In the first half of the 20th century, Springfield’s South Town, a neighborhood defined by the intersection of 11th Street and South Grand Avenue, was a prominent neighborhood shopping center. Boasting restaurants and stores for fine jewelry and furniture, it was prime commercial real estate. South Town was “a city within a city,” according to […]
Arts Features
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Harvest time
The local fall theater season promises everything from Greek drama to 1930s madcap comedy to recent Broadway musicals. Cal Pritner, longtime faculty member of the Illinois State University Department of Theatre and founder of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, performs two one-man plays this weekend: Mark Twain: Unlearning Racism is presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. […]
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Thirty-four winners
Springfield Art Association’s new exhibit of two-dimensional art, organized around the single theme of The Modern Landscape, represents a first for the organization: a show dedicated to Illinois artists. Amanda Lampert, SAA’s curator of collections, credits former executive director Erika Fitzgerald with the idea. “She wasn’t here to see the exhibit through, but I think […]
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Sculpting a career in transition
George Hinds was a recreational sculptor for most of his life until a recent employment “speed bump” prompted him to turn his art into a full-time enterprise. He’s off to a promising start. Along the way to today, Hinds has been a technical illustrator at Fiat Allis, a construction worker, and a coal miner. This […]
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Two weeks to stardom
On a Wednesday afternoon in early July, five teachers huddle in a cluttered second-floor office in the Hoogland Center for the Arts to plan the third and final session of summer theater camp. In a week, the Hoogland will be overrun by dozens of noisy fledging thespians, but on this day, as Jason Goodreau puts […]
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Master of illusion
When a guy from Stratford-upon-Avon, England, began writing plays in London, stages were little more than raised platforms with no “sets” of decorative art conveying a sense of time and place to stories performed by the actors. “Early theater engaged audiences in the willing suspension of disbelief,” explains Ed Smith, a 59-year-old multifaceted thespian. “Clues […]
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Taking it to the edge
And now for something completely different: Springfield Theatre Centre’s Active and Creative Teen Theatre troupe is giving us a play to think about this weekend: Boiling People in My Coffee, by Jonathan Yukich, a theater professor at New York University. It runs Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30, at the Hoogland Center for the […]
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theater
Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson moved to Springfield three years ago to help build a theater program at University of Illinois-Springfield with his wife, Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson, a fellow actor and director and part-time assistant professor of theater at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Before their move to the capital city, the couple’s pursuit of work in the theater had […]
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backstage pass
So much theater is being performed in the region right now, it’s impossible to see it all. Fortunately, I was able to enjoy three excellent productions last week that prove central Illinois a great theater center: Beauty & the Beast in Sullivan, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Bloomington, and Broadway, a delightful relic of the Roaring […]
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art seen
Native American artist Arloa Wheeler of Springfield works exclusively in pen and ink. “I like the contrast,” she says. “It’s total opposites: black ink on white paper. You take something that’s total opposites and you create a piece of art that looks harmonized, and, for me, that’s almost spiritual.” Born in Illinois and a resident […]
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backstage pass 6-30-05
The show of the summer is Ragtime. The musical opened last Friday at the Springfield Muni Opera and runs through this Sunday, July 3. There is not one weak performance in this production. In fact, this is one of those times when every single part is absolutely right. Ragtime features Mary Jo Curry, Tony D. Young, […]
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art seen 6-23-05
If you’ve always thought that an artist waited deep inside you, eager to burst forth, now may be the time to tap that latent passion and make the most of it. It’s also the time to wrestle the Nintendo and TV away from the kids, introduce them to new friends, and discover talents you’ve suspected […]
