Every morning for nearly two years now, I’ve passed a lifelike figure of John Wilkes Booth on my way to work at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. This week, Booth comes to life onstage in one of the most thought-provoking, challenging, and disturbing musicals of recent years. Lincoln’s murderer is one of nine disturbed people […]
Arts Features
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Finding Fogel
Finding Fogel It is an event Seymour Fogel himself most likely would have shunned. In fact, the artist would probably be better known today were it not for his intense independence and passionately private nature. Art historian Greta Berman has said of Fogel (1911-1984), “He didn’t ‘play the game’ and he never promoted himself. He […]
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Witness
His bronze sculptures, monuments, and paintings tell of deep sorrow: the scars of slavery, the sacrifice of immigration, the quiet suffering of women. His art also speaks of hope: the eloquent words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the restless spirit of pioneer Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the creative rebirth of the Harlem Renaissance. […]
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For mature audiences only
Onstage this week is a two-performance bill of short plays titled Danger: Adult Content, featuring a group of local actors performing 10 short pieces by contemporary American playwrights. This ADHD Productions show, designated for “mature audiences only,” is directed by Jason Goodreau and performed by Goodreau, Hillary Gorrell, Jeff Nevins, Carrie Risdon, Patrick Russell, Grace Smith, […]
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Choice art
New York art doesn’t pop up in Springfield too often, but thanks to a biannual fundraiser hosted by Planned Parenthood Springfield, locals get a chance to see and buy a range of works from a renowned Big Apple gallery. PPS’s Art Auction is a large affair boasting 200 framed-and-matted art works, courtesy of New York […]
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A kiss is still a kiss
Don’t call Diana Son’s 1998 play Stop Kiss a political piece. It’s a love story. The first time Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson, assistant professor of theater at Illinois College, read the last scene of Stop Kiss, she gasped. Since that moment three years ago, she has wanted to direct the play. This Friday, she gets her chance […]
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Shaping trash into treasure
One person’s trash is another’s treasure, and Dick Oglesby, 76, has taken the old saying to heart by creating a holiday display consisting of old jewelry donated by the women of Oak Terrace Active Retirement Community, where he also lives. “In June, I asked the activities director to ask the ladies if they had any […]
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The play’s the thing
“My radiation oncologist cruelly resisted my pleas. I begged him to irradiate the unaffected breast so it would be big and perky and glow in the dark like the one they zapped.” — “Degrees of Lucky,” Judith Schlessinger Dyer Judy Dyer, who died of breast cancer earlier this month, left behind a one-act drama about […]
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Decking the Hall
The Springfield Art Association opens its inaugural Holiday Hall Exhibition and Sale this weekend. The event marks a departure from the themes of past holiday exhibitions in favor of a fine-crafts sale for shoppers. Typically SAA’s juried exhibits draw works from artists all over the Midwest, but for the Holiday Hall, the SAA chose the […]
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Giving fellow artists a boost
When Rob and Michele DeLong ventured downtown for the celebrated Old Capitol Art Fair, they saw something that sparked their interest: a “For Lease” sign. After some thinking, the married photographers decided to take down the sign and replace it with their own, advertising the RMD Gallery. The 2,000-square-foot art space and framing studio on […]
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Where the art meets the road
Paintings by Springfield’s Mary Ellen Strack and photographs by Carlinville’s Karl Warma are featured, along with works by other area artists, at Prairie Art Alliance’s current show 6×6, timed to coincide with the city’s annual Route 66 Festival. “We wanted to take advantage of being in our downtown location and tie in with the festival,” […]
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Who’s the Man?
The Man Who Came to Dinner, the popular comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, opens a five-performance run tonight (Thursday, Sept. 22) at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Back in 1939, when it premiered at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway, audiences knew that the lead character, Sheridan Whiteside, was based on […]
