Tag: wexner center for the arts

Best of 2025: Live Music

In a world that felt even more on fire than usual – by which I mostly mean the fire was closer to me personally – I found a lot to be grateful for: my friends, my partner, my family, my jobs. My most often source for solace was, as it has been since I was a teenager, live music.

Across nine cities, I saw about 150 shows (expect that to be fewer next year; I’m trying to be more intentional and include more deliberate days of rest each week). Unsurprisingly, Dick’s Den was at the top of my list, hitting an average of once every two weeks, with Natalie’s Grandview and Cafe Bourbon Street tied for second place at 12, and Ace and Rumba also tied at 7. Interestingly, the Columbus Museum of Art and the Wex tied at 4 each, and all of which were terrific. Because there was so much good stuff, I interpreted “Festival” a little more liberally, as anything with multiple stages or days.

No way of knowing what’s next, but there are already some shows I’m very excited for in the upcoming year, and choosing to set my eyes with hope rather than leap to despondency.

All photos are by me, everything is in Columbus unless stated otherwise, and the listings are in chronological order

Top 25(ish) Shows

Joy Oladokun (Newport Music Hall, 01/21/2025) – Not quite the first show of the year I saw, or even exactly the first touring show (John Calvin Abney, who had a banner this year supporting SG Goodman as well as putting out a stellar EP, did a joint show with Lydia Loveless at Secret Studio a little earlier), but in many ways finally getting to see Joy Oladokun after being a massive fan of her last two records in the room that held so many of my favorite shows of all time (Wilco, Morphine, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, Medeski Martin and Wood/Chocolate Genius, X/The Detroit Cobras) set the tone perfectly and gave me a shot of burning resolve right after the inauguration. I thought the mix of solo acoustic and full-band numbers highlighted both sides of her work in a way I’ve seen a lot of singer-songwriters try but very rarely pull off anywhere nearly as well, and made some of the textures – revealing a surprising (to me) contextual thread between her Observations From a Crowded Room and Don Henley’s Building a Perfect Beast – appear in greater detail and relief.
Chuck Prophet and his Cumbia Shoes (Natalie’s Grandview, 02/05/2025) – I’ve never seen a bad Chuck Prophet show – the rare universally acclaimed songwriter who’s every bit as powerful a bandleader – but this flourishing of his merging a couple of members of his longstanding unit Mission Express with Cali cumbia band ¿Qiensave? into Cumbia Shoes hit another level of powerful catharsis, nuance, and unbridled fun.

Chuck Prophet and his Cumbia Shoes at Natalie’s Grandview

Joel Ross’s Good Vibes (Wexner Center for the Arts)/Joel Harrison’s Anthems of Unity (Natalie’s Grandview), both 03/06/2025 – Talking to a good friend and stalwart of the NYC and, now, LA, jazz scene about how the touring climate was in town, I brought up this particular evening when I got to see the first set of vibes maestro Joel Ross’s crushing current Sextet (that interplay of Maria Grand on alto and Josh Johnson on tenor in the frontline seared my eyebrows off), an unbroken suite of music blending Ross’s originals and standards that turned my head around then drive 10 minutes and see the astonishing guitarist Joel Harrison do his Anthems of Unity book with two of our local heroes, organist Tony Monaco and drummerr Louis Tsamous. These two approaches to jazz/improvised music/the history of American music, and the way both of these artists approached the canon and the way music can be about the rest of the world instead of being hermetic or closed reverberated hard against each other in my chest.
Deli Girls with Deionyx (Cafe Bourbon Street, 04/04/2025) – Over the last couple of years, Bobo has reclaimed the throne as my favorite place to see noisy, edgier rock and roll and one of my favorite places to see more underground-leaning DJs. This show scratched both of those itches hard and deep – NYC’s Deli Girls’ mix of grinding, throbbing rave beats, acid-singed noise, and in-your-face punk and Deionyx’s bleeding edge soulful-at-an-angle set of surprising and powerful records both made my heart incredibly full, as did the room packed full of people 15-25 years younger than I am.

Greater Columbus Community Orchestra with Brian Harnetty, The Visitor (Hilliard Presbyterian Church, 04/06/2025) – Banner year for composer Brian Harnetty, who released a remarkable memoir, Noisy Memory, and put out a gorgeous recording of string quartet and samples The House, and a visual installation This Was Once a Forest, This Was Once a Sea, as well as premiering this rich, sparkling brass ensemble piece with the Greater Columbus Community Orchestra that I’m still feeling vibrate through me.
Nikhil P. Yerwadekar and Living Language (Barbes, NYC, 04/11/2025) – Because the sole New York trip this year was to celebrate my 45th birthday with a gang of my favorite people in the world, there were fewer distinct cultural items on the calendar. But this was an extreme highlight: Yerwadekar, whom I last saw backing Hailu Mergia at a Big Ears, leading a ferocious band through Afrobeat classics and originals in a wall-to-wall-packed Barbes back room where no one stopped moving. Made even sweeter as my great friend Andrew Patton’s inaugural visit to one of my temples of music.

**Nikhil P. Yerwadekar and Living Language** at Barbes

The Lilybandits with Two Cow Garage (Natalie’s Grandview, 06/05/2025) – I think anyone who’s read ten lines I’ve written or spent ten minutes in my presence knows I think Todd May’s the greatest songwriter Columbus has ever produced. They culminated an important reissue project of his first mature band, The Lilybandits with At Thirty Three and a Third this year, and lost its drummer and their lifelong friend Keith Smith last year. This extremely rare reunion of the original core members (May, Trent Arnold, Jose Gonzalez, Bob Hite) with longtime friend Keith Hanlon filing in on drums, Bob Ray Starker providing the horn lines he gifted them with on those records, and Smith’s son joining on a few vocals, was probably the biggest reminder of how much I love my town all year, wrapped up in a rock show that made hard to believe they’d only gotten together to run through the songs once. Two Cow Garage, long influenced by the Lilybandits (the first time I ever saw Two Cow, they did a Todd May song and dedicated it to “The genius of Bernie’s”) set the tone with a set of jubilant catharsis.
Charles “Wigg” Walker (ACME Feed and Seed, Nashville, 06/14/2025) – My eyebrows shot up when I saw Charles Walker – who I knew from his days with the Dynamites (who the Funkdefy collective, at the time including the above-mentioned Andrew Patton, booked in Columbus more than once, and my great friends in St Louis, at the time including fellow Columbus legend Matt Benz booked at Twangfest – was doing a regular brunch gig when Anne and I already planned to be in Nashville. We juggled our schedule to make sure we were in town in time for this and stayed for two sets: Walker still in perfect voice, backed by a sizzling organ trio led by his longtime Dynamites foil Charles Treadway, going through stone soul classics and gorgeous new originals.

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin (Eastside Bowl, Nashville, 06/14/2025) – If the only thing this show gave us was the five minutes of Dan Baird and his killer band opening with the Open All Night highlight “Sheila,” with Baird’s grin and electric presence, it would have justified the six-hours drive each way, the hotel cost, all of it. But it gave us so much more. 45 minutes of blistering rock and roll, led by someone who, at 71, is outplaying and dancing rockers a third of his age. Also, this was a beautiful look in the way other scenes take care of their own, organized by Warner Hodges (Baird’s guitar foil in Homemade Sin, longtime lead player in Jason and the Scorchers), here leading his own band and sitting in with every other set in a benefit for his former Scorchers bandmate Jeff Johnson.
Sam Johnson and Noah Demland, Contrary Motion (Wild Goose Creative, 06/20/2025) – The second or third year in what I hope continues as a series exploring the history of Queer chamber music/new music featured new originals from organizers Sam Johnson and Noah Demland, classics of the canon from Pauline Oliveros and John Cage, and contemporary pieces from Caroline Shaw and Leilahua Lanzilotti by a tight ensemble of some of our best players. A brilliant glimpse of where this music is, how it got here, and how relevant it still is.
Say She She (Woodlands Tavern, 06/20/2025) – Finally got to see my favorite of the current neo-disco bands, NYC’s Say She She, and they tore the roof off Woodlands in a crowd full of people I mostly didn’t know (besides Anne and my Providence-based friend Daria, maybe we knew two other people in a nearly sold out room) all dancing in a sweaty, delirious mess. The reason I went from the show above to this show, but they got separate listings, is that they felt like very distinct events to me; they didn’t resonate against one another like the couple of shared line items.

Budos Band with Benny Trokan (Woodward Theatre, Cincinnati, 07/15/2025) – One of the great live bands I’ve seen in 30 years of seeing live music, Budos Band, retained their crown on a gorgeous summer night in a venue I hadn’t made it to in Cincinnati previously. Icing on the cake was Benny Trokan – who Anne introduced me to in his days with Robbers on High Street – with a tight, swinging four-piece going through the lovely smooth soul of his recent solo record.
Mike Dillon’s Punkadelick (Dick’s Den, 07/18/2025) – Columbus is lucky to get percussionist Mike Dillon coming through our fair city a decent amount, but what made this show special was the presence of New Orleans drummer Nikki Glaspie, who’s shared the stage with Beyonce, Ivan Neville, Snarky Puppy, and Nth Power. That powerhouse sense of the multiplicity of groove and the emotional content of the song took both sets I stayed for into outer space.

Budos Band at Woodward Theatre, Cincinnati

Vandoliers (Rumba Cafe, 08/12/2025) – I’d been a fan of the Vandoliers since their 2019 breakthrough Forever and this year’s Life Behind Bars was a revelation: simultaneously a reminder of what drove me so crazy about the alt.country/Americana scene in my teens and 20s and a broadening in the same sense as their Dallas forebears’ Old 97s’ Fight Songs and Satellite Rides. Similarly, this show was a gleeful, textured statement of purpose, with lead singer Jenni Rose’s songs detailing her coming out the other side of addiction and gender dysmorphia into a brighter place without sugarcoating any of the challenges, and the band – with one exception – having been with her the entire ride and still shouting together. As Anne said, “This is what all protest music should sound like: a party that also makes you want to smash shit.”
Mark Lomax II (Streetlight Guild, 08/28/2025) – I was lucky to see a few examples of one of our finest composers and drummers, Mark Lomax, in action this year, including a reunion with Scott Woods and his trio, and also missed a big premiere at the Wexner Center because I lost track of my schedule and didn’t buy before it sold out. But this rare solo drum recital, directly inspired by Tiffany Lawson’s What If I Told You It Was Freedom (look for more on that in my Art Exhibits Best Of) in Streetlight Guild’s smaller upstairs gallery space was a direct injection into my veins of his compositional strategies, his fingerprint-distinct approach to the drums, and about creativity in general as he discussed the pieces and personal history with Lawson and Woods.

Etienne Charles and Creole Soul (Wexner Center for the Arts) and Quintron and Ms. Pussycat with DANA (Cafe Bourbon Street), both 09/18/2025 – Two approaches to blending cultures and styles through a distinct lens of a life in art, both made exciting shows on this September night. Trumpeter/composer Etienne Charles led his phenomenal band through a selection of compositions drawing from jazz and funk traditions and his Trinidadian heritage to a rapturous crowd at the Wexner Center Performance space. A five minute drive away – we sadly missed Mutha Funk though I heard great things – Quintron and Ms. Pussycat celebrated their 30th anniversary as a rock-and-roll puppet show with homemade drum machines, greasy organ, and garage-rock hooks that’s had me in its hooks for decades and is still a show like nothing else and one I’ll never miss if I can help it.
Kid Congo Powers with Cheater Slicks (Grog Shop, Cleveland, 09/20/2025) – I did a lot of thinking about memory this year – I often do, but at 45 it felt pronounced – and seeing the great Kid Congo, a throughline of so much music I loved play a set bursting with memories of friends and colleagues he’d lost, including “The Boy Had It All,” “Sean DeLear,” “La araña,” “He Walked In,” and songs he’d played with bands many of whose members have slo passed on like The Cramps and The Gun Club, vibrated with those feelings and reminded me that you can carry those people with you in a jubilant way without diminishing how much it hurts. In addition, Cheater Slicks (longtime friends and mutual admirers of Powers) who have been on a streak the last two years, played one of the best sets I’ve seen them do in 30 years of seeing them semi-regularly.
Lorette Velvette with Deerfrance (Bar DKDC, Memphis, 09/26/2025) – The best musical side quest we’ve had in over a decade of going to Memphis with Gonerfest as the main course: Panther Burns legend Lorette Velvette on a double-bill with linchpin of John Cale’s Sabotage era Deerfrance in the intimate confines of Bar DKDC. Killing new songs from both artists, excellent bands including members of the Reigning Sound, Panther Burns, and the Memphis Symphony, and a gorgeous clinic of song.

Talisha Holmes and the Stardust (Dick’s Den, 10/03/2025) – I’ve been a fan of Talisha Holmes’ voice since High School and her singing and repertoire for almost 20 years, but the first show with the band she dubbed Stardust felt like a new chapter opening with ecstatic/spiritual jazz and folk textures into the thorny, dense R&B she does better than anyone else in town. It was an eye opening evening that got me extremely excited to see what’s coming next.
DANA with Messrs and DJ Adam Scoppa (Ace of Cups, 10/17/2025) – As seen in my records of the year, I thought DANA’s Clean Living was a triumph, and their constant touring schedule honed their most nuanced and powerful set of songs into a ferocious live set. Here, along with a rare reunion set from Columbus’ deconstructed hardcore heroes Messrs (including drummer Mat Bisaro playing like a monster while also going through a grueling round of chemo) and the sweet sounds of Adam Scopp’s Heatwave dance night made one of the most satisfying reminders of what I love about Columbus.

Robbie Fulks (Natalie’s Grandview, 10/18/2025) – Robbie Fulks is another artist who is no stranger to anyone who’s read this or talked to me, but what made this appearance at Natalie’s special to me was a return to the four-piece rock band format that made me fall hard in the first place, with drummer Gerald Dowd, bassist KC McDonough, and guitarist Robbie Gjersoe doing a setlist that returned to the first three records – and the excellent new one, Now Then – with one highlight after another.
Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman (Rumba Cafe, 10/23/2025) – A valedictory show for two artists who have done so much for Columbus in their performance home, Rumba, and a set that made my heart almost burst out of my chest.

Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman at Rumba Cafe

Worthington Chamber Orchestra, Frontiers of Sound (Worthington United Methodist Church, 11/07/2025) – The Worthington Chamber Orchestra has a great series, and they continued to cement their place in the creative firmament of Columbus with commissioning the first violin concerto from Columbus native (now based in New York) Aaron Quinn, played by Devin Copfer (WCO concertmaster, Chamber Brews co-founder, Devi and Liz, Urban Art Ensemble) and the orchestra. The piece planted its flag in a truly American continuum, textures that felt like Ives and Copland, cascading harmonies that recalled some of the sticky synth layers of vintage Detroit techno, and a soulful bluesiness in the central violin line that still had all rigor you’d want to see from classical music.
Durand Jones and the Indications with Psycodelics (Newport Music Hall, 11/09/2025) – The smooth soul of Durand Jones had a packed crowd at the Newport eating out of their palms with a sweaty, vibrant show that summed up what so many of us love about the genre while also serving as the entry point for so many younger people. Psycodelics did a muscular, fiery take on vintage sounds like EWF, Sly, and P-Funk that reminded me that music has a long future ahead of it.

Durand Jones and the Indications at Newport Music Hall

Minibeast (Cafe Bourbon Street, 11/14/2025) – Peter Prescott’s Minibeast knocked me completely over, with sparking noise and 10,000-league-deep grooves. Also a reminder of how good Bobo sounds these days. Every nuance of that powerful, multifaceted sound washed over everyone in the room.

Top 20 Festival Sets

Beachland’s 25th Anniversary (Beachland Ballroom and Tavern, Cleveland)
- Mourning [A] BLKStar
- Pull Chains

Mourning [A] BLKStar at Beachland Ballroom

Lost Weekend Records’ 22nd Anniversary (Natalie’s Grandview)
- Ugly Stick
- Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments Featuring Mickey Mocnik

TJSA with Mickey Mocnik at Natalie’s Grandview

Big Ears Festival (Various Venues, Knoxville)
- Kate Soper and Wet Ink Ensemble, Ipsa Dixit (Bijou Theatre)
- Joy Guidry (The Point)
- Tyshawn Sorey and DACAMERA, Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) (St. John’s)

Kate Soper and Wet Ink Ensemble, Big Ears

Lee Bains III and Lonnie Holley (Barley’s)
King Britt/Tyshawn Sorey/Meshell Ndegeocello/Melz (Jackson Terminal)
SML (The Standard)

King Britt/Tyshawn Sorey/Meshell Ndegeocello/MELZ at Big Ears

Future Salad Days Opening (Blockfort Parking Lot)
- Juanita and Juan
- Clickbait
- Cheater Slicks

Jazz and Ribs Fest
- Ron Holmes’ Eclecticism

Ron Holmes Eclecticism, Jazz and Ribs Fest

Gonerfest (Wiseacre Brewing, Memphis)
- Pylon Reenactment Society
- Lightning Bolt
- Lothario
- Cheap Fix
- Des Demonas
- TINA!!!

Tags Aaron Quinn, ace of cups, ACME Feed and Seed, Adam Scoppa, Alice Bag, Bar DKDC, Barbes, Beachland Ballroom, Benny Trokan, Big Ears Festival, Blockfort, Bob Hite, Brian Harnetty, Budos Band, Cafe Bourbon Street, Charles Walker, Cheap Fix, Cheater Slicks, Chuck Prophet, Clickbait, Contrary Motion, DACAMERA, Dan Baird, DANA, Deerfrance, Deionyx, Deli Girls, Des Demonas, Devin Copfer, Dick's Den, Durand Jones and the Indications, Eastside Bowl, Etienne Charles, Future Salad Days, Gerald Dowd, Gonerfest, Greater Columbus Community Orchestra, Grog Shop, Jazz and Ribs Fest, Joel Harrison, Joel Ross, Jose Gonzalez', Josh Johnson, Joy Guidry, Joy Oladokun, Juanita and Juan, Kate Soper, KC McDonough, Keith Hanklon, Keith Hanlon, Keith Smith, Kid Congo Powers, King Britt, Lee Bains III, Lightning Bolt, Lilybandits, Living Language, Lonnie Holley, Lorette Velvette, Lost Weekend Records, Lothario, Louis Tsamous, Maria Grand, Mark Lomax II, Mat Bisaro, Melz, Meshell Ndegeocello, Messers, Micah Schnabel, Mickey Mocnik, Mike Dillon's Punkadelick, Minibeast, Mourning [a] BLKstar, Natalie's Grandview, Newport Music Hall, Nikhil P. Yerwadekar, Nikki Glaspie, Noah Demland, Peter Prescott, Psycodelics, Pull Chains, Pylon Reenactment Society, Qiensave, Quintron and Ms. Pussycat, Robbie Fulks, Robbie Gjersoe, Ron Holmes, Rumba Cafe, Sam Johnson, Say She She, SML, Starker, Streetlight Guild, Talisha Homes, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, TINA!!!, Todd May, Tony Monaco, Trent Arnold, Two Cow Garage, Tyshawn Sorey, Ugly Stick, Vandoliers, Vanessa Jean Speckman, Warner Hodges, Wet Ink Ensemble, wexner center for the arts, Wild Goose Creative, Woodlands Tavern, Woodward Theatre, Worthington Chamber Orchestra

Best Of visual art

Best of 2024: Visual Art

What an astonishing year for visual art this was – 64 exhibits in 6 cities, and very little of it let me down. I got my head turned around repeatedly and – for what’s in my town – I often came back again and again to drink from that fountain.

I want to take a few seconds for an elegy with the hope of rebirth for Skylab. I had dear friends who ran it over the years – I just saw one last weekend – and from the first time I went at 19 (ish), I knew my city was better for it. For that kind of a DIY space to hold on in a rapidly changing downtown for 27-ish (I feel like Berry Van Boekel and a couple of other people started hosting art shows in 1997 but I could be off by a few years) years is a marvelous achievement in itself.

Just as worth celebrating is the way it shifted with the interests of the residence but kept the quality so fucking high. The one exhibit on here I knew would be on this list within seconds of walking through the door, and it was of a lineage with the art I drank lukewarm cans of cheap beer and took in during my early 20s but for today. The music shows weren’t rage soaking out of my pores to Sword Heaven and Skeletons anymore, but the dance floor for Melanie Pagani one night I slipped into dance away the memory of a terrible play I saw was packed and the music was spectacular. If you have a few dollars, give to their relocation GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-skylab-gallery-find-a-new-home

As with the other lists, everything here is in chronological order (the three Ming Smith exhibits are grouped based on the first one of those I saw), in Columbus unless otherwise stated, and any photographs are by me unless otherwise stated.

From An-My Lê’s *Two Rivers* at Moma, January 2024

An-My Lê, Two Rivers; MoMA, NYC – My first exhibit of the year, while in town on an impromptu trip around APAP, also coincided with a Members guided tour with a curator of this fascinating mix of installations, sculptures, and photographs drawing lines between war games and her family’s exodus from Vietnam, smashing decades and locations together in ways that included art history and a point-of-view. Staggering.
Various Artists, 24/7; Seventh Son Brewing x 934 Gallery – This ticked every one of the senses of community I’m often hungry for – Seventh Son’s welcoming spirit, 934’s interest in mixing up artists of various backgrounds and styles, and a use of the space that still sticks with me.
Various Artists, Y’all Don’t Hear Me: The Black Appalachia; University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Knoxville – It’s odd writing this blurb right after hearing the great poet Nikki Giovanni died since Big Ears Festival was the last place I saw her read (her hometown, to a packed 1,000+ room at the Mill and Mine), and this group show in tribute to Giovanni they put together the next year was already echoing in my mind. A beautiful cross-section of the black community in Appalachia that doesn’t get spoken of as often as it should and dazzling work.

From *Y’all Don’t Hear Me*, UT Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, March 2024

Kara Walker, Back of Hand; Poetry Foundation, Chicago – Any time I get to see new Kara Walker, I’m overjoyed and the Poetry Foundation was the ideal space for these gargantuan, moving works on paper.
Nicole Eisenman, What Happened; MCA, Chicago – I knew a little of Nicole Eisenman’s work but this retrospective did an astonishing job of putting the scope of her interest, her tweaking of art and social history and the way that history and community are vitally important. A show that reminded me to love the world over and over again, without shirking any of its ugliness.
Laura Sanders, Her Habitat; Contemporary Art Matters – Finally made it to Rebecca Ibel’s new downtown gallery this year, which was as strong as her previous space. The enormous canvases in Sanders’ show hit me with the way every scene feels suffused with light from the inside out. These paintings feel hyper-realistic at first but – like the plays of Annie Baker or Branden Jacobs-Jenkins – the realism almost bends into surrealism as it gets to a deeper psychological truth.

Nicole Eisenman, MCA, Chicago, April 2024

Pallavi Sen, Dream Time; No Place Gallery – No Place Gallery has been the most consistently striking – for my tastes – gallery in Columbus for years and Pallavi Sen’s watercolors surging with overlapping patterns and an intriguing sense of repetition, was a highlight of everything I saw this year; I went back three times and never got it but loved sinking into these shapes.
Joan Jonas, Good Night, Good Morning; MoMA, NYC – This was the finest example I’ve ever seen of translating performance art – especially the way documentation changed over the decades – into a formal museum space. Gargantuan, overwhelming rooms that conjured the power and intensity of Jonas’s work but also made room for intimate, punch-you-in-the-face direct interaction with these pieces.
Various Artists, The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlatic Modernism; Metropolitan Museum, NYC – I’ve been enamored by The Harlem Renaissance since a middle school English teacher turned me into Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but this exhibit took the visual arts component of that movement – artists I knew pretty well like Archibald Motley and James Van Der Zee, and so many who were outside of my radar – and connected it to the larger world in a way I spent hours in and could have spent twice as long.
Melissa Zexter, Momento; Secret Studio – Secret Studio has turned me onto more of my favorite artists over the last few years than any other Columbus gallery. Melissa Zexter’s embroidered photography struck a nerve with me immediately while opening up an entire universe to me.

From *Clouds are So Beautiful That I Can Bite My Toes,* Skylab, August 2024

Various Artists, Clouds Are So Beautiful That I Can Bite My Toes; Skylab – This group show curated by Amari-Grey was an exposure to younger artists I didn’t know before walking through that door with work that knocked me sideways individually but built power and beauty through the conversation among them. Ducking out of the – also great – street fair atmosphere below, celebrating the massive hanging art Current and with my favorite DJs The Coming Home spinning into something knottier, more ambiguous, but still a celebration of life, was a reminder of how crucial Skylab has been as a place, a reminder, as Sun Ra said, “There are other worlds they have not told you of; I wish to talk to you.”
Ming Smith, August Moon and Transcendence at the Columbus Museum of Art; Wind Chime at the Wexner Center for the Arts; and Jazz Requiem – Notations in Blue at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon University – Having all three of these venues present Ming Smith (not born in Columbus but grew up here, not far from where I spent my childhood in the Hilltop) and showing different sides of her art was my single favorite visual art experience this year. The early trip to Africa juxtaposed against the stellar new installation at the Wex, the personally chest-cracking-open look at the Hilltop and the Ohio State Fair in 1989 in Transcendence, and the deep dive into Pittsburgh through the lens of August Wilson in August Moon at CMA, and the perfect conjuring of traveling and jazz icons, many of whom she knew personally, in these Bresson-y moments at the height of their power juxtaposed with the pause right before or right after being on stage at the Gund. This was probably one of the top ten experiences of my life, going through galleries and thinking about art. The kind of work that holds up just as much nerding out with people deep into their critical bag and taking my Mom and watching her be dazzled.

Ming Smith, *Jazz Requiem – Notations in Blue* at the Gund Gallery, November 2024

Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Tranquility of Communion; Wexner Center for the Arts – Another photographer whose work I knew slightly but this broad yet hyper-focused look at his work, curated by Mark Sealy, the director of Autograph, the London space/collective Fani-Kayode co-founded, was an explosion of myth (in a larger sense and also self-mythologizing), desire, fury and beauty.
Hannah Fitzgerald, There Are No Lies That Change the Version of You I Had; Urban Arts Space – Among my favorite parts of what Urban Arts Space has been bringing to town are artists I may have seen one piece of in a group show, and giving them a wider space to spread out. My favorite example of that this year – and there were several contenders – was Hannah Fitzgerald’s bodily, disorienting sculptures that recalled Louise Bourgeois, Paul Thek and Alina Szapocznikow, but with a completely unique feel and powerful point of view as they unpacked her relationship with her Mother.
Andrea Morales, Roll Down Like Water; Brooks Museum, Memphis – The Brooks in Memphis always has something that makes me overjoyed I made a couple of hours for it whenever I’m in that city I love, and they outdid themselves with this magnificent show of photographer Morales, one of the best explanations of Movement Journalism I’ve ever walked through and one of the most beautiful examples of clear-eyed empathy. Every turn I made here hammered me in the sternum.

Andrea Morales, *Roll Down Like Water* at the Brooks Museum, Memphis, September 2024

Lester Julian Merriweather, Ana*Log; Crosstown Arts, Memphis – Another favorite spot in Memphis over the last several years is the Crosstown complex, the rare renovation of an older building (once an enormous Sears distribution center) that feels like it’s doing things right, including its art gallery, classrooms, public radio studio, and clinic. This first exposure to Merriweather’s canvases winked at Jack Whitten, one of my favorites who I’m surprised I don’t see more influence from throughout the art world, but in a contemporary and personal way. These collaged and gridded abstractions struck a deep chord in me.
Cameron Granger, 9999; Queens Museum, NYC – I’ve been a fan of Cameron Granger for a few years – his show at No Place Gallery made my Best Of in 2022 and I still think about it and a film screening he set up at 934 Gallery last year, so I had to make it to the Queens Museum for his first solo museum show. This so far exceeded my expectations it left me floating through the park back to the train and – in a weekend I saw so much work that rocked me – may have been the finest thing I saw in those three New York days. The film at the center of the exhibit reminded me of the potential I saw in science fiction as as kid, to make metaphors real and force us to confront them, to explode our histories and our anxieties, and that only rarely delivers on.
Elizabeth Catlett, A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies; Brooklyn Museum, NYC – An artist I’ve loved for a long time, this expanded my understanding of Catlett into other genres and media and (as was a theme for so much of the work that stuck with me over the course of this year) and a beautiful example of empathy that’s not mushy or soft-focused.

*Edges of Ailey*, Whitney Musem, December 2024

Alvin Ailey and Various, Edges of Ailey; Whitney Museum, NYC – Alvin Ailey cast a long shadow over pop culture, not just dance, in a way only a few choreographers have, and this Whitney exhibit did an astonishing job putting him in context and dialogue with influences, peers, the social world of New York, and the AIDS crisis, in a joyous and painful explosion that highlighted the craft and struggle of the work and the power and ecstasy of being in this big gallery with one another.
Various Artists, Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy; The Shed, NYC – Props to Anne for finding this, I only knew this recreation of Andre Heller’s Modern Art Carnival was displayed in New York. The best use of enormous art space The Shed I’ve ever seen, and a remarkable act of love in restoring these delightful pieces.

*Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy* at The Shed, December 2024

Best Of theatre

Best of 2024 – Theater/Opera/Dance

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 8, 2024
No Comments on Best of 2024 – Theater/Opera/Dance

An astonishing year for performance art in its broadest sense – every Columbus troupe was hitting, supplemented by killer work I was lucky enough to see in Chicago and New York. Also celebrating the 10th anniversary of Columbus Underground publishing my more formal thoughts, so all thanks to Anne and Walker Evans and everyone else I work with and I’m happy to call friends.

As usual, in chronological order and in Columbus unless otherwise specified.

Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Aviva Neff; Available Light – A decade ago, before I had an outlet, I was so struck by my introduction to Jackie Sibblies Drury’s plays I felt compelled to blog about it on my old Blogspot spot as part of the season that cemented my affinity for Available Light. In January, Available Light set the bar high for my 2024 with her powerful, uncomfortably hilarious satire Fairview. In Columbus Underground, I said, “Fairview is a Philip K. Dick-inflected MAD Magazine special with a full Three Stooges episode nested inside about race in America, how the act of looking twists both the observer and the observed, the impossibility of truly knowing other people, and the Sisyphean quest for ‘Fairness,’ to accomplish it and even define it.” In December, I’m still citing and thinking about this amazing feat of creation.

Available Light’s *Fairview*, photo by Kyle Long

Second Servings by Nancy Shelton Williams, directed by Sue Wismar; eMBer Women’s Theatre – Sue Wismar’s long been one of my favorite actors in town; on that short list where I can have no interest in subject matter or a writer, but when I hear she’s involved? Now I’m interested. This first exposure to her directing delivered on those expectations and then some, finding breathing room and also a coiled tightness that felt right for these characters in this world. As I said for Columbus Underground, “I’ve seen all three of these actors be very good in many things over my years of seeing theater in town; I’ve never seen them better. The tenuous chemistry of the three, the layers of shifting alliances, feel like they go back decades and are as fresh as an open wound.”
You Will Get Sick by Noah Diaz, directed by Eleni Papaleonardos; Available Light – The fact that all three of the Available Light productions I saw this year ended up on this list isn’t an act of intentional favoritism; it’s because all three of them sent me out into the night not just rethinking my perceptions of theater but of the world. Nowhere was that more evident than in this piece, which I called in my CU review, “A play I haven’t seen before, a rare blend of commentary, voice, characters, and love—leavened with appropriate disgust—for the world.”
Night, Mother by Marsha Norman, directed by Michelle Batt; eMBer Women’s Theatre – Ember Women’s Theatre had an excellent year – I still regret not being able to make their third production because of family and job travel responsibilities and this bracing, note-perfect production of a great play no one’s done in Columbus for a very long time was a shining example. I said of Melissa Bair’s scorching Thelma, for CU, “Everything feels natural and also like an accumulating snowball in a way that’s as dark and dazzling as a Goya painting.”

eMBer Women’s Theatre’s *‘Night, Mother*, photo by Michelle Batt

Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Phylicia Rashad; Steppenwolf, Chicago – It was a good year for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins as he further cemented himself as one of our two or three finest voices for the stage and a hell of a year for me as a theater-goer as I got to see two brand new works. Purpose took the black family drama as microcosm, with a civil rights leader patriarch (Cedric Young the week I was there) trying to keep his reputation spotless, with children who took varied paths. The wire-tight pacing given life by Rashad’s direction, the whiplash blending of distance and immediacy, and the best performances I’ve ever seen by actors I’ve been watching for a very long time – including Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, and Jon Michael Hill – meant this is still reverberating around in my bones.
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Amy Herzog; Circle in the Square, New York – My favorite Ibsen, adapted and tightened without losing any of its ferocious ambiguity as the intensity ramped up, by Amy Herzog whose 4000 Miles killed me at Lincoln Center in 2012, and directed by Sam Gold deploying all of the fascinating experiments that haven’t always coalesced in his recent work firing on all cylinders this time, centered around volcanic performances from Michael Imperioli and Jeremy Strong.
Legally Blonde by Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe, and Nell Benjamin, directed by Dionysia Williams Velazco; Short North Stage – This was a stellar year for Short North Stage – their The Color Purple, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Jersey Boys were all also evidence of a company working at the height of its powers and perfect versions of the material – but Legally Blonde stuck with me both because of my surprise (I knew it was a musical and I saw the movie years ago, but didn’t know a single song) and because it was one of the purest distillations of delight I had all year, one of the key tenets of the stage, centered around jaw-dropping performances from Laura Overby, about whom I said, “Doesn’t just rise to that challenge; she sails into space, making it look easy,” and Vera Cremeans, whose “Virtuosic performance [let] the character’s hard-won wisdom, wit, and charm shine brilliantly,” (both from Columbus Underground) and a consistently killer ensemble.
An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, directed by Cat McAlpine; Actors’ Theatre of Columbus – Actors Theatre was a mixed bag for my taste this year – their Twelfth Night was also beautiful, other two didn’t work for me – but this was the apotheosis of the risks they’re taking and the more adult subject matter they’re working with over the last few years and left me a blubbering mess. I’ve been a fan of Cat McAlpine’s work both as an actor and a director for years, but this sailed over those high expectations. For Columbus Underground, I called it “A riveting night of theater that’s a reminder of the challenges inherent in telling stories, in showing up for and with people, and how easily everything can fall apart.”

Actors’ Theatre’s *An Iliad*, photo by Nina Martin

Black on Earth by Orlando and Riccardo Hunter-Valentine, Brother(hood) Dance; Wexner Center for the Arts – Brother(hood) Dance’s first collaboration between OSU’s dance department and the resources of the Wex made my Best Of list last year and the wider lens they took to grapple with Black farming and integrated society took my breath away. This year had more of the “I can’t picture this anywhere else in Columbus” feeling the Wexner Center’s performing arts program used to give me constantly than I’ve had in years – all props to Elena Perantoni and Kathleen Felder – and this was a prime example.
Lunch Bunch by Adrian Einspanier, directed by Eleni Papaleonardos; Available Light – This was another of the most exciting playwrighting voices I’ve ever seen brought to vibrant, touching, and hilariously vicious life by Eleni Papaleonardos with a perfect cast – I was especially struck by Wilma Hatton, Michelle Schroeder-Lowrey, and Whitney Thomas Eads. I said in Columbus Underground, “[It’s] a reminder that we’re all trying to get through and be better, and some of us have to try much harder than others. A reminder of how easy it is to turn into a bully with just a little bit of power. And an uproarious workplace comedy. And it’s more than all those things.”
Max Roach 100 by Ayodele Casel, Rennie Harris, Ronald K. Brown, directed by Ayodele Casel, Rennie Harris, Ronald K. Brown, Torya Beard, and Kit Fitzgerald; Wexner Center for the Arts – This was another example of what the Wex does better than anyone else when it clicks – co-commissioning with New York’s Joyce Theater; finding the perfect curator for this, Richard Colton who I interviewed for a preview in one of my favorite interviews this year; and bringing together film, three of the finest choreographers, and astonishing dancers in tribute to one of the great composers of the last century.

Ayodele Casel at Mershon Auditorium, October 2024

Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Pamela Hill; Tipping Point – First time in 10 or 11 years anyone had done this gut-punch, sadly-even-more relevant gritty poetic look at Boston’s working class from David Lindsay-Abaire, and Pamela Hill and a terrific cast led by a warm, powerful performance from Sonda Staley, broke me with this terrific production that (as I said in Columbus Underground), “Refreshed and deepened my understanding of this play I love while making me dig deeper into my assumptions and reflexive responses to luck, choice, and how I treat other people.”
Wife of a Salesman by Eleanor Burgess, directed by Leda Hoffmann; The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio – This was a stunning home run, born of the Contemporary’s keen eye for new plays and recontextualizing some of the American theater history CATCO made its bones on, with two knockout performances from Megan Lear and Teri Clark Linden at its heart, that I said in my CU review, “Give the density of ideas – the value of duty, the ephemerality of choice, the conflicting approaches of different waves of feminism, the commonality between people if we let our guards down enough – a visceral punch that kept me on the edge of my seat.”

The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio’s *Wife of a Salesman*, photo by Kyle Long

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy after Leo Tolstoy, directed by Melissa Lusher; Otterbein University – I tried to review a lot of college theater in my first couple of years writing for CU. I think it’s important and the two great programs here – OSU and Otterbein – are a lot of people’s introduction to live theater; including me, the first play I remember seeing that wasn’t a Broadway Across America was at OSU (I think; that same High School year also had my first Actors’ Theatre performance). A professor made the great comment on one of my reviews that sometimes a “watchable play” isn’t the best yardstick, sometimes it’s necessary to remember kids are trying their hardest even if I couldn’t recommend something to anyone else, so I backed way off and try to choose what I cover from these programs more carefully. But Otterbein’s musical theater pedigree and the fact this was the first time anyone in central Ohio did this Dave Malloy masterpiece gave me confidence in signing up to review it and I was blown the hell away. Some work fits perfectly with college students and I definitely had that sense the overheated emotion, complicated melodies and harmonies, and large cast all aligned in this phenomenal production. In my CU Review, I said “It drove home the way scale and scope excavate different feelings than smaller-scale work and how beautiful that scope is when everything comes together.”
Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! by Alina Troyano and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Eric Ting; Soho Rep, New York – Of any non-Columbus venue, I’ve seen the most change-my-head-around work at SoHo Rep’s tiny Off-Broadway space on Walker Street. Beyond what I’ve personally seen and been blown away by there, it’s also been a huge source of the work that made Available Light the theater company that reinvigorated my love of theater in Columbus. So when a New York trip coincided with not only the final production before they search for a new home but also a collaboration between Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and downtown performance art legend – and Jacobs-Jenkins’ former professor – who I’d never gotten to see live, Alina Troyano – made this a no-brainer. With rapid-fire wit, Troyano (as herself and longtime alter ego Camerlita Tropicana) and Jacobs-Jenkins (played brilliantly by Ugo Chukwu) pay loving tribute to experimental theater, a shifting and sometimes hard-to-find “downtown” sensibility, the various characters in Troyano’s Tropicana-verse, and the sense of possibility that hits differently being in a room full of strangers and loved ones seeing it live. There was an almost karmic sense of a circle closing in this being the final play I saw of the year being a perfect summation of what I’m hoping for any time the house lights go down. May this set the tone for another year of wonder and possibility.

Curtain Call for *Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!* at SoHo Rep, November 2024

Tags Actors' Theatre Columbus, Adrian Einspanier, Alina Troyano, Amy Herzog, available light, Aviva Neff, Ayodele Casel, best of, Best Of 2024, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Brother(hood) Dance, Cat McAlpine, Circle in the Square, dance, Dave Malloy, David Lindsay-Abaire, Denis O'Hare, dionysia williams, Dionysia Williams Velazco, Eleanor Burgess, Eleni Papaleonardos, ember womens theater, Eric Ting, EVIDENCE, Heather Hach, Henrik Ibsen, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Kit Fitzgerald, Laurence O'Keefe, Leda Hoffmann, Lisa Peterson, Marsha Norman, Max Roach, Max Roach 100, Melissa Lusher, Michelle Batt, Nancy Shelton Williams, Nell Benjamin, Noah Diaz, Orlando Hunter-Valentine, Otterbein University, Pamela Hill, Phylicia Rashad, Rennie Harris, Riccardo Hunter-Valentine, Richard Colton, Ronald K Brown, sam gold, short north stage, Soho Rep, Steppenwolf, Sue Wismar, The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio, theatre, Tipping Point, Torya Beard, wexner center for the arts

Best Of visual art

Best of 2022: Visual Art

I repeatedly say that these year-end lists are foremost an exercise in gratitude, and, as I said in 2021, visual art was the thing I missed most during the lockdown and one of the great boons of the travel we did this year. Visual art slows me down, at least a little, and reminds me of the Mary Oliver line, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” It’s become one of the main tenets of my art diet, and something dazzled me everywhere I turned.

All of these are in chronological order and in Columbus unless otherwise noted. All photos were taken by me unless otherwise noted.

Diane Fox, Unnatural History (Red Gallery, Knoxville) – The return to Big Ears was the indisputable highlight of my musical calendar (Winter Jazzfest was canceled due to the surge, Gonerfest returned in late 2021) and I was overjoyed to see an enhanced visual art element, both in official venues (some really strong work in my hotel lobby) and at other spots around downtown and Old City Knoxville. My favorite was at the Red Gallery along Jackson Avenue. Diane Fox takes photographs of dioramas in natural history museums to create a look at how we frame anthropological history and our relationships to animals over the years that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Various Artists, Black Life As Subject Matter II (Riffe Center Gallery) – The Ohio Arts Council gallery in the Riffe Center is one of Columbus’s most underrated gems and early May’s group show, curated by Willis “Bing” Davis and produced/circulated by Ebonnia Gallery was a kaleidoscopic work at not just black art but the way white America and the “mainstream” art world have given their lives a fair shake, and pointing at ways a more equitable and sane narrative is possible. And the opening had a warmer, more community oriented feeling than art openings almost ever do, aided by music by Derek Dicenzo on bass and Chris Brown on piano.

Terry Adkins, Terry Adkins (Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC) – This first retrospective of artist Terry Adkins since Adkins passed away in 2014 gave me a brilliant jolt of energy and shamed me for not knowing this artist’s work first. Sculptures and videos actively reshaping history and the world around Adkins.

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, World Unbound (MoMA, NYC) – Another artist I sadly didn’t know anything about and a breath of fresh air, the kind of show MoMA’s scholarship really shines with. This late artist (died in 2014) from Cote d’Ivoire, tried to summarize and preserve every piece of information about the known universe, including creating his own alphabet. It’s a magic-drenched tribute to the power and beauty of observation, of looking as deeply as you can.

Henri Matisse, The Red Studio (MoMA, NYC) – Another exhibition that uses MoMA’s scholarship to its fullest and a rare new look at perennial MoMA artist Matisse by assembling the pieces Matisse painted in his masterwork The Red Studio. It’s another tribute to seeing, to really understanding, to collecting the things that help feed our own art and keep them close.

Faith Ringgold, American People (New Museum, NYC) – Probably my favorite show of the entire year. I knew Ringgold’s work and I’d seen what I thought was a pretty strong cross section over the years but this cornucopia of her potent, dazzling work, recontextualizing and re-visioning American history was so beautiful and such a punch in the gut that I did the full court press to get Anne to see it on a later day of our trip and so saw it twice, which has only happened once or twice before in 20 years of going to New York on relatively brief trips.

Clarence Heyward, Unseen (CAM, Raleigh) – There’s always something at CAM that turns me sideways, even when we’ve only been in Raleigh for a few hours I go out of my way to make a trip. Clarence Heyward’s portraits looked at his family, what being a black man and having expectations of filling those roles of protector and provider, in the face of lockdown and the high-attention murder of George Floyd as burning reminders of inequity and cruelty that have always been there. The expression on his daughter’s face in more than one of these still haunts me.

Various Artists, Ain’t I A Woman? (Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison) – My first trip to Madison, Wisconsin, since college was delightful front-to-back with a million great dive bars and a killer show commemorating punk label Dirtnap Records’ 20th anniversary. Their Museum of Contemporary Art provided a beautiful stop in the middle of the day with this group show, part of their Wisconsin Triennial, which took its title from the Sojourner Truth quote used as a bell hooks book title. Curated by Fatima Laster, this introduced me to so many great artists I didn’t already know.

Various Artists, Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage (Wexner Center for the Arts) – jaamil olawale kosoko was one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done, in advance of his poetic dance peace Séancers, and his curatorial work on this piece, bringing together artists whose work I knew well like nora chipaumire and Keioui Keijaun Thomas with those I didn’t know at all, like Jasmine Murrell, tied together with kosoko’s powerful installation at the end, in one of the most satisfying overall exhibits I took in this year.

Cameron Granger, Heavy As Heaven (No Place Gallery) – No Place Gallery had a great year, building on a streak of great years. I’m sure I missed a couple of exhibits over the course of the year, but anytime my schedule lined up with their open hours, I was there, and it always paid dividends. My favorite thing I saw in that space – I’m not alone – and if I were doing more of a ranking, one of my three or four favorite things all year, was this excavation of Granger’s own past and the wider world – the frame of a small house inside the gallery leading to a devastating short film but also with texts lying nearby and a separate film specifically about gentrification in the gallery’s side room. I think I snuck in to see this three times before it closed, and it broke my heart and uplifted me every time.

Amina Ross and Lola Ayisha Ogbara, The Luminary, St Louis

Various Artist, Split My Sides (The Luminary, St Louis) – It felt really good getting back to St Louis this year for the joyous occasion of my good friend John Wendland’s wedding and it did my heart good to see my favorite art space – in a town full of a lot of my favorite art – The Luminary is still holding it down on Cherokee Street. Amina Ross and Lola Ayisha Ogbara delve deep into black trans and feminine experience with a variety of mixed media work that don’t make anything obvious, work that’s visceral and gripping but that rewards further meditation. That huge Ross installation/film nagged at me for days.

Gala Porras-Kim, Correspondences Toward the Living Object (Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis) – Gala Porras-Kim’s elegantly wielded daggers turn on the problematic process of museum collections of sacred or beloved artifacts avoids easy answers for layers of complication upon complication, in a way that uses and benefits from the amount of space and the curatorial structure of a museum exhibit instead of some other gallery spaces.

Various Artists, Front 2022 Triennial (Various Spaces, Cleveland) – I loved the earlier iteration of Cleveland’s multi-venue Front Triennial and was a little afraid the pandemic would have been its death knell but it returned strong in 2022 and the sampling Anne and I did, on a quicker than usual trip centered around a great Compulsive Gamblers reunion show at the Beachland gave me Renee Green’s work interspersed with other artists at MOCA, Julie Mehretu’s architectural explosive drawings in direct dialogue with the CMA collection, SPACES’ international work in Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows and so much more.

Various Artists, New York 1962-64 (Jewish Museum, NYC) – I’m a huge fan of this transitional period of post-war modernism and the Jewish Museum always does a great job of zooming in. In this case, they simultaneously shone a light on a window where New York was at the very center of the art world but also on Alan Solomon’s tenure as director, helping shape the Jewish Museum into the powerhouse of contemporary art it is today. A moving reminder of how much community matters and how one person can shift a narrative, can change the course of time.

Danielle McKinney, Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC

Lorna Simpson, 1985-92 (Hauser and Wirth, NYC) – I thought I knew photographer Lorna Simpson’s work pretty well but this deep dive into her early work was revelatory. The way she looks at masks from the inside, from hair, from the way we invent ourselves and, in particular, how black feminine identity gets shaped was exactly the kind of stab in the heart I needed. Powerful, every-more-relevant work.

Danielle McKinney, Golden Hour (Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC) – McKinney’s work made me think about portraiture in a different way, looking at black women in quiet, intimate moments but undercutting the thought that it’s natural, reminding me that everything in art comes through layers of thought and intention, in some cases directly – like placing one figure under Matisse’s The Dance – and in others with subtler hints at patterning and shapes. The brush strokes hint at a throb, electricity going through everything and illuminating the world.

Hank Willis Thomas, Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC

Hank Willis Thomas, Everything We See Hides Another Thing (Jack Shainman Gallery, NYC) – I’ve been a sucker for the images that hide and reveal at the same time – I read Kenneth Koch’s “One Train May Hide Another” as a teenager – for a long time, and Thomas does that beautifully as well as engaging with technology in a way I don’t think I’d ever quite scene, engaging with cell phone photographs to expose pain and turmoil – and hope – underneath placid, accepted reality, almost banality, of test patterns and color fields.

Tania Pérez Córdova, Generalización (Museo Tamayo, Mexico City) – I loved Mexico City so much it’s almost impossible to pick a single favorite moment, but the Tamayo, one of the best contemporary art museums – from layout to curation to the building itself – I’ve ever been to, and the solo morning I spent there, is high on the list. I felt the vibration of Córdova’s work almost immediately and realized I’d first encountered the Mexico City-born artist at the MCA Chicago about six years ago. This larger retrospective about changing our perceptions of the world – melting down musical instruments and reconstructing them, melting ice in concrete blocks with the molds of people’s faces like death masks… as powerful and poetic a voice as I can think of.

Carlos Motta, Your Monsters, Our Idols (Wexner Center for the Arts) – I knew Motta’s work a little, but the panoply of visions with this strong, surging voice at the top of the Wex ramps killed me. Linking body horror and S&M with liberation and claiming space for oneself and always in a way that was beautiful, no matter how unsettling.

Katie Forbes, Documenting a Movement (Bridge Gallery) – Katie Forbes’ work around the Black Lives Matter protests is a testament to putting in the time and bringing her craft to something that’s important. Her willingness to be vulnerable and be on the ground – some of the photos, like a police officer pepper spraying someone whose hands are up, are uncomfortably close – and her empathy, the desire to know the people here without salaciousness, is an astonishing gift to this town.

**Tania Pérez Córdova**, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City

Tags 400 W Rich, Alan Solomon, Amina Ross, best of, Best Of 2022, Bridge Gallery, CAM Raleigh, Cameron Granger, Carlos Motta, Chris Brown, Clarence Heyward, Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Danielle McKinney, Derek Dicenzo, Diane Fox, Ebonnia Gallery, Faith Ringgold, Fatima Laster, Frederic Bruly Bouabre, Front International: Cleveland Triennial For Contemporary Art, Gala Porras-Kim, Hank Willis Thomas, Hauser and Wirth, Henri Matisse, jaamil olawale kosoko, Jack Shainman, Jasmine Murrell, Jewish Museum, Julie Mehretu, Katie Forbes, Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Knoxville, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, Lorna SImpson, Madison, Marianne Boesky, MMOCA, MOCA Cleveland, MoMA, Museo Tamayo, New Museum, New York City, No Place Gallery, nora chipaumire, Paula Cooper, Raleigh, Renee Green, Riffe Center, St Louis, Tania Perez Cordova, Terry Adkins, The Luminary, visual art, wexner center for the arts, Willis "Bing" Davis

Best Of theatre

Best of 2020 – Theatre/Opera/Dance

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 11, 2020
No Comments on Best of 2020 – Theatre/Opera/Dance

“Are you even here? You’re a relic of a dying empire. The ghost of a glorious future that never came.”

-Sarah Gancher, Russian Troll Farm

Salt given me at Under The Radar’s *Salt*

Live:

I was lucky to see about 15 shows – almost all outstanding – before doors started slamming shut. These 8 grabbed me hard and wouldn’t let go. Their memories are still burned into my brain this many months later. Photos are taken from press either given directly to me or on the company/creator’s official website.

Salt by Selina Thompson, directed by Dawn Walton (01/11/2020 – Public Theatre, Under the Radar, NYC) – Sometimes – and this might be my favorite part of seeing theatre and especially my favorite part of Under the Radar, I see work by a playwright who’s new to me and the voice alone burns a layer of skin off me and makes me feel both more and differently. Selina Thompson’s personal-historical-poetic dive into the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Salt, masterfully acted by Rochelle Rose, did that to me this year. I walked out babbling and as hungry for more of her work as any writing of the last decade.
Body Comes Apart by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith (01/12/2020 – New York Live Arts, NYC) – This vivisection of expectations, trauma, and freedom balanced an unsparing dedication to truth with a supernova love for the world. Body Comes Apart was a physical hour of dance, and acting was a whirlwind from which I couldn’t look away. It avoided platitudes and simplification but burned with a clarity that made its unanswered questions cut even deeper. I could have seen this three times and still tried to grasp it.
Medea by Simon Stone after Euripides, directed by Simon Stone (01/12/2020 – BAM, NYC) – I’m a sucker for the Greeks and I’d never seen Bobby Cannavale on stage. Something felt very fitting about seeing Stone’s ferocious, knives-out take on Euripides here in the same theatre I saw my favorite Hedda Gabler. The adaptations to the play were interesting, aided by vibrant video. My brain pinballed between the remarkable acting – Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Dylan Baker – and the wrenching image of ash falling on that pristine white stage, both stuck with me well after the next day’s flight home.

*The Motherfucker With the Hat*, photo by Nick Lingnofski

Or by Liz Duffy Adams, directed by Rowan Winterwood (01/17/2020 – Actors Theatre) – Actors Theatre’s relationship with MadLab for smaller-scale indoor plays continued to bear fruit this year, even as they had to cancel what looked like an exciting outdoor season. Or was a delightful drawing room sex romp around the fascinating historical character Aphra Behn (played brilliantly by Michelle Weiser) with crackling support from Andy Woodmansee and McLane Nagy as the other legs of the triangle. Winterwood’s sizzling direction made this a hot, funny winter diversion when I needed it most.
The Motherfucker With the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Chari Arespacochaga (01/23/2020 – Short North Stage) – Short North Stage doesn’t always get enough credit for their dark, low-to-the-ground plays in the Green Room. Their Motherfucker With the Hat was another triumph in that lane. Arespacochaga directed it with the right mix of Greek tragedy and cage match, a stellar cast orbited around a volcanic Raphael Ellenberg.
The Bridge Called My Ass by Miguel Gutierrez (01/25/2020 – presented by the Wexner Center) – Gutierrez’s bilingual piece mixed puns, everyday action, and flights of fancy into something I’d never seen before. I didn’t always understand it but I was always enraptured.

*The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes,* photo by Jeff Busby

A Doll’s House Part 2 by Lucas Hnath, directed by Michael Garrett Herring (01/30/2020 – Red Herring Theater) – There have been a few times I’ve seen a Columbus production I felt improved on New York, and this was the most recent example. Herring stripped away the ba-dum-bum sitcom rhythm that sank the Broadway version of this for me the night I saw it and made Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen glow like a bruise. All stellar performances, especially Sonda Staley’s for-the-ages take on Nora.
The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes by Back to Back Theater (02/13/2020 – presented by the Wexner Center) – One of my favorite previews I’ve ever written. I was so glad I held off, skipping this at Under The Radar so I could go into it cold when it played my town. A more complicated bit of metatheatre than the first work of theirs I loved, Ganesh Vs The Third Reich, but brillant and arresting. A look at how much “acting” we all do in making our voices heard and how much marginalized people have to work past just to get their voices heard, to not be seen as a monolithic interest. If this was the last live performance I saw, I went out high.

Online:

*We Need Your Listening*, screenshot from stream and edited

Theatre feels like a circuit between the stage and the audience, even more than music, to me. But for me, this immediate, physical art reaped the greatest rewards as companies tried to find ways to make work that still felt like theater while wholly embracing the new media. I deeply hope many of us can find ways to continue to make things accessible after we can all gather in a room again.

It would be a true shame for these opportunities for people with disabilities or other reasons not to be part of the physical exchange of energy, to finally get a wider range of options and then have them taken away.

Things that moved and inspired me with virtual theatre:

Zoom readings run by local stalwarts Krista Lively Stauffer and Tim Browning with their Virtual Theatre Project gave me the chance to catch Douglas Whaley’s phenomenal The Turkey Men (I missed its premiere run when I was in Italy last year), revisit the terrific Red Herring two-hander Thicker Than Water, and dip into remarkable work from our astounding pool of talent.

Established companies pivoted with aplomb and grace:

Abbey Theatre’s *The Sissy Chronicles*, photo provided by Joe Bishara

Short North Stage revisited shows they’d loved and couldn’t find space for in their schedule previously like the moving early Andrew Lippa John & Jen and the delightfully raunchy Off-Broadway hit by Howard Crabtree and Mark Waldrop When Pigs Fly. They also used their connections to get new material for these revivals while also building new work like Quarantine With the Clauses.
New CATCO Artistic Director Leda Hoffmann met the challenge of her first season in town coinciding with the pandemic and excelled with marvelous Idris Goodwin shorts, Plays For an Antiracist Tomorrow, bringing in legacy CATCO artists as well as fresh blood, then acclaimed Julienna Gonzalez adapted her Detroit Christmas Carol into a Columbus version under Hoffmann’s direction.
Joe Bishara came into his own with Dublin’s Abbey Theatre giving life to exciting pieces from artists like Mark Schwamberger and Nikki Davis.
Red Herring provided astounding social dramas and made steps toward a hybrid experience.

The plethora of archival work was an embarrassment of riches, from American Conservatory Theatre’s take on Lydia Diamond’s Toni Stone to the Goodman’s hilarious and heartbreaking Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls or The African Mean Girls Play.

*The Elaborate Entry of Chad Deity*, screenshot taken from stream and edited

The New Group, Play-Per-View, and more presented riveting reunion readings, giving new life to great plays from past seasons. I especially loved Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian, Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entry of Chad Deity, and Suzan-Lori Parks’ Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.

I was in awe of groups that created new work from tools not intended for this purpose. Magic came from relatively straightforward narrative work like Mona Mansour’s The Beginning Days of True Jubilation, Theatre of War’s Antigone in Ferguson, and Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm. to more ephemeral work like We Need Your Listening by Velani Dibba, Ilana Khanin, Elizagrace Madrone, Stephen Charles Smith, Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane’s Come Together Revisited, and Theatre Mitu’s </remnant>.

*Antigone in Ferguson*, screenshot taken from stream and edited

Even in the dark times, there was still joy if you looked, and I am as grateful as ever people took on these burdens to bring it to us.

Best Of visual art

2020 Best Of – Visual Art

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 8, 2020
No Comments on 2020 Best Of – Visual Art

This year was a reminder not to wait to do things – tell people you care about them, start on that project, go to that exhibit. With the other three categories I’ve used on these memory exercises for the last 20ish years, there were digital workarounds that gave me a taste of what I was missing, tiding me over. Visual Art didn’t work that way for me.

I sampled, and I’m thrilled so many galleries and museums transitioned to or enhanced their existing online presence, with exciting work from David Zwirner, the Frieze fair, all manner of things in Europe. Still, I had a hard time connecting with it. It was like flipping through Artforum to me, good to know what’s going on that I can’t see, but I never felt like I experienced the pieces.

The impetus of the Available Light motto “don’t wait” came to light. When things shut down, I was glad in ways I can barely articulate that I spent the time and money on a New York trip for APAP and trips to Cleveland and Louisville (neither of which were primarily for visual art but I worked some in) all before March. At the same time, I hesitated a month for the new Wexner exhibits, and the window slammed shut when I wasn’t expecting (and they were things I desperately wanted to see). So, as usual, whenever things open again, don’t wait. Find what you’re interested in and lunge at it.

Everything is in Columbus unless otherwise noted. Photos were taken by me unless otherwise noted.

Selections from *Art After Stonewall*, Columbus Museum of Art

Various Artists, Art After Stonewall (Columbus Museum of Art) – This tracing of the aftershocks of the Stonewall Riot, through early Gay Liberation and the darkest, most enveloping days of the AIDS crisis was a monumental undertaking and the finest use yet of the CMA’s new wing. For me, one of the highlights was the prominent placement of Columbus’s role in the gay art movements being documented here, including a lump-in-my-throat wall of Corbett Reynolds, his busts, and ephemera from his nightclub and his Red parties.
Vija Celmins, To Fix The Image in Memory (Met Breuer, NYC) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rental and repurposing of the previous Whitney Museum never quite found its footing but presented some spectacular exhibitions. Maybe my favorite was the last time I’ll ever get to visit – they announced in June the satellite building will not reopen after lockdown – this jaw-dropping retrospective of Vija Celmins. To Fix The Image in Memory took us through luminous renderings of household objects, as though lit from within, to intricate studies of the night sky. Whispered words of apocalypse and hymns to understanding, reminding me again and again of Mary Oliver’s maxim that “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
Expanded Museum of Modern Art (NYC)- I’m always skeptical when something I love – even when it has problems I’ve grumblingly come to live with – changes. But my heart sang when that skepticism burned off scant minutes after walking into the reconfigured MoMA. The flow between the collection crackles and sparks conversation in ways it seemed to restrict or calcify before. The various rooms assembled by artists sizzled with panopticon energy (on my visit I especially loved the Amy Sillman). I want to get back to my favorite city for at least 100 reasons but the biggest one is to luxuriate in the new MoMA some more.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze (Wexner Center for the Arts) – LaToya Ruby Frazier is a shining, fascinating example of how an artist can pay witness, how empathy and a willingness to take a community seriously, always pays off. This look at the Lordstown, Ohio, GM plant and its workers dazzled me. I was touched watching some of the workers documented here walking through the exhibit and thought about how art institutions can serve multiple functions at the same time.
Margaret Kilgallen, that’s where the beauty is (MOCA, Cleveland) – My last trip to another city before lockdown found Cleveland as enriching as ever – you’ll also see it on the Live Music list – and this Kilgallen retro exploded her celebration of niche scenes and an endangered love of what’s hand-crafted and unique. A wild party and a thoughtful call to introspection.
Rachel Feinstein, Maiden Mother Crone (Jewish Museum, NYC) – This Feinstein survey dug deep into myth, desire, and narrative in ways that repelled easy answers and snap judgments. Huge sculptures and sparkling installations, bouncing their energy off each other and absorbing what the observes walking through the Jewish Museum had to give, then throwing it back at us, reshaped and a little more alive.

Rashid Johnson, The Hikers (Hauser & Wirth, NYC) – Hauser & Wirth rarely disappoints me – even more so with their excellent new cafe and bookshop – and when I entered on a sunny January day for the (very good) Mike Kelley pieces, I was knocked sideways by my first real exposure to Rashid Johnson. These massive tile mosaics and collages, which reminded me a little of Jack Whitten, captured a dread and anxiety in a way I found moving but also somehow uplifting.
Felix Valloton, The Painter of Disquiet (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC) – Valloton struck me as a cross between Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec and it was fitting seeing this look at his work in the same room where I really got Bonnard for the first time. Rich, narrative work, unsparing in its judgment of its characters and their desires but enraptured by them at the same time. I spent most of my time at Bemelmans after walking through this writing about it and trying to make sense of how deeply it spoke to me.
Burt Hurley, Loose Nuts: Burt Hurley’s West End Story (Speed Museum, Louisville) – I’m an incredible sucker for genre work before the genre is supposed to have existed. Hurley’s satire of urban Louisville assumed later comic book styles we take for granted and found its own solution to those same storytelling problems in ways I’ve never seen before.

Rachel Harrison, Life Hack (Whitney, NYC) – I’m ashamed to admit I knew very little of Harrison’s work when I walked into the Whitney trying to squeeze the most into this last day of the trip but these vibrant, brutal surreal pop explosions shook me and reverberated against everything else I saw that Sunday (it makes appearances on both the theatre and music lists).
Various Artists, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art (Jewish Museum, NYC) – No exaggeration: I cried four or five times doing this. This kind of tracing movements through one or more focal points is a unique speciality of the Jewish museum and this look at how a collector and gallerist can be a focal point in making people sit up and care and a linchpin of a community that didn’t really exist until she stood up and made it exist was a reminder I deeply needed at the moment. And a reminder I always need.
Sadie Benning, Pain Thing (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Sadie Benning’s previous exhibit at the Wex is one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen in 25 years of regular patronage and these tiny images, implying film at one minute and suggesting the twists of a kaleidoscope, resisting any simplisticy reduction, beguiled and baffled me. I wished I could have seen this another dozen times.

Selections from *The Eastside Canon: Smoky Brown and Friends*, Streetlight Guild

Various Artists, Songs in the Dark (Tanya Bonakdar, NYC) – Tanya Bonakdar is a gallery I make a point to hit every trip if something’s up and this group show reaffirmed everything I love about its stable of artists and its curatorial practice. A look at the current fraught moment and its complicating factors without – in accordance with Brecht who it references in the title – ever making the viewer despair. Work by artists I already loved like Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Olafur Eliasson bumped up against new to me art by Hannah Starkey and Mehschach Gaba.
Jessica Segall, 100 Years, All New People (SPACES, Cleveland) – This look at immigration, composed of elements Segall collected at the borders, was a tomb and a monuument to human ingenuity, our ability to rise above anytthing that would hold us down or keep us still, but also an installation drenched in stillness and the terrible price these systems would exact from us.
Smoky Brown and Friends, The Eastside Canon (Streetlight Guild) – Streetlight Guild, under the guidance of Scott Woods, has been the most exciting single Columbus art development in the last few years. The gallery exhibits are always worthwhile but this was special. One of the great guiding lights of local art, Smoky Brown, given a museum-quality show of work that was new even to someone like me who grew up here and thought I’d seen a lot of his work. Coupled with a selection of work from his collection. A lesson in valuing what’s around you and appreciating your friends and community.

Best Of visual art

Best of 2019 – Visual Art

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 20, 2019
No Comments on Best of 2019 – Visual Art

“If you notice anything,
It leads you to notice
more
and more.”
– Mary Oliver, “The Moths”

In this year – by turns more magnificent than I could hope and immeasurably shitty – visual art continued to be a balm, a lifeline, and a reminder to wake up and try harder. I was lucky enough to catch 75 exhibits over 9 cities in two countries. I left this one ranked – unlike the two performance lists which I put in (mostly) chronological order – we’ll see if I stay comfortable with that.

Everything below is in Columbus unless otherwise noted. All photos have been taken by me for reference for discussion with no claim on the original work, unless otherwise noted.

Various Artists, 2019 Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times (various locations, Venice) – It’s hard to compete with new – my memories of the first Whitney Biennial I was lucky enough to visit are stronger than my memories of this year’s (for more reasons than one) – so it’s not surprising I was so dazzled by my first Venice Biennale. That said, my eyes almost popped out of my head, from the main exhibit curated by Ralph Rugoff with the best overview of artists grappling with the current shifting, chaotic moment, to the various national pavilions haunting and inspiring, to the satellite exhibitions (a storefront dedicated to Sierra Leone knocked me over), this took me back to the best parts of that childlike state where everything’s new and I’m hungry for all of it.
Barbara Hammer, In This Body (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Barbara Hammer’s work has always fascinated me and the Wex – led by its curator, Film/Video Studio Program Curator Jennifer Lange – outdid themselves with this exhibit put together up to Hammer’s death this year. The kind of grappling with mortality that doesn’t come easy, a fusing of rigor with the sensuality her work reminded us can never been separated from politics and society. I spent hours in the main installation, walking through X-Ray negatives bathed in a haunting film, I even went the day after my stepsister’s funeral, and it comforted and challenged me every time.
Natalia Goncharova, Natalia Goncharova (Palazzo Strozzi, Florence) – This was a happy surprise for my first trip to Florence and a source of immense chagrin that the only thing I know of Goncharova previously was her costumes for Dhagliev. A cornucopia of classic high modernism practiced at a level almost no one could match. Masterpieces in dialogue with all the better known names of her time – Picasso, Chagall – while never feeling like she was trying on techniques. A time that felt like the end of the world mapped out and sung in a voice I couldn’t forget.

Suzanne Lacy, We Are Here (SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco) – Suzanne Lacy’s a brilliant example of an artist who works directly with society, never content to only let her work be uplifting. This retrospective, spread across downtown San Francisco’s two main institutions, reminded me how vital her work still is and how inspiring her mission).
Joan Mitchell, I Carry My Landscapes Around With Me (David Zwirner, NYC) – Joan Mitchell’s been one of my favorite painters since I first saw her work; some days, she’s easily my favorite of the Abstract Expressionists. This retrospective of her large-scale paintings at David Zwirner was earth-shattering for me; taking that fusion of abstraction and landscape many of us associate with Kandinsky and exploding it into other worlds. A crystallized moment of the 20th century and a reverberation through the foreseeable future.
Jason Moran, Jason Moran (Wexner Center for the Arts) – Moran’s one of my heroes since I first heard Black Stars when I was in college. His appearance with the Bandwagon is one of my all-time top five concert experiences at the Wexner Center. This look at his – often collaborative – visual art was stunning. The detail-rich replicas of key spots from jazz history loom in the middle, heavy with history as tombs but also vibrating to be reactivated. His video work with Carrie Mae Weems and Stan Douglas hinted at secret histories. I had some issues with the selection of the live performance aspects – would have liked more things like the opening Ogun Meji – but I kept visiting and unpacking this.

Various Artists, Everything is Rhythm: Mid-Century Music and Art (Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo) – 40s-60s contemporary art and music are obsessions of mine, still, and this multimedia presentation in the always excellent Toledo Museum was the best, most approachable tying-together of those threads I’ve ever seen.
Lorna Simpson, Darkening (Hauser and Wirth, NYC) – I knew Lorna Simpson’s photography work a little but this selection of layered, gripping paintings felt revelatory. The light growing dim so you have to lean in and then the cold opens you up.
Various Artists, Detroit Collects: Selections of African American Art from Private Collections (Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit) – Private collectors in museum contexts are problematic but everything about this warmed me up, members of Detroit’s black community talking about collecting black art and fascinating examples of what draws them to it and keeps them going. A deep dive into the best parts of collection and curation – paying tribute, keeping voices alive, giving you something to pass onto your children.

Anselm Kiefer, German Abstraction After 1950, SFMOMA

Various Artists, Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything (Jewish Museum, NYC) – Various artists taking on Leonard Cohen, one of the most imagistic lyricists of the 20th century made this lifelong Cohen fan’s heart grow three sizes. The variety of work, from an amateur men’s choir doing “I’m Your Man” in multichannel video to an organ that played a word with each key to an installation where “Famous Blue Raincoat” synchronizes with a flood of iconography, there was so much to love here.
Various Artists, Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection (Guggenheim, NYC) – Celebrating an anniversary, the Guggenheim turned to artists to contextualize the parts of the massive modern art collection and it’s the best use of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building and the best use of a giant collection of holdings I’ve seen in years.
Various Artists, German Abstraction After 1950 (SFMOMA, San Francisco) – This era – Kiefer, Richter, et al – is a personal favorite of mine and this was an embarassment of riches I couldn’t believe I was seeing all in one place.

Peter Hujar, The Speed of Life (Wexner Center for the Arts) – I loved the John Waters piece that ran in parallel with Hujar, and I loved seeing the two dialogue with one another but the Hujar wrecked me every damn time. A reminder how potent portraiture can be in letting us see and a reminder to be grateful for our networks and the love around all of us.
Simone Fattal, Works and Days (MoMA PS1, NYC) – An artist I knew nothing about before this trip to PS1 knocked me sidewise. Sculptures and watercolors working through the consequences of archaeology and imperialism, knowledge and the stories we tell ourselves. I needed far more hours than I had to properly appreciate this but it’s still with me.
Walid Raad, Walid Raad (Paula Cooper, NYC) – Walid Raad’s alternate history work reminds us all how science fiction tropes can illuminate real world pain and challenge. His puzzles dare you to tease out the facts from the greater truth and complicate your own feelings as you work through them.
Nancy Spero, Paper Mirror (MoMA PS1, NYC) – Spero’s work benefited from the volume and the jumble of this perfect PS1 show, words coming at the viewer like daggers but so many you can’t focus on any one, you have to give into the flood.

Gordon Parks, The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland) – Gordon Parks’ social realist photography is always a wake up call to being alive and this tight, well-curated collection in Cleveland was exactly what I needed in a summer of too much feeling sorry for myself.
Sondra Perry, A Terrible Thing (MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland) – Perry’s video work dug deep into infrastructure and invisible labor in a biting, potent critique that sung.
Various Artists, arms ache avid aeon (CCAD’s Beeler Gallery) – Jo-ey Tang’s work with the Beeler Gallery is coming into its own; I love his specialty of slow exhibitions that evolve over periods of time and this look back on the fierce pussy collective, capped by a symposium that was the most energized I felt all year, was a dazzling, meditative explosion.
Huma Bhabha, The Company (Gagosian, Rome) – In a trip spent gorging ourselves on old masters and antiquity, Bhabha’s sardonic looks at the modern age was the perfect palate cleanser.

Best Of dance theatre

Best of 2019: Theatre/Dance/Opera

Post author By rsanford614
Post date December 16, 2019
No Comments on Best of 2019: Theatre/Dance/Opera

“Setting my palms into the mud
at the base of a gnarled vine,
I pressed them together
and whispered “speak.”
But the vine’s silence just grew
into the silence of the dead
who once tended it.

Then I saw exactly how
it was beautiful—
how it held its world whole
beneath its fog-slick bark,
while the things we ask
to hold us leave us
spent.”
-From “Where the Zinfandel Pass Their Seasons in Mute Rows” by Jane Mead

The pleasure of being in a room with performers, sitting with someone else’s voice, the feedback loop between audience and the stage, all resonated more strongly and felt more vital than ever this year. I saw a little less theatre – only one New York trip instead of the usual two and the Italian trip coincided with the opera houses being dark – about 55 performances between three cities – but still had a hard time carving out these fifteen performances.

Each one of these showed me something I didn’t know before, sent me spinning out into the night, made me desperate to talk to someone about them, and usually made me pound my fist into the heavy desk at the impossibility of coming close to doing it justice the next morning. These are in chronological order, instead of ranking, and are in Columbus unless otherwise specified. All art was provided by the companies for promotional use, either sent to me directly or on their site.

Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by David Glover (Available Light) – Available Light crushed this year by bringing the best writing for the American stage to Columbus and executing on it with jaw-dropping alacrity. The two David Glover-directed plays were standouts and Appropriate started my year of theatre-going with the thunderclap of a warning-shot pistol. I called it “An acidic, invigorating evening that will make you laugh, make you hate yourself for laughing, make you hate yourself for giving someone the benefit of the doubt, but acknowledge the horrible, beautiful nature of being human.” Standout performances – in a cast full of winners – included Kim Garrison Hopcraft’s righteous fireball of desperation, Philip Hickman and Beth Josephsen’s metal-grinder of a struggling marriage, and Jordan Fehr’s devastating look at the difficulty of atonement. My review for Columbus Underground.

Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book), directed by Brandon Boring (Imagine) – It’s rare for a production of a play I love as much as Into the Woods to shock me back into myself. Director Brandon Boring’s risky choices to go off-mic – with all credit to the strong, sympathetic singing of the cast and the nuanced work of musical director Jonathan Collura and his chamber orchestra – and work up an immersive set in a tiny room known for sound problems paid off big in this jaw-dropping, real, funny take. As I said for Columbus Underground, it “took me back to the same place of childlike delight as my first encounter. I found tears coming to my eyes at exactly the places they should have been.”

The Flood by Korine Fujiwara (score) and Stephen Wadsworth (libretto), directed by Stephen Wadsworth (Opera Columbus and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra) – The Flood pointed to a rich, challenging future for two of our best institutions. An original work grappling with a painful chunk of Columbus history, the Franklinton flood, moved me in more senses than just my coming from a family who settled in The Bottoms and ended up on the Hilltop. Fujiwara’s sparkling, layered, complicated score was executed brilliantly with astonishing performances from Lacey Jo Benter, Meröe Khalia Adeeb, and Daniel Stein, among others. I reviewed this for Columbus Underground.

Paramodernities by Netta Yerushalmy with texts by Thomas F. DeFrantz, Julia Foulkes, Georgina Kleege, David Kishik, Carol Ockman, Mara Mills, Claudia La Rocco (presented by the Wexner Center) – It’s rare I see something that makes me say “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” It’s even rarer I’m in the theatre for over four hours still hungry for more when the lights come up. Yerushalmy’s wild grappling with the history of modernism, scoring dances to lectures set my brain and every part of my body on fire. I walked out wanting to grab everyone I knew by the shoulders and shake, “Why weren’t you there? You missed something special.”

The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, directed by Elizabeth Wellman (OSU Department of Theatre) – I was bummed to miss DeLappe’s play twice at Lincoln Center (once sold out by the time I got word, the revival opened the day I was flying home) so I was overjoyed OSU took it on this season and it did not disappoint. Elizabeth Wellman’s bone-deep understanding of patterns, their necessity for us to grow up but also their ability to weigh us down, sparkles here, with ferocious performances from Vayda Good and Mehek Sheikh anchoring a top-notch cast. I reviewed this for Columbus Underground.

Waiting to Be Invited by S. M. Shepard-Massatt, directed by Patricia Winbush-Wallace (Red Herring Productions) – Red Herring’s ambitious play-a-month schedule this year yielded far more hits than misses. One of my favorites was Shepard-Massatt’s look at the early civil rights movement, directed brilliantly by Patricia Winbush-Wallace, with a stellar, perfectly balanced cast of Winbush-Wallace, Julie Whitney Scott, Demia Kandi, Harold Yarborough, and Josie Merkle. I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

King Lear by William Shakespeare, directed by Sam Gold (Cort Theatre, NYC) – My favorite Shakespeare in an uneven – the reports were not wrong – at times gaudy and overwrought version, still had pleasures enough to make this list. Foremost among them, Glenda Jackson – I feel like I’ve seen the defining Lear of my generation, terrifying, imperious, wounded; I can count on one hand the performances I’ve seen on a stage that matched hers. Similarly, casting Russell Harvard, a deaf actor, as Cornwall paid off massively especially in the moments before the assault on the Earl of Gloucester (a brilliant James Houdyshell) with a frenzied argument between Corwnwall and his aide/interpreter, Michael Arden, in sign language.

Hillary and Clinton by Lucas Hnath, directed by Joe Mantello (John Golden Theatre, NYC) – A slice of life/secret history about the back rooms of the primaries for the 2008 election. Hnath’s uncanny ability to understand the rhythms of the way we speak to each other in different rooms and with different intentions sang through the amazing performances of Laurie Metcalf, John Lithgow, Peter Francis James, and Zak Orth.

The View Upstairs by Max Vernon, directed by Beth Kattelman (Evolution Theatre Company) – My favorite thing in a particularly strong season from Evolution this year. An original musical about the moments before the Upstairs Lounge arson, amplifying that tragedy by being about what brings people together for solace, especially people who are denied it elsewhere. Incredibly moving, warmly directed by Beth Kattelman and with a stellar leading role by Jonathan Collura who I did not know was a late addition until a friend told me that at a party weeks later. I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Fine Not Fine written and directed by Andy Batt (MadLab) – Andy Batt’s return to his former home as artistic director delighted me as it brought me to tears. I said at the time it “grapples with the most basic question of humanity: why do we keep living? What makes us want to keep living? It finds a magical strength in the lack of easy answers and in the absence of a magic bullet; in the very difficulty of the road ahead of us all. And it reminds us we don’t have to be alone in that struggle.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Dance Nation by Clare Barron, directed by Whitney Thomas Eads (Available Light) – With every play Clare Barron stakes her claim on the title of best American playwright. This look at a teenage dance team boasted crackling direction and choreography from Whitney Thomas Eads and fantastic performances all around. I said at the time, “I’ve seen nothing that felt as much like adolescence – raging, wildfire emotions; the fracturing of friendships that used to feel like home; not everyone is special at the thing you most want to be seen for – as Dance Nation.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Ekundayo Bandele (Hattiloo Theatre, Memphis) – I’ve long admired Hattiloo Theatre’s mission. While plays have never been the primary factor in getting me to Memphis regularly, I’ve always been impressed they seem to sell out by the time I start planning. I finally rectified that error with a fiery, intense production of this rich Guirgis drama.

The Humans by Stephen Karam, directed by McKenzie Swinehart – Red Herring ended their run at the Franklinton Playhouse with this nigh-perfect take on Karam’s Tony-winning family drama. Orbiting around the devastating father-daughter dynamic of Christopher Moore Griffin and Becca Kravitz, I said at the time, “Swinehart treats what could be heavy, ponderous material with a light touch, letting her characters breathe and taking full advantage of Edith D. Wadkins’ jaw-dropping set. Love for these characters, even at their most broken, animates this The Humans, searing it into the audience’s brain.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

West Side Story by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lryics), directed by Edward Carignan (Short North Stage) – Carignan took this American classic and stripped it down to its raw emotion and primal darkness in this brilliant collaboration with Columbus Children’s Theatre. A shocking, wild take that preserved everything I love about this show I know so well and made me see it anew.

7 by Radouan Mriziga (presented by the Wexner Center) – Mriziga’s take on the Mershon Auditorium brought overload from every corner with voices and symbols, history being rebuilt and seen from various angles. I’d also like to take this moment to shout out the Wex’s recent commitment to accessibility, I saw people enjoying this who would have felt uncomfortable or made to specifically ask for basic accommodation at these kind of immersive performances in the past. It was fantastic to see the beginnings of that change.