away the best improvising he’s seen in the festival, and he’s seen it all), I spent a few minutes catching my breath over at Millennium Music, where Piccolo artist and big-time jazz vocalist Jane Monheit was scheduled to make an appearance. While I was there, I ran into the P&C’s Dan Conover doing the same thing. We shared tales of blogging the festival and commiserated on the toll it’s taken on both our sleeping schedules.

On Friday night, far from the madding crowds that were turning a very wet downtown Charleston into an overcrowded community pool (though we did hear the Salsa Block Party went off without a hitch, until the sky opened up at 11pm), New York-based So Percussion took a break from their highbrow gigs as part of John Kennedy’s Music in Time series and knocked out a couple of sets at Mt. Pleasant’s Village Tavern. It was a great way for us to wind down after Hazelle Goodman’s show; Adam, Doug, Jason, and Lawson had a smaller version of their Music in Time setup arranged around the tiny Tavern stage, and they sipped beers and treated the intimate crowd to some of the stuff they’d played at MiT program II, like Steve Reich’s extremely cool “Drumming, Part I” and the second movement of David Lang’s “the so-called laws of nature,” which they’d be performing the following day in Program III at Recital Hall. What a group of super nice guys; they even gave me a copy of one of their CDs — Steve Reich’s entire Drumming.

Over at P&C’s Spoletoblog, host Dan Conover occasionally posts snippets of poetry from friends and associates he’s calling “spokus” — haikus about Spoleto. Yesterday evening, over a happy-hour beer, while I was dusting myself off from a challenging Friday overview schedule — I’d already been to see Charleston Ballet Theatre, Second City, the Upright Citizens Brigade, paid a visit to Jane Monheit at Millennium Music, and still had Hazelle Goodman’s On Edge in my near future that evening — my friend Elizabeth Krans wrote me her own spoku, entitled “Spoleto”:

Harvest of culture
Yields crops of arts and letters
Patrick now frenzied

(The karma police were obviously napping last night, because later that evening Elizabeth’s car was towed from a lot on King Street. A call to Crosby’s Towing connected us with an attendant who said we’d need to bring $120 before midnight, cash only. Have these people learned nothing from the City Paper’s industry-roiling towing investigation earlier this year? I can see that once again I’ll have to spend a portion of a weekend in a towing office, Charleston Municipal Code in hand, reading aloud to a surly attendant who neither knows nor cares what the laws are. Perhaps I’ll get another good feature for the paper out of it.)

On my way to see Second City’s 3 pm show at 2:55 pm this afternoon (I was running late, natch), I was driving down George Street toward Physicians Auditorium when I spotted Music in Time’s John Kennedy hoofing it down the street. I rolled down the window and asked if he needed a lift somewhere; he was only going to Grace Episcopal Church, but he hopped in and we chatted for a few minutes in the traffic. He thought the Music in Time concert Wednesday evening at the Gaillard had gone swimmingly, and he mentioned that he was still making last-minute changes to his new work, Storm and Stress, which he’ll be premiering at Sunday evening’s Festival Concert. I told him I was experiencing similar last-minute alterations with my own premiere — a short play called “Eight Grand” I’ve written and am directing for next Thursday’s (June 9) short play showcase at PURE Theatre called A Perfect Ten. Yeah, I know — not exactly the same thing, but he did say he was free and would like to make it there. That would be pretty cool, but we’ll see. He’s a busy guy. (But if he comes, I hope he’s not offended by strong language and adult situations…..)

Gardner Guess, Charleston’s biggest fan of comedy, is back on the blog today. (You’ve seen Gardner bagging groceries at Harris Teeter downtown and tromping around town in his trademark floppy hat.) Here’s what he had to say about what he’s seen at the fringe and in Piccolo.

Thursday, June 2

1. Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, 7 p.m. American Theater
“I really liked it … it was a rollercoaster of pure fun … A+”
(In fairness, it should be noted that Gardner, during a Q&A with the family/band, asked them how long they’d been together.)

2. The Best of National No Shame Theatre, 9:30 p.m., Theatre 220
“I really thought they were really amazing … A+ … I’ve liked just about everything I’ve seen this year.”
( In fairness, it should be noted Gradner dozed off several times during the show; something Dottie Ashley would never do.)

Sunday, May 29

1. Second City, 6 p.m., Physicians Auditorium
“I loved it, they were so awesome and everyone of them was so talented; it was really cool and very funny … I’m glad you sent me to it … A+.”

Saturday, May 28

1. Man 1, Bank 0, 5:30 p.m., American Theater
“What an amazing story … that never could have happened to me; I would never have been able to [cash a bank check for $90,000] … A+.”

2. Upright Citizens Brigade, 9 p.m., American Theater
“Now they were really funny, I almost wet my pants they were so funny; like everything I’ve seen this year they were so good … A+.”

Did anyone notice that yesterday was the official start of hurricane season? I’m seeing sunshine outside for the first time in days, but the weather forecast suggests that’s just an evil illusion. Yahoo Weather calls for ’scattered strong storms’ today, and ‘isolated thunderstorms’ for the remainder of the week and weekend. Who the hell’s in charge of weather over at Spoleto? Can we get somebody on this asap?

With the big opening weekend of Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo at our backs and another full week and a half of performances stretching out before us, it’s perhaps possible to try and get a little bit of perspective on the 29th annual arts festival.

One thing we can say for certain: it’s certainly one of the more sexually provocative festivals in recent memory. There are nearly naked midgets and fornication galore on the Dock Street stage for Mabou Mines Dollhouse (not only does it involve dwarves and tall women but solo and, during at least one performance anyway, oral versions), and Don Giovanni is chock full of lascivious behavior, still more skin, and a trunk full of pornography that gets scattered across the floor of Memminger Auditorium. If that’s not enough prurience for festival-goers, they can pop into Belle Muse Gallery on Wentworth Street for a group exhibit of erotic art or check out the work of Lucas Causey at the Humanities Center show Curious Tales – not salacious per se, but there’s no shortage of phalluses, either. Hey, I’m not judging here, just observing.

There may also have been some slight improvement in the cellphone etiquette direction this year. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part; after all, it couldn’t have gotten a hell of a lot worse after last year, and I have yet to experience a single performance in either festival that hasn’t been interrupted by some jerkoff’s twittering, ridiculous ringtone. Actually, I’m mistaken: none of the shows at the American Theater have been interrupted, because the Theatre 99 gang is intelligent enough to make an announcement before each presentation: “Ladies and gentlemen, please turn off all pagers and cellphones, because if they ring during the show they’ll be confiscated and destroyed.” People laugh because they’re expecting comedy from this crowd. But I wanna see tech booth operator and announcement man Sean Sullivan snatch somebody’s ringing cellphone from his fat fingers, hurl it to the ground and stomp on it until it’s been atomized into sand-sized shards of metal and plastic. Please, Sean? Please?

Early reports from opening weekend have two operas out in front of just about everything else in the festival for happy patron quotients. Who’da thunk it? La bella dormente nel bosco is running neck and neck with Don Giovanni as the two most popular parts of the festival to date. Sure, Savion Glover wowed ‘em last weekend at the Gaillard, but that show’s been on the road for months – their Charleston performances apparently closed out a 10-week tour – and he only did three shows. But both Don G. and La bella will play through the end of the festival, and each is a Spoleto-produced premiere. (La bella will also go on to the Lincoln Center Festival, which co-commissioned the work from director Basil Twist, later this summer.)

The Colla Marionette Company’s first program, Sheherazade and Petruschka, has also had theatre-goers gurgling with delight (sometimes literally, being a kid-friendly show), and Mike Daisey’s turn in the Solo Turns series, The Ugly American, has folks hailing it as an especially auspicious beginning to the three-play series.

What would Spoleto be without the edgier stuff? Probably a lot more profitable, but that’s not their mission. And so there’re always a couple of productions in the big festival that make even the most cultured arts diva feel like a floundering Philistine. With opening weekend behind us, that honor at this point is a toss-up: Mabou Mines DollHouse or Emio Greco \ PC’s Rimasto Orfano? They both operate on a level well above mere entertainment, but there have also been plenty of patrons who missed the higher meaning in each. (I even caught a few people I know sneaking out of DollHouse at the first intermission. Sometimes, when you’re faced with three hours of Meaningful Art, a full stomach, and an early morning the next day, it’s damn difficult to rise to the challenge of a production that asks you to work hard to understand it. Hey, we’ve all been there.)

There’s more than a week and a half of the two festivals left, and I’ll be getting to as much of it as I can and talking about all of it here in this space and in the City Paper on June 1 and June 8. I’ll also be getting to a lot more of Piccolo this week, too, so check back often.